SIBYL FAUNTHORPE’S DIARY.
Lowther Street, _November 14, 186_--. I suppose to keep a diary is
about as foolish a thing as any one can do--waste of time in the
present, and self-abasement in the future. I dare say I shall hate
myself when I read over these pages in years to come, and see what a
stupid creature I was at nineteen years of age. However, I am driven
to scribble about myself and my feelings for want of anything better
to do in the long, lonely evenings, when the children are gone to
bed, and Mrs. Hazleton is out, and I have the dreary schoolroom
all to myself. I used to read any novel I could find lying about
downstairs, and bring up here for an evening, till Mrs. Hazleton
found me out and forbade it. ‘Novels, my dear Miss Faunthorpe,’ she
preached, ‘are the worst possible reading for a young woman in your
position--enervating the mind, weakening the logical faculty, which
in your brain I regret to say is sorely deficient.’ I felt inclined
to ask her why she reads novels if they are so injurious. She has a
knack of reading one’s thoughts, and answered my objection before
I could give it expression. ‘For the head of a household, who must
always have some portion of care and anxiety, novel-reading is an
innocent relaxation; but the instructor of youth should employ her
leisure in widening her circle of knowledge. The books in the study
bookcase are quite at your service, Miss Faunthorpe, whenever you
like to avail yourself of them,’ and then she sailed out of the room
to go to a dinner party, dressed in maroon velvet and old Brussels
lace, and looking very handsome--for an old woman. She must be
five-and-forty at the least.
Perhaps I ought not to complain of my bondage, for I might be worse
off than I am. Mrs. Hazleton is fond of preaching, but she is not
unkind to me. She has no grown-up daughters, and whenever she has
company I am asked down to the drawing-room to play and sing and make
myself generally useful; and as she has a good deal of company, this
happens tolerably often. Luckily, music is my strong point. When Mrs.
Hazleton is in a good humour she takes me for a drive in the park,
and I see the world and hear what is going on. I go to a fashionable
church with the children on Sundays and Saints’ days, and am
altogether much better off than in my uncle Robert’s poverty-stricken
household, in dull old Redcastle, where I knew no one worth knowing,
and where life is only another name for vegetation. I am sure the
cabbages in uncle’s wretched kitchen-garden had quite as much
enjoyment of life as Marion and I--more indeed, for they had sunshine
and perpetual idleness, and bees and butterflies buzzing and skimming
about them, while we had old house-linen to patch and darn, and the
tradesmen’s books to puzzle over, and Jenny to teach, and mend for,
and scold, and puddings to make, and buttons to sew on from January
to December. I think there never was such a man as uncle Robert for
wrenching the buttons off his shirts, and pushing his toes through
his socks.
So, at the worst, though I have to grind French, Italian, and German
verbs in a mill all the week through, and listen to those wretched
children strumming Kalkbrenner’s exercises three hours a day, I am
better off than Marion. I have forty pounds a year to spend upon
clothes, and I see a great many nice people. Mrs. Hazleton boasts
that she only knows the best people. ‘I am no tuft-hunter, my dear,’
she tells me when she is in one of her expansive moods. ‘You will see
very few titles in my card-basket; but the people I know belong to
some of the best families in England.’
_December 3._--Such a tiresome, dreary week. Mrs. Hazleton has dined
out four evenings out of six, and now on the fifth she has taken
off the children to see the new actor at the Haymarket. ‘I am sorry
there won’t be room for you in the box, Miss Faunthorpe,’ she said,
with her chilly politeness, after I had been toiling for an hour
helping Moyson, the children’s maid, to tie Lucinda’s ribbons, and
brush Laura’s hair, and sew on a tucker for Magdalen. So here I am at
half-past seven o’clock, my hearth swept, and my fire made up, as
solitary as an old maid with a small annuity.
