CHAPTER VI
‘Business,’ Meadowes explained to Anne a few days after this, ‘was taking him out of London.’ His absence, too, might be somewhat prolonged. He left ample means with his friend Mr. Prior (‘the parson who wedded us, Anne’), and these moneys were to be forwarded by him to Anne at regular intervals; she would want for nothing. Anne took the news quietly, as was her way, and hoped his business might delay ‘Dick’ a shorter time than he anticipated.
Meadowes, however, knew his own mind now, and was quite decided as to the length of time he would be absent from Anne. In the spring a child would be born to them, and after that he would come and tell her everything; till then it might be brutal to disturb her present peace of mind. But after the event it must be done, and the sooner the better. This had been his ultimate decision.
Still, decisions being more easily taken than put into execution, Anne had been a very proud and happy mother for some eight weeks before Meadowes found it possible to speak to her of the matter of their supposed marriage. And even then his hand was, so to speak, forced. He had ridden out from town in haste one summer morning, and now sat in the porch with Anne, wondering why after all he had come, for tell her he could not, though he had started with the determination to do so.
‘For certain, Dick, you be mighty silent,’ said Anne at last, looking up from her sewing.
‘I am annoyed over business,’ said Meadowes lamely, looking down at the ground.
‘And a fine packet of letters unopened in your pocket too,’ laughed Anne, pointing with her needle at the bundle as she spoke.
‘I rode off in such haste,’ began Meadowes absently, then he took the letters from his pocket and turned them over one by one.
‘From my lawyer—from Simon Prior—from——’ He stopped short and looked hard at the third letter, shook his head, and broke the seal to glance at its contents.
‘Lor’, Dick! what hath come to you?’ cried Anne, throwing aside her work a moment later, for she had caught sight of his face; it was grown suddenly grey and rigid. She stepped behind him, laying her hand on his shoulder, and glanced down at the sheet of paper he held.
‘Nothing, Anne—a mere joke,’ said Meadowes quickly, crumpling up the paper as if Anne could have read what was written on it.
‘Dick, that’s a word from Sebastian Shepley, so sure as I do stand here,’ said Anne, her voice shaking; ‘I do know the looks of his name upon the sheet, for ’twas all ever I could read for myself of his letters, an’ many’s the one I had.’
‘Shepley? what would Shepley write to me of?’ asked Meadowes hotly, rising and walking away down the garden-walk towards the gate. But Anne would not be put off. She followed him down the walk and laid her hand on his arm.
‘Tell me, Dick,’ she said; ‘I had a deal rather hear straight all he hath to say.’
‘I swear to you——’ Meadowes began; but Anne interrupted him.
‘Then you swear false, Dick: ’tis writ by Sebastian’s own hand, or my name be not Anne Sundon. Best tell me what he saith.’
‘The letter is from a man Steven Shackleton, Anne. You mistook the lettering, being no scholar,’ persisted Meadowes, lying desperately now, his courage had so withered when brought to the point.
Anne faced round upon him; her big clever brown eyes seemed to be reading into his very soul.
‘You’re makin’ up tales, Dick,’ she said. ‘You won’t look me in the eyes and tell me that’s not Sebastian’s hand of write.’
‘There,’ cried Meadowes, facing round to meet her eyes directly. ‘The letter was from——’ His glance fell to the ground, as he added, ‘Steven Shackleton’ again.
‘If so be you speak straight——’ Anne began. But Meadowes with an impatient exclamation cut her short.
‘What do you take me for? Well, I must be off. A fool I was to leave town without reading my letters, for back to it I must go in a couple of hurries. Come, bid me good-bye, Anne,’ he added, bending down towards her.
‘Good-bye,’ said Anne absently, turning away into the cottage.
She sat beside the baby’s cradle, rocking it slowly, and gazed down at the floor. What did all this confusion and contradiction on Dick’s part mean? Why did he look like that, as scared as though he had seen a ghost? And why was he so angry, and why again so flushed?
Dick meantime was riding back to London at a great pace—riding as if the devil himself rode behind him. But when he reached town it was to ask himself why he had come there; for deep down in his heart he knew that the time had come, and that tell Anne he must—yes, the whole black truth from first to last. He had ridden away from her searching truth-compelling eyes, but they followed him still, and back he must go and have done with it all. Why would the earth not open and swallow him up?—Ah, happy Dathan and Abiram!
CHAPTER VII
The day passed slowly for Anne after Dick had left. Her mind was troubled by vague half-formulated doubts. Had Dick spoken truly, or had he lied to save her pain? Surely, surely she could never mistake Sebastian’s signature, the same she had gazed at so often, and kissed, aye, and wept over also. She revolved these questions in her mind all day and found no satisfactory answers to them; when she lay down at night, one insistent suggestion whispered on in her ear, ‘Why did Dick look like that? Was he lying? Did ever man look so mazed and scared when he spoke the truth?’ Then Anne’s tired eyes closed and she entered the beautiful dream-world. Now the dream-world holds sensations of indescribable vividness not attainable on the earth-world; here experiences come within the scope of words, there we experience the inexpressible.
