Chapter XXVIII: Daisy's Letter

Left to himself, without George Wainwright to listen to his complaints, to afford him consolation, or even to do him good by the administration of the rough tonic of his advice, Paul Derinzy had a very bad time of it. His attendance at the office was exceedingly irregular; and when he was there he was so preoccupied and _distrait_, that he would not look after his work; which accordingly, there being no George Wainwright to stay after hours and pull it up, went hopelessly into arrears. The good old chief, Mr. Courtney, always inclined to be kind and indulgent, and more especially disposed to civility since he had been to dine with Paul's people in Queen Anne Street (where he found the Captain "a devilish gentleman-like fellow, sir; far superior to the men of the present day, with a remarkable fund of anecdote"), had his patience and his temper very much tried by his young friend's peculiar proceedings; and between the two other occupants of the principal registrar's room, Mr. William Dunlop's life was pretty nearly harried out of him.

"If the arrival of my people in town were to render me as wretched as the arrival of P.D.'s people has rendered P.D.," observed Mr. Dunlop, in confidence to a brother-clerk, "I should begin to think it was not a bad thing being a norphan. I have often thought, Simmons, that I could have done the young-heir business in doublet and trunk-hose--no, that is, the spirit-stirring song of the 'Old English Gentleman'--the young-heir business, smiling from the top of the steps on the assembled tenantry, vide Frith, R.A., his picture of 'Coming of Age,' to be had cheap as an Art Union print. But if to become moped and melancholy, to decline to go odd man for b. and s., and to tell people who propose the speculation to 'go to the devil'--if that is to be the result of having people and being heir to a property in Dorsetshire, my notion is, that I would sooner serve her Majesty at two-forty, rising to three-fifty at yearly increments of twenty, and be free!"

There was no doubt that there were grounds for Mr. Dunlop's complaints. Paul not merely did not attend to his work, but his manner, which, from its brightness and courtesy, had in the old days won him troops of friends and rendered him everywhere sought for and popular, was now morose and forbidding. He seemed to be aware of this, and consequently went very little into society. To Queen Anne Street he only went when he was absolutely obliged; that is to say, when he felt that he could not decently remain away any longer; but even then his visits were very short, and his mother found him absent and preoccupied. He had, however, taken sufficient notice of what was passing around him to remark the maidenly delicacy, imbued with true feminine tact, with which Annette asked news of George Wainwright, and the hard struggle which she made to conceal her disbelief of the stories which he, Paul, invented to account for his friend's absence.

He had not seen Daisy for the last fortnight. When last they met it was arranged that they should meet as usual in the course of a few days. But two days after, Paul received a little note from her, saying that, owing to Madame Clarisse's absence, her trouble and responsibility were so great that she could not possibly leave the business to take care of itself for ever so short a time. She would let him know as soon as the possible slackness of work permitted her to make an appointment for meeting him in the gardens, and she was his affectionate D.

Paul did not like the tone of this letter. It was certainly much cooler than that of any of the little notes--there were but very few of them--which he had received from Daisy since the commencement of their acquaintance. He did not believe in the excuse one bit. Even in the height of the season she had always managed to get out and see him for a few minutes once or twice a week. Then, as to Madame Clarisse's absence and Daisy's consequent responsibility, did not the very fact of her being at the head of affairs prove that she was her own mistress, and able to dispose of her own time as she pleased?

There was something at the bottom of it all, Paul thought, which he had not yet fathomed. There was a change in her; that could not be denied--a strange inexplicable change. The girl he met on his return from the country, and who came to him listlessly, with an evident air of preoccupation, which she endeavoured to hide, and with an assumed air of pleasure at his return, which was so ill-assumed as to be very easily seen through, was a totally different being from the loving, teasing, half-coy, half-wayward girl whom he had left behind him.

Paul set himself to work to trace the commencement of this change, and after long cogitation decided that it must have been worked during his absence. What caused it, then? Certainly it arose from no fault of his. He could not charge himself in the slightest degree with neglect of her. He had written to her constantly, freely, and lovingly. He had gone away protesting against his enforced absence; his letters had been filled with joyous expectation of renewed delight at meeting her again; and when he had met her, the warmth of his passion for her, so far from being diminished one jot, had increased and expanded. So that the alteration of their position towards each other which had so evidently come about was her doing, and not his.

