THE SECRET OF DALTON'S LIFE.
'I cannot understand the terms on which you say you and Mrs.
Trelawney have parted,' said Goring, to whom his most valued friend
Dalton had been, as a sort of relief to his own mind, apparently
making what he called 'a clean breast of it,' and detailing his
relations with the fair widow of Chilcote Grange. 'You seem to have
made love enough to her--that I saw for myself often. You seemed to
have expressed admiration enough for her, to all of which she appears
to have listened with patience and pleasure in some instances; with
impatience and petulance in others; and yet you seem to have wound up
with a kind of quarrel at last!'
'She acknowledged that she had only been amusing herself and
befooling me.'
'It would also seem by your own account that amid all the curious
love-making you never made her a direct proposal of marriage.'
'No.'
'Why?'
'I dared not,' said Dalton, sadly.
'You dared not--and why?'
'Because--because I am a married man--there now, the murder is out!'
'A married man--you, Tony Dalton!' exclaimed Goring, in utter
bewilderment.
'I, Tony Dalton--the biggest fool in Her Majesty's service,' replied
that personage, with a groan.
'Does Mrs. Trelawney know of this state of affairs?' asked Goring,
after a long pause.
'I have more than once feared as much.'
'She hinted to me once that there was a secret in your life that
precluded her reception of your addresses. Then it is so?'
'Yes, that I am a married man,' replied Dalton, as he threw open his
dark green and silk-braided patrol jacket (which he had resumed after
the march) as if its collar choked him, tossed his half-finished
cigar into the blazing fire, and drained his glass only to replenish
it again.
It was in a hotel at Southampton, not far from where the transport
lay, when they were having a 'farewell drink' after a cutlet or so,
that Dalton made this astounding revelation to his friend--one that
seemed fully to account for many peculiarities which the latter had
remarked in Dalton's intercourse with Mrs. Trelawney.
'Why, in the name of all that is wonderful, have you concealed this
so long?'
'An emotion of shame perhaps--shame at my own egregious folly tied my
tongue.'
'But when, where, how did it all come about?'
'The most miserable stories are often told in a few words, and thus
told best; and, Goring, I shall tell you mine,' replied Dalton.
'When I was being educated for the service--my parents being dead--I
was boarded by my uncle Sir John Dalton--on whose hands and
generosity I was utterly cast--with a tutor at Hastings.
'My uncle was most generous. I had quarterly as much
pocket-money--too much indeed--as a young fellow in his early teens
could desire to have; I had a horse at my command, a pleasure-boat
whenever I liked it, and was a frequent attender at the theatre; for
my tutor was a careless fellow, fond of amusement too, and did not
look sufficiently after me.
'All this was some ten or twelve years ago. At the theatre there was
a young girl who figured in the bills as Miss Laura Dorillion, and
who was deemed quite a star.
'One story went that she was a lady of high family, who, in a rage
for histrionic fame, had fled from home, changed her name, and
adopted the stage as a profession; another story was that she was the
only daughter of a man of rank, whom dissipation or bad speculations
on the turf had ruined; and rumour added that, when only twelve years
of age, she had played Juliet to perfection in amateur theatricals at
a fashionable West End School; at fifteen she was a genius; at
seventeen she was cast as Miss Hardcastle in the "School for
Scandal;" and more than once when I saw her as Juliet I longed, with
all my soul, to be her Romeo.
'Boylike I fell madly in love with her--in love as dreamy boys at my
then years are wont to do--and nightly I haunted the theatre, often
in defiance of my tutor, and my studies became a farce; in fact they
were utterly neglected, and I had but one thought--Laura Dorillion!
'How pretty--how sweetly pretty--the name sounded to me, and I was
never weary of repeating it to myself.
'_Was_ she pretty, you will ask? When made-up for the stage and
surrounded by all its accessories, she looked downright lovely; but,
when watching her going from her lodgings to morning rehearsal, I was
obliged to confess to myself that my goddess had rather a large
mouth, but fine eyes with a sleepy or dreamy expression, long lashes
and drooping lids of which she could make a most seductive use; that
in figure she was tall but not ungraceful, and was neither fully
grown nor developed; but there seemed a great want of finish about
her for one who was alleged to be the daughter of a noble family.
This might proceed, I thought, from the style of her toilette, which
certainly did not come from Swan & Edgar's.
