Name and Fame: A Novel

by Adeline Sergeant

Dalton presently reappeared with the news that the carriage was waiting for them in the road below.

So in an hour from that time they were at home again, and Lettice was able to get to her own room, and to think of what had happened.

If amongst those who read the story of her life Lettice Campion has made for herself a few discriminating friends, they will not need to be reminded that she was not by any means a perfect character. She was, in her way, quite as ambitious as her brother Sydney, although not quite so eager in pursuit of her own ends, her own pleasure and satisfaction. She was also more scrupulous than Sydney to the means which she would adopt for the attainment of her objects, and she desired that others should share with her the good things which fell to her lot; but she had never been taught, or had never adopted the rule, that mere self-denial, for self-denial's sake, was the soundest basis of morality and conduct. She was thoroughly and keenly human, and she did but follow her natural bent, without distortion and without selfishness, in seeking to give happiness to herself as well as to others.

Brooke Dalton's offer of marriage placed a great temptation before her. All the happiness that money, and position, and affection, and a luxurious home could afford was hers if she would have it; and these were things which she valued very highly. Edith Dalton had done her best to make her friend realize what it would mean to be the mistress of Brooke's house; and poor Lettice, with all her magnanimity, was dazzled in spite of herself, and did not quite see why she should say No, when Brooke made her his offer. And yet her heart cried out against accepting it.

She had needed time to think, and now the process was already beginning. He had given her a month to decide whether she could love him—or even like him well enough to become his wife. Nothing could be more generous, and indeed she knew that he was the soul of generosity and consideration. A month to make up her mind whether she would accept from him all that makes life pleasant, and joyful, and easy, and comfortable; or whether she would turn her back upon the temptation, and shun delights, and live laborious days.

Could she hesitate? What woman with nothing to depend upon except her own exertions, and urged to assent (as she would be) by her only intimate friends, would have hesitated in her place? Yet she did hesitate, and it was necessary to weigh the reasons against accepting, as she had dwelt upon the reasons in favor of it.

If it was easy to imagine that life at Angleford Manor might be very peaceful and luxurious, there could be no doubt that she would have to purchase her pleasure at the cost of a great deal of her independence. She might be able to write, in casual and ornamental fashion; but she felt that there would be little real sympathy with her literary occupations, and the zest of effort and ambition which she now felt would be gone. Moreover, independence of action counted for very little in comparison with independence of thought—and how could she nurse her somewhat heretical ideas in the drawing-room of a Tory High Church squire, a member of the Oligarchy, whose friends would nearly all be like-minded with himself? She had no right to introduce so great a discord into his life. If she married him, she would at any rate try (consciously, or unconsciously) to adopt his views, as the proper basis of the partnership; and therefore to marry him unquestionably meant the sacrifice of her independent judgment.

So much for the intellectual and material sides of the question. But, Lettice asked herself, was that all?

No, there was something else. She had been steadily and obstinately, yet almost unconsciously, trying to push it away from her all the time—ever since Brooke Dalton began to betray his affection, and even before that when Mrs. Hartley, unknown to her, kept her in ignorance of things which she ought to have known. She had refused to face it, pressed it out of her heart, made believe to herself that the chapter of her life which had been written in London was closed and forgotten—and how nearly she had succeeded! But she had not quite succeeded. It was there still—the memory, the hope, the pity, the sacrifice.

She must not cheat herself any longer, if she would be an honest and honorable woman. She would face the truth and not palter with it, now that the crisis had really come. What was Alan Walcott to her? Could she forget him, and dismiss him from her thoughts, and go to the altar with another man? She went over the scenes which they had enacted together, she recalled his words and his letters, she thought of his sorrows and trials, and remembered how he had appealed to her for sympathy. There was good reason, she thought, why he had not written to her, for he was barred by something more than worldly conventionality. When she, strong-minded as she thought herself, had shrunk from the display of his love because he still had duties to his lawful wife, she had imposed upon him her demand for conventional and punctilious respect, and had rather despised herself, she now remembered, for doing it. He had obeyed her, he had observed her slightest wishes—it was for her, not for him, to break through the silence. How had she been able to remain so long in ignorance of his condition, to live contentedly so many miles away from him?