Only a clod
smoke cheap Manillas. No, I shouldn’t like to fancy her happy when I am
gone. It wouldn’t have been pleasant to the Corsair to imagine Medora
flirting with mercantile mariners in his absence.
“_21st._--I have packed all my books, except a few German cribs. Perhaps
it was as well, for my studies had grown very desultory. How can a
fellow read hard when there is a pretty girl in the case, and he has
been so profound an idiot as to fall in love with her? But ‘it is
written’, as the followers of the prophet observe, and I must go. I have
told Susan. We had a very affecting interview yesterday. How the poor
little girl cried! And I hate to see a woman cry; it’s so excruciating
to the feelings of a good-hearted fellow; and the prettiest woman’s nose
is apt to get just a _leetle_ red when ‘the tears come trickling down,
down, down.’ O Susan, that I should quote that familiar ballad of Lord
Lovell when I write of your sorrow! But I suppose there is something of
the _persifleur_ in my nature, for I don’t often find myself very
earnest about anything. And so we walked up and down the Esplanade; she
crying, and I talking. I flatter myself I talked rather well. There was
just that dash of excitement about the business which makes a fellow
talk well. But my eloquence was all of no avail; Alfred de Musset,
Byron, George Sand, Rousseau, and Thomas Moore, all combined, cannot
prevail against the tenets of the Sunday-school; and so we are to part,
‘in silence and tears, half broken-hearted, to sever,’ &c., unless I
were prepared to sacrifice my prospects and put the fatal noose about my
neck.
“Bah! it would be too absurd, too utterly preposterous. Such things have
been, and have always resulted in pretty much the same way. Your poet
Shelley gets expelled from the University because he can’t keep his
convictions to himself, marries a simple rustic maiden, grows tired of
her, and falls in love with someone else, whereon rustic maiden drowns
herself, whence unspeakable _esclandre_ and confusion.
“_January 2nd._--No, the thing cannot be done; the sacrifice would be
too great. The days of the Minerva Press are past. The yellow
post-chaise, the lonely country inn, the college friend who is
introduced in a surplice, and acts as clergyman--alas! are not these
exploded with the dark ages? Were there ever any such marriages, I
wonder? or were they only figments of the romancer’s brain? At any rate,
anything of that kind must be impossible nowadays. And then a man must
be a consummate scoundrel who could devise such a plot. I don’t pretend
to the Sunday-school species of morality; but _nemo repente fuit
turpissimus_, as Juvenal has it. I am not so bad as that.
“_5th._--She is very unhappy; and how hard it seems to leave her to this
drudgery and desolation--Coltonslough, and my landlady, and my
landlady’s children, all the year round! And she is just the ‘creature
not too bright or good,’ &c.; the very woman of all others for a cottage
in the lake districts, or a Devonshire fishing-village, or any pretty
out-of-the-way haven, where a man might take his rest. And yet I must
leave her here, baffled entirely by the Sunday-school precepts with
which her shallow mind has been imbued. I have no time to play the
Lovelace, and I don’t want such a victory as his. I have had tiresome
letters from home. They will expect me to get my degree; and I am free
to confess that my reading since I have been at Coltonslough has been
the merest moonshine. Decidedly I must leave this place by to-night’s
express. ‘Better to die by sudden shock,’ &c.: and as for Susan, it is
only a natural chapter in such a girl’s history. She will break her
heart, and then marry a small tradesman, who will give her a Paisley
shawl and a black-silk gown to wear on Sundays.
“_6th._ Another day, and I am still here. I was awake all last night,
thinking of all manner of possibilities, or perhaps impossibilities. The
yellow post-chaise and the college friend in a surplice are obsolete
absurdities; but how about a marriage before the Registrar? Is there
anything so very impossible in a marriage before the Registrar, which
shall not be, say, _too_ binding? Why not a marriage before the
Registrar, between eight and twelve in the forenoon, with open doors, in
the presence of two witnesses, &c.? You walk into an office, very much
like any other office, and you see an official very much like any other
official, and there is a trifling formula, and a little signing and
countersigning, and so on, and the business is done. But even about this
there would be a good deal of trouble, and the college friend would
still be necessary, though not in a surplice--and the witnesses--and the
office. _Is_ the game worth the candle? Am I really so desperately in
love? And then, again, supposing the game worth the cost of
illumination, these sort of games are so apt to be dangerous; and
awkward stories crop up against one in after-life; with perhaps Chancery
suits, and so forth. No, it is too much trouble. It will be better for
Susan and I to shake hands, like sensible people, and say Good-bye.
