A forgotten sin

Chapter I

Had any one coming to the neighbourhood of Skeffington for the first time asked, “ What are the people at the Hall like? ” it is probable that he would have got some such answer as this: “ Oh, they are just very like everybody else. He a pleasant old gentleman, very busy with the estate, and still a little vain of his looks, which, I believe, used to be quite stunning, once upon a time: she hopelessly commonplace, but quite harmless; the sort of person whom it is so difficult to find anything to say about, don’t you know? or to say to, either, for the matter of that — an excellent housekeeper/ I believe, but certainly

she can never, have l been stunning to look at;

anyway, it’s he who bears off the palm for

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interest between the two. As for the girl — well, she’s just a pretty English girl,— very pretty, I admit, and also very English, — a little in the old-fashioned style, perhaps, and not with very much to say for herself either, or anyway not yet. And they all get on so excellently together, and everything always rufis so smoothly at the Hall, that one never has the chance of making a remark.”

Such, looked at from a neighbourly point of view, was the impression given by the Skeffington family circle; and even a much closer look did not dispel it. Any one, for instance, who, after the departure of the last guests to-day, could have managed to return invisibly to the drawing-room where father, mother, and daughter were lingering before the final good-night, would certainly have remained of opinion that these people were “ just like everybody else,” — that is to say, an eminently respectable family, affectionate and prosperous, and uninteresting because of these very attributes.

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Mr. Morell, his elbow on the mantelpiece and his finely-shaped hand caressing his finely-shaped forehead with a gesture which was habitual in him, — though perhaps a little too elegant in figure and too regular in feature to be called a typical British squire, might nevertheless be taken as a distinctly fine specimen of an English country gentleman, though, of course, an elderly one. There had been a time when that well-moulded hand had passed thus lovingly over brilliant, golden locks, — that was the time at which the characteristic gesture had been acquired; and though in place of the golden locks there was now a bald forehead, thinly fringed with silver, the fingers had not unlearned the trick, and continued to caress the naked skin almost as complacently as they had once caressed the much-admired, sunny locks. The more interesting of the two: yes, there could scarcely be a doubt of that. Looking at the shortish, stout woman with the ordinary face, just now lighting her bedroom candle, it was impos-

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sible not to agree with the imaginary informant above quoted.

And Esme? Here also the informant was right, for she distinctly deserved the italicised very before the “ pretty ” bestowed upon her, though it was not an obtrusive sort of prettiness. No sensational contrast of hair and eyes, no dazzling brilliancy of complexion, nothing that was likely to strike at a distance; only a graceful though still over-youthful figure, a childishly clear skin, a quantity of that peculiar shade of fair hair which the French call cendre, and a pair of thickly-fringed, greyblue eyes which were neither shy nor bold, neither sad nor gay, but which might yet become any of these things, according to what Fate held in store for this child’s soul which still looked out through them upon the unexplored world.

Likewise, it seemed true that she had little to say for herself; but that was scarcely to be wondered at, considering that to-day was her seventeenth birthday, and that the big

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dinner-party which had been given in honour of the event was the first occasion in which she had figured in public in a frock of the regulation “ grown-up ” length.

“ Did it feel very uncomfortable? ” asked Mr. Morell, gazing fondly at his daughter across the room, and still playing with the imaginary hair on his forehead.

“ Not quite so bad as I expected, except for the train; I hope nobody saw me kicking it about. I can’t imagine how people manage in a ballroom.”

Mr. Morell laughed indulgently.

“ By the time you have been through half a season you will be able to manage it quite easily; won’t she, Mary?”

“ I suppose she will,” replied Mrs. Morell, placidly, and then added after a moment: “ But there is no hurry about that. We are not going to London this year, surely? ”

“ No, no, not this year,” he said, with just a touch of haste. “ I shall be very busy this summer; and besides, there is the expense to

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consider. Time enough to be presented at eighteen. By next year everything will be easier.”

He shifted his elbow on the mantelpiece, and stood for a few minutes gazing silently into the dying fire.

“ I am sure Esme is in no hurry about it,” observed Mrs. Morell in her tranquil, even voice.

“None at all,” agreed Esme, stifling a yawn, for she was not yet used to late hours. “ If there exists a passion for dancing within me it has not yet been aroused. Just now it is only my bed that I am in any hurry about.”

The eyes of both father and mother followed her from the room.

