CHAPTER XIII.

FOLLY.

There is no misfortune on earth so great as that of a troubled conscience: there is nothing that will wear the spirits and the frame like a burdensome secret which may not be told. It will blanch the cheek and sicken the heart; it will render the day a terror and the bed weary; so that the unhappy victim will be tempted to say with Job: When shall I arise and the night be gone? He is full of tossings to and fro unto the dawning of the day: his sleep is scared with dreams and terrified with visions.

Had Mrs. Oscar Dalrymple been of a different temperament, this unhappy state of mind would have been hers. But she had no very deep feeling. Troubled in a degree she undoubtedly was. That terrible secret, the debts she had incurred, lay on her mind always in a greater or a less degree; for she knew that when her husband paid them he would be half ruined; certainly crippled for years to come.

Another season had come round and was at its height; and Mr. and Mrs. Dalrymple had again come up to it. The past autumn and winter had been spent at Moat Grange, which Selina found insufferably dull, and where her chief solace and recreation consisted in looking over her beautiful and extensive wardrobe, and trying on portions of it in private. A very negative sort of enjoyment. Where was the use of possessing these divine dresses and adjuncts, when no field was afforded for their display? Selina had ventured to wear one costly robe on a certain evening that she dined at Court Netherleigh, and was severely taken to task by her mother, who was the only other guest, and by Miss Upton, for appearing in such "finery." They asked her what she meant by such extravagance. And that before Oscar, too! Selina blushed a little and laughed it off; but she mentally wondered what would have been said had she put on her very finest, or if they saw the stock at home.

During the winter Selina had a fever, brought on, it was thought, from exposing herself unduly to damp. She grew better, but was somewhat delicate and very capricious. Oscar, loving her intensely, grew to humour her fancies and to pet her as if she were a spoiled child. Her conscience reproached her now and then for the tacit deceit she was enacting, in thus suffering him to live in blissful ignorance of their true position; but on the whole it did not trouble her greatly. Alice, her sensitive sister, would have died under it; Selina contrived to exist very comfortably.

"If you found out that I had done anything dreadfully wrong, would you quite kill me?" she playfully said to him one day.

"Dare say I should," answered Oscar, putting on a face of mock severity. "Might depend, perhaps, upon what the thing was."

"Ah, no; you'd just scold me for five minutes, and then kiss and be friends. I always said you'd never turn out to be an old griffin."

That was the nearest approach Selina ever made towards confessing to her husband. And Oscar had only looked upon it as a bit of passing pleasantry.

Alice Dalrymple had left her mother's house to become companion to Lady Sarah Hope. During a week's visit that Colonel Hope and his wife made to Miss Upton in the autumn--it was soon after they had got into their new house in London--Alice had also been staying at Court Netherleigh. One day Lady Sarah chanced to say she wished she could find some nice young gentlewoman, who would come to her in the capacity of companion: upon which Alice said, "Would you take me?" "Ay, and be glad to get you," returned Lady Sarah, supposing that Alice had spoken in jest. Alice, however, was in earnest. She could not bear to be living on the charity of Oscar Dalrymple, for she shrewdly guessed that Selina threw as much expense on him as he could well afford; and Alice quite believed that her mother, devoted to the care of her poultry, her birds, and her flowers, would not miss her. So the bargain was struck. "And please remember, Lady Sarah, that I come to you entirely as companion, prepared to fulfil all a companion's duties, and not merely as a visitor," Alice gravely said; and she meant it.

Selina was vexed when she heard of the arrangement. She went straight down to her mother's cottage, and upbraided Alice sharply. "It is lowering us all," she said to her. "A companion is next door to a servant; every one knows that. It will be just a disgrace to the name of Dalrymple."

"Very well, Selina; then, as you think that, I will drop the name," returned Alice. "I was christened Alice Seaton, you know, after my godmother, and I will be called Miss Seaton at Lady Sarah's."

"Stuff and nonsense, child!" retorted Selina. "You may call yourself Seaton all the world over, but all the world will know still that you are Alice Dalrymple."

Alice entered upon her new home in London, and gravely told everybody in it that she wished to be called by her second name, Seaton. Lady Sarah laughed, and promised to humour her as often as she could remember to do it.

