CHAPTER II
The young man Richard Meadowes found a coach waiting for him round the corner of Yard’s Entry; he jumped in and bade the coachman drive home to St. James’ Square: a long drive, but Meadowes did not find it so, his thoughts were amply occupied. When he reached home he went in and sat down in a chair beside the fire, apparently in a brown study. What was he thinking about so intently all the time? About a lie: for the whole story of Sebastian Shepley’s marriage had been invented by Richard Meadowes on the spur of the moment, as he stood stammering and hesitating before Anne Champion.
Meadowes had known Sebastian Shepley from his childhood. They had been born and brought up in the same little country village of Wynford, where Meadowes’ father had owned the Manor House and the wide lands appertaining to it, while Shepley’s father was the village apothecary. Then they both went to the wars; Meadowes to fight, Shepley to heal; now, tired of campaigning, which had never been to his mind, Meadowes had left the service and returned to England, where, since his parents’ death, he had inherited, together with the Manor House of Fairmeadowes, this house in St. James’ Square and enough of money to ruin most men.
But Richard Meadowes was neither idle nor without interests. The whole of life appealed vividly to him, every day was crowded with incident and amusement, his difficulty was to select between his pleasures: now of a sudden he had brought himself into a curious place. It had been from the easy pleasantness of his nature that Meadowes had offered, when leaving Flanders, to carry any letters home to Wynford for Dr. Sebastian Shepley. The young surgeon had hesitated for a moment before asking if, instead of bearing a letter to Wynford, Meadowes would deliver one in London.
‘With all my heart—a dozen an’ you please,’ said Meadowes kindly; for he liked the young man with his steady blue eyes, who came moreover from Wynford like himself.
So Sebastian Shepley had intrusted a bulky letter to his care, and along with it a package containing, said he, some amber beads for ‘Annie,’ ‘as yellow as her hair.’ These were to be given to his sweetheart by Meadowes’ own hand.
Now, like most men who are good at making pleasant promises, Meadowes was not quite so good at keeping them. He forgot all about Sebastian Shepley’s love-letter for several weeks, and lost the amber beads, so that when at last he set out to deliver the letter, he had determined to make such apologies as he might for the loss of the beads.
But when first his eyes rested on Anne Champion he thought only of her beauty. He stood and stammered before her, and then there came a whisper: Shepley was in Flanders . . . might never return . . . might have forgotten Anne when he did . . . why could he not supplant him in the meantime?
No wonder he had hesitated for a little before inventing the story; but now that it was done a host of difficulties presented themselves to Meadowes’ fancy. First of all, Shepley might write again to Anne any day—in all probability he would not do so for some weeks, but still he might—therefore Anne must be induced to leave her present home as quickly as might be. Secondly, Anne had impressed him as a self-respecting woman, quite able to take care of herself; she was no silly child to be easily deceived, and, so far as he could judge, not to be bought either. It is true Anne had taken the coin he offered her, but Meadowes acknowledged that she had scarcely seemed to know what she was about at the time. How then was he to gain favour in her eyes? How manage to ingratiate himself with her quickly without rousing her suspicions? He had no possible pretext for going to visit her again, yet go he must, and that speedily, or he ran the risk of Anne’s having received another letter from her lover, which might make her disbelieve all the statements she had accepted to-day.
As Meadowes weighed the matter in his mind, he remembered Shepley’s amber beads. Find them he must, and they might be offered to Anne as a farewell gift from her faithless adorer. So he prosecuted an active search for the missing package, and when at last it had been discovered, sat down and opened it. Then Meadowes slipped the warm yellow beads through his fingers like a monk at his devotions, but all the while darting fears and shivers of shame overcame him, for he was a man of quick sensitiveness, fully conscious of the base part he was playing.
There was no time to be lost; the next day at latest he must go to see Anne again.
Thus it came about that Meadowes stood once more at Anne Champion’s door the next afternoon and knocked.
Anne opened it herself; she stood on the threshold, and did not invite her visitor to come in.
‘Oh, ’tis you again,’ was all she said for greeting.
‘I am come with the remainder of my message, Anne,’ said Meadowes. ‘I forgot yesterday to make over this part of it to you.’
‘Come in then,’ said Anne, curtly enough, and she moved across to the little window, which stood open for the heat. The room had a deserted air, Anne seemed to have been sitting idle, for there were no signs of her usual occupation.
‘Sit down, sir,’ she said, and waited for Meadowes to make known this further errand of his.
‘Shepley asked me to deliver this amber chain into your hand as a keepsake, and to bear him no ill will,’ he said, handing the necklace to Anne.
‘A likely thing it is I’ll have his gifts!’ cried the girl. She flushed angrily, and with a quick movement of her arm flung the chain out at the window; it fell on the opposite roof, and the smooth beads slid down the slates and lodged in some unseen crevice.
‘There they may rot for me!’ she cried.
‘Ah, come,’ began Meadowes; ‘he meant kindly by the gift.’