I have been down to the study, and chosen a couple of volumes, the
best I could find in a dry-as-dust collection of antiquities--the
‘Citizen of the World’ and a volume of the _Spectator_,--but I don’t
feel equal to reading either. It suits my present humour better to
scribble my complaints against fortune in this ridiculous book of
mine. What a lucky woman Mrs. Hazleton is! Married to a wealthy
Indian judge, and left a widow six years ago with an ample fortune;
too old to care about marrying again, but not too old to be admired
and made much of by her friends; her children young enough to be kept
in the schoolroom for the next four years. Impossible to imagine
a more independent position. What a contrast between her fate and
mine! I have never known what it is to have my own way, and yet,
when I was a child, I thought I had only to be ‘grown up’ in order
to taste all the sweets of life. Perhaps that was because of the
nonsense people talked about my good looks. I can fancy no greater
misfortune for a girl in my position than to be brought up with the
idea of being a beauty. When I was a little thing people were always
drawing comparisons between Marion and me to Marion’s disadvantage;
and before I was twelve I knew quite well that I was the pretty Miss
Faunthorpe. Even old Hester, who never had a civil word for me at the
best of times, used to feed my vanity with her taunts about my pretty
face and my uselessness. ‘Handsome is that handsome does,’ she used
to say, by which I knew very well that she thought me handsome. Then
came school, and I was set up as a beauty, and courted and petted by
one-half of the girls, and detested by the other half, and nagged at
by Marion, who was set against me by the disagreeable comparisons
people were always making between us. What was the consequence of
all this? I grew up with the idea that as soon as I left school,
some rich young man, handsome and agreeable into the bargain, would
fall in love with me at first sight, and that I should be married in
grand style at the parish church--six bridesmaids and ever so many
carriages and pairs--before the admiring eyes of all Redcastle. I
came home to uncle Robert’s dull red house, prepared for conquest.
Life would be like a fairy tale. Some fine summer morning the
handsome young prince would appear, and I should be raised at once
from Cinderella’s obscurity to Cinderella’s high fortune. Foolish
creature that I was! I used to lie awake at night telling Marion the
grand things I would do for her when I was married.
‘Where is the prince to come from, Sib?’ she asked me once, rather
maliciously. ‘You know there are not above three such young men in
Redcastle--young Taylor, the lawyer’s son; Mr. Lacy, the biscuit
manufacturer; and George Pinsford, the coachmaker.’
‘Biscuit manufacturer!’ I exclaimed. ‘Do you suppose I would marry a
low tradesman? Aren’t there the county families, stupid?’
Well, here I am, after two weary years’ home life with uncle Robert,
who I must say is the dearest old thing in the world. Here I am,
nearly twenty, and no nearer finding the prince of fairy lore
than when I left Miss Worrie’s establishment for young ladies at
Kilmorden, after three years’ experience as pupil-teacher. Here I am,
a poor drudge of a governess, at just ten pounds a quarter, thankful
for being asked down to the drawing-room, where my beauty goes for
very little. All Mrs. Hazleton’s friends have found out by this time
that I am ‘only the governess,’ and have left off asking one another
who I am, as they used to do at first with some show of interest. I
sing, or play, and some one who has been chattering the whole time
says languidly, ‘Very nice, really. _Thank_ you, Miss Faunthorpe.’
And I sit in the angle between the back drawing-room fireplace
and the window-curtain for the rest of the evening, watching and
listening, with no more part in what is going on than if I were at a
theatre.
Let me look in the glass and see what this lauded beauty is which has
brought me so little luck. A small straight nose very sharply cut,
a short upper lip, under lip a thought too full, teeth good, chin
round and dimpled, face a perfect oval, eyes darkest brown; the sort
of eyes which, I believe, are usually called black. Hair dark brown,
with a tinge of gold where it ripples--the colour usually called
chestnut. Present expression discontent and a tendency to ill temper.
