A Martyr to Mammon

Front matter

I I ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ BY L. BALDWIN. " Mine is a briel title, promising Little, but intending much. " SOUTHEY, Thc Doctor. VOL. III. LONDON : SWAN SONNENSCHEIN, LOWREY & CO., PATERNOSTER ROW. 1886. Printed by Hazel], Watson, & Viney, Ld., London and Aylesbury. CONTENTS. CHAP. PAGE I. A STRONG, WEAK WOMAN .... I II. "home, sweet home!" . . . .25 III. AN UNWILLING RESCUE . . . . .46 IV. VERONICAS WILL AGAIN IS LAW . . -75 1 V. A DISCOVERY ...... QO VI. A WEDDING . . . . . . .122 VII. A DEN BECOMES A BOWER . . . -141 viii. "death and the lady" .... 153 IX. CONSISTENT TO THE LAST . . . . l8l X. THE HAVEN . 205 b VOL.

Chapter I

A STRONG, WEAK WOMAN. It was not till about six months after her enforced marriage that Veronica was, for the first time, able to elude Mr. Moore's unceasing vigilance, and with her own hands to post a letter to Ralph Hazlit. All his hopes were raised to the highest pitch on receiving it. It contained no mention of her marriage, nor of the pain they had both suffered ; but it told of her recovery from illness, and closed with a request that filled him with as much joy as he was then capable of feeling. Veronica wished to see him, and named VOL. III. I the day and the hour when he was to meet her at an hotel in Liverpool. She entered into no details, but said briefly that there was much to explain to him, and from the whole tenor of the letter it was evident that her mind was unchanged towards him.

She signed herself, "Always your poor, true Veronica." The more Ralph pondered the letter, the more he conceived he had a right to augur well from her wish to see him. If she merely Avished to explain to him the events that had so lamentably resulted in their separation, it might be done less painfully by letter ; and if it was to bid him farewell, that too Avould be better written, rather than in meeting again to risk the revival of a love that had brought them nothing but sorrow. He further strengthened his hopes by reasoning that a woman so timid and shrinking as he had known Veronica to be would not make an appointment with him at a place where she ran every risk of observation, unless it were for some other cause than a final leave taking or an explanation. So it seemed to Ralph that he had ground for hope that Veronica, trusting to his love to deliver her from her most wretched bondage, wished to see him in order to cast herself on the protection that he would joyfully offer her.

Veronica was still his own — must be so always — in spite of Sister Mary Agnes' reasoning, which tried to prove that the thing stolen becomes the property of the thief. Mr. Moore had possessed himself of Veronica by as clear an act of robbery as ever highwayman committed ; and though he had legal sanction for his violent proceedings, such a marriage constituted no moral tie which Ralph or Veronica was bound to respect, and therefore Ralph's whole life was at her service, to use in any way that might ameliorate the unhappi ness of her lot. Ralph entered the room at the hotel where Mrs. Moore was waiting to receive him as the clock on the mantelshelf chimed the appointed hour. She was standing at the window with her back towards him, and not till the door was closed did she allow herself to turn and meet her lover face to face once more.

As their eyes met, Ralph sprang forward and took her in his arms, straining her to his heart with emotion too profound and tender for speech. He stroked her head, shorn in her illness of its glory of hair, and he kissed her pale cheeks hollowed by suffering. Not the least, most subtle change or decay of her girlish beauty escaped the deep scrutiny of his gaze. He trembled with a joy keener than anguish while he held Veronica in his arms, as though they were never again to be parted. " My darling, I knew that you would send for me!" he said triumphantly. "All these months that are past I have only lived for this perfect moment ! " But Veronica could not speak, and as the deep flush of colour faded from her face, Ralph saw how white and thin it was, how sharpened by pain of mind and body. He led her to a seat, and kneeling before her, pressed her hands to his lips.

"Not that one," said Veronica, drawing away the hand wearing the wedding ring. "Nay," said Ralph, "it is mine too. You are mine now for ever, Veronica. Now I have you safe at last. All the terrible events of the last year seem like a night mare that I have at length shaken off, and I wake to find the sun shining and I alive to rejoice in its blessed light ! Speak, my darling — speak ! I only want you to speak to perfect my joy," and he looked eagerly into her grave and tender eyes. "Ralph," she said, in a voice full of tears, " I cannot perfect your joy by anything I can say — Avould to God I could ! " " My dearest, what do you mean ? you speak in riddles. You know that you are the joy and light of my life, and I only asked you to speak some little word of love to me, for I too have suffered.

