"A WHITE STAR MADE OF MEMORY LONG AGO."
"'It would never do.' Those words of Martha's--so earnestly spoken by
the kind soul who cared for me almost as tenderly as a mother cares
for her own--haunted me all through the rapid run to Cambridge, walked
the quadrangles of Trinity with me, tramped the Trumpington Road upon
my shoulders, like that black care which sits behind the traveller.
'It would never do.' No need to ask my good Martha for the meaning of
that emphatic assertion. I knew what shape her thoughts had taken as
she watched me sitting by the little square piano--the old, old piano,
with such a thin, tinkling sound--listening to that seraphic voice, and
looking at that delicate profile and exquisite colouring of faintly
flushed cheek, lifted eye, and shadowy hair. My old nurse had surprised
my secret almost before I knew it myself; but, by the time I was back
in my shabby ground-floor sitting-room at Trinity, I knew as well as
Martha knew that I had let myself fall deep in love with a girl whom I
could never marry with my mother's approbation. I might take my own way
in life and marry the girl I loved; but to do so would be to forfeit my
mother's affection, to make myself an outcast from her house.
"'I know what kind of a lady your mother is,' said Martha, in her
valedictory address.
"Was I, her son, likely to be ignorant of the mother's character, or
unable to gauge the strength of her prejudices--prejudices that seemed
so much a part of her nature as to form a strong argument against
Locke's assertion that there are no innate ideas? Indeed, in reading
that philosopher's famous chapter, it always seemed to me, that if the
average infant had to begin the A B C of life at the first letter,
my mother must be a 'sport' or exception to the general rule, and
must have been born with her brain richly stocked with family pride
and social distinctions. In all the years I had lived with her I had
never seen her unbend to a servant, or converse on equal terms with
a tradesman. She had a full appreciation of the value of wealth when
it was allied with good birth; but the millionaire manufacturer or
the lucky speculator belonged to that outer circle of which she knew
nothing, and of which she would believe no good.
"I was her only son; and she was a widow. I owed her more than most
sons owe their mothers. I did not stand as number four or five in
a family circle, taking my share in the rough and tumble of family
life. My mother had been all in all to me; and I had been all in all
to her. I had been her friend and companion from the time I was able
to understand the English language, the recipient of all her ideas,
her likes and dislikes--from the early stage when the childish mind
unconsciously takes shape and bent from the mind of the parent the
child loves best. From my seventh year I was fatherless, and all that
is sacred and sweet in home life began and ended for me with the word
mother.
"My mother was what Gerald Standish called 'a masterful woman,' a
woman to whom it was natural to direct and initiate the whole business
of life. My father was her opposite in temperament,--irresolute,
lymphatic; and I think he must have handed her the reins of home
government before their honeymoon was over. I remember him just well
enough to remember that he left the direction of his life wholly to
her; that he deferred to her judgment, and studied her feelings in
every detail of his existence; and that he obviously adored her.
I don't think he cared very much for me, his only child. I can
recall no indication of warmth of feeling on his part, only a placid
indifference, as of one whose affection was concentrated upon a single
object, and whose heart had no room for any other image. He spoke of
me as 'the boy,' and looked at me occasionally with an air of mild
wonder, as if I were somebody else's son, whose growth took him by
surprise. I never remember his expressing any opinion about me, except
that I had grown since he looked at me last.
"His feeling about me being thus tepid, it was hardly surprising that
he should make what many people have called an unjust will. I have
never disputed its justice, for I loved my mother too much to complain
of the advantages of power and status which that will gave her.
"She was an heiress, and her money had cleared my father's estate from
heavy encumbrances, and no doubt he remembered this when providing for
her future. He was her senior by five and twenty years, and foresaw a
long widowhood for her.
"The entail ended in his own person, so he was free to dispose of his
property as he liked. He left my mother tenant for life; and he left me
five hundred a year, chargeable upon the estate, which income was only
to begin when I came of age. Till my one-and-twentieth birthday I was
dependent upon my mother for everything.
"I told myself that I had to cut my own path in life, and that I must
be the architect of my own fortune.
"My mother's income, under her marriage settlement, was considerable,
and this, in addition to a rent-roll of between two and three thousand
a year, made her a rich woman.
