A Song of a Single Note: A Love Story

by Amelia E. Barr

After Mr. Semple had gone to business she took Maria to the rooms prepared for her. They were light and airy and prettily furnished, and Mrs. Semple pointed out particularly the little sitting-room attached. It contained a small library of books which are now classic, a spinnet for practice, maps and globes, and a convenient desk furnished with all the necessary implements for writing or correspondence.

Maria had fully resolved not to be forced into any kind of study, but as she stood listening to her stepmother's plans and explanations she changed her mind. She resolved rather to insist on the finest teachers London could furnish. She would perfect herself in music and singing; she would enlarge her knowledge and accomplishments in every direction, and all this that she might astonish and please Lord Medway when he came for her. That he would do so she never doubted; and he could not doubt her love when he saw and heard what she had done to make herself more worthy of him.

But this incitement she kept to herself. She permitted her father and stepmother to believe that the fulfilling of their desires was her sole motive, and this beautiful obedience gave her much liberty in other directions. So the weeks and months went past very pleasantly. She had an Italian singing master and a French dancing master, Kalkbrenner gave her music lessons, Madame Jermyn taught her embroidery and lace, and two hours every day were spent in the study of history and geography, and her much neglected grammar. It was all pleasant enough; every master or mistress brought in a fresh element, a little gossip, a different glimpse of the great city in which they all lived. And the preparation of her studies and the practice of her music gave her almost unbounded control of her time. If things were not agreeable down stairs her study was a safe retreat, and she began to take off their shelves the books provided for her amusement and instruction, and to make friends of them and become familiar with their thoughts and opinions.

The evenings were often spent at the theatre or opera, and still more frequently at Vauxhall or Ranelagh gardens, and at the latter places she was always sure of a personal triumph. Her beauty was so remarkable and so admirably set off by her generally fine toilets that she quickly became a noted visitor. Sir Horace Walpole had called her on one occasion "The American Beauty," and the sobriquet clung like a perfume to her. When the Semples had a box and a supper in the rotunda the most noble and fashionable of the young bloods hung round it, paraded past it, or when possible took a box in such close proximity that their toasts to "The Divine American" could be distinctly or indistinctly heard. Both Mr. and Mrs. Semple were proud of this notoriety. It was quite in keeping with the social élat of the age that every glass should be raised when they entered their box at the theatre or opera; quite honorable and flattering to walk between the admiring beaux who watched their entry into the gardens. Maria gave them distinction, exhilarating notice and attention. She was spoken of in the papers as "the lovely Miss Semple, the beautiful daughter of our new collector," and her début at the next spring functions of the Court was confidently predicted.

The break in this generally agreeable life came, of course, through a man's selfish desires, dignified with the name of love. Mrs. Semple had a cousin who was largely engaged in the Mediterranean trade—then entirely in English hands—and when Maria had been about eighteen months in London he returned to that city after a sojourn in Turkey and the Greek islands of nearly three years. He had been named at intervals to Maria, but his existence had made no impression upon her, and she was astonished on coming to the dinner table one day to meet him there. The instinct of conquest was immediately aroused; she smiled and he was subdued. The man who had snubbed Turkish bashaws and won concessions from piratical beys in Tunis and Algiers was suddenly afraid of a woman. He might have run away, but he did not; he was under a spell, and he went with her to the opera, and became her willing slave thereafter.

Now during her residence in London, Maria had had many admirers; some she had frowned away, some her father had bowed out, but Richard Spencer was a very different man to be reckoned with. He was Mrs. Semple's cousin, and Mrs. Semple was strongly attached to every member of her family. Cousin Richard's suit was advocated, pressed, even insisted upon by her. He was present at every meal and went with them to every entertainment, and the generality of Maria's admirers understood that he was her accepted lover.

In fact, this relationship was speedily assumed by the whole Semple household, and before the man had even had the courage to ask her to be his wife she was made to understand that her marriage to Cousin Richard was a consummation certain and inevitable. Of course she rebelled, treating the supposition at first as an absurdity, and, when this attitude was resented and punished, as an impossibility.

The affair soon became complicated with business relations and important money interests, Mr. Semple becoming a silent partner in the gigantic ventures of the Spencer Company. He had always felt, even in Maria's social triumphs, a proprietary share; she was his daughter, he could give or refuse her society to all who asked it. She had never denied his power to dismiss all the pretenders to her favor that had as yet asked it. He considered himself to have an equal right to grant her hand to the suitor he thought proper for her.

And as his interests became more and more associated with Mr. Spencer's he became more and more positive in Mr. Spencer's favor. There was little need then for Mrs. Semple's diplomacies. He had "taken the matter in his own hands" he said, "and he should carry it through."

For some time Maria did not really believe that her father and stepmother were in earnest, but on her twentieth birthday the position was made painfully clear, for when she came to the breakfast table her father kissed her, an unusual token of affection, and put into her hand an order on his banker for a large sum of money.