Puck — October 16, 1878 — page 11: what you’re looking at

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PUCK. It PATIENT KITTY. By James Payn. (Continued.) OULD youask fim to write to Kitty?” said I simply. I had a selfish hope that I might be spared the telling of his disgrace with my own lips. “We could, of course,” said Mr. Halland; “but if you will take our advice, you will not ask it. He would only unsettle her by dwell- ing, perhaps, upon possibilities that may never be realized.’ We are very sorry for you. We shall think no worse of you, but better, for having spoken in his behalf; but his case is in our ovinion a hopeless one, It will be best, much best, to represent it as being so to your sister.” ‘Then I made my bow and departed in sad distress, only, ere I did so, Mr. John Halland held out his hand, which had never been done to me, or to any of the clerks, as I believe, be- fore; an hour before it would have made me very proud, but there was small comfort to me now in any such mark of honor. I found Kitty that evening, as usual, at her embroidery, in which kind of work she had really atyained a great proficiency; she had called to me from the parlor as I came in, ina bright cheery way, which showed me that she had some good news to communicate, doubt- less concerning increased prices paid to her by those who bought her work; but the smile faded from her face directly she caught sight of mine. “There is nothing the matter with Fred- eric ?” cried she, with agitation. “Not as to health, darling; but in other ways, alas! there is.” And then I told her all. It was an easier task than | expected, from her never making the least interruption; but listen- ing with pale face and rigid lips until the end— and even when I had done there was no outburst. * Then you believe, Frank, that Frederic Raynor, your old friend, has been guilty of a <1?” was all she said. fy darling,” cried I, “I have no choice but to believe it, though Heaven knows I would give all I have to think him innocent. He has confessed to it himself.” “Did you hear him? did you see him?” in- quired Kitty, in quick passionate tones. “No, dear; but both the Messrs. Hallands were present when—” “What do I care for the Messrs. Hallands ?” she broke forth. ‘‘ What do I know of them that I should believe it night because they say so, although the sun is shining? I do know Fred. He is good and honest, generous and kind. If your employers called your sister a thief, would you believe them ¢hen? It would be more likely to be true than this is. It is they who are thieves, for they have stolen his good name.” I could not have dreamt that there was such force and fury in Kitty’s gentle nature, as shone forth in her looks and tone; they did not spare even myself. . “ You are a coward, and not worthy of such a friend, Frank. If I had been in your place, I would have said, ‘ You lie! you lie!’ “My darling, calm yourself,” said I as gen- tly as I could, for I really feared that, in her extreme excitement, she would do herself some serious mischief. ‘It is a question of proof and fact. If a man confesses to a crime, there is an end to all doubts.” “ Let him confess it to me,” cried she; “let him tell me with his own lips, ‘I have falsified my father’s accounts; | have robbed the men who gave me bread.’ And not even then would I say, ‘I believe it.’ I would say, ‘ You are mad, and know not what you say.’” It was idle, of course, to reason with her after this, and I did not attempt to doso. I spoke of the probability of Raynor's writing to her himself before he left England; for I had made up my mind, in spite of Mr. Halland’s advice, to ask him to do so, It was clear that no hand but his coukd open her eyes; and he was bound—alas, I could no longer say “in honor" —but in common humanity, to release her from her engagement. “If he writes to say he is innocent,” said I, “then I will believe him, though you and I should be the only persons to do so.” “He will not do that,” answered the girl; “ for he will know that I shall take his inno- cence for granted.” And so the matter was left, In the letter I addressed to Frederic Raynor, I adjured him to make a clean breast of the matter in which he stood accused, for my sister's sake If he was guiltless he had only to say so, and we two at least would continue to hold him innocent, though all the world should be on the other side. But if he had really disgraced himself, was it not his duty to confess it to us, that time might erase his image from my sister's heart, and leave it open to the reception of another? I put all this in as gentle language as I could, consistently with Kitty’s interest, but I felt that they were hard terms. It was humiliation enough that he had already owned his crime to his employers, without my constituting my- self his father-confessor; and it must be added that after that affair of the music hall I had not the confidence in his word which I now professed. His reply was of an evasive nature; he did not write to Kitty at all; and only these few words to me, with neither commencement nor signature: “ Kitty is quite free, and may her next choice be a less unhappy one. God. bless you both.” Of course this was tantamount to an acknow- ledgment of his crime; but it was not precisely so, which I thought cruel. I saw that my poor sister was not even yet convinced by it; so, without saying one