Crowned

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Chapter I

Meanwhile, Wentworth was abroad on his mission to trace Annie S medley to whatever end life or death might have brought her. In the secret recesses of his heart he had pledged himself to a second mission, which was to find her pretended husband, Mr. Maxwell, also. This latter mission might well be supposed easier than the former, as also it might be a step to the former. But not simply because it was a step to the former did Wentworth pledge himself to it.

The fact was that since he had heard Mr. Smedley's story, and since the old man had died, he had dwelt a good deal upon the memory of the time when first he knew the old man and Annie, and the remembrance of their kindness to him, and the sweetness of the child, had reawakened his almost sleeping affection for them, and stirred him with that tenderness with which we are so apt to regard the newly-recalled memories of the past. As his affection revived, his indignation at the scoundrel who had so deeply injured them grew, and his self-reproach at never having attempted to trace them, when first he found them gone. So he entered upon his double mission with the zeal of both an old affection and a new repentance.

VOL. IL B

He made his way first to London. Owing to his Bohemian habits, he had a large acquaintance among all sorts and conditions of men, and therefore among professional writers. Of these, first, he made enquiries after Maxwell. It was some time before he could get any clue to him. No one seemed to know him, and he began to think that Mr. Smedley must have made a mistake in the name. But at last one man answered to his enquiry —

' Maxwell ? I knew such a man once, but it's years ago.'

' Did he write ? '

' Yes ; I believe so. But he painted, too, and played, I think. He was a universal genius on a small scale.'

'That's the man, for certain. What has become of him ?

' Gone to the moon for aught I know ; though I should think to Botany Bay was more probable/

' So ? He was a nice person, then ? '

' Very nice. To my knowledge he wrote strong party articles for a Tory, a Liberal, and a Radical journal in the same year. Later, when he got lower in the world, he talked Tom Paine, and sang leading tenor in a church choir.'

' You must have been sorry to lose his acquaintance. I wonder you let such a man slip.'

' It was a mistake. But we make such mistakes when we are young.'

' I want to know him.'

' Vouf

' Yes.'

' Do you want anyone poisoned } I'll do it for you just as cheap.'

'Mind your own business. Can you find him for me?'

* I don't know. But certainly I'll try. I can have no greater pleasure than in helping a friend into an improved circle of acquaintance.*

In a day or two, Wentworth saw his ally again.

' I have found your man/ he said, ' but he's up in the world once more.'

* So much the better.'

' Of course, if you are going to make his acquaintance. He is a clerk in a government office. How the dickens he got there, I can't make out'

Wentworth obtained all particulars from his informant, and something like a description of Maxwell's personal appearance, and then left, saying,

' Thank you ; I am your debtor ; you shall have the next poisoning case.'

The next morning, at the hour when government clerks go to their arduous duties, Wentworth wended his way towards the particular office in which Maxwell was so honourably installed. Because government clerks wear very dainty boots, the streets near government offices are carefully scavenged in the night. But a few years ago pools of the collected mud were sometimes suffered to lie unremoved till a somewhat late hour of the morning. It happened that one of these pools lay, vast and sloppy, very near the door of the office to which Maxwell belonged. By the side of this pool, Wentworth, with a singular perversity of taste, elected to stand, awaiting his new acquaintance. Wentworth did not always carry a cane ; this morning he had one.

Within a minute of the hour of ten, a man whom Wentworth instantly recognised as Maxwell made his appearance, as did also several of his fellow-workers ; for government clerks, like the rest of mankind, are Jnot over eager to get into harness. As he passed Wentworth and the pool, the former accosted him with,

' Mr. Maxwell, I believe ? '

B 2

' That is my name/ said Mr. Maxwell, superciliously, as a government clerk should.

' Did you ever bear the name of Wilson, may I ask J *

' Of course not A man cannot have two names.'

' So ! I did not know. I am a friend of Mr. Smedley.'

'I know nothing of Mr. Smedley,* said Maxwell, hurriedly, and attempting to move on.

* I dare say not But I am his friend, nevertheless. As you also were his friend once, I have bought a new cane in your service.'

With these words, Wentworth, taking a firm grip of the collar of the fellow's coat, and by a sudden jerk bringing him on to his knees, put across him six or eight of the fiercest blows he ever struck in his life, and then throwing him full length into the pool of mud at his feet, said —

' Lie there, dog ; it is your proper place.*

A half-dozen of the clerks stood by, watching the performance, but no one lifted a finger to help him, for he was not widely beloved.

