A MODERN GENTLEMAN’S DIARY.
Francis Tredethlyn went back to the hotel in Covent Garden with the
little sheepskin-covered volume appertaining to the gentleman who called
himself Robert Lesley, safely stowed in his pocket. He went straight
back to the hotel, ate his simple dinner, drew the candles near him, and
then, taking up a poker from the hearth, made short work of the lock
under which the stranger had kept his secrets. All thought of those
sunny gardens and drawing-rooms at Twickenham, the glancing river, the
woody background, faded out of his mind for a time, and gave place to
one settled purpose--the discovery of his missing cousin’s destroyer.
Yes, her destroyer! He had only been able to read Mrs. Burfield’s story
in one fashion. The solitary departure in the chill light of a winter’s
morning, the haste and secrecy, the lonely return long afterwards; these
things seemed to the young man to point only to one conclusion;--the
simple Cornish girl’s faith had been betrayed by the man she had so
implicitly trusted.
In the little volume before him Francis Tredethlyn hoped to find some
further clue to that sad history. He seemed to take a savage pleasure in
punishing the neat brazen lock, which he shattered with a couple of
vigorous blows from the handle of the poker.
“I wonder whether, when a man’s a villain, he writes _that_ down?”
thought Mr. Tredethlyn. “I can’t fancy a scoundrel putting the truth
about himself even on paper; and if the truth isn’t here, I can’t see
how the book will help me. And yet there must be secrets in it, too, or
he’d never have had such a lock as this. Mr. Lowther used to throw his
journal about any where, and I don’t think _he_ ever did anything that
was particularly worth writing down.”
The Cornishman began to turn over the volume very slowly, looking at the
pages cautiously, almost as if he expected to see some venomous creature
crawl out from between the leaves. The first twenty pages of the book
were filled with the records of a college life, in which brief memoranda
of study were interspersed with boating slang and turf calculations. The
name of a certain Rosa, of the King’s Head, appeared very often in these
earlier pages; and there were little epigrams about Rosa, bespeaking the
easy-going morality of a Rochester or a Sedley, rather than the pure
sentiments of a Tennyson or a Longfellow. Altogether there was a
reckless, swaggering manner about the book, which very well corresponded
with Mrs. Burfield’s description of the prancing stranger.
But the volume had no interest for Francis Tredethlyn until he came to
the twentieth page, where the name of Coltonslough figured for the first
time.
“_November 8._--The abomination of desolation, and just the place for a
fellow that wants to read hard and be delivered from the society of his
fellow-creatures! Arrived yesterday afternoon; found civil landlady,
stereotyped sea-side accommodation; decrepit easy-chair, slippery
horsehair cushions; no window-curtains to speak of, and a great deal of
unnecessary drapery festooned about a rickety tent-bedstead;
wash-hand-stand one size too large for a doll, and fifty sizes too small
for any civilized being; shells and shepherdesses on the mantelpieces,
and any amount of blown-glass decanters on the sideboard. Dined on
chops, which were fried, soddened in their own grease. Must speak to the
landlady to-morrow, and insist on gridiron. The woman who would fry
chops would think nothing of human sacrifices. A girl waited upon me, a
good deal younger than Rosa, and I think prettier--but we have changed
all that, so I didn’t take particular notice of her. Read hard till
after one, and write this before retiring to my couch,--flock, and
lumpy, for I dug my knuckles into the counterpane while examining the
apartment.
“_November 9._--The girl, who is infinitely superior to Rosa, brought me
my breakfast. More chops, not fried, but soddened in relic of the dark
ages entitled Dutch oven, for I inquired; and underdone French rolls.
Why, O provincial taker, always underdone? What grudge dost thou bear
against thy fellow-man that thou seekest insidiously to undermine his
constitution with thy clammy bread-stuffs? Girl, infinitely prettier
than Rosa, cleared away breakfast. Very shy, and only answers polite
inquiries in monosyllables. Asked if she was relation of woman of house.
No, no relation; nursery governess to children. Comes from some remote
district in the west of England; evidently objects to be precise as to
locality. Heard her go down kitchen stairs with tea-things, and did
_not_ hear her reascend them. Conclude that the nursery is somewhere in
the cellarage. Read hard all day. Smoke and stroll in the evening.
