A Song of a Single Note: A Love Story

"It was never intended for Maria. It was written to wound the vanity and fire the jealousy of that Scot. As soon as Maria left the room the opportunity was seized. Can you not see that? And Harry Bradley never dreamed that the kilted fool would turn an apparent love-tryst into a political event. He wished to make trouble between Macpherson and Maria, but he had no intention of making the trouble he did make. He also was jealous, and when two jealous men are playing with fire the consequences are sure to be calamitous. But Macpherson is sorry enough now for his zeal in His Majesty's affairs. He is thoroughly despised by both men and women of the first class. I, myself, have made a few drawing-rooms places of extreme humiliation to him."

"Still, others think the man simply did his duty. A Scotsman has very strong ideas about military honor and duty."

"Fiddlesticks! Honor and duty! Nothing of the kind. It was a dirty deed, and he is a dirty fellow to have done it. There was some decent way out of the dilemma without going through the Police Court to find it. Grant me patience with such bouncing, swaggering, selfish patriotism! A penny's worth of common-sense and good feeling would have been better; but it was his humor to be revengeful and ill-natured, and he is, of course, swayed by his inclinations. Let us forget the creature."

"With all my soul."

"The stories are various about Maria going to General Clinton and begging her lover's life with such distraction that he could not refuse it to her. Which story is the true one?"

"They are all lies, I assure you, Madame. It was Lord Medway who begged Harry Bradley's life."

"But why?"

Neil paused a minute, and then answered softly, "For Maria's sake."

"Oh, I begin to understand."

"She has promised to marry him when she is of age – then, or before."

"I am very glad. Medway is a man full of queer kinds of goodness. When the Robinsons and Blundells, when Joan Attwood and Kitty Errol and all the rest of the beauties, hear the news, may I be there to see? Is it talkable yet?"

"No, not yet. Maria has told no one but me, and I have told no one but you. Medway is to see my father and mother; after that – perhaps. He has not called since the arrangement; he told me 'he was doing the best thing under the circumstances.'"

"Of course he is. Medway understands women. He knows that he is making more progress absent than he would present. Come, now, things are not so bad, socially. Mrs. Gordon and Angelica Jacobus will look after Maria; and, though women can always be abominable enough to their own sex, I think Maria will soon be beyond their shafts. Now, it is business I must speak of. Patrick Huges, my agent, is robbing me without rhyme or reason. I had just sent him packing when I met you. The position is vacant. Will you manage my affairs for me? The salary is two hundred pounds a year."

"Madame, the offer is a great piece of good fortune. From this hour, if you wish it, I will do your business as if it were my own."

"Thank you, Neil. In plain truth, it will be a great kindness to me. We will go over the rascal's accounts to-morrow, and he will cross the river to-night if he hears that Neil Semple is to prosecute the examination."

Then Neil rose to leave. Madame's sympathy and help had made a new man of him; he felt able to meet and master his fate, whatever it might be. At the last moment she laid her hand upon his arm. "Neil," she asked, "Has not this great outrage opened your eyes a little. Do you still believe in the justice or clemency of the King?"

"It was not the King."

"It was the King's representatives. If such indignity is possible when we are still fighting, what kind of justice should we get if we were conquered?"

"I know, I know. But there is my father. It would break his heart if I deserted the royal party now. They do not know in England – "

"Then they ought to know; but for many years I have been saying, 'England was mad'; and she grows no wiser."

"Englishmen move so slowly."

"Of course. All the able Englishmen are on this side of the Atlantic. Lord! how many from the other side could be changed for the one Great One on this side. What do you think? It was my silk, lace, ribbons and fallals Harry Bradley was taking across the river. The little vanities were for my old friend Martha. I am sorry she missed them."

Neil looked at her with an admiring smile. "How do you manage?" he asked.

"I have arranged my politics long since, and quite to my satisfaction. So has Jacobus. He left New York flying the English flag, but the ocean has a wonderful influence on him; his political ideas grow large and free there; he becomes – a different man. Society has the same effect on me. When I see American women put below that vulgar Mrs. Reidesel – "

"Oh, no, Madame!"

"Oh, yes, sir. In the fashionable world we are all naught unless Mrs. General Reidesel figures before us; then, perhaps, we may acquire a kind of value. See how she is queening it in General Tryron's fine mansion. And then, this foreign mercenary, Knyphausen, put over American officers and American citizens! It is monstrous! Not to be endured! I only bear it by casting my heart and eyes to the Jersey Highlands. There our natural ruler waits and watches; here, we wait and watch, and some hour, it must be, our hopes shall touch God's purposes for us. For that hour we secretly pray. It is not far off." And Neil understood, as he met her shining eyes and radiant smile, that there are times when faith may indeed have all the dignity of works.

