BORN TO SORROW. CHAP. XXVI. "HOW SHOULD I GREET THEE?" Has not the reader often shuddered at the receipt of a telegraphic message? They always seem ill-boding, these notes enclosed in their yellow envelope. "Something sudden has occurred, and there is not time to write," is the first thought, as the receipt is being signed, and then " omne ignotum pro horrifico." With men of business, the case of course is different. Jones, on 'Change, opens his telegram with the calmest air; for he expects to find nothing of greater importance in it than that consols have fallen, or that Smith is coming to dine, or something of that kind. I must confess that I can never behold one of those smart, sharp little officials approach my door without secret misgiving, and am heartily well pleased when he passes my roof-tree and leaves his fateful message further on. Ella Grantley had been making up her mind for the worst these few last days; not that she had any great inkling of the Derby project, but she could not in reason close her eyes to the fact that Grantley had been what he would call dropping his money pretty freely" of late times, and that if things kept on long in this way ultimate ruin must be the result. She was getting almost resigned to trouble now (one gets accustomed to this kind of thing in time), and the wife who the first time her husband got drunk since marriage nearly broke her heart with shame and grief, as the years roll on and habit begets indifference, picks her husband out of the gutter or puts him to bed with the utmost coolness, and never troubles her mind with any further thought, except the hope that the graceless one has not spent all the week's wages at the "Blue Elephant." So true it is that wife, ill-treats her, insults her by his known and open preference for other women, wounds her feelings by the associates he tries to make her own. But then "she would have him-she "He is a per has herself to thank for it!" Yes, but then she would have him when love was young, and the happy spring-tide of life blooming, for a pair of careless foolish lovers, when the deceit and black nature of the man lay slumbering for a while, lulled into repose by the magic enchantment of love. It suited the man to conceal all the darker traits of his character, and appear all smiles and amiability. So it is. fect brute to her; but she would have him!" is the moral appended to many a fable of married misery. Despite the warnings of her friends, the tears of her family, the reasonings of prudence itself, she would have him." And having made the great, irretrievable mistake-having few hours-she must needs be content and clouded over a whole lifetime by the error of a shape herself to her lot, and live it out till merciful Providence take the bane of her existence from her, and she be free to choose once more. Ella has at last summoned courage to open the telegram, and the contents verify all her forebodings. The ruin of a life summed up in a few short words: "DEAR ELLA,-Peep o' Day lost the Derby. Am done for. Must leave England.” It had come at last, then, what she had been expecting through all the weary months-ruin and disgrace, flight from all that was near and dear in England, and a lawless, suspicious existence at some foreign watering-place-kindly refuge for those, such as had beaten the Constable in the proverbial race! A life to be spent amongst the black-leg roué friends of her husband-the wife of a gambler, probably obliged to exert all her attractions to lure young men with money to their house; so that they might It was a horrible future to look to; yet she become an easy prey to Grantley and the hawks. could hope for no other, unless merciful Death released her. "Tell Mr. Dalton he may come up," she said, faintly, to the footman, who still waited: and she quite astonished herself by the coolness with which she said it, and the careless disregard she felt at the visit of a man who might fairly be called her victim. "Quite well, thanks!" Whereas Alphonse and "How do, old fellow?" and they pass on. Frederic, meeting after a month's estrangement, rush into one another's arms, with: "Ah! ce bon cœur !" "Mon cher Alphonse!" and weep plentifully over each other's shoulders. That is the way of them, Luigi and Karl and Henri: they do not mean half as much, with all their embraces and tears, as Tom, Jack, and Harry do with their plain rough "How do, old fellow?" Charley entered the drawing-room, and found her still holding the telegram in her hand, but looking very very faint, and, great Goodness! the change that had taken place in her face since he last saw her, in all the proud beauty of youth and happiness! It was as if Time had devoted all his energies to stamping deep indelible footprints of his onward march on the furrowed brow, and as though grief and care had done their best towards dimming the lustre of Ella looked at the young fellow before her. her eye and paling the damask of her cheek. How well he was looking—and that beard made He scarcely recognized in the stricken woman him quite handsome! Was he happy? and had before him the beautiful creature he had seen he forgotten all about the old time; and, above last in that interview at Oaklands Hall. It all, had any inkling reached his ears of the diswas not the time for indulging his surprise, graceful career Harry was running? He had though; for society imperatively demanded, as only landed yesterday, and consequently could much alone as though a thousand pairs of eyes not be expected to know much about it.