CHAPTER XVII
The next day was the same, and the next and the next. On the fourth day, urged by despair, Carrie sat down to write to Sebastian the whole tale of her woe.
‘Sir, I shall die,’ she wrote. ‘ ’Tis terrible; I do not like living with women, I find men vastly more agreeable. Pray, pray, dear sir—my dearest dada—write and summon me home, for I am weary of my life here at Wynford.’
Sebastian laughed a good deal over this mournful missive, and wrote Carrie to try to cultivate patience and the womanly graces.
But before his letter had reached her, help had come to Carrie from an unexpected quarter. Lady Mallow, by the kindness of Heaven, fell sick of an influenza, which painful disorder confined the poor lady to her bed, and set Carrie at liberty.
Andennuifled: and with happy hurrying feet Carrie raced down the avenue and along the sweet hedge-bordered roads, going she knew not whither—but away, away from bondage and embroidery and double-dummy whist!
She turned off into a side lane, and then stood looking across the country to see which direction seemed the most promising.
The river plainly beckoned her: so, thrusting her way through the hedge, Carrie set off across the meadows towards the silvery loops of water that slipped along so invitingly in the distance. The fields were white with anemone blossoms. She stood among them in perfect rapture, and then got down upon her knees and began to pull the flowers in handfuls; then further off, along the river bank, she saw a great thicket of blossoming thorn, white as snow, and off she ran towards it.
Carrie flung down all her freshly gathered flowers in a heap upon the grass when she reached the thorn bushes. For these blossoms were lovelier by far than anything she had seen yet; the little starry flowers set on to their jagged black stems had a beauty all their own. Undismayed by the assailing thorns, Carrie pressed into the thicket to gather some of the coveted branches. Her hair caught on the bushes, her dress gave a distracting tear, and finally she scratched her plump white arm up to the elbow. This at last sobered her adventurous spirit. She tried to escape from the clinging branches, but being town-bred, she was ignorant of the fact that to turn round in a thorn thicket is to imprison yourself hopelessly there. So Carrie twisted quickly round, thinking to find herself free, and instead felt of a sudden twenty more thorns catch on her unfortunate person. She shook her head, and a branch a-dance in the breeze clutched her hair like a human hand.
‘O you beautiful cross bushes!’ cried Carrie in despair, ‘I will not gather more of you, if you will but let me go!’
‘Can I help you, madam?’ said a voice behind her at this moment, and some one laughed. Carrie could not turn round to see who had come to her assistance, but she laughed also.
‘O yes, I thank you,’ she cried; ‘I do not know what to do, I am all caught round and round.’
‘Come out backwards; do not try to turn, I shall hold the branches here for you. Take heed for your eyes, madam,’ said her helper. Carrie began to beat a slow retreat, disengaging herself from the clinging branches one by one. At last, torn and dishevelled, she shook off the last assailant and turned round to see who had come to her aid.
A young man with very shining eyes stood beside her, still holding back the thorn bushes with one hand. They looked at each other in silence for a moment, and then the young man exclaimed in a tone of surprised amusement,
‘Now, by all the powers! ’Tis little Carrie Shepley!’ And Carrie, in spite of her ruffled plumage, responded to this salutation with great urban ease of manner.
‘And this is “Phil” that used to be?’ she said, holding out her hand to him.
‘Carrie, you are scarce changed at all, saving that you are grown to be near as tall as I am,’ said Phil, and he eyed Carrie with great admiration as he took her hand.
‘Nor you either, Mr.—Mr.—I forget your surname,’ said Carrie, drawing herself up with some dignity at this rather free address from a stranger. But as she spoke she met Phil’s shining eyes so ridiculously unchanged that she laughed outright and came down from her high horse without further delay.
‘You are not Mr. Anything, I think—only Phil,’ she said. ‘I could think, to look at us both just now, that we were playing in the Park, and that Patty and Peter would come round the corner in a moment to scold us! Pray, sir—Phil—where are you come from, and how do we meet here?’
‘Come and sit by the river, and I shall tell you everything you care to hear,’ said Phil. And Carrie, nothing loath, sat down on the bank, gathered her torn flounces around her, and gave a surreptitious smooth to her straying locks.
‘Well, I must tell you, you are a trespasser, Carrie, on my father’s land. But ’twould be an ungracious way to renew an old friendship to arrest you—so I let that pass. My father, if you must know, is Mr. Richard Meadowes of Fairmeadowes—the house you see far away there among the trees; that is how I come to be here.’
‘Do you live always here then?’ asked Carrie.
‘I? no—I am but come from Oxford for Easter. I am alone here though just now. My father is in town.—But you have not yet told me how you are here, Carrie?’
‘I am visiting my aunt, Lady Mallow. She hath taken Forde, the house which stands on the sloping ground about half a mile from here along the high road. And indeed, indeed, Phil, I have come near running away to London, so dull have I been these four days since I came to Wynford.’