Then the young man, inexpressibly cheered and strengthened, went rapidly home; and when Madame heard her son's steps on the garden walk she knew that something pleasant had happened to him. And it is so often that fortune, as well as misfortune, goes where there is more of it that Neil was hardly surprised to see an extraordinarily cheerful group around an unusually cheerful fireside when he opened the parlor door. The Elder, smiling and serene, sat in his arm-chair, with his finger-tips placidly touching each other. Madame's voice had something of its old confident ring in it, and Maria, with heightened color and visible excitement, sat between her grandparents, an unmistakable air of triumph on her face.

"Come to the fire, Neil," said his mother, making a place for his chair. "Come and warm yoursel'; and we'll hae a cup o' tea in ten or fifteen minutes."

"How cheerful the blazing logs are," he answered. "Is it some festival? You are as delightfully extravagant as Madame Jacobus. Oh, if the old days were back again, mother!"

"They will come, Neil. But wha or what will bring us back the good days we hae lost forever out o' our little lives while we tholed this weary war? However, there is good news, or at least your father thinks so. Maria has had an offer o' marriage, and her not long turned eighteen years auld, and from an English lord, and your father has made a bonfire o'er the matter, and I've nae doubt he would have likit to illuminate the house as weel."

The Elder smiled tolerantly. "Janet," he answered, "a handsome young man, without mair than his share o' faults and forty thousand pounds a year, is what I call a godsend to any girl. And I'm glad it has come to our little Maria. I like the lad. I like him weel. He spoke out like a man. He told me o' his castle and estate in Lancashire, and o' the great coal mines on it; the lands he owned in Cumberland and Kent, his town house in Belgrave Square, and forbye showed me his last year's rental, and stated in so many words what settlement he would make on Maria. And I'm proud and pleased wi' my new English grandson that is to be. I shall hold my head higher than ever before; and as for Matthews and Peter DuBois, they and their dirty Police Court may go to – , where they ought to have been years syne, but for God Almighty's patience; and I'll say nae worse o' them than that. It's a great day for the Semples, Neil, and I am wonderfully happy o'er it."

"It's a great day for the Medways," answered Madame. "I could see fine how pleased he was at the Gordon connection, for when I told him Colonel William Gordon, son o' the Earl o' Aberdeen – him wha raised the Gordon Highlanders a matter o' three years syne – was my ain first cousin, he rose and kissed my hand and said he was proud to call Colonel Gordon his friend. And he knew a' about the Gordons and the warlike Huntleys, and could even tell me that the fighting force o' the clan was a thousand claymores; a most intelligent young man! And though I dinna like the thought o' an Englishman among the Gordons, there's a differ even in Englishmen; some are less almighty and mair sensible than others."

"He spoke very highly o' the Americans," answered the Elder. "He said 'we were all o' one race, the children o' the same grand old mother.'"

"The Americans are obligated for his recognition," replied Madame a trifle scornfully. "To be sure, it's a big feather in our caps when Lord Medway calls cousins with us."

"What does Maria say?" asked Neil. And Maria raised her eyes to his with a look in them of which he only had the key. So to spare her talking on the subject, he continued: "I also have had a piece of good fortune to-day. I met Madame Jacobus, went home with her to dinner, and she has offered me the position of her business agent, with a salary of two hundred pounds a year."

"It's a vera springtide o' good fortune," said the Elder, "and I am a grateful auld man."

"Weel, then," cried Madame, "here comes the tea and the hot scones; and I ken they are as good as a feast. It's a thanksgiving meal and no less; come to the table wi' grateful hearts, children. I'm thinking the tide has turned for the Semples; and when the tide turns, wha is able to stop it?"

The turn of the tide! How full of hope it is! Not even Maria was inclined to shadow the cheerful atmosphere. Indeed, she was grateful to Lord Medway for the fresh, living element he had brought into the house. Life had been gloomy and full of small mortifications to her since the unfortunate Bradley affair. Her friends appeared to have forgotten her, and the dancing and feasting and sleighing went on without her presence. Even her home had been darkened by the same event; her grandfather had not quite recovered the shock of his arrest; her grandmother had made less effort to hide her own failing health. Neil had a heartache about Agnes that nothing eased, and the whole household felt the fear and pinch of poverty and the miserable uncertainty about the future.

Maria bore her share in these conditions, and she had also began to wonder and to worry a little over Lord Medway's apparent indifference. If he really loved her, why did he not give her the recognition of his obvious friendship? His presence and attentions would at least place her beyond the spite and envy of her feminine rivals. Why did he let them have one opportunity after another to smile disdain on her presence, or to pointedly relegate her to the outer darkness of non-recognition? When she had examined all her slights and sorrows, Lord Medway's neglect was the most cutting thong in the social scourge.

