M. E. Braddon

“ A doll! Mary's pale face flushed a faint crimson. Did he think her still a child, then, this soldier; did he think her only a silly child, with no thought above a doll, when she would have gone out to India, and braved every peril of that cruel country, to be his nurse and comfort in fever and sickness, like the brave Sisters of Mercy she had read of in some of her novels?
Edward Arundel saw that faint crimson glow lighting up in her face.
"I beg your pardon, Miss Marchmont," he said. "I was only joking; of course you are a young lady now, almost grown up, you know. Can you play chess?" ”

“ He is to be happy, and I am to know of his happiness. Another baby–faced girl is to glory in the knowledge of his love; and I am to be quiet––I am to be quiet. Is it for this that I have sold my soul to you, Paul Marchmont? Is it for this I have shared your guilty secrets? Is it for this I have heard her feeble wailing sounding in my wretched feverish slumbers, as I have heard it every night, since the day she left this house? Do you remember what you said to me? Do you remember how you tempted me? Do you remember how you played upon my misery, and traded on the tortures of my jealous heart? ”

“ Good–bye, dear friend; think of me sometimes, but never think of me sorrowfully.
"MARY MARCHMONT."
This was all. This was the letter which the heart–broken girl had written to her lover. It was in no manner different from the letter she might have written to him nine years before in Oakley Street. It was as childish in its ignorance and inexperience; as womanly in its tender self–abnegation.
Edward Arundel stared at the simple lines like a man in a dream, doubtful of his own identity, doubtful of the reality of the world about him, in his hopeless wonderment. ”

“ Mary and her father were as closely united at Marchmont Towers as they had been in Oakley Street. The little girl clung to her father as tenderly as ever––more tenderly than ever perhaps; for she knew something of that which the physicians had said, and she knew that John Marchmont's lease of life was not a long one. Perhaps it would be better to say that he had no lease at all. His soul was a tenant on sufferance in its frail earthly habitation, receiving a respite now and again, when the flicker of the lamp was very low––every chance breath of wind threatening to extinguish it for ever. ”

“ I should be a coward and a fool were I to be for one moment influenced by such a slander as that which you have whispered in Mary Marchmont's ear. It is not the individual only whom you traduce. You slander the cloth I wear, the family to which I belong; and my best justification will be the contempt in which I hold your infamous insinuations. When you hear that I have squandered Mary Marchmont's fortune, or cheated the children I pray God she may live to bear me, it will be time enough for you to tell the world that your kinsman Edward Dangerfield Arundel is a swindler and a traitor. ”

“ Edward Arundel answered, "that I would not have your reputation lied away by the gossips of Kemberling. I should despise you if you married this man. But if you do not mean to marry him, you have no right to encourage his visits; you are trifling with your own good name. You should leave this place, and by that means give the lie to any false reports that have arisen about you."
"Leave this place!" cried Olivia Marchmont, with a bitter laugh. "Leave this place! O my God, if I could; if I could go away and bury myself somewhere at the other end of the world, and forget,––and forget!" ”

“ Olivia was well pleased to see the girl sit hour after hour at her piano. She had learned to play well and brilliantly herself, mastering all difficulties with the proud determination which was a part of her strong nature; but she had no special love for music. All things that compose the poetry and beauty of life had been denied to this woman, in common with the tenderness which makes the chief loveliness of womankind. She sat by the piano and listened while Mary's slight hands wandered over the keys, carrying the player's soul away into trackless regions of dream–land and beauty ”

“ If my cousin had fulfilled this trust, Mary, I would have deferred to her authority, and would have held myself aloof until your minority was passed, rather than ask you to marry me without your stepmother's consent. But Olivia Marchmont has forfeited her right to be consulted in this matter. She has tortured you and traduced me by her poisonous slander. If you believe in me, Mary, you will consent to be my wife. My justification lies in the future. You will not find that I shall sponge upon your fortune, my dear, or lead an idle life because my wife is a rich woman. ”

“ She was only nineteen years of age, and no sorrow had ever altered the brightness of her nature. She lived a happy life with a father who was proud of her, and with a mother who resembled her in almost every attribute. She led a happy but a busy life, and did her duty to the poor about her as scrupulously as even Olivia had done in the old days at Swampington Rectory; but in such a genial and cheerful spirit as to win, not cold thankfulness, but heartfelt love and devotion from all who partook of her benefits. ”

