Among playgoing folk, in the following April there was a great deal of talk about the marriage of that very favourite actress, Mrs. Morton. She appeared in the playbills as Mrs. George Hotspur, late Mrs. Morton. Very many spoke of her familiarly, who knew her only on the stage,—as is the custom of men in speaking of actresses,—and perhaps some few of these who spoke of her did know her personally. "Poor Lucy!" said one middle-aged gentleman over fifty, who spent four nights of every week at one theatre or another. "When she was little more than a child they married her to that reprobate Morton. Since that she has managed to keep her head above water by hard work; and now she has gone and married another worse than the first!"
"She is older now, and will be able to manage George," said another.
"Manage him! If anybody can manage to keep him out of debt, or from drink either, I'll eat him."
"But he must be Sir George when old Sir Harry dies," said he who was defending the prudence of the marriage.
"Yes, and won't have a penny. Will it help her to be able to put Lady Hotspur on the bills? Not in the least. And the women can't forgive her and visit her. She has not been good enough for that. A grand old family has been disgraced, and a good actress destroyed. That's my idea of this marriage."
"I thought Georgy was going to marry his cousin—that awfully proud minx," said one young fellow.
"When it came to the scratch, she would not have him," said another. "But there had been promises, and so, to make it all square, Sir Harry paid his debts."
"I don't believe a bit about his debts being paid," said the middle-aged gentleman who was fond of going to the theatre.
Yes, George Hotspur was married: and, as far as any love went with him, had married the woman he liked best. Though the actress was worlds too good for him, there was not about her that air of cleanliness and almost severe purity which had so distressed him while he had been forced to move in the atmosphere of his cousin. After the copying of the letter and the settlement of the bills, Mrs. Morton had found no difficulty in arranging matters as she pleased. She had known the man perhaps better than any one else had known him; and yet she thought it best to marry him. We must not inquire into her motives, though we may pity her fate.
She did not intend, however, to yield herself as an easy prey to his selfishness. She had also her ideas of reforming him, and ideas which, as they were much less grand, might possibly be more serviceable than those which for a while had filled the mind and heart of Emily Hotspur. "George," she said, one day to him, "what do you mean to do?" This was before the marriage was fixed;—when nothing more was fixed than that idea of marriage which had long existed between them.
"Of course we shall be spliced now," said he.
"And if so, what then? I shall keep to the stage, of course."
"We couldn't do with the ￡500 a year, I suppose, any how?"
"Not very well, I'm afraid, seeing that as a habit you eat and drink more than that yourself. But, with all that I can do, there must be a change. I tell you for your own sake as well as for mine, unless you can drop drinking, we had better give it up even yet." After that, for a month or two under her auspices, he did "drop it,"—or at least so far dropped it as to induce her to run the risk. In April they were married, and she must be added to the list of women who have sacrificed themselves on behalf of men whom they have known to be worthless. We need not pursue his career further; but we may be sure, that though she watched him very closely, and used a power over him of which he was afraid, still he went gradually from bad to worse, and was found at last to be utterly past redemption. He was one who in early life had never known what it was to take delight in postponing himself to another; and now there was no spark in him of love or gratitude by which fire could be kindled or warmth created. It had come to that with him,—that to eat and to drink was all that was left to him; and it was coming to that too, that the latter of these two pleasant recreations would soon be all that he had within his power of enjoyment. There are such men; and of all human beings they are the most to be pitied. They have intellects; they do think; the hours with them are terribly long;—and they have no hope!
The Hotspurs of Humblethwaite remained at home till Christmas was passed, and then at once started for Rome. Sir Harry and Lady Elizabeth both felt that it must be infinitely better for their girl to be away; and then there came the doctor's slow advice. There was nothing radically amiss with Miss Hotspur, the doctor said; but it would be better for her to be taken elsewhere. She, knowing how her father loved his home and the people around him, begged that she might be allowed to stay. Nothing ailed her, she said, save only that ache at the heart which no journey to Rome could cure. "What's the use of it, Papa?" she said. "You are unhappy because I'm altered. Would you wish me not to be altered after what has passed? Of course I am altered. Let us take it as it is, and not think about it." She had adopted certain practices in life, however, which Sir Harry was determined to check, at any rate for the time. She spent her days among the poor, and when not with them she was at church. And there was always some dreary book in her hands when they were together in the drawing-room after dinner. Of church-going and visiting the poor, and of good books, Sir Harry approved thoroughly; but even of good things such as these there may be too much. So Sir Harry and Lady Elizabeth got a courier who spoke all languages, and a footman who spoke German, and two maids, of whom one pretended to speak French, and had trunks packed without number, and started for Rome. All that wealth could do was done; but let the horseman be ever so rich, or the horseman's daughter, and the stud be ever so good, it is seldom they can ride fast enough to shake off their cares.
