Kitabı oku: «A Song of a Single Note: A Love Story», sayfa 15

CHAPTER XI.
THE QUESTION OF MARRIAGE

Maria reached London in the early days of June. Her voyage had been uneventful, and though long, not unpleasant. Still she was glad to feel the earth beneath her feet, and the stir of trafficking humanity around her. They landed late in the afternoon and she remained with the Gordons all night, but early the following morning the colonel took her to Bloomsbury. Mr. Semple's house was not difficult to find; it was the largest in the fine square, an imposing mansion of red brick with a wide flight of stone steps leading to its main entrance. This entrance impressed Maria very much. It was so ample and so handsome.

"I think, indeed," said the Colonel to her, "two sedan chairs could easily be taken in, or out, at the same time."

Her welcome, if not effusive, was full of kindness and interest; she was brought at once to the sunny parlor at the back of the house where her father and stepmother were breakfasting, and nothing could have been more properly affectionate than the latter's greeting. And although she had breakfasted with the Gordons, she found it pleasant enough to sit down beside her father and talk of the voyage and the war, and the conditions of life in America. He was obviously both astonished and delighted with his daughter; her beauty was so great, her manner so charming, her conversation so full of clever observations, that he felt her to be a personal credit. "There are very few young girls so perfectly formed, so admirably finished," he said to himself; and he rose and walked loftily about the room, proudly aware of the piquant loveliness and intelligence of the girl who called him father. The word sounded well in his ears, and even touched his heart; and she herself was a crowning grace to his splendid habitation. And for her, and for all her beauties and graces and accomplishments, he took the entire credit. She was his daughter, as much his property as his wife, or his house, or his purse.

This appropriation of herself did not then displease Maria. She was longing to be loved, longing to be cared for and protected. And she loved her father, and felt that she could easily love him a great deal more. His appearance invited this feeling. He was a strikingly handsome man, though touching fifty years of age, tall and erect like her grandfather, but with a manner much more haughty and dictatorial. He was dressed in a dark blue cloth coat lined with white satin and ornamented with large gilt buttons; his long vest and breeches were of black satin, his stockings of black silk, and his low shoes clasped with gold latches. He wore his own hair combed back from his large ruddy face and tied behind with a black ribbon.

His new wife was very suitable to him. She was thirty-eight years old and distinctly handsome, tall and fair, rather highly colored, and dressed with great care in a morning robe of Indian silk. She was very cheerful and composed, had fine health, lived in the unruffled atmosphere of her interests, and had no nerves worth speaking of – a nice woman apparently, who would always behave as nice women were then taught to behave. And yet there were within her elements much at variance with that habitual subservience she showed her husband. Maria was not long in discovering that, though she spoke little and never boasted, she got all she wished to get and did all she wished to do.

After Mr. Semple had gone to business she took Maria to the rooms prepared for her. They were light and airy and prettily furnished, and Mrs. Semple pointed out particularly the little sitting-room attached. It contained a small library of books which are now classic, a spinnet for practice, maps and globes, and a convenient desk furnished with all the necessary implements for writing or correspondence.

Maria had fully resolved not to be forced into any kind of study, but as she stood listening to her stepmother's plans and explanations she changed her mind. She resolved rather to insist on the finest teachers London could furnish. She would perfect herself in music and singing; she would enlarge her knowledge and accomplishments in every direction, and all this that she might astonish and please Lord Medway when he came for her. That he would do so she never doubted; and he could not doubt her love when he saw and heard what she had done to make herself more worthy of him.

But this incitement she kept to herself. She permitted her father and stepmother to believe that the fulfilling of their desires was her sole motive, and this beautiful obedience gave her much liberty in other directions. So the weeks and months went past very pleasantly. She had an Italian singing master and a French dancing master, Kalkbrenner gave her music lessons, Madame Jermyn taught her embroidery and lace, and two hours every day were spent in the study of history and geography, and her much neglected grammar. It was all pleasant enough; every master or mistress brought in a fresh element, a little gossip, a different glimpse of the great city in which they all lived. And the preparation of her studies and the practice of her music gave her almost unbounded control of her time. If things were not agreeable down stairs her study was a safe retreat, and she began to take off their shelves the books provided for her amusement and instruction, and to make friends of them and become familiar with their thoughts and opinions.