Madame Jacobus, however, was correct in her opinion. Medway was making in these days of lonely neglect a progress which would have been impossible had he spent them at the girl's side. And if he had been aware of every feeling and event in the lives of the Semples, he could not have timed his hour of reappearance more fortunately, for not only was Maria in the depths of despondency, but the Elder had also begun to believe his position and credit much impaired. He had been passed, avoided, curtly answered by men accustomed to defer to him; and he did not take into consideration the personal pressure on these very men from lack of money, or work, or favor; nor yet those accidental offenses which have no connection with the people who receive them. In the days of his prosperity he would have found or made excuses in every case, but a failing or losing man is always suspicious, and ready to anticipate wrong.

But now! Now it would be different. As he drank his tea and ate his buttered scone he thought so. "It will be good-morning, Elder. How's all with you? Have you heard the news? and the like of that. It will be a different call now." And he looked at Maria happily, and began to forgive her for the calamity she had brought upon them. For it was undeniable that even in her home she had been made to feel her responsibility, although the blame had never been voiced.

She understood the change, and was both happy and angry. She did not feel as if any one – grandfather, grandmother, Lord Medway, or Uncle Neil – had stood by her with the loyal faith they ought to have shown. All of them had, more or less, suspected her of imprudence and reckless disregard of their welfare. All of them had thought her capable of ruining her family for a flirtation. Even Agnes, the beginning and end of all the trouble, had been cold and indifferent, and blamed, and left her without a word. And as she did not believe herself to have done anything very wrong, the injustice of the situation filled her with angry pain and dumb reproach.

Lord Medway's straightforward proposal cleared all the clouds away. It gave her a position at once that even her grandfather respected. She was no longer a selfish child, whose vanity and folly had nearly ruined her family. She was the betrothed wife of a rich and powerful nobleman, and she knew that even socially reprisals of a satisfactory kind would soon be open to her. The dejected, self-effacing manner induced by her culpable position dropped from her like a useless garment; she lifted her handsome face with confident smiles; she was going, not only to be exonerated, but to be set far above the envy and jealousy of her enemies. For Medway had asked her to go sleighing with him on the following day, and she expected that ride to atone for many small insults and offenses.

Twice during the night she got up in the cruel cold to peep at the stars and the skies. She wanted a clear, sunny day, such a day as would bring out every sleigh in the fashionable world; and she got her desire. The sun rose brilliantly, and the cold had abated to just the desirable point; the roads, also, were in perfect condition for rapid sleighing, and at half-past eleven Medway entered the parlor, aglow with the frost and the rapid motion.

His fine presence, his hearty laugh, his genial manners, were irresistible. He bowed over Madame's hand, and then drew Maria within his embrace. "Is she not a darling? and may I take her for an hour or two, grandmother?" he asked. And Madame felt his address to be beyond opposition. He had claimed her kinship; he had called her "grandmother," and she gave him at once the key of her heart.

As they stood all three together before the fire, a servant man entered and threw upon the sofa an armful of furs. "I have had these made for you, Maria," said Medway. "Look here, my little one! Their equals do not exist outside of Russia." And he wrapped her in a cloak of the finest black fox lined with scarlet satin, and put on her head a hood of scarlet satin and black fox, and slipped her hands into a muff of the same fur lined with scarlet satin; and when they reached the waiting sleigh he lifted her as easily as a baby into it, and seating himself beside her, off they went to the music in their hearts and the music in the bells; and the pace of the four horses was so great that Madame declared "all she could see was a bundle of black fur and flying scarlet ribbons."

That day Maria's cup of triumph was full and running over. Before they had reached the half-way house they had met the entire fashionable world of New York, and every member of it had understood that Maria Semple and Lord Medway would now have to be reckoned with together. For Medway spoke to no one and returned no greeting that did not include Maria in it. Indeed, his neglect of those who made this omission was so pointed that none could misconstrue it. Maria was, therefore, very happy. She had found a friend and a defender in her trouble, and she was, at least, warmly grateful to him. He could see it in her shining eyes, and feel it, oh, so delightfully! in her unconscious drawing closer and closer to him, so that finally his hands were clasping hers within the muff of black fox, and his face was bending to her with that lover-like, protecting poise there was no mistaking.

"Are you satisfied, Maria? Are you happy?" he asked, when the pace slackened and they could talk a little.

"Oh, yes!" she answered. "But why did you wait so long? I was suffering. I needed a friend; did you not understand?"

"But you had a sorrow I could not share. I did not blame you for it. It was but natural you should weep a little, for the young man had doubtless made some impression. He was a gallant fellow, and between life and death carried himself like a prince. I am glad I was able to save his life; but I did not wish to see you fretting about him; that was also natural."