Louie's Married Life, etc

Front matter

She Mome fiibraru. STS 2<9& rr^iM V or Crown Svo, J20 pages. Handsome Cloth Cover. Illustrations. 2s. each. MADELINE ; or, The Tale of a Haunted House. By Jennie Chappell. LOUIE'S MARRIED LIFE. By Sarah Doudney. NAOMI ; or, The Last Days of Jerusalem. By Mrs. Webb. THE PILGRIM'S PROGRESS. By John Bunyan. With Forty-seven Full-page and Other Illustrations by Frederick Barnard, J. D. Linton, W. Small, etc. (416 pages). DOROTHY'S TRAINING; or, Wild- Flower or Weed. By Jennie Chappell. LIVING IT DOWN. By Laura M. Lane. MICK TRACY, The Irish Scripture Reader. By the Author of " Tim Doolan : The Irish Emigrant." A WAY IN THE WILDERNESS. By Maggie Swan. HER SADDEST BLESSING. By Jennie Chappell. AVICE : A Story of Imperial Rome. By Eliza F. Pollard. FLORENCE STANLEY; or, Forgiving Because Much \ Forgiven.

By Jane M. Kippen. f LONDON : S. W. PARTRIDGE & Co.," 8 & 9, Paternoster Row, E.C. she Home" Hibrartj {COtVTlXUED). THE MAN OF THE HOUSE. \ JULIA RIED. RUTH ERSKINE'S CROSSES. ESTER RIED. ESTER RIED YET SPEAKING. uy THREE PEOPLE. pANgy FOUR GIRLS AT CHAUTAUQUA. AN ENDLESS CHAIN. THE KING S DAUGHTER. THE CHAUTAUQUA GIRLS AT HOME WISE AND OTHERWISE. / THE BETTER PART. \ I By Annie MARK DESBOROUGH'S VOW. \ _ „ .-..»- \ S. Swan. THE STRAIT GATE. > EDITH OSWALD. By Jane M. Kippen. 224 pages. WITHOUT A THOUGHT; or, Dora's Discipline. By Jennie Chappell. A BUNCH OF CHERRIES. ByJ. W. Kirton. THE HOUSEHOLD ANGEL. By Madeline Leslie. LONDON: S. W. PARTRIDGE & Co., 8 & Paternoster Row, E.C. "there was something imposing and sumptuous about her BEAUTY." — p. 143, Louie's Married Life BY SARAH DOUDNEY^ author of "when we two parted," "where the dew falls in LONDON," " A ROMANCE OF LINCOLN'S INN," ETC.

ILLUSTRATED BY W. R.ilNEY, R.I LONDON S. W. PARTRIDGE & CO. 8 & 9 PATERNOSTER ROW. V CONTENTS. CHAPTER PAG I. BEGINNING, I II. LOOKING BACK, 1* III. INEZ, 35 IV. RONALD, . . \ 47 V. RECOVERY, 59 74 VI. THE GUITAR, VII. JARS, 04 VIII. MARIAN, 111 IX. GOING OUT, 12S X. SHADOWS DEEPEN, 14!) lCt) XI. POISONED WORDS, CONTENTS. VI CHAPTER PACE XII. JEALOUSY, 173 XIII. ANGUISH, ........ 183 XIV. STRICKEN, 196 xv. flight, 210 XVI. A FEVERISH DREAM, 224 XVII. AWAKING, 233 XVIII. HEART TO HEART, 245 XIX. THE OLD ALBUM, 257 XX. THE JEWELS, 273 XXI. CLOSING WORDS,

Chapter I. Beginning

' ' Sweetheart, sweetheart, " I hear the two clear notes, And see the sunlight shining through the shower ; "Sweetheart," how faintly from the meadow floats The early fragrance of the cuckoo-flower ! The wind is keen, and April skies are grey ; But love can wait till rain-clouds break apart ; And still the bird sings through the longest day ; "Sweetheart, sweetheart.'" When lives are true, the springtide never dies, When souls are one, the love-notes never cease ; Our bird sings on beneath the cloudy skies, Our little world is full of light and peace ; Fresh as the breath of violets new-born Comes the sweet thought to hearts that cannot part, "After the night of weeping breaks the morn," , , _ <-, Sweetheart, sweethear t . J__2 no one would ever believe f^^J that this song was written by a &JnP Londoner, and yet I, who wrote it, f am a Londoner in heart and soul.

