My Only Love. A novel

Front matter

In /une, at Every Library. LORD OF HIMSELF. & &eto govel BY LORD "WILLIAM LENNOX, AUTHOR OF 'FIFTY YEARS' BIOGRAPHICAL REMINISCENCES,' "CELEBRITIES I HAVE KNOWN," 'FASHION, THEN AND NOW," ETC. 3 Vols., 1 guinea. REMINGTON & CO., 133, NEW BOND STREET, W. Of Every Bookseller. a Jlobel. BY EMILIA AYLMER BLAKE. AUTHOR OF * A CROWN FOR LOVE,' ' NELSON,' ETC. IN THREE VOLUMES. VOL. I. Euripides. ' But this was taught me by the dove, To die — and know no second love. This lesson yet hath man to learn, Taught by the thing he dares to spurn : The bird that sings within the brake, The swan that swims upon the lake, One mate, and one alone, will take.' Byron. Ionium : REMINGTON AND CO., 133, New Bond Street, W. [Removed from 5, Arundel Street, Strand.] 1880. [All Rights Reserved.] CONTENTS OF VOL. I. CHAPTER PAGE I. SWEET SIXTEEN - - - I II.

THE GOD OF MY IDOLATRY - 29 III. MY DEAREST FOE - - "47 IV. AGAINST THE WORLD - - -66 V. HOPE DEFERRED - - - . "79 VI. MAKETH THE HEART SICK - - 91 VII. TRUST ME ALL IN ALL - - 102 VIII. OR NOT AT ALL - - - - I 1 5 IX. THE DESIRE ACCOMPLISHED • 1 33 X. IS SWEET TO THE SOUL - - 1 42 xi. 'twixt cup and lip - - 153 XII. THERE'S MANY A SLIP - - - 1 68 XIII. MAN PROPOSES - - - - 1 93 XIV. WOMAN DISPOSES - - - - 213 XV. LOVE, THOU ART BITTER - - - 223 XVI. SWEET IS DEATH TO ME - - - — »T^*qf^fc«>e-« —

Chapter I. Sweet Sixteen

' Outre tous ces discours, ioutes ces gentillesses Ne vous faisait-il point aussi quelques caresses ? ' Oh, tant ! II me prenait et les mains et les bras, Et de me les baiser il n'etait jamais las.' Moliere, Ecole des Femmes. Far away in old world Cornwall I was bred, though not born, under the wing of a loving, aged foster parent, my father's mother, a widow, who cared but for me in the world. No two companions ever were more opposite than we, in tastes and fashions of vol I. i heart and mind, and yet I loved her well, having no other truly to love. Our home was a neat house of modest pretensions, in a marine town, which I shall call Stor mouth, half fashionable in the ' season' and occasionally galvanised into a show of life by garrison balls and theatricals : but we, my grannie and I, cared for none of these things.

From childhood to girlhood I had been acquainted with few even of other children, but passed my time in such solitary play as I could, until my grannie got masters — the best the neighbourhood could afford — to teach me all I was inclined to learn ; and then I devoted myself to study and hard work, being possessed with a precocious ambition to do and to be something under the sun which my poor father and unknown mother closed their eyes upon so early. I was indeed an orphan, ' deprived of light,' as the Greek origin of the word de rives it ; to live and die in the cold shadow of the world's neglect, unless by some means I could lift myself above it, and this was early made known to me through my grannie's frequent lament, ' What will become of my poor child ? Bread and cheese I can give you,' she would say, ' but what is that to a girl like you ?

Connection is everything, connection and position, and all our people are in their graves but you and I. How ever are you to marry ?' That never troubled me ; but I took pleasure to read of the fair Gabrielle, how in a similar strait, a fortune-teller promised her higher destinies than those dues of her birth she was deprived of : upon me too, it was borne in by some prophetic instinct, that I should win a hero's heart, some Henri Quatre, whom heaven should make for me to be his wife, perhaps ; his love, assuredly ; his mistress ? no, never ! A cruel death fair Gabrielle died by poison. Ah, well I that I might have braved. Since wishes were my only pos sessions, why should I not wish, like the wisest of the three sisters in the Eastern tale, to be the Caliph's wife, rather than his cook's or baker's ? and she had her wish !

