Chapter XII: Love, Then, Had Hope of Richer Store

After that summer day under the plane trees, Sibyl utters the name of Secretan no more. Hope of relenting on her uncle’s part there is none. If Alexis could forgive the man who in his version of the story came basely between father and son to cheat the son of his heritage, and tricked the lover out of his mistress, Stephen Trenchard’s stubborn soul would still remain unsoftened. Reconciliation between these two was impossible. To retain her uncle’s favour, and inherit a portion of his wealth, Sibyl must keep the secret of her marriage. A painful part to play even for a mind not untrained in deceit; but a necessary part, Sibyl tells herself. A difficult game, but for a stake well worth the winning. She has no exact measure of her uncle’s possessions. He has never talked to her of his investments, or told her his income, but she has a fixed idea that his wealth is almost without limit, that, like the Rothschilds or the Duke of Westminster, he could scarcely state the sum-total of his riches if he were asked for exact figures. His fortune is a rolling mass of gold, she supposes, which grows larger at every turn, like a snowball. The respect she sees paid to him by the elect of Redcastle establishes her in this conviction of Stephen Trenchard’s importance, for she knows that in this case importance can only mean money.

Lancaster Lodge is one of those handsomely finished, solidly built houses which adorn the outskirts of every country town, and are like temples dedicated to the genius of commonplace; houses in which the butler’s pantry has been as carefully considered as the drawing-room, and in which my lady’s boudoir is just as unlovely as John Thomas’s attic under the leads. All the principal rooms are large and square and lofty. The passages are broad and straight. The staircase is well proportioned, ventilated and lighted to perfection. Impossible to find fault with a house which, as the house agent proudly puts it, possesses all the requirements for a gentleman’s family. Equally impossible to feel the slightest interest in a mansion which neither awes by its splendour nor attracts by its eccentricity, nor charms by the lowlier graces of homeliness and simplicity. A coffin descending that mathematical staircase would lose its awfulness in the pervading atmosphere of commonplace. A cradle in any of those rooms would seem to have lost its way, and wandered into a desert, where baby-life could not endure. No sadly sweet fancies of domestic joys that are no more entwine themselves about this dwelling of Stephen Trenchard’s. It looks like what it is--an old bachelor’s house,--and Mr. Trenchard could hardly have chosen a habitation more completely in harmony with his own character.

The Redcastle upholsterer, a man whose stock in trade appears to consist of two easy chairs and a sideboard--but who can do great things at a push,--has furnished Lancaster Lodge with appropriate splendour. All is solid and grandiose; dark crimson draperies--velvet in the dining-room and library, satin brocade in the drawing-room--subdue the garish light and give a sombre grandeur to the rooms. Heavy oak furniture, thickest Turkey and Persian carpets; varied spoil of carved black wood, ivory, porcelain, and Bombay inlaid work, which Mr. Trenchard has brought home with him from India,--everywhere the evidence of wealth.

To Sibyl the house seems simply perfect. Its luxury, its soft silent splendour, contrast so pleasantly with the humble homeliness of her uncle Robert’s old-fashioned, low-ceiled rooms; the stealthy-footed footman, who spends so much of his time looking at nothing particular out of the hall window, that he grows sedentary in his habits, and fancies he has disease of the heart; the ponderous butler in his glossy black suit and irreproachable white tie; the smart maid-servants, in crisp starched cambric, tight-waisted, prim, supercilious, as if Mr. Trenchard’s importance as the richest man in Redcastle shed reflected glory upon them. The household has an air of quiet dignity which impresses Sibyl wonderfully. Her soul reposes itself in this land of fatness. She looks back at her life in Dixon Street, its one room, its manifold privations, veritable starvation hovering near like the wan spectre of approaching doom, and the change seems too wonderful for anything but a dream. Does she think of the husband who shared her poverty, whom she abandoned to endure misfortune alone, deserted in the darkest hour of their wedded life? When does she not think of him? Memory and regret are interwoven with the fabric of her life. She consoles herself--justifies her desertion of Alexis--by the idea that life must have been made easy to him by their separation. As a married man with a helpless wife to provide for, he was like a vessel waterlogged; relieved of that burden, he is the same ship free to sail for any port in quest of fortune.

