THREE WIVES.
I have besides my town residence in Cecil Street—which is confined to a suite of two apartments on the second-floor—a very pleasant country-house belonging to a friend of mine in Devonshire; this latter is my favourite seat, and the abode which I prefer to call my home. I like it well when its encircling glens are loud with rooks, and their great nests are being set up high in the rocking branches; I like it when the butterflies, those courtly ushers of the summer, are doing their noiseless mission in its southern garden, or on the shaven lawn before its front; I like it when its balustraded roof looks down upon a sea of golden corn and islands of green orchards flushed with fruit; but most it pleases me when logs are roaring in its mighty chimneys, and Christmas time is come. Six abreast the witches might ride up them, let their broomsticks prance and curvet as they would. If you entered the hall by the great doors while Robert Chetwood and myself were at our game of billiards at its further end, you could not recognise our features. The galleries are studies of perspective, and the bare, shining staircases as broad as carriage ways. The library, set round from the thick carpet to the sculptured ceiling with ancient books, with brazen clasps, and old-world types, and worm-drilled bindings. The chapel, with its blazoned saints on the dim windows, and the mighty corridors with floors of oak and sides of tapestry, are pictures of the past, and teach whole chapters of the book of history: Red Rose and White Rose, Cavalier and Roundhead, Papist and Protestant, Orangeman and Jacobite have each had their day in Old Tremadyn House. When the great doors slam together, as they sometimes will, to the inexpressible terror of the London butler, they awake a series of thunderclaps which roll from basement to garret: many a warning have they given, in the good old times, to Tremadyns hiding for their lives, and many an arras has been raised and mirror slipped to right or left at that menacing sound. To this day, Robert Chetwood often comes anew upon some hold in which, those who ruled before him have skulked—sometimes in his own reception-rooms, but more commonly in the great chambers where he puts his guests. These chambers are colossal, with huge carved pillars bearing up a firmament of needlework, and dressing-closets large enough for dining-rooms. Every person of note who could or could not by possibility of date or circumstance have slept therein have had the credit of passing a night within Tremadyn House, from the Wandering Jew, Shakespeare, Queen Elizabeth, down to Charles the First, Peter the Great, and the late Emperor Nicholas. There has been more than one murder in the Red room, several suicides in the Blue, and one ghost still haunts those spots in expiation. Tremadyns in lace cuffs and wigs; in scarlet and ermine; in armour from top to toe, line both the galleries—sold by the last Charles Surface of a dissolute race for ten pounds ten shillings a head. One great Tremadyn dynasty has passed away; Robert Chetwood, late banker in the City of London, not so long ago banker’s clerk, now reigneth in their stead. The Tremadyns came in at the time of the siege of Jericho, or thereabouts, and the Chetwoods about ten years before the siege of Sebastopol; but there the advantage ceases. There is no man kinder to the poor, no man more courteous to all men, no man, whatever his quarterings, in all Devonshire with a better heart than Robert Chetwood. Tremadyn House is open to the county, as it ever was, and his old London friends are not forgotten; a hale and hearty gentleman indeed he is, but he has had many troubles; he is as happy as any man bereaved of children can be, and it was the loss of them that made him buy the house and give up his old haunts and busy way—
He saw the nursery windows wide open to the air,
But the faces of the children they were no longer there;
and that, wherever it may be, is too sad a sight to look upon.
But what a wife the old man had, to make up, as it seemed even to me, for all! I say to me, for one of those lost children, a maiden of seventeen, was my betrothed bride—the gentlest and most gracious creature eyes ever looked upon; I think if I could write my thoughts of her, I should move those to tears who never saw her face, when they read “Gertrude died.” She gave herself to me: the old man never could have given her. I say no more.