“ But when we do bring her out,” exclaimed Mr. Morell, as the door closed behind the slender, white-robed apparition, “ I feel pretty sure that her path will be clear. I don’t know what other people think of her, and possibly I am a partial judge, but I confess that I find her beautiful, or on the high-

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road to. becoming beautiful. Tell me, Mary, does it not strike you that she has got exactly my eyes? Excuse the vanity of the remark,” he laughed, lightly.

“ The colour, certainly, is the same,” agreed Mrs. Morell, a little stolidly.

“ And her hair, too, reminds me, — though, to be sure, I fancy my hair had more colour in it,” and he g&zed somewhat wistfully at the reflection of his denuded forehead in the glass.

“Your hair was the colour of gold,” said Mrs. Morell, busying herself again with her candle.

“ So it was, so it was,” and he nodded slowly to himself in the glass. “ Anyway, the resemblance is unmistakable. I confess I am very curious as to the effect she will produce, and as to the offers she will have. I feel pretty certain that she will soon be married.”

“ Oh, but I can’t lose her yet,” said the mother, a trifle more quickly.

“ Why not, if it is to secure her own hap-

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piness? Tell me, Mary,” and he raised his head as though under the influence of some new thought, “ do you not think it very likely that she will make a big marriage? ”

This time the wife appeared to hesitate before answering.

“ Why need she make a big marriage? Has she not enough of her own? ”

“ I never said there was any need,” answered the husband, with the faintest touch of irritation; “but, except in the eyes of monks or maniacs, big marriages are surely preferable to small ones; and the greater her fortune, the greater, humanly speaking, will be her chances of enjoyment, or of doing good either, if it comes to that. Surely you agree with me? ”

“ Oh yes, I agree. But, Robert, is it not time for us to be thinking of bed? You told me, did you not, that you have to take the early train to town again to-morrow? ”

“To be sure; it won’t do to gossip any longer. Let us sleep upon the consciousness

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that Esme’s first step in society has been a success. We may be proud of our daughter, Mary. Why do you say so little? Are you not as proud as I am? ”

“ I am as proud as you are,” and the homely grey eyes kindled for a moment, as the exultant father stooped to kiss the passive mother’s cheek. “ But you know that I can’t talk so well as you do, Robert.”

“ That’s right. Leave the talking to me,” he laughed, good-naturedly, “ and meanwhile don’t forget that I shall require my coffee at seven to-morrow morning. Good night, Mary.”

“ Good night, Robert,” and, with the exchange of another smile, they took their several ways.

Chapter II

Let us follow the members of this humdrum, well-to-do English family to their respective apartments, and see whether, in the depths of privacy, they look so exactly “ like everybody else ” as was generally asserted.

The first thing that Mr. Morell did on reaching his room was not to make ready for bed, but, having divested himself only of his evening-coat, to begin pacing the floor with an expression of troubled, rather than joyous excitement on his still handsome face. Occasionally, when passing the glass on the toilet-table, he would throw a glance at his own reflection; but it was not of his own looks that he was then thinking.

“ If she has anything like the success that I had,” — he mused dreamily and hopefully.

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II

And certainly, if Esme could attain the position in society once occupied by her father, there could be little doubt that her fortune was made.

Some thirty years ago Robert Morell had come as near to being a male professional beauty as the usages of British society, as well as a substratum of common-sense in his own nature, would allow. Despite the common-sense, however, society had succeeded in spoiling him for any other profession; for this universal favourite was not only marvellously handsome, he was also a good conversationalist, obviously good-natured, and of that undying gaiety of temperament which enlivens the dullest drawing-room. With just enough fortune to live decently in chosen circles, he had early begun to let himself drift. Without having ever been deliberately vicious, he had never found the strength to resist the exercise of his power over women; and had thus, by his twenty-fifth year, acquired the reputation of having broken more hearts than any

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other man then en vogue in London, and had yet never been in love with anybody but himself. Needless to say that the pet of society was all the more courted and caressed by the beauties of each season for this faculty of remaining fancy-free.

Strangely enough, the one pair of eyes which for a time had taken to haunting his dreams did not belong to any of these fashionable beauties, but to a low-born girl, the daughter of a cottager under whose modest roof he had spent some days during a fishing-tour in the south of England. He had meant to stop in the cottage for only one night, but the eyes had been so curiously fascinating that they had compelled him to change his programme.