The evenings were often spent at the theatre or opera, and still more frequently at Vauxhall or Ranelagh gardens, and at the latter places she was always sure of a personal triumph. Her beauty was so remarkable and so admirably set off by her generally fine toilets that she quickly became a noted visitor. Sir Horace Walpole had called her on one occasion "The American Beauty," and the sobriquet clung like a perfume to her. When the Semples had a box and a supper in the rotunda the most noble and fashionable of the young bloods hung round it, paraded past it, or when possible took a box in such close proximity that their toasts to "The Divine American" could be distinctly or indistinctly heard. Both Mr. and Mrs. Semple were proud of this notoriety. It was quite in keeping with the social élat of the age that every glass should be raised when they entered their box at the theatre or opera; quite honorable and flattering to walk between the admiring beaux who watched their entry into the gardens. Maria gave them distinction, exhilarating notice and attention. She was spoken of in the papers as "the lovely Miss Semple, the beautiful daughter of our new collector," and her début at the next spring functions of the Court was confidently predicted.

The break in this generally agreeable life came, of course, through a man's selfish desires, dignified with the name of love. Mrs. Semple had a cousin who was largely engaged in the Mediterranean trade – then entirely in English hands – and when Maria had been about eighteen months in London he returned to that city after a sojourn in Turkey and the Greek islands of nearly three years. He had been named at intervals to Maria, but his existence had made no impression upon her, and she was astonished on coming to the dinner table one day to meet him there. The instinct of conquest was immediately aroused; she smiled and he was subdued. The man who had snubbed Turkish bashaws and won concessions from piratical beys in Tunis and Algiers was suddenly afraid of a woman. He might have run away, but he did not; he was under a spell, and he went with her to the opera, and became her willing slave thereafter.

Now during her residence in London, Maria had had many admirers; some she had frowned away, some her father had bowed out, but Richard Spencer was a very different man to be reckoned with. He was Mrs. Semple's cousin, and Mrs. Semple was strongly attached to every member of her family. Cousin Richard's suit was advocated, pressed, even insisted upon by her. He was present at every meal and went with them to every entertainment, and the generality of Maria's admirers understood that he was her accepted lover.

In fact, this relationship was speedily assumed by the whole Semple household, and before the man had even had the courage to ask her to be his wife she was made to understand that her marriage to Cousin Richard was a consummation certain and inevitable. Of course she rebelled, treating the supposition at first as an absurdity, and, when this attitude was resented and punished, as an impossibility.

The affair soon became complicated with business relations and important money interests, Mr. Semple becoming a silent partner in the gigantic ventures of the Spencer Company. He had always felt, even in Maria's social triumphs, a proprietary share; she was his daughter, he could give or refuse her society to all who asked it. She had never denied his power to dismiss all the pretenders to her favor that had as yet asked it. He considered himself to have an equal right to grant her hand to the suitor he thought proper for her.

And as his interests became more and more associated with Mr. Spencer's he became more and more positive in Mr. Spencer's favor. There was little need then for Mrs. Semple's diplomacies. He had "taken the matter in his own hands" he said, "and he should carry it through."

For some time Maria did not really believe that her father and stepmother were in earnest, but on her twentieth birthday the position was made painfully clear, for when she came to the breakfast table her father kissed her, an unusual token of affection, and put into her hand an order on his banker for a large sum of money.

"It is for your wedding clothes, Maria," he said, "and I wish you to have the richest and best of everything. Such jewels as I think necessary I will buy for you myself. Our relatives and friends will dine with you to-day and I shall announce your engagement."

"But father!" she exclaimed, "I do not want to marry. Let me return this money. Indeed, I cannot spend it for wedding clothes. The idea is so absurd! I do not want to marry."

