CHAPTER XI
Sebastian and Emma Shepley began their married life in a little house in Jermyn Street—‘small,’ as Emma would have described it, ‘but genteel.’ It would be impossible to exaggerate the pride and pleasure which Emma had in the arrangements of her house, and in the fact that she was married to the (to her) finest and dearest of men; but to Sebastian marriage appeared in a very different light. For him it showed as the end of Youth, the voluntary rejection of romance, the light of common day. He had reasoned himself into it; acknowledging (and the man who does this need never call himself young again) that he had better take what he could get and be thankful for it. He had laid Passion in the grave; and, turning away, he met Life with her resolute face waiting for him inexorable as of old. Marriage was probably the first and most prudent step he could take, and Emma was fond of him, and Emma, after all, was pretty. A home, a wife, children—these solid anchors of the soul, presented themselves almost invitingly to his fancy after a time—and farewell to Love and Youth!
In these curiously differing moods of mind Emma and Sebastian entered into the estate of matrimony—Sebastian with his eyes open, Emma with hers firmly shut.
‘Can two walk together except they be agreed?’ asks that eternally unanswerable book the Bible. Not comfortably, certainly, but they can halt along somehow, far out of step it may be, yet on the same road. I am afraid that when all was said and done the walk of Emma and Sebastian was somewhat after this halting kind. For Emma had not been married for many weeks before she began to see how curiously she disagreed from Sebastian on almost every point. Strange is the glamour of love that she had not found this out sooner! It said something for both of them that after having made the discovery Emma continued to love her husband as much as ever—only, the glamour was gone now. He had been to her a faultless romantic hero, she found him to be a man with several pronounced faults, who frequently offended her taste, who constantly opposed her, who plainly told her that he had once loved another woman, and loved her memory still.
Sebastian on his part owned that Emma was occasionally quite exasperating to him; but he also acknowledged her entire goodness of heart and the excellence of her housekeeping. Their marriage in fact was just one of the ordinary ruck of marriages; not unhappy, not ideal—merely a little disappointing to Emma, a little hardening and coarsening to Sebastian. The great bone of contention was of a social nature. For gentility was dear as life itself to Emma, while to Sebastian all the little affectations and conventions which his wife valued so highly were the merest moonshine. He submitted graciously enough to correction in matters of etiquette, and laughed with imperturbable good humour when Emma called him to task for eating with his knife and wiping his lips with the back of his hand. But when it came to the question of friends and acquaintances matters were more complicated.
Emma had, so to speak, passed her acquaintances through a fine sieve, and the sifted few who came through, they, and they alone, were her intimates. Sebastian, on the other hand, had only one reason for making friends with any one—whether he liked them or not. As a matter of fact he liked the greater part of the world, and was liked by them in return, but anything like an ulterior end in making acquaintances was unknown to him. Emma’s rules for the making of so-called friends, therefore, filled him with amazement; while Emma, on her part, looked with little short of dismay upon the men whom Sebastian welcomed to his table. Certainly there was scarcely one among all his acquaintance that could have been called a gentleman. ‘As why should they, Emma? I am no gentleman myself,’ Sebastian had retorted when taxed with his preference for low company. Emma objected most of all to the soldiers whom her husband had known abroad, and who were continually coming to the house; she might be entertaining her most select lady-friends to a dish of tea, and talking the latest Court gossip with them, when, into this refined circle, and quite undismayed by its frigidly genteel atmosphere, would enter Sebastian, bringing with him, as likely as not, his friend Sergeant Cartwright, or young Tillet the bugler, who played at Ramillies. The Sergeant had lost an arm at Blenheim, and Emma shrank away instinctively from the empty sleeve he wore pinned across his breast; no historic association could reconcile her to the presence of these men in her parlour, and when they were bidden to supper Mrs. Shepley sat at the head of the table with an air of studied aloofness that was fine to see. Now and then she would raise her pretty eyebrows expressively, as when Cartwright spat on the floor, or Tillet made use of expressions not usually heard in parlours; but she came at last to see that remonstrance with Sebastian on this score was useless, and resigned herself as best she might to see the hero of her first love make merry with such friends.
