International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1

THE LADY LUCY'S SECRET.

BY MRS. NEWTON CROSLAND

In a charming morning-room of a charming London house, neighboring Hyde-Park, there lounged over the breakfast-table a wedded pair,—the rich merchant Farrars, and his young wife, the Lady Lucy. Five years of married life had, in most respects, more than realized the brightest hopes which had been born and cherished in the dreaming days of courtship. Till the age of forty, the active mind of Walter Ferrars had been chiefly occupied by business,—not in mean shuffling, speculative dealings, but on the broad basis of large transactions and an almost chivalrous system of integrity.

Then, when a secured position and the privileges of wealth had introduced him to that inner circle of English society which not wealth alone can penetrate, but where wealth in some due proportion is an element necessary to hold fast a place, it was thought most natural and proper that he should choose a wife from the class which seems set apart from the rest of womankind like the choice flowers of a conservatory, on whom no rude breath must blow. The youthful, but nearly portionless, daughter of a poor Earl seemed the very bride decreed by some good angel for the merchant-prince.

But though the nuptials fulfilled nearly all the requirements of a mariage de convenance, there was in reality very much more of the ingredients in their hearts which amalgamate into very genuine "love," than always meet at the altar; though of course "the World" resolutely refused to believe anything of the sort—the World, which is capable of so much kindness, and goodness, and justice, among its individuals, taken "separately and singly," and yet is such a false, malignant, many-headed monster in its corporate body! Walter Ferrars had a warm heart, that yearned for affection, as well as a clear head; and, fascinated as he had been by the youthful grace and beauty, the high-bred repose of manner and cultivated talents of the Lady Lucy, he set himself resolutely to win and keep her girlish heart, not expecting that the man of forty was to obtain it without an effort. Thus, when he assumed a husband's name, he did not "drop the lover." His was still the watchful care, made up of the thousand little thoughtful kindnesses of daily life, neither relaxed in a tête-à-tête, nor increased in public. He was the pleased and ready escort for every occasion, save only when some imperative business claimed his time and presence; and these calls now were rare, for he had long since arrived at the position when efficient servants and assistants carry out the plans a superior has organized.

Is there wonder that the wife was grateful? Few—few women indeed are insensible to the power of continued kindness; they may have a heart of stone for the impetuous impulsive lover, but habitual tenderness-that seems so unselfish—touches the finest chords of their nature, and awakens affection that might have lain dormant through a long life, but for this one sweet influence. Thus it was that the wife of five years loved her husband with an almost adoring worship. She had felt her own mind expand in the intimate communion with his fine intellect; she had felt her own weaknesses grow less, as if she had absorbed some of his strength of character; and she had recognised the very dawn of principles and opinions which had been unknown to her in the days of her thoughtless, ignorant, inexperienced girlhood. And yet with all her love, with all her matured intelligence, she had never lost a certain awe of her husband, which his seniority had perhaps first implanted, and alas! one fatal circumstance had gone far to render morbid.

They sat at breakfast. It was early spring, and though the sunshine streamed through the windows, and from one of them there crept the odors of the conservatory, a bright fire gleamed and crackled in the grate; and shed a charm of cheerfulness through the room. Mr. Ferrars had a newspaper in his hand, but not yet had he perused a line, for his son and heir, a brave boy of three years old, a very model of patrician beauty, was climbing his large chair, playing antics of many sorts, and even affecting to pull his father's still rich and curling hair, so little awe had the young Walter of the head of the house—while Mr. Farrars' parental glee was like a deep bass to the child's crowing laugh. Lady Lucy smiled too, but she shook her head, and said more than once, "Naughty papa is spoiling Watty." It was a pretty scene; the room was redolent of elegance, and the young mother, in her exquisitely simple but tasteful morning dress, was one of its chief ornaments. Who would think that beneath all this sweetness of life there was still a serpent!

A post was just in, and a servant entered with several letters; among those delivered to Lady Lucy were two or three large unsightly, ill-shaped epistles, that seemed strange company for the others. An observing stranger might have noticed that Lady Lucy's cheek paled, and then flushed; that she crushed up her letters together, without immediately opening them, and that presently she slid the ugly ones into the pocket of her satin apron. Mr. Ferrars read his almost with a glance—for they were masculine letters, laconic, and to the point, conveying necessary information, in three lines and a half—and he smiled, as after a while he observed his wife apparently intent on a truly feminine epistle—four sides of delicate paper closely crossed—and exclaimed gaily:

"My dear Lucy, there's an hour's reading for you, at least; so I shall ring and send Watty to the nursery, and settle steadily to the Times."