I have given up that foolish notion of a rich husband, but I
sometimes indulge in another day-dream, perhaps just as foolish. What
if my rich uncle, Stephen Trenchard, were to come home, take a fancy
to me, and leave me a fortune? Such things have happened. I remember
how my poor mother used to talk of her brother Stephen, the Indian
merchant, and of the ship that was coming home to bring her ease and
comfort, and which never came. Will the ship come home for me, I
wonder, now that my poor mother has been lying ten years in her quiet
grave?
_December 13._--The most wonderful thing has happened--the most
unlooked-for, the most extraordinary. My heart beats so fast at the
mere thought of it, that I am almost breathless as I write these
lines. My hand trembles, and the letters look blurred and dim before
my eyes.
I have seen the son of Philip Secretan, my uncle Stephen’s deadly
enemy--the man whom he supplanted in the affections of a weak old
father--for surely any father must be weak who would disinherit his
son in favour of a dependant, the man from whom he received the
injury that lamed him for life. How often have I heard my mother
tell the story, always putting her brother’s conduct in the most
favourable light! He was honest, indefatigable, steady--a favourite
clerk in the firm of Secretan Brothers, Manchester merchants. He
fully deserved the unexpected fortune that came to him, while
Philip’s dissipation and extravagance were justly rewarded by
disinheritance. Yet somehow in spite of poor mamma’s special
pleading, my sympathy was always with this unfortunate Mr. Secretan,
who saw his father’s wealth pass into the possession of his father’s
confidential clerk.
I once asked mamma what kind of a man this Philip Secretan was. She
told me that she had only seen him once in her life, but that he
impressed her as being remarkably handsome and a perfect gentleman.
And now I have seen his son, Captain Secretan. He was at Mrs.
Hazleton’s party last night. I had no idea who he was till
afterwards. He was standing before the fireplace in the back
drawing-room when I went back to my corner after singing ‘Porghi
Amor,’ standing with his back to the fire talking to old Colonel
Syceman. He is tall and strong-looking, and has, to my mind, a
most beautiful countenance. I never called a man beautiful before,
and I dare say I shall laugh at the expression when I read over
this stupid diary some day; but I cannot call his face less than
beautiful. It is such a noble face, with just the grand look I could
fancy in Achilles. I was reading Pope’s ‘Iliad’ to the children this
afternoon, and I thought of Captain Secretan every time Achilles
spoke. It seemed to me almost as if I could see him standing up
before me, confronting Agamemnon. He is dark, with boldly cut
features, a good-humoured expression about the mouth, and a somewhat
dreamy look in the dark gray eyes. I have seen handsomer faces, but
none that ever interested me as deeply. He is a man I should believe
in with all my soul if he were my friend; a man I should lean upon
as on a rock of defence if he were of my kindred. But he is nothing
to me, and I am hardly likely to see him again.
Mrs. Hazleton spoke of him at luncheon to-day as a foolish young
fellow who has sold his commission, and whose future career must be
disastrous unless some distant relations were to die and leave him
their property. As a rule, distant relations are not so obliging.
She spoke with her reverential tone of his family, which is one of
the oldest in Hampshire, although his grandfather was a Manchester
merchant; and she informed me that his first cousin, once removed, is
a baronet, Sir Douglas Secretan, with a large estate in somewhere or
other.
I wonder whether I shall ever see him again.
_December 30._--I have seen him again, three, four, five, six, seven
times. Three times in Mrs. Hazleton’s drawing-room, three times in
the park, when I was out walking with the children; and once in
Desmond Street when I had gone out alone to post a letter.
I dare say it was very wrong, and that I shall be ashamed of myself
when I read over this dreadful diary, but when Captain Secretan asked
me whether I ever walked in the park with the children, I said yes;
and when he asked me what time, I said between three and five; and
after that, when he asked me if I ever went out alone, I told him
yes, sometimes, just before half-past five, to post my home letter.
