A Perilous Secret by Charles Reade

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"Then you think I am as bad as old Bartley," said Percy, firing up.

"No, I don't."

"Ah," said Percy, glad to find there was a limit.

But Julia explained: "I think you are a great deal worse. You pretend to
love me, and yet without the slightest reason you doubt me."

"What did I doubt? I thought you had parted with my bracelet to another
person, and so you had. I never doubted your honor."

"Oh yes, you did; I saw your face."

"I am not r--r--responsible for my face."

"Yes, you are; you had no business to look broken-hearted, and miserable,
and distrustful, and abominable. It was your business, face and all, to
distrust appearances, and not me."

"Ap--pear--ances were so strong that not to look m--miserable would have
been to seem indifferent; there is no love where there is no jealousy."

"Oh," said Julia, "he has let that out at last, after denying it a
hundred times. Now I say there is no true love without respect and
confidence, and this doesn't exist where there is jealousy, and all about
a trumpery bracelet."

"Anything but tr--ump--ump--umpery; it came down from my ancestors."

"You never had any; your behavior shows that."

"I tell you it is an heirloom. It was given to my mother by--"

"Oh, we know all about that," said Julia. "'This bracelet did an Egyptian
to my mother give.' But you are not going to play Othello with me."

"I shouldn't have a very gentle Desdemona."

"No, you wouldn't, candidly. No man shall ever bully and insult me, and
then wake me out of my first sleep to smother me because my maid has lost
one of his handkerchiefs at the wash."

He burst out laughing at this, and tried to inveigle her into good-humor.

"Say no more about it," said he, "and I'll forgive you."

"Forgive me, you little wretch!" cried Julia. "Why, haven't you the
sense to see that it is serious this time, and my patience is exhausted,
and that our engagement is broken off, and I never mean to see you
again--except when you come to my wedding?"

"Your wedding!" cried Percy, turning pale. "With whom?"

"That's my business; you leave that to me, sir. Hold out your hand--both
hands; here is the ancestral bracelet--it shall pinch me no longer,
neither my wrist nor my heart; here's the brooch you gave me--I won't be
pinned to it any longer, nor to you neither; and there is your bunch of
charms; and there is your bundle of love-letters--stupid ones they are;"
and she crammed all the aforesaid treasures into his hands one after the
other. So this was what she went to her room for.

Percy looked down on his handful ruefully. "My very letters! There was no
jealousy in them; they were full of earnest love."

"Fuller of bad spelling," said the relentless girl. Then she went into
details: "You spell abominable with two m's--and that's abominable; you
spell ridiculous with a k--and that's ridicklous. So after this don't you
presume to speak to me, for I shall never speak to you again."

"Very well, then," said Percy. "I, too, will be silent forever."

"Oh, I dare say," said Julia; "a chatter-box like you."

"Even chatter-boxes are silent in the grave," suggested Percy; "and if we
are to part like this forever to-day, to-morrow I shall be no more."

"Well, you could not be much less," said Julia, but with a certain
shame-faced change of tone that perhaps, if Percy had been more
experienced, might have given him a ray of hope.

"Well," said he, "I know one lady that would not treat these presents
with quite so much contempt."

"Oh, I have seen her," said Julia, spitefully. "She has been setting
her cap at you for some time; it's Miss Susan Beckley--a fine
conquest--great, fat, red-haired thing."

"Auburn."

"Yes, all-burn, scarlet, carrots, _flamme d'enfer_. Well, go and give her
my leavings, yourself and your ancestral--paste."

"Well," said Percy, gloomily, "I might do worse. You never really loved
me; you were always like an enemy looking out for faults. You kept
postponing our union for something to happen to break it off. But I won't
be any woman's slave; I'll use one to drive out the other. None of you
shall trample on me." Then he burst forth into singing. Nobody stammers
when he sings.

"Shall I, wasting in despair,
Sigh because a woman's fair?
Shall my cheeks grow pale with care
Because another's rosy are?
If she be not kind to me,
What care I how fair she be?"

This resolute little gentleman passed through the gate as he concluded
the verse, waved his hand jauntily by way of everlasting adieu, and
went off whistling the refrain with great spirit, and both hands in
his pockets.

"You impudent!" cried Julia, almost choking; then, authoritatively,
"Percy--Mr. Fitzroy;" then, coaxingly, "Percy _dear_."

Percy heard, and congratulated himself upon his spirit. "That's the way
to treat them," said he to himself.

