Sheba Blake - A Changed Man

When she looked up she found that, in the turmoil of his mind, her father was moving about the room. ‘You are within an ace of ruining yourself, ruining me, ruining us all!’ he said. ‘You are nearly as bad as your brother, begad!’

‘Perhaps I am—yes—perhaps I am!’

‘That I should father such a harum-scarum brood!’

‘It is very bad; but Nicholas—’

‘He’s a scoundrel!’

‘He is NOT a scoundrel!’ cried she, turning quickly. ‘He’s as good and worthy as you or I, or anybody bearing our name, or any nobleman in the kingdom, if you come to that! Only—only’—she could not continue the argument on those lines. ‘Now, father, listen!’ she sobbed; ‘if you taunt me I’ll go off and join him at his farm this very day, and marry him to-morrow, that’s what I’ll do!’

‘I don’t taant ye!’

‘I wish to avoid unseemliness as much as you.’

She went away. When she came back a quarter of an hour later, thinking to find the room empty, he was standing there as before, never having apparently moved. His manner had quite changed. He seemed to take a resigned and entirely different view of circumstances.

‘Christine, here’s a paragraph in the paper hinting at a secret wedding, and I’m blazed if it don’t point to you. Well, since this was to happen, I’ll bear it, and not complain. All volk have crosses, and this is one of mine. Now, this is what I’ve got to say- -I feel that you must carry out this attempt at marrying Nicholas Long. Faith, you must! The rumour will become a scandal if you don’t—that’s my view. I have tried to look at the brightest side of the case. Nicholas Long is a young man superior to most of his class, and fairly presentable. And he’s not poor—at least his uncle is not. I believe the old muddler could buy me up any day. However, a farmer’s wife you must be, as far as I can see. As you’ve made your bed, so ye must lie. Parents propose, and ungrateful children dispose. You shall marry him, and immediately.’

Christine hardly knew what to make of this. ‘He is quite willing to wait, and so am I. We can wait for two or three years, and then he will be as worthy as—’

‘You must marry him. And the sooner the better, if ‘tis to be done at all . . . And yet I did wish you could have been Jim Bellston’s wife. I did wish it! But no.’

‘I, too, wished it and do still, in one sense,’ she returned gently. His moderation had won her out of her defiant mood, and she was willing to reason with him.

‘You do?’ he said surprised.

‘I see that in a worldly sense my conduct with Mr. Long may be considered a mistake.’

‘H’m—I am glad to hear that—after my death you may see it more clearly still; and you won’t have long to wait, to my reckoning.’

She fell into bitter repentance, and kissed him in her anguish. ‘Don’t say that!’ she cried. ‘Tell me what to do?’

‘If you’ll leave me for an hour or two I’ll think. Drive to the market and back—the carriage is at the door—and I’ll try to collect my senses. Dinner can be put back till you return.’

In a few minutes she was dressed, and the carriage bore her up the hill which divided the village and manor from the market-town.

A quarter of an hour brought her into the High Street, and for want of a more important errand she called at the harness-maker’s for a dog-collar that she required.

It happened to be market-day, and Nicholas, having postponed the engagements which called him thither to keep the appointment with her in the Sallows, rushed off at the end of the afternoon to attend to them as well as he could. Arriving thus in a great hurry on account of the lateness of the hour, he still retained the wild, amphibious appearance which had marked him when he came up from the meadows to her side—an exceptional condition of things which had scarcely ever before occurred. When she crossed the pavement from the shop door, the shopman bowing and escorting her to the carriage, Nicholas chanced to be standing at the road-waggon office, talking to the master of the waggons. There were a good many people about, and those near paused and looked at her transit, in the full stroke of the level October sun, which went under the brims of their hats, and pierced through their button-holes. From the group she heard murmured the words: ‘Mrs. Nicholas Long.’

The unexpected remark, not without distinct satire in its tone, took her so greatly by surprise that she was confounded. Nicholas was by this time nearer, though coming against the sun he had not yet perceived her. Influenced by her father’s lecture, she felt angry with him for being there and causing this awkwardness. Her notice of him was therefore slight, supercilious perhaps, slurred over; and her vexation at his presence showed distinctly in her face as she sat down in her seat. Instead of catching his waiting eye, she positively turned her head away.

A moment after she was sorry she had treated him so; but he was gone.

Reaching home she found on her dressing-table a note from her father. The statement was brief:

I have considered and am of the same opinion. You must marry him. He can leave home at once and travel as proposed. I have written to him to this effect. I don’t want any victuals, so don’t wait dinner for me.

Nicholas was the wrong kind of man to be blind to his Christine’s mortification, though he did not know its entire cause. He had lately foreseen something of this sort as possible.

‘It serves me right,’ he thought, as he trotted homeward. ‘It was absurd—wicked of me to lead her on so. The sacrifice would have been too great—too cruel!’ And yet, though he thus took her part, he flushed with indignation every time he said to himself, ‘She is ashamed of me!’

On the ridge which overlooked Froom-Everard he met a neighbour of his—a stock-dealer—in his gig, and they drew rein and exchanged a few words. A part of the dealer’s conversation had much meaning for Nicholas.

‘I’ve had occasion to call on Squire Everard,’ the former said; ‘but he couldn’t see me on account of being quite knocked up at some bad news he has heard.’

Nicholas rode on past Froom-Everard to Elsenford Farm, pondering. He had new and startling matter for thought as soon as he got there. The Squire’s note had arrived. At first he could not credit its import; then he saw further, took in the tone of the letter, saw the writer’s contempt behind the words, and understood that the letter was written as by a man hemmed into a corner. Christine was defiantly—insultingly—hurled at his head. He was accepted because he was so despised.

And yet with what respect he had treated her and hers! Now he was reminded of what an agricultural friend had said years ago, seeing the eyes of Nicholas fixed on Christine as on an angel when she passed: ‘Better a little fire to warm ‘ee than a great one to burn ‘ee. No good can come of throwing your heart there.’ He went into the mead, sat down, and asked himself four questions:

1. How could she live near her acquaintance as his wife, even in his absence, without suffering martyrdom from the stings of their contempt?

2. Would not this entail total estrangement between Christine and her family also, and her own consequent misery?

3. Must not such isolation extinguish her affection for him?

4. Supposing that her father rigged them out as colonists and sent them off to America, was not the effect of such exile upon one of her gentle nurture likely to be as the last?