One night, in the solitude of her prettily furnished bedroom, all rose-coloured chintz and shining maple, furnished especially for a young lady’s occupation at Mr. Trenchard’s order, Sibyl takes out an insignificant paper-covered book from among her most sacred possessions, and opens it with a hand that trembles a little as she sits alone in the lamplight. It is like opening the grave of the past. That little sixpenny book is the diary she kept at Mrs. Hazleton’s--her brief love story.

Tearfully, sorrowfully, she reads that record of her first and only love, the story of a time when in singleness of mind and simplicity she surrendered her heart to its conqueror.

‘I love him, I love him, I love him,’ she reads, almost blinded by tears. She remembers the gush of passionate feeling with which those foolish words were written. ‘And one little year after I wrote that line I deserted him,’ she says to herself, wondering at her own hardness of heart.

‘What a fool I must have been when I wrote this book!’ This is her verdict as she closes the volume; yet she feels as if it were the best and brightest part of her life in which those foolish pages were written, and that she was happier in those days than she is now, although she has become a personage in Redcastle.

She looks round her room wonderingly, glancing at the maple wardrobe which contains so many pretty dresses, such a treasury of ribbons and lace, and the frivolities women love.

‘Would I exchange all this, and the hope of a fortune from my uncle, for the dismal second-floor schoolroom at Mrs. Hazleton’s, and the freshness and sweetness of first love?’ she asks herself; and for a moment it seems to her that could a good fairy give her back the days that are no more, she would be a gainer by the exchange.

If she could know that her husband was safe and well, that he had prospered since she left him, or that things had gone tolerably well with him, she might feel more at ease than she does. But she knows nothing of what has happened to him since the beginning of the year, when he was seen at Redcastle, a dismal apparition; and of this appearance of his she only hears by chance, a few days after her perusal of her diary, from no less a person than her younger sister Jane, otherwise Jenny.

Sibyl is spending the day with her uncle Robert, a visit which ranks as a condescension now that she is on intimate terms with the Stormonts, the Groshens, Dr. Mitsand, and, in a word, the _élite_ of Redcastle. She is received by her indulgent old uncle with all honour. Hester prepares an extra good dinner, a dainty little loin of veal, and a curry of yesterday’s roast mutton, followed by the unwonted extravagance of a tart and a pudding. Marion sees this relaxation of the economic bow with certain sniffings and bridlings, indicative of suppressed indignation.

‘I never knew such a time-server as Hester,’ she remarks, as she surveys the table, laid as for a feast, a clean tablecloth in the middle of the week, almonds and raisins for dessert, an altogether ruinous expenditure. ‘She didn’t make this fuss about you when you were at home, but now she pays her court to the heiress elect.’

‘No more an heiress elect than you or Jenny, I should imagine,’ replies Sibyl, lightly. ‘I think it is pretty clear that uncle Trenchard means to leave his money among us, though he has not said as much.’

‘Yes, and the lion’s share to you, no doubt, though he has known me longest,’ says Marion, snappishly.

‘A precious sight of his money I’m likely to get, when he never so much as asks me to go and see him,’ observes Jenny, whereupon both sisters swoop down upon her in denunciation of such a noun of quantity as ‘a precious sight.’

‘Where do you pick up your language, child?’ cries Sibyl. ‘Not in the streets surely, since Marion teaches you, and you have no occasion to be running about.’

‘A fat lot Marion teaches me!’ says the incorrigible child. ‘She nags at me for an hour and a half by the kitchen clock every morning, and calls that education.’

‘Pray, in what edition of Lindley Murray do you find the verb “to nag”?’ demands Marion, with the air of a pedagogue.

‘It’s as good a verb as any other. I nag, thou naggest, he or she nags, generally she; or take it in Latin if you like, Nago, nagas, nagat, nagamus, nagatis, nagant; first conjugation; perfect, nagavi.’

‘I’m afraid that Jane has rather an unruly temper,’ remarks Dr. Faunthorpe, mildly.

‘Oh, of course it’s Jane. Marion is never aggravating. _You_ don’t find me unruly, do you, uncle?’ Jane adds coaxingly, as she sidles up to the gentle, easy-tempered little doctor, who has gone through life placidly bearing other people’s burdens, and has never murmured against a destiny that has weighted him with three orphan nieces.

Later in the afternoon Sibyl and Jane are alone together in the garden, Marion having lost her temper at croquet, and left them to themselves.

The little bit of grass upon which they play is not many sizes bigger than the billiard-table at Lancaster House. The balls and mallets are in the last stage of shabbiness, and chipped into icosahedrons.

