Florence Marryat

“ It is I who have no right to aspire to be your husband—a rough, country clod like me, only, only—I would love you with the best, Nell, if I could but make you believe it.’
‘I do believe it, Hugh, and I am sorry it should be so, because my love for you is so different from yours. I regard you as a dear friend. I have no other love to give you.’
‘You care for some other man,’ said Hugh, with the quick jealousy of lovers. ‘You are engaged to be married. ”

“ On they flew through the village and out on the open road, the cobs having now settled seriously to their work, and skimming over the ground like a pair of swallows.
When they had driven half the way into Newport, Lady Bowmant turned their heads homewards, and trotted them gently up a long hill. She had them so completely under her control, that it was a pleasure to see her handle the reins and guide them with a flick of her whip.
‘I’d give anything to drive as you do,’ said Lady Ilfracombe, with genuine admiration of the prowess of her companion. ”

“ I never saw a man so unhappy as he’s been about you. He looks ten years older since you were taken ill. Do you know, Nell, that he’s been here every minute he could spare from his work, kneeling by your bedside whilst you were raving in delirium, praying with all his heart and soul, that God would spare your precious life to us a little longer. Hugh Owen has been your tenderest nurse. ”

“ But the heart that can be so faithful to one man—the man who has betrayed it—will be as faithful to another when once its tears are dried for the first. I, too, look on you as a widow, as something far more to be pitied than a widow. But it is all over now, my poor girl. You know that without my telling you; so, whether you can forget it or not, let me try to make the remainder of your life useful and happy. Will you, Nell?’
‘Oh, Hugh, you are too good. I never knew anyone so good and kind in all my life before. ”

“ You are prejudiced against my old chum—I have seen that from the beginning—but to say that dear old Jack wins all the stakes, night after night, is as good as saying—oh, I am sure you cannot mean it—you cannot think of the meaning of what you say.’
‘My dear Ilfracombe, there is no meaning about it. I am only speaking the plain truth. I’ve seen it for a long time. Doubtless, Mr Portland is the best player of the four, and that is the reason, but it has struck me as rather remarkable. And it seems so strange, too, that friends should want, or like to pocket each other’s money. ”

“ But no true woman ever let another man abuse her lover, however guilty he might be, without resenting it. Least of all women was Nell Llewellyn likely to stand such a thing.
‘How dare you call him by such a name?’ she cried angrily. ‘Whatever he may have done, it is not your place to resent it. I am nothing to you. He is not a scoundrel. There never was a more honourable, kind-hearted, generous creature born. ”

“ One grows young again with spring. The buoyancy of the atmosphere, and all the glad sights and sounds that salute one’s eyes and ears, seem to fill one with new feelings—new ideas—new hopes. Even Nell succumbed to the delights of the season, and felt sorry to think she had driven her kindest friend from her side. She had tried several times to see Hugh Owen, and make up her quarrel with him, but he always managed to avoid meeting her. ”

“ Nora was rather pleased to be left in sole charge. She had been longing to have a turn at the cobs herself. She had been watching Lady Bowmant’s actions very closely, and noticed with what ease she guided the little horses—how quickly they obeyed her voice and the touch of her hand; and had been wishing all the time to try driving them. She had never handled a tandem in her life before, but she was a plucky girl, and her very ignorance made her bold. ”

“ An old woman named Betsy Hobbs, who came in sometimes to help in an emergency at the farmhouse, was seated by the window, with a large pair of knitting-needles in her hands, a ball of worsted at her feet, and her head sunk on her breast, enjoying a snooze after the labours of the day. Nell stared at her unfamiliar figure with the same sense of incapacity to understand her presence, and the same sense of utter indifference to not understanding it. ”

“ Such a wicked thing for a man of Sir Archibald’s age to encourage in his house, but there! it’s all her fault. She don’t go on a bit like a married lady, and I don’t care who hears me say so. A running after gents as she does, screaming and laughing like a schoolgirl, and driving over the place like a mad woman. I’m sure I wish sometimes I’d never set eyes on her face.’
‘Ah, I’m glad our Nell has nothing to do with such,’ said Mrs Llewellyn, ‘for it must be a bad example for a young girl. ”