In December, Colonel Hope had formally adopted his nephew, Gerard. The young man threw up his post in the red-tape office (not at all a wise thing to do), and took up his abode with his uncle. They all went down to the colonel's place in Gloucestershire to spend Christmas, including Frances Chenevix, who almost seemed to have been as much adopted as Gerard, so frequently was she staying with them. Christmas passed; they came to London again, and things went on smoothly and gaily until just before Easter, when a fracas occurred. Gerard Hope contrived in some way to offend the colonel and Lady Sarah so implacably that they discarded him; frequent growls had ended in a quarrel. Gerard was insolent, and the colonel, hot and peppery, turned him out of the house. They went again into Gloucestershire for Easter, Alice with them as companion and Frances as a guest; but not Gerard. In fact, so far as one might judge, he was discarded for ever.

The cause was this: Lady Sarah, detecting the predilection of her sister Frances for the young man, and believing that he was equally attached to her, went out of her way and her pride to offer her to him. Gerard had refused it point blank. No wonder Lady Sarah was angry!

The sweet month of June came round again, and the London season, as I have said, was at its height. Amidst those who were plunging headlong into its vanities was Selina Dalrymple. She had coaxed and begged and prayed her husband to give her just another month or two of it this year, assuring him she should die if he did not. And Oscar, though wincing at the cost, knowing well he could not and ought not to afford it, at length gave in. It appeared that he could deny her nothing. The expenses of the previous season were far more than he had expected, and as yet he had not been able to discharge them all. Apart, this, from his wife's private expenses, of which he as yet remained in ignorance.

It may be questioned, however, whether Selina enjoyed this second season quite as much as she had the last. The visit and the gaiety and the homage were as captivating as ever, but she lived in a kind of terror; for Madame Damereau was pressing for the payment of her account. If that came to Oscar's knowledge, he would not only do to her, she hardly knew what, perhaps even box her ears, but he would be quite certain to carry her forthwith from this delightful London life to that awful prison, Moat Grange, at Netherleigh.

One afternoon, Oscar was turning out of his temporary home in Berkeley Street--for they had the same rooms as last year--when he saw coming towards him a young lady who walked a little lame. It was Alice Dalrymple.

"Ah, Alice!" he cried. "Have you come to London?"

"Yes," she replied. "Lady Sarah is better, and we left Gloucestershire yesterday to join the colonel here: he has been writing for us for more than a week past. Is Selina at home?"

"She is, for a wonder. Waiting for somebody she intends to go out with."

"How is she?"

"I cannot tell you how she is. Rather strange, it seems to me."

"Strange!"

"Take my arm, Alice, and walk with me a few paces. There's something the matter with Selina, and I cannot make it out," continued Mr. Dalrymple. "She acts for all the world as if she had committed some crime. I told her so the other day."

"Acts in what way?" cried Alice.

"She's frightened at her own shadow. When the post used to come in at the Grange she would watch for the boy, dart down the path, and seize the letters, as if she feared I might read the directions of hers. When she was recovering from that fever, and I would take her letters in to her, she more than once became blanched and scared. Often I ask her questions, or address remarks to her, and she is buried in her own thoughts, and does not hear me. She starts and moans in her sleep; twice lately I have awakened in the middle of the night and found her gone from the bed and pacing the dressing-room."

"You alarm me," exclaimed Alice. "What can it be?"

"I can only suppose that her nerves are overwrought with all these follies she is plunged into. It is nothing but turmoil and excitement; turmoil and excitement from day to day. I was a fool to come here again this year, and that's the truth."

"Selina had always led so very quiet a life," murmured Alice.

"Of course she had; and it has been a wonderful change for her; enough to upset the nervous system of a delicate woman. Selina has not been too strong since she had that fever."

"She ought to keep more quiet."

"She ought; but she will not. Before we came up I told her she must not do as she did last year; and I thought she did not mean to. Alice, she is mad after these gay frivolities; worse than she was last summer, I do believe--and that need not be. I wished not to come; I told Selina why--the expense, and other reasons--but she would. She would, Alice. I wonder what it is that chains her mind to this Babel of a city. I hate it. Go you in and see her, Alice. I can't stay now, for I have an appointment."