‘Dull—ah, ’tis a terrible thing to be dull,’ said Phil sympathetically; ‘once I was dull—just once in life, and I made the resolve never to suffer it again. I can bear to be unhappy, or even to be in pain; but dulness—never. I’d sooner get drunk than be dull!’ And at that the young man went off into a curiously ringing laugh that sounded across the fields like a bell.
‘Then are you never dull here?’ asked Carrie in amazement.
‘O no—never. I come here once or twice in the year, and I bring with me books to last me all the time and more; sometimes I work hard, hard, till I feel as though my brain would crack—’tis rather nice that, and then I come down here by the river and amuse myself; or I ride, or shoot the crows, or anything else there is to shoot. But the first morning I waken at an end of my resources, that day I leave Wynford. Oh, but I love Fairmeadowes. I never tire here.’
‘You are just the same,’ said Carrie, more emphatically than before; ‘to hear you talk—’tis just as you used to.’ She looked down at Phil as she spoke. He had flung himself down on the bank at her feet, and was gazing up at her in the frankest manner possible. ‘Why, how old are you?’ she asked suddenly, as unceremonious as he was, and Phil answered without a moment’s hesitation, ‘One-and-twenty, and horribly young it is—but there is all the world to conquer, to be sure, and only one life to do it in.’
Carrie opened her eyes at this statement. ‘How?’ she inquired.
‘How? ah, that is just the question! My father wished me to enter the Service—not I! “ ’Tis a profession for gentlemen,” he said. “Yes, and for fools,” said I, and he (who was in it himself, though he’s no fool!) was rarely angry with me. My father, you know, is a curious man—oh, I shall tell you all that another time,’ said Phil, rolling over on the bank in the most childish manner; then he rose and seated himself beside Carrie. Leaning his chin on his hand he looked down at the river as it flowed below them, and went on in a more serious tone—
‘I had no mind to enter the Service, you see, because I must have something to do that I care about. To speak now before crowds and crowds of people—that would be my ambition.’
‘But what would you speak about?’ asked Carrie laughingly—she was a splendid listener!
‘Speak! I’d speak about anything, Carrie. I’d speak eloquently for half an hour upon your shoe-strings and my entire unworthiness to unloose them!’
‘I believe you would,’ laughed Carrie; ‘you should enter the Church, Phil, then each Lord’s Day you must speak for a certain time.’
‘Not the Church for me, my imagination is by far too strong for that; ’twould have me before my Bishop in a jiffy. Oh, do you remember how scared you were once when I described to you how God would come down on the gilt top of St. Paul’s?’
‘Yes indeed; I should pity your hearers did you scare them after that fashion,’ said Carrie, with a smile of reminiscence.
‘I think I shall study for the Bar,’ began Phil, and then, because in spite of his volubility he was not a bore, he started up in genuine dismay.
‘Lord save us!’ he exclaimed; ‘here have I been talking of my own affairs so long you will never speak to me again, Carrie. Come, let me show you the path through the park, and as you love me, talk of some other matter!’
Carrie laughingly obeyed, talking in her turn of herself, and then they talked of childhood (that was not so very far behind either of them), and of Patty and of Peter. (‘He’s about the only man I respect in this world; if I could do my duty like him I should be proud,’ said Phil. ‘Why, he has never been late with my shaving-water for years.’ At this statement Carrie glanced up with a little grimace of amusement at Phil’s rather peach-like cheek, and he laughed ringingly. ‘Well, that is mayhap something of an exaggeration,’ he admitted.)
And so they sauntered on, abundantly amused with each other, till Carrie remembered with dismay the lateness of the hour, and bidding Phil a hurried farewell, ran off down the road in the direction of Forde.
Phil called after her as she ran: ‘Come again to-morrow, Carrie.’ And so they parted.
CHAPTER XVIII
It was not the nature of Mr. Philip Meadowes (as may have been gathered from his talk) to be reticent upon any subject. He had the acumen, however, which most talkative persons lack, to choose his listeners carefully; but with those whom he trusted Phil had absolutely no reserves. Chief among his confidants was Peter, the grave-faced elderly man-servant who had cuffed his ears in childhood, and now had discreetly forgotten the fact.
This evening, as Peter brought in his young master’s wine, Phil, lying back in a chair, the book he had been reading thrown carelessly on the floor, addressed him quite impatiently.
‘Why, where have you been all afternoon, Peter?’ he said.—‘Now whom do you think I met to-day, by all that is curious?’
Peter laid down the tray he carried, picked up the book from the floor, smoothed its ruffled pages, and made a feint of guessing.
‘Mayhap the parson, sir?’ he said.
‘No, no, stupid; more interesting by far!’
‘Mayhap the parson’s daughter, sir?’
‘Wrong again; some one a deuced deal prettier than the parson’s daughter. But there, you can never guess—who but Carrie Shepley that I used to play with long ago in town, in the days when you were courting her maid Patty?’