In his self-examination, Paul went through all the different phases of the feeling by which he had been actuated towards this girl. He recalled to himself how that at first, dazzled and captivated by her beauty, he had only thought of making her acquaintance, without the idea of any definite end; how that end had in his mind soon taken a form which, though not unnatural in a young man carelessly brought up, and living the loose life which he then led, he now blushed to recall. He recollected the grave displeasure quietly but firmly expressed by Daisy when she saw, as she very speedily did, the position which he proposed for her. And then his mind dwelt on that delicious period when there was no question of what might happen in the future, when they enjoyed and lived in the present, and it was sufficient and all in all to them.

That was the state in which they were when they parted; what was their condition now? Daisy's manner was cold and preoccupied; all the brightness and light, all pretty ways and affectionate regards which she had displayed for him during the summer, seemed to have died out with the summer's heat, and Paul felt that he stood to her in a far more distant position than that which he had occupied at the very commencement of their acquaintance.

He had his hold to establish on her then, to be sure, but he was not without hope or encouragement. Now he had neither to cheer him, and the work was all to be done again. Good God, what did she require of him! He would willingly brave the open frowns and whispered hints of society, of which he had at one time stood in such mortal fear, and would be only too delighted to make her his wife. She knew this. Since his return he had plainly told her so; but the declaration had not merely failed in obtaining a definite answer from her, but had made no difference in her manner towards him. He had argued with her, scolded her, tasked her with the change, and implored her to let him know the reason of it; but he had obtained no satisfactory reply.

"It was his fancy," she said; "she was exactly the same as when they had parted. The life which he had been leading at home had evidently had a very bad effect upon him. She had always feared his return to 'his people,' of whom he thought so much, and with whom he was so afraid of bringing her into contact."

Good heavens, why twit him with that past and bygone folly! Had he not offered to set these people at defiance, and make her his wife?--could he do more?

She replied very quietly that she did not want any family rupture on her account, and that as to the question of their marriage, there was no necessity for any hurry in that matter; and indeed they had very much better wait until they had proved that they were more thoroughly suitable to each other.

And then Paul Derinzy chafed against his chain, and longed to break it, but dared not. He complained bitterly enough of her bad treatment of him, but he loved her too dearly to renounce the chance of bringing her into a better frame of mind, and restoring to himself the darling Daisy of his passionate worship.

He had no one in whom he could confide, no one whose advice he could seek, in this crisis of his life. George Wainwright was away; and to whom else could he turn? Although he and his mother were in their way very fond of each other, there had never been any kind of confidence between them--certainly not that confidence which would have enabled him to lay bare his heart before her, and ask for her counsel and consolation. Mrs. Derinzy was essentially a worldly woman, and Paul knew perfectly that she would scout the idea of his marrying, as she considered, beneath him; and instead of pouring balm into his wounded spirit, would, after her fashion, try to cicatrise the hurt by telling him that he had had a fortunate escape from an unworthy alliance. His father, long trained in habits of obedience, would have repeated his wife's opinion. Had he been allowed to give his own, it would have been flavoured with that worldly wisdom of which he was so proud, and would probably have been to the effect that, however one treated young persons in that position of life, one certainly did not marry them, and that he could not possibly imagine any son of his doing anything so infernally stupid.

Those who had known Paul Derinzy as the light-hearted, light-headed young man of society, enjoying himself in every possible way, extracting the greatest amount of pleasure out of every hour of his life, and allowing no sense of responsibility to weigh upon him, would hardly have recognised him in the pale, care-worn man with hollow cheeks who might be seen occasionally eating his solitary dinner at the club, but who never joined the gay circle in the smoking-room, or was to be found in any of those haunts of pleasure which formerly he had so assiduously frequented. With Daisy always in his mind, he had an irresistible inclination to moon about those places where he had been in the habit of seeing her.

In the dusk of the evening he would walk for hours up and down George Street, in front of Madame Clarisse's house, sometimes fancying he recognised Daisy's reflection on the window-blind, and then being half tempted to rush across and seek admission to her at any cost. And he would go down to the spot in Kensington Gardens--now a blank desert of misery--and wander up and down, picturing to himself the delightful summer lounging there, and recalling every item of the conversation which had then been held.