But though Lady Lucy really perused the letter, her mind refused to retain the pleasant chit-chat gossip it contained. Her thoughst[*sic] were far away, and had she narrowly examined her motives she would have known that she bent over the friendly sheet chiefly as an excuse for silence, and to conceal her passing emotions. Meanwhile the newspaper crackled in her husband's hand as he moved its broad leaves.

Presently Mr. Ferrars started with an exclamation of grief and astonishment that completely roused his absent wife.

"My dear Walter, what has happened?" she asked, with great anxiety.

"A man a bankrupt, whom I thought as safe as the Bank of England. Though it is true people talked about him months ago—spoke suspiciously of his personal extravagance, and, above all, said that his wife was ruining him."

"His wife!"

"Yes;—but I cannot understand that sort of thing. A few hundreds a year more or less could be of little moment to a man like Beaufort, and I don't suppose she spent more than you do, my darling. At any rate she was never better dressed. Yet I believe the truth was, that she got frightfully into debt unknown to him; and debt is a sort of thing that multiplies itself in a most astonishing manner, and sows by the wayside the seeds of all sorts of misery. Then people say that when pay-day came at last, bickerings ensued, their domestic happiness was broken up. Beaufort grew reckless, and plunged into the excitement of the maddest speculations."

"How dreadful!" murmured Lady Lucy.

"Dreadful, indeed! I don't know what I should do with such a wife."

"Would not you forgive her if you loved her very much?" asked Lady Lucy, and she spoke in the singularly calm tone of suppressed emotion.

"Once, perhaps, once; and if her fault were the fault of youthful inexperience,—but so much falseness, mean deception, and mental deterioration must have accompanied such transactions, that—in short, I thank Heaven that I have never been put to the trial."

As he spoke, the eyes of Mr. Farrars were fixed on the leading article of the Times, not on his wife. Presently Lady Lucy glided from the room, without her absence being at the moment observed. Once in her dressing-room she turned the key, and sinking into a low chair, gave vent to her grief in some of the bitterest tears she had ever shed. She, too, was in debt; "frightfully," her husband had used the right word; "hopelessly," so far as satisfying her creditors even out of the large allowance Mr. Farrars made her; and still she had not the courage voluntarily to tell the truth, which yet she knew must burst upon him ere long. From what small beginnings had this Upas shadow come upon her! And what "falseness, mean deception, and mental deterioration" had truly been hers!

Even the fancied relief of weeping was a luxury denied to her, for she feared to show the evidence of tears; thus after a little while she strove to drive them back, and by bathing her face before the glass, and drawing the braids of her soft hair a little nearer her eyes, she was tolerably successful in hiding their trace. Never, when dressing for court or gala, had she consulted her mirror so closely; and now, though the tears were dried; she was shocked at the lines of anguish—those delvers of the wrinkles of age—which marked her countenance. She sat before her looking-glass, one hand supporting her head, the other clutching the hidden letters which she had not yet the courage to open. There was a light tap at the door.

"Who is there?" inquired Lady Lucy.

"It is I, my lady," replied Harris, her faithful maid. "Madame Dalmas is here."

Lady Lucy unlocked her door and gave orders that the visitor should be shown up. With the name had come a flush of hope that some trifling temporary help would be hers. Madame Dalmas called herself a French-woman, and signed herself "Antoinette," but she was really an English Jewess of low extraction, whose true name was Sarah Solomons. Her "profession" was to purchase—and sell—the cast-off apparel of ladies of fashion; and few of the sisterhood have carried the art of double cheating to so great a proficiency. With always a roll of bank notes in her old leathern pocket-book, and always a dirty canvas bag full of bright sovereigns in her pocket, she had ever the subtle temptation for her victims ready.

Madame Dalmas—for she must be called according to the name engraved on her card—was a little meanly-dressed woman of about forty, with bright eyes and a hooked nose, a restless shuffling manner, and an ill-pitched voice. Her jargon was a mixture of bad French and worse English.

"Bon jour, miladi Lucy," she exclaimed, as she entered Lady Lucy's sanctum, "need not inquire of health, you look si charmante. Oh, si belle!—that make you wear old clothes so longer dan oder ladies, and have so leetel for me to buy. Milady Lucy Ferrars know she look well in anything, but yet she should not wear old clothes: no right—for example—for de trade, and de hoosband always like de wife well dressed—ha—ha!"

Poor Lady Lucy! Too sick at heart to have any relish for Madame Dalmas' nauseous compliments, and more than half aware of her cheats and falsehoods, she yet tolerated the creature from her own dire necessities.

"Sit down, Madame Dalmas," she said, "I am dreadfully in want of money; but I really don't know what I have for you."

"De green velvet, which you not let me have before Easter, I still give you four pounds for it, though perhaps you worn it very much since then."