Mrs. Dalrymple was in her bedroom when Alice entered, dressed, and waiting to go out: dressed with an elegance regardless of expense.

"Good gracious, child, is it you!" she exclaimed.

When the first moments had passed, Alice sat down and looked at her sister: her cheek was thin, and its bloom told more of hectic than of health.

"Selina!" exclaimed Alice, "what is the matter? You are much altered."

"Am I? People do alter. You are altered. You look ill."

"Not more so than usual," replied Alice. "I grow weaker with time But you are ill: I can see it. You look as if you had something preying on your mind."

"Nonsense, Alice. You are fanciful."

"What is it?" persisted Alice.

"If I have, your knowing it would do me no good, and would worry you. And yet," added Mrs. Dalrymple, "I think I will tell you. I have felt lately, Alice, that I must tell some one!"

Alice laid gentle hold of her. "Let us sit down on the sofa, as we used to sit together at the Grange, when we were really sisters. But, Selina, if you have wanted a confidant in any grief, who so fitted to be that as your husband?"

"He!" cried Selina--"_he!_ It is the dread of his knowing it--the anxiety I am in, daily and hourly, to keep it from him--that is wearing me out. Sometimes I say to myself, 'What if I put an end to it all, as Robert did?'"

Alice was accustomed to the random figures of speech her sister was at moments given to using; nevertheless her heart stood still.

"What is it that you have done, Selina?"

"Ruined Oscar."

"Ruined Oscar!"

"And ruined myself, with him," added Selina, in reckless tones, as she took off her bonnet with a jerk, and let it lie in her lap. "I have contracted debts that neither he nor I can pay, thousands upon thousands; and the worry of it, the constant fear is rendering my life a--I will not _say_ what--upon earth."

"Debts! thousands upon thousands!" confusedly uttered Alice.

"It is so."

"How did you contract them? Not as--as--Robert did? Surely that infatuation is not come upon you?"

"No. But that infatuation, as you call it, is in fashion in our circles just now. I could tell you of one young lady, whom you know, who amuses herself with it pretty largely."

"A young lady!"

"She is younger than I am--but she's married," returned Selina: and the young lady in question was the Lady Adela Grubb. "My embarrassment arises from a love of pretty gowns," she added lightly; for it was not possible for Selina Dalrymple to maintain a tragic mood many minutes together. "Damereau's bill for last season was between three and four thousand pounds. It is between four and five thousand now."

Alice Dalrymple felt bewildered. "It is not possible for one person to owe all that for one year, Selina!"

"Not possible?" repeated Mrs. Dalrymple. "Some of my friends spend double--treble--four times what I do."

"And so their example led you on?" cried Alice, presently, waking up from a whirlpool of thought.

"Something led me on. If one is in the world, one must dress."

"No, Selina: not as you have done. Not to ruin. If people have only a small income they dress accordingly."

"And make a sight of themselves. I don't choose to."

"Better that, and have peace of mind," remarked Alice.

"Peace of mind! Oh, I don't know where that is to be found nowadays."

"I hope you will find it, Selina. How much do you say you owe?"

"There's four thousand to Damereau, and----"

"Who is Damereau?"

"Goodness me, Alice; if you never did spend a season in town, you ought to know who she is, without asking. Madame Damereau's the great milliner and dressmaker; every one goes to her."

"I remember now. Lady Sarah has her things elsewhere."

"Then I owe for India shawls, and lace, and jewels, and furs and things. I owe six thousand pounds if I owe a farthing."

"What a sum!" echoed Alice, aghast. "Six thousand pounds!"

"Ay, you may well repeat it! Which of the queens was it who said that when she died the name of Calais would be found engraven on her heart? Mary, I think. Were I to die, those two words, 'six thousand,' would be found engraven on mine. They are never absent from me. I see them written up in figures in my dreams; I see them always; in the ball-room, at the opera, in the park they are buzzing in my ears; when I wake from my troubled sleep they come rushing over me, and I start from my bed to escape them. I am not at all sure that it won't turn out to be seven thousand," candidly added Mrs. Dalrymple.

"You must have dressed in silver and gold," said poor Alice.