But we will suffer no more. This time we must arrange our journey so well as to ensure ourselves from pursuit or surprise. My love shall never again be exposed to the chance of such degradation," and he covered her hand with kisses. "It was but the beginning of degradations," said Veronica, in a \*oice so forlorn that Ralph looked up, and saw her face grow whiter as she spoke. " Do not let your mind linger for a moment," he said, " over a past too cruel to recall — it is the past, dead and gone, and we have nothing to do with it now, only with the present — the happy present, and the happier future. Veronica, think of our future ! " But instead of cheering her heart, he had unwittingly appealed to a feeling of which he was ignorant, for, as he spoke, Veronica's calm gave way, and with a bitter sob she flung her arms about his neck and cried, — ■ " Oh, my God !

I cannot think of our future." He held her hands in his till her sudden burst of weeping was over ; then he asked, in a voice of perplexed pain, " What do you mean, Veronica ? " There Avas no reply, though his eyes were fixed on her in intensity of yearning appeal. He read in their grey depths a sorrow that communicated itself to him and gave the death blow to his newborn joy. Again he asked, " What do you mean ? You are killing me by your silence ; speak to me." " I mean, that I cannot think of our future, because it must be spent apart from each other." She spoke in a rapid, passionless voice, as though she were repeating a lesson by heart. Ralph sprang to his feet. " Veronica, do you love me?" he asked vehemently. The ghost of a smile crossed her pale face. " Ask me if I am alive, for to live and to love you are one."

"Then," he said hotly, " if you love me, why do you tortuie me? I would give my life's blood, drop by drop, to saA*e you a pang, and you deal me a deathblow without flinching." "I have flinched only too much," she said, as though goading herself to speak. " I was all weakness when we met," and her lips, that had taken his kisses but a few minutes before, trembled and blanched. "You shall tell me what you mean," said Ralph ; and after a moment's pause he added, " What did you ask me to come here for, Veronica ? " " To tell you that our life can never be what we wanted it to be. All that is over for ever. I thought I could tell you this face to face better than in a letter — but now " "You wish you had written," said Ralph bitterly, "for then you would not have seen my pain. But what is your reason for this wild conclusion ?

You hate Mr. Moore — no pain could sting me into doubting that — and that being the case, why are you not as divinely happy at being freed from him as I should be to deliver you from your bondage ? I have a right to the truth from you, whatever it may be, and I will have it ! " He spoke with a sternness that made it far easier to Veronica to reply to him than if he had appealed to her with tenderness. " It is not possible," he continued, "that you regard this unnatural union with your guardian, into which he forced you when you were of disordered mind and incapable of pro tecting yourself, as holy and inviolable ? Do not tell me you regard such abominable chicanery as a marriage— sacred and binding! " "No," said Veronica warmly, "I have no tinge of superstition with regard to my unhappy relation to Mr. Moore, to the un hallowed marriage into which he forced me when I was not responsible before God or man.

Do not so far misunderstand me, as to suppose I have any respect for such a bond." " What then, in Heaven's name, is it that keeps you from me, who love you more than you know, more than your heart can conceive ? Oh ! child," he said, in a rush of tenderness and pity, " don't think of me in the matter, but look to it that you do not sacrifice your last chance of happiness to a mere idea, perhaps to a misapprehension that a perfectly open talk with me might remove." " I have nothing to hide from you," said Veronica, "I can lay my whole soul before you, and will tell you all. It is no new thought of mine, it is one that has possessed me day and night since I recovered from my illness. It is this — since, most unhappily, I am Mr. Moore's wife, by whatever base means I became so, such I must most un happily remain."

" But you told me a moment ago " broke in Ralph hotly. "Bear with me, dear Ralph, till I have said what is so hard for me to put into words. No two living men must stand in the same relation to me, though one of them were you — the very husband of my soul. If my reason, now that I have plainly told it to you, seem quixotic and high-flown," she continued, as she noted her lover's rising impatience and wrath, "remember, I hold it at the cost of my life's happiness, and that though it falls heavily on you as well, to you it is only the loss of the happy life we had pictured, while to me it is that and much more — it is voluntarily abiding a life that I loathe." "But you need not abide it," said Ralph. ' There is no reason, human or divine, why you should be a self-made martyr. You good women, you love self-sacrifice for its own sake, you glory in depriving yourselves of the happiness life offers you, and think that Heaven is pleased by your unhappiness, whereas it is neither glad nor sorry at such folly.