A slender, graceful, untamed thing she was — Jialf-shy, half-bold, half-unapproachable, half-seductive, with a quivering mouth and flashes of fierce desire in her brown eyes that were so strangely shot through with gleams of yellow. He had never seen this exact light

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in any human eyes before, though he had noticed it often in the eyes of a young dog, or in those of panthers or wild cats. It was a new variety in women’s eyes, and so out of the common that it interested even this connoisseur of women. It was in order to study those curiously animal eyes more closely that he decided to stop on for a few days longer — for that, and to amuse himself by seeing whether this shy creature of the woods, who shrank from him so fearfully and yet vibrated so visibly in response to his every touch, was not to be tamed by the same magic that had brought so many of her highly educated sisters to his feet. There were no trout caught in those sunny June days, but there were many secret strolls by the murmuring river, where creel and rod lay at rest among the boulders, and many talks in the long summer twilights. It was a change from London drawing-rooms and wasp-waisted belles. Sometimes indeed, in later days, it had passed through his mind that if fate had thrown him more frequently

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into the path of that vibrating creature he might actually have lost a good part of his usually so sublime serenity. But fate had not brought them together again. For a time that so startling yellow light would follow him in his dreams, and when, a year later, he was passing near the same place on another fishing-tour, he had actually gone out of his way in order to make inquiries after Eva Birke. The old cottager was dead, he learnt, and the girl and her brother had emigrated to America some months before. On the whole he was relieved to hear it, though he would have enjoyed seeing the yellow eyes again. Soon they faded even from his dreams, and it was many years now since he had thought of them.

Meanwhile, though his hair was beginning to grow thin, he continued to be a much-admired and much-sought-after bachelor; but already he watched himself a little anxiously in the glass. “ When the skin begins to show through that place at the side,” he said to

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himself, “ it will be time to think of settling down.”

But, before the skin had quite begun to show through, there came another warning, for one day, as he was taking a bite out of a real Scotch oatcake, he felt a curious sensation in his mouth, and assured himself by means of his tongue that one of his front teeth was loose. Things were beginning to get serious; decidedly the moment was come. It was now that the substratum of common-sense came to the surface, right through the thick layer of vanity.

“ Better go before I am dismissed,” he reflected philosophically, and began deliberately to look about him. Among the many candidates for his favour there was a rather considerable heiress of the name of Mary Garrett, in whose quiet grey eyes his practised glance had long since read a devotion deeper, if less ostentatious, than that of many more demonstrative women. Why not make her happy, in consideration of her rent-roll?

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Her plainness of feature struck him as an advantage, rather than otherwise. No doubt this pet of society had his own reasons for distrusting a beautiful wife — that is to say, if she were one’s own wife instead of somebody else’s. Be this as it may, the elderly Adonis bestowed his much-admired person upon Mary Garrett, and, abjuring his youth and its traditions, forthwith settled down into the regulation respectable country squire. The splendid estate of Skeffington, which his bride had brought to him as her portion, was the very place to awaken ambitions of a certain order; and even the easy-going Robert Morell, finding himself suddenly transformed from an almost poor man into a very considerable landowner,, seemed to undergo a radical change of nature. He required a new interest in life to replace that furnished by his fast-fading looks, and finding so fine an opportunity ready to hand, he threw himself into his new role with a zest and power of enjoyment of which he had scarcely suspected himself capable. The

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estate, though in fair order, had, in the hands of old-fashioned trustees, lagged behind the times; there were none of the modern improvements, nothing cultivated which had not been cultivated last century, and many opportunities lying waste. To all these things Mr. Morell now began to turn his attention with a new-born energy which deserved better results. For, having no experience that had been gathered outside a drawing-room, and having, moreover, lost his head a little bit over his new elevation, he had early begun to entangle the affairs of the estate. A word of advice might have put everything right a dozen times during the last dozen years, but advice was a thing which Mr. Morell never asked, for, since becoming a landlord, he was almost as vain of his management as he had once been of his looks.

His social successes, besides, had fed large the sanguine element in his nature, which now led him on from one experiment to another, always hoping confidently for the success i8

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which yet evaded him. But although even larger fortunes than his have melted in exactly this fashion, all might still have been well if he had not, in an unlucky moment, conceived the hope of retrenching his losses , at one blow. A few words dropped by two unknown travelling companions in a railway carriage, while he was on his way to London, where an uncomfortable interview with his solicitor awaited him, had first put the fatal idea into Mr. Morell’s head. Since George Grey — whoever he might be — had become rich overnight merely through a parcel of Australian copper shares, why should not Robert Morell at least retrieve what he had lost by some such means? The thought pursued him during the rest of the journey, and on reaching London it was not to his solicitor that he went first, but to an acquaintance who dated from his society days, and about whom he remembered having heard that he lived entirely by speculating on the Stock Exchange.