In Rome they remained till April, and while they were there the name of Cousin George was never once mentioned in the hearing of Sir Harry. Between the mother and daughter no doubt there was speech concerning him. But to Emily's mind he was always present. He was to her as a thing abominable, and yet necessarily tied to her by bonds which she could never burst asunder. She felt like some poor princess in a tale, married to an ogre from whom there was no escape. She had given herself up to one utterly worthless, and she knew it. But yet she had given herself, and could not revoke the gift. There was, indeed, still left to her that possibility of a miracle, but of that she whispered nothing even to her mother. If there were to be a miracle, it must be of God; and at God's throne she made her whispers. In these days she was taken about from sight to sight with apparent willingness. She saw churches, pictures, statues, and ruins, and seemed to take an interest in them. She was introduced to the Pope, and allowed herself to be apparelled in her very best for that august occasion. But, nevertheless, the tenor of her way and the fashions of her life, as was her daily dress, were grey and sad and solemn. She lived as one who knew that the backbone of her life was broken. Early in April they left Rome and went north, to the Italian lakes, and settled themselves for a while at Lugano. And here the news reached them of the marriage of George Hotspur.
Lady Elizabeth read the marriage among the advertisements in the Times, and at once took it to Sir Harry, withdrawing the paper from the room in a manner which made Emily sure that there was something in it which she was not intended to see. But Sir Harry thought that the news should be told to her, and he himself told it.
"Already married!" she said. "And who is the lady?"
"You had better not ask, my dear."
"Why not ask? I may, at any rate, know her name."
"Mrs. Morton. She was a widow,—and an actress."
"Oh yes, I know," said Emily, blushing; for in those days in which it had been sought to wean her from George Hotspur, a word or two about this lady had been said to her by Lady Elizabeth under the instructions of Sir Harry. And there was no more said on that occasion. On that day, and on the following, her father observed no change in her; and the mother spoke nothing of her fears. But on the next morning Lady Elizabeth said that she was not as she had been. "She is thinking of him still—always," she whispered to her husband. He made no reply, but sat alone, out in the garden, with his newspaper before him, reading nothing, but cursing that cousin of his in his heart.
There could be no miracle now for her! Even the thought of that was gone. The man who had made her believe that he loved her, only in the last autumn,—though indeed it seemed to her that years had rolled over since, and made her old, worn-out, and weary;—who had asked for and obtained the one gift she had to give, the bestowal of her very self; who had made her in her baby folly believe that he was almost divine, whereas he was hardly human in his lowness,—this man, whom she still loved in a way which she could not herself understand, loving and despising him utterly at the same time,—was now the husband of another woman. Even he, she had felt, would have thought something of her. But she had been nothing to him but the means of escape from disreputable difficulties. She could not sustain her contempt for herself as she remembered this, and yet she showed but little of it in her outward manner.
"I'll go when you like, Papa," she said when the days of May had come, "but I'd sooner stay here a little longer if you wouldn't mind." There was no talk of going home. It was only a question whether they should go further north, to Lucerne, before the warm weather came.
"Of course we will remain; why not?" said Sir Harry. "Mamma and I like Lugano amazingly." Poor Sir Harry. As though he could have liked any place except Humblethwaite!
Our story is over now. They did remain till the scorching July sun had passed over their heads, and August was upon them; and then—they had buried her in the small Protestant cemetery at Lugano, and Sir Harry Hotspur was without a child and without an heir.
He returned home in the early autumn, a grey, worn-out, tottering old man, with large eyes full of sorrow, and a thin mouth that was seldom opened to utter a word. In these days, I think, he recurred to his early sorrow, and thought almost more of his son than of his daughter. But he had instant, pressing energy left to him for one deed. Were he to die now without a further will, Humblethwaite and Scarrowby would go to the wretch who had destroyed him. What was the title to him now, or even the name? His wife's nephew was an Earl with an enormous rent-roll, something so large that Humblethwaite and Scarrowby to him would be little more than additional labour. But to this young man Humblethwaite and Scarrowby were left, and the glories of the House of Hotspur were at an end.
And so the story of the House of Humblethwaite has been told.
The End