“Not in plain words. But there was not much to indicate hope. And yet I cling to the fancy that she will come to love me in the end. To think otherwise would be utter misery to me. I cannot tell you how dearly I love her, and how weak I am about this business. It seems contemptible for a man to talk about a broken heart; but I shall carry an empty one to my grave unless I win Marian Nowell for my wife.”
“You shall win her!” cried the Captain energetically. “You are a noble fellow, sir, and will make her an excellent husband. She will not be so foolish as to reject such a disinterested affection. Besides,” he added, hesitating a little, “I have a very shrewd notion that all this apparent indifference is only shyness on my little girl’s part, and that she loves you.”
“You believe that!” cried Gilbert eagerly.
“It is only guesswork on my part, of course. I am an old bachelor, you see, and have had very little experience as to the signs and tokens of the tender passion. But I will sound my little girl by and by. She will be more ready to confess the truth to her old uncle than she would to you, perhaps. I think you have been a trifle hasty about this affair. There is so much in time and custom.”
“It is only a cold kind of love that grows out of custom,” Gilbert answered gloomily. “But I daresay you are right, and that it would have been better for me to have waited.”
“You may hope everything, if you can only be patient,” said the Captain. “I tell you frankly, that nothing would make me happier than to see my dear child married to a good man. I have had many dreary thoughts about her future of late. I think you know that I have nothing to leave her.”
“I have never thought of that. If she were destined to inherit all the wealth of the Rothschilds, she could be no dearer to me than she is.”
“Ah, what a noble thing true love is! And do you know that she is not really my niece — only a poor waif that I adopted fourteen years ago?”
“I have heard as much from her own lips. There is nothing, except some unworthiness in herself, that could make any change in my estimation of her.”
“Unworthiness in herself! You need never fear that. But I must tell you Marian’s story before this business goes any farther. Will you come and smoke your cigar with me to-night? She is going to drink tea at a neighbour’s, and we shall be alone. They are all fond of her, poor child.”
“I shall be very happy to come. And in the meantime, you will try and ascertain the real state of her feelings without distressing her in any way; and you will tell me the truth with all frankness, even if it is to be a deathblow to all my hopes?”
“Even if it should be that. But I do not fear such a melancholy result. I think Marian is sensible enough to know the value of an honest man’s heart.”
Gilbert quitted the Captain in a more hopeful spirit than that in which he had gone to the cottage that day. It was only reasonable that this man should be the best judge of his niece’s feelings.
Left alone, George Sedgewick paced the room in a meditative mood, with his hands thrust deep into his trousers-pockets, and his gray head bent thoughtfully.
“She must like him,” he muttered to himself. “Why should not she like him? — good-looking, generous, clever, prosperous, well-connected, and over head and ears in love with her. Such a marriage is the very thing I have been praying for. And without such a marriage, what would be her fate when I am gone? A drudge and dependent in some middle-class family perhaps — tyrannised over and tormented by a brood of vulgar children.”
Marian came in at the open window while he was still pacing to and fro with a disturbed countenance.
“My dear uncle, what is the matter?” she asked, going up to him and laying a caressing hand upon his shoulder. “I know you never walk about like that unless you are worried by something.”
“I am not worried to-day, my love; only a little perplexed,” answered the Captain, detaining the caressing little hand, and planting himself face to face with his niece, in the full sunlight of the broad bow-window. “Marian, I thought you and I had no secrets from each other?”
“Secrets, uncle George!”
“Yes, my dear. Haven’t you something pleasant to tell your old uncle — something that a girl generally likes telling? You had a visitor yesterday afternoon while I was asleep.”
“Mr. Fenton.”
“Mr. Fenton. He has been here with me just now; and I know that he asked you to be his wife.”
“He did, uncle George.”
“And you didn’t refuse him, Marian?”
“Not positively, uncle George. He took me so much by surprise, you see; and I really don’t know how to refuse any one; but I think I ought to have made him understand more clearly that I meant no.”
“But why, my dear?”
“Because I am sure I don’t care about him as much as I ought to care. I like him very well, you know, and think him clever and agreeable, and all that kind of thing.”
“That will soon grow into a warmer feeling, Marian; at least I trust in God that it will do so.”
“Why, dear uncle?”
“Because I have set my heart upon this marriage. O Marian, my love, I have never ventured to speak to you about your future — the days that must come when I am dead and gone; and you can never know how many anxious hours I have spent thinking of it. Such a marriage as this would secure you happiness and prosperity in the years to come.”
She clung about him fondly, telling him she cared little what might become of her life when he should be lost to her. That grief must needs be the crowning sorrow of her existence; and it would matter nothing to her what might come afterwards.
“But my dear love, ‘afterwards’ will make the greater part of your life. We must consider these things seriously, Marian. A good man’s affection is not to be thrown away rashly. You have known Mr. Fenton a very short time; and perhaps it is only natural you should think of him with comparative indifference.”
“I did not say I was indifferent to him, uncle George; only that I do not love him as he seems to love me. It would be a kind of sin to accept so much and to give so little.”
“The love will come, Marian; I am sure that it will come.”