Was I not, by my mother's side, a daughter of that wondrous land of the sun, where miracles are common as the light of noon ? My name, too, Leila ? Memories also I i — had of a stately life in London, where my father, the tenant for life of an inheritance entailed in the male line, used to boast of his little Indian beauty, his only child, and say to other fathers, proud of their five, six, or seven, ' I have eight in one.' He was recalled to serve in India, and slain in battle in the prime of manhood. He left me an infant, not able yet to realise the tremendous loss to be felt every hour of my future life more and more keenly, but I wept as much as a little child could weep when they told me papa was gone away — dead — and I begged to die too, and go to him in heaven. The crown without the cross !

To that I was not born. Happily the spirit of a child is elastic as its tread, and will not break under one blow. At thirteen I began to feel as a woman, and often and often would I walk alone by the sea, making companions of the melancholy waves, in mournful envy of other girls of my age, whom I saw caressed and praised by a fond father, while I had none to cling to under heaven but the poor old grand mother, who rather reproved than en couraged my too demonstrative affection. She had lived through too much to feel in common with the young passionate heart that chafed under her very kindness, and hungered for other love than hers. About this time it happened that a name I had caught from my father's lips, to be ever remembered with honor and regard, rose very high in fame, and be came common in every house throughout England.

I do not repeat it here, for what cause will appear hereafter ; enough that its great possessor passed one day in our humble town, marking an epoch in the annals of the same as surely as he fixed the attention of every man, woman, child and quadruped in the place. I too was stirred by the hubbub and clatter of hoofs : I marked him rising in his saddle while a attendant orderly jogged, regulation wise, with the brisk trot of his horse. I watched the great man alight, measuring him with my eyes — six feet of heroic manhood — my father's height, and a presence not unlike his. Something much more than a mortal, though I felt that it would be a sin to give way to my impulse — to fall down and worship him. Certainly, if no one could have seen me, I should have liked to kiss the particular spots on the ground where his foot had rested.

In all time to come I could not choose but those worn out stone steps must be inexpressibly dear to me for his sake. I partly forgot him, however, so far at least as to waste no time in dreams, but re turned with a fresh impulse to the task which should fit me for that ' broad stream of the world ' whose course attracted me. It was discovered I had a voice. What gentlemen value above all accomplishments in a woman is to sing well, according to my grandmother's lights, from which I nowise dissented, but improved my gift to the best of my power under the guidance of the parish church organist, no mean master, as my luck would have it, who made me his pet pupil. But with all this, I yet craved beauty, fearing much lest in that I should not keep the promise of my childhood. Was I plain or pretty ?

Alas ! I could not resolve that question to my satisfaction, neither by the aid of my glass, nor yet by means of the booby-like conduct of my old master's nephew, an ingenuous youth three years older than myself, whom I had used as my slave from the respective ages of seven and ten, making him useful in stitching my doll's clothes, and, later on, as an errand boy between me and his uncle, until, having completed his sixteenth year, he adopted an odd fashion of blushing through all his pimples as red as a poppy at sight of me, and, if he happened to find me alone in our parlour, making his way out again, with a stammering apology, as fast as his long legs could carry him. Out of such demeanour on the part of my old playmate I could make no sense, but, con vulsed with laughter, would describe the scene to his uncle, whose — ' I've heard tell of you, Miss Lily' was always provocative of a fresh peal of merriment from me.

The old man was very fond of me, and took these vagaries as if they were hurts to something belonging to himself. The nephew was too young, the uncle at sixty too old to fall in love, I foolishly thought. I knew nothing yet of men and their ways. And now I touched upon sixteen ! Living shut up in the proverbial band-box, which, in due course, goes on to the shelf, but wherein, as unenterprising mammas assure their discontented daughters, their ' luck will come ' to them as soon as in any Bel gravian drawing room ; and there did fate very nearly find me out, sooth to say, in the unlovely, but substantial shape of a new candidate for our Borough of Stormouth, a lacker of advancement, matrimonial as well as political. His lady mother and can vasser-in-chief waited, according to form, upon my grandmother, to make request for her small influence, she having some property in and about the town.

My grandmother was not too gracious, being an oldfashioned Tory of staunch principles, in contradistinction to the new candidate, who went in as a dilettante Radical, or ' Moderate Liberal,' as dame Mauleverer, his mother, put it euphuistically to grannie. ' I don't understand these distinctions,' observed the latter, with much simplicity ; ' but is not Mr. Mauleverer a high Tory ? I should think he must be, the name is so good.' ' Well, not quite what you would call a Tory ; in fact, there is no such thing in the world now ; a gentleman must be liberal and make his way with all classes, high and low, or he'll soon be thrust out of his place. But my son's principles are the same as yours and mine, my dear friend, only he must act in opposition to the Government and make himself trouble some.

