 CHAPTER XIX of SONS OF FIRE by MARIE ELIZABETH BRADEN Had the landlady of the house in great Ormond Street been anybody in the world except my old nurse, I doubt if any philanthropic purpose would have inspired me with the boldness to carry through the work I had undertaken. To appear before the average lodging housekeeper within half an hour at midnight and with such a protégé as Esperanza Campbell, upon my hands would have required the courage of a lion, and at that time I was a particularly shy and sensitive young man brought up in the retirement of a remote country house and in the society of a mother whom I loved very dearly but as we are told to love God with fear and trembling. My constitutional shyness, the natural outcome of narrow surroundings, had kept me from making friends at the university and I believe it was sheer pity which had prompted Gerald Standish to take me under his wing. His kindness was rewarded by finding me a likable companion whose character supplied some of the qualities which were wanting in his bright and buoyant disposition. We were real friends and remained friends until the end of his two brief life. So much to explain that it was only my confidence in my old nurse's indulgence which enabled me to cut the knot of our difficulty in disposing of Esperanza Campbell. My faithful Martha and her excellent husband were sleeping the sleep of the just in a ground floor room at the back of the house while their maid servants slumbered still more soundly in a back attic. Happily Martha was a light sleeper had trained herself to wake at the lightest cry in seasons of measles or whooping coughs, teething or infantile bronchitis. So my second application to the bell and knocker brought a prompt response. Bolts were drawn, a key was turned, a chain was unfastened, the door was opened a couple of inches and a timid voice asked what was wanted. It is I Martha, Georgie Bearsford. I've brought you a lodger. Oh, come now, Mr. George, that's one of your jokes. You've been to the theater and you're playing a trick upon me. Go home, now do like a dear young gentleman and come and have a cup of tea with me some afternoon when you've got half an hour to spare. Martha, you are keeping a very sweet young lady out in the cold. For goodness sake, open the door and let me explain matters. Can't she take her in? asked Gerald impatiently from the cab. Martha opened the door and exhibited herself reluctantly in her casual costume of flannel dressing gown and tartan shawl. What do you mean, Mr. George? What can you mean by wanting lodgings for a young lady at this time of night? Sounds queer, don't it? said Gerald who had bounded up the steps and burst into the dim Wayne Scott Hall, lighted only by the candle Martha was carrying. The fact is, we're in a difficulty. Mr. Bearsford assures me you can get us out of it. And then in the fewest words and with most persuasive manner, he explained what we wanted, a home and a protector for a blameless young girl whom the force of circumstances had flung upon our hands at half past 11 o'clock in the evening. Somehow we must get rid of her. She was a gentleman's daughter and we could not take her to the workhouse. Reputation, hers and ours for bad that we should take her to an hotel. Not a word did Gerald say about table turning or spirit wrapping. He was rude enough to guess that any hint at the séance would have prejudiced honest Martha against our charge. I'm sure I don't know what to do, said Martha, and I could see that she was suspicious of Gerald's airy manner and doubtful even of me. My husband's fast asleep. He isn't such a light sleeper as I am. I don't know what he would say. Never mind what he would say. Interrupted Gerald, what you have to say is that you'll take Miss Campbell in and give her a tidy room somewhere. She ain't particular poor thing and make her comfortable for a week or two while she looks out for a situation. Oh, she's on the lookout for a situation, is she, said Martha, evidently mollified by the idea of a bread-winning young person. You see, Mr. George, she went on appealing to me in London. One can't be too particular. This house is all Benjamin and I have to look to in our old age. We put our little all into it and if the young lady happened to be rather dressy or sang comic songs or went to the theatre in cabs or had gentlemen leave letters for her why it would just be our ruin. Our first floor is led to one of the most particular of widow ladies. I don't believe there's a more particular lady in London. My dear Martha, do you think I'm a fool or a naïve? This girl is a village organist's daughter. Ah, Mr. George, they must all begin, said Martha, shaking her head philosophically. She is a mourning for her father, an orphan, friendless and unhappy. As for conduct, propriety, and all that kind of thing, I'll answer for her as if she were my own sister put in Gerald in his splendid reckless way. And that being the case, I hope you are not going to keep the poor young lady sitting out there in a cold cab till tomorrow morning. Martha listened to Gerald and looked at me. If you're sure it's all right, Mr. George, she murmured, I'd do anything in the world to oblige you, but this house is our all. Yes, yes, Gerald exclaimed impatiently. You told us that before. Bring her in, George, it's all settled. This was a happy stroke for old Martha would have stood in the hall with her guttering candle and in her desabilia flannel and tartan debating the matter for another quarter of an hour, but when I brought the pale girl in her black frock up the steps and handed her into the old woman's care, the motherly heart melted all at once and all hesitancy was at an end. Poor young thing, why, she's little more than a child. How pale and cold you look, poor dude. I'll go down a lighter bit of fire and warm a cup of broth for you. My second floor left the day before yesterday. I'll soon get the bedroom ready for you. That says it should be, said I. You'll find yourself safer and comfortable here, Ms. Campbell, with the kindest woman I know. I'll call in a few days and see how you are getting on. I slipped a couple of sovereigns into my own nurse's palm as I wished her good night. The cab man brought in the poor little wooden trunk, received a liberal fare, and went his way in peace. While Gerald and I walked to the tavern stock glad to cool down after the evening's excitement. What an adventure, said he. Of course I always knew it was humbug, but I never thought it was quite such transparent humbug. That girl would have taken anyone in, said I. Why, because she's young and pretty, after a rather sickly fashion. No, because she was so thoroughly and earnest and believed in the thing herself. You really think she was a dupe and not an accomplice? I'm sure of it. Her distress was very real. And at her age and with her imaginative nature. What do you know of her nature? He asked sharply. The question and his manner of asking it pulled me up suddenly as a dreamer of morning dreams is awakened by the matter of fact voice of the servant who comes to call him. What did I know of her? What assurance had I that her sobs and lamentation, her pathetic story of the father, so loved and mourned, were not as furious as the rest of this show, as much a cheat, as the iron rod and the leather strap? How did I know? Well, I could hardly have explained the basis of my conviction, but I did know. And I would have to stake my life upon her honesty and her innocence. I woke next morning to a new sense of responsibility. I had taken this helpless girl's fate into my hands, and to me she must look for aid in chalking out a path for herself. I had to find her the means of earning her daily bread reputably and not as a drudge. The problem was difficult to solution. I'd heard enough of a lot of the average half educated governess, the life harder to pay less than a servant. Yet what else than a nursery governess could this girl be at her age? And with her attainments, which I concluded were not above the ordinary schoolgirls, the lookout was gloomy, and I was glad to shut my eyes to the difficulties of the situation, telling myself that my good Martha would give the poor child a comfortable home upon very moderate terms, such terms as I could afford to pay out of my very moderate allowance, and that in a month or two something in the language of the immortal macabre would turn out. There was but another week of the long, a week which under ordinary circumstances I should have spent with my widowed mother at her house in the country, but which I decided to spend in London accepting Gerald's invitation to share his rooms in Arundel Street and do a final round of the theaters, an invitation I previously declined. During that week I was often in great Oramon Street and contrived to learn a great deal more about Asperon's character and history, of her history, all she had to tell, of her character, which to me seemed transparent as a forest streamlet, all I could divine. I called in Oramon Street on the second day of her residence there and found good nurse Martha in the best possible humor. It was four o'clock in the afternoon and she insisted that I should stop for a cup of tea and as tea making, that is to say the art of producing a better cup of tea than anybody else could produce from the same canister kettle and teapot, had always been a special talent of Martha's. I was glad to accept her hospitality. Ms. Campbell has gone for a little walk round the squares, she informed me. She doesn't care about going out, explained Martha, she'd rather sit over a book or play the harmonium. But I told her she must take an airing for her health's sake. I was disappointed at not finding Asperon's in the tidy back parlor to which nurse Martha ushered me, a room of exemplary neatness and snugness enlivened by those living presences which always make for cheerfulness, vulgar as we may deem them, a glass tank of gold fish, a canary bird and a magnificent tabby cat, sleek, clean, luxuriously idle, in purring contemplation of the bright little fire in the old fashioned great, that great with hobs which reminded me of my nursery deep in the heart of the country. Now you sit down in Blake's arm chair, Mr. George, and let's have a talk over Missy. I shouldn't have taken those two sovereigns from you the night before last if I hadn't been all of a muddle with the suddenness of the thin. I don't want to be paid in advance for doing a kindness to a helpless girl. No, Martha, but since the helpless girl was on my hands, it's only right I should pay you somehow, and we may as well settle that question at once, as it may be several weeks before Miss Campbell is able to find a suitable situation. Several months more likely, do you know how young she is, Mr. George? Eighteen. Eighteen last birthday, only just turned eighteen, and she's much younger than most girls of eighteen in all her ways and thoughts. She's clever enough with her hands, poor child, nothing lazier, lolliping about her, made her own bed, and swept and tidied her own room without a word from me, but there's a helplessness somewhere in her thoughts. I don't know how she'll ever set about getting a situation. I don't know what kind of situation she's fit for. She's much too young and too pretty for a governess, not too young for a nursery governess, surely. A nursery governess means a nursery maid without a cap, Mr. George. I shouldn't like to see her brought to that. I've taken to her already, Benjamin says, with her sweet voice and pretty face, she ought to go on the stage. I was horrified at the idea. Martha, how can you speak of such a thing? Have you any idea what the life of a theater means for an inexperienced girl, for a beautiful girl most of all? Well, I've heard there are temptations, but a prudent young woman can take care of herself anywhere, Mr. George, and an improved young woman will go wrong in a country personage or a nunnery. If Miss Campbell is to earn her own living, she'll have to face dangers and temptations go where she may. She'll have to take care of herself, poor child. There'll be nobody else to take care of her. I've heard that young women are well looked after in some theaters. At Mr. Charles Keane's, for instance, I knew a young person that used to walk on in Louis XI dressed as a boy in blue and gold, and she told me that Mr. and Mrs. Charles Keane was that particular. The Keanes are making a farewell tour in Australia, and will never go into management again. Martha, you are talking nonsense. Poor Martha looked crestfallen at this reproof. I dare say I am Mr. George, but for all that, I don't think Miss Campbell will ever do much as a governess. It isn't in her. There's a helplessness and a bendiness and droopingness, if I may say so, about her character that won't do for a governess. The only mistress that would keep her is the kind of mistress that would make a slave of her. Hard lines, I said, getting up and walking about the little back parlor. It was the third room, quite at the back of the substantial Georgian house. There was scant space for my restlessness between the old square piano which served as a sideboard and the fireplace by which my dear old Martha sat looking at me with a perturbed countenance. I began to think I'd let myself in for a bad thing. What was I to do with this girl whose fate I had in some measure taken into my hands? It had seemed easy enough to bring her to this quiet shelter which she might leave in