‘You must both come to afternoon tea to-morrow, if it’s fine, and play croquet on uncle Trenchard’s lawn,’ says Sibyl, condescendingly, as if she were inviting them to her own house. Perhaps this patronizing invitation has something to do with Marion’s loss of temper five minutes afterwards, when Jenny sends her ball into a distant cabbage bed. The sources of bad humour are more often complex than simple.

It is a warm September afternoon, one of those days in which people incline to sitting in gardens rather than walking on dusty high roads. Sibyl sits on the grass as she was wont to do three years ago, before she was anybody’s heiress. Jenny sprawls, with an appalling display of legs and boots and rusty bootlaces, at her sister’s side.

‘Now, Sibyl’ she says, eagerly, ‘tell us about the parties you go to.’

‘Pray, who is your companion?’ inquires Sibyl, with a contemptuous droop of her heavy eyelids. ‘I see no one here but yourself.’

‘I don’t know what you mean,’ says Jane, staring.

‘No more do I when you say tell _us_.’

‘Oh, lor, as if it mattered! You’re as bad as Marion. Now do be nice, Sib, for once in a way, and tell me what it’s like going to the Stormonts. Only fancy you’re being asked there ever so many times; and to think how often I’ve passed their door when we’ve been out for walks, and the inside of it has seemed as far off as heaven; further, indeed, for they say we’re sure to go to heaven if we’re good, but we’re not sure of going to the Stormonts unless we’re rich. What’s it like, Sib? do tell.’

‘Well, they live in a house, as you know, since you’ve seen the outside of it, and they eat their dinner at a table, just as we do, and they are rather stupid after dinner, and the ladies go up into the drawing-room and talk about other people who are not there, and a little about the minster, and the clergymen, and the schools, and look at one another’s dresses. I can see them count the flounces on my dress sometimes, and actually take the pattern of it under my nose, which I consider an impertinence.’

‘Is it nice going to grand dinners?’ asks Jane, breathlessly.

‘Yes, I suppose so. It’s rather a mild kind of enjoyment. It doesn’t quicken one’s pulse by a single throb. It isn’t like riding a good horse, or seeing a race, or hearing a great singer, or even getting a good break at billiards. There’s no excitement, no elation; but one feels one is doing the right kind of thing, that this is what one was born for.’

‘Are the dinners nice?’ inquires Jenny, licking her lips gluttonously.

‘They are very grand,’ replies Sibyl. ‘I don’t know that I should care about _vol-au-vent à la Financière_, or _petites timbales de gibier_ for a continuance, and with so many made dishes one has the idea that one is eating up all the cold meat that has accumulated in the last week; and one gets rather tired of seeing saddle of mutton and boiled fowls everywhere,--for whether you call fowls _poulets à la Béchamel_, or _chapons en demi-deuil_, they are very much the same birds.’

‘Capons in half-mourning! That is funny. Do you know what _my_ favourite dinner is, Sib? Bullock’s heart with veal stuffing and currant jelly. Do you ever have _that_ at Colonel Stormont’s?’

‘You must never mention such a dish, Jenny. It’s positively revolting.’

‘But you used to like it, and liver and bacon, and sheep’s head with parsley and butter. But never mind your dinners, tell me about your beaux. Marion says that young Mr. Stormont was in love with her until you lured him away.’

‘Marion is a ---- fool.’

‘You must have lots of lovers now that you go into such grand society, Sib, because you are the beauty of the family, you know. We all know that, and that’s what makes Marion so cross sometimes. “I’m nobody,” she says; and then she squeezes her waist in another half-inch, and fancies she has got the better of you. She’s awfully proud of her figure, you know.’

‘You mustn’t talk disrespectfully of your elder sister, Jenny,’ remonstrates Sibyl, yawning. The plebeian two o’clock dinner and the game of croquet in the afternoon sun have made her sleepy.

‘Then I won’t talk of her at all. Tell me about your lovers, Sib, that’s a deal more interesting.’

‘Nonsense, child! I have no lovers.’

‘But you had one once. Yes, I saw somebody who was in love with you once, though he must have gone down in the world dreadfully since you had had anything to say to him, for he looked little better than a beggar when I saw him.’

Sibyl has sunk into a reclining attitude, with half-closed eyes, and is dropping into a gentle doze, but at this speech of Jane’s she starts into a sitting posture again, and looks intently at her sister, very pale.

