Mrs. Dorriman: A Novel. Volume 1 of 3

by Mrs. Henry Wayland Chetwynd

Then one day, while looking out on the sea, some few months after her father's death, her hat off, and a vague sense of wishing she had something to look forward to, pressing upon her, Mr. Dorriman had come, and her brother.

Instead of the usual sneering tone in which John Sandford addressed his sister, she was startled out of herself by hearing him speak with civility. The surprise gave her a brilliant glow, which touched her face with colour and lightened it up. Mr. Dorriman thought her lovely. Her gentle helplessness was another great attraction, an attraction which every day's acquaintance increased. Without fully understanding how it all came about she found herself Mrs. Dorriman, and content to be so and to get away from the roughness and unkindness which was all that she ever knew of the brotherly tie. At first she had not been unhappy. Mr. Dorriman was so fond of her and so carefully surrounded her with comforts and kindness that she was more than content, though she was not in the least in love with him. But soon shadows came. A man of some property, he was unfortunately surrounded by men of wealth. He argued that where those round him made gigantic fortunes he could do the same—putting upon one side the important fact that they had been trained to business and he had not. He plunged into every opening where he thought he saw a chance of success; losses only made him more certain of success in a new direction. He was upright, honourable, and kind-hearted to a fault. He knew really nothing of business, and imagined that in a few days he could master details other men had spent their whole lives in studying—and in this idea John Sandford confirmed him. After seven years of anxieties, and hopes, and fears, he found himself ruined in health from over-worry, broken in fortune, and not able to shield his wife from the consequences. That she had never loved him he knew and had long known. But he had learned from her something of her life and of the absence of happiness which had made her what she was. He also had many a score against John Sandford could he but live to pay them. There was much in the transactions between them he could not understand, and which, looking back upon now by the light of his failures, quite apart from his own speculations, he was certain, he had reason to know, had not been fair or right. But this conviction came to him too late; before he had done more than collect notes and tabulate letters he was struck down by fever, which his constitution could not stand, and Mrs. Dorriman found herself at twenty-five a widow, at the mercy of the world and her brother.

This little place of Inchbrae had been bought by her husband for her when he found how much the sea entered into her thoughts and how she loved it, and he went there to die, leaving her, he thought, a home, and a home she liked.

Mrs. Dorriman, however, after thinking that all was not lost, so she had it, only learned afterwards that she was there as a tenant at will; the place was hers, but all else had passed into her brother's hands in virtue of some claim he had on her husband's property, and she had not a penny!

The last blow completed that helpless feeling of indignation she had against her husband's incapacity for business. The test of a woman's love, as we have said, is adversity, and poor Mrs. Dorriman had never any love to begin with. She possessed her soul in patience before the world, but only before the world; in secret it was one long incessant protest against her fate. She felt in her heart of hearts, though even to herself she did not so plainly speak, that she had not received her share of the bargain. She had married to get out of her brother's power, and she had been a dutiful if not an affectionate wife, and now she was more in her brother's hands than ever! More because she was a proud woman, and her brother made her plainly understand that much that was painful as regarded her husband's transactions might be brought forward by him if he chose to do so.

It was just at that time, just when a helpless sense of loss every where filled her and made her very wretched, and that she was gathering everything together to go away, that Mrs. Dorriman came upon a whole box of papers, some letters all marked and arranged in order, receipts, and other things.

Poor Mr. Dorriman's great idea of business was keeping and docketing every line he ever received, and copies of much that he wrote.

His widow looked at these documents with something of the pang with which we see the relics of a hand no longer there. Indeed, since her husband's death, the faint affection she had had for him had undergone a change. She was indignant when she thought of his business incapacity, but she missed his kindness and she regretted him more each day, as each day taught her how much he had cared for her.

Should she burn these papers, or not? Timid as she was constitutionally—she looked round her, and at that moment she saw her brother coming up to the house. Afraid he might sneer at her sentimentality, or say something to vex her about her looking at them, she hastily pushed the box under the sofa, and sat down, not wishing to conceal anything, but merely from that one idea, that, if he saw her with the old letters before her, he might wound her in some way.

Her brother's visit taught her for the very first time that in that box might lie documents of importance to her husband and to her.