"Assuredly I was not in a position to make an imprudent marriage,
since my power to maintain a wife and family in accord with my own
ideas of a gentleman's surroundings must depend for a considerable
time upon my mother's liberality. I had made up my mind to go to the
Bar, and I knew how slow and arduous is the road to success in that
branch of the legal profession; but far nearer than mere questions of
interest was the obligation which filial love laid upon me. My mother
had given me the devotion of years, had made me the chief object of
her thoughts and her hopes, and I should be an ungrateful wretch if I
were to disappoint her. I knew, alas! that upon this very question of
marriage she cherished a project that it would distress her to forego,
and that there was a certain Lady Emily whom I was intended to marry,
the daughter of a nobleman who had been my father's most intimate
friend, and for whom my mother had a greater regard than for any of our
neighbours.
"Knowing this, and wishing with all my heart to do my duty as a son to
the best of mothers, I could but echo Martha's solemn words--
"'It would never do.'
"No, 'it would never do.' The seraphic voice, the spiritual
countenance, the appealing helplessness, which had so moved my pity,
must be to me as a dream from which I had awakened. Esperanza's fate
must rest henceforward with herself, aided by honest Martha Blake, and
helped, through Martha, from my purse. I must never see her again. No
word had been spoken, no hint had been given of the love which it
was my bounden duty to conquer and forget. I could contemplate the
inevitable renunciation with a clear conscience.
"I worked harder in that term than I had worked yet, and shut my door
against all the allurements of undergraduate friends and all the
pleasures of university life. I was voted churlish and a muff; but I
found my books the best cure for an unhappy love; and though the image
of Miss Campbell was oftener with me than the learned shade of Newton
or the later ghost of Whewell, I contrived to do some really good work.
"My mother and I wrote to each other once a week. She expected me to
send her a budget of gossip and opinion, and it was only in this term
that I began to feel a difficulty in filling two sheets of note-paper
with my niggling penmanship. For the first time in my life, I found
myself sitting, pen in hand, with nothing to say to my mother. I
could not write about Esperanza, or the passionate yearning which I
was trying to outlive. I could hardly expatiate upon my mathematical
studies to a woman who, although highly cultivated, knew nothing of
mathematics. I eked out my letter as best I could, with a laboured
criticism upon a feeble novel which I had idly skimmed in an hour of
mental exhaustion.
"I looked forward apprehensively to my home-going in December, fearing
that some change in my outward aspect might betray the mystery of my
heart. The holiday, once so pleasant, would be long and dull. The
shooting would afford some relief perhaps, and I made up my mind to
tramp the plantations all day long. At Cambridge I had shirked physical
exercise; in Suffolk I would walk down my sorrow.
"A letter from my mother, which reached me early in December, put an
end to these resolves. She had been somewhat out of health all through
November; and her local medical man, who was old and _passé_, had only
tormented her with medicines which made her worse. She had therefore
decided, at Miss Marjorum's earnest desire, upon spending my vacation
in London; and Jebson, her trusty _major domo_, had been up to town,
and had found her delightful lodgings on the north side of Hyde Park.
She would await me, not at Fendyke, but in Connaught Place.
"Connaught Place--within less than an hour's walk of Great Ormond
Street! My heart beat fast and furiously at the mere thought of that
propinquity. Martha's latest letter had told me that all attempts at
finding a situation for my _protégée_ had so far been without result.
Martha and her charge had visited all the agencies for the placing
of governesses and companions, and no agent had succeeded in placing
Esperanza. Her education was far below the requirements of the least
exacting employer. She knew very little French, and no German; she
played exquisitely, but she played by ear; of the theory of music she
knew hardly anything. Her father, an enthusiast and a dreamer, had
filled her with ideas, but had taught her nothing that would help her
to earn a living.
"'Don't you fret about her, Mr. George,' wrote Martha. 'As long as
I have a roof over my head, she can make her home with me. Her bite
and sup makes hardly any difference in the week's expenses. I'm only
sorry, for her sake, that she isn't clever enough to get into a nice
family in some pretty country house, like Fendyke. It's a dull life for
her here--a back parlour to live in, and two old people for her only
companions.'
