Chapter XVIII: At Arm’s Length

There are some people whose houses never change; people whose habitations are in a manner symbolical of their lives, and whose even tenor of existence nothing less than the undertaker can overthrow. Mrs. Hazleton is one of these eminently respectable personages. She has occupied the house in Lowther Street for the last ten years. She has gone to the sea-side every year of those ten, and at exactly the same period, has returned after the same interval, has given her great parties at the same seasons, and has lived a methodical and prosperous existence, with satisfaction to herself and her neighbours, and with considerable profit to the surrounding shopkeepers. When the London season is over, Mrs. Hazleton goes to the sea-side, not because she belongs to that flight of fashionable swallows who follow pleasure’s summer from clime to clime, but simply because London in August is unendurable,--baking pavements, scorched verdure, dust and grime on everything, and a sense of desertion in all those regions which the upper ten thousand and a considerable portion of the lower million inhabit.

There could not be a better time for Alexis to make his inquiry without having to present himself in a formal manner to his old acquaintance. Mrs. Hazleton is at Scarborough, with children, governess, and _femme de chambre_. The blinds are all down, save one of the venetians in the dining-room, which is drawn up about halfway, and in the space thus exposed to view the comfortable round face of Mrs. Hazleton’s cook, and the lanky countenance of Mrs. Hazleton’s sandy-haired footman--a footman whose visage is happily unfamiliar to Alexis--exhibit themselves. Cook and footman are engaged in looking out of the window. There is not much for them to see in Lowther Street on this August evening, but it is a relief to be above ground for a little while, after the twilight of those underground dungeons to which the London domestic is confined.

Alexis mounts the steps, and knocks and rings, under the calm survey of those two pair of eyes. The sandy-haired footman is not impressed by Mr. Secretan’s appearance. Alexis is carelessly dressed in garments of a colonial cut, a velveteen shooting jacket, a soft felt hat, clothes chosen for ease and hard wear rather than for fashion. The footman yawns audibly, and when reminded of his duties by a nudge from cook’s plump elbow, mutters contemptuously, ‘Oh, hang it! that fellow can wait, you know;’ and then withdraws himself lazily from his post of observation, and anon opens the street door a little way, filling the opening with his person.

‘Is there a young woman called Dimond in service here now?’ asks Alexis.

‘Dun know, I’m shaw,’ replies the flunkey, with another yawn. ‘What do you want with her?’

‘We won’t go into particulars till you find out whether she’s still here,’ answers Alexis, coolly. ‘Perhaps you will condescend so far as to inquire of your fellow-servant?’

‘Hi, cooky,’ bawls the footman, ‘what’s our Jane’s name? Dimond, ain’t it?’

‘Of course it is. You might have known,’ answers cook, who has come into the hall, and now contemplates Alexis over the youth’s shoulder.

‘What do you want with Jane Dimond?’ she inquires, sharply. ‘There’s no followers allowed here.’

‘I’m not a follower,’ answers Alexis, ‘but I want to see Jane Dimond alone for five minutes, on business.’

The countenances of cook and footman plainly express an apprehension that this is the beginning of a deep-laid scheme against the family plate.

‘I’ll tell you what, young man,’ says the cook, with asperity, ‘my missus is out of town, and we don’t want no airy sneaks loafing about while she’s away.’

‘And it ain’t no good for them to loaf,’ adds the sandy-haired young man, who has not shaved for the last day or two, and whose chin is adorned with a tawny stubble like a newly-cut wheat field. ‘The plate has all been sent to the bank.’

Alexis fairly bursts out laughing.

‘Is there so much difference between a chimney-pot hat and a wide awake? between Poole and a colonial tailor?’ he says to himself, and then he adds aloud. ‘If one of you simpletons will take the trouble to call Jane Dimond, she will be able to tell you that I’m a gentleman, and that I have not come after the tea-spoons or the umbrellas. I’ll wait in the street for her. You can tell her that a gentleman from Australia wants a few words with her.’

Cook and footman whisper doubtfully for half a minute, and then shut the door upon Mr. Secretan, leaving him to infer their acquiescence with his request.

He paces the pavement for five minutes or so, and then the good-natured Jane Dimond comes down the steps, while cook and footman stand in the doorway to watch the proceedings.

