Stanley Weyman - Shrewsbury - A Romance

Yet the three words, "Garden, ten minutes," so gently breathed, that I doubted while I heard, could only have come from her; and assured of that, it will be believed that I found the ten minutes I spent seeing the boys to bed by the light of one scanty rushlight the longest and most tumultuous I ever passed. If she had not spoken I should have found it a sorry time, indeed; since the moment the door was closed behind me I discerned a hundred reasons to be dissatisfied with my conduct, thought of a hundred things I should have said, and saw a hundred things I should have done; and stood a coward convicted. Now, however, all was not over; I might explain. I was about to see her, to speak with her, to pour out my indignation and pity, perhaps to touch her hand; and in the delicious throb of fear and hope and excitement with which these anticipations filled my breast, I speedily forgot to regret what was past.

Doubtless there have been men able to boast, and with truth, that they carried to their first assignation with a woman an even pulse. But as I do not presume to rank myself among these, who have been commonly men of high station (of whom my late Lord Rochester was, I believe, the chief in my time), neither-the unhappy occurrence which I am in the way to relate, notwithstanding-have I, if I may say so without disrespect, so little heart as to crave the reputation. In truth, I experienced that evening, as I crept out of the back door of Mr. D-'s house, and stole into the gloom of the whispering garden, a full share of the guilty feeling that goes with secrecy; and more than my share of the agitation of spirit natural in one who knows (and is new to the thought) that under cover of the darkness a woman stands trembling and waiting for him. A few paces from the house-which I could leave without difficulty, though at the risk of detection-I glanced back to assure myself that all was still: then shivering, as much with excitement as at the chill greeting the night air gave me, I hastened to the gap in the fence, through which I had before seen my mistress.

I felt for the gap with my hand and peered through it, and called her name softly-"Jennie! Jennie!" and listened; and after an interval called again, more boldly. Still hearing nothing, I discovered by the sinking at my heart-which was such that, for all my eighteen years, I could have sat down and cried-how much I had built on her coming. And I called again and again; and still got no answer.

Yet I did not despair. Mrs. D- might have kept her, or one of a hundred things might have happened to delay her; from one cause or another she might not have been able to slip out as quickly as she had thought. She might come yet; and so, though the more prolonged my absence, the greater risk of detection I ran, I composed myself to wait with what patience I might. The town was quiet; human noise at an end for the day; but Mr. D-'s school stood on the outskirts, with its back to the open country, and between the sighing of the wind among the poplars, and the murmur of a neighbouring brook, and those far-off noises that seem inseparable from the night, I had stood a minute or more before another sound, differing from all these, and having its origin at a spot much nearer to me, caught my ear, and set my heart beating. It was the noise of a woman weeping; and to this day I do not know precisely what I did on hearing it-when I made out what it was, I mean-or how I found courage to do it; only, that in an instant, as it seemed to me, I was on the other side of the fence, and had taken the girl in my arms, with her head on my shoulder, and her wet eyes looking into mine, while I rained kisses on her face.

Doubtless the darkness and her grief and my passion gave me boldness to do this; and to do a hundred other mad things in my ecstasy. For, as I had never spoken to her before, any more than I had ever held a woman in my arms before, so I had not thought, I had not dreamed of this! of her hand, perhaps, but no more. Therefore, and though since Adam's time the stars have looked down on many a lover's raptures, never, I verily believe, have they gazed on transports so perfect, so unlooked for, as were mine at that moment! And all the time not a word passed between us; but after a while she pushed me from her, with a kind of force that would not be resisted, and holding me at arm's length, looked at me strangely; and then thrusting me altogether from her, she bade me, almost roughly, go back.

"What? And leave you?" I cried, astonished and heart-broken.

"No, sir, but go to the other side of the fence," she answered firmly, drying her eyes and recovering something of her usual calmness. "And more, if you love me as you say you do-"

I protested. " If? " I cried. "If! And what then-if I do?"

"You will learn to obey," she answered, coolly, yet with an archness that transported me anew. "I am not one of your boys."

For that word, I would have caught her in my arms again, but with a power that I presently came to know, and whereof that was the first exercise, she waved me back. "Go!" she said, masterfully. "For this time, go. Do you hear me?"

My boldness of a minute before, notwithstanding, I stood in awe of her, and was easily cowed; and I crossed the fence. When I was on my side, she came to the gap, and rewarded me by giving me her hand to kiss. "Understand me," she said. "You are to come to this side, sir, only when I give you leave."

"Oh," I cried. "Can you be so cruel?"

"Or not at all, if you prefer it," she continued, drily. "More, you must go in, now, or I shall be missed and beaten. You do not want that to happen, I suppose?"

"If that hag touches you again!" I cried, boiling with rage at the thought, "I will-I will-"

"What?" she said softly, and her fingers closed on mine, and sent a thrill to my heart.

"I will strangle her!" I cried.

She laughed, a little cruelly. "Fine words," she said.

"But I mean them!" I answered, passionately. And I swore it-I swore it; what will not a boy in love promise?

"Well," she answered, whispering and leaning forward until her breath fanned my cheek, and the intoxicating scent of her hair stole away my senses, "perhaps some day I shall try you. Are you sure that you will not fail me then?"

I swore it, panting, and tried to draw her towards me by her arm; but she held back, laughing softly and as one well pleased; and then, in a moment, snatching her hand from me, she vanished in the darkness of the garden, leaving me in a seventh heaven of delight, my blood fired by her kisses, my fancy dwelling on her beauty; and without one afterthought.

Doubtless had I been less deep in love (wherein I was far over-head), or deeper in experience, I might have noted it for a curious thing that she should be so quickly comforted; and should be able to rise in a few moments, and at the touch of my lips, from passionate despair to perfect control, both of herself and of me. And starting thence, I might have gone on to suspect that she possessed her full share of the finesse , which is always a woman's shield and sometimes her sword. But as such suspicions are foreign to youth, so are they especially foreign to youthful love, which takes nothing lower than perfection for its idol. And this I can say for certain, that they no more entered my brain than did the consequences which were to flow from my passion.

For the time, indeed, I was in an ecstasy, a rapture. Walking a-tip-toe, and troubled by none of the things that trouble common folk; so that to this day-though long married-I look back to that period of innocent folly with a yearning and a regret, the sorer for this, that when I try to analyse the happiness I enjoyed, I fail, and make nothing of it. That all things should be changed for me, and I be changed in my own eyes-so that I walked a head taller and esteemed myself ridiculously-by the fact that a kitchen wench in a drugget petticoat and clogs had let me kiss her, and left me to believe that she loved me, seems incredible now; as incredible as that a daily glimpse of her figure flitting among the water-butts and powdering-tubs had power to transform that miserable back garden into a paradise, and Mr. D-'s school, with its dumplings, and bread and dripping, and inky fingers, into a mansion of tremulous joy!