1. DECEMBER AND JANUARY, 1835-36
1081 Words
1. DECEMBER AND JANUARY, 1835-36In the long and intricately inwrought chain of circumstance
which renders worthy of record some experiences of Cytherea Graye,
Edward Springrove, and others, the first event directly influencing
the issue was a Christmas visit.
In the above-mentioned year, 1835, Ambrose Graye, a young
architect who had just begun the practice of his profession in the
midland town of Hocbridge, to the north of Christminster, went to
London to spend the Christmas holidays with a friend who lived in
Bloomsbury. They had gone up to Cambridge in the same year, and,
after graduating together, Huntway, the friend, had taken
orders.
Graye was handsome, frank, and gentle. He had a quality of
thought which, exercised on homeliness, was humour; on nature,
picturesqueness; on abstractions, poetry. Being, as a rule,
broadcast, it was all three.
Of the wickedness of the world he was too forgetful. To discover
evil in a new friend is to most people only an additional
experience: to him it was ever a surprise.
While in London he became acquainted with a retired officer in
the Navy named Bradleigh, who, with his wife and their daughter,
lived in a street not far from Russell Square. Though they were in
no more than comfortable circumstances, the captain's wife came of
an ancient family whose genealogical tree was interlaced with some
of the most illustrious and well-known in the kingdom.
The young lady, their daughter, seemed to Graye by far the most
beautiful and queenly being he had ever beheld. She was about
nineteen or twenty, and her name was Cytherea. In truth she was not
so very unlike country girls of that type of beauty, except in one
respect. She was perfect in her manner and bearing, and they were
not. A mere distinguishing peculiarity, by catching the eye, is
often read as the pervading characteristic, and she appeared to him
no less than perfection throughout—transcending her rural rivals in
very nature. Graye did a thing the blissfulness of which was only
eclipsed by its hazardousness. He loved her at first sight.
His introductions had led him into contact with Cytherea and her
parents two or three times on the first week of his arrival in
London, and accident and a lover's contrivance brought them
together as frequently the week following. The parents liked young
Graye, and having few friends (for their equals in blood were their
superiors in position), he was received on very generous terms. His
passion for Cytherea grew not only strong, but ineffably exalted:
she, without positively encouraging him, tacitly assented to his
schemes for being near her. Her father and mother seemed to have
lost all confidence in nobility of birth, without money to give
effect to its presence, and looked upon the budding consequence of
the young people's reciprocal glances with placidity, if not actual
favour.
Graye's whole impassioned dream terminated in a sad and
unaccountable episode. After passing through three weeks of sweet
experience, he had arrived at the last stage—a kind of moral
Gaza—before plunging into an emotional desert. The second week in
January had come round, and it was necessary for the young
architect to leave town.
Throughout his acquaintanceship with the lady of his heart there
had been this marked peculiarity in her love: she had delighted in
his presence as a sweetheart should do, yet from first to last she
had repressed all recognition of the true nature of the thread
which drew them together, blinding herself to its meaning and only
natural tendency, and appearing to dread his announcement of them.
The present seemed enough for her without cumulative hope: usually,
even if love is in itself an end, it must be regarded as a
beginning to be enjoyed.
In spite of evasions as an obstacle, and in consequence of them
as a spur, he would put the matter off no longer. It was evening.
He took her into a little conservatory on the landing, and there
among the evergreens, by the light of a few tiny lamps, infinitely
enhancing the freshness and beauty of the leaves, he made the
declaration of a love as fresh and beautiful as they.
'My love—my darling, be my wife!'
She seemed like one just awakened. 'Ah—we must part now!' she
faltered, in a voice of anguish. 'I will write to you.' She
loosened her hand and rushed away.
In a wild fever Graye went home and watched for the next
morning. Who shall express his misery and wonder when a note
containing these words was put into his hand?
'Good-bye; good-bye for ever. As recognized lovers something
divides us eternally. Forgive me—I should have told you before; but
your love was sweet! Never mention me.'
That very day, and as it seemed, to put an end to a painful
condition of things, daughter and parents left London to pay off a
promised visit to a relative in a western county. No message or
letter of entreaty could wring from her any explanation. She begged
him not to follow her, and the most bewildering point was that her
father and mother appeared, from the tone of a letter Graye
received from them, as vexed and sad as he at this sudden
renunciation. One thing was plain: without admitting her reason as
valid, they knew what that reason was, and did not intend to reveal
it.
A week from that day Ambrose Graye left his friend Huntway's
house and saw no more of the Love he mourned. From time to time his
friend answered any inquiry Graye made by letter respecting her.
But very poor food to a lover is intelligence of a mistress
filtered through a friend. Huntway could tell nothing definitely.
He said he believed there had been some prior flirtation between
Cytherea and her cousin, an officer of the line, two or three years
before Graye met her, which had suddenly been terminated by the
cousin's departure for India, and the young lady's travelling on
the Continent with her parents the whole of the ensuing summer, on
account of delicate health. Eventually Huntway said that
circumstances had rendered Graye's attachment more hopeless still.
Cytherea's mother had unexpectedly inherited a large fortune and
estates in the west of England by the rapid fall of some
intervening lives. This had caused their removal from the small
house in Bloomsbury, and, as it appeared, a renunciation of their
old friends in that quarter.
Young Graye concluded that his Cytherea had forgotten him and
his love. But he could not forget her.
- Writer