She shook her head playfully.
“What a darling match-making uncle it is!” she said, and then kissed him and ran away.
She thought of Gilbert Fenton a good deal during the rest of that day; thought that it was a pleasant thing to be loved so truly, and hoped that she might always have him for her friend. When she went out to drink tea in the evening his image went with her; and she found herself making involuntary comparisons between a specimen of provincial youth whom she encountered at her friend’s house and Mr. Fenton, very much to the advantage of the Australian merchant.
While Marian Nowell was away at this little social gathering, Captain Sedgewick and Gilbert Fenton sat under the walnut-trees smoking their cigars, with a bottle of claret on a little iron table before them.
“When I came back from India fourteen years ago on the sick-list,” began the Captain, “I went down to Brighton, a place I had been fond of in my young days, to recruit. It was in the early spring, quite out of the fashionable season, and the town was very empty. My lodgings were in a dull street at the extreme east, leading away from the sea, but within sight and sound of it. The solitude and quiet of the place suited me; and I used to walk up and down the cliff in the dusk of evening enjoying the perfect loneliness of the scene. The house I lived in was a comfortable one, kept by an elderly widow who was a pattern of neatness and propriety. There were no children; for some time no other lodgers; and the place was as quiet as the grave. All this suited me very well. I wanted rest, and I was getting it.
“I had been at Brighton about a month, when the drawing-room floor over my head was taken by a lady, and her little girl of about five years old. I used to hear the child’s feet pattering about the room; but she was not a noisy child by any means; and when I did happen to hear her voice, it had a very
pleasant sound to me. The lady was an invalid, and was a good deal of trouble, my landlady took occasion to tell me, as she had no maid of her own. Her name was Nowell.
“Soon after this I encountered her on the cliff one afternoon with her little girl. The child and I had met once or twice before in the hall; and her recognition of me led to a little friendly talk between me and the mother. She was a fragile delicate-looking woman, who had once been very pretty, but whose beauty had for the most part been worn away, either by ill-health or trouble. She was very young, five-and-twenty at the utmost. She told me that the little girl was her only child, and that her husband was away from England, but that she expected his return before long.
“After this we met almost every afternoon; and I began to look out for these meetings, and our quiet talk upon the solitary cliff, as the pleasantest part of my day. There was a winning grace about this Mrs. Nowell’s manner that I had never seen in any other woman; and I grew to be more interested in her than I cared to confess to myself. It matters little now; and I may freely own how weak I was in those days.
“I could see that she was very ill, and I did not need the ominous hints of the landlady, who had contrived to question Mrs. Nowell’s doctor, to inspire me with the dread that she might never recover. I thought of her a great deal, and watched the fading light in her eyes, and listened to the weakening tones of her voice, with a sense of trouble that seemed utterly disproportionate to the occasion. I will not say that I loved her; neither the fact that she was another man’s wife, nor the fact that she was soon to die, was ever absent from my mind when I thought of her. I will only say that she was more to me than any woman had ever been before, or has ever been since. It was the one sentimental episode of my life, and a very brief one.
“The weeks went by, and her husband did not come. I think the trouble and anxiety caused by his delay did a good deal towards hastening the inevitable end; but she bore her grief very quietly, and never uttered a complaint of him in my hearing. She paid her way regularly enough for a considerable time, and then all at once broke down, and confessed to the landlady that she had not a shilling more in the world. The woman was a hard creature, and told her that if that was the case, she must find some other lodgings, and immediately. I heard this, not from Mrs. Nowell, but from the landlady, who seemed to consider her conduct thoroughly justified by the highest code of morals. She was a lone unprotected woman, and how was she to pay her rent and taxes if her best floor was occupied by a non-paying tenant?
“I was by no means a rich man; but I could not endure to think of that helpless dying creature thrust out into the streets; and I told my landlady that I would be answerable for Mrs. Nowell’s rent, and for the daily expenses incurred on her behalf. Mr. Nowell would in all probability appear in good time to relieve me from the responsibility, but in the mean while that poor soul upstairs was not to be distressed. I begged that she might know nothing of this undertaking on my part.
“It was not long after this when our daily meetings on the cliff came to an end. Mild as the weather was by this time, Mrs. Nowell’s doctor had forbidden her going out any longer. I knew that she had no maid to send out with the child, so I sent the servant up to ask her if she would trust the little one for a daily walk with me. This she was very pleased to do, and Marian became my dear little companion every afternoon. She had taken to me, as the phrase goes, from the very first. She was the gentlest, most engaging child I had ever met with — a little grave for her years, and tenderly thoughtful of others.
“One evening Mrs. Nowell sent for me. I went up to the drawing-room immediately, and found her sitting in an easy-chair propped up by pillows, and very much changed for the worse since I had seen her last. She told me that she had discovered the secret of my goodness to her, as she called it, from the landlady, and that she had sent for me to thank me.
“‘I can give you nothing but thanks and blessings,’ she said, ‘for I am the most helpless creature in this world. I suppose my husband will come here before I die, and will relieve you from the risk you have taken for me; but he can never repay you for your goodness.’