How kind he is! how clever! how interesting! and how well we seem
to know each other, though we have only met seven times! There is
evidently no association for him in the name of Faunthorpe. This is
only natural, as my mother did not marry till some years after her
brother’s quarrel with Philip Secretan. How much I regret, now, that
I did not learn the exact particulars of that quarrel! I have only
a vague idea of the circumstances; but from what my mother told me,
I know that, although Philip Secretan was the sufferer, my uncle
Stephen was as vindictive as if he also had been injured.
Perhaps the injurer is sometimes more angry than the injured.
My mother always declared that her brother was innocent of guile or
wrong-doing from first to last, but now that I know Mr. Secretan’s
son I feel still more inclined to side with my uncle’s enemy.
He, Captain Secretan, has told me the history of his life, his
careless happy youth spent abroad, with a father and mother whom he
idolized. He was educated at Heidelberg, came from Heidelberg to
Woolwich, to an army tutor, joined his regiment at twenty, and sold
out after five years’ service, a few months ago. He has now all the
world before him, he says, and has only to choose a career. He is
energetic and clever, and can hardly miss success in anything he may
attempt.
How changed our walks seem, now that there is always the chance of
meeting him! As I see him coming to meet us along the wintry avenue,
the familiar scene seems to grow beautiful, the sun shines brighter,
the birds break out into singing. They may have been singing before,
perhaps, and I too absorbed to hear them; but it seems as if they
began a glad chorus at his coming. I did not think that winter
afternoons could be so beautiful; the calm still air, the blue-gray
sky, the black tracery of the tall elm trees against the yellow
sunset.
He told me yesterday that his father would have been a rich man, but
for the treachery of a friend whom he had loved and trusted. A cold
sick feeling came over me, just as if the treachery had been mine,
and I had suddenly come face to face with my victim.
‘The only lesson my father ever taught me was to revile that man’s
name, and to carry my hatred of him with me to the grave. An evil
lesson for a kind-hearted man to teach, you’ll say; but for all that,
I don’t believe there ever beat a kinder heart than my father’s.’
I can easily believe this. Kindness and sweet temper are Captain
Secretan’s chief characteristics; a bright good humour which cheers
one like sunshine. A way of looking at life on the pleasantest side
which would inspire hopefulness in the most dismal mind. I know how
low-spirited, discontented, and wretched I was growing just before I
knew him, and how changed and brightened life seems to me now.
The children doat upon him, and are as pleased as I am to meet him in
our walks. He talks to them about all their small pleasures, and is
able to interest himself in their ideas much better than I, who spend
my life with them. Sometimes he paces up and down the broad walk with
the three girls hanging about him, telling them one of the fairy
tales we all know so well, and he has a way of giving a new charm
and interest to the old stories, while his little touches of modern
slang come in here and there with the funniest effect, and set us off
laughing till the tree-tops seem to shake with our laughter.
‘How odd that we should meet you again to-day, Captain Secretan!’
cried Magdalen the day before yesterday, when we found him at the
entrance of the broad walk.
‘Not at all odd, if you insist on coming this way, little one,’ he
said. ‘This is my afternoon constitutional. But if you very much
object I’ll take the other side of the park.’
‘Oh, no, no, please come always,’ shouted the three; and then they
asked for Cinderella, Captain Secretan’s modernized Cinderella,
whose ball dress was made in New Bond Street, and whose cruel
step-mother had a box on the second tier at Covent Garden.