But I was born far away in the country, and all the familiar sights and sounds of old days lend themselves to my rhymes, so that 1 oftener sing of fields, and birds, and flowers, than of those things which are always before my eyes. Moreover, as all authors know, it is sometimes easier to write of the unseen than of the seen, and these home fields of mine have borrowed much of their beauty from the glamour of distance. It is because this tale is called " Louie's Married Life," that I shall give you my songs. They were all written for Ronald to sing to the accompaniment of his guitar ; and if it had not been for Ronald I hardly think that they would ever have been written at all. For if I had married somebody else (as I nearly did, once upon a time), this little flame of song which is in me would have been extinguished altogether, and I should have become the dullest woman in the world.

These songs are a part of my life as a wife. I daresay, however, that many people have BEGINNING. 9 wasted a great deal of pity on the wife of Ronald Hepburne ; and if they do not openly point at the lines on my forehead and the crow's feet at the corners of my eyes, they convey by looks and tones their deep distress on seeing my altered appearance. I admit that they have every possible right to indulge in polite lamentations. Never having been a buxom woman, I had not much flesh to lose; and nursing through long days, and watching through longer nights, have left upon me certain traces which are not likely to be effaced, even in this present time of peace. When I wrote the foregoing little song it was early in an April morning ; the only sunbeams that I could see were shining on brick walls, blackened with smoke ; and the only sky that I could see was a patch of pale blue above the chimney-tops.

But, as I lifted my head from my pillow, a feeling of unutterable gratitude thrilled me through and through : it was the last night that we should ever spend in that dreary London room, and Ronald had been sleeping soundly and long. Weeping may endure for a night (and with me it had endured for many nights), but joy cometh in the morning. I thought of all the other watchers in the crowded houses around me, of mothers count ing the hours by the beds of sick children, of wives who had agonised as I had done and prayed as I had prayed ; and then, as I looked at Ronald's face, in the dim dawn, I began to recall the note of an early bird in my old country home — and so the song was made. We had only been married six months when Ronald was stricken with fever. First a slight cold, a few days of languor and depression, and then, before I had had time to realise the danger, he was face to face with death.

So the battle for life was fought and won in the dark chamber of a London lodging, and on that April morning I was tasting the first sweets of the great deliverance. BEGINNING. But when with a great effort he rose from the bed whereon he had lain for weeks, I almost feared that the conflict was about to begin again. He had never answered to the popular notion of a fine, handsome man (and I must needs say here that I have no fancy for burly men), yet I had not thought it possible that he could become so fragile, so spectre-like, as he now appeared. Mine is, I suppose, a transparent character, for Ronald always reads my thoughts at a glance ; and as his eyes met mine he gave me a reassuring smile. " Never fear, Louie," he said, cheerfully. " I shall grow more substantial by-and-by." And then, touching my thin arm, he added, with a sadder look, " I am afraid, poor child, that you have thrown your own strength away in trying to save mine."

"I'm very strong," I answered, buttoning his great-coat with vigorous fingers. "The cab will be here in a minute, and we have no time to spend in bemoaning our leanness. Are you not very glad, Ronald, to leave this dismal old sick room for ever and ever ? " But, even while I spoke, there flitted across my brain a faint foreshadowing of a time when the memory of that dim little room would become painfully dear. The feeling passed as quickly as it came, and I drew the folds of Ronald's wrapper over his mouth to guard him from the chilly wind of spring. Then the cab came up to the door, and we stood at the window to watch the disposal of our luggage on the roof. "The guitar will go inside," said I to the servant. So the guitar was carried out in its case and deposited on the front seat, and Ronald followed, so slowly and feebly that my heart ached to see him.