"Well?" said he, with an air of indifference, and going slowly back to
the gate. "What is it now?" said he, a little arrogantly.

She soon let him know. Directly he was quite within reach she gave him a
slap in the face that sounded like one plank falling upon another, and
marched off with an air of royal dignity, as if she had done the most
graceful and lady-like thing in all the world.

How happy are those choice spirits who can always preserve their dignity!

Percy retired red as fire, and one of his cheeks retained that high
color for the rest of the day.

CHAPTER XVIII.

APOLOGIES.

We must now describe the place to which Hope conducted his daughter, and
please do not skip our little description. It is true that some of our
gifted contemporaries paint Italian scenery at prodigious length _a
propos de bottes_, and others show in many pages that the rocks and the
sea are picturesque objects, even when irrelevant. True that others gild
the evening clouds and the western horizon merely to please the horizon
and the clouds. But we hold with Pope that

"The proper study of mankind is man,"

and that authors' pictures are bores, except as narrow frames to big
incidents. The true model, we think, for a writer is found in the opening
lines of "Marmion," where the castle at even-tide, its yellow lustre, its
drooping banner, its mail-clad warders reflecting the western blaze, the
tramp of the sentinel, and his low-hummed song, are flung on paper with
the broad and telling touch of Rubens, not from an irrelevant admiration
of old castles and the setting sun, but because the human figures of the
story are riding up to that sun-gilt castle to make it a scene of great
words and deeds.

Even so, though on a much humbler scale, we describe Hope's cottage and
garden, merely because it was for a moment or two the scene of a
remarkable incident never yet presented in history or fiction.

This cottage, then, was in reality something between a villa and a
cottage; it resembled a villa in this, that the rooms were lofty, and the
windows were casements glazed with plate glass and very large. Walter
Clifford had built it for a curate, who proved a bird of passage, and
the said Walter had a horror of low rooms, for he said, "I always feel as
if the ceiling was going to flatten me to the floor." Owing to this the
bedroom windows, which looked westward on the garden, were a great height
from the ground, and the building had a Gothic character.

Still there was much to justify the term cottage. The door, which looked
southward on the road, was at the side of the building, and opened, not
into a hall, but into the one large sitting-room, which was thirty feet
long and twenty-five feet broad, and instead of a plaster ceiling there
were massive joists, which Hope had gilded and painted till they were a
sight to behold. Another cottage feature: the walls were literally
clothed with verdure and color; in front, huge creeping geraniums,
jasmine, and Virginia creepers hid the brick-work; and the western walls,
to use the words of a greater painter than ourselves, were

"Quite overcanopied with lush woodbine,
With sweet musk-roses, and with eglantine."

In the next place, the building stood in a genuine cottage garden. It was
close to the road. The southern boundary was plain oak paling, made of
upright pieces which Hope had varnished so that the color was now a fine
amber; the rest of the boundary was a quick-set hedge, in the western
division of which stood an enormous oak-tree, hollow at the back. And the
garden was fair with humble flowers--pinks, sweet-williams, crimson
nasturtiums, double daisies, lilies, and tulips; but flower beds shared
the garden with friendly cabbages, potatoes, onions, carrots, and
asparagus.

To this humble but pleasant abode Hope conducted his daughter, and
insisted upon her lying down on the sofa in the sitting-room. Then he
ordered the woman who kept the house for him to prepare the spare
bedroom, which looked into the garden, and to cut some of the
sweet-smelling flowers. He himself had much to say to his daughter, and,
above all, to demand her explanation of the awkward circumstances that
had been just revealed. But she had received a great shock, and, like
most manly men, he had a great consideration for the weakness of women,
and his paternal heart said, "Let her have an hour or two of absolute
repose before I subject her to any trial whatever." So he opened the
window to give her air, enjoining her most strictly not to move, and even
to go to sleep if she could; and then he put on his shooting coat, with
large inside pocket, to go and buy her a little wine--a thing he never
touched himself--and what other humble delicacies the village afforded.
He walked briskly away from his door without the least idea that all his
movements were watched from a hiding-place upon his own premises, no
other than the great oak-tree, hollow and open at the back, in which
Leonard Monckton had bored two peep-holes, and was now ensconced there
watching him.

Hope had not gone many yards from his own door when he was confronted
by one of those ruffians who, by their way of putting it, are the
eternal butt of iniquitous people and iniquitous things, namely, honest
men, curse them! and the law, confound it! This was no other than that
Ben Burnley, who, being a miner, had stuck half-way between Devonshire
and Durham, and had been some months in Bartley's mine. He opened on
Hope in a loud voice, and dialect which we despair of conveying with
absolute accuracy.

