Crying for the Light; Or, Fifty Years Ago. Vol. 1 [of 3]

by J. Ewing Ritchie

On the night of the Chartist meeting already referred to, Rose was met by the individual in question, and as there were so many people about, Rose graciously accepted the offer of his arm to take her home, much to his delight and joy. He determined to make the best of his chance. There are some men who take an ell when you give them an inch. Rose’s rustic admirer belonged to this class.

Rose became alarmed at his amorous attention, and screamed. That scream was heard by a gentleman, Sloville’s only baronet, the lord of the manor, as he was riding past in his brougham. By the clear moonlight he saw that the girl who stood trembling before him was the girl whose face had haunted his dreams since he first caught sight of her in Sloville, and in pursuit of whom he had scoured the town like a hawk ever since. He had caught sight of her for a moment at the Chartist meeting, and here she was actually in his power, and needing his aid! How he blessed his stars, as eagerly, with the most polished air, he offered to drive Rose home. At first she hesitated, as was natural. If she would get inside, he would mount the box and drive.

Rose accepted his offer; there could be no harm in that, though she would not allow the brougham to come nearer her home than the top of the street in which she lived, for fear of scandal. She accepted the offer, partly because she wished for the sensation of riding in a brougham like a real lady, and partly because of her anxiety to get rid of her loutish lover. Perhaps it had been as well if Rose had ridden up to the door in the brougham, or had refused the offer of it altogether. As it was, she got out, and the driver of the brougham would not allow her to go home alone. If he was proud as Lucifer, he was subtle as the serpent that tempted Eve. She could not refuse his offer of guardianship, his appearance was so handsome, and his manner so polished and flattering and deferential. Surely he could not do her any harm. The offer was one she had not sufficient self-denial to repel as she ought to have done, as any well-regulated young lady in superior circles of course would have done.

Alas! Rose was but a poor dressmaker, barely eighteen, an age when to the young woman clings a good deal of the romantic folly of the girl. She was the pride of an indulgent mother who never restrained her little whims, and whose scanty means afforded but little relief to the dull monotony of her daily life. Rose, of course, was in her seventh heaven. Her hour of triumph and reward had arrived. Here was the prince who had come to marry the beggar’s daughter; the gallant knight who was to lead her out of the prison house of poverty, to reveal to her all the glories of a world which, after all, looks best at a distance.

There is a tide in the affairs of women as well as men, which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune, and Rose believed that the tide was now in her favour. Here was the chance for which she had been dreaming, for which she had been prepared by a due course of silly novel-reading.

‘A tall, dark gentleman is in love with you,’ said the gipsy whom Rose had last consulted on the subject. ‘He will come to you when you least expect it. He is immensely rich, and will make you handsome presents. He will take you to London, where he will marry you, and you shall have horses and carriages, and servants, and music, and wine, and balls, and will live happy ever after.’

The tall, dark gentleman had come, and he had fallen in love with her. It amused him in that dull town to have an affair of this kind on hand. It gave a new zest to his blasé life; the only things he cared for were pretty faces, and he had spent his life ever since leaving Oxford in search of them. Now that he had come to the family estate and title; now that he was Sir Watkin Strahan, of Elm Court, it is not to be presumed that there was any diminution of zeal in his search; on the contrary, he pushed it with more zest than ever. In the language of his friends, he was a devil of a fellow for women, and it was clear to him that this young rustic beauty would soon fall an easy prey.

The chances were all in favour of the execution of his wicked design, for he was a cruel man, in spite of his youth and handsome face and figure, a polished gentleman, yet venomous and dangerous as a cobra or a wolf. He was now given up to one pursuit, the ruin of this fair young girl, on whom, in an evil moment, he had cast a longing eye; and poor Rose thought him a model gentleman! He had no scruples of conscience when his fancy was aroused. All he cared for, all he thought of, was himself. Pleasure was to be had, regardless of the cost to himself, of the misery to others. In a rich and old community like ours the number of such men is immense, and the mischief they do no tongue can tell. In our streets by night we see the ruin they have wrought.

‘I am mad after that girl,’ said Sir Watkin to a friend one day. ‘I have made her presents of all kinds; I have followed up every chance; I have promised even to marry her, and yet she keeps me at arm’s length. She is a regular Penelope. It seems years since I first saw her.’

‘Nonsense!’ said his friend—an old rake of the Regency, to whom all women were mere childish toys—‘she can’t resist you. You are bound to win her. She is only a little more artful than others of her class.’