But look you — it ceases to be self sacrifice when you offer up the happiness of another as well as your own. You have no right to sacrifice my happiness to a notion originating with yourself and only affecting yourself. That is not self-sacrifice, it is tyranny of the most arbitrary and rigorous kind. There, brute that I am, I have made you cry ! Oh ! my darling, forgive me, but you drive me mad, and then you break my heart with your tears. There is no wound that your tongue can inflict but your lips can most sweetly heal — kiss me, my own ! " " Oh, Ralph — pity me, do not make it harder to leave you!" " Then I will kiss the cheek that is turned from me — from me, Veronica, who love you better than my own soul, who set up no mysterious barriers between us when our happiness is within reach.

See, I am not changed, I am yours for all time. How have you the heart to send me away ? ' and his vfeice broke and trembled. " Do not speak so, Ralph, do not kiss me, but help me ! How should I be worthy of you, if to become yours I did what my heart condemned ? Could you love me if, to become your wife, I sinned against Avhat I feel to be right — against the law that is written in my heart ? " " Child, you are lost in a fog. Would to God it were not a vital matter, and you should sweetly wander in it all your days ! But hear me, Veronica, — do not speak, I must be heard. Think much before you decide irrevocably ; it is not for yourself only, my destiny is bound up with yours. You are responsible formy soul as well as for your own. I have put all into your hands, and you hold for me the keys of life and death.

Let no distorted pride, from however high a source it springs, keep you from me. What — are you never to be my wife because a hateful old man stole you from me ? Veronica, if you only knew how dearer than ever you are to me, how pure and sweet as in your girlhood, how desirable to me above all the world you are, in spite of your being Mr. Moore's wife, you Avould not shrink from me." And there fell a silence, in which Ralph could count the beating of his heart. Presently Veronica spoke. " Since we last saw each other, Ralph, I have passed through agony that surely would have killed me, if I were not destined to a long life of pain. Stripped of all joy and happiness, as I am, •and deeply degraded in my own eyes, separated from you by an insurmountable barrier, I cast about for some holdfast for my soul in its desolation, and I found a truth to which I cling, and while I hold to it I shall not drift away, and heavy waves may beat on me in vain.

I found in my deep tribulation that honour and not love — sweet love alone — must be the foundation of my being. It saved me from loss of self-respect — from madness itself, I believe. I could not make you happy if I came to you, and I could not make myself less unhappy. Ralph, have we not strength to endure ? Can we not love each other all our lives, without any hope of union in this world?" " I am neither a child nor an an^el that I can submit to your unnatural and impossible terms," said Ralph, almost fiercely. "You do not love me as I love you, you cannot. Your heart is cold and poor by mine. But, Veronica, I cannot bear to think of the life to which you condemn yourself. Will you believe I love you without thought of self, if I offer you a form of escape that can bring no joy to me? If you wish to free yourself from the accursed bondage of being Mr. Moore's wife, let me take you to some distant place where he cannot find you, and I will employ the ingenuity of my whole life in guarding you from him ; but I would never see you again — no, I would never see you, or my resolution would fail me, and I should assert my claim to my own again." »j Veronica's head sank on her breast, and she breathed quickly, but she did not speak.

" I pledge you my word," he continued, " that when once I had taken you far away, vol. 111. your liberty should be absolute, and I would find the only happiness that can be mine in knowing you were free of your slavery." " Then, Ralph, you would be stronger than I. I could not trust myself alone and free— I should come to you," Veronica said, with heightened colour. "Choose your martyrdom in your own form," said Ralph sadly ; and then added passionately, " My darling, my own darling, I do not know what I am saying ! I am mad Avith the thought that you are throwing away our lives for a scruple conceived in the very refinement of purity and honour, but puerile, intangible, inapplicable to living men and women." " My dearest, I demand from you the highest proof of love — that you should try to enter into my motive, and yet lo\'e me none the less for it.

Can you do that, Ralph ? Is your love strong enough to do that? " and she took his hand imploringly. "A hard test, my own — a hard test," he said, " but I will press you no further. You have had the disposal of my life hitherto, and you will have it to the end. But while you are sustained with a sense of scaling moral heights, I, for my part, incur a sense of moral guilt in helping you to commit suicide, to murder the happiness of your young life. There is this difference between us, my darling — you love me second to what you consider right, and if any unfortunate concep tion of duty arise in your mind, clashing with your love for me, I must suffer for it. But I love you better than my own soul ! I have no notion of a life of ideal purity which you would mar for me. All of truth, purity, and honour in me is in my love for you, you are my inspiration to right, the life of my life.