-Conwere bent in scrutiny on them, that this in-flicting thoughts like these surged through terview must be quite in accordance with propriety. "How d'ye do, Mr. Dalton? Have you been abroad? How well you are looking!" Merely that, and the answer 66 Very well indeed, thanks, Mrs. Grantley! [How very odd that sounded!] Yaas, I have been abroad-spent last winter in Rome. You weren't abroad I believe, and the spring in Calabria, very jolly time of it. Haw-Town very hot, and-a-very empty!" The shocking hypocrite actually put on a careless drawl, as though effectually to conceal the emotion he was labouring under; but I do not think he succeeded very admirably. It is impossible to deceive a woman in anything of this. They have made the tones of the voice and the expression of the face so long their study, that they can see through a sham with decent accuracy. But this was the meeting thought of for such a long time, half longed for, half dreaded by Charley. Nothing more romantic than a common-place "How d'ye do?" If it had been in France, I think the case would have been different; Jules would have approached the perfidious, but still adored Stephanie (that is, of course, if the gudeman were not at home) with the anguish of despair in his countenance; and would probably have dropped on his knees or hidden his face, Agamemnon-like, in his hands, or hissed out "Ah, Stephanie, c'est vraiment toi!" and then launched out into a most pathetic description of his misery in exile, his longing for this meeting; and, very probably, before the lapse of many hours, ce cher mari, when he returned, would be introduced, "Jules, mon cousin," much to the good man's wrath and chagrin. And after that, Jules would be kind enough to accompany Madame to the Bois de Boulogne, and so on see "Don Giovanni." We cannot afford these little stage-emotions in "perfidious Albion." Stagnant is our blood, and laughably rigid our notions of morality. Thackeray says that when two Englishmen meet, the one of whom has saved the other's life a short time before, all the salutation is: Ella's mind as she sat regretfully surveying the healthy happy man before her. "And how have you been, Mrs. Grantley? And how is the Captain? Gone to the Derby, I suppose, with all the swells. I should like to have been home time enough to have seen it. You went, of course? Splendid race between Peep o' Day and Athleta." "I didn't go," said Ella, wearily, "and I don't understand anything about horse-racing, except that there is not much good in it." Now was Charley's opportunity. Should he say a few bitter things-they would come in very apropos-of the turf, and he might make a very good stroke indeed. The temptation was not allowed to remain. "What a villain I must be to think of such a thing," was his inward comment on this plan; then aloud: "And how are they getting on at the dear old hall (wrong, master Charlie, that epithet)-the squire, and your mamma and Katie, and the curate-quite well, I suppose? Happy time of it I used to have there." Ella favoured him with a sharp glance, just to warn him that he was treading somewhere near forbidden ground, and had better "make tracks" back, as the American have it; but the infatuated young man went on: "I don't think I ever have been half so happy since, as I was when at Oaklands; I used to look forward to coming up from town like an emancipated schoolboy for a half-holiday. Don't you think those were jolly times?" "I mustn't think, you know, Mr. Dalton," said Ella, with almost tears in her eyes.-She was one of those women who possess the rare art of keeping tears in their eyes without shedding them, and these women are very sirens in their way. No man can stand a glance from those eyes to which the gathered tear-pearls only afford a more witching brightness.—“I really have scarcely any time for thinking, nowa-days. My husband is all in all to me, and this London life don't leave one too much time for indulging in dreams of childhood, pleasant though it might have been." bravely All this time she had been bearing up against all the complicated woes of her position; but she felt that she could not keep up much longer before the gaze of the man. A pleading look in her face-"Oh do go and leave me to my misery." But the blind, infatuated youth would not take it. Then Ella blundered: "I suppose you are very happy now, Mr. Dalton, taking things easily and pleasantly? Brought over a bride from the south to astonish the people this season? We have nothing in England, this time, except Lady Trefusis, and some people call her hair red." "I shall never marry, Mrs. Grantley, and that you know very well (She know? why on earth should she know?). "I have only loved once, and made a very great mistake, and it has cured me effectually. No, I shall manage to jog on comfortably by myself." "Forgive me, Mr. Dalton, I was wrong to mention anything of the kind. Let us talk of something else." That is the way of the women: they do the injury, and then they look piteous, and say they are very sorry. Very easy to say "Talk of something else." She had introduced the fatal subject, and all the time the fatal message was crunched in her hand and burning into her heart, and she was wasting the time in the sentimental talk of Jeannette and Jeannot in a