One day, one Saturday half-holiday, Paul, who had not heard from George Wainwright for some days, had been up to the Doctor's establishment to inquire whether any news had been received of his friend, and having been replied to in the negative, he was listlessly returning to town, when the old fascination came upon him, and he struck up past Kensington Palace with the intention of lingering for a few moments in the familiar spot. He was idling along, chewing the cud of a fancy which was far more bitter than sweet, when his desultory footsteps came to a halt as he caught sight of a couple in front of him.

A man and woman walking side by side in conversation. Their backs were towards him, but he recognised Daisy in an instant. The man was tall and of a good figure, and looked like a gentleman, but Paul could not see his face. His first impulse was to rush towards them, but better sense prevailed. His was not the nature to play the spy; so, with a smothered groan, he turned upon his heel, and slowly retraced his steps.

There was an end of it, then. At last he had comprehended the full extent of his misery. All that he had feared had come to pass, and more. She had thrown him over, and he had seen her walking with another man in the very place which up to that time had been rendered sacred to him by the recollection of their meetings there.

There was an end of it; but he would let her know that he was fully aware of the extent of her treachery and baseness. He would go to the club at once, and write to her, telling her all he had seen. He would not reproach her--he thought he would leave that to her own conscience; he would only--he did not know what he would do; his legs seemed to give way beneath him, his head was whirling round, and he felt as though he should fall prostrate to the ground.

When he reached the Park gates--and how he reached them he never knew--he called a cab and drove to the club. He was hurrying through the hall, when the porter stopped him and handed to him a letter. It was from Daisy. Paul's heart beat high as the well-known writing met his view. He took it with him to the writing-room, which was fortunately empty, and sitting himself at the writing-table, laid the letter before him. He was uncertain whether he would open it or not. Whatever it might contain would be unable to do away with the fact which he had so recently witnessed with his own eyes.

No excuse could possibly explain away the disloyalty with which she had treated him. It would be better, he thought, to return the letter unopened. But then there might be something in it which in future time he might regret not to have seen; some possible palliation of her offence, some expression of regret or softening explanation of the circumstances under which she had betrayed him. And then Paul opened the letter, and read as follows:

"MY DEAR PAUL,--I do not think you will be surprised at what I am about to tell you; and I try to hope that you will not be very much annoyed at it. I knew that it must come very shortly, and I have endeavoured as far as I could to prepare you for the news.

"The pleasant life which we have been leading for the last few months, Paul--and I do not pretend to disguise my knowledge that it has been pleasant to you, any more than I shrink from acknowledging that it has been most delightful to me--has come to an end, and we must never meet again. This should be no tragic ending: there should be no shriek of woe or exclamations of remorse, or mutual taunts and invectives. It is played out, that is all; it has run down, and come naturally to a full-stop, and there is no use in attempting to set it going again.

"I can understand your being horribly enraged when you first read this, and using all sorts of strong language about me, and vowing vengeance against me. But this will not last; your better sense will come to your aid; in a very little time you will thank me for having released you from obligations the fulfilment of which would have brought misery on your life, and will thank me for having been the first to put an end to an action which was very pleasant for the time it lasted, but which would have been very hopeless in the future. For my part, I don't reproach you, Paul, Heaven knows; I should be an ingrate if I did.

"You have always treated me with the tenderest regard, and only very lately you have done me the highest honour which a man can do a woman, in asking her to become his wife. Don't think I treat this offer lightly, Paul; don't think I am not keenly alive to its value, as showing the affection, if nothing else, which you have, or rather must have had, for me. Do not think that it has been without a struggle that I have made up my mind to act as I am now doing, to write the letter which you now read.

"But suppose I had said Yes, Paul; you know as well as I do the exact position which I should have occupied, and the effect which my occupancy of that position would have had on your future life. It was not--I do not say this with any intention of wounding you--it was not until you clearly found you could get me on no other terms that you made me this offer; and though probably you will not allow it even to yourself, you must know as well as I do, that after a while you would find yourself tied to a wife who was unsuited to you in many ways, and by marrying whom you had alienated your family from you, and disgraced yourself in the opinion of that world which you now profess to despise, but of whose verdict you really stand in the greatest awe.

