as has been already stated, it was about a year before mr. hazeldine's tragical end that frank derison had been made the confidant by his friend winton of a secret which the latter was not justified in revealing to anyone. he had been told that there was a deposit of twelve hundred pounds standing to the credit of hermia rivers, in umpleby's bank at dulminster, and the news had given a spur to his lagging affections, and had decided him to propose to hermy with the least possible delay.
all his life frank had been used to talk freely to his mother, and as soon as he reached home that evening, he did not fail to tell her what had passed between winton and himself, as far as it related to miss rivers.
"what a dear, noble-hearted girl she is!" he wound up by saying. "i love her to distraction, and have done so for ever so long. of course, twelve hundred pounds isn't to be despised, but if she hadn't a shilling i should love her just the same. she's the only girl in the world i could ever be happy with."
mrs. derison listened to the boy's rhodomontade with a smile which he took to be one of sympathy, but which in reality was one of bitterness. she had heard precisely the same sort of nonsense--in that case addressed to herself--from the lips of frank's father a quarter of a century before; and at that time she had been simple and inexperienced enough to pin her faith to it. what had it resulted in as far as she was concerned? in dead-sea fruit--in dust and ashes. and so would it be with any girl who might lend an ear to frank's vows, and entrust her future to his keeping; for in him mrs. derison recognized an exact counterpart of his father; handsome, gay, not without a certain surface cleverness; lazy and good-natured, with a manner that rarely failed to charm, but with a heart that was thoroughly selfish at the core, although the owner of it was totally unconscious of the fact. with such natures self-deception--unconscious self-deception--is one of the primary laws of their being.
"yes," said mrs. derison, with a somewhat dubious air, "i do not doubt that miss rivers is a very charming girl, nor that you fancy yourself very deeply in love with her; and certainly, as you say, in our circumstances a fortune of twelve hundred pounds is by no means to be despised. but, on the other hand, it is not always advisable for a very young man--which you still are--to tie himself down for life, unless his future, to some extent at least, is already mapped out for him, and he is in a position to form some idea how far it may be affected by an early and perhaps imprudent marriage. your future, i am sorry to say, is anything but an assured one; still, it may contain hidden possibilities of which at present you and i know nothing." then she went on to hint darkly at certain possible contingencies in connection with his position at the bank. mr. avison, senior, was a very old man; there was little likelihood that mr. avison, junior, would ever marry; frank was a relative--though a distant one--and if only he had the sense to play his cards properly, and to wait patiently, who could say what might not come to pass? in any case, it would be well to pause and consider before committing himself seriously with any young woman, however charming she might be.
mrs. derison's words had the effect she intended them to have. they threw an effectual chill for the time being over frank's love aspirations. hitherto he had had no faith that any special advancement at the bank would accrue to him more than to others; indeed, it had often seemed to him that he would have stood a better chance of promotion had he not been a relation of his employer. still, after all, might there not be more in his mother's hints than she was willing to let appear on the surface? he knew that she went occasionally to see old mr. avison, and had she not had good grounds for doing so, she would not have said as much as she had said. his brain was of the sanguine, castle-building order, and almost unconsciously his daydreams began to assume an auriferous tinge, such as they had ever lacked before. it would be as well, perhaps, not to be too precipitate in the matter of hermia. she was a darling girl, and he loved her passionately; still----. even in his thoughts he got no farther than that.
but there came a day, two or three weeks later, when, not for the first time, frank and hermia found themselves on the river together. frank pulled up stream till all the other boats that were out were left behind; then, in a quiet shallow, he fastened the painter round the root of an old tree, and prepared to enjoy a smoke. it was an afternoon in early winter. the sun was drawing towards the west, and in its softened radiance, hermia sat like a creature glorified. never had she seemed so lovely in frank's eyes as then. for once the fervor of passion overcame him; for once he flung prudence and all care for his worldly advancement to the winds; for once his heart spoke without an afterthought. a couple of minutes sufficed for him to say what he had to say, and then he paused, leaning forward towards her, his eyes glowing as they had never glowed before, his whole being instinct with an emotion which was almost as great a surprise to himself as it was to the girl sitting opposite him: for hermia, much as she liked frank, had not thought of him as a possible lover. she was heart-whole and fancy-free, and the revelation came on her with the shock of a great surprise.
there is no need to describe in detail the scene that followed. frank combated hermia's objections and scruples one by one, and, in the end, was provisionally accepted. the affair was to be kept a secret from everybody for twelve months, during which time they would hold themselves as being, to a certain extent, engaged to each other. at the end of that time, either of them who might so choose, would be free to break the compact; but should neither of them wish to do so, then the engagement should be formally ratified and made known to those whom it might concern. it was a foolish arrangement to enter into, but excusable on hermia's part, on the score of her ignorance of the world and its ways, as well as of the possibilities of her own heart. she loved no one else, and it seemed to her that she never should. she thought to be the same always as she was at nineteen. she had known and had liked frank for years, and would fain have had the relationship between them continue the same in the future as it had been in the past; but if it made frank happy to love her, and if he was really sincere in wishing her to become his wife, why, in that case, she would try to love him a little in return. yes, she actually told herself that she would try to love. foolish girl! as if love comes by trying for! but she was soon to be made wiser, after that sweet old fashion which yet seems such a surprising fashion when first it makes itself felt and known.
