“Thankyou, uncle John.” said Lydia, but she did not at once open the letter. Instead she put it into her pocket, with the intent of reading it before she retired to bed.
The day was uneventful, and Lydia retired quite early, the better to read her stepmother's letter. She broke the seal, and removed several sheets of paper, which, along with the envelope, were closely covered in Evelyn's elegant Italian hand. Lydia snuffed the candle and began to read.
'Miss Trent, Miss Ward,' was the bald and unpromising salutation.
'I shall not explain my motives in writing this letter – suffice it to say I wish to tell you my history. If you wish to believe me penitent, then pray do so, though I may say I have no desire to be thought so, and no feeling of regret for any action in my past life, save one, from which all the others sprung.
I was born Evelyn Consett, and I think you will agree I have risen in the world when I tell you I was born in a prison, where my father was confined for debt.
I spent the first ten years of my life in gaol, until my mother managed to prevail upon an aunt of hers, who kept a girls school, to give me a home. This lady consented, on the condition that from the day I passed under her roof, I was to forget my parents entirely. My elder brother, Nathan, had been similarly provided for, having been apprenticed to a distant connection of my mother's who was in trade. Of course, the injunction against our parents was not hard to keep – it was hard enough that I was never allowed to forget I was a charity pupil, without thinking of a family in gaol. So, from that day hence, I considered myself an orphan. My mother wrote to me on several occasions, but I returned her letters unopened.
By the time I was eighteen, I had learned all that my great-aunt could teach me, and was earning my keep by teaching the younger children. How tedious I found those lessons, how tiresome those stupid little girls! I longed to be free, and so I answered an advertisement for a situation as governess in an aristocratic private family.
I got the place, and was speedily installed in my new duties. I will not go into detail about my time with the Hawkeshursts – suffice it to say that the three years I spent there did nothing to lessen my dislike of children. The tiresome, spoiled brats I had in my charge were accounted by many to be fine, affectionate, clever children – I never found them so.
I was a handsome woman even at nineteen, and, with my comely figure and complaisant manners, I soon caught the eye of Montague Hawkeshurst, the eldest son of the family, who was then three-and-twenty, and enjoying the life of a gentleman of leisure. How I loved to hear his stories of parties and balls, curricle-races and cock-fights. It was a breath of fresh air. Of course I found him an ignorant little puppy, but I was flattered by is attentions, and the presents he made me were a valuable addition to my miserable salary, and so I did little to discourage him.
Like the inexperienced little fool I was, I made sure he meant to marry me, and so was led into a closer intimacy than was prudent. Alas, he cruelly wronged me. As a result, he was sent off on a tour of the continent – I thought – while I lost my situation, and was brought to bed some three months later of a stillborn child. Boy or girl, I do not know, I never saw it, nor troubled to enquire.
I had enough savings from my salary, along with the money I realised from the sale of various trinkets Montague had given me, to live in frugal comfort for some time. After a while, however, I began to be uneasy about my precarious situation, and to look about me for some means of support.
At about that time I met Mr Wade – we had barely been acquainted six weeks when he asked me to marry him, telling me even then that he had no heart to offer, but could give me a home and freedom from want, at least. I had not seen or heard of Montague for more than a year, and so I acquiesced.
We had been married a year, when I heard that Montague had returned to his old home. His father had died, and he was now possessor of the family estate, along with a very pretty income. Seeing my chance, I took Adeline, who was but a month or two older than my child would have been, and presented myself to Montague's notice. I told him that Adeline was our child, and called on him to make restitution to myself and his daughter. Alas, I was too late – Montague had married a Spanish lady on his tour abroad, and was even now preparing for the homecoming of the new Mrs Hawkeshurst. With what sinking feelings of anger and dismay did I hear these tidings! All that ought to have been mine – a handsome house, money, a place in the highest society – were given to another. Some foreign cocotte was now the posessor of all these advantages, while I had nothing but a stained name.
What could I do? I could not return to my husband, and the man who ought to have been my husband was out of reach. Mr Hawkeshurst gave me some money, and this I used to establish myself cheaply as a young widow at a bathing place in the South of England, as far away from my home and from the Hawkeshursts as I could manage. There I met Mr Trent, who had brought his little girl to enjoy a short holiday by the sea.
In the pathetic character of widow with an orphaned baby, I was soon able to bewitch him, and, before much time had passed, we were married, and I was established as your stepmamma. Fortunately Mr Trent was able to afford to employ a nurse, and later to send you to school, so I was not overburdened with the care of you children. It would have been unreasonable indeed to expect me to care for two children not my own.