In a dream, then, in a vision of the night, when deep sleep had fallen upon her, Anne dreamed and thought she awoke in Paradise. For Sebastian came to her (out of nowhere, after the fashion of dreams), and their souls seemed fused together in a warm silence. Not a word was spoken between them; yet the miserable past was blotted out for ever; a great light shone everywhere—a glow, a heat of forgiveness, a passion of fulfilment at last; and the beautiful thrilling silence of it all! They seemed alone in hollow space, out of reach of this world’s hubbub. What need of explanations when all was understood? Her thoughts rested on that splendid wordless vacancy. ‘Sure I be in heaven at last!’ said poor Anne. ‘A fine heaven too, that quiet as it is! The old one as I used to hear on was all noise o’ trumpets an’ hosannas—here’s heaven indeed, with this grand quiet as is to go on for ever.’
Anne woke suddenly then—the appalling conviction of a dream was upon her: she might have spoken face to face with her dear lover, so vividly present he had seemed, such a sudden assurance of his faithfulness had come to her. She sat up in bed and called out aloud in the quiet room—
‘Lord! be it a dream? Sebastian dear, what’s this I’m feelin’? Have Dick Sundon fooled me out an’ out a-tellin’ lies of you all this long time? Help me, am I losing my judgment?’
She rose up, groped her way across the dark room, and drew back the window-curtain. The first streaks of day were showing in the sky, the peaceful wooded land was half shrouded still in the mists of morning. With long whistling notes the birds gave welcome to the coming day; they called to each other, near at hand, and far off among the blossoming thickets, like happy spirits that sing together in the fields of joy. Anne leaned from the window and listened to these songs that went up so straight into the dim blue morning skies. A great fear held her fast,—the fear that Dick, her husband, her helper, had deceived her. In her dismay and bewilderment she could only repeat again and again, ‘Lord help me, Lord help me,’ scarcely knowing what she said. Then, afraid to lie down again, she dressed and went down-stairs and into the garden. Far off on the London road she heard the distant trotting of a horse and the roll of wheels; some one must be driving along in the quiet morning dimness. Anne stepped down the little walk and stood leaning against the gate.
The wheels came nearer, and then came down the lane. Anne turned away, for even in that dim light the passers-by must see her tears.
Then she heard the chaise stop at the gate; Dick’s voice—how clear it sounded in the early stillness!—was speaking to the post-boy.
‘There, my man; that’s for your trouble all a dark night.’
‘Thank you, sir—thanks to you,’ said the boy as the chaise rattled off.
Anne turned and came down the little walk to meet Dick; her gown brushed the dew from the overgrown rose-bushes in showers as she passed. She came towards him silently, her face tear-stained, tragic. Dick held out both hands to her, but before he could speak Anne checked him with an upraised hand.
‘God’s spoke to me, Dick,’ she said, stopping before him like an avenging angel.
‘I have come to tell you everything,’ said poor Dick; and at that moment he drank the dregs of a bitter cup, ‘for I knew you guessed something when I left you.’
‘God spoke to me in a dream,’ repeated Anne. ‘When I waked up I knew for sure you had lied to me.’
‘Yes, Anne, I lied,’ he said, almost in a whisper.
‘About Sebastian?’
‘Yes.’
‘An’ he never played me false, nor married a Dutch wife?’
‘Never.’
‘Come,’ said Anne. ‘Come then an’ try if you can speak truth this once.’ She pointed to the seat by the bee-hives, and in silence they crossed over to it and sat down.
‘Tell me now,’ said Anne.
Dick leant forward and began his story, and a pitiful story it was. Now that he was face to face with the worst he made no attempt at extenuation of his falsity; he might have been reading off the words from a printed page, they came so straight from his lips, his flute-clear voice never hesitated once till the whole was told. Anne on her part listened quietly enough; without the usual exclamatory interruptions which her sex commonly indulge in. When the story was done there was a moment’s silence, before she said, speaking very low—
‘Eh! but I’ve been a bitter fool.’ She rose then and stood looking down at Dick.
‘I’m goin’ now,’ she said. ‘If I’m no man’s wife, at least I’ll be no man’s mistress. An’ for the child, you’d best care for him yourself. You’ll maybe make him as good a man as his father some day.’
Dick sprang up and caught her hand. ‘Anne, Anne,’ he cried, ‘you must see how it is—you must understand—I scarce knew all your feeling for Shepley at first—I thought you had forgot—I thought women forgot always—I had not realised—not until that night you spoke of him—and then, then I could not bear it, and I resolved to tell you truly. I——’
‘Oh, you’ve acted mighty true for certain,’ said Anne quietly.
‘I have indeed told you all the truth——’
‘Yes, now.’