“ The young spirit arose and shook off its fetters, fresh and radiant as the butterfly that escapes from its chrysalis. The new light of happiness illumined the orphan's delicate face, until Edward Arundel began to wonder at her loveliness, as he had wondered once before that night at the fiery splendour of his cousin Olivia.
"I had no idea that Olivia was so handsome, or you so pretty, my darling," he said, as he stood with Mary in the embrasure of the window. "You look like Titania, the queen of the fairies, Polly, with your cloudy draperies and crown of pearls." ”

“ I think that love for the living and remorse for the dead must for ever reign side by side in my heart. It is no falsehood to you that makes me remember her; it is no forgetfulness of her that makes me love you. I offer my brighter and happier self to you, Belinda; I consecrate my sorrow and my tears to her. I love you with all my heart, Belinda; but even for the sake of your love I will not pretend that I can forget her. If John Marchmont's daughter had died with her head upon my breast, and a prayer on her lips, I might have regretted her as other men regret their wives ”

“ He looked back to her childish days of poverty and self–denial; her early loss of her mother; her grief at her father's second marriage; the shock of that beloved father's death. Her sorrows had followed each other in gloomy succession, with only narrow intervals of peace between them. She was accustomed, therefore, to grief. It is the soul untutored by affliction, the rebellious heart that has never known calamity, which becomes mad and desperate, and breaks under the first blow. Mary Marchmont had learned the habit of endurance in the hard school of sorrow. ”

“ She stopped, and her face drooped upon her husband's clustering hair.
"You are crying, Mary!"
"Yes, dear. There is something painful in happiness when it comes after such suffering."
The young man lifted his head, and looked in his wife's face. How deathly pale it was, even in that shadowy twilight; how worn and haggard and wasted since it had smiled at him in his brief honeymoon. Yes, joy is painful when it comes after a long continuance of suffering; it is painful because we have become sceptical by reason of the endurance of such anguish. We have lost the power to believe in happiness. ”

“ When this girl and I are equals,––when she, like me, stands alone upon a barren rock, far out amid the waste of waters, with not one memory to hold her to the past, with not one hope to lure her onward to the future, with nothing but the black sky above and the black waters around,––then we may grow fond of each other."
But always more or less steadfast to the standard she had set up for herself, Olivia Marchmont intended to do her duty to her stepdaughter. She had not failed in other duties, though no glimmer of love had brightened them, no natural affection had made them pleasant. ”

“ Sometimes, on the other hand, it seems to us that, because we have endured an age of suffering, or half a lifetime of bewildered joy, the terrestrial globe has spun round in time to the quickened throbbing of our passionate hearts, and that all the clocks upon earth have been standing still.
When the sun sank upon the summer's day that was to have been the day of Belinda's bridal, Edward Arundel thought that it was still early in the morning. He wondered at the rosy light all over the western sky, and that great ball of molten gold dropping down below the horizon. ”

“ That taken away from her, the darkness was blacker than the blackness of death; more horrible than the obscurity of the grave.
In all the future she had not one hope: no, not one. She had loved Edward Arundel with all the strength of her soul; she had wasted a world of intellect and passion upon this bright–haired boy. This foolish, grovelling madness had been the blight of her life. But for this, she might have grown out of her natural self by force of her conscientious desire to do right; and might have become, indeed, a good and perfect woman. ”

“ But even these men recoiled when they felt the cold dampness of the artist's hands, and saw that he had been frightened. These sturdy, uproarious foxhunters, who braved the peril of sudden death every time they took a day's sport, entertained a sovereign contempt for a man who could be frightened of anybody or anything. They made no allowance for Paul Marchmont's Cockney education; they were not in the dark secrets of his life, and knew nothing of his guilty conscience; and it was that which had made him more helpless than a child in the fierce grasp of Edward Arundel. ”

“ Olivia echoed in a tone of unmitigated scorn. "You can answer for Captain Arundel's heart, I suppose, then, as well as for your own? You must have a tolerably good opinion of yourself, Miss Marchmont, to be able to venture so much. Bah!" she cried suddenly, with a disdainful gesture of her head; "do you think your pitiful face has won Edward Arundel? Do you think he has not had women fifty times your superior, in every quality of mind and body, at his feet out yonder in India? Are you idiotic and besotted enough to believe that it is anything but your fortune this man cares for? ”