I was the last to get in ; and so we turned our backs upon that dreary house where we had suffered the sharpest sorrow that we had ever yet known. BEGINNING. 13 The drive to our new abode was not a long one ; and as it was fated that we were to meet with a disaster it was well that it did not come upon us until we were very near our home. As we turned sharply out of Welbeck Street another cab came smashing into ours, and we were overturned in a moment. Assist ance was soon forthcoming ; the two drivers exchanged compliments after the manner of their kind ; ready helpers collected our boxes, and placed us, quite unharmed, in another vehicle ; in short, it was one of those " marvel lous escapes " of which one hears so much, and there was only one thing belonging to us which was much the worse for the accident.

And that one thing was Ronald's guitar. Until I was fairly inside our new rooms, I did not realise that the poor guitar was com pletely done for, and then I confess I shed some very bitter tears. Our new landlady (who had been a dear old nurse of mine) was much amazed and scandalised by my excessive grief, and instantly fell to reproving me as she had done in the days of my childhood. " I 'm astonished at you, Miss Louie," said she, forgetting my matronly dignity. " If your husband's bones had been smashed you couldn't have made a greater fuss, and all about a musical instrument of no account whatever ! A pianner, now, would be worth crying over, but there never was much noise to be got out of that poor silly stringed thing." I am quick of temper, and I felt very much inclined to slap nurse at that moment.

"Go away," I said, crying anew. "You never can understand how dear that guitar is to me. I first f-f-fell in love with Ronald when he was playing upon it." " What a fool I be ! " soliloquised nurse, smiling. " I might have known as much. Why, I remember that I took a fancy to my old man when he was blowing his flute ; and yet most folks say that a flute 's dreadfully disfiguring to the countenance." BEGINNING. 15 After that I kissed nurse, and she went off cheerfully to prepare our seven o'clock dinner, while I took my way to our little sitting-room. Finding Ronald lying tranquilly on an old fashioned sofa, and looking a trifle more like his old self, my spirits rose again, and I began to feel myself a happy woman. Most Londoners are well enough acquainted with Chapel Place — that convenient little alley which runs from Oxford Street into Henrietta Street, Cavendish Square — and it was in Chapel Place that we, a lonely pair of love birds, had now found a settled nest.

Our rooms were on the ground-floor, and we looked out upon the grey stone wall of the great post-office, and were thankful for any " small mercies" vouchsafed us by stray sunbeams. And yet, from that very first afternoon in nurse's house, I felt that here was to be the truest and happiest home that I had ever known. I watched the pigeons fluttering softly about the east gable of St. Peter's Church, and saw the faint crescent of the new moon rise above the house-roofs, and show its pale golden outline against a background of misty lilac sky. And Ronald, languid but content, studied my brightened face, and lazily whispered that I was once more like the girl he had wooed two years ago. When I read a novel I always make a point of skipping the explanations, and now that I am writing a story I shall endeavour to explain as little as I can, and to leave as much as possible to the instincts of my intelligent readers.

It is necessary, however, that I should briefly state how I came to know Ronald Hepburn, and who and what my husband was. First of all, let me say that he was a soldier, sprung from a long line of soldiers who had fought and served in India. In India he was born, and when I met him he had just been invalided home and had left the service. You have only to stroll into the neighbourhood of BEGINNING. the best clubs and you will see dozens of men exactly like him any day. He was not in any way remarkable, and he had never been hand some, but he possessed a certain indolent grace of manner and bearing — a certain air of high breeding and perfect repose, which are attrac tions in the eyes of some women. After saying all this, I have merely to add that I like high breeding and repose, and it was therefore not surprising, perhaps, if Ronald Hepburne succeeded, pretty easily, in fascinat ing me. B

Chapter II Looking Back

\Wu HAD grown up, a penniless -little orphan, r* \& in my uncle's quiet country cottage, *CÆx and when he died, I knew not where to look for another home. He had commended me to the care of his oldest friend, the rector of the parish, and had left me all that he had to leave — a thousand pounds and his blessing. The rector was a good man and a wise ; he invested my small fortune to the best advantage, and sent me up to town to be the protegee and companion of his widowed sister, Lady Waterville. It had seemed to me a hard thing that nurse, who had been my loving tyrant from babyhood, should have left me just twelve months before my uncle's death. After years of com fortable widowhood, she had yielded to the prayers of an old admirer, whose liking for her comely, rustic face had survived through many chances and changes.