It was yesterday afternoon that I met him in Desmond Street, a
dreary drizzling afternoon, which made me think the sooner the year
came to an end the better. I had been feeling rather depressed and
disheartened all the morning. The children had all gone to a morning
performance of the pantomime at Drury Lane, and I had the day to
myself, as Mrs. Hazleton graciously informed me. I don’t think
leisure is an unalloyed good for those who have few pleasant thoughts
to brighten their solitude. I sat mending my clothes, and thinking
about Captain Secretan. My thoughts were not happy ones. I was
shocked to find what a hold this stranger had taken upon my mind, and
how difficult it was for me to think of any one else, or to imagine
my life without him. Yet I knew that he was nothing, and never could
be anything to me. Poor, but proud, and of good birth, moving in what
Mrs. Hazleton calls the best society, he will naturally select a
woman of fortune for his wife. He is handsome, agreeable, has many
gifts which distinguish him from the common run of young men, and
will have no difficulty in making an advantageous marriage. Of an
obscure little pauper like me he would never think seriously for a
moment, unless his thoughts were dishonourable; and I know him and
trust him well enough already to wager my life against that. What
has he to do with me, then, or I with him? Absolutely nothing. We
are only fooling each other by this friendship, which is so sweet to
me, and which must needs have some charm for him, since he takes the
trouble to cultivate it. Better for both of us that we should see
each other no more, or only upon the public stage of Mrs. Hazleton’s
drawing-room. I will tell him so seriously and honestly the next time
we are alone together for a minute or two, while the three girls
march on before us. This doesn’t often happen, for I think Lucinda is
more deeply in love with the captain than----! What was I going to
write? Than a girl of twelve ought to be. This is the lecture which
I read myself yesterday while I worked at that tiresome mending.
All my Christmas quarter’s salary will go for a black silk dress, as
I must have one good and fashionably made gown to wear downstairs.
I wanted so much to have sent uncle Robert a little present, and I
should have liked to buy Marion a winter hat; but that is out of the
question. Shall I have my dress made with flounces, or a trained
skirt?
It was dark when I went out to post my letter; dark, and wet, and
uncomfortable, and there was nothing farther from my thoughts than
the idea of meeting Captain Secretan between Lowther Street and the
post office, though I am bound to confess that the captain himself
was not very far from my thoughts. I had posted my letter, and was
coming away from the office, when a tall man, looking very big in a
great rough overcoat, crossed the road and came towards me. I knew
him in a moment, but a strange shy feeling came over me, and I walked
on ever so fast, pretending not to know him. The street is quiet and
lonely, and I heard his footsteps hurrying after me.
‘Do you always walk like a sporting pedestrian when you are alone,
Miss Faunthorpe?’ he asked, coming by my side.
I started a little at the sound of his voice, although I knew so well
that he was there. Yesterday was one of my nervous days, I suppose. I
said something about its being such a disagreeable evening.
‘Yes,’ he answered, with his good-tempered laugh, ‘the old year is
making himself as obnoxious as he can in order that we may not regret
him. It is rather unpleasant weather. You dislike this drizzling rain
I dare say. I rather like it, for it reminds me of grouse-shooting
in the Highlands. I was even going to ask you to take a little walk
round Eccleston Square before you go back to your schoolroom.’
‘I couldn’t think of such a thing,’ I answered, sharply, feeling that
the proposal was an impertinence.
‘Couldn’t you? Then it wasn’t right in me to propose it, I suppose,’
he replied, placidly. ‘And yet I should be so glad of half an
hour’s quiet talk with you. It’s very nice telling the children
fairy stories, but rather a hindrance to conversation. Well, we’ll
postpone the walk round the square till we’ve pleasanter weather and
you know me better. Do you know I have been thinking of you so much
in the last few days.’
Had he? There must be something sympathetic in our thoughts then, for
he has never been out of mine.
We had turned into Lowther Street by this time, and I was weak enough
to be glad that it is such a long street. I would not have gone three
yards out of my way with him if the happiness of my life had depended
on it, but there was no harm in letting him walk as far as Mrs.
Hazleton’s door with me.
‘Yes, I have been thinking about you a good deal, Miss Faunthorpe,’
he said, after a pause. ‘I have been thinking what might have
happened if I had been a rich man and free to follow my own
inclination.’
This was telling me plainly that he was neither rich nor free.
‘Can you guess what I fancied would have happened in that case?’
‘No, indeed.’
‘I thought it just possible that I might have been tempted to ask you
to be my wife.’
He waited for my reply, but I was dumb. I felt choking, and could not
find a word to answer him.
‘What would you have said in that case?’
