A Terrible Secret: A Novel

by May Agnes Fleming

And then Charley, with that resolute light in his eyes, that resolute compression of his lips, turned and walked up-stairs. It was an unusually lengthy, and unusually grave speech for him, and his volatile sister was duly impressed. She shrugged her shoulders, and went back to her pa's room.

"The amount of it is," she thought, "he is as fond of her as ever, and can't bear, as he has lost her, to hear her spoken of. The idea of his scampering down into Chester to see her once more! Ridiculous! She is heartless, and I hate her!"

And then Trixy took out her lace pocket-handkerchief, and suddenly burst out crying. O dear, it was bad enough to lose one's fortune, to have one's European tour nipped in the bud, without losing Edith, just as Edith had wound her way most closely round Trixy's warm little heart. There was but one drop of honey in all the bitter cup—a drop six feet high and stout in proportion—Captain Angus Hammond.

For Captain Angus Hammond, as though to prove that all the world, was not base and mercenary, had come nobly to the front, and proposed to Trixy. And Trixy, surprised and grateful, and liking him very much, had hesitated, and smiled, and dimpled, and blushed, and objected, and finally begun to cry, and sobbed out "yes" through her tears.

Charley slept until twelve—they were to depart for Liverpool by the two o'clock express. Then his sister, attired for travelling, awoke him, and they all breakfasted together; Mr. Stuart, too, looking very limp and miserable, and Captain Hammond, whose state would have been one of idiotic happiness, had not the thought that the ocean to-morrow would roll between him and the object of his young affections, thrown a damper upon him. He was going to Liverpool with them, however; it would be a mournful consolation to see them off. They travelled second-class. As Charley said, "they must let themselves down easily—the sooner they began the better—and third-class to start with might be coming it a little too strong. Let them have a few cushions and comforts still."

Mr. Stuart kept close to his wife. He seemed to cling to her, and depend upon her, like a child. It was wonderful, it was pitiful how utterly shattered he had become. His son looked after him with a solicitous tenderness quite new in all their experience of Charley. Captain Hammond and Trixy kept in a corner together, and talked in saccharine undertones, looking foolish, and guilty, and happy.

They reached Liverpool late in the evening, and drove to the Adelphi. At twelve next day they were to get on board the tender, and be conveyed down the Mersey to their ship.

Late that evening, after dinner, and over their cigars, Captain Hammond opened his masculine heart, and, with vast hesitation and much embarrassment, poured into Charley's ear the tale of his love.

"I ought to tell the governor, you know," the young officer said, "but he's so deucedly cut up as it is, you know, that I couldn't think of it. And it's no use fidgeting your mother—Trixy will tell her. I love your sister, Charley, and I believe I've been in love with her ever since that day in Ireland. I ain't a lady's man, and I never cared a fig for a girl before in my life; but, by George! I'm awfully fond of Trixy. I ain't an elder son, and I ain't clever, I know," cried the poor, young gentleman sadly; "but if Trix will consent, by George! I'll go with her to church to-morrow. There's my pay—my habits ain't expensive, like some fellows—we could got along on that for a while, and then I have expectations from my grandmother. I've had expectations from my grandmother for the last twelve years, sir, and every day of those twelve years she's been dying; and, by George! she ain't dead yet, you know. It's wonderful—I give you my word—it's wonderful, the way grandmothers and maiden aunts with money do hold out. As Dundreary says, 'It's something no fellow can understand.' But that ain't what I wanted to say—it's this: if you're willing, and Trix is willing, I'll get leave of absence and come over by the next ship, and we'll be married. I—I'll be the happiest fellow alive, Stuart, the day your sister becomes my wife."

You are not to suppose that Captain Hammond made this speech fluently and eloquently, as I have reported it. The words are his, but the long pauses, the stammerings, the repetitions, the hesitations I have mercifully withheld. His cigar was quite smoked out by the time he had finished, and with nervous haste he set about lighting another. For Mr. Stuart, tilted back in his chair, his shining boots on the window-sill of the drawing-room, gazing out at the gas-lit highways of Liverpool, he listened in abstracted silence. There was a long pause after the captain concluded—then Charley opened his lips and spoke: