CHAPTER I
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.
‘Doth Anne Champion live here, my good woman?’ he asked.
‘No, sir. Anne she lives at the top of the stair,’ said Mrs. Nare, squinting up at the stranger out of her narrow old eyes, then, actuated by unknown motives, she added—
‘Anne she’ve got a lover at the wars,’ in a sort of interrogative tone. She had seen Shepley more than once, and knew this was not he; perhaps she wished to find out the stranger’s errand.
‘Thank you, thank you,’ was all he said, however, as he disappeared up the winding old stair. Up and up he went, feeling his way, for there was little or no light to guide him, then he stumbled against a door, and knocked at haphazard, hoping it was the door he sought.
‘Come in,’ said some one, and at that the man, groping with the latch for a moment, at last got the door open, and stood on the threshold looking in.
The sunshine fell across the floor in a flood of smoky brightness, and full in the sun’s beams sat Anne Champion, surrounded by the straw she was plaiting. It was piled up round her, within reach of her fingers, that moved like lightning at her mechanical toil.
Anne wore a gown of pink calico, and, whether for greater comfort or from mere untidiness, all her yellow hair hung over her shoulders in splendid confusion. She let her work fall at sight of a stranger, started up, and standing almost knee-deep among the straw, caught at her hair, and began to wind it up into a knot.
The young man stood still on the threshold for a full minute, as I have said. Then he seemed to recollect himself, and stepping across the floor he held out his hand to the girl, smiling very pleasantly.
‘I scarce need to ask if you are Anne Champion,’ he said.
Anne seemed too much taken aback by this unexpected visitor to make any reply. She stood looking at him and twisting her long yellow hair between her fingers. At last she said—
‘Yes, sir, I be Anne Champion,’ and waited for him to make known his errand.
The young man did not seem to be in any hurry, however. He looked round the bare little room, and then looked again at Anne before he spoke.
‘I am come to make excuses,’ he said then; ‘and if you will allow me to sit down, for I am weak still from a fever, I shall make them to the best of my ability.’
Anne produced a stool from a corner and proffered it to her visitor.
‘I am come from Flanders,’ he began again; but he did not speak like one intent on his business: his bright eyes were fixed on Anne; he seemed to be speaking of one thing and thinking of another. His words, however, had a quick effect on Anne—her look of perplexed shyness had vanished.
‘From Flanders? Ah, sir, ’tis welcome thrice over you are!’ she cried; ‘an’ are you bringing me news of my dear man?’ Her face was radiant; she smiled, and the beautiful dimples in her cheek were revealed, and her white even teeth. Her very eyes seemed to smile.
The young man began to speak again—with unaccountable stumblings and hesitations, still reading Anne’s face with his quick bright eyes as he spoke.
‘I am come—Sebastian Shepley,’ he said, and paused.
At the sight of his perturbation Anne came quickly towards him and laid her hand on his shoulder.
‘Sir, sir,’ she cried. ‘Don’t tell me as there is aught amiss with my Sebastian.’
‘Anne, I am come from your old lover Shepley, as you surmise,’ began the young man again; ‘he—he is well in health.’
The colour which had left Anne’s face rushed back to it in a beautiful scarlet tide.
‘Lord! sir, Sebastian’s not old, begging your pardon, sir,’ she said, letting her hand fall from his shoulder, rather ashamed of her sudden familiarity.
‘I—’twas not that way I meant it, Anne; I scarce know,’ stammered the young man. ‘Come, sit down by me and I shall tell you all.’
Anne, however, would not have felt easy sitting down in the presence of this fine stranger in lace ruffles. She stood opposite him and still looked anxious in spite of his assurances.
‘There hath ill come to him, sir; he’s wounded; or—or—’ she said.
The young man seemed suddenly to have collected himself; his embarrassment, if embarrassment it had been, vanished as suddenly as it had come. He rose and came over to where Anne stood.
‘He hath no wound nor hurt of any sort, Anne, but he hath sent me with a message to you, and this is it:—The war is like to keep him so long in the Low Country he dare not ask you to wait.’
‘I’d wait a lifetime for him,’ laughed Anne. ‘If that be all his message he hath troubled you for naught, sir.’
‘ ’Tis not all. The fact is Sebastian has married—married a pretty Dutch wife. He feared to exhaust your patience. He asked me to tell you. “For,” said he, “Anne hath so many lovers ’twill be neither here nor there to her.” As like as not he may be years abroad still.’
There was a moment’s silence. Anne looked her visitor straight in the eyes; she had whitened down to her very lips.
‘You are but fooling with me, sir,’ she said, half whispering the words.
‘I am in sober earnest; ’tis no matter for jest this,’ said the young man, looking at Anne’s blanching cheeks.
‘O good Lord!’ then cried Anne in a piteous crying voice—the note of a bird over its harried nest. She seemed to forget the presence of a stranger, and, sinking down against a settle that stood by the wall, she hid her face in her hands and sobbed, rocking herself back and forwards in her bitter grief.
‘Sebastian, Sebastian dear, you are not wedded true and certain?’ she cried. ‘O God help me, an’ what am I to do now? O Lord! O Lord!’
The young man who had brought this ill news did not go away and leave Anne alone with her sorrow, as most men would have done. He sat down on the settle she leant against and laid his hand kindly on her shoulder though he said nothing. Anne sobbed on, with hidden face, and all the time her visitor’s bright eyes were roving round the room, taking in every detail of its poor arrangements, yet ever and again he would pat the girl’s shoulder in token of sympathy.
Suddenly Anne rose to her feet.
‘He’s not worth a tear,’ she said. ‘He’s like the rest of you. I had no opinion of men before that I took up with Sebastian, an’ a fool I was to be deceived with him. You’re all like that,’ she cried, pointing to the pile of straw at her feet. ‘A spark’ll send you up in a blaze, and you’re as much to be leaned on as that.’ She plucked a straw from the heap, and snapped the brittle yellow stalk across as she spoke, with an unconsciously dramatic gesture.
‘Come, not all,’ said the young man, surprised by her words.
‘Yes, all. Well, this I do say for Sebastian, he’s as fine a liar as he was a lover—would take in Judas hisself with them straight eyes o’ his.’
‘I am grieved to have borne such bitter news to any one,’ said the young man. ‘But you take it the right way, Anne, and when Shepley returns ’twill be to find a better man in his place.’
‘Better man! There’s not one good among ’em—no, not one,’ said Anne, bitterly. She walked away to the little window, through which the sunshine was pouring in with garish brightness, and leant her forehead against the panes.
‘Come, Anne,’ urged her visitor, following her to the window. ‘You must do your endeavour to forget him. ’Tis a scurvy trick he has played you, but there’s a proverb suited to your case I would have you remember, about the good fish in the sea! Come, here is a coin as yellow as your hair to help you to the forgetting. Buy yourself a new gown with ribbands and have a night at the play.’
Anne looked askance at the stranger’s gold for a moment; then she flung back her head and laughed a harsh-sounding mirthless laugh.
‘I had best make sure ’tis gold I’ve got this time!’ she said, catching up the coin and ringing it on the table.
‘I shall bid you good-night then, my good girl,’ said the stranger, and held out his hand once again.
A minute later he plunged down the dark old stair. ‘What is it like? going down thus into darkness?’ he said to himself; but he did not reply to the question.