Phil expected Peter to laugh at this resurrection of his former flirtations; but instead of laughing he stepped forward and laid his hand suddenly on his young master’s arm.
‘For the love of Heaven, sir, do you have naught to do with Miss Carrie Shepley!’ he said.
Phil was surprised beyond measure to see the decorous Peter so startled out of his usual behaviour.
‘Why, Peter, what the dickens is the matter with you?’ he said.
‘This, sir, that there will be trouble betwixt you and the master if so be you takes up with Miss Carrie Shepley. I know not the rights nor the wrongs of the story, but this I knows, that there was a mighty quarrel once betwixt the master and Miss Carrie’s father, Dr. Shepley of Jermyn Street as is.’
‘Oh—ho!’ whistled Phil. ‘And what did the gentlemen fall out upon, Peter?’
‘On a woman, sir,’ said Peter, fidgeting a little uneasily.
‘And who was the woman?’
‘By the name of Anne Champion, as I gathered, sir. I overheard their quarrel, sir, through the folding-doors betwixt the rooms in St. James’ Square, sir.’
‘So that was why you and Patty were so particular that we met outside, and altogether—eh, Peter?’
‘The same, sir.’
‘Ah, Peter, I have hope for you yet! Sometimes I think you scarce human, you are so dutiful and faithful, but you stooped to some deceit, I’m glad to hear, once, all along of Patty!’
Peter smiled his demure smile.
‘ ’Twas as you say, sir,—all along of Patty,’ he assented.
Phil reverted then to the quarrel. ‘Anne Champion, Anne Champion,’ he repeated. ‘And who was Anne Champion, think you, Peter?’
Peter came up to the fireplace, re-arranged the ornaments on the mantel-shelf, blew away a speck of imaginary dust from the gilt top of the clock, and then, speaking low, he said at last—
‘Your mother, sir, if I made no mistake, sir.’
‘Eh?’ queried Phil, sitting forward in his chair, becoming suddenly sober.
‘The same, sir,’ repeated Peter.
‘And Shepley and my father fell out over my mother, by your way of it, then?’
‘ ’Twas that way for certain, sir.’
‘And what became of my mother, since you know so much, Peter?’
‘How she came by her death, sir, I have no knowledge, but this I can tell you as the master knew naught of her death till Shepley told him the same. I heard them speak it out. Saith the master, “I shall provide for her,” and saith Shepley, “She wants for naught,” and saith the master, “ ’Tis I should support her now,” and then saith Shepley, “Anne Champion is dead, and her blood be on you, and on your children,” and with that he walked out of the room and through the hall to the street door, and the whole was over. I made bold to enter the room, and there sat the master white and shakin’ like any leaf. “Sir,” says I, “there hath harm come to you,” but he made little of it, and bade me fetch him some wine. The same I did, and set to straighten the room, that was in a disorder such as never was. The master watched me a minute, and then saith he, “Can you be silent on this, Peter—no word of it to any in the house?” and with that what think you he did, sir? The most of gentlemen would have offered me money; the master he held out his hand to me like any other man. I’ve been silent on it all these years, sir, for that handshake.’
Phil had been listening breathlessly, his quick wits piecing together from Peter’s rather incoherent account some skeleton of the truth. But at this point he fairly laughed.
‘The devil he did!’ he said. ‘Now, was not that like him, Peter? Ah, you are a clever man, my good father!’
Peter smiled indulgently. ‘Now, sir, you do never give the master his due, if I may make bold to say so,’ he began. ‘But to finish with the story, sir. ’Twas not more than six weeks from then that you was brought to the house, sir, and that’s all I do know—but, sir, from it you’ll see how ’twould be if you took up with Miss Carrie Shepley.’
‘Well, Peter, if the case be so serious as you say, you and Patty should have hesitated ere you introduced us,’ said Phil mischievously.
‘Sir, sir, this is no laughing matter,’ said Peter in a sad tone, for Phil, with the incurable flippancy that characterised him, had burst into a peal of laughter at the man’s grave face.
‘Peter, you are a Methodist; pour me out my wine and go; there is no calculating what will come to me “all along of Carrie,” ’ he said. But when Peter had gone Phil rose and stood looking into the glass that hung on the wall, while he examined his features with a new interest. ‘Anne Champion,’ he repeated. And as, for the first time, he uttered his mother’s name a curious thrill passed through him. ‘Poor mother of mine,’ he said, ‘I hope I have more of you in me than of Richard Meadowes.’
CHAPTER XIX
‘Satan,’ says Dr. Watts, ‘finds mischief for idle hands to do.’ And Caroline Shepley, being very idle at Wynford, fell into mischief in a way which would have confirmed good Dr. Watts in his convictions. Lady Mallow’s influenza, by dint of coddling, had become very severe indeed, and Carrie was left quite to her own devices. What these were the readers who have followed this story so far will have little difficulty in guessing. Day after day Philip and Carrie met each other, and their acquaintance deepened and ripened with extraordinary rapidity. They seemed to have none of the preliminaries of friendship to go through, but to have arrived suddenly at intimacy. Carrie was no great letter-writer at any time, now all thoughts of writing had long ago left her; she had not put pen to paper for three weeks—so absorbing an interest is flirtation. The weather hitherto had been very fine, but at last one morning broke wet and grey. Carrie was sick at heart; how could she meet Philip out of doors on such a day? she asked herself.