a week or so, braced up and ready to fight her battle of life, the battle we all have to fight somehow, a self-supporting young woman. Self-supporting, that was the point. I now remembered with terror that there is a large class of persons upon this earth whom not even the scourge of poverty can make. Self-supporting, a vast multitude of feeble souls who resign themselves from the beginning of things to drift upon the stream of light and are never known to strike out and swim for any shore and so drift down to the ocean of death. Of these are the poor relations for whom something is forever being done and who never do anything for themselves. Of these the feeble signs of patrician family trees who are always waiting for cures under government. God help her poor soul if she was one of these invertebrates, and God help me and my responsibility towards her. I was an only son, the heir to a small estate and suffered and an income of something under three thousand a year. I was not quite twenty years of age and I had to maintain myself at the most expensive college in Cambridge on an allowance that many of the rich young men with whom I associated would have considered abject panuring. I was not in a fast set, I did not hunt indeed with my modest income, hunting would have been impossible, but I was not without tastes which absorbed money, the love of choice books and fine engravings, a fancy for curios picked up here or there, the presence of which gave interest to my rooms and perhaps helped to reconcile me to many long hours within closed doors. I had hitherto been most careful to live within my income for I knew that it was as much as my mother could afford to give me taking into consideration her devotion to the estate which was to be mined by and by and the maintenance and improvement of which had been to her as a religion. Her model cottages, her home farm, the village church to whose every improvement her purse had largely contributed, these were the sources of expenditure which kept her comparatively poor and which forbade any extravagance on my part. All these facts were in my mind that afternoon as I paced the narrow bounds of old Martha's sitting room, she will have to give her living, I said severely, as the result of these meditations which showed me no margin for philanthropy. Had my mother been as some men's mothers I might naturally have contemplated shifting the burden upon her shoulders, I might have told her Esperanza's story and handed Esperanza over to her care as freely as if I picked up a stray cat or dog. But my mother was not one of those soft impressionable women who are always ready to give the reins to sentinette. She was a good woman and devoted much of her life and means to doing good, but her benevolence was restricted to the limits of her own parish. She would hardly listen to a tale of sorrow outside her own village. We have so much to do for our own people, George, she used to tell me it is followed to be distracted by outside claims. Here we know our return for every shilling we give, we know the best and the worst about those we help. Were I to tell her Esperanza's story, her suggestions for helping me out of my difficulty would be crueler than old Martha's. She would be for sending the girl into service as a housemaid or for getting her an assisted passage to the antipodes on an emigrant ship. Martha came to my rescue my trouble now as she had done many a time when I wore a kilt and when my naked knees had come into abrupt collision with a gravel path or a stony beach. She'll have to be older and wiser before she gets her own living, Mr. George said, Martha, but don't you trouble about her as long as I have a bed or a sofa to spare? She can stop with me and Benjamin. Her bite and sup won't hurt us, poor thing, and I don't want six pence from you. She shall stop here free grottis, Mr. George, till she finds a better home. I gave my own nurse a hug as if I had been still the boy in that McDougal kilt. No, no, Martha, I'm not going to impose on your generosity. I shall be able to pay you something. Only I thought you might want two or three pounds a week for her board, and I could not manage that for an indefinite period. Two or three pounds, Lord, Mr. George, if that's your notion of prices, Cambridge landlady's must be our peace, while I only get two guineas from my drawing room floor as a permanency, and lady tenants even begrudge half a crown extra for kitchen fire. Let her stop here as long as she likes, Mr. George, and never you think about money. It's only her future I'm thinking of, for there's a helplessness about her that, ah, there she is, as the hall door slowly opened. I gave her my key. She's quite one of us already. She came quietly into the room and took my offered hand without shyness or embarrassment. She was pale still, but the fresh air had brought a faint tint of rose into the pallet cheeks. She looked even younger, more childlike today, in her shabby morning frock and poor little black straw hat, and she had looked the night before last. Her strong emotion then had given more of womanliness to the small oval face. Today there was a simplicity in her aspect, as of a trusting child who took no thought of the future, securing the kindness of those about her. I thought of a sentence in the gospel, considered the lilies how they grow. This child had grown up like a lily in the mild atmosphere of domestic love, and had been the easy dupe of a delusion which appealed to her affection for the dead. I called to see if you were quite comfortable, and at home with Mrs. Blake, I said, far more embarrassed by the situation than Esperanza was. Yes indeed I am, she answered in her sad sweet voice. It is so nice to be with someone so kind and clean and comfortable. The frown was not very unkind, but she was so dirty. She gave us such horrid things to eat, the smell of them made me ill. And then she said I was affected and silly, and the hair used to say I might starve if I could not eat their food. It made me think of my happy home with father, and our cozy little tea table beside the farm. We did not always have dinner, she added nightly, neither of us cared much for that. She hung over Omarthe's shoulder with affectionate familiarity, and the horny old hand which had led my infant steps was held up to clasp hers, and the withered old face smiled. See how she gets round us, said Martha, nodding at me. Benjamin is just as bad, and you should hear her play the harmonium of an evening and sing a bide with me. You'd hardly hear it without shedding tears. Do you think you can be happy here for a few weeks, I asked. Yes, as happy as I can be anywhere without father. I dreamt of him last night such a vivid dream. I know he was near me. It was something more than a dream. I heard his voice close beside my pillow calling my name. I know his spirit was in the room. It isn't because the hair and his wife were cheats, that there is no link between the living and the dead. I know there is a link. She insisted passionately, her eyes brimming with sudden tears. They are not dead. Those we dearly love only removed from us. The clay is gone. The soul is hovering near blessing, comforting us. She sobbed out her grief, hiding her face upon Martha's substantial shoulder. I could speak no word of consolation. No would I for worlds have argued against this fond hallucination, the dream of sorrowing love. I shall not see thee, dare I say. No spirit ever break the band that stays him from the native land in which he walked when clasped in clay. No visual shade of someone lost, but he, the spirit himself, may come, where all the nerve of sense is numb, spirit to spirit, ghost to ghost. I quoted those lovely lines in a low voice as I walked softly up and down the darkening room, and then there was silence saved for soothing wordless murmurs from Martha. Such murmurs as had served to hush my own baby sorrows. There's the kettle just on the boil, cried the good soul cheerily, when a spronze of sobs had ceased. And I know Mr. George must be wanting his cup of tea. She rose and bustled about in her dear old active way. She lit a lamp, an inartistic cheap paraffin lamp, but the light was cheerful. The tea table arranged by Martha was the picture of neatness. She set as spronze the feminine task of making toast. The poor old child had the prettiest air of penitence as she kissed Martha's hand and then knelt meekly down with the fire glow crimsoning, the alabaster face and neck and shining on the pale gold hair and rusty black frock. I'm afraid I'm very troublesome, she said apologetically, but indeed I'm very grateful to you, sir, for taking care of me that dreadful night and to dear Mrs. Blake for all her kindness to me. Mrs. Blake is the quintessence of kindness. I'm very glad to think you can live happily here until she or I can find some nice situation for you. She had been smiling softly over her task but her face clouded in an instant. A situation, that's what everybody said at Bestbury. We must find her a situation and then Miss Grimm Shaw wanted me to be a dressmaker. You shall not be a dressmaker, I promise that, but oh what am I to be? I don't know half enough for a governess. I couldn't teach big girls German and French in drawing. I couldn't teach little boys Latin and that's what everybody wants of a governess. I've read the advertisements in the newspapers. And as to being a nursery governess, why it's Negro slavery, said Martha. I wouldn't mind the drudgery. Only I hate children, said Esperanza. This avowal shocked me. I looked at the soft childlike countenance and the speech seemed incongruous. I've never had anything to do with children since my sister Lucy died, she explained. I shouldn't understand them and they would laugh at me and my fancies. After Lucy's death, I lived alone with father, always alone, he and I. The harmonium and the organ in the church close by were our only friends. Our clergyman was just civil to father, but I don't think he ever liked him. I heard him once tell someone that his organist was an eccentricity, an eccentricity. That was all he could say about my father, who was ever so much clever than he. She said this with pride, almost with defiance, looking me in the face as if she were challenging me to dispute the fact. Was your father very clever? I asked her keenly interested in any glimpses of her history. Yes, I'm sure he was clever, much clever, than the common run of people. He loved music and he played beautifully. His touch upon the old organ made the church music sound angelic. Now and then there was someone in the church, some stranger, who seemed to understand his playing. And it was astonished to find such an organist in a village church and out of the way village like ours. But for the most part, people took no notice. It didn't seem to matter to them whether the choir sang well or badly. But when they sang false, it hurt father just like bodily pain. Did he teach you to play a little? But he wasn't fond of teaching. What I know of music, I found out chiefly for myself, just sitting alone at the organ when I could get one of the choir boys to blow for me, touching the keys and trying the stops, till I learned something about them. But I play very badly. Beautifully, beautifully ejaculated Martha, you draw tears. You sang in the choir, I think, I said, yes, there were four young ladies and a ladies made with a contralto voice, and I was the sixth. There were about a dozen men and boys who sat on the other side of the chancel. People said it was a good choir for a village church. Father was so unhappy when we sang badly that we could not help trying hard to sing well. I remembered those seraphic soprano notes and handles thrilling melody, and I could understand that at least one voice in the choir had the heavenly ring. Well, I said at last, we must hope for the best. Something may turn up that will suit you better than governessing. And in the meantime, you can make yourself happy with my old nurse. I can answer for it. She'll never be unkind to you. I'm sure of that. I would rather stay here and be her servant, than go among strangers. What wear an apron and cap and wait upon the lodges? I said, laughing at the absurdity of the idea. She seemed a creature so far removed from but useful race of neat-handed villuses. I should not mind. The clock in the hall struck six, and I promised Gerald to be ready for dinner at half-past as we were to go to a theater afterwards. The Delphi, where Jefferson was acting in Rip Van Winkle, had to take a hurried leave. Don't you worry yourself about her, Mr. George, said Martha, as she let me out at the street door. I'll keep her as long as ever you like. I told Martha that I should send her a little money from time to time, and that I should consider myself in her debt for a pound a week as long as Ms. Campbell stayed with her. She'll want a new frock, won't she? I ask the one she wears looks very shabby. It looks what it is, Mr. George. It's all but threadbare, and it's the only frock she has in the world, poor child. But don't you trouble about that either. You gave me two sovereigns. One of those will buy the stuff, and she and I can make the frock. I've cut out plenty of frocks in my day. I used to make all your mother's frocks once upon a time. She had nursed my mother in the bloom of her youth. She had nursed me in her sturdy middle life, and now in her old age, she was prompt and willing to care for this girl, for whose fate