"No: only in things that cost it: such things as these," said Mrs. Dalrymple, pulling at her bonnet with both hands in irritation so passionate that it was torn in two.

"Oh, pray! pray!" Alice interposed, but too late to prevent the catastrophe. "Your beautiful bonnet! Selina, it must have cost three or four guineas. What a waste!"

"Tush!" peevishly replied Mrs. Dalrymple, flinging the wrecks to the middle of the room. "A bonnet more or less--what does it matter?"

Alice sat in thought; looking very pained, very perplexed.

"It appears to me that you are on a wrong course altogether, Selina. The past is past; but you might strive to redeem it."

"Strive against a whirlpool," sarcastically responded Selina.

"You are getting deeper into it: by your own admission, you are having new things every day. It is adding fuel to fire."

"I can't go naked."

"But you must have a large stock of dresses by you."

"Do you think I would appear in last year's things? I can't and I won't. You do not understand these matters, Alice."

"Then you ought not to 'appear' at all. You should have stopped at the Grange."

"As good be in a nunnery. Once you have been initiated into the delights of a London season, you can only come back to it. Fancy my stopping at that mouldy old Grange."

"What is to be the end of all this?" lamented Alice.

"Ah, that's it! The End. One does not know, you see, how soon it may come. I'd not so much mind if I could get all the season first. The torment of it is, that Damereau is pressing for payment. She is throwing out hints that she can't supply me any longer on credit--and what on earth am I to do if she won't? What a shame it is that there should be so much worry in the world!"

"The greatest portion of it is of our own creating, Selina. And no worry ought to have the power very seriously to disturb our peace," the younger sister continued, in a whisper.

"Now, Alice, you are going to bring up some of those religious notions of yours! They will be lost upon me. One cannot have one's body in this world and one's heart in the next."

"Oh yes, we can," said Alice, earnestly.

"Well, I don't suppose I am going into the next yet, unless I torment myself out of this one; so don't go on about it," was Selina's graceless reply. But as Alice rose to leave, her mood changed.

"Forgive my fractiousness, Alice; indeed, you would excuse it, if you only knew how bothered and miserable I am. It makes me cross with myself and with other people."

"Ma'am," interrupted Ann, Mrs. Dalrymple's maid, "Lady Burnham is at the door, waiting for you."

"I am not going out today," answered her mistress, rising. "I have changed my mind."

"Oh, my patience!" uttered the maid. "What's this? Why, ma'am, it's never your bonnet?"

No man is a hero to his valet-de-chambre: I fear the same may be said of woman. "Bother the bonnet," was the undignified reply of Mrs. Dalrymple, as she flirted the pieces further away with her foot. Ann humbly followed them to the far-off corner, and there took them into her hands. "Reach me another bonnet," said her mistress; "I think I will go, after all. What's the use of staying indoors?"

"Which bonnet, ma'am?"

"Oh, I don't know! Bring some out."

An array of bonnets, new and costly, were displayed for Mrs. Dalrymple's difficult choice. Alice, to whom all this was as a revelation, took her departure with uplifted hands and a shrinking heart.

Mrs. Dalrymple went downstairs, and took her seat in Lady Burnham's carriage. The latter, an extremely wealthy woman, full of pleasurable excitement, imparted some particulars she had learnt of the marriage festivities about to be held in a family of their acquaintance, to which they were both invited. Lady Burnham was then on her road to Damereau's to order a suitable toilette for it--one that would eclipse everybody's but the bride's. Selina, in listening, forgot her cares: when carried out of herself by the excitement of preparing for these pomps and vanities, she generally did so forget. But only then. In the enacting of the pomps and vanities themselves, when they were before her in all their glory, and she made one of the bedizened crowd, her nightmare would return to her; the skeleton in the closet would at those festive times, be exceeding prominent and bare. The reader may be a philosopher, a grave old F.R.S., very learned in searching out cause and effect, and so be able to account for this. I am not.

Selina's mouth watered as she listened to Lady Burnham's description of what she meant to wear at the wedding, and what she recommended to Selina: and the carriage stopped at Madame Damereau's. Mrs. Dalrymple's orders were quite moderate today--only amounting to about ninety pounds.

