A daughter of strife

Copyright, 1897
Dodd, Mead & Company
BURR PRINTING HOUSE, NEW YORK.
PART I
‘. . . Old unhappy far-off things,
And battles long ago.’
A Daughter of Strife
As long ago as the year 1710 there lived in London town a girl of the name of Anne Champion—a straw-plaiter by trade, and by hard fortune a beauty. Anne lived alone in a garret, and earned her bread by the sweat of her brow, plaiting straws for hats from early morning to late at night. Then she would go out and buy her food for the next day, if she had earned enough to buy food with, and if she had not, she would do without food and work on.
A hard life enough; but it was not to last for ever. For Anne had a fine lover at the wars—Surgeon Sebastian Shepley,—and ere very long he was to return, and Anne was to say farewell to work. Partings were partings in those days, and Anne never thought of getting a letter from Flanders more than once in seven or eight weeks. When she got one, poor girl, she could not read it—no, nor answer it; for she had no ‘book-learning,’ and had never been taught to write; but she used to take her letters to a former adorer of her own who served in a print-shop, and he kindly read his rival’s love-letters aloud, and, when Anne could afford to send one in return, would even be forgiving enough to write it for her. Anne’s fine lover had caused considerable jealousy among her neighbours, and old Mrs. Nare, the mother of Matthew, the young man in the news-shop, was never tired of hinting to Anne that no good ever came of such unequal alliances. When she saw that Anne was quite undisturbed by these prognostications, Mrs. Nare tried to persuade her that there was little chance Shepley would ever return from the wars.
‘The surgeons do come by their deaths in war-time so well as the soldiers,’ she would say; ‘best not set your heart overly on him, Anne.’ And Anne would whiten, and turn away at her words.
Yard’s Entry, where Anne Champion and Mrs. Nare lived, is a place that smells of age now—it was counted old even in these far-away days I write of,—and the stone stairs leading up to Anne’s garret were worn away into crescent shape by the tread of many generations. At the foot of these stairs, on warm evenings, Mrs. Nare used to stand and watch all her neighbours’ affairs; so it was natural enough that a stranger coming in to the Entry one evening should address himself to her when he made inquiry for Anne Champion. He was a young man with very bright eyes, and his voice, as clear as the note of a flute, echoed up the stair as he spoke.