Chapter XVII: Bad News

“From this time, no matter what comes--excepting accident or ill-health--I am mistress of my own career,” Arley said to herself, as, with a firm, quick step, she wended her way home after leaving the art store. “If worst comes to worst I can earn my own living--I need be dependent upon no one. And why should I not toil for my bread?” she added, thoughtfully. “She--Ina--did, while I was living a petted, spoiled child upon her money; and now, perhaps, it is no more than right and just that I should take my turn and realize something of the trials and hardships that she endured.”

Philip wondered to see her bending over her drafting every time he came into their sitting-room, and one day remarked upon her industry.

“I did not know that you were so fond of your pencils and brushes, Arley,” he said, as he glanced at the pretty sketch which she was working upon.

“I must fill up the time in some way,” she answered, quietly. “I cannot go out here as freely as I have done elsewhere, for I cannot speak the language, and these swarthy, fierce-looking people half frighten me. I am very, very lonely much of the time. When will you take me home?” and she looked up at him with tears of homesickness in her eyes.

He scowled at the question.

“I don’t know,” he said, and then muttered something else which she did not catch.

She regarded him questioningly, and saw that there was an anxious and angry look on his face, while he began to pace the floor with a nervous tread.

“Is there anything that troubles you particularly?” she asked.

“Yes, everything,” he answered, moodily; then asked: “Have you any money, Arley?”

She flushed a vivid crimson.

She felt humiliated that he, a strong, active, capable man, should be so lost to his sense of duty and manhood as to allow himself to become reduced to the necessity of coming to her for money to defray their needful expenses.

“Yes, I have a little in my purse,” she answered, coldly.

“How much?” he demanded, eagerly.

“Four or five pounds, perhaps,” she said, more determined than ever to keep the secret of her earnings from him.

“Let me have a part of it, will you?” he asked, turning his back upon her, while a blush of shame mantled his cheek as he made the request; then he added, deprecatingly: “I am in a deucedly unpleasant predicament just now, and--and a remittance which I was expecting has not arrived.”

“A remittance!” she repeated, with quick surprise. “I thought you told me that you had nothing? You gave me to understand when we left home that all you had you had with you--is it all gone?”

“Yes.”

“Then you have been trying to borrow,” she said, with abated breath.

“Well, suppose I have? A man must live somehow.”

“Somehow!” repeated Arley, scornfully.

Then, rising, she confronted him resolutely, and said:

“Philip Paxton, I will not live upon borrowed money; it is not honest.”

“There is an old saying, I believe, that ‘beggars cannot be choosers,’” he replied, with bitter sarcasm.

“We need not be ‘beggars’ while you have your health and a pair of hands to work with. You ought to go to work. Why will you not be a man?” she said, scorn and righteous indignation quivering in her tones.

“It is not exactly a comfortable feeling, when one has had plenty, to be obliged to come down to such a level--to dig and delve like a common laborer. It is rather galling to one’s pride, to say the least,” Philip returned, with considerable heat.

“I would rather ‘dig and delve like a common laborer,’ as you express it, and get an honest living, than to exist as we have been doing for the last six or eight months,” Arley said, with grave dignity. Then she added:

“But if you should return to England and resume your profession you might do as well, if not better, than formerly, and we should, no doubt, be much more comfortable than we are now.”

“Do you suppose I am going back to England in this poverty-stricken condition and have people laughing in their sleeve over the failure of all my expectations?” Philip demanded, with a very red face.

Arley’s lip curled and her eye flashed a scornful fire.

“I should say that it would be at least more manly and honest than to live like this and borrow of friends, with no prospects of ever being able to repay,” she remarked, pithily. “But you need not go back. Why not resume your profession here? You speak the language so well you might make a beginning here. I will not murmur, though I am so homesick that I feel as if I cannot stay here another day.”

A sudden rush of tears blinded her as she said this, and her voice broke.

“I will do anything to help or encourage you if you will only give up this kind of life and do right; but it is beneath you--it is mean to impose upon the good-nature of one’s friends and then sit idly down with folded hands.”

Philip’s eyes fell and he flushed hotly. He felt the truth of her words and cringed beneath her well-merited scorn; but he was still too proud and obstinate to act upon her advice or his own convictions of duty and right.

Fate had, according to his way of thinking, used him very ill, and, like a silly boy, he had run into a corner to sulk, instead of manfully grappling with it and making himself master of the situation.

“We will not discuss the matter further,” he said, coldly; “but if you will let me have two or three pounds I will endeavor to satisfy our landlord’s demands for the present.”

Arley sighed heavily, but went to her room to get her purse, and when she returned and took from it some pieces of gold to give him, Philip watched her narrowly and noticed that there was more in it.

He received it with a muttered “thank you,” and then immediately left the room; while Arley, with burning cheeks and quivering lips, sat down to her work again.

There was a bitter pain in her heart, together with an unaccountable consciousness that she was beginning to despise her husband for his cowardice and meanness.

The poor girl, however, was not conscious, happily, that her darkest days were yet to come.

She worked steadily on at her drawing, and in the course of another week carried a second collection to the art store.