“I told her to give herself no trouble on my account; but I could not help saying, that I thought her husband had behaved shamefully in not coming to England to her long ere this.
“‘He knows that you are ill, I suppose?’ I said.
“‘O yes, he knows that. I was ill when he sent me home. We had been travelling about the Continent almost ever since our marriage. He married me against his father’s will, and lost all chance of a great fortune by doing so. I did not know how much he sacrificed at the time, or I should never have consented to his losing so much for my sake. I think the knowledge of what he had lost came between us very soon. I know that his love for me has grown weaker as the years went by, and that I have been little better than a burden to him. I could never tell you how lonely my life has been in those great foreign cities, where there seems such perpetual gaiety and pleasure. I think I must have died of the solitude and dulness — the long dreary summer evenings, the dismal winter days — if it had not been for my darling child. She has been all the world to me. And, O God!’ she cried, with a look of anguish that went to my heart, ‘what will become of her when I am dead, and she is left to the care of a selfish dissipated man?’
“‘You need never fear that she will be without one friend while I live,’ I said. ‘Little Marian is very dear to me, and I shall make it my business to watch over her career as well as I can.’
“The poor soul clasped my hand, and pressed her feverish lips to it in a transport of gratitude. What a brute a man must have been who could neglect such a woman!
“After this I went up to her room every evening, and read to her a little, and cheered her as well as I could; but I believe her heart was broken. The end came very suddenly at last. I had intended to question her about her husband’s family; but the subject was a difficult one to approach, and I had put it off from day to day, hoping that she might rally a little, and would be in a better condition to discuss business matters.
“She never did rally. I was with her when she died, and her last act was to draw her child towards her with her feeble arms and lay my hand upon the little one’s head, looking up at me with sorrowful pleading eyes. She was quite speechless then, but I knew what the look meant, and answered it.
“‘To the end of my life, my dear,’ I said, ‘I shall love and cherish her — to the end of my life.’
“After this the child fell asleep in my arms as I sat by the bedside sharing the long melancholy watch with the landlady, who behaved very well at this sorrowful time. We sat in the quiet room all night, the little one wrapped in a shawl and nestled upon my breast. In the early summer morning Lucy Nowell died, very peacefully; and I carried Marian down to the sofa in the parlour, and laid her there still asleep. She cried piteously for her mother when she awoke, and I had to tell her that which it is so hard to tell a child.
“I wrote to Mr. Nowell at an address in Brussels which I found at the top of his last letter to his wife. No answer came. I wrote again, after a little while, with the same result; and, in the mean time, the child had grown fonder of me and dearer to me every day. I had hired a nursemaid for her, and had taken an upper room for her nursery; but she spent the greater part of her life with me, and I began to fancy that Providence intended I should keep her with me for the rest of her days. She told me, in her innocent childish way, that papa had never loved her as her mamma did. He had been always out of doors till very, very late at night. She had crept from her little bed sometimes when it was morning, quite light, and had found mamma in the sitting-room, with no fire, and the candles all burnt out, waiting for papa to come home.
“I put an advertisement, addressed to Mr. Percival Nowell, in the Times and in Galignani, for I felt that the child’s future might depend upon her father’s acknowledgment of her in the present; but no reply came to these advertisements, and I settled in my own mind that this
Nowell was a scoundrel, who had deliberately deserted his wife and child.
“The possessions of the poor creature who was gone were of no great value. There were some rather handsome clothes and a small collection of jewelry — some of it modern, the rest curious and old-fashioned. These latter articles I kept religiously, believing them to be family relics. The clothes and the modern trinkets I caused to be sold, and the small sum realised for them barely paid the expense of the funeral and grave. The arrears of rent and all other arrears fell upon me. I paid them, and then left Brighton with the child and nurse. I was born not twenty miles from this place, and I had a fancy for ending my days in my native county; so I came down to this part of the world, and looked about me a little, living in farm-house lodgings here and there, until I found this cottage to let one day, and decided upon settling at Lidford. And now you know the whole story of Marian’s adoption, Mr. Fenton. How happy we have been together, or what she has been to me since that time, I could never tell you.”
“The story does you credit, sir; and I honour you for your goodness,” said Gilbert Fenton.
“Goodness, pshaw!” cried the Captain, impetuously; “it has been a mere matter of self-indulgence on my part. The child made herself necessary to me from the very first. I was a solitary man, a confirmed bachelor, with every prospect of becoming a hard, selfish old fogey. Marian Nowell has been the sunshine of my life!”
“You never made any farther discoveries about Mr. Nowell?”
“Never. I have sometimes thought, that I ought to have made some stronger efforts to place myself in communication with him. I have thought this, especially when brooding upon the uncertainties of my darling’s future. From the little Mrs. Nowell told me about her marriage, I had reason to believe her husband’s father must have been a rich man. He might have softened towards his grandchild, in spite of his disapproval of the marriage. I sometimes think I ought to have sought out the grandfather. But, you see, it would have been uncommonly difficult to set about this, in my complete ignorance as to who or what he was.”
Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon Page 479