I have made her myself responsible. Gerald received me with his customary cheeriness, though I was ten minutes after the half hour, and the fried soul had frizzled its self to dryness by that delay. I have some good news for you, he exclaimed in his exuberant way. It's all right. What's all right? You're protégé. I've written to the person at Bestbury. The story, she told us, was gospel truth. I never thought it was anything else. Oh, that's because you're overhead in years and love with her, said Gerald. I felt myself blushing furiously, blushing like a girl whose secret tenderness stands revealed. Of course, I protested that nothing was farther from my thoughts than love, that I was only sorry for the girl's loneliness and helplessness. Gerald obviously doubted me, and I had to listen to his sage counsel on the subject. He was my senior by two years, and claimed to be a man of the world. While I'd been brought up at my mother's apron string, he foresaw dangers of which I had no apprehension. There is nothing easier to drop into than an entanglement of that sort, he said. You'd much better fall in love with a ballet girl. It may be more expensive for the moment, but it won't compromise your future. His arguments had no effect upon my conduct in the few remaining days of the long vacation. I went to Ormond Street a second and a third time during those few days. I took Esperanza to an afternoon concert at the St. James's Hall and enjoyed her ecstasy as she listened to Saint-Anne and Bottesini. With her, music was a passion, and I believe she sat beside me utterly unconscious of my existence, with her soul lifted above earth and all earthly feelings. You were happy while the music lasted, I said, as we walked back to Ormond Street by a longish round, for I chose the quietest speech rather than the nearest way. More than happy, she answered softly, I was talking with my father's spirit. You still believe in the communion of the dead and the living, I said, in spite of the tricks your German friends played upon you? Yes, she answered steadfastly, I still believe, I shall always believe there is a bridge between earth and heaven, between the world we can see and touch and the world we can only feel with our hearts and minds. When I hear music like that, we heard just now those long-drawn singing notes on the violin, those deep organ tones of the cello. I feel myself carried away to a shadowy world where I know my father and mother are waiting for me. We shall all be together again some day, and I shall know and understand, and I shall feel her soft touch upon my forehead and my hair, as I felt it so often in my dreams. She broke down crying softly as she walked by my side. I soothe her as well as I could soothe her most when I talked of those she had lost, questioning her about them. She remembered her mother dimly, a long last illness, a pale and wasted face, and gentle hands and loving arms that used to be folded round her neck as she nestled against the sick bed. That sick room and the dim light of wintery afternoons and the sound of the harmonium as her father plays off music in an adjoining parlor were things that seemed to have lasted for years. She could not look behind them, her memory of mother and of home stopped on the threshold of that dimly lighted room. Her father was a memory of yesterday. He had been her second self, the other half of her mind. He believed in ghosts, she said, and in second sight he has often told me how he saw my mother coming downstairs to meet him with a shroud showing faintly above her white summer gown. The night before, she broke a blood vessel and took to her bed in her last illness. An optical delusion, no doubt, but it comes natural to a scotchman to believe such things. He should not have told you. Why not? I like to know that the world we cannot see is near us. I should have died of loneliness. If I had not believed my father's spirit was still within reach, I don't mind about those people being imposters. I begin to think that the friends we have lost would hardly talk to us through the moving up and down of wooden tables. It seems such a foolish way, does it not? Worse than foolish, undignified, the ghosts and virgins move and talk with a stately grandeur. Shakespeare's ghosts are kingly and awful. They strike terror. It has remained for the 19th century to imagine ghosts that fit about a shabby parlor and skipped from side to side of the room and flood around a table and touch and wrap and tap and pat, with vicious hands like the touch of a toad. Samuel Johnson would not have sat up a whole night to see a table heaved up and down or to be touched on the forehead by a chilly, unknown hand. I don't care what you say about those things she answered resolutely. There is a link between life and death. I don't know what the link is, but though my father may be dead to all the world besides, he is not dead to me. I did not oppose stubborn common sense to this fond delusion. It might be good for her to believe in the things that are not. The tender fancy might bridge over the dark gulf of sorrow. I tried to divert her mind to lighter subjects, talk to her of this monstrous London of which she knew nothing and of which I knew very little. On the following evening I took Esperanza on my old nurse to the theatre, a form of entertainment in which Martha especially delighted. I was not very happy in my choice of a play. Had I taken my protege to see Jefferson, she would have been touched and delighted. Unluckily, I chose another theatre where Berlesque was being played, which was just a shade more vulgar than the average Berlesque of those days. Esperanza was puzzled and disgusted. I discovered that her love of music was an exclusive passion. She cared for nothing else in the way of art. I tried her with a picture gallery only to find her ignorant and indifferent, two things only impressed her in the whole of the National Gallery, a landscape of turners and a face which recalled her father's. My last Sunday before term began was spent almost entirely with Esperanza. I accepted Martha's invitation to partake of her Sunday dinner and sat at meet with Daryl Benjamin for the first time in my life, though I had eaten many a meal with his worthy wife in the days when my legs reached a very little weight below the table, and my manners were in sorenheit of the good soul's supervision. Happy childish days before governess and lesson books had appeared upon the scene of my life, days in which life was one long game of play, interrupted only by childish illnesses which were, like bad dreams, troubled and indistinct patches on the fair foreground of the childish memory. The good Benjamin ate his roast beef and deprecating an apologetic attitude, sitting out here uncomfortably on the edge of his chair. Esperanza ate about as much solid fruit as a singing bird might have done, but she looked stronger and in better health than on the night of the seance and she looked almost happy. After the roast beef and apple tart, I took her to an afternoon service at St. Paul's where the organ music filled her with rapture. I shall come here every Sunday, she said, as we left the cathedral. I entreated her not to go so far alone and warned her that the streets of London were full of danger for youth and inexperience, but she laughed at my fears, assuring me that she had walked about the meadows and coppices around Bestbury ever since she could remember and no harm had ever befallen her, though there were hardly any people about. I told her that in London the people were the danger and exacted her promise that she would never go beyond the immediate neighborhood of Great Armand Street by herself. I gave her permission to walk about Queen Square, Guilford Street, and Mecklenburg Square. The neighborhood was quiet and respectable. I'm bound to obey you, she answered me, I owe you so much gratitude for your goodness to me. I protested against gratitude to me, the only friend to whom she owed anything was my dear old nurse. I had a great terror of the perils of the London streets for a girl of her appearance. It was not so much that she was beautiful, but because of a certain strangeness and exceptional character in her beauty which would be likely to attract attention and arouse curiosity, the dreamy look in the large violet eyes, the semi-transparent power which suggested an extreme fragility, the unworldliness of her whole aspect were calculated to appeal to the worst instincts of the prowling profligate. She had an air of helplessness which would invite persecution from the cowardly wretches who make the streets of a great city perilous for unprotected innocence. She was ready to promise anything that would please me. I do not care if I never go out, she said simply the lady who lives in the drawing room has a harmonium and she has told me I may play upon it every day, all day long when she is out and she has a great many friends and visits a good deal, but she must go out of doors for your health's sake. I protested, Martha or Benjamin must go with you. They have no time to go out of doors till after dark, poor things they are so busy that they will take me for a walk sometimes of an evening, I shall make them go out for their own sakes, you need not feel anxious about me you are too kind to think of me at all. I could not help feeling anxious about her, I felt as if I were responsible for everything that could have sailed or hurt her, that every hair of her head was at charge upon my conscience or health or happiness or talents and tastes and fancies it was mine to care for all of these. My protégé, standish, called her in this farewell, walked through the dull Sunday streets in the dull October twilight, it seemed as if she were much more than my protégé, my dearest, most sacred care, the purpose and the promise of my life. Tonight we were to say goodbye, we were to have parted at the door in great Orman street, but standing on the doorstep waiting for the opening of that inexorable door which would swallow her up presently like a tune, I felt all at once that I could not sacrifice this last evening, standish was dining out, there would only be loneliness and a roast chicken awaiting me at half past seven, the chicken might languish uneaten, the ghost might have the doll come a place room, I would finish the evening with Martha's tea and toast and hear Esperanza sing her favorite numbers of Handel and Mendelssohn to the accompaniment of an ancient stouted piano, a relic of the schoolroom in my Suffolk home, the piano on which my mother took her first music lesson. It was an evening in Elysium, a back parlor is sometimes large enough to contain paradise, I did not question my own heart or analyze my beatific sensations, I ascribed at least half my happiness to Handel and Mendelssohn and that feeling of exaltation which only sacred music can produce. There were no anxious questionings in my mind till after I had said goodbye to Esperanza goodbye till the third week in December and had left the house, those uneasy questionings were inspired by my dear old Martha who opened the hall door for me and said gravely as I shook hands with her, it would never do Mr. George, I know what kind of lady your mother is as well as anybody it would never do. I did not ask her what it was that would never do but I carried a new sense of trouble and difficulty out into the autumn wind. End of Chapter 19 Chapter 20 of Sons of Fire by Mary Elizabeth Braddon this LibriVox recording is in the public domain a white star made of memory long ago it would never do those words of Martha's so earnestly spoken by the kind soul who cared for me almost as tenderly as a mother cares for her own haunted me all through the rapid run to Cambridge walked the quadrangles of Trinity with me tramped the trumpington road upon my shoulders like that black care which sits behind the traveler it would never do no need to ask my good Martha for the meaning of that emphatic assertion I knew what shape her thoughts had taken as she watched me sitting by the little square piano the old old piano with such a thin tinkling sound listening to that seraphic voice and looking at that delicate profile and exquisite coloring of faintly flushed cheek lifted eye and shadowy hair my old nurse had surprised my secret almost before I knew it myself but by the time I was back in my shabby ground floor sitting room at Trinity I knew as well as Martha knew that I had let myself fall deep in love with a girl whom I could never marry with my mother's approbation I might take my own way in life and marry the girl I loved but to do so would be to forfeit my mother's affection to make myself an outcast from her house I know what kind of a lady your mother is said Martha in her valedictory address was I her son likely to be ignorant of the mother's character or unable to gauge the strength of her prejudices prejudices that seem so much a part of her nature as to form a strong argument against Locke's assertion that there are no innate ideas indeed in reading that philosophy first famous chapter it always seemed to me that if the average infant had to begin the ABC of life at the first letter my mother must have been born with her brain richly stocked with family pride and social distinctions in all the years I had lived with her I had never seen her unbent to a servant or converse on equal terms with a tradesman she had a full appreciation of the value of wealth when it was allied with good