They see Jane gesticulate as in extreme surprise at sight of Alexis, and then the two walk a little further off, quite out of earshot, to the aggravation of Jane’s fellow-servants, whose curiosity is by this time raised to the highest pitch.

‘I shouldn’t wonder if he was some haristocratic arf-brother of ers,’ says cook, who is a devoted student of “Reynolds’s Mysteries of London.” ‘Life is full of family secrets and such like.’

‘Lor, sir,’ says Jane Dimond, when she has recovered the shock of surprise; ‘I thought you was dead and gone.’

‘Did you, Jane. Why?’

‘Because I fancied if you was in the land of the livin’ you wouldn’t have turned a deaf ear to that advertisement.’

‘What advertisement?’

‘The advertisement as Miss Faunthorpe--I beg pardon, Mrs.----’

‘Never mind the name, girl. Tell me all about the advertisement.’

Jane explains herself in a roundabout way, but in due course Alexis knows all that Jane knows, except his wife’s present abode. That the girl refuses to tell even to him.

‘She told me to keep it a secret, and I’m not going to tell no one without her permission,’ says Jane resolutely.

This resolve the husband combats, but in vain.

‘I’ll arst her leaf to tell you, and when I’ve got her leaf I’ll tell you,’ answers Jane. ‘Wild horses wouldn’t move me from that.’

‘Telegraph to her then directly,’ cries Alexis, taking out a handful of silver. ‘Come with me to the nearest telegraph office, and I’ll write the message for you. You can put in the address yourself.’

‘No, I won’t send her no telegrafts, lest I should get her into trouble with her friends. I’ll write to her.’

‘Inexorable girl! Is she in the country?’

‘Yes.’

‘And the country post is gone ever so long. I shall have to wait twenty-four hours before you can get her answer.’

‘I can’t help that,’ says Jane, with an inflexible air. ‘She’s trusted me, and I’ll do my dooty by her. As you’ve stayed away so long it can’t hurt you to stay a little longer.’

‘Stayed away so long, cruel girl! Don’t you know that it was she who left me?’

‘Whatever she did, I make no doubt she did it for the best,’ answers Jane, true to the fair young governess whose donations of lace and ribbon, soiled gloves, darned stockings, and friendly smiles, had won her heart years ago.

‘See here, Jane,’ says Alexis, unfolding a five-pound note. ‘Here’s something to buy you a silk gown for Sundays. Now don’t you think that you could contrive to tell me the address at once? You know my wife wishes to see me. The advertisement says that.’

‘No, it don’t,’ answers Jane, taking a tiny slip of paper out of her shabby old portemonnaie. ‘The advertisement says nothing of the kind.’

She reads as follows:--

‘S. S. to Alexis. You are not forgotten. In all I do I am
faithful to your interests. I look forward to our reunion. Wait
and hope, as I do. Write and tell me where you are, and what you
are doing.--Address, S. S., Post Office, Hale Street, Pimlico.’

‘There, you see,’ exclaims Jane, triumphant. ‘There’s not a word about wanting to see you. She only wants to hear from you.’

‘Heartless woman!’ mutters Alexis. ‘Yet I’m glad she was just a little anxious to know my fate. I’ll go to a coffee-house, and write to her, and bring the letter to you to post. There’s the silk gown for you all the same, Jane, to show that I bear no malice.’

‘Oh, sir!’ cries the housemaid, overcome by this generosity, ‘I couldn’ think----’

‘You needn’t think about it. You’ve only to take the money and buy your gown. I’ll go and write my letter.’

He goes to the nearest coffee-house and writes to Sibyl. There is a touch of bitterness in the composition, though his wounded heart is full of love for her all the time. Neither exile nor the sense of her unkindness have been strong enough to exclude her from his heart. He may pretend to himself and to his friend Dick Plowden that he has ceased to love his wife, that he seeks his child alone; but the mere fact that she has sought to obtain tidings of him is enough to melt his heart, to change pride and anger to love and pardon.

‘Whatever the exalted sphere in which you now move,’ he writes,
‘you may be glad to know that your desertion has not quite been
the death of me. I have contrived to live, somehow, though
indignation against your cruelty has lacerated my heart, and
love for the wife who deserted me has proved an incurable
disease. I have not starved or been driven to hang myself, and I
have come back from the other side of the world because I have
a foolish hankering to know the fate of the woman who swore at
the altar to love, honour, and obey me, and kept her vow by
abandoning me in my darkest hour of need. Where are you, Sibyl?
and with whom? What has been your reward for deserting me? Has
your scheme of life been a wise one? Have your hopes prospered?