"Mr. Hope, sir, they won't let me go down t' mine."

"No; you're discharged."

"Who by?"

"By me."

"What for?"

"For smoking in the mine, in spite of three warnings."

"Me smoking in t' mine! Who telt you yon lie?"

"You were seen to pick the lock of your Davylamp, and that put the mine
in danger. Then you were seen to light your pipe at the bare light, and
that put it in worse peril."

"That's a lie. What mak's yer believe my skin's nowt to me? It's all one
as it is to them liars that would rob me of my bread out of clean spite."

"It's the truth, and proved by four honest witnesses. There are a hundred
and fifty men and twenty ponies in that mine, and their lives must not be
sacrificed by one two-legged brute that won't hear reason. You are
discharged and paid; so be good enough to quit the premises and find work
elsewhere; and Lord help your employer, whoever he is!"

Hope would waste no more time over this fellow. He turned his back, and
went off briskly on his more important errand.

Burnley shook his fist at him, and discharged a volley of horrible curses
after him. Whilst he was thus raging after the man that had done his duty
he heard a satirical chuckle. He turned his head, and, behold! there was
the sneering face of his fellow jail-bird Monckton. Burnley started.

"Yes, mate," said Monckton, "it is me. And what sort of a pal are you,
that couldn't send me a word to Portland that you had dropped on to this
rascal Hope? You knew I was after him. You might have saved me the
trouble, you selfish brute."

Burnley submitted at once to the ascendency of Monckton; he hung his
head, and muttered, "I am no scholard to write to folk."

"You grudged a joey to a bloke to write for you. Now I suppose you expect
me to be a good pal to you again, all the same?"

"Why not?" said Burnley. "He is poison to you as well as to me. He
gave you twelve years' penal; you told me so at Portland; let's be
revenged on him."

"What else do you think I am here for, you fool? But empty revenge,
that's child's play. The question is, can you do what you are told?"

"Ay, if I see a chance of revenge. Why, I always did what you told me."

"Very well, then; there's nothing ripe yet."

"Yer don't mean I am to wait a year for my revenge."

"You will have to wait an opportunity. Revenge is like other luxuries,
there's a time for it. Do you think I am such a fool as to go in for
blindfold revenge, and get lagged or stretched? Not for Joseph, nor for
you, either, Benjamin. I'll tell you what, though, I think this will be a
busy day; it must be a busy day. That old fox Bartley has found out his
blunder before now, and he'll try something on; then the Cliffords, they
won't go to sleep on it."

"I don't know what yer talking about," says Burnley.

"Remain in your ignorance, Ben. The best instrument is a blind
instrument; you shall have your revenge soon or late."

"Let it be soon, then."

"In the meantime," said Monckton, "have you got any money?"

"Got my wages."

"That will do for you to-day. Go to the public-house and get half-drunk."

"Half-drunk?"

"Half-drunk! Don't I speak plain?"

"Miners," said Burnley, candidly, "never get half-drunk in t' county
Durham; they are that the best part of their time."

"Then you get half-drunk, neither more nor less, or I'll discharge you as
Hope has done, and that will be the worst discharge of the two for you.
When you are half-drunk come here directly, and hang about this place.
No; you had better be under that tree in the middle of the field there,
and pretend to be sleeping off your liquor. Come, mizzle!"

When he had packed off Burnley, he got back into his hiding-place, and
only just in time, for Hope came back again upon the wings of love, and
Grace, whose elastic nature had revived, saw him coming, and came out to
meet him. Hope scolded her urgently: why had she got off the sofa when
repose was so necessary for her?

"You are mistaken, dear father," said she. "I am wonderfully strong and
healthy; I never fainted away in my life, and my mind will not let me
rest at present--I have been longing so for my father."

"Ah, precious word!" murmured Hope. "Keep saying that word to me,
darling. Oh, the years that I have pined for it!"

"Dear father, we will make up for all those years. Oh, papa, let us not
part again, never, never, not even for a day."

"My child, we never will. What am I saying? I shall have to give you back
to one who has a stronger claim than I--to your husband."

"My husband?" said Mary, turning pale.