French play. Then there came a great rush of tears, she could not conceal it: she was being | humiliated in the eyes of the old lover, and her face was evidently getting overshadowed; for Charley said, gently and kindly, "You will pardon my saying what I am going to say for old friendship's sake, won't you Mrs. Grantley? I am afraid that you are not happy; something in your face, so changed-in your voice, so altered tell me what it is, for old friendship's sake. There can be no harm in your confiding in me; I am sure that things have gone badly with you." : Simple young casuist! But there certainly could not be much harm; better he should learn it than a careless, callous stranger. | you must not think that I don't love my hus band: I love him, spite of all my misery, more than all the world beside; I simply tell you this, that you may see if I have at all ill-treated you how immeasurably better your lot is than mine." Hot tears were in the honest young fellow's blue eyes, and it was in a choking voice that he answered: "I dare not say all that I feel, I should be certain to transgress some of the proprieties. I have been living a wild foreign life lately, where the people don't put so much stress on the convenances. Any man could say that he pitied you, and that is all that I may say. I heard from a friend of mine that the Captain had dropped a great deal of money on the Derby. In common fairness I must say that had " Peep-o'-day" won, Grantley would have been quite right with the betting men; but I suppose the favourite's being beaten has entirely finished him. If I could help him in the least, I should be happy indeed to do anything in my power. To Grantley himself I can say nothing. I know the man does not and never did like me; and though he beat me in the aim of my life, I dont' think he feels very merciful to me." Ella showed him the telegram. "This confirms the idea altogether that the Captain is done for: I really do not know in what way to help him. It might seem to him, you know, that I was coming home to insult him in his bad luck, and to twit him with the misery that his marriage has brought you both. But, however, don't look so miserable, Mrs. Grantley: it cuts me to the heart to see you wretched, though I can be nothing more to you, I'll see if matters cannot be made right. Will I call in again? That I will, and happy, and let people say what they will. I am like Sir Galahad, you know; 'my strength is as the strength of ten, because my heart is as pure,' pure at least froin the sin of envying another man his success. Bye-bye, Mrs. Grantley; come and see you soon again," and the sound of his cheery voice died away. And the great Jeames showed him the door. "I am not happy, Mr. Dalton (and it was Left to herself Ella fell into a very painful with a great gulp of anguish that the woman reverie, leaning her beautiful chin upon her who had rejected him said this), I am not hap-hand and gazing gloomily out on the dying day. py. If I were to reveal to you all the misery which I have gone through the last year, you would not bring yourself to believe it, and you would consider yourself amply revenged if you did-amply revenged for the momentary heartburn I caused you not a very long time ago. I feel ashamed to tell you, but you will not think any the harder of me, will you, Charley--that is, Mr. Dalton-to tell you that, after the first few months, I had scarce a a moment's happiness with my husband-a gambler, a betting man, wholly swallowed up in the pursuit of gain; a man with a dark cloud of suspicion hanging over him, which I feel certain will break into a storm ere long. I ought not to tell you this. Still, you are not a stranger, and [raising her eyes beseechingly] I know not what regrets entered into her mind then; we are none of us so perfect, at any rate, that we can afford to find fault with her, if now, in her hour of darkest need, she let her thoughts go with the good-hearted, affectionate man, whom she had rejected. She could not help contrasting the life which she was leading with that she would have lived as the wife of Charley Dalton. He at least would have loved her, and no other woman would have come between them, and he would have been her slave, obedient to her every wish and whim. But then it was no use sighing for what might have been: it was her duty, since she had chosen, to abide steadfastly by the choice. She was too highminded, with all her weakness, to spend time in idle, vain regrets. She must cleave to her load of misery! And the tears trickled through her fingers as she sat there, alone and friendless; while, just turn the slide, and probably at Oaklands Hall the friends she longed for were happy and genial in their blissful ignorance. husband, and, if needs be, sink with him down play the part of "La Belle Dame Sans Merci," to the lowest depths that his ill-fortune might till the victims which haply fell into her toils bring him to. She remembered having read in could bleed no more? She seemed to be stand. some novel that they had brought her from ing, as it were, on the other shore, away from Mudie's, how that when men had lost their all home-ties and happiness and love: on the farand been forced to live on their own wits, or ther shore, where yet the grass was green and the absence of wit in others, which is about the bejewelled with flowrets, she saw her dear same thing, their wives had been