Now dwellers in town may dread a wet day, yet they can scarcely dread it with that entire dismay of heart that falls upon the country dweller at sight of the blank grey heavens, the spongy roads, the dripping trees. The pleasures of the country are, in fact, entirely visionary in wet weather, its discomforts really practical. Carrie stood and looked out over the fields, yesterday so green, to-day so grey; up at the skies, yesterday so blue, to-day so leaden, and her heart died within her. What on earth should she do with herself all day? She went up-stairs and tried to be sympathetic over her aunt’s symptoms for an hour or more, then she came down-stairs again and worked at her embroidery, then she tried to read (Carrie was not intellectual, you remember), then she fell asleep and wakened to hear the dinner-bell ring, always a welcome summons to this hearty young heroine.
Dinner over, Carrie went again to inquire for the health of Lady Mallow, and as she stood beside the bed, listening with ill-concealed yawns to an enumeration of all the symptoms, Carrie became aware of a sudden lightening of the leaden skies, and a watery sunbeam shot in at the window. She could have clapped her hands for joy.
‘Now, Caroline,’ said Lady Mallow, ‘here is theGentlewoman’s Journal, which contains much useful information, such as may be useful to you in after life. I commend to your attention the article which relates to the making of wax-flowers, a most pretty accomplishment, and one which, along with other feminine parts of education, I fear your good father hath omitted from your course of study,’ etc.
Carrie listened with very scant attention, but she took the Journal and made her escape from the room quickly enough.
There could be no doubt about it—the sun was trying to shine. It is true everything was dripping with moisture, but what of that? Carrie donned a long blue cloak, slipped a loose blue hood over her curls, and set off down the avenue without a thought. It must be confessed that a hope came to her that Phil too might be tempted out by this change in the weather. Nor was Carrie mistaken, for she had not gone very far along the roads—very miry they were—before she heard some one whistling gaily in the distance, and then Phil came across one of the fields, leaped the fence, and stood beside her.
‘Now, how delightful, Carrie!’ he began; ‘I was just wondering how best I could meet you. ’Twas bold of you to venture out in such weather, but you have your reward, you see,’ added this saucy young man.
‘If you but knew the day I have passed!’ cried Carrie. ‘Come, Phil, take me to walk somewhere; I am near stifled with sitting in my aunt’s chamber listening to her symptoms and reading theGentlewoman’s Journal.’
‘We had best keep on the road, then; the fields are heavy walking to-day,’ said Phil, and they stepped out along the road very well pleased with each other. It struck Carrie, however, that her companion scarcely looked so cheerful as he had done the day before; perhaps this dull weather affected his spirits, she thought.
‘Tell me, what is your father like?’ asked Phil suddenly. Carrie was rather surprised, but she answered with eager pride:—
‘Tall above the common, and with eyes as blue as mine; and every one depends on him: half London come to him to be cured.’ Phil walked along in silence for a little.
‘What is the matter?’ asked Carrie; ‘you seem quiet to-day.’
‘I was thinking—thinking of my father,’ said Phil, then turning towards her with his sudden impulsive manner he burst out, ‘ ’Twould be strange to feel after that fashion for one’s father! I’ll tell you what my father is; I am so like him I can see—yes, see—straight into his mind, and I know every thought that passes through it. All my life I’ve lived with him, and had everything from his hand, and for the life of me, Carrie, I cannot trust him!’
‘Oh, Phil, have a care what you say!’ exclaimed Carrie, but Phil, fairly driven on by the current of his words, continued without heeding her—
‘Ninety-nine times he’d bless you, the hundredth time he’d curse you; his kindness, when he chooses, can’t be known, and when it comes to an end he’s as hard as these flints. Oh, but he is not bad through and through either, only like a rotten fruit—one bite so good and the next all gone to corruption. I sometimes look and look at him and wonder how ’twill end—the good or the bad. I’d like to have a bet on him, I’d back the devil in him though, and I’d win. And for all this, Carrie, when he talks to me, as he will sometimes for hours, ’tis all I can do not to worship him. He understands me full as well as I understand him, that’s the strange thing, and he knows I know his heart. When I look at him and think about myself, I think sometimes that I am doomed to perdition. I’ll go his way, only quicker, and that’s the way that leads——’
All of a sudden Phil stopped, pointing down to the ground ominously.
‘No,’ said Carrie; ‘for your eyes are open.’
‘That’s the way my father has gone; you don’t suppose he sins with his eyes shut,’ said Phil. ‘He told me once (he’s nothing if not frank) that——’
Round the corner of the road came a sudden sound of wheels, a jingle of harness, a plash of many horses’ feet through the mire. Carrie glanced up to see a coach with outriders approaching; the men wore prune liveries, and at sight of them Phil stood still.