The first step taken, the others followed

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almost unavoidably. Why pursue the familiar development of that recognised form of mental disease called gambling, to which a certain fixed percentage of the happiness and health of mankind is yearly sacrificed? The timid beginnings, the rapture of the first gain, the sting of the first loss, the growing boldness, mingled of terror and of mock confidence, the dogged desire to vanquish fate just because fate seems to be resisting, the everrecurring feverish hope, alternating with the darkness of impending disaster, and finally the desperation which, losing all control, grows almost light-headed in the insane haste with which it throws good money after bad, — everybody has heard the symptoms described so often that they have become a mere commonplace.

Mr. Morell had not yet quite reached this final stage, but he was at a measurable ' distance from it. As he paced his bedroom floor with nervously furrowed brow, he was asking himself what the morrow would bring. Upon

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the news waiting for him in town the future of Skeffington hung wellnigh upon a thread. And to think that to the eyes of outsiders the edifice of his prosperity, hollow to the core and ready to crumble at a touch, still bore so fair an aspect! What a dust the fall would raise !

• It was the thought of exposure which stung far sharper than even the thought of poverty. To have to acknowledge his failure was bitterer than to have to bear the consequences. And to Mary, too, the good, devoted creature who had so confidently intrusted her all to him! It was a humiliation which he felt unable to face. Did she really suspect nothing? Once or twice lately he had caught her eyes watching him with a certain anxious inquiry. Doubtless these frequent journeys to town had aroused her attention, and . doubtless, too, his manner betrayed at times the nervous strain that was upon him. He was conscious even of having lost flesh. But she had asked nothing — she

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never did; and if the blow did fall, she would say nothing either, and, no doubt, would find in her devotion to him strength to bear it. “ The dear creature is so deeply attached to me,” mused Mr. Morell, still pacing the floor, “ but how about Esme? ”

A look of real pain passed through his paleblue eyes. His daughter was the one person in the world capable of rousing in him true emotion, and though possibly the admiring affection with which he regarded 1 her may have been coloured by the fact of her real or imagined resemblance to himself, yet it was of its kind a real affection.

After a moment of painful thought he put up his head with a nervously defiant gesture.

“ Bah! Why torture myself with visions of what may never be? To-morrow at this time I may know that the Brazilian Star shares have gone up, and all danger will be past. Broadly speaking, my luck has been true to me all my life, and I don’t believe it’s going to desert me now.”

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And five minutes later he was as soundly asleep as though there were no such things as Brazilian Star shares in the world.

Meanwhile in the adjoining room the insignificant little person who was this man’s wife was still sitting over the fire, wide awake, and — was it possible? — yes, actually crying. Seen thus, divested of both lace coiffure and jewels, she was even plainer than she appeared in public, but, strangely enough, not quite so insignificant. The usually so placid mouth was working, and the calm grey eyes were shining through the tears with a surprisingly vivid light. The truth was, that this ordinary-looking woman, about whom people were accustomed to remark, “ Oh, Mrs. Morell! ” as though to say that she didn’t count, was in reality a far rarer and finer nature than her much-admired husband, who, despite . his straight nose and well-turned figure, showed himself, when closely looked at, to be a perfectly commonplace person.

The history of her life was not very strik-

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ing, but it had its own unostentatious pathos. She had loved deeply and had got what she wanted, and yet was a disappointed woman. At the time of her marriage she had, indeed, been quite clear in her mind that Robert had chosen her for her money’s sake and not for her own, but in her secret heart she had counted on gaining his love in time; she had put it to herself as a task, and she had failed. And even the failure might have been borne if her own love could have survived it. But, unfortunately for herself, hers was not a nature to worship blindly for long. Despite her homely exterior she had always been an idealist at heart, and as one by one her illusions faded and fell to the ground, she passed through those fine phases of suffering that are known only to peculiarly sensitive natures. With a sort of youthful simplicity which was quite distinct from stupidity, she had fancied that a noble exterior must portend a noble soul, and she had found that the idol at whose feet she had worshipped was not of gold but

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of clay. Dreams had pursued her of devoting herself to this man’s happiness, of sacrificing every taste of her own to the lightest of his wishes, of loving him as no man had ever before been loved, and, behold! he did not require her love, nor want it, and his wishes were quite other from those she had pictured to herself. It was not her vanity which suffered so much as her pride, for she had quickly understood that if she had failed to gain his love, it was principally because he had no love to give, or none of the only sort which could have satisfied her, whereas the discovery that she had attempted to merge her whole being in a nature so far below her own stung her proudly reserved spirit with a sense of keenest humiliation. Her fault always had been to take herself too seriously, and the difficulty of expressing herself, under which she laboured, sprang from this cause as well as from a keen consciousness of her lack of beauty, the instinctive feeling which pursues certain natures that plain women have less right than

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beautiful women, not only to be seen, but also to be heard.

