University of Virginia Library

11. CHAPTER XI.

The Penates seldom smile on the breakfast-meal
in the happiest families, and where no sacrifices are
made to the domestic deities, it is a gloomy gathering
enough. On the morning succeeding the dinner-party—dates
begin to assume an importance as
we draw to the close of our history—Mr. Layton was
in his murkiest humor. He did not even, as usual,
vent his ill temper on the poor servant in waiting—
the common safety-valve of effervescing humors.
The cold coffee, the heavy cakes, the missing butter-knife,
all were unnoticed. Twice he rose, and
it seemed unconsciously, from the breakfast-table—
strode up and down the room—paused behind Emilie's
chair—patted her head—then turned abruptly
away to hide a starting tear—seized the morning
paper, sat down by the window, and affected to be
reading it. Emilie, whose agitated spirits were
ready to take alarm, thought her father's manner
portended evil to her; and when he said, “My
child, your mother wishes to speak with you as soon
as you have finished your breakfast,” she turned
pale, rose from her untasted coffee, and left the
room. Gertude would have followed, but Mr. Layton

arrested her by a request that she would allow
him to speak with her in the library.

Layton's affairs with Pedrillo had come to a fearful
crisis. Pedrillo had been excessively irritated by
being for ten days denied all access to Emilie; and on
the preceding morning, (of which we have given the
details,) he had been exasperated by her manifest
aversion to him, and by the emotion she had betrayed
at the mention of Marion. He was farther
outraged by some well meant attempts of Flint to be
witty on the precariousness of love affairs; and these
little irritations swelled the measure of his impatience,
already full, to overflowing. When he met
Layton, the passion that had been curbed by the
restraints of good-breeding, was expressed without
qualification. He insisted on the immediate performance
of Layton's contract, and threatened, in
case of any further delay, the enforcement of his pecuniary
claims, and, what Layton dreaded far
more, the disclosure of the fraud he had practised
at the gaming-table. Layton was desperate, and
promised whatever Pedrillo required.

“Miss Clarence,” said Layton, when he had
closed the library-door, and after two or three embarrassing
hems! “Miss Clarence, I find it excessively
awkward to make a request of you, which always
comes with a bad grace from a gentleman to a
lady, and from me to my guest may appear particularly
indelicate. However, I am perfectly aware such
fastidiousness is out of place in relation to you, and
though I am really oppressed and mortified by the
necessity of asking”—

“I beg, Mr. Layton,” replied Gertrude, compassionating
his embarrassment, “that you will consider
my being your guest merely as a circumstance
that gives me a facility in serving you.”

“You are very good, Miss Clarence, very kind;
but it is so difficult to explain to a lady the little pecuniary
embarrassments to which gentlemen are liable,
that it is humiliating to confess them. However,
your goodness overcomes my scruples; and frankly,
my dear Miss Clarence, I am in pressing want of a
thousand dollars. Can you oblige me by advancing
it?”

Gertrude hesitated for a moment; but her plans
and resolutions were formed, and not to be lightly
shaken. “I am awaiting, Mr. Layton,” she replid,
“a letter from my father, which will contain
some instructions in relation to my pecuniary concerns,
and till I hear from him, I cannot dispose of
so large a sum.”

“But, my dear madam—my dear Miss Clarence,
you misunderstand me—dispose! bless me!—I ask
only the loan for a very few days.”

“So I understand, Mr. Layton.”

“And you refuse!—I confess I did not anticipate
this; a thousand dollars is a small item of your
splendid fortune, Miss Clarence. Would to God I
had been endowed with one particle of your admirable
prudence!” Though Layton did not quite
lose his customary good-breeding, he spoke in a
tone of bitter sarcasm that wounded Gertrude to the
heart, for she utterly disdained every sordid consideration.
She was not however betrayed into any
apparent relenting, and he proceeded: “I was

perfectly aware that I had no claims, Miss Clarence,
but I imagined you might be willing to risk a small sacrifice
for the husband and father of friends whom
you profess to love.”

“I am perfectly aware of all the motives that
exist for granting your request, Mr. Layton, and I
resist them in very difficult compliance with what I
believe to be my duty.”

“Duty!—a harsh ungraceful word on a young
lady's lips, Miss Clarence. But I am detaining
you—I certainly have no intention of appealing to
the feelings of a lady who has so stern a sense of
duty.” Layton spoke with unaffected scorn. Nothing
could appear more unlovely in his eyes, more
unfeminine, and, as he said ungraceful in a lady
than consideration in money affairs. He mentally
accused Gertrude of parsimony, of miserliness, of
utter insensibility to the soft charities of life; but
the current of his feelings was changed, when a moment
after the door was thrown open, and Emilie
rushed in and threw herself at his feet, exclaiming
passionately, “Oh, my dear father, pity me!—have
mercy on me!”

Her customary manner was so quiet and gentle
that there was something frightful in this turbulent
emotion. Gertrude sprang towards her—“My dear
Emilie,” she said, “what does this mean?”

