And all this time Maurice was praying for help. It had not been a very pleasant idea, that of facing his cousin for the first time; but now the thought occurred to him that he would rather face the very worst--even that obnoxious being, of whom the preacher earnestly warned him--than hear this man inveigh against his sins any more.
Mattie quietly entered the shop. The spell was broken; Mr. Gray paused with his right arm above his head--he was just coming down with another bang on the counter--and Maurice leaped off his stool, to which he had been transfixed, and shook hands violently with Mattie in his bewilderment.
"He will see me, Miss Gray?"
"Yes. If you wish it."
"Thank you--thank you! Is he in the parlour?"
"Yes."
"And so be warned, young man--there is no excuse left you--not one, now.
You have been warned of all the evils which a guilty life incurs upon those who go on their way defiantly!"
"Oh! yes--I have been warned, sir; there"s not a doubt of it--I"m afraid I have put you to a great deal of trouble?" said Maurice, not yet recovered from his confusion.
"In a good cause, I don"t mind trouble."
"Very kind of you, I"m sure. In the parlour, you said, Miss Gray?--then I"ll go to him at once. It must be getting very late."
Mr. Gray was proceeding to follow Maurice, when Mattie touched him on the arm and arrested his progress.
"I think we had better leave them together. Their business is scarcely ours."
"What?--ah! exactly so, my dear. But I wish you had not interrupted me quite so unceremoniously--the impression I was making upon that young man was wonderful! Great heaven! if it is left for me to work his regeneration at the last, how proud I shall be! Mattie, I think I have moved him--he has already said something about building a tabernacle, a chapel, or something; but I scarcely caught the words at the moment--think of that man, so wicked, and perverse, and designing, proceeding after all, in the straight and narrow way! It"s wonderful!"
In the meantime, Maurice Hinchford had entered the parlour, closed the door behind him, and advanced towards the figure at the table, sitting in the full light of the gas above his head. Maurice paused and looked at him.
Sidney had changed; he was looking older; there was a thread or two of silver in the dark waving hair; and the eyes, which blindness had not dimmed, had that melancholy vagueness of expression, by which such eyes are always characterized.
"Well, Sidney--I am here at last."
"I am sorry that you have taken the trouble to call."
"Indeed!--why?"
"I think you and I are best apart. We know each other far too well, by this time."
"Have patience with me, Sidney. I think not."
He drew a chair nearer his cousin, and sat down. He had not offered to shake hands with Sidney; he felt that his cousin would have resented that attempt; that he was regarded as a man who had done a grievous wrong, and from whom no professions of friendship or cousinly regard would be received. He had come with a faint hope of doing good--in some way or other, he scarcely knew himself; of extenuating in some way--almost as indefinite to him--the past conduct which had placed him in so sinister a light.
"Sidney," he said, "I wish that you had accepted that invitation to meet me which I made you. I could have explained much."
"No explanation, Maurice, would have been satisfactory to me at that time."
"Will it be now, then?" he asked, eagerly catching at the words which implied possibly more than his cousin had wished to convey.
"I would prefer dismissing the subject altogether," Sid replied. "If you will tell me candidly and honestly that you are sorry for the past, I will be glad to hear it--and believe it."
"You bear me no malice, then?"
"No--I have outlived it."
"Then you will----"
"I will do nothing, but remain with those good friends who have taken pity on my helplessness," he said, sternly.
"Sidney, pray understand me. I don"t wish you to think me a wholly bad man--G.o.d knows I am not that--I have never been that. I have had bad friends, evil counsellors, if you will--mine was never a resolute nature, but one easily led away from the first. I was an only son, spoiled by an indulgent father, spoiled by the money which was lavished on me, spoiled by the crowd which the spending of that money brought about me--nothing more."
"That is bad enough," said Sid.
"I own that. I own that I was flattered to my moral ruin, Sidney--that they, who called themselves my friends, cheered on that downfall, and made it easy to me--scoffing at all worlds purer than their own. I was young, vain, impressionable, and far from high-principled when I first met Harriet Wesden at Brighton."
"I would rather not hear the story," said Sidney, uneasily.