Under the blight of disappointment she had shrunk yet further into herself, presenting an even duller surface to inquiring eyes than she had done before. No one should guess the failure of her life, if she could by any depths of silence prevent it; no other woman should know that she had sold herself for a price which had not been paid: though she should require to cut out her tongue for the purpose, the secret must die with her. Even in the early days of her marriage she had never attempted to show her whole feeling, nervously afraid of incommoding Robert with her affection, and in time the affection had come to die, and there remained only the empty, tired heart of the disillusioned woman, without the man who had been the cause of the disillusion having ever suspected the capabilities of self-sacrifice, the treasures of tenderness, which it had once contained, nor the disappointment which had rusted

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them. He had been far too busy with his private aims to have time for observing his wife, to whom he considered that he had behaved very well by marrying her at all, and better still by remaining faithful to her after he had done so. “ The dear creature is so absurdly devoted to me,” he would still say to himself, with half-compassionate complacency, years after he had become to her only the shell of a dead ideal.

It was of course impossible that Mrs. Morell should not in the course of years have caught various glimpses of the downfall of their fortunes, but she had been too diffident to claim the confidence withheld, and — exactly because the money was hers — too proud to ask for explanations. Even at this period, though her husband’s manner within the last months had made her suspect much, she was very far from guessing the whole truth.

Robert’s words to-night concerning the desirability of Esme’s making a “ big ” mar-

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riage had to her ears sounded more alarming than anything she had lately observed.

“ And must my sweet child be sacrificed as I sacrificed myself? ” she queried, still brooding over the fire. “ I was chosen because of my money; must her husband again be chosen for her, and again because of money? It is too much to hope that in such a case there will be love on both sides; and yet she deserves a better fate than I, if only because she is beautiful.”

And the poor little person rocked her body and choked back her sobs for fear of being heard in the next room, with symptoms of such deeply-working emotion as no living soul had ever yet seen on the mistress of Skeffington’s everyday countenance. This was the real Mrs. Morell, in contradiction to the one generally seen in society.

And about Esme, at this moment slumbering peacefully with her pink cheek on her white arm, and with the soft cloud of hair shading her delicate neck, are there likewise

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revelations to be made? Was there a real Esme as well as a sham Esme to be considered? No, or at least not yet; for, having , had no experiences, she had no reason to dissimulate. The need for a mask would come in time, no doubt; but it had not come yet. So far, both in public and in private, Esme presented the same countenance, and yet even now, without being aware of it, she was more or less of a fraud, considering that the world took her for an heiress, whereas she was not very far from becoming a beggar'

What else she was it would have been hard to say at this point; not even her mother could feel certain yet whether the child would prove to have a woman’s soul, and she shrank from the idea of the proof, knowing well that the word was almost synonymous with suffering. Esme’s own attitude towards life was one of hopeful, but not in the least impatient, expectation. It seemed so natural to suppose that the future would be as smooth and pleasant as the past had been, and the past had

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been so pleasant that she felt in no hurry whatever to say good-bye to it.

These, then, are the true portraits of the three people who were “ exactly like everybody else,” and, no doubt, the description is as correct as descriptions which people make of each other are wont to be; for few of us have any real notion what our closest acquaintances are like with their masks off, and there is a mask taken off every night behind nine out of ten bedroom doors in the United Kingdom — of that be assured.

Chapter III

At an early hour on the following forenoon Mr. Morell was being ushered into the private parlour at the back of a certain house in the City — well known for its extensive operations on .all European money-markets — where he had lately been a constant visitor. He entered the apartment with his usual elastic tread; for want of spirit had never been his failing, and, in face of the crisis so near at hand, he had felt the need of pulling himself together. Besides, he had slept well and breakfasted well, and he could not yet believe that fate would dare to brave him to the end. Yet, despite his obstinate confidence, it was a relief when, after five long minutes, a step came down the passage. It shuffled a little behind the door — somehow he did not quite like that shuffle, — and then a