CHAPTER I.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume III, Issue 152, 31 March 1876, Page 6

CHAPTER I.

SPECULATION. Ik the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and forty , at the hour of one, post meridan ; the season November ; the air chilled with the first stinging breath of winter ; in the place where merchants then did congregate, commonly called " 'Change," two gentlemen confronted one another in the thickest of the crowd ; the elder, a man fast verging towards bis three-score years and ten, with scarce a trace of age except in his silvered hair ; his form erect as in youth, with a step firm and somewhat stately. The signet of sorrow, present sorrow, was on his brow, mingled with the indignation and wounded pride which flashed from his dark eyes, and spoke in his compressed lips, as he Bhook hands gloomily with his friend. A few eilver threads mingled with the dark locks of the younger man, but they were only here and there, among the brown curls that had retained their brightness, although their owner had seen the snows of more than fifty winters. His bearing was soldierly, and the insignia on his shoulders marked him as a colonel in the United States' service. Hi 3 countenance was by nature sunny, as one might see in the merry twinkle of liio gray eyes, but now sadness and sympathy gained the ascendency, as drawing the arm of his friend within his, they crossed the thoroughfare, making their way rapidly out of the busy mart. " I have come from the bank," he said as soon as they had left the crowd ; "we have done the best we can for him. Benton will be allowed to go without further proceedings, though there are two strong voices against it ; Commodore Greenwood, who has lost a pretty large sum, and has not a spark of generosity in him, and would be specially opposed to any act of mercy I might propose ; and my cousin, Tom Stapleton, who has no ties, and has spent twenty years of his life doing nothing, and has a plenty left, we need not waste our sympathy on him. The bank will not be able to pay fifty cents on the dollar. The old Commodore shook his fist in my face and vowed re renge ; however, let it turn as it will, Philip Benton shall not come into the clutches of the law. He shall go to South America, Australia, or some far-off place first." " He has branded his family with infamy," interrupted the elder gentleman, striking the pavement with his heavy cane. " I trust he will go where I shall never see him." "Are you going up to the house?" inquired the other, as if unwilling to enter on the merits of the case. " Come and dine with us ; will you?" The questions followed each other without a pause for a reply. It came, however, after a moment. " Yes, I shall see Lucy again, and urge her to come home with me ; a divorce can be obtained without much publicity. Thank you, I shall leave town before dinner. Good morning." " Divorce ! " said the officer, under his breath, after his companion had left him. " Never! it would be the destruction of both of there." The elderly gentleman did not slacken his hurried pace till he paused in a part of the city distant from business, before an elegant

mansion in Square. The blinds were clown all over the house, and there was an appearance of desolation and neglect about the steps and sidewalks, contrasting with the well washed pavements of the ndjoining dwellings. He waited but a moment, drew a long breath, and ascending the steps, he entered where he was no stranger. The stillness of death reigned in the halls and drawing rooms, and his foot on the oaken staircase brought the first sound of life to his ear. " Dear, dear grandpapa," was the sound, and a curly head nestled in his arms, and he felt the little creature sob as he pressed him to his bosom, and heard the whisper, " Papa has gone away off, and mamma is so srieved, and sisters cry all the time, and Harold stamps his foot." " Sad times, my darling," said the grandfather, taking the boy to the nursery, where he found the elder sister resting her head on hf*r arms in weary sadness, while Harold was striding across the floor with the step of a grown man, pouring forth his boyish thoughts, and chafing like a caged lion. "Where is your mother?" said the grandfather, his voice fairly broken with the emotion caused by the sight of his grandchildren. " She is in her own room with sister Rosa," replied the girl, coming forward and putting up her lips for dear grandpapa's kiss. " My poor Marion," he said, pressing her to his heart, "you nipß help your mother bear this ; it will kill her — " "It is worse than death," interrupted the boy ; but the grandfather left the room before he could finish the sentence. " Yes, Marion," he added, as the door closed after him, "disgrace is a great deal worse than death. Disgrace!" he cried, pressing his hand, to his brow lest the tears should start ; '' I hear it everywhere, I see it in every face ; all the boys have it. I wish we could all die, or take mamma to some desert island, and — " Marion came near and drew her brother into the recess window, to be out of hearing of little Willie, who was gazing -with astonished eyes into Harold's excited face. " Harold," whispered the girl, " did you know we are very poor, very poor indeed ? I heard the man who came about the f urnifc ire say we were not worth a cent. Everything must be sold, and we are to go somewhere, a great way off. Mamma told Rosa and me this morning ; she had a line from papa to-day, and he wants her to leave one of us with Colonel Hartland, to be his daughter ; you know he has been papa's best friend, and but for him something more dreadful might have happened." " But you wouldn't leave mamma — in disgrace, too ! O, Marion, how could you or Rosine think of such a thing ? " " Of course I should not wish to leave mamma," replied the sister, coloring slightly, " but you know if papa wishes it, it must be done, and it would be less care for papa, we shall be so poor." " I don't care for poverty, Marion," said the boy, blushing crimson ; " poverty isn't disgrace. I must give up college, and all that, of course, but I'm thankful we are going off. I don't care how far, if we could only get away from it ; to have it flung at me that papa is . O, Marion ! " and he threw himself in a paroxysm of shame on the couch which occupied the window. " Go away, Willie," said the sister, in a sharp voice, as the curly head peeped through the curtains "we don't want you here." " Let him come," said his brother, drawing the child towards him. "Such a big boy cry !" said Willie, carefully wiping Harold's eyes 1 At this moment sister Rosine appeared a with a summons from their mother. It will be necessary here to bring forward what has perhaps been anticipated by the reader — the cause of the sudden sorrow that had overwhelmed in one moment a household that had dwelt for years in peace and quiet, enjoying all the comforts and luxuries of life. Philip Bent on, the father, had stood for a long term of years in a positiou of eminence as president of a large bankiug establishment. He had ever borne a spotless reputation. "He is too proud to be other than honest," was said by friend and foe. In an evil hour, when gambling in stocks were rife, Philip Benton made haste to be rich, borrowed money of the institution for speculation secretly, but with no doubt the sincere purpose of refunding. A sudden revulsion in the money market not only ruined him pecuniarily, but held him before the world — that world who had deemed him so honest — as a swindler, a man who had wilfully defrauded widows and orphans. The world is never pleased to be mistaken in the opinion she forms of any man, and the tongue of reproach, in this case, was sharper than a two-edged sword. The voices loudest against Benton were those who had been guilty of the same crime, but had the good fortune to refund the money borrowed secretly, before the panic. The discovery of his fraud had come upon Philip Benton like a shock of mental paralysis, and but for his intimate and dear friend, Colonel Hartland, the niilitarr gentleman whom we have already introduced to our readers, he would have remained, with stolid indifference, where justice would have claimed him for the penitentiary. By the exertions of his friend, early and late, the law was evaded, the matter compromised with the creditors, and Benton sent to the then far West ; his wife and five children were left behind, to follow or to leave him to fate, as they and their friends should determine. The visit of the grandfather, Mr. Hawthorne, to his daughter, was to urge upon her a plan of his own. He had come from his beautiful country-seat, among the breezy hills of Connecticut, as soon as he had heard the distressing news, determined to take his daughter and the children to his own home. " Dear ILiwthorndeau, the early home of my Lucy," he had said to himself, " what place on earth can be like it to her, and here she can hide her sorrows from the world." | Twice before he had endeavoured to open the subject to her, but was checked by the utter prostration that followed this stunning blow. This day he found his daughter calm, but wearing the lines of unutterable sorrow in her wan face, and hands that clutched each other continually. " Lucy, my child, listen to me," said her father, taking her 1 clasped hands in his. " Let me talk to you of (his ; the time has come when I must speak." " Yes, father," she replied, looking up into Ms fuco with her

