B. L. Farjeon

“ I pledge myself, in the name of my dear mother, whose memory I revere, that I will set down here nothing but the truth—that I will not strive to win pity or grace by the faintest glossing of any particulars in which I may not appear to advantage—that I will not swerve by a hair’s breadth from my honest intention to speak of the matters treated herein in a plain, unvarnished style. The dear one who will be the first to peruse these lines is as precious to me as ever woman was to man, but I will not retain her love by subterfuge or pretence, although it would break my heart to lose it. ”

“ I will not rob you of her.”
“Sydney!” cried Grace, holding out her hands to him.
“Did I not tell you?” he asked of Mr. Pelham; and then, turning to Grace, he said, “Rest content. You have broken my heart. Either I was not worthy of you, or you were not worthy of me. It matters not, now that our eyes are opened. Mr. Pelham, I was guilty of an error to-night when I said you were unfortunate in your love affairs. Many men would envy you. Come, gentlemen, enough of this. The play is over; drop the curtain! Adolph, my lad, I am sorry for you, but it is the way of life.” ”

“ Square, my trying the door, and now my flight, had brought me into deadly peril in connection with the murder. I heard the policeman running after me. He sprang his rattle; the air seemed filled with pursuing enemies hunting me down, and I flew the faster, but only to fall at last, quite exhausted, into the arms of men, in whose remarks I heard a confirmation of my fears. Then I became cooler, and was marched to a police station, mocking myself as it were in a temper of devilish taunting despair, to be accused of a crime of which no man living was more innocent. ”

“ I did not wish to frighten him by an over-display of seriousness; “the best as well as the worst of us; the oldest as well as the youngest of us. We have a good many dreams in life, Adolph, to which we cling in earnestness and true faith, and when we awake from them and our suffering is over, we smile at ourselves for our credulity. You are dreaming such a dream now, and if I rouse you from it I do so for a good purpose, and out of consideration for another as well as for yourself. Tell me—why did you introduce Mr. Pelham into Grace’s house as your cousin? ”

“ Upon Sydney no impression could be made against any person in whom he had confidence, unless the most distinct proof could be produced—the evidence of his own senses or of witnesses upon whom he could implicitly rely. So would it be with my father. On my honour, you can no longer live in this house. I cannot permit you for another day to impose upon a gentleman whom I love and honour. ”

“ We have too much at stake to run the slightest risk. I propose to write to you every night, and to send Fanny to you every morning with my letters. You can give her your letters to me. Do not send any more strange men to the house. Richard Manx might see them, and his suspicions might be aroused. Perhaps the hardest duty before us is the duty of patience, but unless we submit we shall fail in our purpose. So let us be brave and patient, working not for the present, but for the future. My love, my heart, are yours for ever, and I thank God that I have such a man as you to love. ”

“ That gentleman and his mother and sisters would lower their false faces to the ground before Lady this and Lady that”—he mentioned the names of the ladies, but it is unnecessary to set them down here—“who are wealthy and highly connected, but who are not fit to tie the shoe-strings of my poor persecuted Grace, nor the shoe-strings of any girl who has a spark of virtue in her. You have seen Grace times enough now, Fred, to be able to appreciate her purity, her modesty, her innocence, at their proper worth. There lives not on earth a woman more worthy the love and esteem of man!” ”

“ There is in this lovely lady so much animation and vitality, so much pure love of life, so much sunlight, that they overcome her against her will, and break out in the midst of the gloomiest fits of melancholy and depression. Hers is a happy, joyous, and impulsive nature, and the blow that has fallen upon her is all the more cruel because of her innate brightness and gaiety of disposition. ”

“ I do not propose in this statement to refer to any incidents in Sydney Campbell’s career which are not in some way connected with my own story. At a future time I will tell you more concerning him, and you will then be better able to do him justice. What I am about to narrate may tend to lower him in your eyes, and what follows may tend to lower me; but I am bound to speak the truth, without fear or favour. It is well, my dear, that to minds as pure as yours the veil is not removed from the lives even of the men to whom is given a full measure of respect and love. ”

“ Have you no pity? Even if I have committed an error through ignorance, should I not be allowed an opportunity to reform? Am I to be utterly abandoned—utterly lost? And are you going to crush me, and send me wandering through the world again, with no one to love or sympathise with me? That portrait of mine which was in Mr. Pelham’s pocket-book, and which Sydney [184] saw, was stolen from me, and what was written on the back was forged writing. If a man loves me, can I help it? It is nothing to do with me whether he is a gentleman or a blackguard. Pelham loved me, and he was a cheat. ”

“ It is because you are strong, and wise—but you miss a great deal—yes, indeed, indeed you do! It would spoil the sunshine if one stopped while one was enjoying the light and warmth, to ask why, and what, and wherefore. Don’t you think it would? Such a volatile, impressionable creature as Lydia Holdfast does not stop to do such a wise and foolish thing—we can be both wise and foolish in a breath, let me tell you. ”

“ No man can be a match for such a creature as Lydia Holdfast—let us call her by that name. It must be a case of Greek meeting Greek, and in me this woman will find more than her match. So for the present do not move openly; do not run the risk of being discovered. Do nothing that will put our enemies on their guard; above all, do not write to the newspaper which published Lydia Holdfast’s infamous story; a friend has already stepped forward in vindication of your character, and that should be a comfort to you, as it is to me. ”

