Fenton's Quest E-Book

Mary Elizabeth Braddon

• Herausgeber: Mary Elizabeth Braddon
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Beschreibung

Mary Elizabeth Braddon (4 October 1835 – 4 February 1915) was an English popular novelist of the Victorian era. She is best known for her 1862 sensation novel Lady Audley's Secret. Born in London, Mary Elizabeth Braddon was privately educated. Her mother Fanny separated from her father Henry in 1840, when Mary was five. When Mary was ten years old, her brother Edward Braddon left for India and later Australia, where he became Premier of Tasmania. Mary worked as an actress for three years in order to support herself and her mother. In 1860, Mary met John Maxwell (1824–1895), a publisher of periodicals. She started living with him in 1861 owever, Maxwell was already married with five children, and his wife was living in an asylum in Ireland. Mary acted as stepmother to his children until 1874, when Maxwell's wife died and they were able to get married. She had six children by him, including the novelist William Babington Maxwell. Braddon was a prolific writer, producing more than 80 novels with inventive plots. The most famous is Lady Audley's Secret (1862), which won her recognition, and a fortune as a bestseller. It has remained in print since its publication and been dramatised and filmed several times. R. D. Blackmore's anonymous sensation novel Clara Vaughan (1864) was wrongly attributed to her by some critics. Braddon wrote several works of supernatural fiction, including the pact with the devil story Gerald, or the World, the Flesh and the Devil (1891), and the ghost stories "The Cold Embrace", "Eveline's Visitant" and "At Chrighton Abbey". From the 1930s onwards, these stories were often anthologised in collections such as Montague Summers's The Supernatural Omnibus (1931) and Fifty Years of Ghost Stories (1935).[5] Braddon's legacy is tied to the sensation fiction of the 1860s. Braddon also founded Belgravia magazine (1866), which presented readers with serialised sensation novels, poems, travel narratives and biographies, as well as essays on fashion, history and science. The magazine was accompanied by lavish illustrations and offered readers a source of literature at an affordable cost. She also edited Temple Bar magazine. She died on 4 February 1915 in Richmond, then in Surrey and now in London, and is interred in Richmond Cemetery. Her home had been Lichfield House in the centre of then town, which was replaced by a block of flats in 1936, Lichfield Court, now listed. She has a plaque in Richmond parish church which calls her simply 'Miss Braddon'. A number of streets in the area are named after characters in her novels – her husband was a property developer in the area. There is a critical essay on Braddon's work in Michael Sadleir's book Things Past (1944). In 2014 the Mary Elizabeth Braddon Association was founded to pay tribute to Braddon's life and work.

Leseprobe

Fenton's Quest

Mary Elizabeth Braddon

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The Common Fever.

Marian’s Story.

Accepted.

John Saltram.

Halcyon Days.

Sentence of Exile.

“Good-Bye.”

Missing.

John Saltram’s Advice.

Jacob Nowell.

The Marriage at Wygrove.

A Friendly Counsellor.

Mrs. Pallinson has Views.

Father and Son.

On the Track.

Face to Face.

Miss Carley’s Admirers.

Jacob Nowell’s Will.

19.Gilbert Asks a Question.

20. Drifting Away.

21. Father and Daughter.

22. At Lidford Again.

23. Called to Account.

24. Tormented by Doubt.

25. Missing Again.

26. In Bondage.

27. Only a Woman.

28. At Fault.

29. Baffled, Not Beaten.

30. Stricken Down.

31. Ellen Carley’s Trials.

32.The Padlocked Door at Wyncomb.

33.“What Must Be Shall Be.”

34.Doubtful Information.

35.Bought with a Price.

36.Coming Round.

37.A Full Confession.

38.An ill-Omened Wedding.

39. A Domestic Mystery.

40. In Pursuit.

41. Outward Bound.

42. The Pleasures of Wyncomb.

43.Mr. Whitelaw Makes an End of the Mystery.

44.After the Fire.

45.Mr. Whitelaw Makes His Will.

46.Ellen Regains Her Liberty.

47.Closing Scenes.

Chapter 1

The Common Fever.

A warm summer evening, with a sultry haze brooding over the level landscape, and a Sabbath stillness upon all things in the village of Lidford, Midlandshire. In the remoter corners of the old gothic church the shadows are beginning to gather, as the sermon draws near its close; but in the centre aisle and about the pulpit there is broad daylight still shining-in from the wide western window, across the lower half of which there are tall figures of the Evangelists in old stained glass.

There are no choristers at Lidford, and the evening service is conducted in rather a drowsy way; but there is a solemn air of repose about the gray old church that should be conducive to tranquil thoughts and pious meditations. Simple and earnest have been the words of the sermon, simple and earnest seem the countenances of the congregation, looking reverently upwards at the face of their pastor; and one might fancy, contemplating that grand old church, so much too spacious for the needs of the little flock gathered there to-night, that Lidford was a forgotten, half-deserted corner of this earth, in which a man, tired of the press and turmoil of the world, might find an almost monastic solitude and calm.