Some diabolical counsellor suggested a flippant answer instead of a
serious one.
‘Isn’t your question rather like Lord Dundreary’s?’ I asked. ‘If you
had had a brother, do you think he would have liked cheese?’
‘I see,’ he said, with a disappointed tone, ‘I am not to expect a
serious answer to a hypothetical question. I dare say you are right,
Miss Faunthorpe. In all life’s delicate questions women are always
wiser than men.’
I thought that he had taken the easiest way of telling me that his
circumstances forbade him to think of marrying me.
‘In that case,’ I said to myself, ‘he has no right to waylay me as I
come from the post;’ and I tried to feel very angry with him.
‘So you didn’t go home to spend your Christmas holidays?’ he said
presently.
‘Home! Do you suppose I could afford to travel to Yorkshire and back
for a week’s pleasure? Besides, I have no real home. My sisters and I
are dependent on my uncle’s bounty, and he is only a parish doctor,
who finds it a hard thing to pay his butcher and baker.’
I was determined to let him know how poor I am, and how wise he has
been in coming to the conclusion that I am no wife for him.
‘Poor little thing,’ he said compassionately, and his pity did me
good somehow. It did not gall, as most people’s pity does.
‘Poor little girl,’ he said again, after a few moments’ silence. ‘An
orphan, and sent out into the world to bear the burden of servitude
and all ill-usage “that patient merit from the unworthy takes.” One
would suppose that you could hardly be worse off than you are at
present?’
This was not very cheering, but I said nothing. We were near Mrs.
Hazleton’s door by this time, and yet we had been walking slowly.
‘Any change would be for the better, one would think,’ he said,
musingly. ‘A change that would give this poor little waif a sworn
protector and defender,--a husband pledged to toil for her and
cherish her. But a poor husband--a man at war with fortune--bah! I’ll
tell you what it is, Miss Faunthorpe,’ he burst out suddenly, ‘with
your lovely face you ought to make a brilliant marriage.’
‘So I was told when I was sixteen,’ said I, ‘but I’m almost twenty,
and the fairy prince in the shape of a rich husband hasn’t appeared
yet.’
‘You wouldn’t despise an eligible opportunity of exchanging Mrs.
Hazleton’s schoolroom for a house in Kensington Palace Gardens, I
suppose? You have a feminine inclination for fine clothes, servants
with powdered heads, carriages and horses, and a box at the opera?’
‘I am human, and I don’t pretend to be superior to the weaknesses of
humanity,’ I answered, feeling that I was making myself intensely
disagreeable.
He provoked me, somehow, by his nonchalant manner of discussing my
position and prospects. Luckily, we were quite at the door now, and I
was able to beat a retreat before anything still more unpleasant had
been said upon either side.
‘Good afternoon, Captain Secretan,’ I said.
‘It must be good-bye,’ he answered, ‘I am going into Norfolk
to-morrow for a month’s shooting.’
I felt as if he had said that he was going to Australia, but I only
answered ‘Oh, in that case, good-bye;’ and so we shook hands again,
and then he lifted his hat and went away, while I gave the bell a
good sharp pull that insured its being answered promptly.
I don’t quite know whether I like him or hate him; but whichever
feeling it is, it must be rather strong of its kind, as I cannot get
him out of my thoughts. I am inclined to think that it is hatred.
What could be more disagreeable or humiliating than his way of
speaking about me before my face, as if I had been miles away? ‘Poor
thing, poor little waif!’
I grow hot and red when I think of it.
_Jan. 14._--The year is just a fortnight old. There has been snow,
but bright clear weather, a blue sky, and sunshine. We walk in
Kensington Gardens every day, and meet him every day. He makes the
three girls run races with their hoops, he being umpire, and during
the race he and I are able to talk without restraint. He only stopped
four days in Norfolk. He told me that the shooting was very good, but
that he was bored to death after the second day, and yet it was in a
pleasant country house that he was staying at, according to his own
account. There was to be a ball the very day after he came away, but
he did not care to stay for it. Curious man!
