Shrewsbury: A Romance Page 4

  CHAPTER III

  Doubtless there have been men able to boast, and with truth, that theycarried to their first assignation with a woman an even pulse. But asI do not presume to rank myself among these, who have been commonlymen of high station (of whom my late Lord Rochester was, I believe,the chief in my time), neither--the unhappy occurrence which I am inthe way to relate, notwithstanding---have I, if I may say so withoutdisrespect, so little heart as to crave the reputation. In truth, Iexperienced that evening, as I crept out of the back door of Mr.D----'s house, and stole into the gloom of the whispering garden, afull share of the guilty feeling that goes with secrecy; and more thanmy share of the agitation of spirit natural in one who knows (and isnew to the thought) that under cover of the darkness a woman standstrembling and waiting for him. A few paces from the house--which Icould leave without difficulty, though at the risk of detection--Iglanced back to assure myself that all was still: then shivering, asmuch with excitement as at the chill greeting the night air gave me, Ihastened to the gap in the fence, through which I had before seen mymistress.

  I felt for the gap with my hand and peered through it, and called hername softly--"Jennie! Jennie!" and listened; and after an intervalcalled again, more boldly. Still hearing nothing, I discovered by thesinking at my heart--which was such that, for all my eighteen years, Icould have sat down and cried--how much I had built on her coming. AndI called again and again; and still got no answer.

  Yet I did not despair. Mrs. D---- might have kept her, or one of ahundred things might have happened to delay her; from one cause oranother she might not have been able to slip out as quickly as she hadthought. She might come yet; and so, though the more prolonged myabsence, the greater risk of detection I ran, I composed myself towait with what patience I might. The town was quiet; human noise at anend for the day; but Mr. D----'s school stood on the outskirts, withits back to the open country, and between the sighing of the windamong the poplars, and the murmur of a neighbouring brook, and thosefar-off noises that seem inseparable from the night, I had stood aminute or more before another sound, differing from all these, andhaving its origin at a spot much nearer to me, caught my ear, and setmy heart beating. It was the noise of a woman weeping; and to this dayI do not know precisely what I did on hearing it--when I made out whatit was, I mean--or how I found courage to do it; only, that in aninstant, as it seemed to me, I was on the other side of the fence, andhad taken the girl in my arms, with her head on my shoulder, and herwet eyes looking into mine, while I rained kisses on her face.

  IN AN INSTANT I WAS ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE FENCE]

  Doubtless the darkness and her grief and my passion gave me boldnessto do this; and to do a hundred other mad things in my ecstasy. For,as I had never spoken to her before, any more than I had ever held awoman in my arms before, so I had not thought, I had not dreamed ofthis! of her hand, perhaps, but no more. Therefore, and though sinceAdam's time the stars have looked down on many a lover's raptures,never, I verily believe, have they gazed on transports so perfect, sounlooked for, as were mine at that moment! And all the time not a wordpassed between us; but after a while she pushed me from her, with akind of force that would not be resisted, and holding me at arm'slength, looked at me strangely; and then thrusting me altogether fromher, she bade me, almost roughly, go back.

  "What? And leave you?" I cried, astonished and heart-broken.

  "No, sir, but go to the other side of the fence," she answered firmly,drying her eyes and recovering something of her usual calmness. "Andmore, if you love me as you say you do----"

  I protested. "_If?_" I cried. "If! And what then--if I do?"

  "You will learn to obey," she answered, coolly, yet with an archnessthat transported me anew. "I am not one of your boys."

  For that word, I would have caught her in my arms again, but with apower that I presently came to know, and whereof that was the firstexercise, she waved me back. "Go!" she said, masterfully. "For thistime, go. Do you hear me?"

  My boldness of a minute before, notwithstanding, I stood in awe ofher, and was easily cowed; and I crossed the fence. When I was on myside, she came to the gap, and rewarded me by giving me her hand tokiss. "Understand me," she said. "You are to come to this side, sir,only when I give you leave."

  "Oh," I cried. "Can you be so cruel?"

  "Or not at all, if you prefer it," she continued, drily. "More, youmust go in, now, or I shall be missed and beaten. You do not want thatto happen, I suppose?"

  "If that hag touches you again!" I cried, boiling with rage at thethought, "I will--I will----"

  "What?" she said softly, and her fingers closed on mine, and sent athrill to my heart.

  "I will strangle her!" I cried.

  She laughed, a little cruelly. "Fine words," she said.

  "But I mean them!" I answered, passionately. And I swore it--I sworeit; what will not a boy in love promise?

  "Well," she answered, whispering and leaning forward until her breathfanned my cheek, and the intoxicating scent of her hair stole away mysenses, "perhaps some day I shall try you. Are you sure that you willnot fail me then?"

  I swore it, panting, and tried to draw her towards me by her arm; butshe held back, laughing softly and as one well pleased; and then, in amoment, snatching her hand from me, she vanished in the darkness ofthe garden, leaving me in a seventh heaven of delight, my blood firedby her kisses, my fancy dwelling on her beauty; and without oneafterthought.

  Doubtless had I been less deep in love (wherein I was far over-head),or deeper in experience, I might have noted it for a curious thingthat she should be so quickly comforted; and should be able to rise ina few moments, and at the touch of my lips, from passionate despair toperfect control, both of herself and of me. And starting thence, Imight have gone on to suspect that she possessed her full share of the_finesse_, which is always a woman's shield and sometimes her sword.But as such suspicions are foreign to youth, so are they especiallyforeign to youthful love, which takes nothing lower than perfectionfor its idol. And this I can say for certain, that they no moreentered my brain than did the consequences which were to flow from mypassion.