"I thought of the small dark parlour in the Bloomsbury lodging-house,
the tinkling old piano, the dull grey street; a weary life for a girl
of poetic temperament reared in the country. That letter of Martha's,
and the fact of being within an easy walk of Great Ormond Street, broke
down my resolution of the last two months. I called upon Martha and
her charge on the morning after I left Cambridge. I thought Esperanza
looked wan and out of health, and could but mark how the pale, sad
face flushed and brightened at sight of me. We were alone for a
few minutes, while Martha interviewed a butcher, and I seized the
opportunity. I said I feared she was not altogether happy. Only unhappy
in being a burden to my friends, she told me. She was depressed by
finding her own uselessness. Hundreds of young women were earning their
living as governesses, but no one would employ her.
"'No lady will even give me a trial,' she said. 'I'm afraid I must look
very stupid.'
"'You look very lovely,' I answered hotly. 'They want a commoner clay.'
"I implored her to believe that she was no burden to Martha or to me.
If she could be content to live that dull and joyless life, she was at
least secure of a safe and respectable home; and if she cared to carry
on her education, something might be done in the way of masters; or she
might attend some classes in Harley Street, or elsewhere.
"She turned red and then pale, and I saw tears trembling on her long
auburn lashes.
"'I am afraid I am unteachable,' she faltered, with downcast eyes.
'Kind ladies at Besbery tried to teach me; but it was no use. My
mind always wandered. I could not keep my thoughts upon the book I
was reading, or on what they told me. Miss Grimshawe, who wanted to
help me, said I was incorrigibly idle and atrociously obstinate. But,
indeed, it was not idleness or obstinacy that kept me from learning. I
could not force myself to think or to remember. My thoughts would only
go their own way; and I cared for nothing but music, or for the poetry
my father used to read to me sometimes of an evening. I am afraid Miss
Grimshawe was right, and that I ought to be a dressmaker.'
"I glanced at the hands which lay loosely clasped upon the arm of the
chair in which she was sitting. Such delicately tapering fingers were
never meant for the dressmaker's workroom. The problem of Esperanza's
life was not to be solved that way.
"I did not remain long on this first morning; but I went again two days
afterwards, and again, until it came to be every day. Martha grumbled
and warned me of my danger, and of the wrong done to Esperanza, if I
were to make her care for me.
"'I don't think there's much fear of that,' added Martha. 'She's too
much in the clouds. It's you I'm afraid of. You and me knows who mamma
wants you to marry, don't us, Mr. George?'
"I could not gainsay Martha upon this point. Lady Emily and I had
ridden the same rocking-horse; she riding pillion with her arms clasped
round my waist, while I urged the beast to his wildest pace. We had
taken tea out of the same toy tea-things--her tea-things--and before I
was fifteen years of age my mother told me that she was pleased to see
I was so fond of Emily, and hoped that she and I would be husband and
wife some day, in the serious future, just as we were little lovers now
in the childish present.
"I remember laughing at my mother's speech, and thinking within myself
that Emily and I hardly realized my juvenile idea of lovers. The
romantic element was entirely wanting in our association. When I talked
of Lady Emily, later, to Gerald Standish, I remember I described her as
'a good sort,' and discussed her excellent qualities of mind and temper
with an unembarrassed freedom which testified to a heart that was at
peace.
"I felt more mortified than I would have cared to confess at Martha's
blunt assurance that Esperanza was too much in the clouds to care
about me; and it may be that this remark of my old nurse's gave just
the touch of pique that acted as a spur to passion. I know that after
two or three afternoons in Great Ormond Street, I felt that I loved
this girl as I could never love again, and that henceforward it would
be impossible for me to contemplate the idea of life without her.
The more fondly I loved her, the less demonstrative I became, and my
growing reserve threw dust in the elderly eyes that watched us. Martha
believed that her warning had taken effect, and she so far confided in
my discretion as to allow me to take Esperanza for lamp-lit walks in
the Bloomsbury squares, after our cosy tea-drinking in the little back
parlour. The tea-drinking and the walk became an institution. Martha's
rheumatics had made walking exercise impossible for her during the last
month. Benjamin was fat and lazy.