So thought a gentleman in the Squire’s pew — a good-looking man of about thirty, who was finishing his first Sunday at Lidford by devout attendance at evening service. He had been thinking a good deal about this quiet country life during the service, wondering whether it was not the best life a man could live, after all, and thinking it all the sweeter because of his own experience, which had lain chiefly in cities.

He was a certain Mr. Gilbert Fenton, an Australian merchant, and was on a visit to his sister, who had married the principal landowner in Lidford, Martin Lister — a man whose father had been called “the Squire.” The lady sat opposite her brother in the wide old family pew to-night — a handsome-looking matron, with a little rosy-cheeked damsel sitting by her side — a damsel with flowing auburn hair, tiny hat and feather, and bright scarlet stockings, looking very much as if she had walked out of a picture by Mr. Millais.

The congregation stood up to sing a hymn when the sermon was ended, and Gilbert Fenton turned his face towards the opposite line of pews, in one of which, very near him, there was a girl, at whom Mrs. Lister had caught her brother looking very often, during the service just concluded.

It was a face that a man could scarcely look upon once without finding his glances wandering back to it afterwards; not quite a perfect face, but a very bright and winning one. Large gray eyes, with a wonderful light in them, under dark lashes and darker brows; a complexion that had a dusky pallor, a delicate semi-transparent olive-tint that one seldom sees out of a Spanish picture; a sweet rosy mouth, and a piquant little nose of no particular order, made up the catalogue of this young lady’s charms. But in a face worth looking at there is always a something that cannot be put into words; and the brightest and best attributes of this face were quite beyond translation. It was a face one might almost call “splendid”— there was such a light and glory about it at some moments. Gilbert Fenton thought so to-night, as he saw it in the full radiance of the western sunlight, the lips parted as the girl sang, the clear gray eyes looking upward.

She was not alone: a portly genial-looking old man stood by her side, and accompanied her to the church-porch when the hymn was over. Here they both lingered a moment to shake hands with Mrs. Lister, very much to Gilbert Fenton’s satisfaction. They walked along the churchyard-path together, and Gilbert gave his sister’s arm a little tug, which meant, “Introduce me.”

“My brother Mr. Fenton, Captain Sedgewick, Miss Nowell.”

The Captain shook hands with Gilbert. “Delighted to know you, Mr. Fenton; delighted to know any one belonging to Mrs. Lister. You are going to stop down here for some time, I hope.”

“I fear not for very long, Captain Sedgewick. I am a business man, you see, and can’t afford to take a long holiday from the City.”

Mrs. Lister laughed. “My brother is utterly devoted to commercial pursuits,” she said; “I think he believes every hour wasted that he spends out of his counting-house.”

“And yet I was thinking in church this evening, that a man’s life might be happier in such a place as this, drifting away in a kind of dreamy idleness, than the greatest successes possible to commerce could ever make it.”

“You would very soon be tired of your dreamy idleness,” answered his sister, “and sigh for your office and your club.”

“The country suits old people, who have played their part in life, and made an end of it,” said the Captain. “It suits my little girl here very well, too,” he added, with a fond glance at his companion; “she has her birds and her flowers, and her books and music; and I don’t think she ever sighs for anything gayer than Lidford.”

“Never, uncle George,” said the girl, slipping her hand through his arm. And Gilbert Fenton saw that those two were very fond of each other.

They came to the end of a shady winding lane at this moment, and Captain Sedgewick and Miss Nowell wished Mrs. Lister and her brother good-evening, and went away down the lane arm-in-arm.

“What a lovely girl she is!” said Gilbert, when they were gone.

“Lovely is rather a strong word, Gilbert,” Mrs. Lister answered coldly; “she is certainly pretty, but I hope you are not going to lose your heart in that direction.”

“There is no fear of that. A man may admire a girl’s face without being in any danger of losing his heart. But why not in that direction, Belle? Is there any special objection to the lady?”

“Only that she is a nobody, without either money or position and I think you ought to have both when you marry.”

“Thanks for the implied compliment; but I do not fancy that an Australian merchant can expect to secure a wife of very exalted position; and I am the last man in the world to marry for money.”

“I don’t for a moment suppose you would marry any one you didn’t like, from mercenary considerations; but there is no reason you should make a foolish match.”

“Of course not. I think it very doubtful whether I shall ever marry at all. I am just the kind of man to go down to my grave a bachelor.”

“Why so, Gilbert?”

“Well, I can hardly tell you, my dear. Perhaps I am rather difficult to please — just a little stony-hearted and invulnerable. I know that since I was a boy, and got over my schoolboy love affairs, I have never seen the woman who could touch my heart. I have met plenty of pretty women, and plenty of brilliant women, of course, in society; and have admired them, and there an end. I have never seen a woman whose face impressed me so much at first sight as the face of your friend, Miss Nowell.”