birth but the millionaire manufacturer or the lucky speculator belonged to that outer circle of which she knew nothing and of which she would believe no good I was her only son and she was a widow I owed her more than most sons oh their mothers I did not stand as number four or five in a family circle taking my share in the rough and tumble of family life my mother had been all in all to me and I had been all in all to her I'd been her friend and companion from the time I was able to understand the English language the recipient of all her ideas her likes and dislikes from that early stage when the childish mind unconsciously takes shape and bent from the mind of the parent the child loves best from my seventh year I was fatherless and all that is sacred and sweet and home life began and ended for me with the word mother my mother was what Gerald standish called a masterful woman a woman to whom it was natural to direct and initiate the whole business of life my father was her opposite in temperament irresolute lymphatic and I think he must have handed her the reins of home government before their honeymoon was over I remember him just well enough to remember that he left the direction of his life holy to her that he deferred to her judgment and studied her feelings in every detail of his existence and that he obviously adored her I don't think he cared very much for me his only child I can recall no indication of what the feeling on his part only a placid indifference as of one whose affection was concentrated upon a single object and whose heart had no room for any other image he spoke of me as the boy and looked at me occasionally with an air of mild wonder as if I were somebody else's son whose growth took him by surprise I never remember his expressing any opinion about me except that I had grown since he looked at me last his feeling about me being thus tepid it was hardly surprising that he should make what many people have called an unjust will I've never disputed his justice for I love my mother too much to complain of the advantages of power and status which that will gave her she was an heiress and her money had cleared my father's estate from considerable incumbrances and no doubt he remembered this when providing for her future he was her senior by five and twenty years and foresaw a long widowhood for her the entail ended in his own person so he was free to dispose of his property as he liked he left my mother tenant for life and he left me 500 a year charge of oath to the estate which income was only to begin when I came of age till my one and 20th birthday I was dependent upon my mother for everything I told myself that I had to cut out my own path in life and that I must be the architect of my own fortune my mother's income under her marriage settlement was considerable and this in addition to a rent roll of between two and three thousand a year made her a rich woman assuredly I was not in a position to make an imprudent marriage since my power to maintain a wife and family in accord with my own ideas of a gentleman's surroundings must depend for a considerable time upon my mother's liberality I'd made up my mind to go to the bar and I knew how slow and arduous is the road to success in that branch of the legal profession but far nearer than mere questions of interest was the obligation which filial love laid upon me my mother had given me the devotion of years have made me the chief object of her thoughts and her hopes and I should be an ungrateful wretch if I were to disappoint her I knew alas that upon this very question of marriage she cherished a project that it would distress her to forego and that there was a certain lady Emily whom I was intended to marry the daughter of a nobleman who had been my father's most intimate friend and for whom my mother had a greater regard than for any of our neighbors knowing this and wishing with all my heart to do my duty as a son to the best of mothers I quit but echo Martha's solemn words it would never do no it would never do the seraphic voice the spiritual countenance the appealing helplessness which had so moved my pity must be to me as a dream from which I had awakened Esperanza's fate must rest heads forward with herself aided by honest Martha Blake and helped through Martha from my purse I must never see her again no word had been spoken no hint had been given of the love which it was my bound in duty to conquer and forget I could contemplate the inevitable renunciation with a clear conscience I worked harder in that term than I'd worked yet and shut my door against all the allurements of undergraduate friends and all the pleasures of university life I was voted churlish and a moth but I found my books the best cure for an unhappy love and though the image of miss Campbell was oftener with me than the learned shade of Newton or the later ghost of we well I contrived to do some really good work my mother and I wrote to each other once a week she expected me to send her a budget of gossip and opinion and it was only in this term that I began to feel a difficulty in filling two sheets of note paper with my niggling penmanship for the first time in my life I found myself sitting pen in hand with nothing to say to my mother I could not write about Esperanza or the passionate yearning which I was trying to outlive I could hardly expatiate upon my mathematical studies to a woman who although highly cultivated knew nothing of mathematics I eked out my letter as best I could with a labored criticism upon a feeble novel which I had idly skimmed in an hour of mental exhaustion I look forward apprehensively to my home going in December fearing that some change in my outward aspect might betray the mystery of my heart the holiday once so pleasant would be long and dull the shooting would afford some relief perhaps and I made up my mind to tramp the plantations all day long at Cambridge I had shirked physical exercise in Suffolk I would walk down my sorrow a letter from my mother which reached me early in December put an end to these resolves she had been somewhat out of health all through November and her local medical man who was old and passé had only tormented her with medicines which made her worse she had therefore decided that Ms. Marjorm's earnest desire upon spending my vacation in London and Jepsen her trusty major domo had been up to town and had found her delightful lodgings on the north side of Hyde Park she would await me not at Fendike but in Canock Place Canock Place within less than an hour's walk of great Ormond Street my heart beat fast and furiously at the mere thought of that propane couture Martha's latest letter had told me that all attempts at finding a situation for my protege had so far been without result Martha and her charge had visited all the agencies for the placing of governesses and companions and no agent had succeeded in placing Esperanza her education was far below the requirements of the least exacting employer she knew very little French and no German she played exquisitely but she played by ear of the theory of music she knew hardly anything her father and enthusiast and a dreamer had filled her with ideas but had taught her nothing that would help her to earn a living don't you fret about her Mr. George wrote Martha as long as I have a roof over my head she can make her home with me her bite and suck makes hardly any difference in the week's expenses I'm only sorry for her sake that she isn't clever enough to get into a nice family in some pretty country house like Bendike it's a dull life for her here a back parlor to live in and to old people for her only companions I thought of the small dark parlor in the Bloomsbury lodging house the tinkling old piano the dull gray street a weary life for a girl a poetic temperament reared in the country that letter of Martha's and the fact of being within an easy walk of great ormond street broke down my resolution of the last two months I called upon Martha and her charge on the morning after I left Cambridge I thought Esperanza looking Juan and out of health and could but mark how the pale sad face flushed and brightened that side of me we were alone for a few minutes while Martha interviewed a butcher and I seized the opportunity I said I feared she was not altogether happy only unhappy and being a burden to my friends she told me she was depressed by finding her own uselessness hundreds of young women were earning their living as governesses but no one would employ her no lady will even give me a trial she said I'm afraid I must look very stupid you look very lovely I answered hotly they want a commoner clay I implored her to believe that she was no burden to Martha or to me if she could be content to live that dull and joyless life she was at least secure of a safe and respectable home and if she cared to carry on her education something might be done in the way of masters or she might attend some classes in Harley street or elsewhere she turned red and then pale and I saw tears trembling on her long arbor lashes I'm afraid I'm unteachable she faltered with downcast eyes kind ladies at basbury tried to teach me but it was no use my mind always wondered I could not keep my thoughts upon the book I was reading or on what they told me Miss Grimshaw who wanted to help me said I was incorrigibly idle and atrociously obstinate but indeed it was not idleness or obstinacy that kept me from learning I could not force myself to think or to remember my thoughts would only go their own way and I cared for nothing but music or for the poetry my father used to read to me sometimes of an evening I'm afraid Miss Grimshaw was right and that I ought to be a dressmaker I glanced at the hands which lay loosely clasped upon the arm of the chair in which she was sitting such delicately tapering fingers were never meant for the dressmaker's workroom the problem of Esperanza's life was not to be solved that way I did not remain long on this first morning but I went again two days afterwards and again until it came to be every day Martha grumbled and warned me of my danger and of the wrong done to Esperanza if I were to make her care for me I don't think there's much fear of that added Martha she's too much in the clouds it's you I'm afraid of you and me knows whom I want you to marry don't us Mr. George I could not gain same Martha upon this point Lady Emily and I had ridden the same rocking horse she riding pillion with her arms clasped around my waist while I urged the beast to his wildest pace we had taken tea out of the same toy tea things her tea things and before I was 15 years of age my mother told me that she was pleased to see I was so fond of Emily and hoped that she and I would be husband and wife someday in the series future just as we were little lovers now in the childish present I remember laughing at my mother's speech and thinking within myself that Emily and I hardly realized my juvenile idea of lovers the romantic element was entirely wanting in our association when I talked to Lady Emily later to Gerald Standish I remember I described her as a good sort and discussed her excellent qualities of mind and temper with an unembarrassed freedom which testified to a heart that was at peace I felt more mortified than I would have cared to confess that Martha's blunt assurance that Esperanza was too much in the clouds to care about me and it may be that this remark of my old nurses gave just the touch of peak that acted as a spur to passion I know that after two or three afternoons in great Ormond Street I felt that I loved this girl as I could never love again and that hence forward it would be impossible for me to contemplate the idea of life without her the more fondly I loved her the less demonstrative I became and my growing reserve through dust in the elderly eyes that watched us Martha believed that her warning had taken effect and she so far confided in my discretion as to allow me to take Esperanza for lamp lit walks in the Bloomsbury squares after our cozy tea drinking in the little back parlor the tea drinking in the walk became an institution Martha's Rometics have made walking exercise impossible for her during the last month Benjamin was thought and lazy if I didn't let the poor child go out with you she'd hardly get a breath of fresh air all the winter and I know that I can trust you Mr George said Martha yes you can trust me and to die she might trust me to breathe no word of evil into the ear of her I loved she could trust me to review the childlike innocence which was my darling's highest charm she could trust me to be loyal and true to Esperanza but she could not trust me to be worldly wise or to sacrifice my own happiness to filial affection the time came when I had to set my love for Esperanza against my duty to my mother and my own interests duty and interest kicked the beam oh those squares those grave old Bloomsbury squares with their formal rows of windows and monotonous iron railings and stately doorways and clean door steps and enclosures of trees whose blackened branches showed leafless against the steely sky of a frosty evening what groves or streams of paradise could be fairer to us to than the dull pavements which repaced arm and arm in the wintry greyness telling each other those thoughts and fantasies which seemed in their intuitive sympathy to Marcus for predestined life companions her thoughts were childishly expressed sometimes but it seemed to me always as if they