‘Write and answer all these questions freely and fully if you
recognise the tie which, in the sight of God and man, makes us
two one. Tell me about our child, the infant I have never seen,
yet whose baby face has haunted my dreams. You have given your
babe to the care of strangers perhaps, but I conclude you have
watched over its welfare.

‘Tell me further if there are in your life--prosperous as it may
be--some few weaker moments when your heart yearns for reunion
with the husband you once loved. But no, love, I will show you
an easier way. Do not stop to answer one of these questions.

‘Write, Sibyl, from your heart to mine. Tell me in three words
to come to you, and I will come. I will come, dear, and all the
past, all that you have made me suffer, shall be forgotten and
forgiven in the rapture of our reunion.--Yours for ever, if you
will have it so,--ALEXIS.’

He is swayed to and fro by diverse passions as he writes this letter, now all bitterness, now fond unreasoning love. He has not the courage to read over his effusion, but seals and addresses it hastily, and hurries back to Lowther Street. There is no difficulty about admittance this time. Jane Dimond opens the door, receives the letter, and promises to post it that evening.

It is too late for any of the provincial mails, but it is something to be assured that there shall be no needless delay.

‘I shall call for the answer the day after to-morrow, in the evening. You ought to have it by that time,’ says Alexis, and it seems to him that the interval will be an unendurable space of time.

He thinks about that advertisement as he goes back to the Brompton Road. Sibyl must have cared for him a little, despite her heartless abandonment of him, or she would not have felt this anxiety to be informed of his fate. She would not have committed herself by an act likely to entangle her fate with his. Once having released herself from him she would have held herself altogether aloof--she would have stretched no friendly hand across the gulf if she had not loved him. Her heart was still his, he tells himself, when she made that appeal to him. Whatever her scheme of life--whatever game she was playing--her heart was true to him.

Comforted by this assurance he is inclined to be wondrously indulgent, to forgive much, should she but prove herself worthy to be forgiven.

He tries to occupy himself with hard-headed business during that weary interval in which he waits for Sibyl’s reply. He goes down to Messrs. Keel and Skrew’s office, and enters upon the discussion of certain extensions and improvements in the Australian branch of the business, improvements which his experience of the colony has suggested to him. He is well received, and his views approved by Mr. Keel, the senior partner--a gentleman with large ideas, a palatial villa on Clapham Common, vineries, pineries, succession houses, and a stable which is a perennial source of profit to the horse dealers and the veterinary surgeon, and a well-spring of heart-burning and annoyance to its proprietor. Mr. Keel is a gentleman who talks of thousands as meaner people talk of sixpences, and is rumoured to have started in life thirty years ago as a stevedore, and to have founded his fortunes upon the ill-gotten gains supposed to be inseparable from that function.

Mr. Keel is pleased with Mr. Secretan’s suggestions.

‘You’re about the only fellow I ever sent out who seems to understand the Australian trade,’ he says approvingly, ‘and I shall push you, young man, mark my words, I shall push you.’

Cheered by this assurance, Alexis thinks what a nice thing it will be for him to go back to Sidney with his wife and child for his companions, if Sibyl will but show herself true metal after all, and if his child lives. Two formidable ‘ifs.’

He builds a delightful castle in the air, and looks so well, fed upon this nutriment of hope, that Samuel Plowden scrutinizes him with a serio-comic expression when he returns to the outer office after his interview with Mr. Keel.

‘Why, I thought you came home on sick leave, youngster,’ says the kindly clerk. ‘By Jupiter, I never saw any one looking better.’

‘All the effect of the voyage, Mr. Plowden, I assure you. I was a shadow when I went on board at Sidney.’

The second day after Mr. Secretan’s interview with Jane Dimond has come, and in the evening Alexis knocks at the familiar door in Lowther Street, with a heart that seems to beat louder than the knocker.