My black silk dress has come, and is a great success. I dread to see
the dressmaker’s bill, as I have only reserved a sovereign for the
making, and I am afraid she will charge me something nearer three.
The dress certainly fits to perfection, and is beautifully finished;
the trimmings simple, but of the best quality. At home, Marion and I
used to make our own dresses, but after going nearly out of my mind
for a week over piping-cord and button-holes, I always felt myself a
dowdy at the last.
Mrs. Hazleton has a dinner party to-morrow, Captain Secretan is
coming in the evening, and I shall wear my new dress. Have I made up
my mind yet whether I like him or hate him?
Yes. I do neither. I love him--love him--love him.
There, it is written at last. Foolish old diary, how I shall despise
you and myself some day when I read over this wretched page!
_Jan. 16._--Such a delicious party last night! Captain Secretan
was the first person I saw when I slipped quietly in at the back
drawing-room door. He was watching the door, and those dark eyes
brightened at sight of me. I sang to him, I played to him, I talked
to him, the party was all him. The rest of the people were only
the medium through which I saw him,--or they were like trees in
a landscape, and he the living figure in the foreground. I know
he likes to talk to me, and to hear me sing or play; but I wonder
whether he loves _me_.
_Feb. 3._--It has come at last. He has asked me plainly,
straightforwardly, anxiously, earnestly, to be his wife.
He has told me that he is poor, that he is living just now on the
money he got for his commission. He has nothing else, but he has
youth, health, and strength, some talents, and he is willing to work.
With a wife whom he fondly loved he would have a motive for beginning
a new career.
‘I’m such a happy-go-lucky fellow,’ he said, in his bright, cheery
way, ‘that I can hardly bring myself to put my shoulder to the wheel
for my own sake, but if I had you to work for, pet, I should slave
like a Goliath.’
I don’t like to remind him that the Philistine soldier was more
remarkable for strength than industry.
He made me say yes, and promise whatever he liked. How could I resist
him, when I love him so dearly that the lightest touch of his hand
makes me tremble? and there seems to me more pathos in his voice than
in the tenderest phrase of Mozart’s. He is so straightforward, so
candid, so noble. He wanted to take Mrs. Hazleton into his confidence
immediately, so that I might be married very quietly from her house.
‘We have nothing to wait for, darling,’ he said, ‘unless we were to
wait till I have made a fortune, which would mean at least half a
dozen years of severance,--just the brightest, happiest years of life
sacrificed to a sordid scruple, an unworthy doubt of Providence. If
you love me, Sibyl, you will not talk of waiting.’
‘I should like to be wise and prudent,’ I told him, ‘but your
impetuosity carries me along like a torrent.’
‘Love is a torrent,’ answered he, ‘do not oppose so poor a thing as
reason against its sacred might.’
I entreated him to say nothing to Mrs. Hazleton. An idea had occurred
to me which made me hesitate, even with my lover’s hand clasping
mine, as to the wisdom of yielding to his prayer.
I remembered a strange fact, which had almost slipped out of my mind
lately. I remembered that Alexis Secretan is the natural inheritor
of his father’s hatred, the natural enemy of my rich uncle, Stephen
Trenchard, the uncle from whom I have been taught to expect a
fortune. If I marry Captain Secretan, I surrender all hope of favour
from my uncle.
I begged Alex--he has taught me to call him Alex--to say nothing to
Mrs. Hazleton yet awhile. I wanted time to think.
After all, this hope of fortune from my uncle Stephen may be only
a dream, vain as that idea of a rich husband with which I used to
delude myself when I was a schoolgirl. On the other hand, I have
the knowledge from my poor mother that my uncle was a very rich man
twenty years ago (I have the knowledge from his last letter to my
uncle Robert, enclosing a twenty-pound bank bill as a present for
Marion and me); that he has never married, and has no intention of
marrying; that he looks forward to returning to his native country
in a few years and making the acquaintance of his nieces. Too good
a chance in all this, surely, to be thrown away. It would be rather
a bitter thing for me to see Marion chosen for her uncle’s heiress,
while I was left a pauper.