“ Olivia Marchmont stood a few paces from her stepdaughter, watching her while the black shadow of doubt blotted every joy from her heart, and utter despair crept slowly into her innocent breast. The widow expected that the girl's self–esteem would assert itself––that she would contradict and defy the traducer of her lover's truth; but it was not so. When Mary spoke again, her voice was low and subdued, her manner as submissive as it had been two or three years before, when she had stood before her stepmother, waiting to repeat some difficult lesson. ”

“ How little these good women know of us, after all! What vulgar suspicions and narrow–minded fears influence them against us! Are they honourable and honest towards one another, I wonder, that they can entertain such pitiful doubts of our honour and honesty?"
So, hour after hour, and day after day, Olivia Marchmont kept watch and ward over Edward and Mary. It seems strange that love could blossom in such an atmosphere; it seems strange that the cruel gaze of those hard grey eyes did not chill the two innocent hearts, and prevent their free expansion. ”

“ And yet, if there was any truth in appearances, it was Olivia who was most inimical to the missing girl; it was Olivia whom Mary had feared; it was Olivia who had driven John Marchmont's orphan–child from her home once, and who might, by the same power to tyrannise and torture a weak and yielding nature, have so banished her again.
Or these two, Paul and Olivia, might both hate the defenceless girl, and might have between them plotted a wrong against her.
"Who will tell me the truth about my lost darling?" cried Edward Arundel. "Who will help me to look for my missing love?" ”

“ She had never questioned herself as to her worthiness of her lover's devotion. She had accepted it as she accepted the sunshine and the starlight––as something beautiful and incomprehensible, that came to her by the beneficence of God, and not through any merits of her own. But as the fabric of her happiness dwindled away, the fatal spell exercised over the girl's weak nature by Olivia's violent words evoked a hundred doubts. How should he love her? why should he love her in preference to every other woman in the world? ”

“ What vengeance could he wreak upon the head of that wretch who, for nearly two years, had condemned an innocent girl to cruel suffering and shame? To shame; for Edward knew now that one of the most bitter tortures which Paul Marchmont had inflicted upon his cousin had been his pretended disbelief in her marriage.
"What can I do to him?" the young man asked himself. "What can I do to him? There is no personal chastisement worse than that which he has endured already at my hands. The scoundrel! the heartless villain! the false, cold–blooded cur! What can I do to him? ”

“ I know how brave and good you are, and I am proud to think of your noble courage and all the brave deeds you did in India. But you have fought for your country, Edward; you have done your duty. Nobody can expect more of you; nobody shall take you from me. O my darling, my husband, you promised to shelter and defend me while our lives last! You won't leave me––you won't leave me, will you?"
Edward Arundel kissed the tears away from his wife's pale face, and drew her head upon his bosom. ”

“ Before my little girl is four years older, you will be a man, Arundel––with a man's intellect, a man's courage, and, above all, a man's keen sense of honour. So long as my darling remains poor, her humble friends will be strong enough to protect her; but if ever Providence should think fit to place her in a position of antagonism to Paul Marchmont,––for he would look upon any one as an enemy who stood between him and fortune,––she would need a far more powerful protector than any she could find amongst her poor mother's relatives. Will you be that protector, Edward Arundel? ”

“ It was thus she grew to early womanhood; a child in gentle obedience and docility; a woman by reason of that grave and thoughtful character which had been peculiar to her from her very infancy. It was in a life such as this, narrow, monotonous, joyless, that her seventeenth birthday came and went, scarcely noticed, scarcely remembered, in the dull uniformity of the days which left no track behind them; and Mary Marchmont was a woman,––a woman with all the tragedy of life before her; infantine in her innocence and inexperience of the world outside Marchmont Towers. ”

“ She said this not so much to her cousin as to herself. She was like Job in his despair, and cried aloud to the Supreme Himself in a gloomy protest against her anguish.
"Olivia," said Edward Arundel very earnestly, "what is it that makes you unhappy? Is the burden that you carry a burden on your conscience? Is the black shadow upon your life a guilty secret? Is the cause of your unhappiness that which I suspect it to be? Is it that, in some hour of passion, you consented to league yourself with Paul Marchmont against my poor innocent girl? ”