‘What do you mean?’ she cries. ‘What was he like? Where did you see him? When? Tell me all about it this instant.’

‘Ah, I see you know the person I speak of. You wouldn’t be in such a way if you didn’t. How pale you are, Sibyl! Do you care for him very much?’

‘Will you tell me what you are talking about, child?’ exclaims Sibyl, passionately.

Jane begins her story with deliberation and importance.

‘I have always kept it a secret,’ she prefaces, ‘feeling that it might get you into a row with uncle and Marion, and I’ve wanted to tell you about it ever since you came home, but have never had a chance of being alone with you till this afternoon.’

‘For goodness’ sake go on. What was the man like?’

‘Very handsome and noble-looking, though his clothes were dreadfully shabby. His coat was shabbier than uncle’s, snuff and all, but it looked as if it had been a more gentlemanly coat in its day; and as for his poor boots, it made my heart bleed to see them. I wanted to give him my new shilling, one uncle Robert gave me on Christmas Day, for it was the day after New Year’s Day that I saw the man, you know----’

‘I know nothing. Never mind how you came by the shilling.’

‘But he pushed away my hand gently, and said, “No, my dear, I’m not a beggar, though I dare say I look like one.”’

‘Poor fellow,’ sighs Sibyl.

‘Oh, Sibyl, I did feel so ashamed of myself for having offered him that shilling,--ever so much ashameder than he did,’ adds Jenny, coining a comparative in the impetuosity of her speech.

‘Can’t you tell me about it straight--beginning at the beginning?’ demands Sibyl, impatiently.

‘Well, it was the day after New Year’s Day. I detest New Year’s Day. Church in the morning, and dulness in the afternoon--and I came into the garden to have a run all by myself, and to get out of Marion’s way. It was a little after four, between the lights, you know, and a wretchedly cold afternoon. Well, you know the lane at the bottom of the garden----’

‘Of course,’ says Sibyl, with an involuntary glance in that direction. Beyond the plot of lucerne there is a low wall, and on the other side of the wall an accommodation road leading to a neighbouring farm.

‘Well, he was there, looking over the wall, and he beckoned to me. I was afraid at first, thinking he might be a robber, but as I had nothing but my hoop to be robbed of I went up to the wall to look at him, and then I saw somehow in a moment that he was a gentleman, though I am sure you wouldn’t have given twopence for his hat.’

‘What did he say?’

‘He asked me if my name was Faunthorpe, and then if I had a sister called Sibyl. “Yes,” says I, “but she’s away in London.” “Where?” says he. “At Mrs. Hazleton’s, Lowther Street, Eccleston Square,” says I. “Is that all you know about her?” says he. “What more can I know about her?” says I. “She’s very happy, I believe, and she’s very well,--at least, she was when uncle heard from her last.” “When was that?” says he. “About three weeks ago,” says I. And then he sighed heavily, and he looked so white and tired that I pitied him with all my heart.’

‘Poor fellow,’ sighed Sibyl again.

‘Ah, you do know him then?’ cries Jane.

‘How can I tell? He didn’t tell you his name, I suppose.’

‘Not a bit of it. He asked me a lot of questions about you. Did we expect you home soon? and so on, but I could tell him no more than I had told him at first. You were at Mrs. Hazleton’s, and you were likely to stay there, for anything I knew. I didn’t know that uncle Robert wanted you to come home at that time. They don’t take _me_ into their confidence.’

‘You didn’t mention uncle Trenchard?’ asks Sibyl, with a scared look.

‘Of course not; why should I go and mention our rich uncle to a wandering tramp that might go and steal his plate? At least, I don’t mean that, for when once I had heard the poor thing speak it never entered my mind that he was anything but a gentleman. Who is he, Sibyl? Do tell me. Some one who fell in love with you in London; saw you go in by Mrs. Hazleton’s carriage perhaps, and fell in love with you at first sight, and followed you about everywhere, and neglected his profession, and went to the dogs for your sake. Do tell me all about him.’

‘How do I know who the man was?’ says Sibyl, absently. There is no shadow of doubt in her mind. This wanderer was her husband, who had come to Redcastle in quest of her.