"Only twice—only seven times in all—and it cost me twenty guineas," sighed Lady Lucy.

"Ah, but so old-fashioned—I do believe I not see my money for it.

Voyez-vous, de Lady Lucy is one petite lady—si jolie mais très petite.

If she were de tall grand lady, you see de great dresses could fit small lady, but de leetle dresses fit but ver few."

"If I sell the green velvet I must have another next winter," murmured Lady Lucy.

"Ah! vous avez raison—when de season nouveautés come in. I tell you what—you let me have also de white lace robe you show me once, the same time I bought from you one little old pearl brooch."

"My wedding-dress? Oh no, I cannot sell my wedding-dress!" exclaimed poor Lady Lucy, pressing her hands convulsively together.

"What for not?—you not want to marry over again—I give you twenty-two pounds for it."

"Twenty-two pounds!—why it is Brussels point, and cost a hundred and twenty."

"Ah, I know—but you forget I perhaps keep it ten years and not sell—and besides you buy dear; great lady often buy ver dear!" and Madame Dalmas shook her head with the solemnity of a sage.

"No, no; I cannot sell my wedding-dress," again murmured the wife. And be it recorded, the temptress, for once, was baffled; but at the expiration of an hour, Madame Dalmas left the house, with a huge bundle under her arm, and a quiet satisfaction revealed in her countenance, had any one thought it worth while to study the expression of her disagreeable face.

Again Lady Lucy locked her door; and placing a bank-note and some sovereigns on the table, she sank into a low chair, and while a few large silent tears flowed down her cheeks, she at last found courage to open the three letters which had hitherto remained unread in her apron pocket. The first—the second, seemed to contain nothing to surprise her, however much there might be to annoy—but it was different with that last: here was a gross overcharge, and perhaps it was not with quite a disagreeable feeling that Lady Lucy found something of which she could justly complain. She rose hurriedly and unlocked a small writing-desk, which had long been used as a receptacle for old letters and accounts.

To tell the truth, the interior of the desk did not present a very orderly arrangement. Cards of address, bills paid and unpaid, copies of verses, and papers of many descriptions, were huddled together, and it was not by any means surprising that Lady Lucy failed in her search for the original account, by which to rectify the error in her shoemaker's bill. In the hurry and nervous trepidation which had latterly become almost a constitutional ailment with her, she turned out the contents of the writing-desk into an easy chair, and then kneeling before it, she set herself to the task of carefully examining the papers. Soon she came to one letter which had been little expected in that place, and which still bore the marks of a rose, whose withered leaves also remained, that had been put away in its folds. The rose Walter Ferrars had given her on the eve of their marriage, and the letter was in his handwriting, and bore but a few days earlier date. With quickened pulses she opened the envelope; and though a mist rose before her eyes, it seemed to form into a mirror in which she saw the by-gone hours. And so she read—and read.

It is the fashion to laugh at love-letters, perhaps because only the silly ones come to light. With the noblest of both sexes such effusions are sacred, and would be profaned by the perusal of a third person: but when a warm and true heart is joined to a manly intellect; when reason sanctions and constancy maintains the choice which has been made, there is little doubt but much of simple, truthful, touching eloquence is often to be found in a "lover's" letter. That which the wife now perused with strange and mingled feelings was evidently a reply to some girlish depreciation of herself, and contained these words:—

"You tell me that in the scanty years of your past life, you already look back on a hundred follies, and that you have unnumbered faults of character at which I do not even guess. Making some allowance for a figurative expression, I will answer 'it may be so.' What then? I have never called you an angel, and never desired you to be perfect. The weaknesses which cling, tendril-like, to a fine nature, not unfrequently bind us to it by ties we do not seek to sever. I know you for a true-hearted girl, but with the bitter lessons of life still unlearned; let it be my part to shield you from their sad knowledge,—yet whatever sorrow or evil falls upon you, I must or ought to share. Let us have no secrets; and while the Truth which gives its purest luster to your eye, and its richest rose to your cheek, still reigns in your soul, I cannot dream of a fault grave enough to deserve harsher rebuke than the kiss of forgiveness."

What lines to read at such a moment! No wonder their meaning reached her mind far differently than it had done when they were first received. Then she could have little heeded it; witness how carelessly the letter had been put away—how forgotten had been its contents.

Her tears had flowed in torrents, but Lucy Ferrars no longer strove to check them. And yet there gleamed through them a brighter smile than had visited her countenance for many a month. A resolve approved by all her better nature was growing firm within her heart; and that which an hour before would have seemed too dreadful to contemplate was losing half its terrors. How often an ascent, which looks in the distance a bare precipice, shows us, when we approach its face, the notches by which we may climb!—and not a few of the difficulties of life yield to our will when we bravely encounter them.