There seemed to be a spell in Gertrude's voice;
Emilie was hushed for a moment—she turned her
eyes to her friend with the most intense supplication,
and then again bursting into heart-piercing cries,
she said, “No, no—you cannot help me. Oh, my
father, my dear father, if you ever loved me, even

when I was a little child—if you once wished to
make me happy, do not now abandon me to utter
misery! Gertrude—this very week—oh, I shall go
wild. My dear father, pity me!—Gertrude, beg for
me!”

Gertrude burst into tears. “For God's sake,
Mr. Layton,” she cried, “save your child from this
cruel fate!”

“Do you feel!” he exclaimed, gazing at Gertrude,
as if he were surprised at her emotion—“do
you feel? Then even the stones cry out against me”
—and giving way to a burst of uncontrollable feeling,
he raised Emilie and pressed her to his bosom.
“Pity me—pity me, my child; I am miserable, condemned,
wretched, lost. Speak the word, Emilie—
say I shall dissolve this engagement with Pedrillo,
and I will—I will go to prison. We will all sink
together into this abyss of ruin and misery. Speak,
Emilie, and it shall be so.”

Emilie was terrified by her father's passionate
emotion, and she gathered strength at the first
thought of a generous motive for her sacrifice.
“Oh, no, no,” she replied, “let it be me alone,
if there must be a victim—I have expected it—I can
bear it.” She dropped her head on her father's
shoulder.

`Can I,' thought Gertrude, `look passively on
this distressful conflict? why have I not heard from
my father?—why should I wait to hear?—he would
not be less willing to interpose than I am—I will
speak to the wretched man—I will try;' and she
was on the point of giving utterance to her purpose,
when a servant appeared at the open door with a

packet of letters. Her eye ran hastily over the
superscriptions. One was from her father. She
broke the seal and glanced at its contents, and then
turning to Emilie, she threw her arms about her,
and said with a look of ineffable joy, “Now, Emilie,
I can redeem my promise to you.” Emilie looked
up bewildered, a faint light dawned on her mind,
but it was a light struggling through darkness.
There was a strange sickly fluttering about her
heart, like that felt by the sufferer who has resigned
himself to the executioner when his uncertain sense
first catches the cry of pardon.

“I thought you had withdrawn, Miss Clarence,”
said Mr. Layton, with evident confusion and undisguised
displeasure, “I am not aware that your
residence under my roof invests you with a right to
witness our most private affairs.”

Gertrude did not condescend to notice this offensive
speech. She replied with a little faltering, for
she found it difficult to embody in words her long
mediated project, “Mr. Layton, my position in
your family has given me a knowledge of your
affairs, unsought for and most painful.”

“Such assurances are superfluous, madam.”

“No, not superfluous,” she continued, with unabated
gentleness, “for the knowledge that Emilie's
happiness was in jeopardy, has inspired me with the
hope to serve her.”

“By advice and remonstrance, no doubt—the
selfish and cold-hearted are ever lavish of such services.”

“I waited only for a letter from my father,” she
proceeded, without seeming to hear him, “it has

come, and is what I expected. Mr. Layton, I must
be more explicit than you may think becomes me.
This is no time to make sacrifices to fastidiousness—
Emilie allow me to speak alone with your father.”
She kissed Emilie tenderly as she turned to withdraw
and whispered, “take heart of grace, my
blessed—all must yet be well.”

Mr. Layton gazed at Gertrude with an impatient
expectation of remonstrance, but she spoke in a
voice and with a look like an angel's extending
celestial aid to a mortal lost in a labyrinth. “Mr.
Layton,” she said, “there is no time, and this is no
occasion for distrusts on your part, or delays on
mine. I have come to the knowledge, no matter
how, that you are involved in pecuniary obligations
to Mr. Pedrillo. May not the cancelling of these
obligations save Emilie from this marriage?”

“What right have you, Miss Clarence, to ask
this question; and how, in God's name, am I to
cancel any pecuniary obligations?”

“My right,” she replied, “is indisputable, for
rests on my affection for Emilie, and my hope to
save you from an eternal sorrow by satisfying Pedrillo's
claims.”

“Poor dreaming girl!” exclaimed Layton, half
incredulous and half contemptuous, “you talk of
satisfying Pedrillo's claims, when your generosity
could not stretch to the hazard of one poor thousand
dollars.”

“No,” returned Gertrude, with a smile, “we
money-dealers, Mr. Layton, are all calculators—we
require an equivalent for our money. Emilie's redemption
from this deep misery is worth to me any

sacrifice I can make. Her emancipation from this
engagement is the equivalent I demand, the only
return I wish. No, this is not all; you must promise
me not only her freedom, but that she shall be
at liberty to give her hand to Randolph Marion,
on whom she has already worthily bestowed her
heart. If you accede to my terms, you will furnish
me with a statement of the amount of Pedrillo's
claims.”

“Good Heaven!—are you in earnest—have you
deliberated?—your father, Miss Clarence?”