Her employer was even better pleased with them than he had been with her first efforts--she had improved upon the hints which he had given her, and had really furnished him with some exquisite little things.

The money which she received for them was more precious to her than anything she had ever possessed, while a year ago she would have laughed to scorn the thought that she could have prized the paltry sum earned by her own hands.

On her return to her rooms she was feeling very cheerful; her face was brighter than it had been for some time, and Philip, who happened to be in, observing it, wondered what had caused the change, while for some time he had had an unpleasant consciousness that she was somehow getting beyond him--rising above his level.

He pointed to some letters which he had just brought in, and Arley’s eyes glistened with eagerness at sight of them.

Hastening to her room, she laid aside her hat and mantle, and then returned to read them.

One was from Miss McAllister--she recognized the cramped, old-fashioned hand instantly; the other was from Annie Vane, and post-marked Horsham.

Miss McAllister’s letter was, of course, seized upon first, for it was from her dear old home, and though hers now no longer, yet the tenderest memories clustered around it still. It was full of affection for her; full of pleasant, sunshiny news, mingled with longings for her speedy return.

Ina added a “postscript” of three or four pages, telling her many rambling yet harmless bits of gossip, which she knew would interest her, and writing so kindly, even tenderly, that Arley’s heart went out in her gratitude for her sweetness and goodness.

She lingered long over this dear home letter, her face full of a tremulous gladness, mingled with a wistful longing, which smote Philip, who was covertly watching her, with a momentary sense of shame and regret.

After reading it through the second time she folded and laid it down with a sigh of regret that there was no more of it to read, and, taking up the other, broke the seal in an absent way.

But as she removed the closely-written sheet from the envelope a cry of startled surprise broke from her, for it was edged with black and blotted in many places with tears.

With a terrible feeling of foreboding, she hastily scanned the pages, and learned with grief and horror the fearful news which had blasted the pride and hopes of the household at Hazelmere.

The letter was dated June 30th, and told how Wil Hamilton--gentle, noble, promising Wil--had sailed for the United States at the appointed time to join Major Powell’s expedition for Colorado; how he had written home once after landing, in the best of spirits and so hopeful, so full of life and anticipation. Then there had come to them the dreadful news that, while the party were passing over a mountain, he had fallen over a precipice into a dark and gloomy ravine below. There had been an immediate search made for him, but when they reached the bottom of the chasm into which he had fallen his body was nowhere to be found--nothing but his hat and a handkerchief covered with blood remained as evidence of the terrible tragedy.

“It was possible,” Major Powell’s secretary wrote, “that some fierce animal had immediately seized upon the unfortunate young man, dragged him to his lair, and there devoured him.”

Such was the terrible blow which had fallen upon the hitherto happy household at Hazelmere.

Sir Anthony was absolutely crushed, Annie wrote, with a trembling pen; her mother nearly deranged over the loss of her boy, while as for herself, she said that life would never be the same to her again without her dear brother.

But Lady Elaine--their charming, beloved “Lily of Mordaunt”--it seemed at first as if the shock must certainly kill her.

She relapsed from one fit of unconsciousness to another, until their physician was almost in despair, fearing that she would never rally from them. But death had no intention of so mercifully releasing her from her misery, and she gradually recovered.

Arley wept bitterly over this letter; it was so sad to think of noble, promising Wil Hamilton meeting with such a fate! It seemed such a useless sacrifice to him to leave his home and country, all his bright hopes and prospects, and, taking his life in his hand, go into the wilds of a foreign land to die so tragically.

“Have you bad news, Arley?” Philip asked, surprised by her sudden and passionate sobbing.

For reply she merely held out the letter to him and then crept away to her own room to weep out, unrestrained, her grief for her friend, the Lady Elaine, and her ruined life.

Philip Paxton, meanwhile, sat outside, reading Annie Vane’s letter. When he began to take in the meaning of it he swore an oath; then, devouring the rest of it with eager eyes, he cast it angrily from him, and, springing to his feet, began pacing the floor with restless steps, his face deeply flushed, his eyes glowing with a sort of evil excitement and purpose.

Back and forth, back and forth, he went, his boots creaking ominously with every step, until Arley grew terribly nervous at the sound, and wondered if he would never stop; but, never dreaming of the treachery that he was plotting against her, nor of the evil purposes which had sprung into being and had taken root in his heart upon reading the fatal news which her letter had brought.

Surely his good angel must have been sleeping, or have deserted her post, or he never would have planned such fell wickedness against the brave, true woman whom he had already so injured.

After a time that wretched pacing ceased, for he also retired to his own chamber, and did not come forth again that day.

His first feeling upon reading of Wil Hamilton’s tragic end had been one of horror; the intelligence that the bright, cheery comrade, with whom he had spent such pleasant years at college, had been suddenly plunged into eternity in that fearful way, could not fail to unman him for a moment.

Then his heart had leaped with the startling thought that Lady Elaine Warburton--and her twenty thousand pounds a year--was free! No troth bound her now to another, and she might yet be won, with her immense fortune, by some fortunate schemer who was bold enough to dare what he meant to dare for her.