But perhaps Emma’s sorest moments were when those whom she naively termed ‘persons of importance’ came to visit Sebastian. To Emma, every one with a title was a person of importance, be they never so unimportant in reality, and it seemed to her that Sebastian intentionally said and did the wrong things to such personages. There was one terrible night when ‘a Marquis’ (enough that the mystic dignity was his) honoured the little house in Jermyn Street with a visit, and Sebastian, all unheeding of coughs and frowns from his wife, must press this exalted visitor to sup with them. Now on this ill-fated night Emma had chosen to feed her lord and master on pig’s feet and fried liver—viands whose price, or rather want of price, is almost proverbial. It was, indeed, from no sordid motives of economy that Emma had so furnished forth her board, but from the desire to please Sebastian, whose taste in food was incurably vulgar. How could she have anticipated that burning moment when her faltering tongue must frame the words—
‘My Lord, may I offer you some of these pig’s feet, or mayhap your Lordship would relish some of this fried liver more?’
And as if this was not bitter enough, did not Sebastian break into a laugh that shook the glasses on the table, crying out—
‘Faith, Emma, had you known we were to entertain the quality to-night, I had not had my liver and pig’s feet!’
Emma smiled faintly, for tears were not far off; and the Marquis, seeing her perturbation, told the story of the liver they got at Blenheim, that the officers swore was shoe-leather,—‘A different dish from your fine cookery, madam,’ he said, begging for another helping of the dish. But it was a life-long lesson to poor Emma: she never ordered liver for supper again without a pang of foreboding.
Then the matter of Church observances had arisen between these young people. Emma was a devout Church-woman; Sebastian did not hold much to one persuasion or another, and certainly was not fond of Church services. Emma all her life had gone every Sunday to the curious little old church of St. Mary Minories, and after her marriage expected Sebastian to go there with her. The first Sunday morning after her marriage Emma came down-stairs in her church-going attire, and in rather a shocked voice expressed her astonishment to find Sebastian smoking by the fire, instead of making any preparation for coming with her.
‘Charlotte will be here in the coach immediately,’ she said. ‘Hasten, Sebastian, we shall be late at St. Mary’s.’
‘St. Mary’s?’ queried Sebastian.
‘St. Mary Minories, where it hath always been our custom to attend divine service—come, Sebastian, pray lay aside your pipe!’
Sebastian leant forward, pressing down the tobacco into the bowl of his pipe. He made no reply.
‘Are you not coming to church? Perhaps some patients require your care——’ began Emma. She came and laid her hand on his shoulder in gentle remonstrance.
‘No, I cannot come.’
‘Mayhap you might come to meet us—you think little of such a walk,’ suggested Emma.
‘No!’ said Sebastian curtly. Emma had never seen him so cross before. Her eyes filled with tears, and she withdrew her hand from his shoulder, and turned away.
‘I fear I have displeased you, sir!’ she said, feeling a sudden inclination to desert this young man, who could behave so strangely to her one short week after their marriage. But the next moment she forgave him; for Sebastian, at the tearful sound of her voice, jumped up and came over to where she stood, holding out his hands to her.
‘Pardon me, Emma; ’tis no fault of yours, but a fancy of my own. I never pass that way an I can help it, Emma—that’s all.’
‘Why——!’ began stupid Emma; but she dried her tears.
‘Because Anne Champion lived there, and there I saw her die, and I’m like to weep tears of blood when I pass by that way,’ said Sebastian, who, whatever he was, would have no secrets from his wife, in spite of Dr. Barrington’s wisdom.
If Emma had been a crafty woman she would have discontinued her attendance at St. Mary Minories after this; but she was not, and instead, she went there weekly, and very frequently she would say, ‘Sebastian, if so be that you cannot worship along with me, why do you not go to some other church?’ And Sebastian scarcely knew whether to laugh more at her singular lack of tact or to be provoked by it.
After this sort of fashion time went on; and then, whatever little differences there may have been between the Shepleys, were forgotten for a time in the wonderfully uniting interest which came to them with the birth of their daughter. All Emma’s first admiration for Sebastian returned to her, when she saw how delightfully he played the part of a father. And indeed, to see him with this enchanting milky-skinned baby in his arms was a sight to please any heart; they looked so wholly incongruous.
‘Lord! to think of your fathering such a dainty piece of goods, doctor!’ exclaimed Emma’s pet aversion, the Sergeant, at sight of Sebastian and his tiny daughter. Emma was too proud and pleased at the moment to find fault with the speech, so, lifting little Miss Shepley from her husband’s arms, she brought her to be kissed by the Sergeant.
‘She is very beautiful,’ said the proud mother in a conclusive manner, after the salute had been very unwillingly given. ‘And we intend to name her Caroline, after my mother.’
So let this be my reader’s first introduction to Caroline Shepley.