Landlady waited on me at dinner. Dismal change, after monosyllabic girl,
recalling Death’s-head at Egyptian banquets, but _not_ crowned with
flowers. More reading after dinner, brandy-and-water cold, and now to
bed. Have ordered mattress to be put over flock. Sleeping on knobby
surface all very well now and then, but not for a permanence. Mem: To
keep my eye upon Lord Paisley’s ‘Blazing Tom,’ for the Craven meeting.
“_November 12._--No diary yesterday or the day before. Read with German
crib: wonderful fellows those Germans for first-class translations of
classic fogies. Wrote to H. C. to put a pony on ‘Blazing Tom.’ Walked on
the Esplanade in the afternoon, and made the acquaintance of
monosyllabic Cornish girl, infinitely prettier than Rosa. Yes, I
succeeded in breaking the ice, with considerable trouble; for I never
_did_ see anything feminine so shy and frightened as this brown-eyed
Cornish girl. ‘Her eye’s dark charm,’ &c. Well, there _is_ something of
the gazelle in her eyes, something shrinking and fawn-like. I could
fancy the white doe of what’s-its-name looking as she looked at me
yesterday.
“I went out for my smoke and stroll rather earlier than I had intended.
I saw the Cornish girl and three uncouth children in rusty leather boots
wending their way across the piece of waste ground which forms the
delicious prospect before my window. A nice, cool, gray afternoon, with
a low yellow streak on the western horizon; a gray sea, melting into a
gray sky, with only just that one golden streak glimmering along the
edge of the waters; the sort of afternoon that reminds one of Tennyson’s
poetry. So I lighted my cigar, and went out for a stroll. Perhaps I
followed the monosyllabic girl. What do I know? as that amiable French
nuisance, who is perpetually quoted in newspaper leaders, remarked.
Enough that I went, found the Cornish girl, very shabbily dressed, but
unutterably pretty, strolling listlessly up and down the paved walk
beside the sea. They _call_ it the sea; but, Oh for the roaring breakers
of the Atlantic, or the long hoarse roar of the waves as the German
Ocean surges on broad yellow sands yonder, far away in the North!
“And so, having lighted my cigar, I strolled up and down the Esplanade.
Of course I began to talk to the children. If children have any use in
this world--which I have been frequently inclined to doubt--surely it
must be in this matter of serving as a means of introduction to pretty
nursemaids. The children and I were intimate in no time; the presuming
little imps became, of course, obnoxiously familiar; and, like all
go-betweens, were very difficult to shake off when done with. But I got
the Cornish girl to talk at last. She is not stupid, only shy; and she
told me a good deal, in a pretty, simple, girlish way, about her native
county, always keeping clear of all precise allusion to locality, by the
bye. She is very pretty,--I had almost written lovely, but that
adjective can only be applied to a high-bred beauty. She is extremely
pretty, and that white doe of Rhylston (isn’t it?) look in her eyes
haunted me all last night while I was reading. Yes, it was very
pleasant, that stroll upon the Esplanade. I threw away my first cigar,
and forgot to light another, though she would have allowed me to smoke,
I dare say. It was very pleasant, that cool gray sea, and the yellow
streak fading in the west, and the flat gray shore, and the generally
Tennysonian aspect of everything. It was very much better than the
King’s Arms, and a lot of fellows drinking no end of Bass, and chaffing
Rosa. I don’t suppose this Cornish girl knows what chaff means. I almost
shudder when I think of Rosa, with her big, round, black eyes, and the
sticky little curls upon her forehead, and the tartan neck-ribbons, and
great yellow earrings. And Oxonians have married Rosas before my time,
and have deservedly gone to the dogs thereupon. But fifty thousand is
your figure, my dear Robert,--fifty thousand, well sounded, and no
separate-use-and-maintenance humbug either. Something in the
commercial-widow line, I suppose you will have to put up with, my poor
Bob; but no greedy old parent to interfere with the disposal of the
money. The widow, or the orphan, if a fifty thousand pounder, is the
sort of article for you, dear child.