And so, with tears, she had taken leave of my uncle and me, and had gone off with her husband to his London home, little thinking how soon I was destined to follow her. Lady Waterville was very stout, very ami able, and indescribably lazy. I have said " indescribably," because no word in any lan guage would ever completely express that wonderful indolence of hers. Many people are sufficiently ashamed of their idleness to veil it under pretty shams of work ; but Lady Waterville ' never was ashamed in the least. She was uncompromisingly honest, and would plainly admit that anything in the shape of an occupation was hateful to her. The world was far too busy, she declared ; as for herself, it had not pleased a kind Providence to give her a vocation, and she did not mean to thwart its designs by trying to find employment.

" Here I sit," she would say, " with my idle hands before me, and even Satan himself has never found any mischief for them to do. So Dr. Watts is not infallible, my dear." In one of his stories, Mr. Wilkie Collins has introduced us to a lady who sat through life, and she must certainly have borne a strong resemblance to Lady Waterville. Strange as it may seem, this sitting existence appeared to agree with her extremely well ; and, despite her obesity, she was a pretty old woman, with an open, good-tempered face, and soft hair which was a mixture of silver and gold. I have heard Ronald say that she always reminded him of an immense doll, smiling fatuously upon you through its glass window, untouched by any human ills, unaltered by the lapse of time. But although she was not blessed (or cursed) with any deep feelings, she was very comfortable to live with, and unvary ing in her kindness to me.

Her husband, Sir Clement Waterville, had been knighted for his services in India ; and, having done with the army, he had settled himself in an old house in George Street, Hanover Square. There his widow wTas still living when I came up to town to be her com panion, and there she continued to live to the end of her days. The house was let on a long lease at two hundred and sixty pounds a-year, and was the property of Ronald Hepburne. It was the only property that he possessed, and it had been left to him by his aunt, Inez Greystock, who had perished in the Indian Mutiny. Sir Clement Waterville and Colonel Grey stock (the husband of Inez) had been intimate friends in India ; and so it came to pass that Ronald became acquainted with the Water villes, and continued to visit the widow after Sir Clement's death.

Lady Waterville did not receive many visi tors, as she hated the trouble of entertaining ; but any one who had been liked by her husband was welcomed to her house ; and there were two young men in whom Sir Clement had taken an especial interest. These two were William Greystock and Ronald Hepburne. Colonel Greystock had survived his wife many years ; he had never had any children, and William, his nephew, had taken the place of a son. Through his influence William had obtained a Government appointment in India, and had inherited all that his uncle had to leave. When I came to live with Lady Waterville the colonel had been dead some time ; and William, a single man, was living comfortably on his means. " William Greystock would be a good match for you, Louie," said Lady Waterville one day. How well I remember that day !

It was May time ; the drawing-room was sweet with flowers, and through the open windows came the first warm breath of summer. We sat with a little tea-table between us ; the clocks were just striking four, and the sunshine lay brightly on the old street and square. I had been in town three months, and my ears had grown accustomed to the ceaseless roll of wheels ; the noises that had seemed deafening at first were pleasant now, and I had already begun to love that loud hum of unresting life which is still dear to me. Not being in the least in awe of Lady Waterville, I never hesitated to speak my mind. " I don't like Mr. Greystock much," I said, frankly. "You might like him better if he were to pay you particular attentions, my dear." " I don't think I should. I liked our curate very much indeed until he became particularly attentive, and then I turned against him in the most extraordinary way.