‘My father, Carrie,’ he said, and Carrie marvelled at his tense voice.
Splish-splash through the sparking mud came the horses, each with his jogging postilion a-back, whipping and spurring and cursing by turns, for the roads were heavy and the horses weary.
Phil and Carrie stood to the side, and Carrie took a curious glance into the coach, where a man sat, its only occupant. The next moment the coach had drawn up beside them, and the man, opening the door, stepped out on to the road, and bowed low before Carrie.
‘I scarce expected to find my son in such fair company, madam,’ he said, but with a little interrogative lift of his eyebrows.
Phil’s face flushed, but he answered in a clear, steady voice.
‘Sir, may I have the honour to present to you Miss Caroline Shepley? It has been my good fortune to make Miss Shepley’s acquaintance since coming to Wynford.’
‘Good fortune indeed,’ said Richard Meadowes, though the name went through him like a stab. Nemesis, Nemesis!—what was this? A woman in a blue hood stood before him, who wore the very features of Sebastian Shepley, and did he dream that Philip called her by that name?
A good thing it is we do not see into men’s hearts as we look into their faces! Carrie, as she stood all unconscious by the roadside in her blue hood, saw in Richard Meadowes only an elderly man, alert-looking, and of courteous address, who smiled on her with such a singularly pleasant and interesting smile that at once she wished to see him smile again. To this end she smiled herself, and with a gesture towards Phil, she said very sweetly—
‘The fortune hath not been altogether on his side, sir, for indeed I should have fared ill at Wynford without your son’s society.’
‘Phil should know better than to ask a lady to walk out over such roads as these,’ said Meadowes, with a glance at Carrie’s shoes; for that careless young woman, who was very vain of her pretty feet, had come out in a pair of smart high-heeled satin shoes—now, alas! smart no longer.
‘Oh, we are not come so very far from home,’ said Carrie; ‘but, sir, Phil will wish to ride home with you. I shall not go farther now.’
‘You must allow me to have the honour of fetching you home in the coach,’ said Meadowes. He offered his hand to Carrie, and held open the door of the coach as he spoke.
Carrie considered it very good fun to ride home in a coach and four. She thought what fun she would make of it in her next letter to her father. But she noticed how silent Phil had become of a sudden. He sat on the back seat and allowed his father to carry on all the conversation.
At the gate of Lady Mallow’s house Carrie descended, and, with a farewell wave of her hand, tripped off up the avenue in her damp little shoes.
After Carrie had left the coach all efforts at conversation ceased entirely between father and son. But when they drew up at the door, Meadowes, as he got out, signified to Phil that he would speak with him at once in the library.
Phil followed his father with a shrug which was not noticed by the older man, as he seated himself in a large chair, and indicated to Phil that he should stand facing him.
‘Where did you meet Miss Caroline Shepley?’ was the first suavely put question which Phil had to answer.
‘In the fields by the river, sir.’
‘And what introduction had you to this fair lady?’
‘I had met her before, sir.’
‘Where?’
‘In London.’
‘At whose house in London?’
‘In the Park.’
‘And who presented you to her there?’
‘A friend, sir.’
‘What friend?’
‘I cannot tell you, sir.’
‘You must tell me.’
‘I will not.’
There was a short silence. Phil leant against the mantel-shelf looking straight at his father, and waited for him to speak.
Meadowes folded his arms, unfolded them, leant back in his chair, finally spoke—
‘Well, that is straight speech, my son, and mine shall be as straight: After this time you shall not with my permission have word or look again for Miss Caroline Shepley.’
‘Have you aught against Carrie Shepley, sir?’ asked Phil. He burned to tell his father all he knew, but the dread of bringing Peter into disgrace tied his tongue—he must try to extract the story for himself.
‘I have: let that suffice you. Philip,’ cried his father, starting forward in his seat, ‘Philip, you are too young to question my commands after this fashion. Enough that I tell you to have no further speech with this young woman. ’Tis not for you to gainsay me.’
Phil drew himself up quickly from the easy lounging attitude he had stood in.
‘Sir,’ he said, ‘speak with Carrie? I will speak with her, yes, and court her, yes, and marry her—that I’ll do if Heaven so send that she’ll have me.’
‘On how long acquaintance have you taken this resolve?’ asked his father dryly.
‘Three weeks, sir.’
‘Ah, long enough assuredly for so unimportant a step to be considered!’
Phil was too acute not to see that his adversary had scored here. He had, moreover, a trait of age seldom to be noticed in the young: he could laugh at his own foibles. He laughed now, well amused at his ardour, and, dropping lightly on his knees beside his father’s chair, took Meadowes’ long white hand in his with his sudden irresistible impetuosity.
‘Sir, will you not tell me the story of your heart?’ he said. ‘Sure every man alive hath felt as I feel now!’