“_November 13._--She brought me my breakfast this morning--(what, is she
_she_ already? Alas, poor Rosa!)--and I got her to pour out my tea. I
couldn’t detain her long: she was so _very_ busy, she said, and seemed
painfully anxious to get away. I made her talk a little. She has a nice
low voice,--‘an excellent thing,’ &c.! Now Rosa had a vixenish way of
speaking, that always jarred upon me, even when I was deepest down that
pit into which the fair barmaid’s admirers cast themselves. She--the
Cornish girl--is what people call a genteel young person, with white
hands and a slim waist, and a nice way of doing her hair, and putting on
her collars and cuffs. Her name is Susan Turner, by the bye; and the
children call her Susy. Could anything sound more pastoral? Susy. The
name of Rosa was always so painfully suggestive of nigger melodies.
Another cool gray afternoon, and another low yellow line across the sky;
so I went out for my smoke at the same time as yesterday. She was on the
Esplanade with the children. She instructs them in arithmetic, writing,
and elementary smatterings of history, geography, and grammar, after
dinner, and then brings them out for a walk till tea-time, after which
they ‘retire to rest,’ as the novelists have it, not without
considerable rebellious scuffling in the passage and on the stairs. That
is the order of the day. In the morning, I suspect, she is housemaid,
parlour-maid, needlewoman, or anything else that my landlady’s
necessities oblige her to be. But she is always equally neat and pretty;
and if she were only provided with that trifling little matter of fifty
thousand or so in the elegant simplicity of the three per cents, I
should be decidedly inclined to fall in love with her. Does one ever
fall in love with a fifty-thousand pounder, by the bye? I rather think
not. She--Susy--was not quite so shy this afternoon, and we talked a
good deal. I offered to lend her some books. I offered to lend Rosa
books once, when I was in the lowest depths of spooneyism, and was
unhappy about her grammar--those dreadful superfluous ‘whiches,’ and
intolerable ‘as hows’!--but Rosa rejected my literature, as dry rubbish
that gave her the horrors. I had lent her the ‘Bride of Lammermoor.’ My
little Susy won’t turn up that innocent nose of hers at any sentimental
story, I’ll be bound. I’ve found an odd volume of Byron, containing
‘Parisina,’ and the ‘Prisoner of Chillon,’ and a lot of the ‘To Thirza’
business.
“N.B.--I find that I’ve called her my little Susy! Pretty well, as I’ve
been only a week in the place. Am I going down into another pit, I
wonder--a deeper abyss than that into which Rosa casts her victims?
Poor, pretty, fawn-eyed little darling! Take care of yourself, my dear
Robert. Poor, friendless Susy! She couldn’t well be _worse off_ under
any circumstances than she is in this place, that’s one blessing: the
drudge of a mistress who is herself a slave in the bondage of poverty. I
went down to the kitchen yesterday to get a fresh supply of coals--these
people are ready to fall down and worship me because I’m not proud, as
they put it; but there are numerous orders of pride, I think,--and I saw
their dinner. Such a poor bone of mutton! Poor little Susy! how she
would open her eyes at sight of the Richmond and Greenwich banquets that
I have seen given to persons as inferior to herself as--Hyperion to the
other person. What a frightful hindrance to original composition is that
abominable habit of hackneyed quotation!--the great newspaper-mill going
round three-hundred-and-thirteen times a year, and only one little
limited stock of quotations for all the leader-writers.
“_November 16._--Sunday, and a wet day: saw Susan start for church in
the morning with prayer-books and children. Strolled out with umbrella a
little after twelve; found church; unpleasant new building, smelling of
damp stucco, and looking like an edifice of soddened brown paper; waited
in the porch, patient as that young idiot in Arthur Pendennis’s poem,
until my lady came out, and conducted her home in triumph under my
umbrella, while the awkward squad of children brought up the rear under
cover of the maternal gingham. She was obliged to take my arm; and as
the walk from the church is rather a long one, we got alarmingly
intimate--when I say alarmingly intimate, I mean that she has taken to
blushing when I speak to her. That’s the worst of these fawn-like girls;
they will blush! And when they’re pretty, the blushes are so bewitching.