compelled to friends stand with reproachful longing in their become their accomplices in cleaning out the eyes, and their arms stretched out to clasp her; pigeons and youthful gulls that fluttered within while she, on the bleak, desolate strand, was reach of the hawk, and had, moreover, to dress fain to turn her face from the bright vision, their best, talk, look, play their best, to keep and commence her weary pilgrimage into the up the attraction. Ella shuddered at the bare future, with the sharp stones wounding her notion-the daughter of an old family to descend feet, the gaunt moorland stretching before her, to such depths as these; to parade her misery and the mountains of Despair, on which no before hard, unfeeling men; to become the verdure grew and no sunlight glistened, seemed accomplice of desperate gamblers, who, with forever shutting out the comely form of Hope! their dupes, would crowd round with their There had been very little sunlight on her marcoarse manners and rough bonhommie; for ried life, and the close was to be gloom and nothing, she could say from experience, misery! A longing, intense wish that her husblunts the finer virtues of courtesy and band would come and be with her, now took chivalrous conduct towards women, more possession of her soul. She would feel easier than excessive gambling. And then there in her mind, were the ruined, lost man with her. would be the sickening uncertainty of a life She might be able to console him, to concert like this, when the ill-luck of any day might some plans for the future, to inform him of destroy the gains of weeks, and the end of Dalton's kindness, which he could not pos which would be wrapped in obscurity and sibly misconstrue-kindness so unaffected, so gloom, if not a wicked criminal one. She generous-if he would only come and be with would go home: she could not consent, how-her, to comfort and cheer in all this dreadful ever great her love, to lower herself to such lowest depths as these. At home she would at least find a sacred bosom whereon to sob out all her great misery; and the loving arms of sister-yet unchanged, whilst she had been so much changed to encircle her, and keep her safe from the fate she was picturing now. Oh, sacred quiet and rest of home! what would she now give, not to have left it, for the cold mercies and charity of the world—false, unreal spectacles as all its pleasures were, in comparison with the dear home-joys, and occupations, which, sweet and fresh as the primroses that starred the banks about Oaklands in the spring-tide, were pure from the smoke of the world's hardening, blackening contagion! Oh, to hear the words of kindness and love ringing the changes in her ears-the tender pity of her mother, the rugged kindness of the old man her father, and the staunch loyalty of Katie! It was too painful, And Charley Dalton-well, 'twas no use for this longing for a rest and quiet, that might him to break his heart about a thing that could come never more till the rest that is in heaven not be helped. It would look too officious for came to ease the weary heart-this Tantalus-him to offer more than his hearty sympathy, like striving after the happy vision, a glimpse of under the circumstances: so, instead of pining which was vouchsafed her. Visions soon fade and moping, and writing a long series of verses before hard, cruel reality, in the world of reali- to Alethea in misery, or on seeing Clorinda in ties; and, dream as she would, she could not tears, this modern young philosopher, having escape from the dread present. There lay the dined very comfortably, and knocked off his cold, true fact before her-her husband a ruined pint of sherry in the most scientific manner, in gambler; the house in Portman-square-in company with little Tom Tit of the Incomewhich she had known scarce a moment's right tax, who knew everybody and everything, and, happiness, and ah, how much heart-scaring as he expressed it, who was posted up on who pain and anguish !-and her own future. Was was doing what, and that sort of thing, and who she to become a kind of modern Becky Sharp, chatted and grinned in the most contented manwithout that lady's errors? was she, all inno-ner, till the coffee and cigars were discussed, cent and guileless as she was, to enrol herself and Charley proposed looking into the play, among the ranks of the "birds of prey," to and after the play a quiet oyster at Evans's, a "One-half the world knows not"-I am almost afraid to go on with this quotation, so often misquoted in such a variety of forms, that it would be puzzling to declare its original im port: I think, though, it implies that one-half of the world do not know how the other half live: so here the good people at the Hall might possibly have been making merry, the squire cracking his harmless jokes, the remaining daughter teasing her father and the Curate alternately with her mischievous wit, and Mrs. Stewart calm and urbanely placid, the while that Ella, the lost darling, was sighing that the world was weary, and that she was aweary, aweary, and wished that she were dead! where the solemn and affectionate proprietor; his high estate" in the sporting world. Men condescended to inform the young fellow that he was glad to see him, and that he looked none the worse for his travels. And I'll venture to bet that, when Charley laid his head upon the pillow at "Long's,' that evening, his