‘My heart! ’twould be a history indeed,’ said Meadowes. He spoke uneasily, for he had reached that stage of moral decay which refuses to answer any serious questioning. With a quick shuffle of the conversational cards he passed on:—
‘A history indeed.—But to return to the subject in hand from which you try to escape: you have known Caroline Shepley for three weeks; you wish to marry her; I do not intend that you should; therefore there the case stands.’
Phil had risen and stood before his father again. There is nothing more irritating to the finer feelings than to have questions, which we put in all seriousness, answered lightly. Phil had for a moment thought he might gain his father’s confidence, but he had been mistaken. He felt jarred and baffled.
‘I am sorry, sir. I shall take my own way,’ he said.
‘Then I shall have no more to do with you, Philip.’
‘Then I shall have to provide for myself. You have at least given me brains enough for that,’ said Phil hotly.
‘Do you think so? Well, brains are a good gift, better perhaps than gold.’
Phil stared at his father for a moment in blank amazement, then he turned on his heel and left the room without a word.
CHAPTER XX
After Philip had gone, Richard Meadowes leaned back in his chair with closed eyes for a long time. The past was stirred in him by this quarrel. In the twenty years that had elapsed since Anne Champion’s death he had changed very little outwardly; but the soul had travelled a long road these twenty years. Now looking back over the ‘Past’s enormous disarray’ he scarcely recognised himself for the same man he had been. He that had started so eagerly in the race, how he lagged now! he had not an enthusiasm left, and smiled to remember all he used to have. At one time too he remembered having thought about things spiritual; these did not visit him now. Once even he had feared death and judgment; death now-a-days had ceased to appall him, and for judgment he thought of it as an old-world fable. He could even think of Anne Champion’s sad story and her cruel end with no more than a momentary pang of discomfort.
But for all this the soul was still partially alive in this man. He could still suffer, and that is a sign of vitality, and if he had a genuine sentiment left it was for his son.
His suffering indeed was of a purely egotistical sort. The vast failure he had made of life struck a sort of cold despair through him; Phil must make restitution for his failures; and now the coldest thought of all assailed him: he had not Phil’s heart. He had lavished kindness on the boy all his life, yet sometimes Phil would look at him in his curiously expressive fashion and turn away quickly as if to hide the thought that leapt out from his speaking eyes: ‘I know you, I understand you.’
But whether Phil loved him or not, thought he, he could not afford to quarrel with him after this fashion. Everything else in life had failed; Phil at least he must keep!
Meadowes rose hurriedly and went in search of Phil, who had gone out, it appeared, across the Park.
The sun had come out now, after the rain, and its warmth drew up the smell of the mould from the streaming moisture-laden earth.
‘Earth, where I shall soon lie,’ thought Meadowes; ‘earth, that will absorb me into its elements again. Then the great failure will be at an end, the puzzle solved—no, not solved, only concluded: solved would mean another life, and that would mean—— Ah! the opened Books, and the Face from which earth and heaven flee away, and the Voice crying: “Give an account of thy stewardship, for thou mayest be no longer steward.” Tush, why does that old nonsense so ring in the brain?’
‘Phil, Phil,’ he shouted; he could stand his own thoughts no longer.
It is always a difficult matter to retract one’s words. But it was a characteristic of Richard Meadowes that he could generally extricate himself from any difficult situation with grace and composure.
It was, he admitted, quite unsuitable that, after having fairly warned Phil of the results of his disobedience, he should now retract all he had just said; but it must be done. Phil must stay with him at any cost.
So, putting the best face he could to it, he called and called again for Philip, who at last appeared: he had quite expected the summons.
‘I suppose he desires to forget all that has just passed,’ thought Phil, well aware of the sway he held over his father’s affections.
‘I think you called me, sir?’ he said. He wore a very demure aspect.
‘Yes; I wished to explain this matter further, Phil: ’twas perhaps scarcely fair in me not to give you a reason for my displeasure. Let us walk on and I shall tell you all.’
But it would, alas, have been as impossible for the Richard Meadowes of now-a-days to tell all the truth about any subject as it would be for a crab to discontinue the sidelong gait which is its inheritance; so he cut out one half of the story and padded up the other half, and summed up the whole in one easy sentence: ‘ ’Twas, in fact, jealousy on Shepley’s part caused our quarrel,’ he said—a half-truth which altered the facts of the case a little.
‘Who was the woman?’ asked Philip bluntly. ‘I suppose she was my mother?’
‘Yes, Anne Champion by name,’ Meadowes said, but hurried on before Phil had time to question him further. ‘So you can see, Philip, that I have reason on my side when I bid you have no more to do with Miss Caroline Shepley.’
‘I scarce see why an old quarrel between our parents should come between us,’ said Phil.
‘My dear Phil,’ said the candid father, ‘I will be frank with you—’tis an old story, and I, for my part, would willingly bury it; but I know Shepley for a man of vindictive passions, and I tell you this, that no power on earth would persuade him to give you his daughter’s hand in marriage. ’Twill spare you perhaps much pain and unpleasantness with him if you but take my advice and see no more of the girl.’