And when they don’t happen to have fifty thousand or so, what is a
fellow to do? Take to his heels, replies the stern moralist, who has
sown his own wild oats twenty years ago, and is envious of the young
scatterers of to-day. I came to Coltonslough to read; and come what may,
I shall stay there till it’s time to go back to St. B. In the meantime,
Susan is a brown-eyed angel--an angel who leads the life of a low-bred
drudge, and for whom any possible change of circumstances _must_ be a
change for the better.
“Of course I questioned her about the sermon as we walked home. Take an
interest in sermons, and women will believe in you, though you were the
veriest scoundrel that ever admired Voltaire and considered the
‘Pucelle’ his _chef-d’œuvre_. What a little Puritan she is! She has been
to church twice every Sunday ever since she can remember, she told me,
and to Sunday-school, and to all kinds of examinations and
cross-examinations in the vicar’s parlour. I don’t suppose _she_ would
have floundered as I did, and come to grief over some of the questions
those old fogies at Oxford asked me about Biblical history. She knows
all about Saul, and David, and Jonathan, and those everlasting wars with
the Philistines, I dare say. She is very pretty, lovely--yes, lovely,
though _not_ high-bred. I sometimes fancy, though, that she must have
decent blood in her veins. I never saw a prettier little hand upon my
arm than that which rested there to-day, as I brought her home from
church. If I were--something utterly different from what I am, I would
get my degree, go in for a country curacy, and little Susy should be my
wife. But _noblesse oblige_: which very elastic aphorism means, in my
case, that I must marry a rich woman, and hold my own in my native
county whenever the reigning potentate is polite enough to retire to the
dusky shades whither all earthly sovereigns must go.
“Poor little Susan! pretty little Susan! When I am a county magnate,
laying down the law at the head of my table in the great dining-room at
the hall, shall I look back and think of these days, and smile at
myself, remembering that I could be so foolish as to go out on a wet
Sunday to escort a little nursemaid along a damp clay road?
“Read hard all the afternoon: dined on an elderly fowl flavoured with
Dutch oven--a bird that must have known Coltonslough when the first
bow-windowed house was a damp brickwork skeleton, grim and open to the
howling of the winds. Read for some time after dinner, and let my fire
out. Went downstairs to hunt up matches and firewood, and found my
landlady and Susan sitting opposite to each other at a little table with
one tallow-candle, reading pious compositions of an evangelical
tendency. They both seemed glad to see me; so I stopped and talked to
them. Susan had read the ‘Prisoner of Chillon;’ she read it last night,
and cried over it ‘fearful,’ my landlady informed me; so we were able to
talk about the poem, and I read two or three of the fugitive pieces
aloud. I used to be rather great at the debating-club at O., and I gave
them the ‘Thyrzas’ and ‘Day of my Destinys’ very strong. I could see the
tears shining in Susan’s eyes before I’d finished. I used to recite
poetry to Rosa sometimes, when I’d been taking too much Bass, and we
stood in the moonlit porch at the King’s Arms, with the river, and the
willows, and the towing-path all of a shimmer in the silvery light; but
one is apt to get tired of reciting sentimental poetry to a young person
who cries, ‘Lor’, how funny!’ at the close of some passionate verse. I
remember thundering out that grand anathema of Tom Moore’s against the
Prince Regent, ‘Go, deceiver, go!’ and my Rosa asked me naïvely what the
gentleman had done that the other gentleman should use such bad language
to him. No, Rosa, your strong point was not intellect. In the matter of
sticky curls and large black eyes you are unsurpassed, but the
sentimental element in your nature may be represented by zero.
“_November 30th._--More blanks in my journal. I said we were growing
alarmingly intimate; such an intimacy is alarming to a fellow who came
to Coltonslough bent on devoting himself to Aristotle and Aristophanes,
Æschylus and Euripides, and all that sort of people. Have been reading
‘The Clouds’ all this morning, but found a strange undercurrent of Susan
Turner pervading that classic satire; and I mean to go in and win this
time: those fellows at St. Boniface sha’n’t be able to laugh at my
discomfiture a second time. Why were women created for the trouble and
confusion of the superior sex? I thought I should be so safe at
Coltonslough, remote from Rosa, the Delilah of my youth; and lo! here is
another Delilah, a thousand times more dangerous--a shy, brown-eyed
Omphale, for whose sake any intellectual Hercules on this earth would
meekly hold the distaff. She is _so_ pretty; and all those modest,
shrinking ways have such an unspeakable fascination after a long course
of Rosa’s sharp repartees, all redolent of the bar and the beer-engines.
