HOW WILLIAM GODDARD CHANGED HIS NAME.
This gentle woman, who had long since left youth behind her, was
experiencing for the first time the influence of romantic love. She
was in her forty-seventh year, a widow who had been a faithful and
devoted wife, and yet her heart was the heart of a girl. The age of
passion was passed. The fact that up to the time of her marriage she
had had no sweetheart, had never once found her heart dwelling on any
young man of her acquaintance, may prove that she was never capable of
the passion of love. There was at present no passion in her soul. But
the overpowering and self-annihilating sentiment of love filled her
now, and for the first time in her life she felt that she lived.
With her, as in all true love worthy of the name, she wished to get
nothing; the desire, the insatiable desire, to give was paramount,
with no rival feeling near its throne. There was no coquetry of
concealment in her words or manner. When this man asked her to be his
wife she took him tenderly by the hand and placed before him all the
reasons why she was not worthy of him.
She was, she told him, older than he by many years. She was a widow.
She had suffered long ill-health, was not now quite recovered, and had
been cautioned by the doctors that her extraordinary respite from
helplessness might be ended any moment. She could never hope to be an
active woman again. She could not go about with him as his wife
should. He was a young man. A man of five-and-thirty was young enough
to marry a girl thirty years younger than she was. He had told her he
had found a wonderful plant in South America, a plant which would
yield a fibre of inestimable value, a fibre that one day might be
expected to supersede cotton and wool. He had told her that as soon as
he had secured his patent and got up a company he should be one of the
richest men in England, in the world. Why should he, whose star was
rising, link himself to her, whose star was sinking fast, who could
not hope to live very long, and who must not expect that even the
short span allowed to her would be unbroken by a return of infirmity
and helplessness? If he wanted money to carry out his great scheme, if
he wanted not to share the harvest of his discovery with strangers,
she was not without means, and every penny she could command was most
heartily and humbly at his service.
He listened to her without any show of impatience, without a single
interruption. When she had done he went on as though she had said
nothing.
"I have everything on earth I want but one, and that one is more
important to my happiness than all the rest put together. I want you
for my wife. Will you marry me, Nellie?"
She smiled, and gazed at him out of eyes that told him he was
unspeakably dear to her. "If you will have me you may," she said, and
smiled again. Her husband had never in all their joint lives called
her anything but Ellen. It touched her tender and confiding heart to
be, as it were, drawn by that dear and familiar form of her name into
the heart and nature of this man.
"I must and will," he said, and kissed her.
"If you care for me," she said, taking one of his hands in both her
own, "I am yours to take by reason of my love for you, and by reason
of your having restored my life when I had given it up. When I gave it
up it was no longer mine. It became yours when you gave it back to me.
What is left of it is yours, and everything else I have. Even my very
name must be yours if you claim me."
"I do claim you, and no power on earth shall take you from me."
"Or you from me?"
"Or me from you, I swear."
He kissed her again. That was the betrothal.
There was nothing violent in the scene. Except for the two kisses and
the beautiful light in the eyes of the woman and the clasping hands,
any one seeing it and hearing nothing would have had no reason to
suspect that it was a love scene. He was calm, firm, persistent,
grave. He did not smile once. He indulged in no heroics, no
extravagances, no transports. She admired him all the more for this.
Anything of the kind would have been out of place, shocking. She was
no young girl, to be won by rhapsodies or carried away by transports.
She knew that although her youth had left her all her good looks were
not yet gone. But he never said a word about her beauty. He was too
sensible, and too noble, and too chivalrous, she told herself, to
think she, a woman of forty-seven and in weak health, could be pleased
by flippant flattery.
They sat hand in hand for a while, she in a dream of contented
happiness. To her this was not the aftermath of love gathered off an
autumn land; it was the first growth, which had never come above the
soil until now, because no sun had shone on the field before.
There came no let or hindrance in the course of William Goddard's
wooing. He had only been a few months in Richmond, but during that
time his conduct there had been above reproach. At first, it is true,
he had not been a regular attendant at church on Sunday. He had gone
now and then, but not every Sabbath. From the beginning of his
love-making he never missed the forenoon, and often attended the
evening, services. He kept much to himself, and made no friends. He
was a strict teetotaler, and frequented no such profitless places as
clubs or billiard-rooms. When people heard of the engagement between
Mrs. Crawford and William Goddard they said she was a lucky woman, and
that her second husband would be even better, if such a thing were
possible, than her first. If there had been in the whole town a rumour
to his disadvantage it would have swelled into a howl, for those who
knew the gentle widow felt a personal interest in her, a love for her,
as though she had been a mother or sister.