I cannot pinpoint when exactly I began to feel that Mr Trent knew my secret – only in time his looks betrayed him, and so I had to silence him – I spent ten years in a prison – I could not go back there on a charge of bigamy. Likewise Mr Wade, who inconveniently reappeared at the precise moment when it looked as if I was free at last. Fortunately I could call upon my brother Nathan to take care of him. As to William, I did not know what I should do until I happened to call at the doctor's house on a minor matter. He was out, but as I waited I happened by chance to take up a volume of the Lancet. By complete good fortune, it opened at an interesting article on the problems in detecting certain vegetable poisons. A thrill of joy ran through me as at last I saw my way clear of my difficulties. But, oh, what agonies of suspense I suffered as I waited on the chance of success! I do not believe I slept a whole night those long months, and my nerves and appetite were almost destroyed.
I had thought that getting these two men out of the way would silence my fears – but it made them worse. Oh, what I have suffered in suspense all this time! I feel everyone can see my guilty secret. Everyone is against me, as they have been all my life. Those who ought to have been my most devoted friends have turned out to be my deadly enemies. How I have been watched and beset, day and night, I hear their muttering about me. They creep into my room at night, the fiends, and plot to poison me in my turn. How cruelly I am used, but yet I shall not submit.
Superadded to my torments, you have set two spies on me, but they shall be evaded by
Evelyn Wade'
Lydia was shocked at this letter – not just by the contents, but at the almost delusional arrogance and self-interest betrayed in every line. The letter displayed not an ounce of affection or sympathetic feeling for any person other than herself. How could she peak so of her own agonies, while she was slowly poisoning the man who had married her in compassion and good faith?
She could not let Adeline read Evelyn's callous and self-pitying letter – it would shock her too much. Instead, she distilled the main points, and told Adeline that Evelyn had confessed to murdering their papa.
Lydia did, however, share the letter with her Uncle, who was as shocked as she was. They discussed the propriety of handing the confession over to the police, along with the other evidence they had uncovered.
“But it is difficult to think of sending one's stepmamma, even one who has wronged one so cruelly by her crime, to the gallows,” said Lydia at the end of that conversation. “Though my heart cries out at my father's murder, the spirit of revenge is not strong within me. Is she not as confined now as she would be in prison? And will not a greater power than Earthly justice judge her
in time?”
The time for Evelyn to meet her judgement occurred sooner than anyone had expected. Within but a few days of receiving the letter, they had news that the house at Allingham had burned to the ground. The fire was thought to have started in Mrs Trent's dressing room, where one of the nurses slept every night, so as to be within call. Fortunately, Mrs Gage awoke in time to save herself, but found she was unable to coax Evelyn from her room. That lady had locked herself in, and resisted any attempt to make her stir. One would-be rescuer, Mr Scott the butler, who had scaled a ladder to her window, found himself dangling over a frightening drop by one hand, when Mrs Trent, screaming in in almost incoherent tirade against schemers and traitors, pushed him forcefully from the frame.
The door was broken down, and Mrs Trent was forcibly removed from the building, but too late. She had succumbed to the smoke, and never regained consciousness. She died later that day.
She was buried under the name of Evelyn Wade, that being the only name she had the shadow of a legal claim to, and thus ended her colourful career.
Chapter the 27th
And so our little tale draws to a close. The mystery has been elucidated, the villain disposed of, and so nothing is left for me to do but to marry off the principal characters. Unfortunately, unless I press the good Detective into service, I find myself at least one gentleman short. As useful as Mr Richard Dodds has made himself, I feel we can let him off this particular service, unless he should take it into his head to make up to Bessie, who, being out of her place following the razing of the Allenham house, is living with her sister in Maida Vale. However, that would not solve our particular problem, and so I find I must do the best I can with what I have.
One late-autumn evening, some months after Evelyn Wade's funeral, Lydia was sitting in her room, her feet propped on the hearth, alternately knitting and staring into the fire, which gave a cosy, cheerful light to the room, keeping far at bay the foggy chill outside. After the alarms and excitements of the past couple of years, life had seemed singularly uneventful in the last few months. Adeline had come of age and taken possession of her fortune, but this had presented little change in the now peaceful household. Adeline gave away more in charity, and indulged her taste for music freely, but the event of her twenty-first birthday had not hurried on her marriage – indeed, the subject had not been mentioned, though the engagement still stood.
Lydia was musing on Adeline's possible future, when there was a shy scratch at the door, and that young lady herself crept in. The strains of the past two years had not been kind to her – she had been in poor health for some time, and the doctor said she 'lacked tone', recommending change of air as soon as the winter was over. She was still as bewitchingly lovely as ever, but her eyes were less changeful, and there was a touch of hollowness about her cheek. She looked rosy enough in the firelight, the only source of light in the room, but at midday she looked pale and wan. Her figure, once so slender and blooming, was somewhat gaunt, and had lost much of its energy, though none of its grace.
Just now, she seemed a little troubled and uncertain. She hovered between the hard chair at the table, and the other easy chair by the window. After a few moment's hesitation, she seated herself on the hearthrug, and rested her head against Lydia's knees.
“Lyddy, may I speak to you?” she murmured, but though Lydia readily assented, Adeline remained silent for some time, gazing into the fire as Lydia knitted. Eventually she broke her silence, though the words came as if they cost her a great effort.
“Lyddy, dearest, I wish you would advise me, I don't know what to do.”