"Maria, you are twenty years old this twenty-fifth of November. It is time you settled yourself. Mr. Spencer will have his new house ready by the end of next June. As nearly as I can tell, your marriage to him will take place on the twenty-ninth of June. Your mother thinks that with the help of needlewomen your clothing can be finished by that time."

"I told Mr. Spencer a month ago that I would not marry him."

"All right; girls always say such things. It appears modest, and you have a certain privilege in this respect. But I advise you not to carry such pretty affectations too far."

"Father, I do not love Mr. Spencer."

"He loves you, that is the necessary point. It is not proper, it is not requisite that a girl should take love into her consideration. I have chosen for you a good husband, a man who will probably be Lord Mayor of London within a few years, and the prospect of such an honor ought to content you."

It is difficult for an American girl at this time to conceive of the situation of the daughters of England in the year 1782. The law gave them absolutely into their father's power until they were twenty-one years old; and the law was stupendously strengthened and upheld by universal public approval, and by barriers of social limitations that few women had the daring to cross. Maria was environed by influences that all made for her total subjection to her parent's will, and at this time she ventured no further remark. But her whole nature was insurgent, and she mentally promised herself that neither on the twenty-ninth of June nor on any other day that followed it would she marry Richard Spencer.

After breakfast she went to her room to consider her position, and no one prevented her withdrawal.

"It is the best thing she can do," said Mr. Semple to his wife. "A little reflection will show her the hopeless folly of resistance to my commands."

"Her behavior is not flattering to Richard."

"Richard has more sense than to notice it. He said to me that 'there was always a little chaffering before a good bargain.' He understands women."

"Maria has been brought up badly. She has dangerous ideas about the claims and privileges and personal rights of women."

"Balderdash! Claims of women, indeed! Give them the least power, and they would stake the world away for a whim. See that she dresses herself properly for dinner. I have told her I shall then announce her engagement, and in the midst of all our relatives and friends she will not dare to deny it."

In a great measure Mr. Semple was correct. Maria was not ready to deny it, nor did she think the relatives and friends had anything to do with her private affairs. She made no answer whatever to her father's notice of her approaching marriage, and the congratulations of the company fell upon her consciousness like snowflakes upon a stone wall. They meant nothing at all to her.

The day following Mrs. Semple went to buy the lawn and linen and lace necessary for the wedding garments. Maria would not accompany her; her stepmother complained and Maria was severely reprimanded, and for a few days thoroughly frightened. But a constant succession of such scenes blunted her sense of fear. She remembered her grandfather's brave words, "Be strong and of good courage," and gradually gathered herself together for the struggle she saw to be inevitable. To break her promise to Lord Medway! That was a thing she never would do! No, not even the law of England should make her utter words false to every true feeling she had. And day by day this resolve grew stronger, as day by day it was confronted by a trial she hardly dared to contemplate.

There was no one to whom she could go for advice or sympathy. Mrs. Gordon was in Scotland, where her husband had an estate, and she had no other intimate friend. But at the worst, it was only another year and then she would be her own mistress and Ernest Medway would come and marry her. Of this result she never had one doubt. True, she heard very little from him; but if not one word had come to assure her she would still have been confident that he would keep his word, if alive to do so. Letter-writing was not then the easily practised relief it is now, and she knew Lord Medway disliked it. Yet she was not without even these evidences of his remembrance, and considering the conditions of the country in which they had been written, the great distance between them, the difficulty of getting letters to New York and the uncertainty of getting letters from New York to England, these evidences of his affection had been fairly numerous. All of them had come enclosed in her Uncle Neil's letters, and without mention or explanation, for Neil was sympathetically cautious and did not know what effect they might have on the life of Maria, though he did not know his letters were sure to be inquired after and read by her parents.

They were intensely symbolic of a man who preferred to do rather than to say, and are fairly represented by the three quoted:

"Sweetest Maria: Have you forgiven your adoring lover?

Ernest."

"My Little Darling: I have been wounded. I have been ill with fever; but no pain is like the pain of living away from you.

Ernest."

"Star of My Life: I have counted the days until the twenty-fifth of November; they are two hundred and fifty-five. Every day I come nearer to you, my adorable Maria.