‘But, Anne, men are mortal—will fall before temptation. ’Tis hard to blame us too cruelly.’
‘O yes; for certain men be mortal.’
‘I shall in truth provide for you all your days, Anne; I thought of no other thing.’
‘Will you, sir?’ said Anne, with a curious smile, and Meadowes, not catching its meaning, pursued eagerly—
‘All your days truly, Anne; you shall have all that woman can wish, if you will but pardon me.’
Anne stood looking at him in a curious dispassionate way for a moment.
‘I’d sooner starve,’ she said then, shortly.
‘But, Anne, you can never suppose that I would let you want, after all there has come and gone between us, after——’
Anne smiled again her curious smile, and shook her head.
‘A strange man you be for certain, Dick,’ she said; ‘kind an’ tender when you’ve a mind to be, and one as feels quick. She paused before adding slowly, ‘And just as false as hell.’
Meadowes winced under the words, but he went on, ‘False or no, Anne, I must provide for you—for you and the child.’
‘For the child mayhap, never for me,’ said Anne. ‘You’d best see after him, for he’ll be set down to your account when all things is squared. See you train him up to be so good a man as you are, Dick.’
‘Then do you not wish to care for your son yourself, Anne?’ asked Meadowes incredulously, for, up to this time, Anne had doted on the boy.
‘No more I do. He be your son, Dick, and ’tis for you to fend for him.’
‘Then——’ Meadowes hesitated, waiting for Anne to make her intentions known.
‘I’ve worked before, and now I’ll work again; and if so be I get no work, then I’ll starve, as I’ve starved before,’ said Anne quietly. ‘Martha’s kind and up in years, best leave the boy with her.’
‘Are you going to leave him?’
‘Yes, an’ never see him nor you again,’ said Anne. She turned away into the house without another word, and Meadowes heard her go up-stairs and move about in her room gathering a few possessions together. She came out again before long, carrying a little bundle.
‘Good-bye, Dick,’ she said, holding out her hand to him; ‘good-bye to the part on you as was kind to me—the rest be rotten bad.’
‘It cannot be you are really going, Anne.’
‘Good-bye,’ said Anne for answer, and she walked away down the lane and turned off at the opening that led into the London road.
CHAPTER VIII
On a warm summer evening, some three weeks later, Richard Meadowes sat in the library of his town house thinking, perhaps not unnaturally, of Anne Champion and wondering where she was.
‘Dr. Sebastian Shepley, to wait upon you, sir,’ said the man-servant, showing some one in, and Meadowes rose to greet his visitor, feeling the room strangely warm.
‘Ah, Shepley,’ was all he said for welcome to the tall steady-eyed man who came forward into the room.
Shepley sat down opposite to Richard Meadowes and facing the sunlight. His pleasant blue eyes rested on Meadowes inquiringly for a moment.
‘I fear I have intruded on you, sir,’ he said, noticing the other man’s embarrassment.
‘I—I am pleased to see you,’ said Meadowes, not with absolute veracity. The situation seemed at that moment intolerable to him—better, he thought, make a quick end of it.
‘You have heard about Anne Champion?’ he said, forcing himself to look straight at Sebastian Shepley.
‘I am come for no other reason than to ask your aid in the matter,’ said Shepley, ‘for the last I have heard of Anne was the message of thanks you gave me from her anent the amber necklace. Often as I’ve writ to her I have heard never a word in answer. Tell me, sir, do you know aught of where she went?’
‘I know naught of Anne now,’ said Meadowes, looking down as he spoke.
‘Now?’ asked Shepley, for something in the other’s voice attracted his attention.
‘A year and more she lived with me, and she bore me a son,’ said Meadowes.
There was a moment of silence that seemed to tingle.
‘There—swallow your lies!’ cried Shepley; and he struck with all his great strength across Meadowes’ lips. Without another word he left the room, passed out through the hall, and strode away down the Square.
‘Lies, lies—hellish black lies every word he spoke,’ he cried in his heart. ‘And ah! my poor Annie, what is come to you these weary years?’ Then remembering that Anne’s neighbours in Yard’s Entry might have some knowledge of her whereabouts he turned his steps in that direction.
It was drawing to sundown when at last he reached Yard’s Entry. He stood still for a moment and looked up at the little window he had known as Anne’s, and which used to reflect the sunlight. It was blazing scarlet just now. Then he went up to the doorway and knocked; Mrs. Nare appeared in answer to his summons.
‘A good even to you, mistress,’ said Shepley. ‘And can you tell me aught of Anne Champion, who lived here some two years since?’
Mrs. Nare squinted up at him out of her narrow old eyes.
‘Anne, she came back here some three weeks agone,’ she said. ‘Came and went her ways again. And now she hath come here mortal stricken—taken with a fever she’ve caught working amidst the rags for a Jew man in Flower and Dean Street.’
Sebastian waited to hear no more; he ran up the dark stair and unceremoniously opened the door of Anne’s room.