“_7th._--A very long talk with Susan. I told her that we must part; our
roads in life lying separate, and so on. Poor child! her grief was
something very terrible. We had wandered out to some lonely ground
beyond the Esplanade, leaving those abominable children to disport
themselves as they pleased. We sat down upon a little bank at the edge
of a great ploughed field, with the grey sea before us. The poor child
sobbed as if her heart would have broken. I am no deliberate Lovelace,
but I suppose I have in this instance pursued the prey with something of
a Mexican trapper’s intensity. I never meant to be in earnest; but have
been drifted, as it were, by the chances of the situation; and people
who let lodgings at dull watering-places really should not employ such
pretty parlour-maids. Poor, tender-hearted little Susy! I never thought
she could have grown so fond of me, or that a little sentimental
spouting, and a few pretty speeches, could have gone so far. I should
have been a callous wretch if I had not been touched by her grief; and I
was inexpressibly touched; so much so that I flung all good resolutions
to swell the general heap of paving material for the halls of Pluto, and
told my Susy that there was an alternative for this miserable parting if
she would--trust me--and consent to a marriage before the Registrar.
“She will trust me. I explained to her the nature of the ceremonial I
proposed, and how all unnecessary publicity and the ruin of my prospects
might be avoided thereby. And then the poor little thing burst out with
a whole string of romantic protestations.
“Did she want me to sacrifice my prospects? Oh no, no! Did she want to
be acknowledged before the world as my wife? No, a thousand times. She
knew very well that she was too ignorant and humbly educated to support
such an honour. She only wanted to know herself that she was my wife, my
own lawful wife, united to me by the laws of heaven and earth.
“The laws of heaven and earth as administered in a Registrar’s office. I
have cast prudence to the winds, and am now committed to the step which
I only dreamed of as a possibility last night. I have a sort of
foreboding that the business will bring me into trouble; but having gone
so far now, am I to recede? And then I am really desperately in love
with this Cornish girl.
“How is it to be done? These things seem so simple when one contemplates
them in a dreamy reverie engendered by tobacco-smoke. It will be rather
a complicated business, I fear; and the college friend, that is the
grand question. Who is to be the convenient college friend? Perhaps I
had better sleep upon it.
“_8th._--After a world of serious consideration, I can think of no one
but my brother. He’s a selfish beggar, who’d scarcely wet the tips of
his fingers to save an entire ship’s crew from drowning; but he owes me
money, and ought to go through fire and water to serve me. At any rate
he is not troubled by any scruples or compunctions of the Sunday-school
order; and then he’s a clever fellow, and on the spot. I’ll go up to
town to-morrow and sound him about it.”
There was no more. The journal ended here; and Francis Tredethlyn sat
staring at the last half-page, sorely puzzled as to how he was to read
that broken history.
That the lines before him had been written by a heartless profligate he
could scarcely doubt, little as he had been accustomed to sit in
judgment on his fellow-men. But he was slow to understand the full
measure of the writer’s depravity. A more subtle mind than his was
required to read the hidden meaning of that carelessly-written diary.
Francis Tredethlyn only understood that his cousin had fallen into the
hands of a selfish worldling, who had been fascinated by her pretty
face, but who set his own welfare and his own happiness before all
thought of her love or sorrow.
“He meant to marry her,” thought the young man; “thank heaven for that.
No matter how secret or clandestine the marriage may have been, it shall
be my task to find Susan, and to make that marriage public.”
Mr. Tredethlyn went early the next day to Gray’s Inn, there to hold a
solemn consultation with the chief of that firm which had transacted all
Oliver Tredethlyn’s legal affairs during a period of some forty years.
To Mr. Kursdale, Francis told all that he had been able to discover of
his cousin Susan’s history; and to the lawyer’s hands he confided the
manuscript volume surrendered to him by Mrs. Burfield.
“You’ll be able to make more out of it than I can, Mr. Kursdale,” he
said. “Heaven knows I read it carefully; but I can only understand that
the man is a scoundrel, and that it was my cousin’s evil fortune to love
him. I wonder how it is that a simple innocent country girl always does
fall in love with a scoundrel, if he has only got a handsome face and a
smooth tongue?”
The next day was Saturday, and Francis Tredethlyn’s thoughts were
strangely divided between the contemplation of his cousin’s unknown
wrongs, and the expectation of a day in the sunny gardens and
drawing-rooms at the Cedars. Late in the evening there came a letter
from Mr. Kursdale, the solicitor,--
“_Yourself and Another._
“DEAR SIR,--After a very careful perusal of the MS. volume
intrusted to me by you yesterday, I regret to say that I can
only come to one conclusion respecting the intentions of the
writer.
“I believe that it was this person’s design to involve Miss
Susan Tredethlyn in a fictitious marriage, which should be, in
fact, no marriage at all.
“A marriage before the Registrar would have been as entirely
valid, if duly performed, as any religious solemnization.
“I conclude, therefore, that the writer of the MS. diary
contemplated a sham ceremony, in the presence of some person,
falsely representing himself to be the Superintendent Registrar.
“I much fear that your cousin’s simplicity would render her
likely to be the dupe of any such plot.
“Should you wish to communicate with me further on this subject,
I shall be glad to wait upon you at any time you may appoint.
“I am, dear Sir, yours very obediently,
“JAMES KURSDALE.”
“A mock marriage!” thought Francis Tredethlyn. “Yes; I understand it all
now. There was an insolence in his manner of writing of my pretty Susy
that stung me to the very heart. No honest man ever wrote like that of
any woman; _no_ man would write like that of a woman whom he meant to
make his wife.”
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CHAPTER XIII.