A Name for Herself by L. M. Montgomery

Author:L. M. Montgomery [L.M. Montgomery]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
Published: 2018-01-17T16:00:00+00:00

(EXTRACT FROM LETTER WRITTEN BY WILLIAM CAVENDISH TO OLD FRIEND IN ST. MARTIN’S)

Dear Morris:–

What a letter of fatherly good advice you sent me, to be sure. The gist of it seems to be “marry and settle down.” Marriage in your eyes seems to be a sort of universal panacea for all the ills of life. It might be so with some. With me I fear it would prove quite otherwise.

You wonder that I have never married. Well, I will tell you why on condition that you forevermore stop preaching marriage to me. When you have heard my brief story you will realize that you are wasting time and breath in doing so.

Years ago, when I was a mere boy, I met and loved Ethel Leah. She was then in all the bloom of her beauty – a tall, slender girl with glorious brown eyes and the sweetest mouth a man could picture in his fairest dreams. She returned, or professed to return, my love, and when I went West to better my fortunes an understanding that amounted to an engagement existed between us.

You know that my first western experiment did not turn out well. Moreover, I got into a fast set and lived a rather wild life. I supposed that rumors of this soon reached Ethel for I soon noticed a subtle difference in the tone of her letters. For my own part, I began to grow discouraged and reckless, owing to my lack of success. My own letters grew colder and fewer. I loved Ethel as fondly as ever but I felt an increasing chasm forming between us. I knew her parents would never consent to her marriage with a man who had failed. At this period I received a brief letter from her announcing her engagement to Dr. Fitzelroy. It came as a fearful blow. I never answered the letter. I said savagely that since she had chosen to discard me I would accept my dismissal with a pride equal to her own. But some motive power seemed gone from my life and during the next two years I went down hill rapidly, becoming more dissipated every day.

In this fatal course I was at last arrested by what seemed at the time to be a dire calamity. The firm with whom I was employed failed, and I found myself face to face with ruin. I returned home. For a time I felt utterly discouraged. Then I obtained a good position in my native city, and my prospects began to look bright again, for I had firmly resolved to live an entirely different life and repair my past mistakes.

At this juncture I again met Ethel Leah, more beautiful than ever. Dr. Fitzelroy was away; we met frequently, and on my part the old love returned with trebled intensity. Before it had been but the love of a boy; now it was the love of a man. She, on her side, professed a similar reawakening of the old affection. But when I urged her to follow the dictates of this affection she failed in the test.

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