Such a blaze of light smote across his eyes as he came in that he was half-blinded, for the skies were scarlet that night from a great sunset, and all the room was lit up with the red glow. He stood for a moment in the doorway shading his eyes from the dazzle, then stepped across the crazy old floor, that creaked and gave under his heavy tread.
‘Annie, Annie!’ he cried, kneeling down beside her.
For Anne, she thought she dreamed again; the weary tossings of the desolate day were done—she tasted a supreme felicity. What if with the breaking day the vision fled, and she woke again to want and loneliness? enough that now it tarried with her. She would not move, she scarcely dared to breathe for dread lest the dream should depart; but lay very still and felt the kindly strength of Sebastian’s arm support her, and his cool hard cheek pressed against hers that burned with fever. ‘Annie,’ he said again, and this time Anne opened her eyes and smiled.
‘Eh, Sebastian, Sebastian, my dear man, stay—stay one minute, for dreams be terrible short,’ she cried. Nor would all Shepley’s words reassure her of his actual presence.
‘So many days as I’ve lain here, an’ such dreams and dreams! Lor’! them was dreams! You and Dick Sundon, Dick Sundon an’ you, back and fore you came and went the two of you. Sometimes Phil ’ud be there too (Phil my boy as is)—(Lord Christ, have a care on Phil, being that he’s so young and with none but Dick Sundon a-carin’ of him!) . . . then I’d dream of Dick for hours and hours, an’ now, Sebastian, ’tis you; Lord send this dream stays!’
Shepley knelt beside her, listening to all her strange babble of ‘Dick’ and ‘Phil;’ but feeling how the fever ran hot in her blood he pushed back the fears that came to him with her words. He looked round the room, with the stamp of relentless poverty set everywhere on it, and thanked Heaven he was there now. For poor Anne lay on the bare boards of this place that was now her shelter, and for covering she had thrown over her the dress she had taken off. No trace of meat or drink was to be seen anywhere.
As he sat thus taking in the bareness of poor Anne’s sick-room, with a perfunctory little knock the door was shoved open and Mistress Nare came in. She walked across the floor on tiptoe and stood looking at Anne.
‘The fever hath gotten that hold on her blood ’twill burn her up before the week is out,’ she said sagely, winking across at Sebastian. ‘And by your leave, sir, I’d make bold to say you’d best sit farther off from her—’tis a catching sickness I dare swear.’
‘I am come here to cure her,’ said Sebastian; ‘I am a surgeon to my trade.’
‘For certain then, sir, you’ve come too late,’ croaked the old woman.
Sebastian rose angrily.
‘Have a care what you say,’ he exclaimed. ‘And now, if you’ll do me a service, you shall go and buy all that Anne Champion needs—a bed to lie on——’
‘And die on,’ interpolated Mrs. Nare viciously, but Sebastian gave no heed to her remark, only went on with his enumeration:—
‘And blankets to cover her, and food to eat and wine to drink—all these things she must have before the day is done; so hasten you—if so be you wish for this.’ He drew from his pocket a coin and laid it in the old woman’s hand.
‘A bed and blankets. Food and wine and fire,’ repeated Mistress Nare. ‘Good lack, sir, dyin’ Anne she’ve not got so much as will buy a shroud to wrap her in!’
‘Here,’ said Sebastian hastily, shaking out from his purse a handful of coins. ‘How much will you require?’ Mrs. Nare was convinced.
‘Happen three guineas, sir, to begin with,’ she said, and her crooked old fingers closed greedily over the yellow coins.
‘Well, hasten—hasten,’ said Sebastian, and Mrs. Nare shuffled off down the stair chuckling and curious.
‘Dyin’ Annie’s gotten a lover up to the last, Matthew,’ she said as she passed her son on the stair. So much for maternal jealousy.
CHAPTER IX
The vision tarried. Anne never woke to another lonely day; always there was Sebastian sitting by her, Sebastian holding her hand, Sebastian bending over her, wise and tender.
Whenever the fever left her, Anne was trying to tell him something—something he would not listen to then. But at last one day, lying still and white, Anne suddenly spoke.
‘Listen to me, Sebastian,’ she said, ‘for I’m not long for this world; you can’t refuse to hear me now.’ And with that she told him all her story. Sebastian sat beside her, his head bowed upon his hands, listening without word or comment.
‘Now that I be come to death’s dear, I’ve but the one thought. Dick, he’s a man to look out for hisself—and you was ever straight, my man; but w’at’s to come of Phil? Lord, I’d turn in my grave to think on him! for sure he’s gotten part o’ my soul, Sebastian—he hath truly.’ Sebastian did not speak, and Anne went on—
‘Dick’ll fend for him an’ no fear—make a fine gentleman of him most like—as fine as hisself, and then teach him lyin’ ways an’ false dealin’s, an’ my boy as hath half my soul he’ll go down into hell with all the liars as find their place there, and who’s to help?’