were only my thoughts in the feminine guise nothing that she said ever jarred upon me and her ignorance of the world in all its ways suggested some nymph or fairy reared in the seclusion of woodland or ocean cave not thought of endymion and i fancied that his goddess could have been scarcely less of the earth than this fair girl who walked beside me confiding in me with a childlike faith one night i told her that i loved her we had stayed out later than usual the clock of st george's church was striking nine and in the shadowy quiet of queen square my lips met hers in love's first kiss how shyly and how falteringly she confessed her own secret so carefully guarded till that moment i never thought you could care for a poor girl like me she said but i loved you from the first yes almost from the very first my heart seemed frozen after my father's death and your voice was the first that thought it the dog and i'm feeling gradually passed away and i knew that i had someone living to love and care for and think about as i sat alone i had a world of new thoughts to interweave with the music i love all that music as bronza i'm almost jealous of music when i see you so moved and influenced by it music would have been my only consolation if you had not cared for me she answered simply but i do care for you and i want you to be my wife now at once as soon as we can be married i talked about an immediate marriage before the registrar but willing as she was to be guided by me and most things she would not consent to this it would not seem like marriage to me she said if we did not stand before the altar well it shall be in a church then only we shall have to wait longer and i must go back to cambridge at the end of this week i must give an exit and come up to london on our wedding day and take you home in the evening i shall have a quiet home ready for my darling far from the can of dons and undergraduates but with an easy distance of their varsity i explained to her that our marriage must be a secret till i came of age next year or till i could find a favorable opportunity of breaking the fact of my mother will she mind will she be angry ask us bronza not when she comes to know you dear love well as i knew my mother's character i was infatuated enough to believe what i said where was the heart so stony that would not warm to that fair and gentle creature where the pride so stubborn which that tender influence could not bend i had the bands put up at the church of st george the martyr assured that martha's rheumatism and benjamin's lethargic temper would prevent either of them attending the morning service on any of the three fateful sundays if martha went to church at all she crept there in the evening after tea she liked the gas lights in the evening warmth the short prayers in the long sermon and she met her own class among the congregation i felt tolerably safe about the bands had my mother been in good health it would have been difficult for me to spend so many of my evenings away from home but the neurologic affection which had troubled her himself look had not been subjugated by the great dr gall's treatment and she passed a good deal of her life in her own rooms and in semi darkness minister to buy a lady who had been a member of our household ever since my father's death and his presence had been the only drawback to my home happiness this lady was my mother's governess miss margeren a woman of considerable brainpower wide knowledge of english and german literature and a style of piano forte playing which always had the effect of cold water down my back and yet miss margeren played correctly she introduced no discords into that hard dry music which seemed to me to have been written expressly for her hard and precise fingertips bony knuckles and broad strong hand with the thumb which she boasts of as resembling thalbergs in a difficult and complicated movement miss margeren's thumb worked wonders it was ubiquitous it turned under and over and wrapped out sharp staccato notes in the midst of presto runs or held rigid semi breves while the active fingers fired ballies of cords or raced the base with lightning triplets in whatever entanglement or floored ornament list or thalberg had wrapped up a melody miss margeren's thumb could search it out and drum it into her auditors miss margeren was on the wrong side of 50 she had a squat figure and a masculine countenance and her voice was deep and strong like the voice of a man she dressed with a studio sobriety in dark cloth wearing gray alpaca according to the seasons and in the evening she generally wore plaid poplin which ruled her square squat figure into smaller squares i have observed an affinity between plain people and plaid poplin miss margeren was devoted to my mother and antagonistic as her nature was to me and all things and blighting as was her influence upon the fond dream of my youth i'm bound to record that she was conscientious in carrying out her own idea of duty her idea of duty unhappily included no indulgence for youthful impulses and she disapproved of every independent act of mine my evening absences puzzled her i wonder you can like to be out nearly every evening when your mother is so ill she remarks severely on my return to khanok place after that glimpse of paradise in queen square if i could be of any use to my mother by staying at home you may be sure i should not be out miss margeren i replied rather stiffly it would be a satisfaction to your mother to know you were under her roof even when she is obliged to be resting quietly in her own room unfortunately my mathematical coach lives under another roof and i have to accommodate myself to his hours this was sophistication but it was true that i read mathematics with an ex senior wrangler in south kensington every other day do you spend every evening with your coach ask miss margeren looking up suddenly from her needlework and fixing me with her cold gray eye certainly not you know the old saw all work and no play and how do you amuse yourself when you are not at south kensington i did not think you knew many people in london that is because i know very few people whom you know my chief friends or the friends of my college life not the worthy bucolic's of suffering miss margeren's side went on with her sewing she delighted in the plainest of plain work severest undergarments of calico or flannel she had taken upon herself to supply my mother's poor cottage tenants with under clothing a very worthy purpose but i could not help wishing she had deferred a little more to the universal sense of beauty in her contributions to the cottage's wardrobes surely those prison-like garments must have appalled their recipients my inexperienced eye noted only their ugliness and shape and coarseness of texture along for a little trimming a softer quality of flannel i'm afraid they must hurt the people who get them i said one day when miss margeren exhibited her bail of flannel underwear they are delightfully warm and friction is beneficial to health she replied severely i don't know what more you would have it hurt me not a little to note miss margeren's suspicious air when she discussed my evening occupations for i knew she had more influence over my mother than anyone living and i fancied that she would not scruple to use that influence against me i'd lost her friendship long ago by childish rudenesses which i looked back upon with regret but which i could not obliterate from her memory by the studious civilities of later years i went back to came bridge and my mother and her devoted companion left canock place for brighton dr gall having strongly recommended sea air after exhausting his scientific means in the weary battle with nerve pain it was a relief to me when i thought of esperanza to know that miss margeren was 50 miles away from great ormond street those suspicious glances and prying questions of hers have frightened me when i thought of esperanza when was she not the center and circumference of my thoughts i've worked hard miss no lecture neglected no opportunity for i'd made up my mind to play the game of life off my own bat but esperanza's image was with me whatever i was doing i think i mixed up her personality in an extraordinary fashion with the higher mathematics she perched like a fairy upon every curve or slid sift like along every line i weighed her and measured her and calculated the doctrine of chances about her she became in my mind the ruling and to commonize invisible spirit of the science of quantity and number could this interval between the asking in church and my wedding day be any other than a period of foolish dreaming of fond confusion and wandering thoughts i was not 21 and i was about to take a step which would inevitably offend my only parent the only being to whom i stood indebted for care and affection in the rash hopefulness of our youthful passion i made sure of being ultimately forgiven but hopeful as i was i knew it might be some time before i could obtain pardon in the meantime i had an income which would suffice for a youthful menage i would find a quiet home for esperanza at one of the villas on that grandchester road till i had taken my degree and then i should have to begin work in london indeed i had fixed in my own mind upon our second floor in martha's roomy old house which would be conveniently near the temple where i might share a modest set of chambers with a cambridge friend in the deep intoxication of my love dream great ormond street seemed just the most delightful spot in which to establish the cozy home i figured to myself it would be an infinite advantage to live under my dear old nurse's roof and to know that she would watch over my girl wife while i sat waiting for briefs in my dingy chambers or reading law with an eminent qc i'd asked esperanza on the night of our betrothal whether she thought we could live upon 500 a year a ripple of laughter prelooted her reply dear george do you know what my father's income was she asked 65 pounds a year he paid 15 pounds a year for our cottage and garden such a dear old garden and we had to live and close ourselves upon the other 50 pounds he was very shabby sometimes poor darling but we were always happy though i seemed so helpless and getting my own living i think i could keep house for you and not waste your money 500 a year while you are immensely rich i told her that i should be able to add to our income by the time we had been married a few years and then we would have a house in the country in the garden and a pair of ponies for her to drive and cows and poultry and all the things that women love what a happy dream it was and how the sweet pale face brightened under the lamp light as she listened to me i want nothing but your love she said nothing i'm not afraid of poverty the three weeks were gone i got an exit and went up to london by an early train i had directed esperanza to meet me at the church whose doors we had so often passed together in our evening walks and where we had now at side by side one Sunday evening she was to take martha to church with her but not till the last moment not till they were at the church door where she to tell my own nurse what was going to happen lest an idea of duty to the mother should induce her to betray the son the air was crisp and bright and the wintry landscape passed in the wintry sun between cambridge and stratford but the dull greatness of our metropolis in winter wrapped me around when i left bishopsgate street and there was a thin curtain of fog hanging over my beloved bloomsbury when my handsome rattled along the sober old world speaks to the heavy georgian church i sprang from the cab as if i had worn mercury's sandals told the man to wait and ran lightly up the steps pushed back the heavy door and entered the dark temple hushed and breathless how solemn and cold and ghostly the church looked how gray and pale the great cold windows the fog seemed thicker here than in the streets outside and the jury feign was empty i looked at my watch 20 minutes to 11 i didn't treated her to be at the church at least 10 minutes before the hour and i felt bitterly disappointed that she had not anticipated the appointment her last letter was three days old could she be ill could any evil thing have happened i hurried back to the church door intending to get into my cab and drive to ormond street i changed my mind before i crossed the threshold i might miss her on the way drive by one street while she and martha were walking to another again there was something undignified in a bridegroom rushing off in search of his bride my place was to wait in the church i'd seen a good many weddings in our parish church in suffolk and i knew that the bride was almost always late yet in spite of this experience i had expected my bride in advance of the appointed time she had no wreath of orange blossoms no bridal veil to adjust no doting mother or sister bridesmaids to flurry and hinder her under the pretense of helping she had no carries to wait for her impatience to see me after nearly three weeks should have brought her to the church earlier than this then i remembered martha no doubt she was waiting for martha that good soul was interviewing the butcher or adjusting her paisley shawl while i was fretting and fuming in the church i had no best man to reason with my impatience and keep up my spirits my best man was to be the parish clerk and he had not yet appeared upon the scene i saw a pew opener creeping