I can never dissociate Rosa from the smell of malt liquors and ardent
spirits, with just a faint suspicion of lemons and stale pork-pie. But
there must be something extraordinary about _this_ girl, for her vulgar
surroundings do not seem to vulgarize her. I don’t mean that she is one
of nature’s duchesses, or any humbug of that sort. I have no belief in
nature’s nobility, and to my mind a duchess is a person who has been
cradled in Belgravia, whose long-clothes were flounced with _point
d’Alençon_, and to whom the wrong side of Temple Bar would be as strange
as the centre of Africa. I should by no means care to see my little Susy
in a London drawing-room; but I can fancy her domiciled in some rustic
cottage in the lake district, a patient Wordsworthian little handmaiden,
waiting upon and worshipping her husband, and getting him cosy
breakfasts, with silvery trout broiled to perfection, and mushrooms
newly-gathered from the neighbouring plains. If I were only an embryo
curate, with neither expectations nor ambitious desires, I scarcely
think that I could find a better wife than this simple gazelle-eyed
maiden; but---- Oh, that terrible monosyllable! The history of all the
world seems made up of buts and ifs.
“My afternoon stroll upon the Esplanade has grown into an established
thing. Sixpence judiciously bestowed upon the children despatches those
young abominations scurrying over the waste ground to an emporium which
they call ‘the shop,’ whence they return after an interval, embrowned
and sticky with the traces of ginger-bread and barley-sugar. In the
meanwhile Susan and I are alone on that dreary Esplanade. What is it
Byron says about youth, and solitude, and the sea? Well, that sort of
thing _is_ rather a dangerous combination; and I begin to think that if
I want to redeem my character at St. B., I shall be obliged to take
myself and my books away from Coltonslough. ‘Breathes there the wretch
with soul so dead,’ who could sit in that dingy parlour, coaching
himself in the classics, while one of the prettiest girls in all the
British dominions is walking up and down the Esplanade opposite his
window, and thinking of him? Yes, she thinks of me, and expects me, when
that yellow streak begins to glimmer in the west. I have seen her head
turned towards my window; and then I pitch my friend Sophocles into the
remotest corner, and go out for my afternoon stroll.
“_December 10._--Yes, the dismal confession must be written, or the
account between R. L. and self closed for ever. I am in love--seriously,
desperately, unreasonably in love--with a young person whose social
status is something between that of a parlour-maid and a
nursery-governess. Could she be worse off than she is now? Could any
turn in the wheel of fortune leave her in a lower place than that she
now occupies? Scarcely! I don’t believe in those dismal histories which
the Minerva Press was wont to disseminate. Susan is just the sort of
girl to fall on her feet. Those shy, sensitive creatures always know how
to take care of themselves, and often do remarkably well in life. It’s
your dashing, high-spirited, strong-minded girl who goes to the bad.
Goodness knows I’m not a bad-hearted fellow. I can’t look at such a girl
as Susan without worrying myself about her future career. There’s
scarcely any sacrifice I wouldn’t make--short of the sacrifice of my own
prospects--in order to insure her welfare. Yes, the little stranger, let
into my dwelling unawares, has strung his bow and twanged his arrow home
to my heart. I am really in love this time. I used to feel savage with
those St. B. fellows when they talked nonsense to Rosa: but I think I
should annihilate the man who so much as looked at this girl. Yes; I am
prepared to make any sacrifice--short of the destruction of my own
prospects. Your really rich man, or your penniless beggar, can afford to
make a fool of himself; but I stand just in that middle distance between
the golden lands of plenty and the sterile plains of poverty, in which a
man must needs be peculiarly circumspect.
“_17th._--I have broken the ice at last. What a little Puritan she is!