"Yes," said Hope; "for you know you have a husband. Oh, I heard a few
words there before I interfered; but it is not to me you'll say '_I
don't know_.' That was good enough for Bartley and a lot of strangers.
Come, Grace dear, take my arm; have no concealments from me. Trust to a
father's infinite love, even if you have been imprudent or betrayed; but
that's a thing I shall never believe except from your lips. Take a turn
with me, my child, since you can not lie down and rest; a little air,
and gentle movement on your father's arm, and close to your father's
heart, will be the next best thing for you." Then they walked to and fro
like lovers.

"Why, Grace, my child," said he, "of course I understand it all. No
doubt you promised to keep your marriage secret, or had some powerful
reason for withholding it from strangers; and, indeed, why should you
reveal such a secret to insolence or to mere curiosity. But you will tell
the truth to me, your father and your best friend; you will tell me you
are a wife."

"Father," said Mary, trembling, and her eyes roved as if she was looking
out for the means of flight.

Hope saw this look, and it made him sick at heart, for he had lived too
long, and observed too keenly, not to know that innocence and purity are
dangers, and are more often protected by the safeguards of society than
by themselves.

"Oh, my child," said he, "anything is better than this suspense; why
do you not answer me? Why do you torture me? Are you Walter
Clifford's wife?"

Mary began to pant and sob. "Oh papa, have patience with me. You do not
know the danger. Wait till he comes back. I dare not; I can not."

"Then, by Heaven, he shall!"

He dropped her arm, and his countenance became terrible. She clung to
him directly.

"No, no; wait till I have seen him. He will be back this very
evening. Do not judge hastily; and oh, papa, as you love your child,
do not act rashly."

"I shall act firmly," was Hope's firm reply. "You have come from a sham
father to a real one, and you will be protected as well as loved. This
lover has forbidden you to confide in your father (he did not know that I
was your father, but that makes no difference); it looks very ugly, and
if he has wronged you he shall do you justice, or I will have his life."

"Oh, papa," screamed Mary, "his life? Why, mine is bound up with it."

"I fear so," said Hope. "But what's our life to us without our honor,
especially to a woman? He is the true Cain that destroys a pure virgin."

Then he put both his hands on her shoulder, and said, "Look at me,
Grace." She looked at him full with eyes as brave as a lion's and as
gentle as a gazelle's.

In a moment his senses enlightened him beyond the power of circumstances
to deceive. "It's a lie," said he; "men are always lying and
circumstances deceiving; there is no blush of shame upon these cheeks, no
sin nor frailty in these pure eyes. You are his wife?"

"I am!" cried Grace, unable to resist any longer.

"Thank God!" cried Hope, and father and daughter were locked that moment
in a tender embrace.

"Yes, papa, you shall know all, and then I shall have to fall on my knees
and ask you not to punish one I love--for--a fault committed years ago.
You will have pity on us both. Walter and I were married at the altar,
and I am his wife in the eyes of Heaven. But, oh, papa, I fear I am not
his lawful wife."

"Not his lawful wife, child! Why, what nonsense!"

"I would to Heaven it was; but this morning I learned for the first time
that he had been married before. Oh, it was years ago; but she is alive."

"Impossible! He could not be so base."

"Papa," said Mary, very gravely, "I have seen the certificate."

"The certificate!" said Hope, in dismay. "What certificate?"

"Of the Registry Office. It was shown me by a gentleman she sent
expressly to warn me; she had no idea that Walter and I were married, but
she had heard somehow of our courtship. I try to thank her, and I tried,
and always will, to save him from a prison and his family from disgrace."

"And sacrifice yourself?" cried Hope, in agony.

"I love him," said Mary, "and you must spare him."

"I will have justice for my child."

Grace was in such terror lest her father should punish Walter that she
begged him to consider whether in sacrificing herself she really had not
been unintentionally wise. What could she gain by publishing that she had
married another woman's husband "I have lost my husband," said she "but I
have found my father. Oh take me away and let me rest my broken heart
upon yours far from all who know me. Every wound seems to be cured in
this world, and if time won't cure this my wound, even with my father's
help, the grave _will_."

"Oh, misery!" cried Hope; "do I hear such words as these from my child
just entering upon life and all its joys?"

"Hush, papa," said Grace; "there is that man."

That man was Mr. Bartley. He looked very much distressed, and proceeded
at once to express his penitence.

CHAPTER XIX.

A WOMAN OUTWITS TWO MEN.