Phil shook his head. But light had meantime come to Meadowes. He would make peace with Phil yet—all would be well.
‘Well, Phil,’ he said, ‘I have told you the truth of how the matter stands, and how prudence should guide you; but moreover I have considered what I said to you in haste, and even should you persist in this folly I will not turn you from your home.’
Then with a sudden genuine impulse of feeling he laid his hand on Phil’s arm.
‘Phil, Phil, you are all that I have—you must stay with me were a hundred Carrie Shepleys in the case.’ Phil did not speak, but he took his father’s hand, bowing over it with the elaborate courtesy of the age.
‘I can only ask you, give this matter your very careful consideration,’ said his father, and with that he turned the conversation into another channel.
But a few hours later—when the dusk had fallen, a man on horseback left Fairmeadowes bearing a special and important missive to Dr. Sebastian Shepley of London. The horseman had orders to spend as little time on the road as might be, and the letter ran thus:—
‘Sebastian Shepley,—Richard Meadowes must acquaint you with the fact that, unless you take prompt measures for the removal of your daughter from the house of her aunt Lady Mallow, she will undoubtedly contract a marriage with the son of that man who has the honour to sign himself‘Your Enemy.’
‘Sebastian Shepley,—Richard Meadowes must acquaint you with the fact that, unless you take prompt measures for the removal of your daughter from the house of her aunt Lady Mallow, she will undoubtedly contract a marriage with the son of that man who has the honour to sign himself
‘Your Enemy.’
CHAPTER XXI
Carrie—unconscious, sleepy Carrie—laid herself down to rest that night in her four-post bed, and slept the dreamless sleep of youth and health, till the morning light stealing through the curtains disturbed her a little, when she dreamt she was riding down Piccadilly in a coach and four with Philip Meadowes, and wakened with a laugh.
And all this night, that had passed so quickly for Carrie, a man was spurring along the miry roads towards London, bearing a letter that was big with fate for her; while at Fairmeadowes Phil tossed about, revolving something in his mind that did not seem to take shape very easily; and Richard Meadowes too lay sleepless till the dawn.
Three sleepless men, ‘all along of Carrie,’ as Phil had so vulgarly put it!
The cause of Phil’s sleeplessness was not far to seek, for, late that night, Peter had brought him a curious and disquieting piece of news.
‘The master hath sent George a-ridin’ express to town this night, sir,’ he had said, and then, in a whisper, ‘bearing a letter, sir, with the address “To Dr. Sebastian Shepley.” For George is no scholar, and came to me to read the direction, sir, and there it was, so sure as I do stand in my shoes.’
Phil, who was not without youthful affectations, pretended to receive this intelligence with great unconcern; but when Peter had gone he strode up and down the room in great agitation. Then he threw up the window, and leant out into the velvety spring darkness. Thoughts throbbed through his brain that the cool night air could do very little to calm.
‘By Heaven!’ he said, speaking out into the darkness, ‘he’ll not outwit me.’
So this was what his father’s sudden change of front had meant!—he wished to throw the blame upon Dr. Shepley if Carrie was taken away. Oh ho, that was very wily no doubt, ‘but not all the fathers in Britain shall outwit me,’ said the arrogant Philip, and began to revolve schemes in his busy, clever young head.
Towards morning he turned over on his pillow, and fell to sleep at last.
‘I can but try my luck,’ he murmured as his eyes closed.
The spring world was all a-dazzle with sunshine again after yesterday’s rain, when Carrie came down-stairs. I regret to say that she came down-stairs late, bidding the maid ‘not tell Lady Mallow’ with such a charming smile that the austere elderly woman fibbed profusely to her mistress a few minutes later. After breakfast, Carrie went out on to the lawn, and stood, in apparent irresolution, looking round her. She smiled to herself out of mere pleasure of heart, and strolled away down the steps to the terrace, following her errant fancies. From the terrace there was a wide view far over the country. Carrie stood still here, shaded her eyes from the brilliant sunshine, and gazed intently in the direction of Fairmeadowes.
Far away among the fields she saw some one walking by the river bank. Carrie was irresolute no longer. She did not stay to put on her hat and her gloves, nor stop to consider that she had not yet visited her aunt’s sick-room—no, she did none of these things, but ran off down the avenue, and, pushing through the hedge, walked with more sedateness across the fields. In the distance, now, she could hear a long clear whistle like a bird’s note. It came nearer and nearer, then Phil came up through the long, reedy, flowering grasses by the riverside, with both hands held out to her; his shining eyes seemed to speak for him.
‘I thought you were never coming, Carrie,’ he said, and took her hands in his.
Hitherto their relations had been strictly unsentimental, now they had suddenly become lovers; without a word of explanation they both acknowledged it.