“Why, Adele, I will give you any advice in my power – but perhaps Uncle James can advise you better, he is so wise.”
“No, dear, I cannot speak to Uncle, it is not a matter for... In short, it is about Alfred.”
Lydia's heart sank within her breast. In general, she could believe she had bested her unhappy love, and banished it to a forgotten corner of her heart, but to be asked to give impartial and sisterly advice! She managed to maintain her composure, however, and indicated to Adeline that she might continue.
“I am so confused, Lyddy, I begin to wonder if perhaps Alfred or I were mistaken in our feelings.” she struggled for composure a moment, and then carried on, in a more restrained tone, “It has struck me more and more lately that Alfred and I have less of the ready sympathy with one another's hearts and feelings than we did formerly. I am more apt to be cross and pettish to him, he seems more distant every day. I begin to feel that perhaps marriage would not be for our mutual happiness...” and her voice faltered, and she buried her face in her sister's lap and wept.
Lydia allowed her to have her cry, gently stroking the soft chestnut head that lay in her lap, until all at once Lydia spoke again.
“I think he would be better a brother to me than a husband.”
Lydia lifted Adeline's tearstained face and looked steadily and tenderly in her eyes for some moments. The truth burst in on her, and she could not restrain her own tears as she gasped -
“Oh, Adeline, you have guessed all, and you are trying to sacrifice yourself for me!”
“And have you not almost sacrificed your life – twice or more, in my service? The truth is, I am not good for Alfred, you are. I am a clinging vine, you are a growing tree. My tendrils would suffocate him, you would lift him high in your boughs.
“I idolise him – I see nothing but perfection. You see, and forgive, his faults, and so help him to overcome them. Look at when we first came to London – I daydreamed aloud with him about what we should do when he started his literary career, I longed for him to begin, but I was so happy to be with him that I did not tease him about it, trusting to his own sense of duty to make a beginning, and not discouraging his visits. You, however, gave him one rousing speech about not making you ashamed of him, and off he goes, to start at once.”
You are right that I see Alfred's faults,” replied Lydia, “But I see that they are not serious ones, and would not endanger a wife's happiness.”
“Not if he had a strong, intelligent, active wife, a woman like you, that is true, but what can such a fragile clinging thing as I do?”
“Adeline, this is serious indeed, and I feel I am the last person in the world who can - who should - advise you in this matter. Alfred is a man of honour, and, as his wife, would make you as happy as he could. All I can advise is that you look deep inside yourself, with no reference to me, or to anyone else but yourself and him, and if on sober reflection you truly do feel that such a marriage would not be for your happiness, then you should ask Alfred to release you from your promise. But I beg you will ask anyone's advice but mine.”
Adeline's only reply was to hug her sister's knees, and the girls sat in silence together until bedtime.
The painful subject was not raised again for several weeks, until one morning when they were all sitting together. Mr Trent, who happened to be free from business that day, looked kindly at the two acknowledged lovers, who were standing together by the window, looking out, and exchanging desultory remarks in a low voice.
“So,” he said, in a hearty tone, “what are you too plotting over there? Naming the day for your wedding, hey?”
At this, Alfred and Adeline, who had merely been discussing the chances of rain later in the day, looked embarrassed and confused – as, for a moment, though thankfully unobserved, did Lydia.
“To be quite honest, sir,” said Alfred, after a few moment's uncomfortable silence, “I have not so far pressed Miss Wade to hurry on the day which would make her Mrs Denham, and me the happiest of men. When first I asked her to honour me by allying her fortunes with mine, she had no fortune, or prospects of such, whatsoever. Now, however, she is the possessor of eighteen thousand pounds. This, with her personal recommendations of grace, goodness and beauty, would enable her to look far higher than me for a husband, and so if she should wish to be released from her promise, I am not the man to stand in her way. I consider myself bound, but
feel it would be wrong to bind her to a promise made under very different circumstances.”
“Why, Alfred!” exclaimed the young heiress, in surprise, “As if that makes the slightest difference! All that matters is that you love me.”
“Why, of course I love you.” Alfred assured her, after but a slight hesitation. “I should indeed be less than human if I did not!”
Adeline was thoughtful for a moment. Her face was as gentle and placid as ever, but her head was proudly erect and there was a new edge to her voice as she replied in a low, steady tone.
“As a husband should love a wife, Alfred, or as a brother should love a sister?”
Alfred was staggered. He coloured, he stammered, he opened his mouth as if to speak, but his honest heart stopped the lie which rose to his lips. He had been guilty of dissimulation, it is true, but tell a direct lie – and so serious a lie – he could not.
Adeline drew herself up with the dignity of an empress.
“Your silence tells me all, Alfred. A moment ago you offered to release me from my bond, should I so wish. Now I release you.” and she drew off the little diamond ring that he had given her on her twentieth birthday, and which she had worn ever since for his sake, kissing it when she laid it aside at night, and held it out toward him.
Lydia Trent Page 15