about a pew opener in the accustomed clothes black bonnet and sober apparel as bronzes bridesmaid martha would have to give her away i took a turn around the church looked at the monuments and even stood still to read a tablet here and there and knew no more of the inscription after i'd read it than if it had been in choice assyrian i opened the heavy door and went out onto the steps and stood watching a stray cab or a stray pedestrian dimly visible through the thickening fog i looked at my watch every other minute between anger and despair it was five minutes to 11 the curate who was de marias passed me on the steps and went into the church unsuspecting that i was to be the chief actor in the ceremony i stood looking along the street in the only direction in which my bride was to be expected and my heart sickened as the slow minutes wore themselves out till it was nearly a quarter past 11 i could endure this no longer my handsome was waiting on the opposite side of the street i lifted my finger and signed to the driver to come over to me there was nothing for it but to go to great arm on street and discover the cause of delay before the man could climb into his seat and cross the road a broom drove sharply up to the church steps a broom of dingy aspect driven by a man whose livery branded him as a fly man i was astonished at the fly but never doubted that it brought me my dear love and my heart was light again and i ran to greet her with a welcoming smile the carriage door was sharply open from within and my mother stepped out instead before me tall and grave in a neat dark traveling dress her fine features sharp and clear in the wintry gloom mother i exclaimed aghast i know i'm not the person you expected george she said quietly badly as you have behaved to me i'm sorry for your disappointment whereas esparanza i cried on heating my mother's address it was only afterwards that her words came back to me in that long doll afterwards when i had leisure to brute over every detail in this agonizing scene she is safe and in good hands and she is where you will never see her again that's a lie i cried if she is among the living i will find her if she is dead i will follow her you are violent and unreasonable but i suppose your foolish passion must excuse you when you've read this letter you will be calmer i hope she gave me a letter in esparanza's writing we have moved a few paces from the church steps while we talked i read the letter walking slowly along the street my mother at my side dearest i'm going away i'm not to be your wife it was a happy dream but a foolish one i should have ruined your life that has been made clear to me and i love you far too dearly to be your enemy you will never see me again don't be unhappy about me i shall be well cared for i'm going very far away but if it were to the farthest end of the earth and if i were to live a hundred years i should never cease to love you or learn to love you less goodbye forever esparanza i know whose hand is in this i said miss margroom miss margroom is my true and loyal friend and yours too though you may not believe it whoever it may be who has stolen my love away from me that person is my dire and deadly foe whether the act is yours or hers it is the act of my bitterest enemy and i shall ever so remember it look your mother let there be no misunderstanding between you and me i love this girl better than my life whatever trick you have played upon her whatever cajolaries you and miss margroom have brought to bear upon her whatever false representations you may have made appealing to her unselfishness against her love you have done that which will wreck your son's life unless you can undo it i have saved my son from the shipwreck his own folly would have made of his life my mother answered calmly i've seen what these unequal marriages come to before the wife is thirty it would be no unequal marriage the girl i love is a lady a village organized daughter by her own confession totally without education a pretty delicate young creature with a certain surface refinement i grant you but do you think that would stand the wear and tear of life or our counterbalance your humiliation when people ask questions about your wife's antecedents and belongings people even the politest people will ask those questions george my dear dear boy the thing you were to have done today would have been utter ruin to your social existence for the next fifty years you will never be rich enough or great enough to live down such a marriage don't preach to me i cried savagely you're broken my heart surely that is enough for you i broke away from her as she laid her hand upon my arm such a shapely hand in a dark gray glove i remember even in that moment of anguish and of anger how my dear love had often walked by my side gloveless shabbier than a millerner's apprentice no she was not of my mother's world no more was titania she belonged to the realm of romance and fairy not to belgravia or mayfair i ran back to the spot where the handsome still waited for me jumped in and told the man to drive to great ormond street i left my mother standing on the pavement to find her way back to her carriage as she could to go where she would i knocked at the lodging house door loud enough to wake the seven sleepers i pushed past the scared made servant and dashed into martha's parlor she was sitting with her spectacles on her nose pouring over a tradesman's book and with other books of the same kind on the table before her martha this is your doing i said you betrayed me to my mother oh mr george forgive your old nurse that loves you as if you were her own flesh and blood i only did my duty by you and my mistress it would never have done sir it would never have done she called me dear as in the old nursery days tears were streaming down her withered cheeks it was you then yes it was me mr george least ways me and benjamin we talked it over a long time before he wrote the letter to my mistress at brighton sarah came home from church on sunday dinner time the drawing rooms were dining out and the second floor is empty so there was nothing to hinder sarah's going to church she came home at dinner time and told me you and esparanza cambell have been asked in church for the third time you might have knocked me down with the feather i never thought she could be so artful i talked it over with benjamin and he posted a letter that night and miss margium came up from brighton next morning came to see esparanza how did you know that mr george i know miss margium yes it was miss margium that came she asked to see esparanza alone and they were shut up together for over an hour and then the bell was rung and miss margium told the girl to pack up miss cambell's things bring her box down to the hall and when she had done that to fetch a fourth wheeler sarah was nearly as upset as i was but she and i packed the things between us such a few things poor child and carried the box downstairs and i waited in the hall while sarah ran for the cab and presently esparanza came out with miss margium and put on her hat and jacket and then came to bid me goodbye she put her arms around my neck and kissed me and though i had done my duty by you and your moth mr george i felt like jude ash it was right of you to tell she said it was only right for his sake and miss margium heard her down the steps and into the cab before she could say another word i do believe the poor dear child gave you up without a murmur mr george because she knew that it would have been your ruin to marry her fudge that had been drummed into her by miss margium you've done me the worst term you ever did anyone in your life martha and yet i thought if there was anybody in the world i could trust it was you where did the cab go do you know that sharing cross station i heard miss margium give the order end of chapter 20 chapter 21 of sons of fire by mary elizabeth bradden this libra box recording is in the public domain and that unrest which men miss call delight alan went back to match him sobered by grief and longing for the comfort his betrothed could give him the comfort of sympathy and gentle words the deeper comfort in the assurance of her love susette looked very pale in her black frock when alan appeared at marsh house for the first time after his bereavement they stood side by side in the gray light of a hopelessly dull day finding but little speech in the sadness of this first meeting my darling you have been grieving for my grief he said tenderly looking into the dark eyes noting the tired look as of many tears the sharper line of the cheek the subtle pallor where a lovely carmine had been want to come and go like warm light my dearest you've lost all your roses and for my sake for me those dear eyes have known sleepless nights those lovely cheeks have grown pinched and pale do you think that i could help being sorry for you alan she murmured with downcast eyelids you had no other cause for sorrow i hope no no only in every life there are saddening intervals i was sorry for your sake sorry that i was never to see your father again i liked him so much alan and then somehow i got into a low spirited way and old dr podmore gave me a tonic which made my head ache i don't know that it had any other effect susette it was cruel of you not to tell me that you were ill or i was not to say ill why should i worry you about such nonsense i was only below par that is what dr podmore called it but please don't talk about me alan talk to me of yourself and of your poor mother she is coming to stay with you i hope yes she is coming to me next week how is mrs warlock do you go to her as much as ever almost as much she seems so dependent upon me for companionship poor soul i'm the only girl she has taken to as people say what a wise woman to choose the most charming girl in the world if you said in the matching world it would not be a stupendous compliment nay i mean the world i challenge the universe to produce me a second susette and jeffrey your violin player has he been much at home not very much please don't call him my violin player i've not played a single accompaniment for him since you objected i've been very dutiful don't talk of duty it is love that i want love without alloy love which being full of foolishness itself can forgive a lover's baseless jealousy alan have i ever been unforgiving know you have born with my tempers you've been all that is kind and sweet but i sometimes wish you would be angry with me with that there were a girl in matchum handsome enough to admit of your jealousy how desperately i would flirt with that girl her one smile was not encouraging is he still as devoted to his fiddle does he talk of tartini spontini de barrio as other men talk of solsbury or gladstone i've seen very little of him but he is a fanatic about music he inherits his mother's passion his poor mother side alan she is so fond of you almost as fond as she is of her own son that's not possible susie well the son must be first of course but indeed she is very fond of you alan dear soul it is for old sakes sake i'll tell you her poor little innocent secret susie you who are the other half of my soul have a right to know all things which gravely interests me only you must be discretion itself and you must never breathe a word of mrs warnawk's story to my mother and then he sat down by her side in the comfortable corner by the old fashioned fireplace fenced off from all the outer world by a japanese screen on which choti and an army of smaller devils grinned and capered against a black satin background and he told her tenderly but only an outline the story of his father's first love and asparanzas all two willing sacrifice it was generous but a mistake he said in conclusion she gave up her own happiness dashed away the cup of joy when it was at her lips she was nobly unselfish and she spoiled two lies such sacrifices never answer do you really believe that alan asks is that looking at him with us startling intensity i really do i've never known a case in which self-surrender of that kind has ended well a man and woman who love each other should be true to each other and their mutual love all worldly considerations should be as not if a man truly loves a beggar girl let him marry her and don't let the beggar girl draw back under the idea that he would do better by marrying a duchess but if two people love each other who are otherwise bound and fettered who cannot be happy without breaking older ties oh that is a different thing honor comes into the question and there must be sacrifices this world would be a pandemonium if inclination went before honor i'm talking of love wade against worldly wisdom against poverty against rank race wealth you can understand now why mrs. war knocks heart went out to me from the beginning of our acquaintance why she has accepted me almost as a second son alan's matchum friends were enthusiastic in their welcome and cordial in their expressions of sympathy it may be that the increase of means and importance which had come to him by his father's death was no small factor in the opinion of the village and its environs a man who's had an estate in suffolk and who lived at matchum for his own pleasure was a personage and matchum gossip did not fail to exaggerate the unseen suffocate state and to talk of the beachhurst property as a mere bagatell a windfall from a maternal uncle hardly worth talking about as compared with van dyke and its vast acreage lady