A Song of a Single Note: A Love Story

It is difficult for an American girl at this time to conceive of the situation of the daughters of England in the year 1782. The law gave them absolutely into their father's power until they were twenty-one years old; and the law was stupendously strengthened and upheld by universal public approval, and by barriers of social limitations that few women had the daring to cross. Maria was environed by influences that all made for her total subjection to her parent's will, and at this time she ventured no further remark. But her whole nature was insurgent, and she mentally promised herself that neither on the twenty-ninth of June nor on any other day that followed it would she marry Richard Spencer.

After breakfast she went to her room to consider her position, and no one prevented her withdrawal.

"It is the best thing she can do," said Mr. Semple to his wife. "A little reflection will show her the hopeless folly of resistance to my commands."

"Her behavior is not flattering to Richard."

"Richard has more sense than to notice it. He said to me that 'there was always a little chaffering before a good bargain.' He understands women."

"Maria has been brought up badly. She has dangerous ideas about the claims and privileges and personal rights of women."

"Balderdash! Claims of women, indeed! Give them the least power, and they would stake the world away for a whim. See that she dresses herself properly for dinner. I have told her I shall then announce her engagement, and in the midst of all our relatives and friends she will not dare to deny it."

In a great measure Mr. Semple was correct. Maria was not ready to deny it, nor did she think the relatives and friends had anything to do with her private affairs. She made no answer whatever to her father's notice of her approaching marriage, and the congratulations of the company fell upon her consciousness like snowflakes upon a stone wall. They meant nothing at all to her.

The day following Mrs. Semple went to buy the lawn and linen and lace necessary for the wedding garments. Maria would not accompany her; her stepmother complained and Maria was severely reprimanded, and for a few days thoroughly frightened. But a constant succession of such scenes blunted her sense of fear. She remembered her grandfather's brave words, "Be strong and of good courage," and gradually gathered herself together for the struggle she saw to be inevitable. To break her promise to Lord Medway! That was a thing she never would do! No, not even the law of England should make her utter words false to every true feeling she had. And day by day this resolve grew stronger, as day by day it was confronted by a trial she hardly dared to contemplate.

There was no one to whom she could go for advice or sympathy. Mrs. Gordon was in Scotland, where her husband had an estate, and she had no other intimate friend. But at the worst, it was only another year and then she would be her own mistress and Ernest Medway would come and marry her. Of this result she never had one doubt. True, she heard very little from him; but if not one word had come to assure her she would still have been confident that he would keep his word, if alive to do so. Letter-writing was not then the easily practised relief it is now, and she knew Lord Medway disliked it. Yet she was not without even these evidences of his remembrance, and considering the conditions of the country in which they had been written, the great distance between them, the difficulty of getting letters to New York and the uncertainty of getting letters from New York to England, these evidences of his affection had been fairly numerous. All of them had come enclosed in her Uncle Neil's letters, and without mention or explanation, for Neil was sympathetically cautious and did not know what effect they might have on the life of Maria, though he did not know his letters were sure to be inquired after and read by her parents.

They were intensely symbolic of a man who preferred to do rather than to say, and are fairly represented by the three quoted:

"Sweetest Maria: Have you forgiven your adoring lover?

    Ernest."

"My Little Darling: I have been wounded. I have been ill with fever; but no pain is like the pain of living away from you.

    Ernest."

"Star of My Life: I have counted the days until the twenty-fifth of November; they are two hundred and fifty-five. Every day I come nearer to you, my adorable Maria.

    Ernest."

This last letter was dated March the fourteenth, and with it lying next her heart, was it likely she would consent to or even be compelled to marry Richard Spencer? She smiled a positive denial of such a supposition. But for all that, the preparations went on with a stubborn persistence that would have dismayed a weaker spirit. The plans for furnishing the Spencer house, the patterns of the table silver, all the little items of the new life proposed for her were as a matter of duty submitted to her taste or judgment. She was always stolidly indifferent, and her answer was invariably the same, "I do not care. It is nothing to me." Then Mr. Semple would answer with cold authority, "You have excellent taste, Elizabeth. Make the selection you think best for Maria."