A ATARI YR TO MA AIM ON. 20 My God ! " said he, speaking rapidly and low, and as if Veronica were not near him, " how can she do it— where does such strength come from ? A tender creature I could crush in my grasp — all sweetness and softness — yet she is terrible — inexorable as the forces of nature. What gave you such tender, pitiful eyes to melt my heart with, while your lips wound like a sword ? Oh ! my darling, what is this — do I love you, hate you, or pity you most ? " and he drew her towards him in an agony. " I wish I had died before I had seen this day!" said Veronica. "I am born to calamity. I must bear pain and inflict it on the one creature dearest to me in all the world. Oh ! let your love extend to forgive ness ; do not let me go back to my unhappy and ignominious life thinking that you resent what I am doing, because I cannot explain myself to you."

" Nay, I understand but ,too well, that as you have been the joy of my life so now you will become its pain and its mystery. I shall no longer contest your will, but if your decision should ever change or waver, remember, wherever you may be — -wherever I may be, I am yours as long as I live. Come to me, or send for me in any time of need, but think of me till then as little as you can, for I shall be neither a good nor a profitable subject to dwell upon." " I pray God you may forget me, Ralph ! " " The age of miracles is past, and such prayers are idle. And you cannot forget me, Veronica. I shall haunt you, waking and sleeping, and one day you will long for me and say — I sent him away in a moment of madness, but now I repent ; when will he come to comfort me ? " After a pause he said suddenly, " There is one hope for us, that this probation may not, after all, last many years.

Mr.. Moore is getting an old man, he ought to die." " He is more likely to bury both of us," she answered. " He is only just entering on an iron old age, his health is perfect, his mind tranquil and powerful, his conscience at rest with a sense of having done his duty by me, and he has none of the cares and anxieties that tell on the strength of elderly men. What is there that could shorten the life of such a man ? " "What you say is hatefully true," replied Ralph, "but promise me this — that if he dies before we do — and God grant that he may! — - you will come to me then in all honour and simplicity. However many years we may have to wait, promise me you will come to me or send for me, wherever I may be." " I promise with all my heart. And do you, dear Ralph, promise me still to write to me.

I will let you know when you may safely send a letter to me, for when Mr. Moore is at home it would be madness to attempt it. I cannot give up your letters." " So be it. I must comply with all your hard conditions. But, Veronica, it all brings me back to the old point — how can you do it? " " My dear, my only love, we shall break our hearts the more we speak about it. There is no arguing in love, I only implore you to let me go without repeating or defending my reason. You are all I have to look to in this world ; do not leave me to the weakness of my own strength — help me to say good-bye!" and she held out her hands imploringly towards him. "You ask me more than I can do. It is you who are strong, not I. I cannot help you to leave me." No tears dimmed Ralph's eyes, but he kissed away Veronica's — a tender moisture that cooled his anger and turned it into deepest pity.

Neither of them spoke as they walked down the stairs and crossed the broad pavement to the carriage that stood Avaiting. Veronica drew a thick veil over her tear-stained face, and as Ralph held her hand for the last time it was deadly cold, and powerless to return his clasp. As they left the hotel they were seen, and Mrs. Moore was recognised by Kirby Postle thwaite, who with malign pleasure noted the exact time when they passed out, and slipped the memorandum into his pocket-book for future use with an air of complete satisfaction.

CHAPTER IL

" HOME, SWEET HOME ! " Kirby Postlethwaite had not forgiven Veronica for her refusal of him some years previously. He had not forgotten his wounded pride, nor his disappointed hopes of substantial gain, and he had cherished resentment against her ever since. Probably he would not have deliberately sought an opportunity of injuring the woman he had once professed to love, but when a chance of inflicting pain upon her presented itself to him unsought, Kirby Postlethwaite was not the man to let that chance escape him. The sight of Mrs. Moore without her husband, and in the company of a gentleman who was evidently an intimate friend of hers, afforded him so much pleasure, that he determined to share it with no less a person than Mr. Moore himself. Accordingly, he despatched a note to Mr. Moore that very evening, stating that he might not be aware that Mrs. Moore had been seen in company with a gentleman that afternoon at such an hotel.