tearless e3 - es, " to-day I can bear anything. Philip, thank God, i~ : ' safe from the hands of the law." j " Rosine," she added, turning to the second daughter, who Lad scarcely left her mother since the first hour of her grief, " you may g'> to the nursery, and when I ?e"d Tor you, come with all the children, j My precious comforter!" she added, as the door closed after her: I " my dear ones ! " " It is of them I wish to speak, Lucy,'' said her father, encouraged j by this first effort to talk of her family ; "I wish to renew and urge i upon you the acceptance of my home. Come, uiy daughter, you are welcome to all that I have. She who tak>& your mother's pace in my household assures you of an earnest, whole-souled welcome. I have none but you ; your children shall be my children ; educated, trained as you please. I will this day settle a sum upon you and your children, sufficient for your support, if you will come to me. Hawthorndeau, your early home, with all its tender associations, if you will leave your husband, give up one who has proved so unworthy of you — " " Please don't, father," said Mrs. Bentou, with a shudder ; "do not tempt me to be unfaithful to the vows made before God and man. You were the first to teach me my duty ; you would not entice me rom the path where you taught me to walk ? " "But, my child, consider your duties to your liltle ones." " I have, I have," she replied, earnestly. " A path will be opened for them in the wilderness. It cannot be right^for me, for the sake of their future in this life, to forsake one to whom I have promised to keep till death ; they and their mother must follow the fortunes of their father. Let me tell you," she added, seeing him about to urge the matter upon her, " I have had a line from Philip to-day. Colonel Hartlnnd, our noble friend, has offered him a home on a farm of his in Illinois, and we are to meet Philip as soon as arrangements cau be made. The Colonel has often begged of him one of his daughters, and now it is my husband's wish that I leave either Marion or Rosine with him." Mrs. Beaton forced herself to communicate this intelligence to her father, but toward the close of the sentence, her voice became unsteady, and though no tears followed, she was seized with a violent attack of trembling, and some moments passed before she could recover herself. "My poor Lucy ! " exclaimed her father, enclosing her] in his arms, " this is too much !" " Yes, I own, I rebel against this requirement of my husband more than any he ever made." " And yet, Lucy, you are my all ; but you leave me in my declining years, taking away all my preiious grandchildren except one, whom you place with comparative strangers." Mrs. Benton looked imploringly into the face of her parent " What can I do, and do right ? I know, dear father," she exclaimed, a bright flush kindling her pallid cheek for a moment, and passing away like a shadow, " you shall have dear little Willie, your natneseke, for a while at least. I will take the responsibility of leaving him with you, only asking," she said, pressing his hand nervously, " that, as far as you can prevent, while he is with you, no word, no deed shall prejudice him against his father, or against the faith of his mother. Brighter days may restore us all to you, dear father," she added. " I will pray that it may be so, if it be the will of God, but I must follow my husband."