Ernest."

This last letter was dated March the fourteenth, and with it lying next her heart, was it likely she would consent to or even be compelled to marry Richard Spencer? She smiled a positive denial of such a supposition. But for all that, the preparations went on with a stubborn persistence that would have dismayed a weaker spirit. The plans for furnishing the Spencer house, the patterns of the table silver, all the little items of the new life proposed for her were as a matter of duty submitted to her taste or judgment. She was always stolidly indifferent, and her answer was invariably the same, "I do not care. It is nothing to me." Then Mr. Semple would answer with cold authority, "You have excellent taste, Elizabeth. Make the selection you think best for Maria."

Mr. Spencer's method was entirely different. He treated Maria's apathetic unconcern with constant good nature, pretended to believe it maidenly modesty, and under all circumstances refused to understand or appropriate her evident dislike. But his cousin saw the angry sparkle in his black eyes, and to her he had once permitted himself to say, "I am bearing now, Elizabeth. When she is Mrs. Spencer it will be her turn to bear." And Elizabeth did not think it necessary to repeat the veiled threat to Maria's father.

Medway's last letter, dated March the fourteenth, did not reach Maria until May the first. On the morning of that day she had been told by Mrs. Semple to dress and accompany her to Bond Street.

"We are going to choose your wedding dress," she said, "and I do hope, Maria, you will take some interest in it. I have spoken to Madame Delamy about the fashion and trimmings, and your father says I am to spare no expense."

"I will not have anything to do in choosing a wedding dress. I will not wear it if it is made."

"I think it is high time you stopped such outrageous insults to your intended husband, your father and myself. I am astonished your father endures them. Many parents would consider you insane and put you under restraint."

"I can hardly be under greater restraint," answered Maria calmly, but there was a cold, sick terror at her heart. Nevertheless she refused to take any part in the choosing of the wedding dress, and Mrs. Semple went alone to make the selection.

But Maria was at last afraid. "Under restraint!" She could not get the words out of her consciousness. Surely her dear grandfather had had some prescience of this grave dilemma when he told her if she was not treated right to come back to him. But how was she to manage a return to New York? Women then did not travel, could not travel, alone. No ships would take her without companions or authority. She did not know the first of the many steps necessary, she had no money. She was, in fact, quite in the position of a little child left to its own helplessness in a great city. The Gordons would be likely to come to London before the winter, but until then she could find neither ways nor means for a return to New York. All she could do was to take day by day the steps that circumstances rendered imperative.

The buying of the wedding dress brought things so terribly close to her that she finally resolved to tell her father and stepmother of her engagement to Lord Medway. "I will take the first opportunity," she said to herself, and the opportunity came that night. Mr. Spencer was not present. They dined alone, and Mr. Semple was indulging one of those tempers which made him, as his father had said to Neil, "gey ill to live with." He had been told of Maria's behavior about the wedding dress, and the thundery aspect of his countenance during the meal found speech as soon as the table was cleared and they were alone. He turned almost savagely to his daughter and asked in a voice of low intensity:

"What do you mean, Miss, by your perverse temper? Why did you not go with your mother to choose your wedding dress?"

"Because it is not my wedding dress, sir. I have told you for many weeks that I will not marry Mr. Spencer;" then with a sudden access of courage, "and I will not. I am the promised wife of Lord Medway."

Mr. Semple laughed, and then asked scornfully, "And pray, who is Lord Medway?"

"He is my lover; my husband on the twenty-ninth of next November."

All the passion and pride of a lifetime glowed in the girl's face. Her voice was clear and firm, and at that hour she was not a bit afraid. "I will tell you about him," she continued, and her attitude had in those few minutes so far dominated her audience that she obtained the hearing she might otherwise not have gained. Rapidly, but with singular dramatic power, she related the story of her life in New York – her friendship with Agnes Bradley, the attraction between herself and Harry Bradley, his arrest, trial and death sentence, Lord Medway's interference and her own engagement, her subsequent intimacy with the man she had promised to marry, and the love which had sprung up in her heart for him.