That's the way to get into power now-a-days. He must compel them to take him into the Privy Council to keep him quiet.' ' I'm sorry for it ; that used not to be the way with honourable men. I'm afraid the whole of England is rotten to the core.' ' That it is, my dear madam ; all every one of us has to do is to cut out our own slice outside the general corruption — to keep clear of it, in fact. I shall be happy to do anything within my power for you and your little grand-daughter. Of course you'll give all your interest to my son ?' ' Well — yes ; at least, I'll think about it,' hesitated grannie, and at this stage of the proceedings I made my entrance on the scene. I had just come in from bathing, with dripping hair, and toilette — such as it was — demolished by the wind. Mrs. Mauleverer looked down at my feet, and then at my head, from a height of con tempt that conjured up from my hurt self esteem a very demon of rebellion.

There was a defiance in the courtsey I dropped down to the ground, to show I knew how to do it, as my grandmother introduced me. * Young girls ought to be taught how to dress,' predicated my enemy of me ; ' or otherwise they know no better than to make frights of themselves, and no one can tell what they may lose by giving a bad impression. That child has a great look of her father. Ah ! I knew him very well. Yes, she has a look of him, but his complexion was nothing like so dark ; he was a fine handsome Englishman.' ' I have heard I have my mother's com plexion,' I remonstrated. ' Oh no, oh no ! not at all ; she was a very beautiful woman. And now I must take myself off, I have so many to call upon. I make sure I can reckon upon you, dear Mrs. Fortescue, and as for that little minx, she may make a great match yet ; dress her, dress her !' My grandmother, neither pledging herself, nor yet demurring to any of Mrs. Mauleverer's conclusions, that lady, as it were to clinch her argu ment, stepped back into the room to say — ' My son shall call on you himself,' and with that left us, my grandmother half flattered, myself wholly indignant at her impertinence, meant for condescension.

One thing she had made sensible to me in her praise of my parents, that I was by comparison to be despised in her eyes, and to this, I made up my mind, her son should be no party, good luck and bright wit favouring me ; so I followed the enemy's good counsel, and dressed myself for conquest, crowning the achievement by a most mischievous hat of my own device. Mr. George Augustus Mauleverer came, saw, and was overcome ; so true is it that the masculine disposition is to be subdued by a bit of straw and a tuft of feather. I lay in wait for him in the garden in front of our house, pretending not to ex pect, or know him when he came ; and by this ruse de guerre quite threw him off his pedestal as a man of family and fashion. At first sight of me he gave a start of surprise, doubtless to find me so opposite to the dusky, dwarfish fright I had been described to him.

Not content with this satisfaction, I drew him on, after he followed me into my grandmother's drawing room, into something very like serious admiration ; ignorant as I was, yet all the more wise with the cunning in such matters, which, old Montaigne says, comes by nature as the gift of the author of all evil to every daughter of Eve, however young and simple she may be. Next day, while unconscious of the amount of mischief I had achieved, and ruminating on its possible extent with some alarm, I was aroused by the mother of my victim sweeping down like a provoked kite upon our dove-cot. With much ostentation of mystery, and the initiation of my grand mother into a mighty secret, she ordered * the little goose,' meaning my too quick witted self, out of the room. What she there and then imparted in most solemn confidence to my grandmother I failed not to coax out, word for word, after she was gone, nor shall I by concealing the same run risk of crossing any reader's feminine curiosity, or masculine rather, compared to which latter our weaker faculty is but *as water unto wine.' In one word I had made a conquest of George Augustus Mauleverer, so that his five thousand a year, prospective title of M.P., and somewhat stumpy person were metaphorically placed at my small feet, always provided that I, by fortune, birth, and connection, could make some decent show of equivalent.

This was not to be calculated too rigidly, inasmuch as George had his fancy to please : he might easily marry a girl in his own class of life, she, little minx, for her part, might make a. higher match, though that was most im probable ; but those two young people would never be so happy as by uniting themselves for life. How old was the chit ? Not sixteen. Why, they say she's seventeen all out — quite old enough to be married when a gentleman is willing to have her. Wait ? No, George Augustus would not wait. It would be an impertinence to ask a gentleman to wait. Five thousand pounds ! Not enough to pay election expenses. No matter : another five thousand on death of grandmother. Very well ; five hundred a year should be settled on her, if she survived her husband. But the estate ? Oh no !