“ I have very few friends, Hugh—very, very few,’ said the girl, with a quivering lip.
‘How can you repay me?’ repeated the young man, musingly. ‘Is it possible you do not guess? Nell, do you know, have you ever thought why I lead such a lonely life, why I have not married like Will? My brother is five years younger than myself, and most of the lads in Usk are thinking of getting a wife as soon as they can make their pound or thirty shillings a week. I make four times that as a minister, Nell, and most girls would think me well able to keep them in comfort and respectability. ”

“ But how could I do it, Nell? What can you have ever done to make you speak like that?’
‘I’ve done what the worst woman you’ve ever met has done. Hugh, you have forced the truth from me. Don’t blame me if it hurts you. I am not a good girl, like Hetty, or Sarah Kingston, or Rachel Grove. I’m not fit to speak to any one of them. I have no right to be at Panty-cuckoo Farm. If father knew all, perhaps he’d turn me out again. I—I—have fallen, Hugh! ”

“ I could remain your friend though I knew you guilty of every weakness common to human nature, but I dare not take the hand of a woman who deliberately desires the death of a fellow-creature. Depend on it, Nell, that this unfortunate lady, who has married the man who behaved so basely to you, will have enough trouble without you wishing her more. ”

“ When our Nell was ill, he was at the farm every day, praying most beautiful, and bringing her books and flowers, and such-like; but I don’t believe we’ve seen him, not to speak of, since Christmas, have we, Nell?’
‘I don’t think we have, mother,’ replied Nell consciously.
‘Oh, that’s plain enough,’ said Farmer Owen. ‘You ain’t dying any longer, my lass, or you’d have Master Hugh at your bedside often enough. He don’t care for lasses with rosy cheeks, and who can eat a good dinner, and use their legs. They’ve no interest for a minister. ”

“ Oh, Hugh, I feel as if I had been in possession of untold wealth, and I had deliberately thrown it away. Will it always [Pg 127] be so? Shall I never be any better? Am I to go on suffering like this to my life’s end?’
‘I hope not, Nell,’ replied the young man. ‘You are not strong enough for dairy and farm work, and it leaves your brain too little to do, so it broods incessantly upon the past. The work you want, Nell, is head work—something by which you will feel you are benefiting others. That is the employment to bring peace and forgetfulness in its train. ”

“ What working man has the leisure to go after his neighbour’s wife? When his day’s labour is over he is too tired to go courting, to say nothing of the fact that his neighbour’s task is over at the same time, and he is keeping safe guard over his sheepfold. No, her own people would show no sympathy for her disgrace! Nell was quite aware of that. Hugh, who was so good himself and a minister of the gospel, was the only one she would have dared tell her story to, and he could so far overlook it as to wish to make her his wife. ”

“ It takes sorrow and disappointment and bodily pain to make us welcome it as a release from all evil.
[Pg 69]
‘Oh, Ilfracombe,’ she whispered, ‘I am so sorry for you. Death is an awful thing. But I cannot see it was your fault. You meant to be good and kind. She expected too much, surely? She must have known that some day you would marry, and it would come to an end?’
‘That is just what Sterndale said!’ exclaimed the earl joyfully; ‘and you say the same. You do not spurn me from you, my own darling, because of the vileness of my former life? Oh, Nora, you are a woman in a thousand. ”

“ Nora, I have been no better than other young men—’
‘I never supposed you were,’ interposed his wife.
‘Ah, wait till you hear all. Some years before I met you, I took a fancy to a girl, and she—lived in my house. You understand?’
Lady Ilfracombe nodded.
‘Most men knew of this, and your father made it a condition of our marriage that the whole thing was put an end to. Of course it was what I only intended to do, but I knew it was my duty to make some provision for the young woman, so directed Mr Sterndale to tell her of my intended marriage, and settle a certain sum of money on her. ”

“ Lady Ilfracombe, though indisposed to accord her a hearty welcome just because she had been introduced by Jack Portland, could not help thawing under her lively manner, and before long they were all on the most excellent terms.
‘How good of you to ask us to luncheon, Lady Ilfracombe!’ exclaimed the new comer. ‘I am sure I shall never forget it. I do so admire anything like cordiality. You meet with so little of it in this country. We Englishwomen are horribly stiff as a rule, are we not? Sir Archibald and I were admiring your drag so much. ”