What am I to do? How am I to choose between Alexis and the
possibility of a large fortune?
Prudence suggests that I should only pledge myself to Alexis on
condition that our marriage shall be deferred for some years.
We are both young. We can afford to wait a few years, and yet have a
good deal of the brightness of life before us. My uncle Stephen is
an old man, older no doubt at his age than men who have spent their
lives in Europe. Whether I am to inherit any portion of his wealth is
a question that must be decided in a few years. I must tell Alex that
he must wait. If his love is real and earnest it cannot be lessened
by time.
_Feb. 5._ I have told him my decision. Vain, hopeless, to talk of
reason with a man whose inclination is his only law. He tells me
that if I really cared for him I could not propose dreary years of
separation. My statement that I have rich relatives who may leave me
money if I marry to please them, and are sure to leave me nothing
if I marry without their consent, fell on ears obstinately deaf to
reason. Love like this is worse than a torrent--it is a maelstrom.
Prudence, reason, worldly wisdom, are mere straws in the whirlpool.
I must see him no more.
_Feb. 7._ I have seen him again. Poor Alex! He looks so unhappy. How
sweet to know that I have such power over him!--I, to whom he seemed
such a far-off creature two months ago. Is the chance of fortune
worth such a love as his?
_Feb. 8._ Stephen Trenchard may live to be as old as Old Parr, and
leave his money to the Asylum for Idiots, after I have sacrificed
youth and love and all that is sweetest in life to the sordid hope of
fortune.
_Feb. 9._ A hopelessly wet day. I have seen him walk up and down the
street three times in the rain. I know his dear umbrella.
_Feb. 11._ In the Broad Walk again yesterday. It is all settled. I
am to give Mrs. Hazleton a month’s notice to-morrow--our agreement
is a month’s notice on either side--in the event of my proving
inefficient, she said. Not in the event of my not liking the
situation. Oh dear no, of course not.
I am so agitated that I can hardly write. This day month I am to have
my boxes packed, and go quietly away in a cab at ten o’clock in the
morning, drive to the station and deposit my luggage, and then meet
Alexis, with whom I shall drive back to the quietest little church
in Ecclestonia, where we are to be married. No witnesses but the
pew-opener and the clerk; no announcement in the _Times_. The secret
of our marriage kept from everybody who knows us, at the outset, at
any rate, so that if Stephen Trenchard dies in India--a likely thing
after all--I may still inherit my share of his fortune. Dear old
uncle Robert is such an easy-going man, that as long as I tell him I
am comfortably situated with my employer he will never put himself
out of the way to know more. He has not an acquaintance in London
whom he could ask to call upon me at Mrs. Hazleton’s. There is no
such isolation as poverty.
I have arranged with Jane Dimond, the under housemaid, about my
letters. She will receive any that come to Lowther Street for me,
and post any that I send her to be posted. I have given her quite
a heap of things, the weeding out of my wardrobe, and made her my
friend for life.
_March 11._ To-morrow is to be my wedding day. Oh fearful day! on
which hangs all my life to come. Will the future be blessed or
accursed for to-morrow’s vows?
I wish Marion and uncle Robert could have been with me. It would all
have seemed more real. I remember my foolish fancies--my castles in
the air. The grand wedding at which I used to see myself figuring
as chief performer; my white satin dress and Brussels flounces; the
carriages; the favours; the crowd; Mendelssohn’s Wedding March; the
joyous peal of bells. Those bells are sounding in my ears to-night.
To-morrow, to-morrow, to-morrow! Before noon to-morrow I shall have
ceased to be Sibyl Faunthorpe. My name will be Sibyl Secretan--name
of all others most abhorrent to my uncle, Stephen Trenchard.