"Oh, Mary, what can I say? I was simply mad, stung into fury by that
foul-mouthed ruffian. Mary, I am deeply sorry, and thoroughly ashamed of
my violence and my cruelty, and I implore you to think of the very many
happy years we have spent together without an angry word--not that you
ever deserved one. Let us silence all comments; return to me as the head
of my house and the heiress of my fortune; you will bind Mr. Hope to me
still more strongly, he shall be my partner, and he will not be so
selfish as to ruin your future."

"Ay," said Hope, "that's the same specious argument you tempted me with
twelve years ago. But she was a helpless child then; she is a woman now,
and can decide for herself. As for me, I will not be your partner. I have
a small royalty on your coal, and that is enough for me; but Grace shall
do as she pleases. My child, will you go to the brilliant future that his
wealth can secure you, or share my modest independence, which will need
all my love to brighten it. Think before you answer; your own future life
depends upon yourself."

With this he turned his back and walked for some distance very stoutly,
then leaned upon the palings with his back toward Grace; but even a back
can speak, and the young lady looked at him and her eyes filled; then she
turned them toward Bartley, and those clear eyes dried as if the fire in
the heart had scorched them.

"In the first place, sir," said she, with a cold and cutting voice, very
unusual to her, "my name is not Mary, it is Grace; and, be assured of
this, if there was not another roof in all the world to shelter me, if I
was helpless, friendless and fatherless, I would die in the nearest ditch
rather than set my foot in the house from which I was thrust out with
shame and insult such as no lady ever yet forgave. But, thank Heaven, I
am not at your mercy at all. He to whom nature has drawn me all these
years is my father--Oh, papa, come to me; is it for _you_ to stand aloof?
It is into your hands, with all the trust and love you have earned so
well from your poor Grace, I give my love, my veneration, and my heart
and soul forever." Then she flung herself panting on his bosom, and he
cried over her. The next moment he led her to the house, where he made
her promise to repose now after this fresh trial; and, indeed, he would
have followed her, but Bartley implored him so piteously, for the sake of
old times, not to refuse him one word more, that he relented so far as to
come out to him, though he felt it was a waste of time.

He said, "Mr. Bartley, it's no use; nothing can undo this morning's
work: our paths lie apart. From something Walter Clifford let fall one
day, I suspect he is the person you robbed, and induced me to rob, of a
large fortune."

"Well, what is he to you? Have pity upon me; be silent, and name your
own price."

"Wrong Walter Clifford with my eyes open? He is the last man in the
world that I would wrong in money matters. I have got a stern account
against him, and I will begin it by speaking the truth and giving him
back his own."

Here the interview was interrupted by an honest miner, one Jim Perkins.
He came in hurriedly, and, like people of that class, thrust everybody
else's business out of his way. "You are wanted at the mine, Mr. Hope.
The shoring of the old works is giving way, and there's a deal of water
collecting in another part."

"I'll come at once," said Hope; "the men's lives must not be endangered.
Have the cage ready." Jim walked away.

Hope turned to Bartley.

"Pray understand, Mr. Bartley, that this is my last visit to your mine."

"One moment, Hope," cried Bartley in despair; "we have been friends so
long, surely you owe me something."

"I do."

"Well, then, I'll make you rich for life if you will but let Mary return
to me and only just be silent; speak neither for me nor against me;
surely that is not much for an old friend to ask. What is your answer?"

"That I will speak the truth, and keep my conscience and my child."

This answer literally crushed Bartley. His very knees knocked together;
he leaned against the palings sick at heart. He saw that Colonel Clifford
would extort not only Walter's legacy, but what the lawyers call the
mesne profits, that is to say, the interest and the various proceeds
from the fraud during fourteen years.

Whilst he was in this condition of bodily collapse and mental horror a
cold, cynical voice dropped icicles, so to speak, into his ear.

"In a fix, governor, eh? The girl won't come back, and Hope won't hold
his tongue."

Bartley looked round in amazement, and saw the cadaverous face and
diabolical sneer of Leonard Monckton. Fourteen years and evil passions
had furrowed that bloodless cheek; but there was no mistaking the man. It
was a surprise to Bartley to see him there and be spoken to by a knave
who had tried to rob him; but he was too full of his immediate trouble to
think much of minor things.

"What do you know about it?" said he, roughly.

"I'll tell you," said Monckton, coolly.

He then walked in a most leisurely way to the gate that led into the
meadow whose eastern boundary was Hope's quick-set hedge, and he came in
the same leisurely way up to Mr. Bartley, and leaned his back, with his
hands behind him, with perfect effrontery, against the palings.

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