Still Sebastian did not speak.
‘Eh!’ cried Anne, half rising on her pillows. ‘This once I seen you hard, Sebastian! ’Tis no fault o’ the child’s—no, nor mine neither, as he’s there.’
‘You can scarce expect me to love him, Anne,’ said Sebastian at last. ‘And what help can I give the child?’
‘Eh! none, none, my man; maybe Heaven’ll help him,’ sobbed Anne, then she turned and laid her hands in Sebastian’s.
‘But as you love me,’ she said, ‘you’ll make me this vow—you’ll swear to me if ever you can help my poor Phil you’ll do it; not for his own sake, Sebastian (an’ forgettin’ Dick Sundon an’ all his lies), but for mine, as was Phil’s mother, and gave him half her soul?’
‘Annie, Annie, I’d do more than that for you!’ said Sebastian. He prayed her then to lie still—she had spoken beyond her strength. Anne obeyed, and till late in the day she did not speak again, then she spoke suddenly—half-wanderingly this time.
‘You’ll live long and happy, Sebastian,’ she said; ‘you’ll marry, my pretty man, and another woman but me, she’ll be the joyful mother o’ your sons.’ Then with no change in her voice, but as if she suddenly addressed a third person in the room, she continued: ‘And, God, you’ll avenge me on Dick Sundon? You understand how it’s been with me, an’ how ’tis impossible I should forgive him? And, Lord, have a care of Phil, and give him a white heart—my caring of him be past an’ done with now.’ There fell a long silence then, poor Anne having disposed of all her earthly cares.
‘Come, Sebastian,’ she cried, then quickly—with that awful chanting voice of the dying—and she held out her arms to him. But even as he bent down, Sebastian felt a long straining shiver pass through her, the sorrows of death compassed her, the pains of hell took hold upon her. He caught her to his heart for a moment, but a Stronger than he was drawing Anne away from his embrace. As their lips met she smiled a far-away dreamy smile.
‘Ha’ done, my man—ha’ done,’ she said; ‘no more of earth.’
‘I’ll bury Annie,’ said Sebastian, ‘and then I’ll kill Richard Meadowes.’
It was in compliance with this resolution that Sebastian Shepley, a few days later, waited again upon Richard Meadowes.
Meadowes sat writing at the table with his back to the door, but at the sound of its opening he turned round, and at sight of his visitor sprang up; the two men faced each other silently for a moment. Sebastian’s eyes from under their overhanging brows flashed like blue flames.
‘I called you a liar,’ he said, advancing up the room, ‘and for that mistake I crave your pardon; you spoke truth, and now I am come to fight you for the truth you spoke.’
‘Fight with you, you damned surgeon! you son of a village leech! I fight with gentlemen!’ said Meadowes scornfully.
‘And I with men, so if you are one you had best show it,’ retorted Shepley; and he drew the sword that hung at his side with a drawing rattle from its sheath.
There was not much question then between them of rank. They fought with savage hatred on either side; but from the first the fortunes of the fight followed Sebastian.
The whole had been ended, and ended with it there would also have been the larger half of this story, if an unaccountable impulse had not moved Sebastian Shepley to mercy. Something, perhaps, of the futility of revenge, now that Anne was dead and could never know of it, came to him of a sudden, and stayed his hand.
‘There,’ he said. ‘You have your life at my hand, for all it may be worth.’ And he turned away as if to leave the house.
Meadowes leant against the wall, breathing hard after the struggle.
‘Stop—one moment, Shepley,’ he said, ‘I—I would speak with you; Anne Champion, if I can find her, shall want for naught.’
‘She wants for naught now,’ said Shepley shortly.
‘But,’ interposed Meadowes, ‘I should be the man to provide for her, I looked to do that always, I had indeed no intention——’
‘Anne Champion is dead,’ said Shepley slowly, pausing for a moment on the threshold. ‘Anne is dead, and her blood be upon you and upon your children.’
PART II‘He that hath a wife and children hath givenhostages to Fortune.’
PART II
‘He that hath a wife and children hath given
hostages to Fortune.’
CHAPTER X
The war was ended, the Peace of Utrecht signed, and what remained of our armies after the twelve years’ conflict was free to come home once more. With the soldiers came back the surgeons, to practise in peace the suggestive proficiency they had gained in war-time; and cleverest among them all was Dr. Sebastian Shepley.
Like all successful doctors, Shepley owed something to his personality. There was that in him which inspired others with a sense of his capacity. Not very much of a gentleman, but very much of a man; of gigantic size and easy rough address, he suggested all that was most cheerful and prosperous in life. Shepley had been through half the campaigns of the war, and now that peace was proclaimed he had the good luck to obtain an appointment under the then celebrated Dr. Joseph Barrington of Harley Street, Surgeon in Ordinary to his newly ascended Majesty King George the First. The appointment was a fortunate one for Shepley; but perhaps it was not quite so fortunate for Barrington, who found ere long that Sebastian Shepley was likely to prove an Absalom who would steal away the hearts of fashionable London from himself. But Barrington was very magnanimous—strangely magnanimous,—and seemed rather to like than to dislike the praises that were heaped upon the young man. The reason of his magnanimity was not very far to seek, nor had he any false delicacy in telling Shepley of it; for, as they sat together one day, the older man gave it as his opinion that marriage was a prudent step for a young man to take before taking up a practice.