word to her, I went down to Clapham that very morning to see Frederic face to fact He had set off to Liverpool to go on board ship an hour before I arrived; and on my asking to see his father, I was informed that Mr. Jacob Raynor was too ill to speak with anyone. I said nothing of this to Kitty, but by some means or other she had found out where I had been, and thanked me for all the pains I had taken on her account. ‘I have only one fa- vor more to ask,” she said, “in connection with this subject;” and when of course I an- swered, “It is granted, darling,” she said, “Pray promise me never to speak to me of Fred again.” She did not even ask for his last note, which I therefore kept in my own possession. In looking at it, as I sometimes did, though always with a keen sense of pain, it struck me how like the writing was to the elder Raynor's; this, however, I had often no- ticed before; it was the case even with the formation of his figures, and that (and the Devil) had doubtless put it into his head to falsify his father’s books. Il. UnpeER no circumstances, it is probable, would the firm have prosecuted Fred; but the defalcations of which he had been guilty were not very serious, and only extended over eigh- teen months or so. ‘They were discovered quite accidentally by Mr. Halland; though, | had it been otherwise—tnat is, if Mr. Raynor himself had found them out—I did not believe he would have concealed his son's depravity for an instant. It shocked me to think that each of those ‘ windfalls,” of which the un- happy young fellow used to talk so lightly, had probably been a successful fraud upon his em- ployers, and I no longer wondered at the hag- gard and weary looks which had accompanied his introduction to crime. I should have de- sired Kitty to return those little presents to her, which I felt had not been his to give, but that, in the first place, my lips were sealed upon all concerning him; and, secondly, I knew those relics of her lost love were her greatest treasures. I never saw them, but when I came upon her suddenly sometimes, she would lock ner little desk, and rise from it with such a look as a devotee might wear caught on her knees (by one of another faith) before a shrine, She did not mope nor show by any outward sign that her young hopes were withered; she even redoubled her solicitude, always great, for my home comfort; but I felt that in her case life was no longer a blessing to be enjoyed, but a long tedious road to be trodden with a buz- then, only to be laid down on that last mile- stone which stands at the head of our graves, Of course I hoped otherwise at first; that the poor girl would gradually forget the man who had thus trodden out the wellspring of her youth and happiness; but in the end I could come to no other conclusion. In less than a year, though still comely, Kitty had lost the good looks which belong to girl- hood, and only needed the garb of the pious sisterhood to enroll her with those who have given up the world and affianced themselves to Heaven. Instead of the work which she had so assiduously pursued for love's sake, she now gave up her leisure time in ministrations among the poor. It was more than a month after his son’s ca- tastrophe before Mr. Jacob Raynor reappeared at the office, and when he did’so, he was ely recognizable. His hair, which had been iron gray, was now become snow white; his erect form was bowed; and instead of look- ing those who spoke with him in the face, he studiously kept his eyes averted from them, and generally fixed upon the ground. There was no need to speak of the disgrace that his only son had inflicted on him, for it could be read in his face, in his voice, and even in his very movements, which, heretofore somewhat stiff and pompous, had become vague and shambling. For my own part, I confess (though I could not but’ pity him) his presence was even less agreeable to me than before, though it had no longer any fears for me; he never asked us for subscriptions to this or that _bene- volent object now; never found fault with our caligraphy; never administered little private lectures of his own, or invited us to attend his public ones. But I could not forget that if this man had been less unyielding in the matter of his son's affections, less stern in forbidding him both companionship and correspondence with the object of them, Fred would never have gone so fatally astray. He had, it is true, acted within his rights as a father, but he had exercised them, as it seemed to me, in a man- ner inconsistent with those professions of kind- liness and goodwill to all men, of the.genuine- ness of which I was still far from doubting. Indeed, one of the most painful features of his case was that his occupation in the way of pub- lic well-doing seemed to have gone, simply through lack, not of will, but of “heart” for it; his backbone, as one of my fellow-clerks expressed it, appeared to have slipped out, and left him limp, yet with no one to lean on; and it was rumored that at home he would now sit for hours muttering to himself and staring at the wall, He did his office work, notwithstanding, with his usual mechanical exactness, so that there was no need for his employers to extend to him the indulgence which would certainly not have been wanting, however inadequately he might have served them. Neither they nor their subordinates evér ven- comicbooks.com