“ Edward Arundel thought: "the idea of going to her humble friends would be the first to present itself to her mind. She will go to her dead mother's sister, and give her all her jewels, and ask for shelter in the quiet farmhouse. She will act like one of the heroines in the old–fashioned novels she used to read in Oakley Street, the simple–minded damsels of those innocent story–books, who think nothing of resigning a castle and a coronet, and going out into the world to work for their daily bread in a white satin gown, and with a string of pearls to bind their dishevelled locks." ”

“ I do not think that anything more could have been done for her."
"No," answered Edward Arundel, bitterly; "unless you could have loved her."
"We cannot force our affections," the widow said, in a hard voice.
Another voice in her breast seemed to whisper, "Why do you reproach me for not having loved this girl? If you had loved me, the whole world would have been different."
"Olivia Marchmont," said Captain Arundel, "by your own avowal there has never been any affection for this orphan girl in your heart. ”

“ Other women possess that power, and trifle with it, and turn it to bad account. I have prayed, Edward Arundel,––yes, I have prayed upon my knees to the God who made me, that He would give me some poor measure of that gift which Nature has lavished upon other women; but He would not hear me, He would not hear me! I was not made to be loved. Why, then, should I make myself a slave for the sake of winning people's esteem? If they have despised me, I can despise them."
"Who has despised you, Olivia?" Edward asked, perplexed by his cousin's manner. ”

“ Whatever I have been, my love, at least, has been pure. My love is pure, though I am base. I will never slander that again, for I know now that it is immortal."
In the sudden rush of that flood–tide of love and tenderness, all these thoughts welled into Olivia Marchmont's mind. In all her sin and desperation she had never been so true a woman as now; she had never, perhaps, been so near being a good woman. But the tender emotion was swept out of her breast the next moment by the first words of Edward Arundel. ”

“ As it was, she made a routine of penance for herself, after her own fashion: going long distances on foot to visit her poor, when she might have ridden in her carriage; courting exposure to rain and foul weather; wearing herself out with unnecessary fatigue, and returning footsore to her desolate home, to fall fainting into the strong arms of her grim attendant, Barbara.
But this self–appointed penance could not shut Edward Arundel and Mary Marchmont from the widow's mind. Walking through a fiery furnace their images would have haunted her still, vivid and palpable even in the agony of death. ”

“ How would you like your papa to marry again?"
Mary Marchmont started to her feet, as if she would have gone to her father in the midst of all those spectators. John was standing near Olivia and her father, talking to them, and playing nervously with his slender watch–chain when he addressed the young lady.
"My papa––marry again!" gasped Mary. "How dare you say such a thing, Mr. Arundel?"
Her childish devotion to her father arose in all its force; a flood of passionate emotion that overwhelmed her sensitive nature. Marry again! marry a woman who would separate him from his only child! ”

“ Mary need never again have fallen into the power of Olivia Marchmont. His own imprudence, his own rashness, had flung this poor child, helpless and friendless, into the hands of the very man against whom John Marchmont had written a solemn warning,––a warning that it should have been Edward's duty to remember. But who could have calculated upon the railway accident; and who could have foreseen a separation in the first blush of the honeymoon? Edward Arundel had trusted in his own power to protect his bride from every ill that might assail her. ”

“ Yes; womanhood was the something wanted in Olivia Arundel's face. Intellect, resolution, courage, are rare gifts; but they are not the gifts whose tokens we look for most anxiously in a woman's face. If Miss Arundel had been a queen, her diadem would have become her nobly; and she might have been a very great queen: but Heaven help the wretched creature who had appealed from minor tribunals to her mercy! Heaven help delinquents of every kind whose last lingering hope had been in her compassion!
Perhaps Mary Marchmont vaguely felt something of all this. ”

“ It is a pity certainly that so great a man should die in the prime of life; but if Byron had survived to old age after writing these lines, he would have been a living anticlimax. When a man writes that sort of poetry he pledges himself to die young.
Edward Arundel had grown to love Belinda Lawford unconsciously, and in spite of himself; but the first love of his heart, the first fruit of his youth, had perished. He could not feel quite the same devotion, the same boyish chivalry, that he had felt for the innocent bride who had wandered beside him in the sheltered meadows near Winchester. ”