"And I will not break my word, not a letter of it," she said in conclusion.

"If there was any truth in this story," answered her father, "who cares for a woman's promises in love matters? They are not worth the breath that made them."

"My promise to Lord Medway, father, rests on my honor. I could give him no security but my word. I must keep my word."

"A woman's honor! A woman's word to a lover! Pshaw! Let us hear no more of such rant. What do you think of this extraordinary story, Elizabeth?"

"I think it is a dream, a fabrication. Maria has imagined it. Who knows Lord Medway? I never heard tell of such a person."

"Nevertheless, he will come for me on the twenty-fifth of November," said Maria.

"Long before that time you will be Mrs. Richard Spencer," answered her father.

"I declare to you, father, I will not. You may carry me to the altar, that is as far as you can go; you cannot make me speak. I will not say one word that makes me Richard Spencer's wife. I entreat you not to force such a trial on me. It will make me the town's talk, you also."

"Do not dare to consider me as a part of such a mad scene. Go to your room at once, before I – before I make you."

She fled before his passion, and terrified and breathless locked the door upon her sorrow. But she was not conquered. In fact, her resolution had gained an invincible strength by the mere fact of its utterance. Words had given it substance, form, even life, and she felt that now she would give her own life rather than relinquish her resolve.

In reality her confidence did her case no good. Mr. Semple easily adopted the opinion of his wife that Maria had invented the story to defer what she could not break off. "And you know, Alexander," she added, "those Gordons will be back before the date she has fixed this pretended lover to appear, and in my opinion they are capable of encouraging Maria to all lengths against your lawful authority. As for myself, I am sure Mrs. Gordon disliked me on sight, I know I disliked her, and Maria was rebellious the whole time they were in London. I wonder Richard does not break off the wedding, late as it is."

"I should not permit him to do so, even if he felt inclined. But he is as resolute as myself. Why, Elizabeth, we two men should be the laughing-stock of the town for a twelvemonth if we allowed a chit of a girl to master us. It is unthinkable. Go on with the necessary preparations. The Spencers living in Durham and in Kendal must be notified at once. The greater the company present the more impossible it will be for her to carry out her absurd threat. And even if she will not speak, silence gives consent. I shall tell the clergyman to proceed."

After this there were no more pretenses of any kind. Maria's reluctance to her marriage was openly acknowledged to the household, and her disobedience complained of and regretted. Among the two men-servants and three maids there was not one who sympathized with her. The men were married and had daughters, from whom they expected implicit obedience. The women wondered what the young mistress wanted: "A man with such black eyes and nice, curly hair," said the cook, "any proper girl would like; so free with his jokes and his money, too; six foot tall, and well set up as ever I saw a man. And the fine house he is giving her, and the fine things of all kinds he sends her! Oh, she's a proud, set-up little thing as ever came my way!" These remarks and many more of the same kind from the powers in the kitchen indicated the sentiment of the whole house, and Maria felt the spirit of opposition to her, though it was not expressed.

She could only endure it and affect not to notice what was beyond her power to prevent. But she wrote to her Uncle Neil and desired him to see Lord Medway and tell him exactly how she was situated. In this letter she declared in the most positive manner her resolve not to marry Mr. Spencer, and described the uneasiness which her stepmother's remark about "restraint" had caused her. And this letter, with one to Mrs. Gordon, were the only outside influences she had any power to reach.

At length the twenty-eighth day of June arrived. The Spencer house was filled with relatives from the Northern and Midland countries, and in Maria's home the wedding feast was already prepared. A huge wedding cake was standing on the sideboard, and in the middle of the afternoon her wedding dress came home. Mrs. Semple brought it herself to Maria and spread out its shimmering widths of heavy white satin and the costly lace to be worn with it.

"It is sure to fit you, Maria," she said. "Madame Delamy made it from your gray cloth dress, which you know is perfect every way. Will you try it on? I will help you."

"No, thank you. I would as willingly try my shroud on."