Mr. Spencer's method was entirely different. He treated Maria's apathetic unconcern with constant good nature, pretended to believe it maidenly modesty, and under all circumstances refused to understand or appropriate her evident dislike. But his cousin saw the angry sparkle in his black eyes, and to her he had once permitted himself to say, "I am bearing now, Elizabeth. When she is Mrs. Spencer it will be her turn to bear." And Elizabeth did not think it necessary to repeat the veiled threat to Maria's father.

Medway's last letter, dated March the fourteenth, did not reach Maria until May the first. On the morning of that day she had been told by Mrs. Semple to dress and accompany her to Bond Street.

"We are going to choose your wedding dress," she said, "and I do hope, Maria, you will take some interest in it. I have spoken to Madame Delamy about the fashion and trimmings, and your father says I am to spare no expense."

"I will not have anything to do in choosing a wedding dress. I will not wear it if it is made."

"I think it is high time you stopped such outrageous insults to your intended husband, your father and myself. I am astonished your father endures them. Many parents would consider you insane and put you under restraint."

"I can hardly be under greater restraint," answered Maria calmly, but there was a cold, sick terror at her heart. Nevertheless she refused to take any part in the choosing of the wedding dress, and Mrs. Semple went alone to make the selection.

But Maria was at last afraid. "Under restraint!" She could not get the words out of her consciousness. Surely her dear grandfather had had some prescience of this grave dilemma when he told her if she was not treated right to come back to him. But how was she to manage a return to New York? Women then did not travel, could not travel, alone. No ships would take her without companions or authority. She did not know the first of the many steps necessary, she had no money. She was, in fact, quite in the position of a little child left to its own helplessness in a great city. The Gordons would be likely to come to London before the winter, but until then she could find neither ways nor means for a return to New York. All she could do was to take day by day the steps that circumstances rendered imperative.

The buying of the wedding dress brought things so terribly close to her that she finally resolved to tell her father and stepmother of her engagement to Lord Medway. "I will take the first opportunity," she said to herself, and the opportunity came that night. Mr. Spencer was not present. They dined alone, and Mr. Semple was indulging one of those tempers which made him, as his father had said to Neil, "gey ill to live with." He had been told of Maria's behavior about the wedding dress, and the thundery aspect of his countenance during the meal found speech as soon as the table was cleared and they were alone. He turned almost savagely to his daughter and asked in a voice of low intensity:

"What do you mean, Miss, by your perverse temper? Why did you not go with your mother to choose your wedding dress?"

"Because it is not my wedding dress, sir. I have told you for many weeks that I will not marry Mr. Spencer;" then with a sudden access of courage, "and I will not. I am the promised wife of Lord Medway."

Mr. Semple laughed, and then asked scornfully, "And pray, who is Lord Medway?"

"He is my lover; my husband on the twenty-ninth of next November."

All the passion and pride of a lifetime glowed in the girl's face. Her voice was clear and firm, and at that hour she was not a bit afraid. "I will tell you about him," she continued, and her attitude had in those few minutes so far dominated her audience that she obtained the hearing she might otherwise not have gained. Rapidly, but with singular dramatic power, she related the story of her life in New York – her friendship with Agnes Bradley, the attraction between herself and Harry Bradley, his arrest, trial and death sentence, Lord Medway's interference and her own engagement, her subsequent intimacy with the man she had promised to marry, and the love which had sprung up in her heart for him.

"And I will not break my word, not a letter of it," she said in conclusion.

"If there was any truth in this story," answered her father, "who cares for a woman's promises in love matters? They are not worth the breath that made them."

"My promise to Lord Medway, father, rests on my honor. I could give him no security but my word. I must keep my word."

"A woman's honor! A woman's word to a lover! Pshaw! Let us hear no more of such rant. What do you think of this extraordinary story, Elizabeth?"

"I think it is a dream, a fabrication. Maria has imagined it. Who knows Lord Medway? I never heard tell of such a person."