George Augustus would not settle the estate. She might die without a son, and he would have to marry again. Was she not consumptive ? All reflections made, I jumped to the conclusion that if anybody was to be con stituted match-maker in my behoof, Mrs. Mauleverer was the very last person in the world whose interference I would suffer, while poor grannie proved herself a mere feather to be twisted about the shrewd dowager's thick fingers. ' I won't have him,' I blurted out, to dear old grannie's consternation. ' Why, my dear Lily, how can you say so ? And why ? Tell me why.' ' Why, because I won't, and I don't care for him, and I never can, and there's an end of it.' ' Why, you seemed to like him so much yourself.' * Like to torment him, you mean ' Oh, Lily !' ' Well, like him in a way, but not to marry him.' ' You'll never see such a match again if you miss him ; you must marry some time.' ' Well, perhaps not.' ' My dear, but you must ; I would have you marry a duke, if I could.' ' And because you cannot, I'm to take the first that comes, whether I like him or not' ' You'll grow to like him if you marry him ; you may as well like him as anyone else.' ' I don't see that.

He's a little tubby figure ; and you know you brought me up to admire height in a man. My father was six feet high,' I pouted in deprecation. * As if I could foresee a man of such a position would propose, and you want to refuse him for that.' ' Well, and his politics — a Whig and a Radical. When I was a child, you warned me against even dancing with any man who was not a Tory, and now you want me to marry in the teeth of your own principles.' ' Women's principles, my love, must give way to paramount necessity • think of the danger of your being left an old maid.' At that I laughed a long and merry laugh, ringing with the bright scorn of sixteen summers. ' Ah, I can see no good to come of this,' she feebly remonstrated, and on a renewal of confabulation, between both old ladies, it was decided that George Augustus should speak for himself, who, no doubt, all important preliminaries being once satisfactorily arranged, would easily over come the forgotten trifle of my opposition.

Accordingly George Augustus came at his leisure, a few days afterwards, to do what he should have done at first — make love to me. It was the first formal declaration I had ever received from a man, but after the first blush — (literally), which for a moment tinged my cheek — not apt to color hitherto, the more he prayed and pressed the more indifferent I felt, the more ardent he for my coldness. I could have looked him quietly in the face through it all, and only dropped my eyelids because I thought it was the proper thing to do. It had been enjoined upon me not to be rude to him, to let him kiss my hand ; and so much did he abuse this permission that I doubt whether the Queen's hand, in all her life, received a like quantity of kisses to mine, in that one long summer's day. The first taste of love was sweet to me, if not the lover.

While his lips pressed my fingers, and crept up the tiny wrist to print themselves upon the soft smoothness of the rounded arm, I wandered away in imagination towards that other, once seen and now recalled to memory, and thought in envy of the happy woman who should win from him such delicate, tender caresses. He was not married ! That flashed upon me ; and should I marry now ? I broke away from the profaning touch, resolved to suffer it no more. This was no longer a matter of choice with me, having provoked my assailant too far. ' Lily, my darling, listen to me like a darling,' he remonstraced ; ' say three little words — " I love you," or if you cannot, one kiss.' Before I could struggle he had done it. vol. 1. Angered and ashamed I began to cry. It was the first kiss I had ever had from a man, except once when I was four years old.

A painter to whom I sat with my father for our portraits called me 'little Chatterbox ;' I, not understanding the epithet, asked for an explanation, and re ceived a kiss which I, desiring to return with a decorous slap in the face, mounted upon a footstool with that intent, but found I could not by at least a couple of feet reach up to my purpose. Vexed at this, I burst into tears, and the like did now. * Oh, Lily, Lily, your beautiful eyes — don't spoil them like that. I'll kiss away those tears for you, naughty girl ! I won't be put away. Why, have I pulled down your hair, and you want to put it up again with your little fingers ? What a heap of lovely hair — all fallen down ! oh, you poor little thing!' He did not tell me I was beautiful, but his looks flattered me the more that his tongue was reticent.

My eyes, I knew, were something remarkable ; nurses and maids from my earliest years having worried me on the subject. My hair, dark with glints of red, was at least rare in tint and luxuriance. George Augustus looked and looked, as if he would devour and swallow me up — little hands, great eyes, hair and all. Then I was fair ! Sweet it was to be taught that lesson. To be assured I had so much to enrich the eyes, and captivate the heart which should satisfy the lovethirst that grew upon me : but this was not the man. The more he pleaded the more obstinately I put away the deep draught of passion thus thrust upon me in the ugly glass wherefrom I so coyly refused to sip. Why did I so ? Woman seldom does re ject love that is true. He should have persevered, and then he might have won me, and enjoyed his fancy ; I might have lived to content the world — if not myself — a happy woman without a history, and not now be tracing these remorseful lines.