emily has the house and home farm for her life mrs. mournington explained with their privileged heir of alan's intimate friend but the bulk of the estate passed at once to mr. karoo my niece has done very well for herself after all the last words carelessly spoken implied that in the first instance mr. karoo had been rather a poor match for miss vincent i suppose this sad event will delay the marriage for two or three months perhaps they were to have been married at midsummer when susette will come of age but she tells me she would not think of marrying alan till at least half a year after his father's death she talked of a year but that would be simply absurd the wedding can be as quiet as they like yes of course murmured a senting friend sipping mrs. mournington's salon tea and despondently foreseeing the stern necessity of wedding presence without even the poor compensation of champagne ices wedding cake and a crowd of fine gowns and new bonnets positively no equivalent for their money susette had pleaded hard for a year's delay it would be more respectful to him whom you have lost and it would be more pleasing to your mother she said no susette my mother would rather see me happy than sacrifice my happiness to conventionality half a year is a long time for a man whose life seems a thing of shreds and patches waiting the better full of life that he longs for i shall remember my dear father with no less affection i shall no less regret his loss when you and i are one we can be married quietly at nine o'clock in the morning before matching people have finished breakfast with only your father and aunt and my mother for witnesses and we can slip away from the station in the fresh september morning on the first stage of our journey to coma such a lovely journey at that season susie it will still be summer in italy and we can stay late in october till the grapes are all gathered and the bear sows are getting bare and then we can come back to match them to our own cozy fireside and amuse ourselves with the arrangement of our house it will be as new to me as it will be to you susie for only when you are its mistress will it be home susette could hardly withhold her consent her lover being so earnest it was settled that the marriage should take place early in september and this being decided the current of life flowed smoothly on alan spending more of his days at marsh house the grove and discomb than in his own house except when lady emily was with him discomb was by far the most delightful of these three houses and out of door weather pleasant as were mrs. mournington's carefully tended grounds and shrubbery her veranda and spacious conservatory the gardens at discomb had that delicious flavor of the old world and that absolute seclusion which can never be enjoyed in grounds that are within earshot of a high road at discomb the long grass walks the walls of ilax and a view the cypress avenues and marble temples were isolated amidst surrounding woods nearly a mile away from the traffic of everyday life there was a sense of quiet and privacy here compared with which marsh house and the grove were scarcely superior to the average villa in a newly developed suburb the seasons waxed and waned the month of may when the woodland walks around discomb were white with the feathery bloom of the mountain ash and golden with the scented blossoms of the yellow azalea and june which filled the woodland avenues with a flush of purple rhododendrons masses of bloom in an ascending scale of color from the deep base of darkest purple to the trouble of palest lilac and july with her lap full of roses that made the gardens a scene of enchantment i always tell the gardeners that if they give me roses i will forgive them all the rest said mrs. wornock when alan complimented her upon her banquet of bloom arches of roses festoons of roses temples built of roses roses in beds and borders everywhere but your men are model gardeners they neglect nothing in this paradise of flowers alan and susette dawdled away two or three afternoons in every week discomb seemed to alan always something of an enchanted palace a place upon which there lay a glamour and a spell a garden of sleep a grove for woven paces and weaving hands a spot haunted by sad sweet memories ruled over by the genius of love faithful in disappointment mrs. wornock's personality gave an atmosphere of sadness to the house in which she lived to the gardens in which she pays to and throw with slow meditative steps but it was a not unpleasing sadness and it suited alan's mood in this quiet summer of waiting while grief for the loss of his father was still fresh in his mind lady emily came to this home on several occasions and now that mrs. wornock's shyness had worn off with all those agitations which were inevitable at a first meeting the two women were very good friends it was difficult for anyone not to take kindly to lady emily caru and she on her side was attracted to mrs. wornock fascinated by a nature so different from her own and by that reserved force of genius which gave fire and pay thoughts to mrs. wornock's playing lady emily listened with moistened eyes to the sonata pateitika and mrs. wornock showed a cordial interest in the blickling park and wood-bast wig cows which gave distinction to the fendite dairy farm pure white with lovely black muzzles and splendid milkers protested lady emily i was taught that thing you play dear mrs. wornock but my playing was never good for much even when i was having two lessons a week from poor sir julius he was only mr. benedict when he taught me and he was almost young jeffrey made meteoroic appearances at discount during those quiet summer months and his presence seemed to make everybody uncomfortable there was a restlessness a suppressed fever about him which made sensitive people nervous dearly though his mother loved him and gladly as she welcomed his reappearance upon the scene of her life she was always fluttered and anxious while he was under her roof his leave expired early in july but instead of joining his regiment which had returned to england and was now courted at york he sent in his papers without telling his mother or anybody else what he was doing and would not reconsider his decision when asked to do so by his colonel he told his mother one morning at breakfast in quite a casual way that he had left the army oh jeffrey she exclaimed with a shocked look i hope you are not sorry i thought it would please you for me to be my own master able to spend more of my life with you dear jeffrey i'm very glad on that account but i'm afraid it is a selfish gladness it was better for you to have a profession everybody told me so years ago when i was so grieved that you're going into the army that is a way everybody has of saying smooth things well mother i'm no longer a soldier india was pleasant enough there was a smack of adventure a possibility of fighting but i could not have endured garrison life in an english town i would rather mope at home why should you mope jeff yes why i'm free to go east west north or south i suppose there need be no moping now but you will be often at home won't you dear or else i shall be no gainer by your leaving the army yes i will be here as often and as much as as i can bear it he'd risen from the breakfast table and was walking up and down the room with that light careless step of his which seemed in perfect harmony with his tall slim figure he was very pale and his eyes were brighter than usual and there was a quick restlessness in the smile that flashed across his face now and again do i bore you so much jeffrey his mother asked with a wounded look you bore me no no no oh surely you know how the land lies surely this fever cannot have been eating up my heart and my strength all this time without your eyes seeing and your heart sympathizing you must know that i love her i feared as much my poor jeffrey no name had been spoken yet mother and son understood each other you feared great god why should it be a reason for fear here am i young rich my own master and here she is free as she is fair free to be my wife tomorrow except for this tie which is no tie a foolish engagement to a man she never loved has she told you that not she her lips are locked by an overstrained sense of honor she will marry a man for whom she doesn't care a straw she will be miserable all her life right best she will have missed happiness and on her deathbed she will boast to her perished priest i've kept my word poor pretty puritan she thinks it virtue to break my heart and grieve her own you have told her of your love jeffrey yes that was dishonorable no more than it was to love her i'm a lump of dishonor i am made up of lies but if she had an ounce of pluck there need be no more at falsehood she has only to tell him the truth the sad simple truth i never loved you i've let myself be persuaded into an engagement but i never loved you that would break alan's heart it would be bad to bear no doubt but not so bad as the gradual revelation that must come upon him in the years after marriage she may be able to deceive him now to delude him with the idea that she loves him but how about the long winter evenings by their own fireside and the dull nights when the rain is on the roof a woman may hide her want of love before marriage but by heaven she can't hide it after god help him when he finds that he has a victim and not her wife poor alan but how do you know she does not care for him or that she cares for you how do i know that i live and breathe that this is i touching himself with an impatient tap of those light restless fingers i know it i've known it more or less from the time we played those duets the dawn of knowledge and of love to know each other was to love we were born for each other alan with his shadowy resemblance to me was only my forerunner like the man one sees in the street the man who reminds one of a dear friend half an hour or so before we meet that very friend alan taught her to like the type she never loved him in me she recognizes the individual faded to love her and to be loved by her dear jeffrey this is mere guesswork no it is instinct intuition dead certainty i tell you once twice a thousand times if you like she loves me and she doesn't love him tax her with it pluck out the heart of her mystery this hollow sham this similar loquam of love must not go on to marriage talk to her as woman to woman as mother to daughter i tell you it must not go on it is driving me mad i will do what i can poor alan so good so true hearted am i false hearted or vile mother why should alan be all in all to you he is not all in all you know you are the first always the first in my heart but i'm very sorry for alan if what you tell me is true he is doomed to be most unhappy he is so fond of her he has placed all his hopes of happiness upon his marriage and they are to be married in little more than a month it will be heartless to break it all if it isn't broken off there will be a tragedy i will rush between them at the altar the lying words shall not be spoken i would rather shoot him for her than that she should perjure herself swear to love another while she loves only me jeffrey how do you know how can you be sure our hands have touched our eyes have met that is enough he walked out of the window to the garden and from the garden through the stables where he ordered his dog cart his servant kept a portmanteau always ready packed he left his home within an hour of that conversation with his mother and he was on his way to london before noon the first intimation of his departure which his mother received was a note which he found on the luncheon table i'm off to the hearts for our fortnight's tramp remember something must be done to hinder this marriage i shall return before the middle of august and shall expect to find all settled address post restaunt harzburg end of chapter 21 chapter 22 of sons of fire by mary elizabeth bradden this liber box recording is in the public domain who knows why love begins the time was drawing near the corn was cut and carried on many a broad sweep of hot chalky soil and summer's branding sun had burnt up the thin grass on the wide bear down where never shadow of tree or bush made a cool spot in the expanse of light and heat and dryness the mysterious immemorial stones yonder on salisbury plain stood up against the background of cloudless blue in every window of the cathedral in the valley winked and flashed in the sunshine only in the sober old close and the venerable gardens of up bygone generation within hedges that dead hands had planted trees whose growth dead eyes had watched was their coolness or shelter for the gentle slumberous feeling of summer afternoon in its restful perfection here in an antique drawing room mrs. mournington and her niece were taking tea after a morning with taylor and dressmaker there never was such a girl for not caringness as this girl of mine said mrs. mournington with a vexed air if it had not been for me i don't think she would have had a new frock in her true so and as she is a very prim personage about lingerie and has a large stock of peresian prettiness in that line there would really have been nothing to buy rather a relief i should think left mrs. cannon who was giving them tea a most delightful state of things asserted mrs. sub dean proud mother of half a dozen daughters in which opinion agreed a county lady also rich in daughters uh you are all against me said