"Nevertheless, he will come for me on the twenty-fifth of November," said Maria.

"Long before that time you will be Mrs. Richard Spencer," answered her father.

"I declare to you, father, I will not. You may carry me to the altar, that is as far as you can go; you cannot make me speak. I will not say one word that makes me Richard Spencer's wife. I entreat you not to force such a trial on me. It will make me the town's talk, you also."

"Do not dare to consider me as a part of such a mad scene. Go to your room at once, before I – before I make you."

She fled before his passion, and terrified and breathless locked the door upon her sorrow. But she was not conquered. In fact, her resolution had gained an invincible strength by the mere fact of its utterance. Words had given it substance, form, even life, and she felt that now she would give her own life rather than relinquish her resolve.

In reality her confidence did her case no good. Mr. Semple easily adopted the opinion of his wife that Maria had invented the story to defer what she could not break off. "And you know, Alexander," she added, "those Gordons will be back before the date she has fixed this pretended lover to appear, and in my opinion they are capable of encouraging Maria to all lengths against your lawful authority. As for myself, I am sure Mrs. Gordon disliked me on sight, I know I disliked her, and Maria was rebellious the whole time they were in London. I wonder Richard does not break off the wedding, late as it is."

"I should not permit him to do so, even if he felt inclined. But he is as resolute as myself. Why, Elizabeth, we two men should be the laughing-stock of the town for a twelvemonth if we allowed a chit of a girl to master us. It is unthinkable. Go on with the necessary preparations. The Spencers living in Durham and in Kendal must be notified at once. The greater the company present the more impossible it will be for her to carry out her absurd threat. And even if she will not speak, silence gives consent. I shall tell the clergyman to proceed."

After this there were no more pretenses of any kind. Maria's reluctance to her marriage was openly acknowledged to the household, and her disobedience complained of and regretted. Among the two men-servants and three maids there was not one who sympathized with her. The men were married and had daughters, from whom they expected implicit obedience. The women wondered what the young mistress wanted: "A man with such black eyes and nice, curly hair," said the cook, "any proper girl would like; so free with his jokes and his money, too; six foot tall, and well set up as ever I saw a man. And the fine house he is giving her, and the fine things of all kinds he sends her! Oh, she's a proud, set-up little thing as ever came my way!" These remarks and many more of the same kind from the powers in the kitchen indicated the sentiment of the whole house, and Maria felt the spirit of opposition to her, though it was not expressed.

She could only endure it and affect not to notice what was beyond her power to prevent. But she wrote to her Uncle Neil and desired him to see Lord Medway and tell him exactly how she was situated. In this letter she declared in the most positive manner her resolve not to marry Mr. Spencer, and described the uneasiness which her stepmother's remark about "restraint" had caused her. And this letter, with one to Mrs. Gordon, were the only outside influences she had any power to reach.

At length the twenty-eighth day of June arrived. The Spencer house was filled with relatives from the Northern and Midland countries, and in Maria's home the wedding feast was already prepared. A huge wedding cake was standing on the sideboard, and in the middle of the afternoon her wedding dress came home. Mrs. Semple brought it herself to Maria and spread out its shimmering widths of heavy white satin and the costly lace to be worn with it.

"It is sure to fit you, Maria," she said. "Madame Delamy made it from your gray cloth dress, which you know is perfect every way. Will you try it on? I will help you."

"No, thank you. I would as willingly try my shroud on."

"I think you are very selfish and unkind. You know that I am not well; indeed, I feel scarcely able to bear the fatigue of the ceremony, and you are turning what ought to be a pleasure to your father and every one else into a fear and a weariness."

She did not answer her stepmother, but in the hurry of preparations going on down stairs she sought her father and found him resting in the freshly decorated drawing-room. He was sitting with closed eyes and evidently trying to sleep. She stood a little way from him, and with many bitter tears made her final appeal. "Say I am ill, father, for indeed I am, and stop this useless preparation. It is all for disappointment and sorrow."