‘You should in truth be looking out for a wife, Shepley,’ he concluded, and he gave a suggestive cough.
‘Some day, mayhap, sir, some day,’ said Shepley. His face fell suddenly into a half hard, half tragical expression, very foreign to that it generally wore, and he passed his hand quickly across his lips. Barrington, a keen observer of faces, gave a sharp glance at him for a moment.
‘Such wounds, Shepley, are best treated not too tenderly,’ he said. ‘It but keeps them open.’
‘There may be truth in that you say, sir, but it goes against nature,’ said Shepley.
‘Like many a good drastic cure,’ said Barrington. ‘Come (if you will have my advice), bury this old trouble, whatever it may be, and begin life from where you are. Many a happy match hath begun coolishly, many an ill one hotly: and this is the wisdom of a man old enough to be your father.’
‘I thank you, sir; I shall give some thought to the matter,’ said Shepley, and would have changed the subject, but Barrington pursued—
‘You scarce need a proof of my goodwill; Shepley; yet I’ll give you one. There’s not another man in London to whom I would sooner give my daughter Emma than yourself.’
‘My dear sir——’
‘There, there, I have but given you a piece of my mind and something of a hint. Let the matter rest. I pray you to be in no haste: no prudent marriage was ever yet hasty, nor any hasty one prudent; time, time and thought——’
‘Yes, sir, as you say, time and thought—’tis a great step in life,’ said Shepley. But he took the older man’s hand in his as he spoke, and shook it warmly.
‘I thank you, sir,’ he said. ‘And this story you guess at—well, I give you my hand on’t that if ever I marry Emma she hears it all.’
‘Tush! keep your heart’s history to yourself,’ said Barrington, smiling. ‘The woman who supposes herself any man’s first love is a fool.’
Emma, whose name had been thus bandied between Sebastian Shepley and her father, was the younger of Dr. Barrington’s two daughters. The elder daughter, Charlotte by name, had married early, and ‘well,’ as the phrase goes, having allied her fortunes with those of a certain Sir James Mallow, who, though only a knight, was the possessor of a handsome income, and had converted Charlotte from plain Miss Barrington without a fortune to ‘My Lady’ with one. The marriage had been a source of vast gratification to Emma as well as to the fortunate Charlotte, for it seemed to be in the very blood and bones of the Barringtons to aspire in matters social. Their father’s promotion to Court practice had given these young women another help on the painful uphill path, and had made it not only possible but quite natural for them to mention persons of title frequently in conversation. Now Emma drove out daily in Lady Mallow’s coach, and dreamt of even greater splendours to come. She was an extremely pretty girl, slim and tall, with fine auburn hair and delicate colouring. ‘With her looks,’ said Lady Mallow, ‘Emma must have a baronet.’ And indeed she repeated this so often that Emma came to think of the baronet as a reality, and never contemplated the possibility of any suitor of lower degree.
It gave her, therefore, quite a painful shock to discover suddenly one fine day that she was beginning to care a great deal about a man who was not even distantly connected with a baronetcy. Emma made this discovery some time after Sebastian Shepley had been presented to her; but she put the thought aside at first as quite unworthy. To confirm herself in dismissing such an idea, she spoke with some sharpness to Charlotte about the spectral bridegroom.
‘I wish you would in truth present me to a baronet, Charlotte, instead of speaking so frequently of doing so,’ she said.
Charlotte was a little nettled by the remark, probably because she knew no baronet whom she could present to her sister, yet was unwilling to acknowledge the fact.
‘I take good care to present no man to you whom I do not consider suitable to be your husband,’ she said coldly.
‘I may get tired of waiting,’ said pretty Emma. This was all she said then, but some months later, in a burst of girlish despair, she confided to Lady Mallow what she feared was her hopeless passion for Dr. Sebastian Shepley. ‘I should not care for fifty baronets now,’ she concluded, burying her face on Charlotte’s not very sympathetic breast.
‘Tush! Emma,’ said her Ladyship; ‘you should look higher——’ She could think of no more weighty argument. But Emma could not listen even to this. She sobbed and sobbed, and prayed Charlotte, if she loved her, to try to help her. For a long time Charlotte resisted these entreaties, then she determined to tell her father the state of the case.
‘So this is what ails Emma?’ he said. ‘Gad! but I’ll make short work with it. Shepley is a fine man—no finer surgeon have I come across this many a year. If he will take Emma he shall have her, and welcome.’