Jane Dimond appears promptly, and divining his impatience, gives him the expected letter without a word. He wrings her hand in speechless gratitude, as if the letter were a boon from her; bids her a brief good night, and goes away with his prize. He would rather read the letter in the street, unwatched, than open it in Mrs. Hazleton’s hall, under the housemaid’s friendly eyes.

Yes, it is from Sibyl, in the hand he knows so well. The last letter he received from her was that cruel renunciation, that most heartless farewell--the loosening, nay, the severing of every link between them. She writes to him again. There is communion between them once more. The thought thrills him.

She begins well at all events:--

‘DEAREST--DEAREST--DEAREST!’

There is love’s foolish rapture in a gush of pen and ink.

‘Thank God for your dear letter, though it is not altogether
kind. Still it promises forgiveness for my wrong-doing, and that
is much. Thank God for the knowledge that you are living and
well. My heart grew very heavy when that advertisement of mine
remained unanswered.

‘You ask me if my scheme of life has realized what I counted
upon, if my hopes have prospered. I can say yes to both those
questions. I am on the road to high fortune, fortune which
you and I will share in happy days to come if you are as true
to me as I am to you, though seeming estranged. In a very
little while, dear, my most anxious hopes will be realized. The
realization is so near that it would be worse than folly to
sacrifice those hopes now, as I must sacrifice them if I were to
obey you, and say come to me.

‘I long to see you, my heart aches, my soul sickens at the
thought that we must wait for the hour of reunion. But I am not
so weak a slave to impulse as to abandon my prize, just as it is
almost won. We must wait, dearest. I ask from you patience and
trust. I give you my daily prayers, my nightly dreams. There is
no wrong-doing in my scheme of life. I injure no one, least of
all do I wrong you. I only forego the happiness of sharing your
life for a little while in order to make it brighter afterwards.

‘Write to me, dear husband, from time to time, and let me write
to you, but let our correspondence pass through the hands of
that good girl, Jane Dimond. I know your impulsive nature, and
I cannot trust you with my address, for fear you should come
here and destroy all my plans. I am known in my present circle
only as Miss Faunthorpe. All my hopes would be shipwrecked if I
stood confessed as Mrs. Secretan. Yet, believe me, there is no
shadow of wrong to you in this concealment. It is for our mutual
welfare. You ask me about our child, Alexis. Our child, our son,
is safe and well. I dare tell you no more than that.

‘Ever, through all changes and dangers, your true and loving wife,

‘SIBYL.’

‘Is she mad?’ Alexis asks himself, indignantly, after reading this letter. ‘Does she think I am to be put off with loving words and assurances of constancy? Does she suppose that she can keep me at a distance by concealing her address and writing to me under cover to a housemaid? Wherever she may have hidden herself, my business shall be to find her, and my first visit shall be to Redcastle. I’ll go straight to her uncle, the doctor, and unearth this mystery.’

END OF VOL. I.

LONDON:
J. AND W. RIDER, PRINTERS,
BARTHOLOMEW CLOSE.

Transcriber’s Notes

Obvious typographical errors and punctuation errors have been silently corrected after careful comparison with other occurrences within the three volumes of this work and consultation of external sources. Some hyphens in words have been silently removed and some silently added when a predominant preference was found in the original work. Except for those changes noted below, original spellings in the text and inconsistent or archaic usage have been retained.

Page 12: “its panelled recesses” replaced with “its paneled
recesses”.

Page 34: “Mrs. Gorsuch, contempuously” replaced with “Mrs.
Gorsuch, contemptuously”.

Page 37: “would be materally” replaced with “would be materially”.

Page 39: “the solemn responsibilites” replaced with “the solemn
responsibilities”.

Page 58: “By-and-by he” replaced with “By-and-bye he”.

Page 86: “He has aked” replaced with “He has asked”.

Page 122: “again by and by” replaced with “again by-and-bye”.

Page 147: “a vivacious nonenity” replaced with “a vivacious
nonentity”.

Page 168: “ths most miserable” replaced with “the most miserable”.

Page 176: “to its conquerer” replaced with “to its conqueror”.

Page 177: “and a currie” replaced with “and a curry”.

Page 183: “à la Béchamelle” replaced with “à la Béchamel”.

Page 198: “and by-and-by” replaced with “and by-and-bye”.

Page 262: “the county pa er” replaced with “the county paper”.

Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.

New original cover art included with this eBook is granted to the public domain.