The unknown informant further remarked that he alluded to it reluctantly, but that in the interests of public morality he felt it to be his painful duty to acquaint Mr. Moore with the fact, and ventured to suggest that an elderly gentle man, with a young and beautiful wife, should watch over such a valuable possession with at least as much care as he guarded his purse or his plate-chest. So having delivered his mind with the freedom characteristic of anonymous writers, Kirby Postlethwaite ' ' HO ATE, S WEET HOME ! ' ' 27 signed his letter in the singularly inappro priate and hackneyed name of "A Well wisher." Mr. Moore, who was from home when Veronica had seen Ralph, found Kirby's letter, written in a feigned and crabbed hand, waiting for him on his return. He read it twice very carefully before he fully compre hended the enormity of its contents.

That he should feel jealousy, in the ordinary sense of the word, was impossible, because he did not love Veronica, but a dread lest he, the man of unstained reputation, had committed his honour to the keeping of a woman who would wantonly tarnish it, forced cold drops of terror to start upon his brow. That evening Veronica saw that Mr. Moore was angry and perturbed, and that by many devious ways he was approaching some unpleasant subject. He uttered lofty senti- . _4 MARTYR TO MAMMON. ments concerning the duties of wives towards their husbands, especially of young wives to wards elderly husbands, and then sententiously remarked that " Cæsar's wife should be above suspicion." He fixed his eyes full upon Veronica, expecting her to grasp his meaning, but she did not ask who was the Cæsar and who the wife alluded to, and so deprived Mr. Moore of the opportunity of pointing his moral.

At last, setting aside all vagueness of speech, and with a directness he might as well have employed at first, he laid Kirby Postle thwaite's letter before her, saying, as he did so, " Can you deny what this letter asserts, Mrs. Moore? " Veronica changed colour, startled by the abruptness of the question, but read the letter through, and returning it to Mr. Moore, said quietly, — ' ' HOME, S WE ET HOME ! ' ' 29 " There is nothing to deny in it. Your ' Well-wisher ' is correct as to his fact, but wrong in the inference he draws from it." "How — heh ? What the devil! Mrs. Moore, are you without shame? " asked her husband, spreading the letter before him as a text for a homily. "Would that I were," said Veronica, "for my whole life is full of shame since you made me your wife. Listen to me, Mr. Moore," she said imploringly, as he was about to reply angrily, " and I will never trouble you again on the subject.

The day before yesterday, at my own request, I saw Ralph Hazlit to explain to him, as I was in honour bound to do, the means by which you made me your wife, when I was helpless in your hands. I told you that you were powerless to separate us, — do not be angry yet, but hear me to the end. You cannot understand the kind of love there is A MARTYR TO MAMAION. 30 between us, for it is independent of all that the world means by love ; but you can appreciate the result of it, for it will preserve me all my life from doing anything that you could consider dishonouring to your name. I shall never leave you, Mr. Moore. From no sense of duty towards you, — do not misunderstand me, — for I owe you none, but because I love Ralph Hazlit too well to go to him in the fallen estate of your wife. There is no need that his name should ever be mentioned between us again.

I have told you the relation in which we stand to each other, and there is nothing in it to cause your 'Well-wisher' a moment's uneasiness." Mr. Moore understood Veronica so far as to know that she was incapable of untruth, and therefore he must needs believe her statement; but he hated to be perplexed by so insignificant a being as his wife, Avho ' ' HOME, S WEET HOME ! ' ' 31 pretended to act from motives beyond his comprehension. So he contented himself by saying he should watch over her carefully, and by telling her that the admission she had just made was in every way unworthy of a married woman. Now that Veronica had resolved to bear her life in the unhappy form it had assumed, and had refused to be delivered from it, her days settled down, as Mr. Moore's wife, into a chill monotony far more difficult to bear than those of more violent suffering that had preceded them.

The strength of will that helped her to abide by her decision transformed her timid nature and gave her courage to face each dreary detail of her life. Mr. Moore might storm, Veronica was silent ; Mr. Moore might harangue till exhaustion ensued, his wife noticed it no more than she would a blue bottle buzzing on the pane. He had no perception of the cruel and irreparable injury he had inflicted on Veronica's whole life. In his own judgment, he was incapable of error, and having done nothing wrong, there Avas nothing to be repented of. But that this obstinate woman should quietly and steadily resent his authority and control over her, galled him more than he would care to own. One evening, when Mr. Moore returned from business, he found his wife at her piano, play ing softly to herself in the twilight.