This is why Tremadyn House has become to me a home. It pleases Robert Chetwood to have his friend’s son with him, above all, because he was his daughter’s plighted husband, and my father’s friend is trebly dear to me as Gertrude’s father. When the Christmas party has dispersed, and the great house is quite emptied of its score of guests, I still remain with the old couple over the new year. They call me son, as though I were their son, and I call them my parents. If Heaven had willed it so, dear Gertrude and myself could not have hoped for greater wedded happiness, more love between us, than is between those two. “Perhaps,” he says, with a smile I never saw a young man wear, “perhaps it is that my old eyes are getting dim and untrustworthy, but Charlotte seems to me the dearest and most pleasant-looking dame in all the world.” And his wife makes answer that her sight also is just as little to be depended on. To each of them has come the silver hair, and the reverence with it that alone makes it beautiful; and if their steps are slower than in youth, it is not because their hearts are heavier; they are indeed of those, so rare ones, who make us in love with life down even to its close. They always seemed to me as having climbed the hill together their whole lives long, and never was I more astonished than upon this new year’s eve, when, Mrs. Chetwood being with us two in after-dinner talk, as custom was when all her guests were gone, her husband told this history. He had always talked quite openly to me,
A pair of friends, though I was young,
And Robert, seventy-two;
and then, at the end of another year of love and confidence, I could not resist inquiring of them how long they two had been one.
“Well, on my word, George,” said the dear old lady, “you should be more discreet than to ask such questions.”
But her husband answered readily:
“This thirty years. I’ve been a married man myself this half-a-century.”
“Why, you don’t mean to say——” said I.
“Yes, I do,” he interrupted. “Of course I do. Charlotte has been my wife too long, I hope, to be jealous now of either Kate or Mary; but I loved them each in turn almost as dearly as I love her. Charlotte,” he added, turning towards her as she sat in the great arm-chair, “you don’t mind George being told about my other two wives, do you?”
“I don’t mind your talking of Mary much,” she answered, “but get over that young Kate’s story as quickly as you can, please.”
And I really thought I detected a blush come over her dear old face while she was speaking.
“It is rather less than half a century ago,” he began, “since I first set foot in this beautiful Devon county. I came down on a short holiday from London, in the summer time, to fish, and I brought with me, besides my rod and basket, a portmanteau full of clothes and about twenty-five pounds in gold, which was the whole amount of my savings. I was junior clerk in a house at that day, with one hundred and twenty pounds a-year, and with as much chance of becoming a partner as you, my dear briefless Charles, have of sitting on the woolsack. From the top of Tremadyn House I could point you out the farm-house where I lodged, and will some day take you to see it,—a mighty homestead, with a huge portico of stone and flights of stone steps leading to the upper chambers from without. On one side was the farm-yard, filled with swine and poultry, with open stalls for cattle, and enormous barns, not so well kept or neat, perhaps, as the present day requires, but a perfect picture of plenty; on the other stood the cider-presses, and beyond, the apple orchards, white with promise, red with fruit, made the air faint with fragrance; half orchard was the garden, too, in fruit, through which, beneath a rustic bridge, my trout stream wandered. Charlotte, you know the place—have I not painted it?”
“You have, Robert,” she said. The tears were in her eyes, ready to fall, I saw.
“There, then, I met Katie. The good man of the house was childless, and she, his cousin, was well cared for as his child. It was no wonder, George: the dark oak parlour seemed to need no light when she shone in it. Like a sunbeam gliding over common places, whatever household matters busied her she graced. Some sweet art seemed to lie in her, superior to mere neatness, as high-heartedness excelleth pride. I put on salmon flies to catch trout. I often fished without any hook at all. I strove to image her fair face and form in the clear waters, by the side of that hapless similitude of myself—the reflex of a forlorn youth in his first love. I did my best at haymaking to please her. I took eternal lessons in the art of making Devon cheese. I got at last so far as to kiss her hand. I drew a little, and she sat to me for her portrait. We sallied out a mushrooming and getting wild flowers, and on our way sang pleasant songs together, and interchanged our little stores of reading. On the eve before my long put-off departure we were thus roaming: we had to cross a hundred stiles—the choicest blessings of this country I used to think them—and once, instead of offering my hand to help her over, I held out both my arms, and, upon my life, George, the dear girl jumped right into them; and that was how I got to kiss her cheek.”