"I think you are very selfish and unkind. You know that I am not well; indeed, I feel scarcely able to bear the fatigue of the ceremony, and you are turning what ought to be a pleasure to your father and every one else into a fear and a weariness."

She did not answer her stepmother, but in the hurry of preparations going on down stairs she sought her father and found him resting in the freshly decorated drawing-room. He was sitting with closed eyes and evidently trying to sleep. She stood a little way from him, and with many bitter tears made her final appeal. "Say I am ill, father, for indeed I am, and stop this useless preparation. It is all for disappointment and sorrow."

He listened without denial or interruption to her words, but when she ceased in a passion of weeping he answered, "There is no turning back and there is no delay, Maria. You are very silly to cry over the inevitable, especially when both my love and wisdom decide that the inevitable is good for you. You will certainly be married to Richard Spencer to-morrow morning. Prepare yourself for ten o'clock. I shall come to your study for you at five minutes before ten. At nine o'clock Madame Delamy will send two women to arrange your dress. See that you are ready in time. Good night."

There was nothing now to be done in the way of prevention, and a dull, sullen anger took the place of entreaty in Maria's mind. "If they will set my back to the wall, they shall see I can fight," she thought, as she wretchedly took her way to her room. The beauteous gown was shining on her bed, and she passionately tossed it aside and lay down and fell asleep. When she awoke it was morning, a gusty, rainy morning with glints of sunshine between the showers. She was greatly depressed, and not a little frightened. What she had to do she determined to do, but oh! what would come after it? Then she was shocked to find that the scene she was resolved to enact, though gone over so often in her mind, slipped away from her consciousness whenever she tried to recall or arrange it. For a few minutes she was in a mood to be driven against her will, and she fully realized this condition. "I must be strong and of good courage," she whispered. "I must cease thinking and planning. I must leave this thing to be done till the moment comes to do it. I am only wasting my strength."

Fortunately, she was continually interrupted. Coffee was sent to her room. Then the hairdresser arrived, and the women to robe her for the ceremony. She was quite passive in their hands, and when her father appeared, ready to answer his "Come, Maria."

The parlors were crowded with the Spencers and their friends, and congratulations sounded fitfully in her ears as carriage after carriage rolled away to St. Margaret's Church. Mr. Semple and Maria were in the last coach, and his wife and the bridegroom in the one immediately before them. So that when they arrived at the church, the company were already grouped around the communion railing.

Maria felt like a soul in a bad dream; she was just aware when she left the carriage that it was raining heavily, and that her father took her arm and sharply bid her to "lift her wedding dress from the plashy pavement." She made a motion with her hand, but failed to grasp it, and then she was walking up the gloomy aisle, she was at the rail, the clergyman was standing before her, the bridegroom at her side, the company all about her. There was prayer, and she felt the pressure of her father's hand force her to her knees; and then there was a constant murmur of voices, and a spell like that which held her during her last interview with Lord Medway was upon her. But suddenly she remembered this fateful apathy, and the memory was like movement in a nightmare. The instant she recognized it the influence was broken and she was almost painfully conscious of Richard Spencer's affirmative:

"I will."

She knew then what was coming and what she had to do, and those who watched her saw the girl lift herself erect and listen to the priest asking those solemnly momentous questions which were to bind her forever to obey Richard Spencer, to love and honor him, and in sickness and health, forsaking all others, keep unto him as long as she lived. She had but to say two words and her promise would be broken, her lover lost and her life made wretched beyond hope.

"But I will never say them!" and this passionate assurance to her soul gave her all the strength she needed. When the clergyman stopped speaking she looked straight into his face and in a voice low, but perfectly distinct, answered:

"I will not."

There was a moment's startled pause. Her father's voice broke it:

"Go on, sir."

But before this was possible Maria continued:

"I am the promised wife of another man. I do not love this man. I will not marry him."

Her eyes, full of pitiful entreaty, held the clergyman's eyes. He looked steadily at the company and said, "God's law and the laws of this realm forbid this marriage until such time as the truth of this allegation be tried." And with these words he walked to the altar, laid the Book of Common Prayer upon it, and then disappeared in the vestry.