When Mrs. Farraday went finally to take the head of her brother's
(Edward Chatterton's) house at Rochester she naturally told him all
the news of Richmond, of the fire, the rescue, the love-making, the
engagement or understanding between the widow and the heroic next-door
lodger. She told him everything she knew, and minutely described the
two people and the two houses.
Her brother seemed interested. He was a florid, well conditioned,
good-humoured, shrewd man of fifty, not averse from gossip in the
evening when he sat in front of his own fire, with his legs stretched
out before him, smoking his pipe.
"What is known of this man? You say he has been only a few months in
Richmond?"
"That is all. I believe he has spent most of his life in South
America. For a while he was in a gold mine, and he was for a while a
farmer, I think."
"And what brought him back to England? South America is a fine
place--that is, parts of it--if you are any good and have an opening.
What did he come back to England for? Has he made his fortune?"
"I don't think he has made his fortune. He is not an old man, not even
middle-aged. He is almost young--not more than thirty-five or so."
"Then _why_ did he come back, and what is he losing months of his time
in England for--at his time of life, too, when he ought to be working
his hardest?"
"I don't know exactly. I think he has found some plant in the llanos
out of which he can make cloth, and has come over about starting a
company and taking out a patent. He says the plant is more valuable
than flax or wool or cotton."
"Or all together?"
"Yes, I think he said that, but I am not sure. I haven't a good memory
for this sort of thing."
"Kitty?"
"Well?"
"I have a fixed idea that every man who wants to take out a patent and
start a company, and is months about the job, is either a born idiot
or a consummate rogue. I have a very poor opinion of this Mr. Crawford
Number Two."
"Good gracious, John! aren't you very hard on a man you never saw?"
He nodded his head gravely at the fire, but took no other notice of
her question. He puffed at his pipe a minute in silence, blowing the
smoke straight out in front of him, as if in pursuit of some design.
Then he took his pipe out of his mouth with one hand, waved away the
banks of smoke lying before him with the other, and turning round to
her, said:
"And, Kitty, I should not be at all surprised to find that he set fire
to the house and then rescued the fool of a woman for reasons best
known to himself."
Mrs. Farraday started to her feet aghast.
"Do you know, John, that you are saying the most awful things a man
could say? You horrify me!"
"I mean," he went on, looking once more lazily into the fire, "that I
think he set fire to the house and rescued the woman in order that he
might have a claim upon her, and that he doesn't care a ---- for her,
and that all he wants, or ever thought of, is her money."
"John, you do not know the man, and it is shameful of you to say such
things, and you could be put in prison for saying them; and then to
think of your calling the dearest creature alive 'that fool of a
woman,' is worse than any libel you could speak of think of!"
The tears were in Mrs. Farraday's eyes, and she could hardly command
her voice.
"Think over the matter. He knows this fool of a woman is a helpless
invalid. He knows from you that you are coming here. He learns from
you that there are two strange servants who sleep in the top of the
house; and on the very night you are away, and the first night for
years this elderly woman is sleeping alone, the house next door to
which he lives takes fire; the kitchen over which she sleeps takes
fire, and there is a great smell of paraffin oil in the place,
although no one knew of any being in the house. And lo and behold you!
when the woman is just dead, he comes, bursts in her window, and
rescues her, and makes love to this well-off invalid woman--he who has
come back to England at the age of thirty-five, without a fortune, and
with a cock-and-bull story about a patent and a fibre."
"Good-night. I will listen to no more such awful talk."
"Good-night, Kitty; yet, take my word for it, he set fire to that
house."
But then, as Mrs. Farraday had remarked, her brother did not know the
man; nor, moreover, did he live at Richmond.
No one suggested that there was any reason for delaying the marriage
between Goddard and the widow. He had not yet secured his patent, and
therefore could not start his company. Now and then he had to go up to
London for a day or two to see the artificers who were carrying out
his designs for the machines to be employed in converting his plant
into cloth. When he returned to Singleton Terrace after these brief
absences, he made up for lost time by increased tenderness and
devotion.
He never came back empty-handed, and he never brought any splendid
present; always a book, or a bouquet, or a basket of fruit--nothing
more. He had bought her a ring, of course; but even that was
inexpensive and simple--three small diamonds in a plain gold band.
"I shall be poor, Nellie, until I am rich; and I shall not be rich in
money until my patent and my company are all right."