And yet I know that she loves me, with the regular Haidee or Zuleika
sort of devotion: would like to kneel at my feet and offer me tiresome
flowers, when I was absorbed in the classic fogies, and all that sort of
thing. A long interview on the Esplanade this afternoon. I beat the
ground with the greatest discretion; for it would have been the easiest
thing in the world to frighten her. It must be a marriage--a _bonâ fide_
marriage, secret, of course. She won’t object to that. But upon the
other point I can see she would be inflexible. Those quiet people are
always obstinate. Ay di me, my pretty Susy, I fear that you and I must
say Good-bye. And I am really over head and ears in that dismal pit. I
am most absurdly fond of her; that’s the worst of it. Yes, we must say
Good-bye. The catechisms in the rector’s parlour and the Sunday-school
have done their work, and Susan Turner will be a drudge all her life
rather than surrender those ridiculous prejudices which it is the
fashion to implant in the minds of rustic youth. _Addio_, my pretty
Susan. I cannot imagine anything more delightful than our quiet walks in
the cold gray twilight; I cannot conceive any eyes--out of a Murillo--so
beautiful as those brown orbs of yours--orbs is the proper phrase, I
think, when a fellow is sentimental;--but the price demanded is too
heavy. One may buy gold in too dear a market; and ten years hence, with
blighted prospects, and half-a-dozen children, I might grow tired of my
white doe of what’s-its-name, and fancy a blue-eyed Greuze--how
wonderful that man was in his manipulations of violet-hued pupils
swimming in enamelled whiteness!--instead of my Murillo.
“_20th._--I began to pack my books the day before yesterday, and yet I
linger. ‘Tell me, my heart, if this be love!’ Not much doubt about it, I
fear. But only a day or two more, and then--and then good-bye, pretty
puritanical Susan, with your Sunday-school morality, and all that innate
obstinacy peculiar to quiet women. I shall have forgotten her in six
weeks, I dare say. But then that consolatory idea of the future oblivion
won’t lessen the present anguish of parting. We may forget all about a
gigantic triple-pronged carious tooth when we turn our back upon the
dentist’s torture-chamber, but the pang of extraction is none the less.
I shall forget her, and some other eyes will haunt me in my sleep; but
there must be a long blank interval of weariness before the Lethean
waters can wash away that artless face. I have plumbed her simple mind
to its uttermost depths, and have found nothing like deception or
pretence. So we must part. I to go forth and do my best at opening the
great oyster; she to remain here as my landlady’s drudge and companion.
Poor little thing! I hope she’ll miss me when I go. I shouldn’t like to
think of her enjoying a flirtation with some new lodger--a city clerk,
who would wear ready-made clothes bought somewhere in Shoreditch, and
smoke cheap Manillas. No, I shouldn’t like to fancy her happy when I am
gone. It wouldn’t have been pleasant to the Corsair to imagine Medora
flirting with mercantile mariners in his absence.
“_21st._--I have packed all my books, except a few German cribs. Perhaps
it was as well, for my studies had grown very desultory. How can a
fellow read hard when there is a pretty girl in the case, and he has
been so profound an idiot as to fall in love with her? But ‘it is
written’, as the followers of the prophet observe, and I must go. I have
told Susan. We had a very affecting interview yesterday. How the poor
little girl cried! And I hate to see a woman cry; it’s so excruciating
to the feelings of a good-hearted fellow; and the prettiest woman’s nose
is apt to get just a _leetle_ red when ‘the tears come trickling down,
down, down.’ O Susan, that I should quote that familiar ballad of Lord
Lovell when I write of your sorrow! But I suppose there is something of
the _persifleur_ in my nature, for I don’t often find myself very
earnest about anything. And so we walked up and down the Esplanade; she
crying, and I talking. I flatter myself I talked rather well. There was
just that dash of excitement about the business which makes a fellow
talk well. But my eloquence was all of no avail; Alfred de Musset,
Byron, George Sand, Rousseau, and Thomas Moore, all combined, cannot
prevail against the tenets of the Sunday-school; and so we are to part,
‘in silence and tears, half broken-hearted, to sever,’ &c., unless I
were prepared to sacrifice my prospects and put the fatal noose about my
neck.
“Bah! it would be too absurd, too utterly preposterous. Such things have
been, and have always resulted in pretty much the same way. Your poet
Shelley gets expelled from the University because he can’t keep his
convictions to himself, marries a simple rustic maiden, grows tired of
her, and falls in love with someone else, whereon rustic maiden drowns
herself, whence unspeakable _esclandre_ and confusion.