"'If I didn't let the poor child go out with you, she'd hardly get a
breath of fresh air all the winter. And I know that I can trust you,
Mr. George,' said Martha.
"'Yes, you can trust me,' answered I.
"She might trust me to breathe no word of evil into the ear of her I
loved. She could trust me to revere the childlike innocence which was
my darling's highest charm. She could trust me to be loyal and true
to Esperanza. But she could not trust me to be worldly-wise, or to
sacrifice my own happiness to filial affection. The time came when I
had to set my love for Esperanza against my duty to my mother and my
own interests. Duty and interest kicked the beam.
"Oh, those squares! those grave old Bloomsbury squares, with their
formal rows of windows, and monotonous iron railings, and stately
doorways, and clean doorsteps, and enclosures of trees, whose blackened
branches showed leafless against the steely sky of a frosty evening!
What groves or streams of paradise could be fairer to us two than
the dull pavements which we paced arm-in-arm in the wintry greyness,
telling each other those thoughts and fancies which seemed in their
intuitive sympathy to mark us for predestined life-companions. Her
thoughts were childishly expressed sometimes; but it seemed to me
always as if they were only my thoughts in a feminine guise. Nothing
that she said ever jarred upon me; and her ignorance of the world and
all its ways suggested some nymph or fairy reared in the seclusion of
woodland or ocean cave. I thought of Endymion, and I fancied that his
goddess could have been scarcely less of the earth than this fair girl
who walked beside me, confiding in me with a childlike faith.
"One night I told her that I loved her. We had stayed out later than
usual. The clock of St. George's Church was striking nine, and in
the shadowy quiet of Queen's Square my lips met hers in love's first
kiss. How shyly and how falteringly she confessed her own secret, so
carefully guarded till that moment.
"'I never thought you could care for a poor girl like me,' she said;
'but I loved you from the first. Yes, almost from the very first. My
heart seemed frozen after my father's death, and your voice was the
first that thawed it. The dull, benumbed feeling passed away, and I
knew that I had some one living to love and care for and think about as
I sat alone. I had a world of new thoughts to interweave with the music
I love.'
"'Ah, that music, Esperanza! I am almost jealous of music when I see
you so moved and influenced by it.'
"'Music would have been my only consolation if you had not cared for
me,' she answered simply.
"'But I do care for you, and I want you to be my wife, now at once--as
soon as we can be married.'
"I talked about an immediate marriage before the registrar. But,
willing as she was to be guided by me in most things, she would not
consent to this.
"'It would not seem like marriage to me,' she said, "if we did not
stand before the altar.'
"'Well, it shall be in a church, then; only we shall have to wait
longer. And I must go back to Cambridge at the end of this week. I must
get an exeat, and come up to London on our wedding-day, and take you
home in the evening. I shall have a quiet home ready for my darling,
far from the ken of dons and undergraduates, but within an easy
distance of the 'Varsity.'
"I explained to her that our marriage must be a secret till I came
of age next year, or till I could find a favourable opportunity of
breaking the fact to my mother.'
"'Will she mind? Will she be angry?' asked Esperanza.
"'Not when she comes to know you, dear love.'
"Although I knew my mother's strong character, I was infatuated enough
to believe what I said. Where was the heart so stony that would not
warm to that fair and gentle creature? Where the pride so stubborn
which that tender influence could not bend?
"I had the banns put up at the church of St. George the Martyr, assured
that Martha's rheumatism and Benjamin's lethargic temper would prevent
either of them attending the morning service on any of the three
fateful Sundays. If Martha went to church at all, she crept there in
the evening, after tea. She liked the gaslights and the evening warmth,
the short prayers, and the long sermon, and she met her own class among
the congregation. I felt tolerably safe about the banns.
"Had my mother been in good health, it would have been difficult for
me to spend so many of my evenings away from home; but the neuralgic
affection which had troubled her in Suffolk had not been subjugated by
the great Dr. Gull's treatment, and she passed a good deal of her life
in her own rooms and in semi-darkness, ministered to by a lady who had
been a member of our household ever since my father's death, and whose
presence had been the only drawback to my home happiness.