last thought—and, for the matter of that, prayer too -was for the welfare of the woman whom he had left in the pride of happiness, and had returned to find abased in the humility of sorrow and despair! And for some time afterward Charley Dalton had to enact a little farce, which is very often played by young fellows in situations like his, who wish to keep their character for honesty and virtue, and not to give employment to those gentlemen who, by a pleasant figure, are said to be "of the long robe." I mean, he had to keep two faces, till he became a regular Janus, the one face for the woman he loved-insanely and wickedly loved, I grant you, and very much after the style of the gentilhommes in Octave Feuillet's pleasing novels-and one face for the world and society at large. He could not help showing, by the tell-tale inflexions of his voice, the tremulous glance of the eye, that he had not forgotten the love of his youth. He blamed himself for it, but he could not help it; and, until some select committee of the Virtuous took him to task about it, he could not muster enough resolution. But so it was; he kept up the two faces. He might have read the words of Robert Browning in the "Last Words," when he says, "God be thanked, the meanest of his creatures Boasts two soul-sides-one to face the world with, One to show a woman when he loves her." CHAP. XXVII. used to cite Grantley as a proverb in the way of good luck, and envy the career he was running. Now the merest turn of the cards had abased him to the ground; a slip of the foot, a swerve on the part of the animal on which he had placed his fortunes, and all was gone from him; and, worse than all, men had seen his fall, and were even then speculating on it, in that pleasant, sympathetic manner in which our dearest friends will speculate on our misfortunes and wonder who will get our sherry, and where we bought our sparkling Môsel; just in the same way as Fauntleroy's friends did, when they called to see him for the last time before his doom. Even now he imagined the Children of Promise were scenting the carcass afar off, and whetting their beaks for the banquet, and oiling their well-curled locks for the onslaught; even now he saw, in his mind's eye, the posters which advertised, in words as pathetic as the second column of the Times, "The sale of property belonging to a gentleman going abroad." Going abroad! There is, to my thinking, much pathos in those words-they always seem to speak of exile from England to the shores of Boulogne and Ostend; that the gentleman would not go abroad unless he could not possibly help it. It was the day after the Derby, and settling-day was gradually approaching, when, to the uttermost, every farthing was to be exacted from him, and he would be left "back-bare, heart-sick," and with (worse than all) a wife dependent on him, and forced to share his disgrace. Oh, those days after! What very uncomfortable sensations they do admit-more uncomfortable than the quarte heure of Rabelais, or unhappy Goldsmith's feelings, when he had been junketing with the fair at Mulberry Gardens, and put his hand in his pocket to find the "MY PRIDE IS BROKEN, MEN HAVE SEEN reckoning, and found therein the usual occu MY FALL." Such might have been the bitter plaint of Harry Grantley, on the day after the Derby, when every hope on which he had staked his fortunes had proved illusory, when the pleasing mirage of success had forever faded, and left but the cold, grey, barren reality, in place of the gorgeous rays which erstwhile had illumined the sky. Just as in times passed by, in good King Arthur's day, the lists were set near Enid's home; and the mighty Geraint, whose strength and puissance were so great that, in the estimation of the eyes of those who loved him, "himself, beyond the rest pushing, could move the chair of Idris"-the mighty Geraint, avenging the great insult done to fair Guinevère, felled to the earth Edryn, son of Nudd; then the bitter wail, which heads this chapter, was drawn from the fallen man's lips. And in just the same way might Grantley in his ruin have complained that men had seen his fall. Mingled, I dare say, with the blow of having lost all his money and ruined his fortune, came the bitter assurance that he had "fallen from pant-nothing. Above all things unpleasant, are these days after. The day after a ball: what need that I tell you of the ghastly white pinched faces of the women, who looked so queenly under the brilliant light of the candelabra, who moved along the floor in the true Junonian style. Can these be they, the leadenfaced shivering beings, who shudderingly await their carriages in the unwelcome morning light? Such is the day after the ball. And then the supper-room, what a horrible debris strews the table, and what a faint odour of dying flowers, and wine whose sparkle has departed, and spoilt masses of what was once a miracle of the confectioner's art-all, all departed with the garish sunlight! And then the morning after that call-supper of yours, O festive young Templar! the memory thereof, I think, is exceedingly generous unto you. When you sat with your Sodales last night, "birling at the wine," wh a wonderful facetiousness characterised all your sayings! You were a Curran and a Sheridan and a Pitt-tria juncta in uno'; you set the table in a roar, as the sparkling Burgundy circled round the board, and the wit-bestowing wine of |