“_January 2nd._--No, the thing cannot be done; the sacrifice would be
too great. The days of the Minerva Press are past. The yellow
post-chaise, the lonely country inn, the college friend who is
introduced in a surplice, and acts as clergyman--alas! are not these
exploded with the dark ages? Were there ever any such marriages, I
wonder? or were they only figments of the romancer’s brain? At any rate,
anything of that kind must be impossible nowadays. And then a man must
be a consummate scoundrel who could devise such a plot. I don’t pretend
to the Sunday-school species of morality; but _nemo repente fuit
turpissimus_, as Juvenal has it. I am not so bad as that.
“_5th._--She is very unhappy; and how hard it seems to leave her to this
drudgery and desolation--Coltonslough, and my landlady, and my
landlady’s children, all the year round! And she is just the ‘creature
not too bright or good,’ &c.; the very woman of all others for a cottage
in the lake districts, or a Devonshire fishing-village, or any pretty
out-of-the-way haven, where a man might take his rest. And yet I must
leave her here, baffled entirely by the Sunday-school precepts with
which her shallow mind has been imbued. I have no time to play the
Lovelace, and I don’t want such a victory as his. I have had tiresome
letters from home. They will expect me to get my degree; and I am free
to confess that my reading since I have been at Coltonslough has been
the merest moonshine. Decidedly I must leave this place by to-night’s
express. ‘Better to die by sudden shock,’ &c.: and as for Susan, it is
only a natural chapter in such a girl’s history. She will break her
heart, and then marry a small tradesman, who will give her a Paisley
shawl and a black-silk gown to wear on Sundays.
“_6th._ Another day, and I am still here. I was awake all last night,
thinking of all manner of possibilities, or perhaps impossibilities. The
yellow post-chaise and the college friend in a surplice are obsolete
absurdities; but how about a marriage before the Registrar? Is there
anything so very impossible in a marriage before the Registrar, which
shall not be, say, _too_ binding? Why not a marriage before the
Registrar, between eight and twelve in the forenoon, with open doors, in
the presence of two witnesses, &c.? You walk into an office, very much
like any other office, and you see an official very much like any other
official, and there is a trifling formula, and a little signing and
countersigning, and so on, and the business is done. But even about this
there would be a good deal of trouble, and the college friend would
still be necessary, though not in a surplice--and the witnesses--and the
office. _Is_ the game worth the candle? Am I really so desperately in
love? And then, again, supposing the game worth the cost of
illumination, these sort of games are so apt to be dangerous; and
awkward stories crop up against one in after-life; with perhaps Chancery
suits, and so forth. No, it is too much trouble. It will be better for
Susan and I to shake hands, like sensible people, and say Good-bye.
“_7th._--A very long talk with Susan. I told her that we must part; our
roads in life lying separate, and so on. Poor child! her grief was
something very terrible. We had wandered out to some lonely ground
beyond the Esplanade, leaving those abominable children to disport
themselves as they pleased. We sat down upon a little bank at the edge
of a great ploughed field, with the grey sea before us. The poor child
sobbed as if her heart would have broken. I am no deliberate Lovelace,
but I suppose I have in this instance pursued the prey with something of
a Mexican trapper’s intensity. I never meant to be in earnest; but have
been drifted, as it were, by the chances of the situation; and people
who let lodgings at dull watering-places really should not employ such
pretty parlour-maids. Poor, tender-hearted little Susy! I never thought
she could have grown so fond of me, or that a little sentimental
spouting, and a few pretty speeches, could have gone so far. I should
have been a callous wretch if I had not been touched by her grief; and I
was inexpressibly touched; so much so that I flung all good resolutions
to swell the general heap of paving material for the halls of Pluto, and
told my Susy that there was an alternative for this miserable parting if
she would--trust me--and consent to a marriage before the Registrar.
“She will trust me. I explained to her the nature of the ceremonial I
proposed, and how all unnecessary publicity and the ruin of my prospects
might be avoided thereby. And then the poor little thing burst out with
a whole string of romantic protestations.