"This lady was my mother's governess--Miss Marjorum--a woman of
considerable brain power, wide knowledge of English and German
literature, and a style of pianoforte playing which always had the
effect of cold water down my back. And yet Miss Marjorum played
correctly. She introduced no discords into that hard, dry music,
which seemed to me to have been written expressly for her hard and
precise finger-tips, bony knuckles, and broad, strong hand, with a
thumb which she boasted of as resembling Thalberg's. In a difficult
and complicated movement Miss Marjorum's thumb worked wonders. It was
ubiquitous; it turned under and over, and rapped out sharp staccato
notes in the midst of presto runs, or held rigid semibreves while the
active fingers fired volleys of chords, shrilled out a six-bar shake,
or raced the bass with lightning triplets. In whatever entanglement
of florid ornament Liszt or Thalberg had disguised a melody, Miss
Marjorum's thumb could search it out and drum it into her auditors.
"Miss Marjorum was on the wrong side of fifty. She had a squat figure
and a masculine countenance, and her voice was deep and strong, like
the voice of a man. She dressed with a studious sobriety in dark cloth
or in grey alpaca, according to the seasons, and in the evening she
generally wore plaid poplin, which ruled her square, squat figure into
smaller squares. I have observed an affinity between plain people and
plaid poplin.
"Miss Marjorum was devoted to my mother; and antagonistic as her nature
was to me in all things, and blighting as was her influence upon the
fond dream of my youth, I am bound to record that she was conscientious
in carrying out her own idea of duty. Her idea of duty unhappily
included no indulgence for youthful impulses, and she disapproved of
every independent act of mine.
"My evening absences puzzled her.
"'I wonder you can like to be out nearly every evening when your mother
is so ill,' she remarked severely, on my return to Connaught Place
after that glimpse of paradise in Queen Square.
"'If I could be of any use to my mother by staying at home, you may be
sure I should not be out, Miss Marjorum,' I replied, rather stiffly.
"'It would be a satisfaction to your mother to know you were under her
roof, even when she is obliged to be resting quietly in her own room.'
"'Unfortunately my mathematical coach lives under another roof, and I
have to accommodate myself to his hours.'
"This was sophistication; but it was true that I read mathematics with
an ex-senior wrangler in South Kensington every other day.
"'Do you spend _every_ evening with your coach?' asked Miss Marjorum,
looking up suddenly from her needlework, and fixing me with her cold
grey eye.
"'Certainly not. You know the old saw--"All work and no play----"'
"'And how do you amuse yourself when you are not at South Kensington? I
did not think you knew many people in London.'
"'That is because I know very few people whom you know. My chief
friends are the friends of my college life--not the worthy bucolics of
Suffolk.'
Miss Marjorum sighed, and went on with her sewing. She delighted
in the plainest of plain work--severest undergarments of calico or
flannel. She had taken upon herself to supply my mother's poorer
cottage-tenants with under-clothing--a very worthy purpose; but I could
not help wishing she had deferred a little more to the universal sense
of beauty in her contributions to the cottagers' wardrobes. Surely
those prison-like garments must have appalled their recipients. My
inexperienced eye noted only their ugliness in shape and coarseness of
texture. I longed for a little trimming, a softer quality of flannel.
"'I am afraid they must hurt the people who get them,' I said one day,
when Miss Marjorum exhibited her bale of flannel underwear.
"'They are delightfully warm, and friction promotes circulation and
maintains the health of the skin,' she replied severely. 'I don't know
what _more_ you would have.'
"It irked me not a little to note Miss Marjorum's suspicious air when
she discussed my evening occupations, for I knew she had more influence
over my mother than any one living, and I fancied that she would not
scruple to use that influence against me. I had lost her friendship
long ago by childish rudenesses, which I looked back upon with regret,
but which I could not obliterate from her memory by the studious
civilities of later years.
"I went back to Cambridge, and my mother and her devoted companion left
Connaught Place for Brighton, Dr. Gull having strongly recommended
sea-air, after exhausting his scientific means in the weary battle with
nerve pain. It was a relief to me, when I thought of Esperanza, to know
that Miss Marjorum was fifty miles away from Great Ormond Street. Those
suspicious glances and prying questions of hers had frightened me.