“What shocking stories you are telling, Robert,” said Mrs. Chetwood, and certainly she was then blushing up under her lace cap to her white hair.
“Well, my dear, nobody was there except Kate and myself, and I think I must know what happened, at least as well as you do: so,” he continued, “after one more visit to the farm-house, Kate and I were married; she gave up all her healthy ways and country pleasures to come and live with me in the busy town; studious of others’ happiness, careful for others’ pain; at all times forgetful of herself: active and diligent, she had ever leisure for a pleasant word and a kind action; and for beauty, no maid nor wife in the world was fit, I believe, to compare with her; to you, George, who knew and loved our dearest Gertrude, I need not describe her mother. She was not long with me, but it soon seemed as if it must have cost my life to have parted with her; yet the girlish glory faded, and the sparkling spirit fled, and the day has been forgiven, though forgotten never, which took my darling Katie from my side.”
The old man paused a little here. Mrs. Chetwood kissed him softly upon the cheek.
“My second wife,” he resumed, “was not so young, and certainly had not the outward graces of my first. She was beautiful, too, in the flower as Kate was in the bud; her face had not the vivacity, nor her eyes the dancing light of Katie’s, but there sat such a serenity upon her features, as we sometimes see upon a lovely landscape when the sun is near its setting; a look which no man ever tires of; and Mary bore me children, and then, much as I had loved the sapling, it seemed to me that the full-fruited tree was dearer yet. She was no country girl from the Devon dales, but a town lady, bred. I had a great house by that time, with all things fitting about me, and my sphere was hers. The pearls suited her pleasant brow, and crowned her still raven tresses as becomingly as the single rose in her hair had adorned simple Kate. I think, if I may say so without ingratitude for my present great happiness, and with the leave of my dear Charlotte, that the happiest hours of my life were spent during those days, when our two children’s voices rang cheerily over the house, and some little scheme of pleasure for them was my everyday desire and Mary’s. Even at the terrible time when boy and girl were being taken from us at once, never did their patient mother seem more dear to me; from when the hush of sickness stole upon us at first, to the day when that white procession left our doors, what a healing spirit was she! When we thought that the thickly folded veil of sorrow had fallen over us for ever, how tenderly she put it aside!
“It must needs have happened that my speech has here been melancholy, but indeed I should not speak of Mary so. She was the blythest, cheerfullest, most comfortable middle-aged wife that man ever had; behind our very darkest trouble a smile was always lying ready to struggle through it, and what a light it shed! One of your resigned immoveable females, who accept every blessing as a temptation, and submit, with precisely the same feelings to what they call every chastening, would have killed me in a week. George, my Mary acted at all times according to her nature, and that nature was as beautiful and blessed as ever fell to the lot of womankind. You might well think that Kate and Mary were two prizes great enough for one man to draw out of the marriage lottery, and yet I drew another. When I lost my beloved Mary, my third wife took her place in my inmost heart.
“Kiss me, Charlotte,” said the old man, tenderly, and again she kissed him on the cheek. “And now,” continued he, “let us fill our glasses, for the New Year is coming on apace; and please to drink to the memory of my two wives, and to the health of her who is still left to me. The two first toasts must necessarily be somewhat painful to my dear Charlotte, and we will, therefore, receive them in silence, but the third we must drink with all the honours.”
So after those, he stood up, glass in hand; and said to her,
“Kate, Mary, Charlotte,—bride, matron, and dame in one, to whom I have been wedded this half-century,—for I have had no other wife, George,—God bless you, dear old heart! We have had a merry Christmas, as we have ever had, and I trust it may be permitted to us to have, still together, one more happy New Year. Hip! hip! hip! Hurrah!” and the echoes of our three times three seemed cheerily to roam all night about Tremadyn House.
Now ready, Price Five Shillings and Sixpence, cloth boards,