If 1 could have married him I would, just to please my uncle and the rector." " So you are not quite such ' an unlesson'd girl ' as I supposed," said Lady Waterville, surveying me with a benign smile. " You have had a lover ; but as he didn't succeed, I think he must have played his cards very badly." " He played them well enough, I believe," I replied, smiling at the remembrance of sun dry proofs of devotion. " I don't mean that he was not in earnest." The widow was still smiling at me across her teacup. " But he must have been terribly deficient in tact. You were in the dullest of country places ; you saw nobody, and went nowhere. Under such circumstances I don't see how any decent man could have failed to win you. My brother used to be rather fastid ious about curates, so I suppose your admirer was presentable."

" Decidedly presentable and good-looking ; but I got tired of him and his face." " What was the matter with his face ? " " Nothing ; but it was a face that had no story in it." Lady Waterville held out her cup for more cream, and then looked at me with a slight shake of the head. " I know you now," she said. " Louie, you are just the kind of girl who will marry badly or not marry at all." I laughed gaily. " What an awful prophecy, Lady Water ville ! " I cried. " Do you know what it is that writes the story on a man's face ? " she went on. " I will tell you— folly, extravagance, sin, and bitter repentance." I grew graver as I listened. Was she think ing of the very face that I was silently pictur ing at that moment ? Despite her laziness, Lady Waterville possessed the faculty of observation ; perhaps she saw all the more of life because she was wholly unoccupied.

Her eyes were always at liberty ; never being bent on crewel-work or patch-work, they studied human countenances in a leisurely fashion, and it is possible that they discovered a good many little secrets. I felt my cheeks begin ning to burn. " Give me another cup of tea, my dear," she said, speaking in quite a different tone. " The last was not sweet enough. How well those buttercups suit you ! " I had fastened a cluster of large water buttercups into my bodice, and I thoroughly appreciated the widow's kindness in looking at them, and taking no notice of my blushes. She was talking on in a pleasant, rambling way, and I was gradually getting cool again, when the page threw open the door and announced Mr. Greystock. William Greystock came in, dark, bland, inscrutable as he always was. He had black eyes, deep-set, and black hair, closely cropped, that lay in thick ripples over his head.

As he wore no moustache, there was nothing to veil the hard outline of his thin lips and prominent chin ; and I thought then (as I think now) that his was the strongest and most cruel pro file I had ever seen in all my life. He talked well and fluently ; admired Lady Waterville's flowers, and even deigned to praise my humble buttercups. I told him that I had bought them of a little girl in the street, just because they reminded me of my old home ; and then he asked me if I had not lately written some verses about the country. My cheeks grew hot again. Lady Water ville looked with an amused glance from William Greystock's face to mine. " I did not know that Miss Coverdale ever wrote poetry," she said to him. " Pray, how did you find it out . " "Through Ronald," he replied, with one of his peculiar smiles.

" I went into his room last night and found him as usual with his beloved guitar. He was setting some lines to music ; I asked who had written them, and he told me." " Does he always tell you everything ? " I inquired, trying to speak playfully, and succeeding very badly. " Yes," was the quiet answer. " He has inherited his love of the guitar from his Aunt Inez," said Lady Waterville, not look ingat me. " She had quite an unreasonable fondness for her guitar, poor woman ! I used to see her sometimes when she was first married to Colonel Greystock, and I always thought her a most extraordinary person. Ronald's mother, her own sister, was not like her in the least." " I have often looked at those two portraits in the dining-room," said I. " Mrs. Hepburne was not nearly as handsome as her sister, but I like her face better."