"_When_ I thought of Esperanza!--when was she not the centre and
circumference of my thoughts? I worked hard; missed no lecture;
neglected no opportunity; for I had made up my mind to win the game of
life off my own bat; but Esperanza's image was with me whatever I was
doing. I think I mixed up her personality in an extraordinary fashion
with the higher mathematics. She perched like a fairy upon every curve,
or slid sylph-like along every line. I weighed her, and measured her,
and calculated the doctrine of chances about her. She became in my
mind the ruling, and to common eyes, invisible spirit of the science of
quantity and number.
"Could this interval between the asking in church and my wedding-day
be any other than a period of foolish dreaming, of fond confusion and
wandering thoughts? I was not twenty-one, and I was about to take a
step which would inevitably offend my only parent, the only being to
whom I stood indebted for care and affection. In the rash hopefulness
of a youthful passion, I made sure of being ultimately forgiven; but,
hopeful as I was, I knew it might be some time before I could obtain
pardon. In the meanwhile, I had an income which would suffice for a
youthful _ménage_. I would find a quiet home for Esperanza at one of
the villas on the Grandchester Road till I had taken my degree, and
then I should have to begin work in London. Indeed, I had fixed in my
own mind upon a second-floor in Martha's roomy old house, which would
be conveniently near the Temple, where I might share a modest set
of chambers with a Cambridge friend. In the deep intoxication of my
love-dream, Great Ormond Street seemed just the most delightful spot in
which to establish the cosy home I figured to myself. It would be an
infinite advantage to live under my dear old nurse's roof, and to know
that she would watch over my girl-wife while I sat waiting for briefs
in my dingy chambers, or reading law with an eminent junior.
"I had asked Esperanza on the night of our betrothal whether she
thought we could live upon five hundred a year. A ripple of laughter
preluded her reply.
"'Dear George, do you know what my father's income was?' she asked.
'Sixty-five pounds a year. He paid fifteen pounds a year for our
cottage and garden--such a dear old garden--and we had to live and
clothe ourselves upon the other fifty pounds. He was very shabby
sometimes, poor darling; but we were always happy. Though I seem so
helpless in getting my own living, I think I could keep house for you,
and not waste your money. Five hundred a year! Why, you are immensely
rich!'
"I told her that I should be able to add to our income by the time we
had been married a few years, and then we would have a house in the
country, and a garden, and a pair of ponies for her to drive, and cows
and poultry, and all the things that women love. What a happy dream
it was, and how the sweet face brightened under the lamplight as she
listened to me.
"'I want nothing but your love,' she said; 'nothing. I am not afraid of
poverty.'
"The three weeks were gone. I got an exeat, and went up to London by an
early train. I had directed Esperanza to meet me at the church, whose
doors we had so often passed together in our evening walks, and where
we had knelt side by side one Sunday evening. She was to take Martha to
church with her; but not till the last moment, not till they were at
the church door, was she to tell my old nurse what was going to happen,
lest an idea of duty to the mother should induce her to betray the son.
"The air was crisp and bright, and the wintry landscape basked in the
wintry sun between Cambridge and Stratford; but the dull greyness
of our metropolitan winter wrapped me round when I left Bishopsgate
Street, and there was a thin curtain of fog hanging over my beloved
Bloomsbury when my hansom rattled along the sober old-world streets
to the solid Georgian church. I sprang from the cab as if I had worn
Mercury's sandals, told the man to wait, ran lightly up the steps,
pushed back the heavy door and entered the dark temple, hushed and
breathless. How solemn and cold and ghostly the church looked, how grey
and pale the great cold windows. The fog seemed thicker here than in
the streets outside; and the dreary fane was empty.
"I looked at my watch. Twenty minutes to eleven. I had entreated her
to be at the church at least ten minutes before the hour; and I felt
bitterly disappointed that she had not anticipated the appointment.