Was she quite silly? the reader will ask. Well, not more so than many another thoughtless woman.

Madame Damereau took the order as politely and carefully as though Mrs. Oscar Dalrymple had been made of bank notes and gold. She knew better manners--and better policy, too--than to make any objection before others of her clientèle. But that same evening, when Selina was dressing, she was told that a lady who gave the name of Cooper wished to see her. Selina knew that there was a Mrs. Cooper in the establishment of Madame Damereau, a partner, she fancied, or book-keeper; something of that sort. She had seen her once or twice; a lady-like woman, who had been reduced.

"Let Mrs. Cooper come up here," she said to the maid. And Mrs. Cooper entered the bedroom.

"I come from Madame Damereau's," she began, taking the chair that Selina pointed to. "She hopes----"

"For goodness' sake, speak low!" interrupted Selina, in ill-concealed terror. "Mr. Dalrymple is only in his dressing-room, and I do not wish him to hear all my private affairs. These London walls are thin. She wants money, I suppose."

"She hopes, madam, that you will make it convenient to let her have some," said Mrs. Cooper, sinking her voice to a whisper. "If it were only a few hundred pounds," she said. "That is trifling compared with the whole sum, which amounts now to----"

"Oh, I know what it amounts to; I can guess it near enough," hastily interposed Mrs. Dalrymple. "In the course of a week or two I will see what I can do."

Poor Selina, at her wits' end for excuses, had said "in the course of a week or two" so many times now, that Madame Damereau was tired of hearing the phrase.

Mrs. Cooper hesitated, not much liking her errand. "She bade me say, madam, that she was extremely sorry to cause inconvenience, but that she cannot execute the order you gave today unless she previously receives some money."

"Not execute it!" repeated Selina, with flashing eyes. "What do you mean by saying such a thing to me?"

"Madam, I am but the agent of Madame Damereau. I can only speak as she bids me."

"True," answered Selina, softening; "it is not your fault. But I must have the things. You will get them for me, will you not?" she said, in an accent of entreaty, feeling that she was speaking to a gentlewoman, although one who but held a situation at a milliner's. "Oh, pray use your influence; get her to let me have them."

Mrs. Cooper stood in distress, for hers was one of those refined natures that cannot bear to cause or to witness pain.

"If it depended upon me, indeed you should have them," she answered, "but I have no influence of that sort with Madame Damereau. She would not allow the slightest interference between her and her ladies: were I to attempt it, I might lose my place in her house, and be turned out again to struggle with the world."

"Has it been a harsh world to you?" inquired Selina, pityingly.

"Oh yes," was Mrs. Cooper's answer, "or I should not be where I am now. And I am thankful to be there," she hastily added: "I would not seem ungrateful for the mercy that has followed me in my misfortunes."

"I think misfortunes are the lot of all," spoke Selina. "What can I do to induce Madame Damereau to furnish me with these things?"

"Perhaps you had better call and see her yourself, madam," replied Mrs. Cooper, relapsing into her ostensible position. "I will try and say a word to her tonight that may prepare her. She has a good heart."

"I will see her tomorrow. Thank you," replied Mrs. Dalrymple, ringing for Mrs. Cooper to be shown out.

Selina finished dressing, and went forth to the evening's gaiety with what spirits she had. Once plunged into the gay scene, she forgot care and was merry as the merriest there. Her husband had never seen her face brighter.

On the following day, Selina proceeded to Madame Damereau's at an early hour, before any of the other clientèle would be likely to appear. But the interview, although Mrs. Cooper had said as much as she dared, was not productive of good. Madame had gradually learnt the true position of Oscar Dalrymple, that he was a very poor man, instead of a rich one; she feared she might have trouble over her account, and was obstinate and obdurate. Not exactly insolent: she was never that, to her customers' faces: but she and Mrs. Dalrymple both lost temper, and the latter was impolitic enough to say some cutting things, not only in disparagement of madame's goods, but about the "cheating prices" she had been charged. Madame Damereau's face turned green, and the interview ended by her stating that if some money was not immediately furnished her, she should sue Mr. Dalrymple for the whole. Selina went away sick at heart; for she read determination on the incensed lips of the Frenchwoman.