  For the time, indeed, I was in an ecstasy, a rapture. Walkinga-tip-toe, and troubled by none of the things that trouble commonfolk; so that to this day--though long married--I look back to thatperiod of innocent folly with a yearning and a regret, the sorer forthis, that when I try to analyse the happiness I enjoyed, I fail, andmake nothing of it. That all things should be changed for me, and I bechanged in my own eyes--so that I walked a head taller and esteemedmyself ridiculously--by the fact that a kitchen wench in a druggetpetticoat and clogs had let me kiss her, and left me to believethat she loved me, seems incredible now; as incredible as thata daily glimpse of her figure flitting among the water-butts andpowdering-tubs had power to transform that miserable back garden intoa paradise, and Mr. D----'s school, with its dumplings, and bread anddripping, and inky fingers, into a mansion of tremulous joy!

  Yet it was so. Nor did it matter anything to me, so great is the powerof love when one is young, that my mistress went in rags, and hadcoarse hands, and spoke rustically. Touching this last, indeed, I mustdo her the justice to say that from the first she was as quick to notedifferences of speech and manner as she was apt to imitate goodexemplars; and, moreover, possessed under her rags a species ofrefinement that matched the witchery of her face, and proved her tobe, as she presently showed herself, no common girl.

  Of course I, in the state of happy delirium on which I had nowentered, and wherein even Mr. D---- and the boys wore an amiable air,and only Mrs. D----, because she persecuted my love, had the semblanceof a female Satan, needed no proof of this; or I had had it when myDorinda--so I christened her, feeling Jennie too low a name for somuch beauty and kindness--proposed at our second rendezvous that Ishould teach her to read. At the first flush of the proposal I foundreading a poor thing because she did not possess it; at the second Iadored her for the humility that con
descended to learn; but at thethird I saw the convenience, as well as sense, of a proposal which wasas much above the mind of an ordinary maid in love as Dorinda appearedsuperior to such a creature in all the qualities that render senseamiable.

  Yet this much granted, how to teach her, seeing that we seldom met orconversed, and never, save under the kindly shelter of darkness? Theobstacle for a time taxed all my ingenuity, but in the end Isurmounted it by boldly asking Mr. D----'s leave to hold the afternoonclasses in the playground. This, the approach of warm weather givingcolour to the petition, was allowed; after which, as Dorinda wasengaged in the back premises at that hour, and could listen while shedrudged, the rest was easy. Calling up the lowest class, I would findfault with their reading, and after flying out at them in a simulatedpassion, would remit them again and again to the elements; so that fora fortnight or more, and, indeed, until the noise of the ladsrepeating the lesson annoyed Mrs. D----'s ears, the playground rangwith a-b, ab; e-b, eb; c-a-t, cat; d-o-g, dog, and the like, with thealphabet and the rest of the horn-book. And all this so frequentlyrepeated, that with this assistance, and the help of a spelling-bookwhich I gave her, and which she studied before others awoke, mymistress at the end of two months could read tolerably, and wasbeginning to essay easy round-hand.

  And Heaven knows how delicious were those lessons under the shabbyragged tree that shaded one half of the yard! I spoke to the yawninggrubby-fingered boys, who slouched and straddled round me; but I knewto whose ears I applied myself; nor had pupil ever a more diligentmaster, or master an apter pupil. Once a week I had my fee of kisses,but rarely, very rarely, was permitted to cross the fence; a reserveon my Dorinda's part, that, while it augmented the esteem in which Iheld her, maintained my passion at a white heat. When, nevertheless, Iremonstrated with her, and loverlike, complained of the rigour whichin my heart I commended, she chid me for setting a low value on her;and when I persisted, "Go on," she said, drawing away from me with awonderful air of offence. "Tell me at once, and in so many words, thatyou think me a low thing! That you really take me for the kitchendrudge I appear!"

  Her tone was full of meaning, with a hint of mystery, but as I hadnever thought her aught else--and yet an angel--I was dumb.

  "You did think me that?" she cried, fixing me with her eyes, andspeaking in a tone that demanded an answer.

  I muttered that I had never heard, had never known, that--that--and sostammered into silence, not at all understanding her.

  "Then I think that hitherto we have been under a mistake," sheanswered, speaking very distantly, and in a voice that sent my heartinto my boots. "You were fond--or said you were--of the cook-maid. Shedoes not exist. No, sir, a little farther away, if you please," mymistress continued, haughtily, her head in the air, "and know that Icome of better stock than that. If you would have my story I will tellit you. I can remember--it is almost the first thing I can remember--aday when I played, as a little child, with a necklace of gold beads,in the court-yard of a house in a great city; and wandered out, theside gate being open, and the porter not in his seat, into thestreets; where," she continued dreamily, and gazing away from me,"there were great crowds, and men firing guns, and people runningevery way----"

  I uttered an exclamation of astonishment. She noticed it only bymaking a short pause, and then went on in the same thoughtful tone,"As far as I can remember, it was a place where there were booths andstalls crowded together, and among them, it seems to me, a man wasbeing hunted, who ran first one way and then another, while soldiersshot at him. At last he came where I had dropped on the ground interror, after running child-like where the danger was greatest. Heglared at me an instant--he was running, stooping down below the levelof the booths, and they had lost him for the time; then he snatched meup in his arms, and darted from his shelter, crying loudly as he heldme up, 'Save the child! Save the child!' The crowd raised the samecry, and made a way for him to pass. And then--I do not rememberanything, until I found myself shabbily dressed in a little inn,where, I suppose, the man, having made his escape, left me."