"Her last letter was three days old. Could she be ill? could any evil
thing have happened? I hurried back to the church door, intending to
get into my cab and drive to Ormond Street. I changed my mind before
I had crossed the threshold. I might miss her on the way--drive by
one street while she and Martha were walking in another. Again, there
was something undignified in a bridegroom rushing off in search of
his bride. My place was to wait in the church. I had seen a good many
weddings in our parish church in Suffolk, and I knew that the bride was
almost always late. Yet, in spite of this experience, I had expected
my bride in advance of the appointed time. She had no wreath of
orange-blossoms, no bridal veil to adjust, no doting mother, or sister
bridesmaids to flurry and hinder her under the pretence of helping.
She had no carriage to wait for. Her impatience to see me after nearly
three weeks should have brought her to the church earlier than this.
"Then I remembered Martha. No doubt she was waiting for Martha. That
good soul was interviewing the butcher, or adjusting her Paisley shawl,
while I was fretting and fuming in the church. I had no best man to
reason with my impatience and keep up my spirits. My best man was to be
the parish clerk, and he had not yet appeared upon the scene. I saw a
pew-opener creeping about, a pew-opener in the accustomed close black
bonnet and sober apparel. Esperanza's bridesmaid! Martha would have to
give her away.
"I took a turn round the church, looked at the monuments, and even
stood still to read a tablet here and there, and knew no more of the
inscription after I had read it than if it had been in choice Assyrian.
"I opened the heavy door and went out on the steps, and stood watching
a stray cab or a stray pedestrian, dimly visible through the thickening
fog. I looked at my watch every other minute, between anger and
despair. It was five minutes to eleven. The curate who was to marry us
passed me on the steps and went into the church, unsuspecting that I
was to be the chief actor in the ceremony. I stood looking along the
street, in the only direction in which my bride was to be expected, and
my heart sickened as the slow minutes wore themselves out, till it was
nearly a quarter-past eleven.
"I could endure this no longer. My hansom was waiting on the opposite
side of the street. I lifted my finger, and signed to the driver to
come over to me. There was nothing for it but to go to Great Ormond
Street, and discover the cause of delay.
"Before the man could climb into his seat and cross the road, a
brougham drove sharply up to the church steps--a brougham of dingy
aspect, driven by a man whose livery branded him as a flyman.
"I was astonished at the fly, but never doubted that it brought me my
dear love, and my heart was light again, and I ran to greet her with a
welcoming smile.
"The carriage door was sharply opened from within, and my mother
stepped out and stood before me, tall and grave, in her neat dark
travelling dress, her fine features sharp and clear in the wintry gloom.
"'Mother!' I exclaimed aghast.
"'I know I am not the person you expected, George,' she said quietly.
'Badly as you have behaved to me, I am sorry for your disappointment.'
"'Where is Esperanza?' I cried, unheeding my mother's address.
"It was only afterwards that her words came back to me--in that long
dull afterwards when I had leisure to brood over every detail in this
agonizing scene.
"'She is safe, and in good hands, and she is where you will never see
her again.'
"'That's a lie!' I cried. 'If she is among the living, I will find her.
If she is dead, I will follow her.'
"'You are violent and unreasonable; but I suppose your romantic
infatuation must excuse you. When you have read this letter, you will
be calmer, I hope.'
"She gave me a letter in Esperanza's writing. We had moved a few paces
from the church steps while we talked. I read the letter, walking
slowly along the street, my mother at my side.
"'DEAREST,
"'I am going away. I am not to be your wife. It was a happy dream,
but a foolish one. I should have ruined your life. That has been
made clear to me; I love you far too dearly to be your enemy. You
will never see me again. Don't be unhappy about me. I shall be well
cared for. I am going very far away; but if it were to the farthest
end of the earth, and if I were to live a hundred years, I should
never cease to love you, or learn to love you less.
"'Good-bye for ever,
"'ESPERANZA.'
"'I know whose hand is in this,' I said,--'Miss Marjorum.'
"'Miss Marjorum is my true and loyal friend, and yours too, though you
may not believe it.'
"'Whoever it may be who has stolen my love away from me, that person
is my dire and deadly foe. Whether the act is yours or hers, it is the
act of my bitterest enemy, and I shall ever so remember it. Look here,
mother, let there be no misunderstanding between you and me. I love
this girl better than my life. Whatever trick you have played upon her,
whatever cajoleries you and Miss Marjorum have brought to bear upon
her, whatever false representations you may have made, appealing to her
unselfishness against her love, you have done that which will wreck
your son's life unless you can undo it.'