Again and again he pleaded with me, ' Lily, I am afraid I cannot make you love me,' and got no answer but — ' I cannot tell ; I don't know — wait until I see you again,' and, with that cold comfort, he started for London, on business, I was told. 2 — I did not believe it, but gave way to a horrible suspicion, which rose upon me out of some scattered phrases of his. It so happened that some days before, a cele brated singer, Mrs. Forest, had made her appearance at Stormouth, and I, being myself an amateur musician of lofty aspira tions, made a point of hearing the famous prima donna. As a woman she bore an evil name, having made a conquest, on the stage, of a poor lord who suffered her to remain in the path of temptation until she ran away with one of her professional coadjutors, and, being divorced from her noble husband, married him.

The story was noised that she was no more faithful to her present than to her former vows, and certain it was that George Augustus was an enthusiastic admirer of her beauty, both of face and voice. The local Mrs. Grundy was careful to make me aware of the fact that his praises of Mrs. Forest were such as a gentleman should not bestow on one lady, while paying his addresses to another. A council upon my perversity was held forthwith between Mrs. Mauleverer and my grandmother, and thereupon I was strenuously urged by the latter to give my reasons. Thus pushed, I gave conjectures instead, to the effect that I was convinced George Augustus had gone away on no business, but some love affair — some objec tionable love affair — most likely Mrs. Forest had to do with it. This I charged grannie not to repeat after me, but she did so at once to Mrs. Mauleverer, who, shocked beyond measure, repeated to her son, the next time he came down, every word I had said.

He, to make the case worse, denied nothing, but laughed with right good glee, and said, ' Is it too much gallantry I am accused of ?' Horror of horrors ! I had stumbled upon the truth, though how I did so is as great an enigma to myself as it was to the two lady mothers. At my guilty adorer I could scarcely look for very shame. Something else George Augustus had done in London besides make love where he should not ; he had played and lost several thousand pounds, to be promptly discharged as a debt of honor, while legal difficulties hindered the raising of the sum by mortgage of his estates. The result was, George Augustus must have forthwith either my five thousand pounds, or another woman's, in the honorable way of marriage, which could not, therefore, be postponed. His mother had found a girl answering all requirements for his wife with four times the sum.

So it was put to me at once to say ' Yea or nay ; and I still denied him during a nine hours' siege, from three in the afternoon until two hours past midnight — but I was new to the world, and from such a manner of wooing I revolted. All was vain, and he went away sorrowful, to seek a more complaint, wealthier bride. That was over, but not the conse quences ; my home had no longer the negative merit of quiet. I had offended against all family law, tradition and pre cedent, and baulked poor grannie of the eager desire of her life, to see me married early. I had had my chance, and thrown it away, and never could such another be looked for again, if I lived a hundred years. To this Mrs. Grundy failed not to chime in with a thousand ' aye, ayes,' and added that I was dangerous moreover, a girl likely to do much mischief and no good.

My old music-master's wife was among the first to propound this view of my adventure, provoked by her husband with symptoms of something very like jealousy on my account. One day, at my grandmother's request, I was preparing some election streamers with Mr. Mauleverer's colours — of course, when he was still a bachelor. The couple surprised me at my task, and while by the wife I was com mended therefore, the husband gave vent to grumbles ot disapprobation of my making too much of the Whig candidate. ' What has turned you politician all of a sudden ?' shrewdly threw in the lady. ' I never thought you had found out the difference between Whig and Tory before.' Then, turning to her husband, ' Perhaps you think Miss Fortescue ought to choose her husband by the color of his coat.' Thus challenged, the organist's temper broke into a discordant key.

I too, much disconcerted, let fall the compromising, gaudy-coloured shreds and patches, which he, snatching up, tore into smaller divisions flung into the grate, and exclaimed ; ' What does she want to marry for ? — whims of women !' Two words comprised the wise's comment on this outburst — ■* Old fox !' she cried, with the accompaniment of a box on the ear such as sent the peccant organist spinning round on his chair (an easy one on castors), and knocked him against the chimney-piece by the neat impetus of the blow, the lady's hand being small for the result she achieved. He bore it like a lamb, and, without one word of justifica tion, lay quietly under the ' soft impeach ment.' Next time I had a singing lesson I was made acquainted with my master's house hold tribulations in my behoof. His wife, much displeased at his too great partiality for me as his pet pupil, had put thereon the most objectionable construction, scolding him so perpetually as to give him no peace by day or night. * She's the same as a daughter to you, but with a difference, Mr. Nightingale — with a difference!