Chapter Fourteen #6
He did not look at her as he began to speak, but by subtle measures caught the tips of her fingers in his.
“My first love was one of my nearest relations, an orphan from her infancy, and under the guardianship of my father.
Our ages were nearly the same, and from our earliest years we were playfellows and friends.
I cannot remember the time when I did not love Eliza.
At seventeen she was lost to me forever; she was married against her inclination to my brother.
Her fortune was large, and our family estate much encumbered.
My brother did not deserve her; he did not even love her.
We were within a few hours of eloping together for Scotland, but my cousin's maid betrayed us.
I was banished to the house of a relation far distant, and she was allowed no liberty, no society, no amusement, until my father's point was gained. She resigned herself at first to all the misery of her situation, and I was with my regiment in the East Indies. The shock which her marriage had given me was of trifling weight—was nothing to what I felt when I heard, about two years afterwards, of her divorce—even now the recollection of what I suffered….”
He could say no more, and for a moment he only listened to the pianoforte.
Mary was so affected by his sad story, and still more by his distress, that she could not speak.
He saw her concern, and leaning toward her, took her hand, pressed it, and kissed it.
A few minutes more of silent contemplation enabled him to proceed with composure.
“It was nearly three years after this unhappy period before I returned to England. My first care, when I did arrive, was of course to seek for her; but the search was as fruitless as it was melancholy. I could not trace her beyond her first seducer, and there was every reason to fear that she had removed from him only to sink deeper in a life of sin. At last, after I had been six months in England, I did find her. Regard for a former servant of my own, who had since fallen into misfortune, carried me to visit him in a spunging-house, where he was confined for debt; and there, in the same house, under a similar confinement, was my unfortunate Eliza. So altered—so faded—worn down by acute suffering of every kind! I could hardly believe the melancholy and sickly figure before me to be the remains of the lovely, blooming girl on whom I had once doted. What I endured in so beholding her—she was in the last stage of a consumption. I saw her placed in comfortable lodgings, and under proper attendants; I visited her every day during the rest of her short life. I was with her in her last moments.”
Again he stopped to recover himself; and Mary spoke her feelings in an exclamation of tender concern at the fate of his unfortunate friend.
“That is tragic, indeed,” she breathed, heartily sorry at lately thinking to romanticize his brooding ways.
It also occurred to her that by way of a cautionary tale, it was utterly terrifying—if such an evil were to come of Sir Thomas’ attempt to separate Maria and Henry… Mary shuddered.
“I hope I do not add to your troubles by confiding this, Mary,” he whispered, his hair sweeping into his eyes in a look of deep distress. “A subject such as this, untouched for fourteen years—it is dangerous to handle it at all.”
“You do well to warn me of what might befall a young lady separated from one she loves—I do have such a care for my friend Maria, and Henry— but I think there must be more,” Mary said; every moment fearful that they would be interrupted, she urged him to go on.
“Eliza left to my care her only child, a little girl—the offspring of her first guilty connection, who was then about three years old. It was a precious trust to me, but I had no family, no home, and my little Eliza was therefore placed at school. I saw her there whenever I could, and after the death of my brother, which left to me the possession of the family property, she visited me at Delaford. Three years ago, I removed her from school to place her under the care of a very respectable woman who had the charge of four or five other girls of about the same time of life, and for two years I had every reason to be pleased with her situation. But last summer, she suddenly disappeared. Her caretaker and companions alike would tell me little, wishing more to absolve themselves of any guilt in her disappearance, than to provide any useful information. In short, I could learn nothing but that she was gone; all the rest, for nearly five long months, was left to conjecture. What I thought, what I feared, may be imagined. It was only last month that some new information came into my hands—a friend Eliza had previously visited in this area wrote that Eliza had been to see her again, but when I arrived to recover her, she had vanished once more. I have remained in the county a fortnight now, searching daily for her, hoping somebody might have seen her, that I might uncover some clue—what little I have discovered only raises more questions, more fears….”
“Good God—and this is your business in Sussex!” Mary’s heart ached for him—and how selfish she had been to lament his going away! “I wonder you can keep your composure at all. I am sure I should be run mad.”
“It has been difficult, at times, but I have learned from my military days some degree of self-possession. Indeed, I have never confided in anybody so fully before.”