‘Come and sit down, Carrie, I have all the world to say to you,’ said Phil, and he flung his arm round her as he spoke. To Carrie it seemed the most natural thing that Phil should be in love with her—she had known it indeed for ten days past—she was not the least surprised at it, but what did surprise her now was to find that she too was in love, and that it was so natural—she seemed to have loved Phil always. It was no astonishing thing to her that she should sit here with Phil’s arm round her, and hear him say all manner of things that only yesterday he would never have dreamed of saying. What did astonish her was that he had not said all this long ago! Why not yesterday? why not when they first met? Had they ever been strangers? Had they not understood each other always? It was ridiculous this sudden assumption of loverishness on Phil’s part; they had been lovers from long long ago!
And from these happy thoughts Carrie was rudely wakened by what Phil was saying. His voice was urgent, his looks were anxious; he was actually telling her a story, in rather incoherent words, about both their parents, and a woman and a fight, and she did not take it all in.
‘But what has all this to do with you and with me, Phil?’ she asked, raising her face to his.
Phil turned and shook her ever so lightly.
‘Oh, you dear dull darling that you are,’ he cried; ‘do you not see they will separate us?—take you away from me, Carrie—never allow you to see me again?’
‘But I could not live without you,’ said simple Carrie, unaware that the formula had been used before; it seemed quite an original argument to her.
‘Nor I without you, of course,’ cried Phil—quite as unoriginal, in spite of his quick wits (the poor and the rich in wits as in wealth meet together in some things), ‘and for that reason you won’t refuse me what I ask, Carrie—’tis the only plan—I’ve thought all the matter out, and unless you will do it, your father will be here to-night, and will carry you off to London, and you will never see my face again, as like as not.’
‘Well?’ asked Carrie dubiously.
‘You’ll run away with me, and marry me. ’Tis as easy as the alphabet if once we get to London.’
‘Oh, but my father,’ protested Carrie.
‘Well, it has come to this: you must choose betwixt him and me; he will never allow you to marry me if he knows.’
‘But ’tis so sudden, Phil!—if I had even a day to consider the matter.’
‘You have scarce an hour,’ said Phil; ‘by now your father has that letter, by another hour, if I mistake not, he will be on his way here; by the evening he will have arrived. You must come with me now, now, now—or——’
The unspoken alternative of separation struck coldly on Carrie’s ear. Yet another love, older, steadier, plucked at her heart—she was torn between the two.
‘Ah, Phil,’ she cried, ‘I cannot leave you, and I cannot grieve my father. What am I to do? O what a sad thing trouble is—I have never known it before!’
(I doubt if she ever had.)
Phil was not, perhaps, as diligent a Biblical student as he might have been, but his researches in that direction came to his aid at this moment.
‘Oh, you know, Carrie, there is Scripture for that,’ he said, ‘about “leaving father and mother and cleaving to your wife”—that’s the rule for men, and I dare swear it holds good for women too.’
‘Do you think so? But I would not grieve my father for the world,’ hesitated Carrie.
Phil grew impatient, for time was racing on, the sun was high in the heavens now.
‘You must—you must; can you bear to think of never seeing me again? I’d sooner miss the sun out of the sky than you, Carrie.’
Carrie seemed to herself to be whirled round and round in the eddies of Phil’s passion; she could not gainsay him, and yet she trembled and held back.
‘Yes—ah, yes—I would go to the world’s end with you, Phil,’ she said, ‘if it were not for fear to grieve my father.’ She rose and paced up and down the bank in an agony of indecision, clasping her hands together and then flinging them out with a gesture of helpless bewilderment. Never in life before had Carrie been called upon to make a decision of any importance, and now the two strongest affections of her heart warred together for the victory.
Phil came and paced beside her, arguing, beseeching, coaxing her by turns—till she turned at last in despair and laid her hands in his.
‘I will come with you,’ she said.
Phil did not allow the grass to grow under his feet.
‘Come then, so quickly as you can, Carrie,’ he cried, ‘for each moment is precious. I shall return to Fairmeadowes and tell them I am gone out for the day. You must go home and put on your habit, and get one of your good aunt’s horses.’
‘I am not permitted to ride alone,’ said Carrie, who saw lions in the way at every turn.
Phil laughed, and put his hand in his pocket. ‘Here, Carrie,’ he said, ‘give me your hand.’ Carrie all unsuspicious laid her hand in his.
‘That is what you must do to your aunt’s groom, my child; there never was groom yet but understood that argument,’ said Phil.
‘All this, Phil?’ said Carrie, as she eyed the yellow coin.
‘All that, and say, as you give it, that he must come to Wyntown for the horse at five o’ the clock.’
‘But he will wonder, Phil.’
‘Doubtless.—Oh, Carrie, but women waste time on trifles!’
Carrie was nettled by this remark, so she hastened off as fast as she could through the long meadow hay, determined that Phil should not find her so dilatory after all.
‘Meet me at the cross roads,’ Phil shouted, as he ran off in the direction of Fairmeadowes.