"But when you get your patent and your company, you will not want to
go away again to America?" she asked anxiously. "I do not think I
could face so long a voyage."
"O, no! There will be no need for me to go out again. I have all
arranged over there. I have an intelligent and energetic agent there.
I will remain at home attending to the interests of the company (of
which I shall, of course, be chairman), and hunting up markets for my
fibre. We shall very likely have to leave this place and live in town,
take a good house in Bayswater or Kensington, for we must do a little
entertaining. You would not mind changing Richmond for Bayswater or
Kensington?"
"Nothing could please me better than to be of any use I can to you;
and if my health keeps good, as good as it is now, I could manage the
entertaining very well indeed."
"You grow stronger every day. I have not a particle of fear on the
score of your health. I dare not have any fear of that, Nellie. You
must not even refer to such a thing again. When we have taken that new
place I lay you a bunch of roses you will dance at our house-warming,
ay, out-dance all the young girls in the place."
She sighed, and took one of his hands in both hers and smiled. She had
never dreamed of a lover, but if she had dreamed of one in her latter
years he surely would be such a one as this. How sensible and
considerate and affectionate he was! If he had been more ardent, more
enthusiastic, she might fear his displays were insincere, that
although he loved her then, he would tire of her soon after they were
married, and, she being so much older than he, take his ardours and
transports to the feet of younger and more beautiful goddesses.
But with such as he there could be no such fear. Raptures might please
a girl, and be excused in a young man towards a girl, but from any man
to her they would be absurd and repulsive. It would be impossible to
believe them sincere, and the mere idea that a lover's words and
actions were not the outcome of candid feeling would be shocking,
destructive of all sympathy and self-respect.
But William, her William, as she now called him, was perfect in all he
said and all he did; and of one thing she felt quite sure: that if
ever a cloud came between them in their married life, it would arise
from some defect in her nature, not in his.
When old Crawford made his will a couple of years before his death he
did not wish to place any restraint upon her as to marriage after he
had gone, except that she was to keep his name. He had made all his
money himself; he had worked hard for it, allowing himself no luxuries
and little comfort for the best part of life, and deferring marriage
until he was well on in years and had given up active business. He had
no child, no relative he knew of in the world. He would have welcomed
a son with joy. Nothing would have pleased him more than to think that
the name which he had raised up out of poverty into modest affluence
would survive and flourish when he was no more.
But a son was denied to him. All hope of an heir was gone. He loved
his wife in his own way, and he would not fetter her future with an
imposed lifelong widowhood. She was to be left free to wed again if
her choice lay that way. She had been a true and tender wife to him,
the one source of peaceful happiness in his old age. She should not
feel the dead hand of a niggard; she should have all his money, but
she should keep his name. His name should not die out wholly even when
she ceased to be. He should leave her all the income from his property
for her life, or as long as she retained the name he had given her. If
she changed that name the name should not die. His money should go to
Guy's Hospital, and be known, while that great handmaiden of the sick
poor survived, as the Crawford Bequest. When she followed him to the
grave the money should go finally to the hospital, and be of bounteous
service to the indigent sick and a perpetual living monument to his
name.
"Mrs. Crawford," said Mr. Brereton, her lawyer, when he came to draw
up the necessary documents in connection with the marriage of the
widow and Goddard, "has only a life interest in the estate. It goes to
Guy's Hospital upon her death."
"Is it necessary for us to take further into consideration that remote
and most melancholy contingency?" asked Goddard.
"No, no," said Mr. Brereton hastily. "But business is business, and I
thought it only right to mention the matter to you."
Goddard merely bowed, as though dismissing the horrible thought from
amongst them.
Goddard settled upon her ten thousand pounds.
"I did not know you had so much money, William," said she, "but surely
it is a waste of law expenses to settle anything on me? In the course
of nature, even if I were not ailing, I must go first."
When he told her of the settlement he had made they were alone.
"I haven't the money now, but it will come as a first charge on my
general estate when the company is floated. As to my outliving you, we
do not know. Who can tell? It is well always to be prepared for the
unforeseen, the unforeseeable. And as to which of us shall live the
longer, let us speak or think no more of that. Let us tell ourselves
that such a consideration belongs to the remote future. Let us devote
ourselves to the happy"--he kissed her--"happy present."
At the time William Crawford, lately William Goddard, returned from
his first visit to Welford they had been about three months married,
and Mrs. Crawford's old affliction had gradually been stealing back
upon her.