Read Ebook: The Tatler Volume 3 by Addison Joseph Steele Richard Sir Aitken George Atherton Editor

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Ebook has 682 lines and 103962 words, and 14 pages

Perhaps you guess what I mean, perhaps you are sneering at me; you can do so if you please, for I am so very ill that I care for nothing now, and they say I am dying. I know now, oh, I know well why an animal crawls away and hides itself to die: though I am only twenty-three I know more about death than those Egyptians who have been shut up in pyramids alone with him for a thousand years.

From the window where I am sitting now, wrapped up in shawls, I can see the garden; the frost has gone, and I can see a yellow crocus that has pushed its head up through the dark, stiff mould. If it knew what I know of life, it would draw that head back.

You must think me a very gloomy person, and indeed just now I am, for I am thinking of a part of my history of which I shall not speak, but only hint.

Some time, no matter how long ago, I was living at the Bath Hotel. I had plenty of clothes and money, and I thought I was in love. Well, one day I found myself deserted, I found a letter on the breakfast table enclosing a blue strip of paper--a cheque for two hundred pounds. I did not scream and tear my hair as a girl I know said she did when she was deserted, I believe I laughed.

I went to the theatre that night alone, and everybody stared at me. I was beautiful then, I am nearly as beautiful now, but it was only on that night that I first fully recognised how beautiful I was, I could see it in the faces of the men who looked at me, and in the manner of the women,--how women hate one another! and yet some women have been very good to me.

Well, when I got home I found supper waiting for me, and after supper I looked at myself again in the long pier glass opposite the fireplace; then a strange feeling came over me that I had never felt before, I felt a thirst to be admired, I say thirst, for it was so, it was really in the back of my throat that this feeling came, but it was in my head as well; it was not the admiration of ordinary people that I wanted; I craved to see some being as lovely as myself turn its head to gaze at me.

Oh! my beautiful face, how I loved you, oh! the nights I have woken up shivering to think of the dissecting rooms where they take the bodies of the people who have no friends.

At the end of six months my two hundred pounds were nearly gone. I lived innocently, I lived in a kind of dream. Men filled me with a kind of horror, when they looked at me in the streets I shuddered; I shudder still, and I wonder why God ever made such a blind and cruel thing as man.

I moved into furnished rooms: all this is misty now in my mind. If I had died then I might never have gone to heaven, but I would never have seen hell. I got typhoid fever; my rings lay on the dressing table, hoops of sapphires and emeralds; each fortnight a ring went to pay for my rooms and the doctor, who seemed never able to cure me.

I cannot tell you much after this, I can only say that I struggled, mad with pride and mad with hatred. I starved, but why should I pain you, and make more sad a story that is already sad enough?

JAMES WILDER

It is about six months ago. I was in a very bad way. I was walking along the south side of Russell Square one day--the 17th of September I remember now--and thinking to myself how I should pay my landlady the three weeks' rent owing to her.

Deeply as I was trying to think I could not help noticing a man coming towards me, striding along with his hat tilted back from his forehead, his head in the air, and looking just like a person walking in his sleep. I made way to let him pass, then suddenly I felt him grasp me by the arm and I heard him say "Ah!"

I knew at once--how shall I put it--that he only wanted to speak to me, that he had mistaken me for someone he knew, and as I looked in his face I did not feel a bit afraid, although his face was strange enough, goodness knows.

"What is your name?" he asked.

"Jane Seymour," I replied, for it was my name, at least the name I went under.

"Ah!" he said, and his hand fell from my arm. I never saw a person look so disappointed as he looked just then; I heard him muttering something like "always the same, disappointment, death," then he turned to go, and I broke into tears.

I was hungry and I had no money; he had seemed almost friendly, and now he was going--I could scarcely speak, I leaned up against the railings, I remember trying to hide a hole in my glove, for I had determined on telling him my real name.

"Well?" he said, "Well?"

"My name is Beatrice Sinclair," I answered; "that is my real name."

"Beatrice Sinclair," he muttered to me in a low voice, as if afraid of someone else hearing him, "Beatrice Sinclair, oh, Beatrice! the time I have been searching for you, the three weary years, the nights of terror; but it is over now, thank God! thank God."