"And then, Paul, it would be one of two things: either you would hold to me with a dogged defiance, which is not part of your real nature, but which, under the circumstances, you would cultivate, feeling yourself to be a martyr, and taking care to let me know that you felt it--you will deny all this, Paul, but I know you better than yourself; or you would feel me to be a clog upon you, and leave me for the society in which you could forget that, for the mere indulgence of a passing passion, you had laid upon yourself a burden for life.

"What but misery could come out of either of these two results? Under both of them we should hate each other; for I confess I should not be grateful to you for the enforced companionship which the former presupposes; and under the latter I should not merely hate you, but in all probability should do something which would bring dishonour on your name. You see, I speak frankly, Paul; but I do so for the best. If you had been equally frank with me, I could have told you long since, at the commencement of our acquaintance, of something which would have prevented our ever being more to each other than the merest acquaintances. You told me your name was Paul Douglas; you disguised from me that it was Paul Derinzy. Had I known that, I would have then let you into a secret; I would have told you that I too had in a similar manner been deceiving you by passing under the name of Fanny Stafford, whereas my real name is Fanny Stothard.

"Does not that revelation show you what is to come, Paul? Do you not already comprehend that I am the daughter of a woman who holds a menial position in your father's house, and that this fact would render wider yet the chasm which yawns between our respective classes in society? You do not imagine that your mother would care to recognise in her son's wife the daughter of her servant, or that I should particularly like to become a member of a family in which my cousin's waiting-woman is my own mother.

"I ascertained this fact in sufficient time to have made it, if I had so chosen, the ground for putting an end to our intimacy, and my reason for writing this letter; but I preferred not to do so, Paul. I have put the matter plainly, straightforwardly, and frankly; and I will not condescend to ride off on a quibble, or to pretend that I have been influenced by your want of confidence in withholding your name. You will see--not now, perhaps, but in a very little time--that I have acted for the best, and will be thankful to me for the course which I have taken.

"And recollect, Paul, the breach between us must be final--it must be a clean cut; and you must not think, even after it has been made, that there are any frayed and jagged points left which are capable, at some time or another, of being reunited. We have seen each other for the last time; we have parted for ever. There must be no question of any interview or adieu; we are neither of us of such angelic tempers that we could expect to meet without reproaches and high words; and I, at all events, should be glad in the future to recall the last loving look in your eyes, and the last earnest pressure of your hand.

"And that mention of the future reminds me, this letter is the last communication you will receive from me; and when you have finished reading it, you must look upon me as someone dead and passed away. If by chance you ever meet me in the street, you must look upon me as the ghost of someone whom you once knew, and forbear to speak to me. It will not be very difficult to imagine this; for, God knows, I shall be no more like the Fanny Stafford whom you have known than the Fanny Derinzy you would have made me. No matter what I am, no matter what I may become, you will have ceased to have any pretext for inquiring into my state; and I distinctly forbid your attempting to interfere with me in the slightest degree. Does that sound harsh, Paul? I do not mean it so; I swear I do not mean it so. If you knew--but you do not, and never shall. You are hot and impetuous and weak; I am cool and clear-brained and strong-minded: you look only at the present; I think for the future. You will repeat all this bitterly, saying that I am right, and that my conduct plainly shows I know exactly how to describe myself; I know you will, I can almost hear you say it. I half wish I could hear you say anything, so that I could listen to your dear voice once again; but that could never be.

"Goodbye, Paul! At some future time, not very long hence, when all this has blown over, and you are in love with, and perhaps married to, someone else, you will acknowledge I was right, and think sometimes not unkindly of me. But I shall never think of you again. Once more, goodbye, Paul! I should like to say, God bless you! if I thought such a prayer from me would be of any use."

Paul Derinzy read this letter through twice, and folded it up and placed it in his pocket. Ten minutes afterwards the writing-room bell rang violently, and the servant, on answering was surprised to find an old gentleman kneeling on the floor, and bending over the prostrate body of Mr. Derinzy, whose face was very white, whose neck-cloth was untied, and who the old gentleman said was in a fit.