" Ronald is exactly like his aunt," Mr. Greystock remarked. "As I was saying," went on Lady Water ville, " I always thought Inez a most extra ordinary person. She expected too much happiness and never got any at all. Poor thing ! She was a disappointed woman from beginning to end. Any one with a genius for scribbling might make a novel out of her history." " I should like to hear it," I said. Lady Waterville was rather fond of story telling, and she had been, as I soon dis covered, more than commonly interested in Inez Greystock. "Inez and Estella Winton," she began, " were the daughters of Captain Winton, an English naval officer who had married a Spanish lady. The mother died when the children were young ; the father was often at sea, and they were left a good deal to their own devices. Inez was beautiful, and had, of course, a train of admirers ; but she cared for no one save a young soldier, who was known in those days as Lieutenant Greystock.

He liked her well enough, Louie, but not half as well as she liked him. She lavished gold, you see, and got only silver in return." " My uncle was a matter-of-fact man," put in William, in his quiet voice. " There never could have been an atom of romance in his nature." " Just so," said Lady Waterville. " Inez was a fool to expect too much from him. He was not rich enough to marry, nor patient enough to bear with her exacting ways, and the affair ended, as such affairs often do, in a quarrel and a parting." " What a pity," I cried, regretfully. " I don't know that it was a pity, Louie. They would have gone wrangling through their youth together. But Inez, foolish girl, could never forget Greystock, although she married the richest man of her acquaintance, a Mr. Wendall. He was a diamond merchant, and after their marriage he brought her to this II LOOKING BACK. very house, and invited Estella to come and live with them."

" He was a good husband, I believe," said William. " He must have had the patience of Job," Lady Waterville replied. "After enduring his wife's irritable temper for seven years, he died, and left her handsomely provided for. And then, for two years more she lived here in peace and quietness with Estella and the guitar." "No wonder that she chose to be painted playing on it," William Greystock remarked. " Her fondness for the thing must have amounted to a positive mania. It had be longed to her mother, had it not . " " To her mother and grandmother. It was never far from her side, and she would com pose airs and set words to them, just as Ronald does now-a-days. That portrait in the dining room is Inez herself; there she sits as she did in life, her great Spanish eyes looking into c space, and her guitar resting on her knees.

It is a fine picture." " It is beautiful," I said, " but very sad. And her second marriage — how did that come to pass ? " " It came to pass through Colonel Grey stock's need of money," answered Lady Water ville, with her usual frankness. " William knows that I am telling an unvarnished tale. His uncle returned from India on leave, and sought out his old love, and Inez fancied, no doubt, that she had found her lost youth again. Captain Hepburne was Colonel Greystock's friend, and he happened to fall in love with Estella. On the same day the two sisters were married, very quietly, in St. George's Church, and the two husbands took their wives back with them to India." " Then Inez was happy in her last days . " said I. But Lady Waterville shook her head.

Chapter III. Inez

|WTOILLIAM GREYSTOCK was looking Z4_/>l__b? a* me with a quiet, provoking <Hg^> smile. " Miss Coverdale will be disappointed in the story," lie said. " It is only in the fairy-tales that the prince and princess, when they are brought together, ' live happily ever afterwards.' For my part I think a woman is sincerely to be pitied if she marries the hero of her first love-dream." I knew that he was talking at me. From the very beginning" of my intercourse with Ronald Hepburne he had been watching me silently, and reading this tell-tale face of mine until I had often wished desperately for Mokanna's silver veil to hide my burning cheeks. They did not burn when he was not present ; it was that quiet, persistent scrutiny which made me intolerably self-con scious, and deprived me of all ease and free dom.

I disliked William Greystock heartily, and I was unwise enough to show my aver sion. If I had been a woman of the world I should have concealed it under a pleasant manner and a sweet smile ; but even then I could hardly have helped making an enemy of him. For, if he had found out my secret, I had discovered his. Strange and incredible as it may seem, he had actually fallen in love with Lady Waterville's companion, the simple little girl fresh from the country. And with him, and with those like him, love merely means a strong desire for possession, not a willingness for self-sacrifice. It was the sort of love that will strike because it is forbidden to caress, INEZ, 37 and longs to wound the thing that will have none of its kisses. I do not think that a love of this kind is very common now-a-days ; strong feelings have gone out of fashion, and men and women usually accept their dis appointments with admirable coolness and good sense.