“I have already told you that I have only waited
for his sanction. Read, if you please, what he says
on the subject.”

Layton ran his eye hastily over a few paragraphs
of the letter, and trembling with new emotions, he
exclaimed, “Oh, he has not—you have not dreamt
of the hideous amount of my debt to that villain.”

“We do not know it, but we should not shrink
from any amount within the compass of our fortune.
Be more calm, Mr. Layton—take this pencil and
give me in writing the sum due.”

“Look over me, then,” he said, seizing a sheet
of paper, “look over me, and arrest my hand when
the sum exceeds your intentions. He then recalled
and recorded the debts contracted from time to
time. He stopped suddenly—“These are thousands,
not hundreds, Miss Clarence.”

“I understand perfectly”—replied Gertrude,
“go on.”

He proceeded, till running up the different specifications,
he set down the sum total, “Sixty thousand

dollars!” he said. “You see now, Miss
Clarence, how deep, how hopeless is my ruin.”

“Hopeless! do you still doubt that I am in earnest,
Mr. Layton?”

“But you cannot design—Miss Clarence, I will
not deceive you. I can by no possibility repay any
portion of this debt.”

“You forget that I have made my own terms,
Mr. Layton. Assure me that Emilie is at liberty
to indulge the honorable inclinations of her heart,
and I will at once convey to you the amount of property
you have mentioned.”

Layton did not reply—he could not. He was
almost frantic with conflicting emotions; a manly
shame, that he had underrated and insulted a woman
capable of such generosity and forbearance—
a thrilling joy at the thought of escaping from
thraldom, checked by the stinging consciousness,
that he remained Pedrillo's slave, while the secret
of his dishonor was in his keeping. He pressed
his hands to his throbbing temples—he paced the
room, and replied only by incoherent ejaculations, to
Gertrude's entreaties, which were urged as if she
were suing for her own happiness.

There is a salutary principle in the atmosphere of
virtue—a quickening influence in a noble action—
an inspiration caught from powerful goodness.
`Will Gertrude Clarence do this for her friend,'
he thought, `and shall not I run a risk—sacrifice
myself, if it must be, for my child? It is but the
name of honor that I have to lose!'

But was it not possible to break with Pedrillo, and
still preserve that name?—Pedrillo might make the

long dreaded disclosure, but he had no proof, and
would the word of a disappointed man, a revengeful
Spaniard, be credited?' Layton felt assured it would
not; and without waiting to deliberate further, he
poured out his honest thanks to Gertrude, and received
the papers that placed at his disposal the
price of Emilie's liberty.

Thus authorized to tell Emilie that she was mistress
of her own destiny, Gertrude flew to her friend,
her face radiant with the happiness she was to communicate.
Banished spirits restored to paradise,
could not have been more blissful than the two
friends; Emilie receiving more than life and liberty,
a release from the cruellest enthralment, and
at her hands, whose favors had the unction of celestial
mercy; and not release only, but the assurance
that her affections might now expand in the natural
atmosphere of a pure, requited, and acknowledged
love.

Delicious as Emilie's sensations were, Gertrude's
was even a more elevated joy, for

it is that quiet inward joy, that springs from the consciousness
of benevolent and successful efforts for
others; of efforts to which one is not impelled by
any authorised claim, which the world does not demand,
nor reward, nor can ever know—which can
have no motive, nor result in self. A perfectly disinterested
action is a demonstration to the spirit of
its alliance and communion with the divine nature—
an entrance into the joy of its Lord.

Not a shadow dimmed their present sun-shine—
not one presaging thought of coming evil—not one
transient presentiment of the fatal consequences of
that hour's decisions.

As soon as their spirits were sufficiently tranquilized,
Emilie sat down to write a note to Marion,
and Gertrude to read her letters. Those shorter,
and of less consequence than her father's we shall
first present; and our readers will confess, they
were of a nature to bring down our heroine's feelings
to the level of very common life.

Gertrude read Mr. Smith's letter and threw it
into the fire, but before it was consumed, she snatched
it out, and preserved it as a happy illustration of
the flattering honors, to which an heiress may be
doomed. The following brief reply ended this correspondence.

“Miss Clarence presents her compliments to Mr.
“Samuel Smith. She is very happy to hear that
“his son—Mr. John Smith—has a good constitu
“tion, and laudable habits, but must decline the
“honor of deriving any advantage from them.”

The succeeding epistle was from Mr. D. Flint.

Blunt and gauche as our friend Flint was, his
coarser qualities were so commingled with simplicity,
integrity, and good-heartedness, that our heroine,
if she had been compelled to select one from among
her professed suitors, would undoubtedly have laid the
crown matrimonial on Mr. D. Flint's aspiring brow;
but as she was fortunately exempt from so cruel a
necessity, she laid the letter aside to be answered as
he had requested, at the end of a week, and strictly
`according to the dictates of her good sense.'

The last and most important letter was from Mr.
Clarence.