I felt very strange as he said all this. I knew well that this man was not in love with me; I had no relations, so he could not be a relation, and yet I knew in a horribly certain kind of manner that he knew me, that he had been searching for me, and--had found me.

A hansom cab was passing, he hailed it and we both got in, then I heard him giving directions to the driver, "No.--Berkeley Square," he said, "and drive quick."

The cab stopped at a large house in Berkeley Square, and we got out; he gave the driver half-a-sovereign, and without waiting for the change went up the steps, and opened the door with a latch-key; "Come on," he said, beckoning to me, and I followed.

We entered a great hall with a floor of polished oak; I saw jars of flowers standing here and there, and idols half hidden by palms and long feathery grasses.

He opened a door and motioned me to enter a room, and I went in, feeling horrible in my shabby clothes amongst all this splendour.

It was a library. He told me to sit down, and I sat in a great easy-chair, looking about me whilst he went to a window, and stood for nearly a minute looking out, jingling money in his pocket, but not speaking a word.

--Oh, this writing makes my head ache so, and this cough, cough, cough, that tears me from morning till night!--

Well, he stood at the window without speaking, and I kept trying to hide my boots under my skirt; but I looked about me, and noticed everything in the room at the same time.

The books were all set in narrow bookcases, and between the bookcases there were spaces occupied by pictures, and I never had seen such strange pictures before. They were just like pictures of ghosts, beautiful faces nearly all of them, but they seemed like faces made out of mist, if you understand me. Over the mantelpiece stood a portrait of an old man with grey hair, and on the gold frame of this picture was written in black letters the name, "Swedenborg."

At last my companion turned from the window, wheeled a chair close to me, and sat down.

He had taken his gloves off now, and I saw that his hands, very white and delicate-looking, were absolutely covered with the most exquisite rings.

"Mine is a very old family," I said. "We lived once in a castle in the North of England, Castle Sinclair."

"Yes, yes."

"My father was an officer. He was very extravagant. He died in India. I was sent to school in England, then I became a governess--then--then--"

"You need not tell me the rest," he said, "I know it. Yes, you are indeed Beatrice Sinclair." He looked at me in a gloomy manner. Then "You have spoken frankly," he said, "and I shall do the same. My name is James Wilder."

He paused, and looked at me hard, but I said nothing.

"Ah!" he continued, "you know nothing of the past, then? Perhaps it is better so, but I must tell you some of it, so that you may do what I require you to do. Listen. In the reign of King Charles the First a terrible tragedy happened. A member of the Wilder family did a fearful wrong upon a member of the Sinclair family. No family feud took place, because Gerald Wilder, who had committed this wrong, expiated it by suicide, but a blind, reasonless, unintentional feud has been going on between the two houses ever since. The house of Sinclair has warred with our family in a strange and fearful manner. All the eldest sons of our house have been slain before the age of twenty by--a Sinclair. My eldest brother was slain by your father's brother."

"My father's brother?"

"Less than nothing."

Then he stopped.

"You have no money?"

"None."

He went to a desk and drew out a cheque-book, scribbled for a moment, tore off a cheque, and brought it to me.

I looked at it: it was a cheque on the British Linen Company's Bank for five hundred pounds. I felt just as if I were drunk, the books in the cases seemed to dance.

I stopped, for he was smiling at me such a melancholy, kind smile, it told me at once that I had nothing to fear from him. He called me "child," and took my hand and kissed it--I felt so ashamed of my glove, but he did not seem to notice the holes in it, nor how old it was.

"Yes," he said, "the money is for you; you must buy yourself beautiful clothes and some jewellery. I am going to send you to the north of England, to do what has to be done. You must start on the day after to-morrow; have no fear, I wish you to do nothing sinful or wrong, but rather the best work mortal ever did; you shall be provided for. I will set aside a fund for you under trustees; it is an act of piety, not charity, for in saving the last of the Sinclairs from want I am doing an act which may expiate the sin our house committed. Beatrice Sinclair, you shall never want again, never be cold or hungry."

I was crying like a child. When I could cry no more he began speaking again.

"More than sufficient." I felt dazed and strange. Did he intend to marry me? Why was he sending me to the north of England? But it was delightful, I could not describe my feelings.

"Now you must have some food," he said, getting up and moving to the door as he spoke. "Come with me to the dining-room."

A SOUND WHICH REMINDS ME OF MY PAST

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