‘I’ll have none o’ his kindness then,’ said Anne. She did not seem disposed for further conversation. But Meadowes persisted:—
‘You seem scarce so busy to-day.’
‘No more I am, sir; I be tired of work.’
‘Have you ever lived in the country?’ queried Meadowes, who had since the day before evolved his plans a little. ‘Work is none so hard there, and living pleasant; quiet is good for a sad heart.’
‘You’ll have tried it, sir?’ said Anne sarcastically. ‘For sad hearts be mighty common.’
‘Ah! I have had my sad days too.’
‘I’d scarce have thought it, sir,’ said Anne, taking a survey of her visitor. ‘But there,’ she added, as if on second thoughts, ‘you have mayhap felt things like the rest of us.’
‘I have—I have. God knows I feel things,’ said Meadowes, with sudden curious earnestness. He crossed over to where Anne stood, and laid his fine, white, ringed hand on her arm for a moment.
‘I am grieved for you, Anne; indeed I am; I had not thought ’twould be such a stroke to you, this. I would it were in my power to help you.’
Anne shook her head.
‘ ’Tis kind of you, sir, and thank you; there’s but the cure of time for me, I do fear,’ she said, drawing back slightly from the touch of Meadowes’ hand as she spoke.
‘I have a cottage in the country,’ he began, ‘where an old nurse of mine keeps bees and flowers and the like: mayhap a change to country air would help you to the forgetting of your trouble.’
Anne shook her head and smiled.
‘I’d get no sale for my straw-plaits thereaway,’ she said.
‘Oh, I would pay you——’ began Meadowes, but Anne cut him short.
‘For what, sir?’ she asked sharply.
Meadowes became certain of what he had only suspected before,—that Anne Champion was quite able to take care of herself.
‘For your work, my good girl,’ he said, drawing himself up rather stiffly for a moment. ‘Martha hath over much on her hands between the bees and the flowers. If you care to live with her it would be to give her your assistance in these matters.’
‘I’ve no knowledge o’ flowers nor any skill with bees, sir,’ said Anne, still speaking in a suspicious tone. Then she added: ‘And where will this place be, sir? for I have been no more than ten miles from London all my days.’
‘Not farther than that; ’tis out Richmond way,’ said Meadowes. ‘But pray do not hasten yourself to decide. I can get another woman any day. ’Twas but that I fancied the country might change your thoughts for you that I made you the offer.’ He rose as he spoke and held out his hand.
‘Thank you, sir,’ said Anne, curtseying to her fine visitor, and rather impressed by his sudden assumption of dignity.
Meadowes was quick to observe the advantage he had gained.
‘If you care to take a week wherein to think over the offer,’ he said, ‘I shall keep the place vacant for you till then.’
‘Thank you, sir,’ again said Anne.
‘Shall I come and see you at the week’s end?’ asked Meadowes.
‘I thank you; yes, sir,’ said Anne.
When her visitor had gone Anne sat down by the window to consider the matter. ‘Him an’ his bees!’ was her first contemptuous conclusion, for, as she would have expressed it herself, ‘handsome women they do know their own know about the men.’ Then she thought over the past, with its hard work and scanty pay, over the present, that was swept empty of hope and pleasure, into a future, that had nothing to offer but work, work, work. It was a fixed belief with Anne that men were seldom wholly disinterested in their motives. She could not bring herself to imagine that Meadowes offered her this situation because he wished his work done—no, no, it was because she was ‘so rarely fine-looking,’ that was all. But then what if it proved to be a good situation—good pay, little work?—she would be a fool to refuse it. And further, she was well able to take care of herself.
There are moods of mind when only some change in the outward conditions of life can promise hope or comfort. It seemed to Anne impossible that she could stay on here in her old surroundings when everything in the future had changed for her. She was even weak and feminine enough to imagine the delight of Mrs. Nare when she discovered that her prophecies had come true and Anne’s fine lover had proved faithless. This thought recurred to her again and again, for women are curious creatures, and bad as they find it to be jilted, they perhaps find it worse still that other women should be able to marvel and gossip over their deserted state! Said Anne, when this thought had become intolerable, ‘I shall go away to the country; Mrs. Nare shall be none the wiser,’ and with that she decided to accept the offered situation, whatever it might prove to be.
So when on the following Sunday afternoon Meadowes appeared once more at Yard’s Entry, he found Anne quite ready to undertake the unknown duties she had hesitated over the week before.
‘I’m happy to go, sir,’ she said; ‘and if so be as I do fail at the work, ’tis your own fault, sir, offering the place to one as knows nought of country ways.’
‘You will learn—you will learn,’ said Meadowes hastily.
‘And your name, sir? if I may make bold to ask.’
‘Mr. Richard Sundon; I fancied I had given you my name ere this.’
‘No, sir, and mayhap you live in the country thereaway?’
It scarcely suited Meadowes to answer this with absolute veracity.
‘No, in town—in rooms just now; some day I shall settle down,’ he replied.
‘O yes, sir, a home’s a fine thing they do say,’ said Anne, in a dreary voice that had the echo of tears in it.