having given her word, hermia would not revoke it; but the compact was one which, for her at least, had no element of happiness in it. she hated the secrecy which it involved, and as time went on she began to find that her heart, instead of being drawn closer to frank by the bond between them, seemed rather to be repelled thereby. she felt like one who had sold her freedom and got nothing in return. then clement hazeldine appeared on the scene, and hermia slowly awoke to the fact that she had made a terrible mistake.
meanwhile, frank kept on in his old happy, careless way. he loved hermia after a fashion, and probably as much as it was in him to love anyone, while the secret between them lent a piquancy to the feeling he had for her which he did not fail to appreciate.
john brancker and his sister could not help seeing something of what was going on, and smiled and talked to themselves about it; and although, as time went on, they wondered a little that frank did not speak out, they decided to take no apparent notice, but to let the affair develop of its own accord.
but now the year was hurrying to its close, soon the last of the twelve months would be here, and hermia began to dread more and more the coming of the day when she would be called upon to decide whether her engagement to frank should be broken off, or whether the bond that held them should be drawn still closer, and so merge at last into that closest bond of all. that frank would hold to his part of the engagement she had no reason to doubt. what, then, ought she to do? she could no longer hide from herself that her heart belonged not to frank, but to another; the awakening had come at last, but she would have found it hard to say whether the knowledge made her happy or the reverse.
before this time, however, clement hazeldine had discovered that he, too, had lost his heart; but, as he told himself not once but a hundred times, he had found hermia too late: she belonged to another; for that there was some sort of an understanding between her and derison he felt nearly sure, although why there should be any secrecy about it he altogether failed to comprehend. as we have already seen, he was in the habit of going to john brancker's house twice a week, ostensibly for the purpose of forming one in a musical quintets, but the magnet which really drew him there was something far different. then, for two brief hours he could bask in hermia's loveliness, he could gaze unrebuked into the depths of her violet eyes, and listen to the music of her voice, and steep his senses in the sweet fragrance of her presence. frank, in whose ears the click of a billiard ball was far sweeter music than any discoursed by violin and piano, looked in occasionally on the musical evenings, when he played an indifferent second to clem's first fiddle. he felt no jealousy at seeing the young doctor so often at the cottage; he was blessed with too good an opinion of himself to feel jealous of anyone. the limit of time would soon be reached to which he and hermy had bound themselves by a conditional promise. he told himself that he still loved her as much as ever, and when the time should come for him to declare his intentions one way or the other, he felt nearly--but not quite--sure that he should say to hermy: "i cannot live without you. be my wife."
such was the state of affairs when the peaceful current of events was broken by the tragic death of mr. hazeldine and the subsequent arrest of john brancker. then followed a terribly anxious time for miss brancker and her niece, during which both clement and frank called often at nairn cottage. it is in such seasons of trial that a man's real qualities are most conspicuously made manifest. clement's sympathy was so evidently genuine and heartfelt; wherever it was possible to ease their cares, or transfer any portion of their trouble, however small, from their shoulders to his own, it was done so quietly and unobtrusively, that they could not feel otherwise than touched by so much devotion to them and their interests. on the other hand, frank's sympathy was so obviously forced and unreal; the whole state of affairs was so palpably distasteful to him, that even simple-hearted miss brancker began to suspect that perhaps she and her brother had been misreading the young man's character all along, and had been attributing to him qualities very different from any which he really possessed. but frank was essentially a creature of the sunshine, a being to whom sickness and trouble and the thousand-and-one anxieties to which our poor humanity is liable, were utterly alien. when the skies began to lower and thunder filled the air, he was as much out of his element as a butterfly on a rainy day.
the year of waiting agreed upon between the two young people came to an end while john brancker was awaiting his trial. of course, at such a time any talk about love affairs was out of the question. by frank the delay was hailed gladly, since it put off till a future time the necessity of arriving at a decision as to which he was still as far as ever from having made up his mind one way or the other. far was he from suspecting that to hermia the delay was a relief at least equal to that felt by himself.
it was a dark and anxious time for edward hazeldine. knowing what he did, he felt bound to proclaim aloud his belief in john brancker's innocence. there was no other course open to him, and for this reason it was that, without consulting anyone, he secured the services of mr. burgees, the eminent criminal advocate, for the defence.
it was indeed very bitter to him to think that he, who had always prided himself on his rigid sense of justice--one of the chief maxims of whose life had been to do unto others as he would have them do unto him--should allow an innocent man to be cast into prison and be too timid of soul to speak the word that would have set him free. but the day had now gone by for revealing to the world, except at the last extremity, that which his father's letter had told him. he had allowed the man to be brought in guilty by a coroner's jury, he had allowed him to be committed by the magistrates, he had, allowed him to linger through long, weary weeks in prison with an accusation the most terrible of all accusations hanging over his head, and yet he had not opened his lips. to do so now would be moral and social suicide. he had gone so far that to turn back would be worse than to go forward. he must take the risk, happen what might. if john brancker were acquitted then might all yet be well, but should the verdict go against him, then--and only then--the dread secret must be told. not for a thousand such secrets should an innocent man go to the gallows. after that, let ruin, hopeless and irremediable, be his portion.