'The girl was quite a favourite in Hastings; she played for, sang
for, and subscribed to many local charities, and had about her none
of that fastness of dress or demeanour peculiar to so many young
girls on the stage; and so I loved her, or thought I did. I was but
a boy--it was what the French--so happy in their phrases--call _un
grand caprice enflammé par des obstacles_--nothing more, perhaps; and
the obstacles were my lack of independent means to take her off the
stage; my having no profession; and my uncle's well known family
pride, position, and general views regarding me, his brother's only
son, and all that sort of thing. Otherwise, I might have continued
"to sigh like a furnace," and eventually, when I went elsewhere,
forget her; but it was not to be.
'I was not a bad-looking fellow, and always dressed scrupulously
well; thus she was not long in discovering me as I sat night after
night, bouquet in hand, in a certain pit stall; and she no doubt
connected me with the beautiful bouquets that came to the stage door
nightly, in more than one instance with little complimentary notes on
pink and perfumed paper inserted therein.
'Once she appeared at the wings with one of these notes in her hand.
She blew me a kiss from the tips of her fingers, and placed the
missive in her bosom, two little actions which raised me to the
seventh heaven of ecstacy. After that Laura Dorillion sang to me,
acted to me, glanced and smiled at me in a way that completed her
conquest, and, in short, I was a lost Tony Dalton!
'As a pledge of solemn engagement, I gave her a diamond and opal ring.
'In the end I achieved an introduction in the most matter-of-fact way
in the world--just as Sir Walter Scott did to his first love--by the
prosaic offer of my umbrella on a wet day, and then my dream began to
take a more tangible form in little lunches and solid presents, in
escorting her to and from the theatre, which became an established
kind of expected duty; in walks on the Sunday mornings along the
towering cliffs that overhang the sea; along the breezy Marina; by
the Lover's Seat in lonely Fairlight Glen with its thickly wooded
sides and tapestry of wild flowers; by the Dripping Well, that an
enormous beech-tree overhangs; among the ruins of the old castle,
when "the old, old tale" was told again--not of Hastin and his men,
or of Saxons or Normans--but of our love for each other, and life
became to me a species of feverish intoxication for some weeks at
least.
'Some little points of manner, accent, pronunciation certainly did at
times jar upon my better taste; and she seemed, for a girl educated
at a West End seminary for young ladies, rather ignorant of the
manners and customs of that "society" which she affected in genteel
comedy to pourtray upon the stage; but the former I attributed to
association with her inferiors--to wit, the members of the company to
which she belonged.
'From what you know of my disposition and general character, you may
guess the end of all this.'
'No--I do not,' said Goring.
'I married her.'
'Whew!' whistled Goring; 'in church?'
'In church! where she was given away by the manager. The "heavy old
woman" acted as mother, two young ladies of the company were
bridesmaids, and when, tremulously, she subscribed herself in the
register Laura Dorillion, the clerk and the pew-opener gave their
signatures as witnesses. The breakfast is but a confused memory.
There was no rice--no old slippers; and we are told that no girl
likes to be married without any of the gay things which make marriage
such a joyous experience--no gay preparations--no pretty wedding in a
flower-decked church--no presents--not even a new dress!'
'Well?'
'Then came a life of misery and jealousy. I trembled when other men
went near her, and boiled with exasperation when love was openly made
to her on the stage in the mere business of the play. I had seen
enough of that done before with considerable placidity, but somehow I
could not stand it now.
'With my last quarter's allowance in my pocket, and utterly vague
ideas of the future in my mind, I left the house of my tutor and went
to share her humble lodging in a rather obscure part of Hastings, and
soon the sordid nature of our surroundings began to impress me most
disagreeably, as the bubble began to burst.
'At last there came a night which I was fated not to forget for a
time.
'I had brought her home from the theatre, where she had acquitted
herself with singular skill and sweetness as blind Iolanthe in "King
René's Daughter," and she was in the act of repeating a portion of
her dialogue with Tristan as we ascended the stair--
"Another time,
When I had pined for many tedious days,
Because my father was detained from home,
I wept for very gladness when he came!
Through tears I gave my bursting heart relief,
And at mine eyes it found a rushing vent."
'In our little sitting-room I found an elderly man, wearing a
battered grey hat girt by a black band, and clad in
shabby-genteel--nay, quite threadbare garments--standing on the
hearthrug, smoking a short clay pipe, with his coat-tails over his
arms, his bleared and tipsy-looking eyes--one of which had a white
plaister over it--regarding the furniture and details of the
apartment critically, while he took a sip from a pewter mug of beer,
and set it down with a clank.