“Did she want me to sacrifice my prospects? Oh no, no! Did she want to
be acknowledged before the world as my wife? No, a thousand times. She
knew very well that she was too ignorant and humbly educated to support
such an honour. She only wanted to know herself that she was my wife, my
own lawful wife, united to me by the laws of heaven and earth.
“The laws of heaven and earth as administered in a Registrar’s office. I
have cast prudence to the winds, and am now committed to the step which
I only dreamed of as a possibility last night. I have a sort of
foreboding that the business will bring me into trouble; but having gone
so far now, am I to recede? And then I am really desperately in love
with this Cornish girl.
“How is it to be done? These things seem so simple when one contemplates
them in a dreamy reverie engendered by tobacco-smoke. It will be rather
a complicated business, I fear; and the college friend, that is the
grand question. Who is to be the convenient college friend? Perhaps I
had better sleep upon it.
“_8th._--After a world of serious consideration, I can think of no one
but my brother. He’s a selfish beggar, who’d scarcely wet the tips of
his fingers to save an entire ship’s crew from drowning; but he owes me
money, and ought to go through fire and water to serve me. At any rate
he is not troubled by any scruples or compunctions of the Sunday-school
order; and then he’s a clever fellow, and on the spot. I’ll go up to
town to-morrow and sound him about it.”
There was no more. The journal ended here; and Francis Tredethlyn sat
staring at the last half-page, sorely puzzled as to how he was to read
that broken history.
That the lines before him had been written by a heartless profligate he
could scarcely doubt, little as he had been accustomed to sit in
judgment on his fellow-men. But he was slow to understand the full
measure of the writer’s depravity. A more subtle mind than his was
required to read the hidden meaning of that carelessly-written diary.
Francis Tredethlyn only understood that his cousin had fallen into the
hands of a selfish worldling, who had been fascinated by her pretty
face, but who set his own welfare and his own happiness before all
thought of her love or sorrow.
“He meant to marry her,” thought the young man; “thank heaven for that.
No matter how secret or clandestine the marriage may have been, it shall
be my task to find Susan, and to make that marriage public.”
Mr. Tredethlyn went early the next day to Gray’s Inn, there to hold a
solemn consultation with the chief of that firm which had transacted all
Oliver Tredethlyn’s legal affairs during a period of some forty years.
To Mr. Kursdale, Francis told all that he had been able to discover of
his cousin Susan’s history; and to the lawyer’s hands he confided the
manuscript volume surrendered to him by Mrs. Burfield.
“You’ll be able to make more out of it than I can, Mr. Kursdale,” he
said. “Heaven knows I read it carefully; but I can only understand that
the man is a scoundrel, and that it was my cousin’s evil fortune to love
him. I wonder how it is that a simple innocent country girl always does
fall in love with a scoundrel, if he has only got a handsome face and a
smooth tongue?”
The next day was Saturday, and Francis Tredethlyn’s thoughts were
strangely divided between the contemplation of his cousin’s unknown
wrongs, and the expectation of a day in the sunny gardens and
drawing-rooms at the Cedars. Late in the evening there came a letter
from Mr. Kursdale, the solicitor,--
“_Yourself and Another._
“DEAR SIR,--After a very careful perusal of the MS. volume
intrusted to me by you yesterday, I regret to say that I can
only come to one conclusion respecting the intentions of the
writer.
“I believe that it was this person’s design to involve Miss
Susan Tredethlyn in a fictitious marriage, which should be, in
fact, no marriage at all.
“A marriage before the Registrar would have been as entirely
valid, if duly performed, as any religious solemnization.
“I conclude, therefore, that the writer of the MS. diary
contemplated a sham ceremony, in the presence of some person,
falsely representing himself to be the Superintendent Registrar.
“I much fear that your cousin’s simplicity would render her
likely to be the dupe of any such plot.
“Should you wish to communicate with me further on this subject,
I shall be glad to wait upon you at any time you may appoint.
“I am, dear Sir, yours very obediently,
“JAMES KURSDALE.”
“A mock marriage!” thought Francis Tredethlyn. “Yes; I understand it all
now. There was an insolence in his manner of writing of my pretty Susy
that stung me to the very heart. No honest man ever wrote like that of
any woman; _no_ man would write like that of a woman whom he meant to
make his wife.”
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