So not very many days later, Dr. Barrington, as you have heard, approached Shepley on the subject of marriage.
At first it seemed as if nothing were to come of the conversation; then quite suddenly Shepley came one day to announce to Dr. Barrington that Emma had agreed to marry him.
‘My blessings on you for a sensible man,’ said Barrington. ‘You were so long about it I half feared you would not take my counsel at all.’
‘I took it so well that I did not hurry in the matter,’ laughed Sebastian.
He laughed himself down-stairs, laughed his adieus to Emma, and swaggered off down the street with his fine swinging gait, as gay and hearty a man as you might see in all England.
But oh, inscrutable heart of man! what were these curious old words that so rang in his ears? He seemed to be walking to the tune of them.
‘If I forget thee,’ said the voice of the heart that speaks ever whitest truth,—‘If I forget thee, let my right hand forget its cunning.’
And he shook his head and smiled, and looked down at his clever right hand.
CHAPTER XI
Sebastian and Emma Shepley began their married life in a little house in Jermyn Street—‘small,’ as Emma would have described it, ‘but genteel.’ It would be impossible to exaggerate the pride and pleasure which Emma had in the arrangements of her house, and in the fact that she was married to the (to her) finest and dearest of men; but to Sebastian marriage appeared in a very different light. For him it showed as the end of Youth, the voluntary rejection of romance, the light of common day. He had reasoned himself into it; acknowledging (and the man who does this need never call himself young again) that he had better take what he could get and be thankful for it. He had laid Passion in the grave; and, turning away, he met Life with her resolute face waiting for him inexorable as of old. Marriage was probably the first and most prudent step he could take, and Emma was fond of him, and Emma, after all, was pretty. A home, a wife, children—these solid anchors of the soul, presented themselves almost invitingly to his fancy after a time—and farewell to Love and Youth!
In these curiously differing moods of mind Emma and Sebastian entered into the estate of matrimony—Sebastian with his eyes open, Emma with hers firmly shut.
‘Can two walk together except they be agreed?’ asks that eternally unanswerable book the Bible. Not comfortably, certainly, but they can halt along somehow, far out of step it may be, yet on the same road. I am afraid that when all was said and done the walk of Emma and Sebastian was somewhat after this halting kind. For Emma had not been married for many weeks before she began to see how curiously she disagreed from Sebastian on almost every point. Strange is the glamour of love that she had not found this out sooner! It said something for both of them that after having made the discovery Emma continued to love her husband as much as ever—only, the glamour was gone now. He had been to her a faultless romantic hero, she found him to be a man with several pronounced faults, who frequently offended her taste, who constantly opposed her, who plainly told her that he had once loved another woman, and loved her memory still.
Sebastian on his part owned that Emma was occasionally quite exasperating to him; but he also acknowledged her entire goodness of heart and the excellence of her housekeeping. Their marriage in fact was just one of the ordinary ruck of marriages; not unhappy, not ideal—merely a little disappointing to Emma, a little hardening and coarsening to Sebastian. The great bone of contention was of a social nature. For gentility was dear as life itself to Emma, while to Sebastian all the little affectations and conventions which his wife valued so highly were the merest moonshine. He submitted graciously enough to correction in matters of etiquette, and laughed with imperturbable good humour when Emma called him to task for eating with his knife and wiping his lips with the back of his hand. But when it came to the question of friends and acquaintances matters were more complicated.
Emma had, so to speak, passed her acquaintances through a fine sieve, and the sifted few who came through, they, and they alone, were her intimates. Sebastian, on the other hand, had only one reason for making friends with any one—whether he liked them or not. As a matter of fact he liked the greater part of the world, and was liked by them in return, but anything like an ulterior end in making acquaintances was unknown to him. Emma’s rules for the making of so-called friends, therefore, filled him with amazement; while Emma, on her part, looked with little short of dismay upon the men whom Sebastian welcomed to his table. Certainly there was scarcely one among all his acquaintance that could have been called a gentleman. ‘As why should they, Emma? I am no gentleman myself,’ Sebastian had retorted when taxed with his preference for low company. Emma objected most of all to the soldiers whom her husband had known abroad, and who were continually coming to the house; she might be entertaining her most select lady-friends to a dish of tea, and talking the latest Court gossip with them, when, into this refined circle, and quite undismayed by its frigidly genteel atmosphere, would enter Sebastian, bringing with him, as likely as not, his friend Sergeant Cartwright, or young Tillet the bugler, who played at Ramillies. The Sergeant had lost an arm at Blenheim, and Emma shrank away instinctively from the empty sleeve he wore pinned across his breast; no historic association could reconcile her to the presence of these men in her parlour, and when they were bidden to supper Mrs. Shepley sat at the head of the table with an air of studied aloofness that was fine to see. Now and then she would raise her pretty eyebrows expressively, as when Cartwright spat on the floor, or Tillet made use of expressions not usually heard in parlours; but she came at last to see that remonstrance with Sebastian on this score was useless, and resigned herself as best she might to see the hero of her first love make merry with such friends.