“ And off ran Nora to join her husband. The Derby day was for her a complete success. She was dressed becomingly—was in good health and spirits, and in the humour to enjoy all she saw and heard. Lord Ilfracombe’s drag, with its team of perfectly-matched chesnuts, was one of the handsomest in the Four-in-hand Club, and had always attracted particular attention when he turned out for the annual Park display. ”

“ She saw Jack Portland’s bloated face grow darker and darker as she parried his attempts at familiarity, until she dreaded lest, in his anger at her repulsion, he should say something aloud that would lower her for ever in the eyes of her relations. Who can trust the tongue of a man who is a habitual drinker? At [Pg 83] last Nora could stand it no longer, and, rising hastily, she asked the dowager to excuse her leaving the table, as she did not feel well. Her plea was sufficient to make her husband follow her, but he could not get the truth out of her, even when alone. ”

“ I do so love fair men. I told Sir Archibald yesterday, that if the earl had not been married, I couldn’t have resisted a flirtation with him.’
‘Have one now,’ cried Nora merrily. ‘Don’t mind me. It is quite the fashion for married men to flirt now-a-days; and [Pg 226] a lady in town told me once that she should feel quite hurt if the women did not consider her husband worth pulling caps for.’
‘Now, you’re just the sort of girl I like,’ said Lady Bowmant admiringly. ‘I suppose it isn’t good manners to call you a “girl,” just as if you were nobody. ”

“ I thought poor Hetty would have cried herself sick last week, when Dr Cowell told us we mustn’t build our hopes too much on keeping [Pg 6] you here. I think he will be as surprised as anyone when he hears the good news. Oh, my lass, it would have been a sore day for more than one of us if we had lost you!’
‘I may go yet, mother,’ said Nell, looking at her skeleton hands; ‘there’s not much of me left, I’m thinking.’
‘Oh, no you won’t, my dear, not this time, thank God. I know what these fevers are. I’ve seen too many of them. When they’ve burnt themselves out, they’re over. ”

“ People do, as a rule, when they first come downstairs. Her cheeks were sunken and white as death itself, and her eyes seemed preternaturally large and staring. But it was Nell, and Hugh Owen’s face grew scarlet at the mere sight of her.
‘Oh, Nell!’ he exclaimed, as he advanced quickly to grasp her outstretched hand, ‘this is a joyful surprise to see you downstairs again. Your mother had not prepared me for it. Are you sure you feel none the worse for the exertion—that it will not do you any harm?’
Nell was about to reply, but Mrs Llewellyn anticipated her. ”

“ If her mother remarked how comfortable and happy Hetty was in her new home, Mr Llewellyn would observe,—
‘Ay, ay, it’s just as well she’s feathered her nest before troubles come,’ or if Nell said she felt stronger and better for the fine weather, it would be, ‘Well, I don’t know as it’s a thing to crow over. Many a person’s happier dead than alive.’
At last one morning she came down to breakfast to find him in a brown study over a lawyer’s letter, which had reached him in a long, blue envelope. The postman was a rare visitor at Panty-cuckoo Farm. ”

“ Hugh Owen would not have been over-pleased could he have heard them [Pg 29] discussing his private feelings after this fashion; but, luckily for him, he did not hear them. It is lucky for all of us when we do not hear what our neighbours say of us behind our backs. We should not have an acquaintance left in the world if we did. But the young minister went on his way, little dreaming that anyone guessed the sweet, sacred hope which he was cherishing in his heart of hearts, and which he only waited for Nell’s complete convalescence to confide to her. ”

“ Nell is much too sensible for that. She knows that gentleman’s compliments mean no good for poor girls, and would not encourage such a thing for a moment. My lasses are not like the Simpsons, Mrs Hody, nor yet the Manleys. They’ve never been allowed to run loose for anyone to talk to, but been reared in a God-fearing way and taught that His eye is on them everywhere. ”

“ But something about the luggage seemed to bring an old memory with it, and made her feel uneasy. Could it possibly belong to someone whom she had met in Grosvenor Square? or at Thistlemere?—anyone who might recognise her as having been in Lord Ilfracombe’s household? The thought made her turn cold with apprehension.
‘Both these bundles of shawls can’t belong to one gentleman, Nell,’ said her mother presently. ‘Come and take one into the other room. Ay, but that’s a beauty. And what a pretty plaid, too—green and orange and blue. ”