"'I have saved my son from the shipwreck his own folly would have
made of his life,' my mother answered calmly. 'I have seen what these
unequal marriages come to--before the wife is thirty.'
"'It would be no unequal marriage. The girl I love is a lady.'
"'A village organist's daughter, by her own confession totally without
education. A pretty, delicate young creature with a certain surface
refinement, I grant you; but do you think that would stand the wear
and tear of life, or counterbalance your humiliation when people asked
questions about your wife's antecedents and belongings? People, even
the politest people, _will_ ask those questions, George. My dear, dear
boy, the thing you were to have done to-day would have been utter ruin
to your social existence for the next fifty years. You will never be
rich enough or great enough to live down such a marriage.'
"'Don't preach to me,' I cried savagely. 'You have broken my heart.
Surely that is enough for you.'
"I broke away from her as she laid her hand upon my arm--such a shapely
hand in a dark grey glove. I remembered even in that moment of anguish
and of anger how my dear love had often walked by my side, gloveless,
shabbier than a milliner's apprentice. No, she was not of my mother's
world; no more was Titania. She belonged to the realm of romance and
_féerie_; not to Belgravia or Mayfair.
"I ran back to the spot where the hansom still waited for me, jumped
in, and told the man to drive to Great Ormond Street. I left my mother
standing on the pavement, to find her way back to her carriage as she
could, to go where she would.
"I knocked at the lodging-house door loud enough to wake the Seven
Sleepers. I pushed past the scared maid-servant, and dashed into
Martha's parlour. She was sitting with her spectacles on her nose
poring over a tradesman's book, and with other books of the same kind
on the table before her.
"'Martha, this is your doing,' I said. 'You betrayed me to my mother!'
"'Oh, Mr. George, forgive your old nurse that loves you as if you were
her own flesh and blood. I only did my duty by you and my mistress. It
would never have done.'
"She called me 'dear,' as in the old nursery days. Tears were streaming
down her withered cheeks.
"'It was you, then?'
"'Yes, it was me, Mr. George, leastways me and Benjamin. We talked it
over a long time before he wrote the letter to my mistress at Brighton.
Sarah came home from church on Sunday dinner-time. The drawing-rooms
were dining out, and the second floor is empty, so there was nothing to
hinder Sarah's going to church. She came home at dinner-time, and told
me you and Esperanza Campbell had been asked in church--for the third
time. You might have knocked me down with a feather. I never thought
she could be so artful. I talked it over with Benjamin, and he posted a
letter that night.'
"'And Miss Marjorum came up from Brighton next morning, and came to see
Esperanza?'
"'How did you know that, Mr. George?'
"'I know Miss Marjorum.'
"'Yes, it was Miss Marjorum that came. She asked to see Esperanza
alone, and they were shut up together for over an hour, and then
the bell was rung, and Miss Marjorum told the girl to pack up Miss
Campbell's things, bring her box down to the hall, and when she had
done that, to fetch a four-wheeler. Sarah was nearly as upset as I was,
but she and I packed the things between us--such a few things, poor
child--and carried the box downstairs, and I waited in the hall while
Sarah ran for the cab. And presently Esperanza came out of the parlour
with Miss Marjorum, and put on her hat and jacket, and then came to bid
me good-bye.
"'She put her arms round my neck and kissed me; and though I had done
my duty by you and your ma, Mr. George, I felt like Judash. "It was
right of you to tell," she said; "it was only right--for his sake," and
Miss Marjorum hurried her down the steps and into the cab before she
could say another word. I do believe the poor dear child gave you up
without a murmur, Mr. George, because she knew that it would have been
your ruin to marry her.'
"'Bosh! That had been drummed into her by Miss Marjorum. You have done
me the worst turn you ever did any one in your life, Martha; and yet
I thought if there was anybody in the world I could trust it was you.
Where did the cab go--do you know that?'
"'Charing Cross Station. I heard Miss Marjorum give the order.'"