‘I’ll describe him if you like. I can see him before me at this moment. He is tall and dark, with rather large features, regular features, but striking, not one of those straight-nosed waxwork faces one sees in a hairdresser’s shop. His lower lip projects a little, which gives him rather a scornful look till he smiles, and then he has the kindest expression. “Dear child,” he said, and patted my shoulder so kindly, “you are just a little like your sister when you look up at me as you are looking now.” You won’t think that a compliment, I know, Sib, but he said it. Who is he, Sib? Do tell me.’

‘I have not the remotest idea,’ replies Sibyl, with provoking indifference.

‘Come now, you wouldn’t have been so agitated when I spoke about him if you hadn’t guessed who he was.’

‘I was not agitated,’ says Sibyl, pretending to yawn.

‘Oh, very well, if you like to tell crammers, of course I can’t help it. My experience of elder sisters is that they may break all the commandments with impunity, and drive a coach and six through the Catechism. I think they wash their hands of Christianity when they’re confirmed.’

‘Jane, you are not only blasphemous, but you’re extremely impertinent to _me_,’ exclaims Sibyl.

‘Well, if that’s all I get for keeping your secrets!’

‘That was wise of you at any rate, Jenny,’ says Sibyl, making haste to relent. ‘Marion would have made no end of mischief out of nothing. Never mind the man in the lane, dear. We’ll forget all about him. He was some foolish fellow, no doubt. And if you’d like a new frock for Sunday, Jenny, you shall have that pretty checked peach-coloured silk of mine, and I’ll get Miss Eylett to make it up for you.’

‘Oh you dear!’ cries Jane, crimsoning with rapture. ‘That lovely peach-colour! How sweet I shall look, if--’, with a doubtful look at her well-worn boots--‘if uncle Robert will only give me new boots.’

‘If he won’t, I know somebody else who will. And, Jenny, if you could contrive to keep your hair a little smoother, and your hands a shade cleaner, you wouldn’t be the worst-looking child in Redcastle,’ says Sibyl, drawing her younger sister towards her, and bestowing a condescending kiss upon that young person’s forehead. ‘Now mind when you come to afternoon tea with me to-morrow you make yourself look as nice as ever you can.’

‘I’ll do my best, Sib, but I know I shall feel shabby before those stuck-up servants. When is uncle Trenchard going to have Marion to stay with him again, do you think?’

‘I don’t know. That’s a question I can’t ask him, you see.’

‘I suppose not; but Marion’s rather cut up at his not inviting her, you know. I say, Sib, I fancy Marion’s nose is out of joint since you’ve come home.’

Sibyl smiles--a self-satisfied smile. She is very sure of her uncle’s preference--knows quite well that he considers Marion something of a simpleton, and not a little of a bore.

‘It isn’t my fault, Jenny, if uncle Trenchard likes me best,’ she says, complacently.

The sisters go in to tea after this, Jenny with her arm round Sibyl’s waist.

‘I say, Sib, when you’re married, and have a beautiful house of your own, you’ll have me to stay with you sometimes, won’t you? I’ll be good, and keep my hair tidy.’

‘I mean never to marry, Jane; at least, not during uncle Trenchard’s lifetime. I mean to keep his house for him, always.’

‘But he may live to be ninety--twenty years to come,--and a nice old woman you’d be by that time. Who’d have you then? You ought to marry now, Sib, while you have such advantages; that’s what uncle Robert says. Do be married soon, that’s a dear, and let me be your bridesmaid--in white muslin over pink silk. Is Frederick Stormont very nice?’

‘He’s absolutely detestable,’ replies Sibyl, and immediately without rhyme or reason bursts into tears. She is thinking of the fond and faithful husband who came to Redcastle in quest of her, and departed hopeless.

Where is he? what is he doing? how has he fared since that bleak January afternoon when he found his journey had been useless? Starving, perhaps; or worse--dead. Slain by his own hand in some dark hour of despair. Has she not reason to fear the worst of one she left without hope?

Three days later, by the help of her old ally, Mrs. Hazleton’s housemaid, Jane Dimond, Sibyl contrives to insert the following advertisement in the second column of the _Times_ supplement:--

‘S. S. to Alexis.--You are not forgotten. In all I do I am
faithful to you and your interests. I look forward to our
reunion. Wait and hope, as I do. Write and tell me where you
are, and what you are doing.--Address, S. S., Post Office, Hale
Street, Pimlico.’

This advertisement is inserted three times, and the housemaid inquires diligently at the Hale Street Post Office during the following fortnight for a letter addressed to S. S. No such letter comes, and Sibyl’s vague fears of evil are intensified by this ominous silence.