Maurice paid no heed to the remark, but went on hastily; and Sidney, suppressing his intention to arrest the narrative, sat still and listened to its weaknesses, its mystery, and yet its truth.
"Harriet Wesden was a romantic school-girl--a young woman who knew little of life, or had read the fictions, highly-coloured, concerning it, till she might have belonged to dream-land for the realities about her. She was led away by a senior scholar, too, as romantic as herself, and more designing; and she and I met, talked, corresponded--fell in love with each other."
"I deny that."
"Patience, Sidney; on my soul we did! I was not a villain, but a man led away by my vanity and this girl"s preference for me, and I loved her. I don"t say that it was a very true or pa.s.sionate love; but it _was_ a love, which burned fiercely enough for a time--which would have been purer and better, but for the evil counsellor and false friend who was always with me, to treat life, and love, and honour as a jest."
"The man I met at your house?"
"No. A man who has died since then--thank G.o.d, I was almost adding, for he worked me much evil, and death only freed me from him."
"Go on."
"When Harriet Wesden and I parted, I believe we truly loved each other.
I had a.s.sumed a false name at the outset, and had maintained it throughout our strange courtship--fearing the discovery of governesses, and not knowing the character of her to whom my folly had lured me. I was to go abroad at my father"s wish, and I left, fully resolving to write to her, and own all, and ask her if she would wait for me. Then came long absence, fresh scenes, new friends, new dissipations, a belief that she would easily forget me, being but a child when I had seen her last; and so the old, old story, varied scarcely from the many that have gone before it. Sidney, she did forget me--did discover that, after all, it was but a fleeting fancy of her own."
"No."
"I think the next part of my story proves that. I met her again after an absence of a few years, in the streets, near her house in Suffolk Street, whither I had conducted my father to see yours. All my old pa.s.sion for her revived--but it was a struggle with her to endure my presence at first. Still I was from the old days; I revived in her memory the one romance that had been hers--I had not played a false part therein, and could easily excuse my long silence. I found out the friends whom she visited in the neighbourhood of New Cross; I formed their acquaintance, and met Harriet Wesden more frequently. Her old a.s.sertion that she never wished to see me again--that she loved another, whose name she would never confess to me--wavered. I saw it, and, carried away by the impression created, I did my best to win her."
"Away from me?--well, you succeeded. She wrote to me at that time, confessing her inability to think of me longer as a lover."
"She wrote, not knowing her own mind, I believe. At that time she was disturbed in thought concerning us--she was often cold and repellent to me, and it was difficult to understand her. Well, Sid, throughout all this, I loved her."
"Why keep to your false name, then?"
"I was ready to confess the truth, at every interview; then I put off the avowal, after my old fashion. I knew by that time that your father and yourself were lodging at the stationer"s shop, and I formed a shrewd guess as to the rival I had in her affections. Finally, Sid, there came that night at New Cross, when she was carried away to Ashford. As I hope to be saved, I had no design against her then; in good faith, I was her escort to the railway station; it was only as we approached that station, that the ruse suggested itself--that the devil whispered in my ear his temptation. I knew the time of the mail-train; I had been by it _en route_ to Paris only a few weeks since; I led her along, unsuspecting of evil, to the other side of the railway station. She was with me in the carriage before I became conscious of the heinousness of the act I had committed. Even then I intended her no harm; I trusted all to circ.u.mstance; I was even prepared to marry her, rather than lose her; I was under a spell, Sidney!"
"Yes--the spell of the devil."
"When she discovered the truth, I found that I had secured her hate, rather than her love; at Ashford station she faced me like a tigress, and, full of the honest indignation that possessed her, held me up to the shame I deserved before a host of people--pointed me out as a coward and knave who had sought to cruelly deceive her. She claimed the protection of that--that terrible man in the shop there--he was at Ashford as you know--and I was glad to hide my head in the railway carriage, and be borne away from his withering contempt. That"s the story. I will not tell you of the sorrow which I experienced for the harm that I had done her--of the shame that has remained with me since then--of the turn which she even gave to my character. Sidney, I would have made any reparation in my power--but I was baffled and degraded, and dared not look upon her any more."