mrs. mournington but there is a great pleasure in buying things especially when one is spending somebody else's money poor papa side susette my aunt forgets that he is not creases look at that girl's wretched pale face cried mrs. mournington would anyone think that she was going to be married to a most estimable young man in the best match in the neighborhood except one at those two last words susette's cheeks flamed crimson and the feminine conclave looking at her felt she was being cruelly used by the strong-minded aunt of hers i don't think the nicest girls are ever very keen about their true so said the county lady with a furtive glance at a buxom freckled daughter who had lately become engaged and who had already begun to discuss house ninim and frocks without largeness of ideas that alarmed her parents yes but there is a difference between caring too much and not caring at all susette would be married in that white gingham she is wearing today if i would let her pray don't tease people about my frocks auntie if you can't find something more interesting to talk about we had better go away said susette with a pettishness which was quite unlike her but it must be owned that to be made the object of a public attack in feminine convocation was somewhat exasperating mrs. mournington was not to be put down she went on talking of frogs though one of the daughters of the house carried susette off to the garden an act of real christian charity if she had not spoiled her good work by beginning to talk of susette's lover i can quite fancy your aunt must be rather boring sometimes she said but do tell me about mr. caru i thought him so nice the other day at the flower show when you introduced him to me what can i tell you about him you have seen him and i'm glad you thought him nice yes but one wants to know more one wants to know what he is like from your point of view but how could you see him from my point of view that's impossible true a casual acquaintance could never see him as he appears to you to whom he is all the world said the canon's daughter who was young and romantic having lived upon church music and coventry pat more's poetry there's my aunt showing them patterns of my frocks exclaims susette irritably glancing in at the drawing room where mrs. mournington sat the center of a little group handing scraps of stuff out of her reticule the scraps are being passed round and peered at and pulled about by everybody with the meditative and admiring air an african savage seeing the group would have supposed that some act of sordillage was being performed it is rather an ordeal being married said the canon's daughter thinking sadly of a certain undergraduate who was downhearted about his divinity exam and upon whose achieving deacons borders within a reasonable time depended the young lady's matrimonial prospects she sighed as she thought of the difference in worldly wealth between that well-meaning youth and alan karoo and yet here was the future mrs. karoo pale and worry and obviously discontented with her lot when those gowns had been ordered susette thought as if it were another link forged in the iron chain which seemed to weigh heavier upon her every day of her life she had promised and she must keep her promise that was what she was continually saying to herself those words were woven into all her thoughts alan was so good so true hearted could she disappoint and grieve him could she be heartless unkind selfish think of herself first and of him after snatch at the happiness fate offered to her and leave him out in the cold know better that she should bear her lot become his wife live out her slow melancholy days his faithful servant and friend honoring him and obeying him doing all that woman can do for man except loving him those meteoric appearances of jeffries had made life much harder for susette she might have fought against her love for him more successfully perhaps had he been always near had she seen him almost daily and become accustomed to his presence as a common incident in the daily routine but to be told that he was in the far north of scotland yachting with a friend and then to be startled by his voice at her shoulder murmuring her name in disco wood and to turn around with nervous quickness to see him looking at her with his pale smile like a ghost or to be assured that he was salmon fishing in kanamara and to see him suddenly sauntering across the lawn in the july desk more ghosts like even than in the woods as if face informed were a mere materialization which her own sad thoughts had conjured out of the twilight he would take very little trouble to explain his unlooked for return scotland was too hot the north sea was like a vast sheet of red hot iron blown over by a south wind that was like the breath of a blast furnace island was a place of bad ends and inexorable rain and there were no fish or none that he could catch he had come home because life was weariness away from home he feared that life meant weariness everywhere the days were hurrying by and now mrs. morrington talked ever lastingly of the wedding or so it seemed to susette who in these latter days tried to avoid her aunt as much as was consistent with civility and fled from the grove to disco as to a haven of peace mrs. morrington loved to expatiate upon the coming event to bewail her niece's indifference to regret that there was to be no festivity we're speaking of and to enlarge upon the advantages of allen's position and surroundings and susette's good fortune in having come to match him your father might have spent a thousand pounds on a london season and not have done half so well for you she said conclusively the general not a dissent certainly between them they had done wonderfully well for susette from this worldly wisdom the harass girl fled to the quiet of disco where the peaceful silence was only broken by the deep broad stream of sound from the organ touched with ever-growing power by mrs. warlock susette would steal softly into the music room unannounced and take her accustomed seat in the recess by the organ and sit silently listening as long as mrs. warlock cared to play only when the last court had died away did the two women touch hands and look at each other it was about a week after that weary day in salisbury when susette seated herself by the player in the silent way and sat listening to a funeral march by bethoven with her head leaning on her hand and not so much as a murmur of praise for music or performer stirring the thoughtful quiet of her lips when the last melancholy notes low down in the base had melted into silence mrs. warlock looked up and saw susette's face bathed in tears tears that streamed over the pallid cheeks unchecked jeffrey's mother started up from the organ and clasped the weeping girl to her breast poor child poor child he was right then you are not happy happy i'm miserable i don't know what to do i don't know what would be worst or wickedest to disappoint him or to marry him not loving him no no no you must not marry not if you cannot love him but are you sure that susie are you sure you don't love him he is so good so worthy to be loved as his father was years ago why should you not love him uh who can tell side susette who knows why love begins or how love gets the mastery i let myself be talked into thinking i loved him i always liked him liked his company was grateful for his attentions respected him for his fine nature and then i let him persuade me that this was love but it wasn't it never was love friendship and liking are not love and now that the fatal day draws near i know how wide a difference there is between love and liking you must not marry him susette you know i would not willingly say one word that would tell against alan karoo's happiness i love him almost as dearly as i love my own son but when i see you miserable when i see jeffrey utterly wretched i can no longer keep silence this marriage must be broken off he will hate me he will despise me what can he think me false fickle unworthy of a good man's love you must tell him the truth it will be cruel but not so cruel as to let him go unbelieving in you thinking himself happy living in a fool's paradise will you let me speak for you susette let me do what your mother might have done had she been here to help you in your knee susette was speechless with tears her face hidden on mrs warlock's shoulder the door was opened at this moment and a servant announced mr karoo alan had approached the group by the organ before either mrs warlock or susette could hide her agitation their tears the way in which they clung to each other told of some over mastering grief good god what is the matter what has happened he exclaimed nothing has happened alan yet there is sorrow for all of us sorrow that has been coming upon us though some of us did not know it susette may i tell him now this moment may you tell me tell me what questioned alan susette speak to me you you no one else fear indignation despair were in his tone he caught hold of susette's arm and drew her towards him looking searchingly at the pale tear-stained face that she shrank from his grasp and sank on her knees at his feet it is my miserable secret that must be told at last i have tried i've hoped i honor i respect you alan but our hearts are not our own we cannot guide or govern their impulses my heart is weighed down with shame and misery but it is empty of love i cannot love you as your wife should if i keep my word i shall be a miserable woman you shall not be that he said sternly not to make me the happiest man in creation but don't you think with chilling deliberation this tragedy might have been acted a little earlier it seems to me that you have kept your secret over carefully i have been weak alan hopelessly miserably weak minded i tried to do what was best i did not want to disappoint you disappoint me why you have fooled me from the first disappoint me why i've built the whole fabric of my future life upon this rotten foundation i was to be happy because of your love my days and years were to flow sweetly by in a paradise of domestic peace blessed by your love and all the time there was no such thing you did not love me you had never loved me you were only trying to love me and the hopelessness of the endeavor is brought home to you today three weeks before our wedding day susette susette never was women's cruelty crueler than this of yours she was in floods of tears at his feet her head drooping till her face almost touched the ground he left her kneeling there and rushed away to the garden to hide his own tears the tears of which his manhood was ashamed the passionate sobs the wild hysterical weeping of the sex that seldom weeps he found a shelter and a hiding place in an angle of the garden where there was a sidewalk shut in by closed-crop cypress walls and here mrs warlock found him presently sitting on a marble bench with his elbows on his knees his face hidden in his hands she seated herself at his side and laid her hand gently on his alan dear alan i'm so sorry for you she said softly i'm very sorry for myself i don't seem to need anybody's pity i think i can do all the grieving ah that is the worst of it nobody's sympathy can help you not yours he answered almost savagely for at heart you must be glad my dismissal makes room for someone else someone whose interests are dearer to you than mine could ever be there is no one nearer or dearer to me than you alan no one not even my own son you have been to me as a son the son of the man i fondly loved whose face i was to look upon only once once after those long years in which we were parted i've loved you as a part of my youth the living memory of my lost love ah my dear i had to learn the lesson of self-surrender when i was younger than you i loved him with all my heart and mind and i gave him up you did wrong to give him up he himself said so but there is no parallel between the two cases this girl has let me believe in her i've lived for a year in this sweet delusion a bliss no more real than the happiness of a dream she would have loved me she would have married me all would have been well for us but for your son when he came my chance was blighted he has charms of mind and manner which i have not like me they say but ten times handsomer he can speak to her with the language that i have not although singing notes on the violin that long drawn lingering sweep of the bow like the cry of a spirit in paradise an angelic voice telling of love ethereal love released from clay those tears which seem to tremble on the strings that loud sudden sob of passionate pain which came like a short sharp amen to the prayer of love i could understand that language better than he thought he stole her love from me set himself deliberately to rob me of my life's happiness it is cruel to say that allen he is incapable of treachery of deliberate wrongdoing he is a creature of impulse meaning a creature with whom self is the only god and in one of his impulses he told susette of his love even in plainer words than his strativarius could tell the story and from that hour her heart was false to me i saw the change in her when i came back after my father's death you are unjust to him allen in your grief and anger whatever his feelings may have been he has fought against them he has made himself almost an exile from this house he has been biting his time no doubt and now that i have had the coup de grace he will come back end of chapter 22