Stanley Weyman - Shrewsbury - A Romance

Yet it was so. Nor did it matter anything to me, so great is the power of love when one is young, that my mistress went in rags, and had coarse hands, and spoke rustically. Touching this last, indeed, I must do her the justice to say that from the first she was as quick to note differences of speech and manner as she was apt to imitate good exemplars; and, moreover, possessed under her rags a species of refinement that matched the witchery of her face, and proved her to be, as she presently showed herself, no common girl.

Of course I, in the state of happy delirium on which I had now entered, and wherein even Mr. D- and the boys wore an amiable air, and only Mrs. D-, because she persecuted my love, had the semblance of a female Satan, needed no proof of this; or I had had it when my Dorinda-so I christened her, feeling Jennie too low a name for so much beauty and kindness-proposed at our second rendezvous that I should teach her to read. At the first flush of the proposal I found reading a poor thing because she did not possess it; at the second I adored her for the humility that condescended to learn; but at the third I saw the convenience, as well as sense, of a proposal which was as much above the mind of an ordinary maid in love as Dorinda appeared superior to such a creature in all the qualities that render sense amiable.

Yet this much granted, how to teach her, seeing that we seldom met or conversed, and never, save under the kindly shelter of darkness? The obstacle for a time taxed all my ingenuity, but in the end I surmounted it by boldly asking Mr. D-'s leave to hold the afternoon classes in the playground. This, the approach of warm weather giving colour to the petition, was allowed; after which, as Dorinda was engaged in the back premises at that hour, and could listen while she drudged, the rest was easy. Calling up the lowest class, I would find fault with their reading, and after flying out at them in a simulated passion, would remit them again and again to the elements; so that for a fortnight or more, and, indeed, until the noise of the lads repeating the lesson annoyed Mrs. D-'s ears, the playground rang with a-b, ab; e-b, eb; c-a-t, cat; d-o-g, dog, and the like, with the alphabet and the rest of the horn-book. And all this so frequently repeated, that with this assistance, and the help of a spelling-book which I gave her, and which she studied before others awoke, my mistress at the end of two months could read tolerably, and was beginning to essay easy round-hand.

And Heaven knows how delicious were those lessons under the shabby ragged tree that shaded one half of the yard! I spoke to the yawning grubby-fingered boys, who slouched and straddled round me; but I knew to whose ears I applied myself; nor had pupil ever a more diligent master, or master an apter pupil. Once a week I had my fee of kisses, but rarely, very rarely, was permitted to cross the fence; a reserve on my Dorinda's part, that, while it augmented the esteem in which I held her, maintained my passion at a white heat. When, nevertheless, I remonstrated with her, and loverlike, complained of the rigour which in my heart I commended, she chid me for setting a low value on her; and when I persisted, "Go on," she said, drawing away from me with a wonderful air of offence. "Tell me at once, and in so many words, that you think me a low thing! That you really take me for the kitchen drudge I appear!"

Her tone was full of meaning, with a hint of mystery, but as I had never thought her aught else-and yet an angel-I was dumb.

"You did think me that?" she cried, fixing me with her eyes, and speaking in a tone that demanded an answer.

I muttered that I had never heard, had never known, that-that-and so stammered into silence, not at all understanding her.

"Then I think that hitherto we have been under a mistake," she answered, speaking very distantly, and in a voice that sent my heart into my boots. "You were fond-or said you were-of the cook-maid. She does not exist. No, sir, a little farther away, if you please," my mistress continued, haughtily, her head in the air, "and know that I come of better stock than that. If you would have my story I will tell it you. I can remember-it is almost the first thing I can remember-a day when I played, as a little child, with a necklace of gold beads, in the court-yard of a house in a great city; and wandered out, the side gate being open, and the porter not in his seat, into the streets; where," she continued dreamily, and gazing away from me, "there were great crowds, and men firing guns, and people running every way-"

I uttered an exclamation of astonishment. She noticed it only by making a short pause, and then went on in the same thoughtful tone, "As far as I can remember, it was a place where there were booths and stalls crowded together, and among them, it seems to me, a man was being hunted, who ran first one way and then another, while soldiers shot at him. At last he came where I had dropped on the ground in terror, after running child-like where the danger was greatest. He glared at me an instant-he was running, stooping down below the level of the booths, and they had lost him for the time; then he snatched me up in his arms, and darted from his shelter, crying loudly as he held me up, 'Save the child! Save the child!' The crowd raised the same cry, and made a way for him to pass. And then-I do not remember anything, until I found myself shabbily dressed in a little inn, where, I suppose, the man, having made his escape, left me."

At that I remember that I cried out in overwhelming excitement and amazement; cried out that I knew the man and his story, and the place whence she had been taken; that I had heard the tale from my father years before. "It was Colonel Porter who picked you up-Colonel Porter, and he saved his life by it!" I cried, quite beside myself at the wonderful discovery I had made. "It was Colonel Porter, in the great riot at Norwich."

"Ah?" she said, slowly; looking away from me, and speaking so coolly and strangely as both to surprise and damp me.

Yet I persisted. "Yes," I said, "the story is well known; at least that part of it. But-" and there and at that word I stopped, dumbfounded and gaping.

"But what?" she asked sharply, and looked at me again; the colour risen in her face.

"But-you are only eighteen," I hazarded timidly, "and the Norwich riot was in the War time. I dare say, thirty years ago."

She turned on me in a sort of passion.

"Well, sir, and what of that?" she cried. "Do you think me thirty?"

"No, indeed," I answered. And at the most she was nineteen.

"Then don't you believe me?"

I cried out too at that; but, boy-like, I was so proud of my knowledge and acuteness that I could not let the point lie. "All I mean," I explained, "is that to have been alive then, and at Norwich, you must be thirty now. And-"

"And was it I?" she answered, flying out at me in a fine fury. "Who said anything about Norwich? Or your dirty riots? Or your Porter, whose name I never heard before! Go away! I hate you! I hate you!" she continued, passionately, waving me off. "You make up things and then put them on me! I never said a word about Norwich."

"I know you did not," I protested.

"Then why did you say I did?" she wailed. "Why did you say I did? You are a wretch! I hate you!"

And with that, dissolving in tears and sobs she at one and the same time showed me another side of love, and reduced me to the utmost depths of despair; whence I was not permitted to emerge, nor reinstated in the least degree of favour until I had a hundred times abased myself before her, and was ready to curse the day when I first heard the name of Porter. Still peace was at last, and with infinite difficulty restored; and so complete was our redintegratio amoris that we presently ventured to recur to her tale and to the strange coincidence that had divided us; which did not seem so very remarkable, on second thought, seeing that she could not now remember that she had said a word about booths or stalls, but would have it I had inserted those particulars; the man in her case having taken refuge-she fancied, but could not at this distance of time remember very clearly-among the seats of a kind of bull-ring or circus erected in the marketplace. Which of course made a good deal of difference.