“ Track that woman,” (and here Lydia Holdfast appeared, smiling in triumph) , “follow her, do not allow her out of your sight. But be careful; she is as cunning as a fox, and will slip through your fingers when you least expect it.” Then she and Lydia Holdfast alone played parts in the running commentary of her dreams. “What do you want to find out,” said Lydia Holdfast; “about me? I am a simple creature—but you are much more simple. It is a battle between us, for the life of a man, for the honour of a man. ”

“ I had a motive—yes; I did not want [27] to do anyone an injustice. But, what can a weak woman like myself do when she is in the company of such a man as you? Nothing escapes you. It seems to me as if you had studied every little incident in connection with the murder of my poor husband for the purpose of bringing some one in guilty; but you are better acquainted than I am with the wickedness of people. You want to know what reason my husband had in taking a common lodging in Great Porter Square instead of coming home at once to me and his child. ”

“ If we are doing him an injustice in our estimate of him, there can be no exposure; he will come out of the fire unscathed. If we succeed in proving our suspicions unfounded, you will be clear. And even then I should advise you to make a clean breast of it. Subterfuge and deceit, my dear lad, are not gentlemen’s weapons. When we strike a man, we strike him in the face—we do not stab in the back.”
“What will Grace say?” murmured Adolph.
“What can she say? In the case of an exposure, it is you who have been wronged, not she. ”

“ How I love and pity you! To say, as you desire me to say, that my faith is not shaken, is but a poor expression of my feelings towards you. My faith is strengthened, my love is strengthened, my hope is strengthened. Sitting in my little cupboard of a bedroom, with Fanny sleeping peacefully in my bed—yes, my dear, my poor little friend is with me again ”

“ He is husband, friend, and father, all in one, to me. His exact words, I assure you. Trifle with such a man! No, indeed; it would be too cruel! Come and sit here, by my side, Frederick. If you refuse, I declare I will ring for my maid, and will not speak to you—no, not another word! Now you are good; but you look too [182] serious. I hate serious people. I love pleasure and excitement. That is because I am young and not bad looking. What do you think? You can’t say I am ugly. But perhaps you have no eyes for me; your heart is elsewhere—in that locket on your chain. ”

“ Sydney Campbell is this lady’s lover, and she encourages him; you are this lady’s lover, and she encourages you; Mr. Pelham is this lady’s lover, and she is his. You may well turn pale. She brings this blackleg lover of hers into the house—into Sydney’s house—under false colours. On my oath, Adolph, I am speaking the truth when I speak of Grace as Mr. Pelham’s lover. She plays you into his hands—but you are subsidiary in the affair, my lad. The big stake lies with our friend Sydney. ”

“ CHAPTER XXVIII. FREDERICK HOLDFAST’S STATEMENT (CONTINUED) .
All the colour died out of her face, and I saw that I had frightened her.
“How do you know?” she asked, in a faint tone.
“That is my secret,” I replied. “It should be sufficient for you that I do know, and that I have evidence at hand for a full exposure of your proceedings.”
“Your own evidence will not be strong enough,” she said. “Hating me as you do, you can invent any wicked story you please—it does not require a very clever man to do things of that kind. ”

“ She drew a long breath, and looked before her into the air, as though endeavouring to obtain from invisible space some connecting links between the new ideas formed by this romance in real life. The dominant thought in her mind as she read the narrative was whether she would be able to obtain from it any clue to connect Richard Manx with the murder. Her desire lay in this direction, without reference to its justice or injustice, and she would have felt better satisfied had such a clue been supplied. ”

“ I do not believe in love in a cottage for a man with tastes and habits such as mine; and if my father were to turn his back upon me, I [112] should be in a perplexing position. However, I have little doubt as to my being able to guide our boat into safe waters. But there is an obstacle on Grace’s side. I am about to impart a secret to you. Her life has been most unfortunate; she has been most cruelly served, and most cruelly betrayed. Would you believe that when she was sixteen years of age, she was entrapped into a marriage with a scoundrel—entrapped by her own father, who is now dead? ”

“ Then there’s our young pigeon, Adolph——”
“A child!” cried Grace.
“Quite old enough,” retorted Mr. Pelham, “for me to twist his neck for him if I had any doubts of you. But I haven’t, my girl. It is not only love, but interest, that binds us together.”
They passed on out of my sight without having perceived me. I was astounded, not by the discovery, but by the coarse, brutal nature of the plot in which Sydney’s honour was sacrificed. This woman, Grace, was a worthless schemer and a deliberate cheat. The man, Mr. Pelham, was a blackleg and a ruffian. ”

“ When Fanny appeared before Mrs. Preedy in the kitchen, she was a decent-looking, tidy little girl, with a world of happiness in her face. She had found her friend, her angel friend, who would never again desert her. She understood in some dim way that Becky would call upon her for help in the secret which had caused her to assume the disguise of a servant. “I ’ope it’s somethink ’ard she wants me to do,” thought Fanny. She would like to show Becky what love and gratitude could accomplish.
“You’re a nice looking little thing,” said Mrs. Preedy, pinching Fanny’s cheek. ”

“ The extraordinary story which has appeared in the columns of the Evening Moon, and the dreadful intelligence it conveys to me of the murder of my dear father, render it imperatively necessary that I should place upon permanent record certain particulars and incidents relating to my career which will incontestibly prove that the Romance in Real Life which is now being inserted in every newspaper in the kingdom is an infamous fabrication. ”