But perhaps Emma’s sorest moments were when those whom she naively termed ‘persons of importance’ came to visit Sebastian. To Emma, every one with a title was a person of importance, be they never so unimportant in reality, and it seemed to her that Sebastian intentionally said and did the wrong things to such personages. There was one terrible night when ‘a Marquis’ (enough that the mystic dignity was his) honoured the little house in Jermyn Street with a visit, and Sebastian, all unheeding of coughs and frowns from his wife, must press this exalted visitor to sup with them. Now on this ill-fated night Emma had chosen to feed her lord and master on pig’s feet and fried liver—viands whose price, or rather want of price, is almost proverbial. It was, indeed, from no sordid motives of economy that Emma had so furnished forth her board, but from the desire to please Sebastian, whose taste in food was incurably vulgar. How could she have anticipated that burning moment when her faltering tongue must frame the words—
‘My Lord, may I offer you some of these pig’s feet, or mayhap your Lordship would relish some of this fried liver more?’
And as if this was not bitter enough, did not Sebastian break into a laugh that shook the glasses on the table, crying out—
‘Faith, Emma, had you known we were to entertain the quality to-night, I had not had my liver and pig’s feet!’
Emma smiled faintly, for tears were not far off; and the Marquis, seeing her perturbation, told the story of the liver they got at Blenheim, that the officers swore was shoe-leather,—‘A different dish from your fine cookery, madam,’ he said, begging for another helping of the dish. But it was a life-long lesson to poor Emma: she never ordered liver for supper again without a pang of foreboding.
Then the matter of Church observances had arisen between these young people. Emma was a devout Church-woman; Sebastian did not hold much to one persuasion or another, and certainly was not fond of Church services. Emma all her life had gone every Sunday to the curious little old church of St. Mary Minories, and after her marriage expected Sebastian to go there with her. The first Sunday morning after her marriage Emma came down-stairs in her church-going attire, and in rather a shocked voice expressed her astonishment to find Sebastian smoking by the fire, instead of making any preparation for coming with her.
‘Charlotte will be here in the coach immediately,’ she said. ‘Hasten, Sebastian, we shall be late at St. Mary’s.’
‘St. Mary’s?’ queried Sebastian.
‘St. Mary Minories, where it hath always been our custom to attend divine service—come, Sebastian, pray lay aside your pipe!’
Sebastian leant forward, pressing down the tobacco into the bowl of his pipe. He made no reply.
‘Are you not coming to church? Perhaps some patients require your care——’ began Emma. She came and laid her hand on his shoulder in gentle remonstrance.
‘No, I cannot come.’
‘Mayhap you might come to meet us—you think little of such a walk,’ suggested Emma.
‘No!’ said Sebastian curtly. Emma had never seen him so cross before. Her eyes filled with tears, and she withdrew her hand from his shoulder, and turned away.
‘I fear I have displeased you, sir!’ she said, feeling a sudden inclination to desert this young man, who could behave so strangely to her one short week after their marriage. But the next moment she forgave him; for Sebastian, at the tearful sound of her voice, jumped up and came over to where she stood, holding out his hands to her.
‘Pardon me, Emma; ’tis no fault of yours, but a fancy of my own. I never pass that way an I can help it, Emma—that’s all.’
‘Why——!’ began stupid Emma; but she dried her tears.
‘Because Anne Champion lived there, and there I saw her die, and I’m like to weep tears of blood when I pass by that way,’ said Sebastian, who, whatever he was, would have no secrets from his wife, in spite of Dr. Barrington’s wisdom.
If Emma had been a crafty woman she would have discontinued her attendance at St. Mary Minories after this; but she was not, and instead, she went there weekly, and very frequently she would say, ‘Sebastian, if so be that you cannot worship along with me, why do you not go to some other church?’ And Sebastian scarcely knew whether to laugh more at her singular lack of tact or to be provoked by it.
After this sort of fashion time went on; and then, whatever little differences there may have been between the Shepleys, were forgotten for a time in the wonderfully uniting interest which came to them with the birth of their daughter. All Emma’s first admiration for Sebastian returned to her, when she saw how delightfully he played the part of a father. And indeed, to see him with this enchanting milky-skinned baby in his arms was a sight to please any heart; they looked so wholly incongruous.
‘Lord! to think of your fathering such a dainty piece of goods, doctor!’ exclaimed Emma’s pet aversion, the Sergeant, at sight of Sebastian and his tiny daughter. Emma was too proud and pleased at the moment to find fault with the speech, so, lifting little Miss Shepley from her husband’s arms, she brought her to be kissed by the Sergeant.
‘She is very beautiful,’ said the proud mother in a conclusive manner, after the salute had been very unwillingly given. ‘And we intend to name her Caroline, after my mother.’
So let this be my reader’s first introduction to Caroline Shepley.