'"Hullo, my girl," he exclaimed; "here you are at last! This here is
a rum go. So this is the young gent as you have gone and made such a
fool of yourself by marrying?"
'Laura's heart was beating fast--so fast that even respiration seemed
to suffocate her; her face was blanched; her eyes had a scared
expression; and gave me a glance that seemed full of shame and agony.
'"Who is this impertinent scoundrel?" I demanded.
'"Scoundrel in your teeth again!" he exclaimed, turning up the cuffs
of his coat, threateningly, and striking his battered hat firmly on
his head; "is this your company manners, you young cub?" he added,
with a frightful imprecation.
'"Who are you, and what do you want here?" I demanded, looking about
for a stick.
'"Dabchick is my name! Jo Dabchick, clown, Banger's Circus,
Surreyside o' the river, and no mistake; and I have come here to see
my own daughter, Laura Dorillion, as she calls herself, or must it be
Mrs. Antony Dalton now--Lady Dalton perhaps that's to be, when your
uncle hops his blessed twig?"
'"Oh, father," said Laura, in a breathless voice, "why have you come,
and how did you find me out?"
'"I come because I want money; and, as for finding you out, that was
easy enough; the Hastings theatre ain't at the bottom of the sea."
"'And mother?"
'"Is there in your bed--has had a drop too much, and so I have tucked
her in there; and now what have you got for supper--tripe, sausages,
bloaters, or summat tasty, I hope? Speak--you look as lively as a
couple of glow-worms in the sunshine!"
'My soul sickened within me! And with these additions to our little
household--a slatternly, odious mother, a beery, broken-down actor,
whose line had once been genteel comedy, a clown in a circus
latterly, but whose incessant dissipation had deprived him of all
employment--life became a burden now, and my stupendous folly stood
in letters of fire before me.
'Existence became unendurable, and neither Laura nor I dared to look
forward to the dark and vague future we might be doomed to drag out
in the world.
'Their arrival filled my wife with shame and anger, and I do believe
with generous sorrow for me. My quarter's pittance was soon
expended; _her_ salary could not maintain us all. My tutor soon
discovered the whole situation, and laid it mercilessly bare before
my uncle, Sir John Dalton, who from that hour cast me off, ignored my
letters and my existence, and disinherited me by his will.
'I had no money, or means of getting any, after the best of my
jewellery and wardrobe had departed. Laura's father and mother soon
proved abusive and most obnoxious to me; they insulted me hourly, and
eventually drove me from the squalid lodgings we shared together.
Laura one night took their part; it required but that to fill up the
measure of my disgust, and I found myself wandering in the streets
with all I possessed in the world--the clothes that I wore. I rooted
the love of her out of my heart; but it was long before I could
efface her image, which often a fancied resemblance in another
brought before me.
'There are some men of whom it is said that they will not acknowledge
their false steps even to their own hearts; but I am not one of them,
and must acknowledge, dear Goring, that in sackcloth and ashes I have
repented of mine.
'My haughty uncle proving obdurate to the last degree, there was no
hope for me so far as he was concerned; so I took the Queen's
shilling and sailed for India, and there I strove to forget my boyish
folly, the contemptible position I had occupied with such a father
and mother-in-law, the disgust and horror with which their advent and
their surroundings inspired me--sick, too, of the slatternly girl I
had married, for slatternly she too was in her home and when off the
stage, reserving all her toilettes and her graces for the British
public.
'You know the rest. I soon got a commission through the
ranks--sooner than I could have got it through the medium of a
crammer and exams. From the hour I turned at midnight along the
Marina of Hastings, and heard the monotonous sound of the surge, as
it rolled on the beach in the dark, I have never heard of my wife or
been able to trace her. Her odious parents I discovered have been
long since dead, and that she is no longer on the stage, or, if so,
bears another name, or has gone I know not where.
'I have sometimes hoped that I had been freed from her by
death--ungenerous though that hope may be, and that my uncle must
have heard of her demise, when by a codicil to his will he left me
all his fortune. And now you know why it was that I dared not make a
proposal to Mrs. Trelawney--nor did I ever think of love or marriage
till I met her lately; and how I love her, and have struggled to tear
that hopeless passion from my heart, is known only to God and to
myself!'