Maxwell was not specially a coward, but the suddenness of the whole affair, the vivid reappearance of an almost forgotten episode in his life (his memory was facile in such matters), the strength of Wentworth's grip, and the fierceness of his blows, demoralized him, and when he rose from his unexpected bed, he looked with a bewildered air at Wentworth, and then at his fellowclerks standing by, and walked away quickly towards his home. Then Wentworth stepped up to the on-lookers and said —

*May I ask you the favour of that gentleman's address ? '

They looked at each other, and one of them said, —

' I think there is no need for a second punishment of that sort, whatever his offence may have been.*

' You are right/ said Wentworth ; ' I have no intention of repeating it'

Then one of them, who knew the address, gave it ; and Wentworth, thanking him, also walked away.

Later in the day, Wentworth called at Maxwell's house. A maid came to the door.

' Is Mr. Maxwell at home ? * he asked.

' Yes, Sir ; but he cannot see any one ; he is ill.'

* Go up and tell him that the friend whom he met this morning wants to speak with him.'

She went up, and came down again in a moment, saying,

' Mr. Maxwell will see you, Sir.*

Wentworth was surprised. He had thought to have more trouble. When he had entered the room, and the maid had left. Maxwell said, —

' I see you, because if I had refused, you would have thought that I was afraid. I gave you reason to think so this morning. I ought to have broken your neck.*

* My neck would have taken a good deal of breaking ; but it is neither my neck nor your courage that I have come to speak about I have come to make a proposal to you.*

' You can have no proposals to make to me.*

* We'll see, I need not tell you the history of the past ; you can recall it. My proposal is this : — either, on the one hand, you give me all the information you can about Annie Smedley, and then prepare to find some occupation and interest in life in Australia or America, or wherever you please out of England ; or on the other hand, you prepare yourself to expect that I expose you in every position in which you attempt to place yourself, as long as we both live, and that I cane you like a dog wherever we meet This is the choice I have to offer you.'

It was a hard choice ; but Wentworth had his reasons for it He felt that any attempt to restore Annie to the companionship of those who might learn to love her would be a cruel kindness, as long as the shadow of this fellow might cross her path. If he could put him clean out of her neighbourhood, then she might grow brave before the faces of her kind, and become once more happy in life — if, indeed, she had not already passed to a life where courage is not needed or develops in other forms.

But besides this substantial reason for his conduct, Wentworth had another. He was, for the most part, very tolerant of human error, not through making light of the error, but through a habit of looking for and finding redeeming good in the midst of much of weakness and sin. An unredeemed villain is not often found, he used to say ; most men have some good in them, and the worst men are not always those with most broadlyemblazoned sins. But of treachery, in all its forms, he was intolerant ; a traitor is an unredeemed villain, he would say, and to him he would be almost vindictive in his dislike. All the forms of human passion he knew might coexist with much of essential worth ; but treachery was the negation of passion as well as of honour. The traitor was a reptile, and he had a real pleasure in putting his foot upon him. So to him the alternative which he presented to Maxwell seemed to err on the side of mercy, if it erred at all. His longing was to humiliate him, for the very outer graces of the man filled him with loathing and irritation by their contrast with the deformity within.

Maxwell might have ventured to defy Wentworth, if his treachery had not taken the dangerous form of a mock marriage. This was the damning point in his position. This compelled him, after much battling, to yield to Wentworth's dictation.

The information that Wentworth obtained from him was not great in quantity, though its value proved to be considerable. The mode of the mock marriage was told, and its unreality proved beyond question. Wentworth had had a secret fear that the marriage might prove to be real, and its denial the actual villany practised upon Annie. He had not that superstitious regard for the form without the inner meaning of marriage, that could make him think that the position of a pure-minded girl who had been mocked by a villain needed any redemption ; or that it could be redeemed by the fact that the reptile had the right to call her wife.

It appeared that, after the pretended marriage. Maxwell had taken Annie to live in a small village in Suffolk. There they had made no acquaintances, for he told her to make none. Only once she had been brought into speaking contact with two elderly ladies, apparently sisters, by some trifling accident, and she had expressed herself as singularly pleased with them and their manner to her. After a little, Annie grew impatient to see her father, for Maxwell had promised that their seclusion should be only for a few weeks, and that then he himself would take her to her father. When at last he could put her off no longer, he told her that she must give up the hope altogether; and when she grew angry and • insisted upon going, he told her why she could not go. Then had happened what would happen in such a case, when a high-hearted woman found the man she had loved and trusted to be a reptile, and the next day she escaped from him. He guessed she would go to the ladies whose acquaintance she had made, in the first instance, and went there to seek her. He was informed that she had been there, refused any further information, and threatened with the constable if he came near the house again. This was all he had to tell. Though he did not say so, it clearly appeared that he had not greatly troubled himself to find Annie, and for this Wentworth loathed him more than for all the rest, and groaned inwardly that the mud-pool had not been forty fathoms deep, that so the toad might never have come to the surface again.

However, he had obtained a clue to Annie, and forthwith he made his way to the Suffolk village that Maxwell had named, leaving him with the words —

* I'll see you again in a fortnight Meantime you will have formed your plans for the future. You need not try to give me the slip ; I would find you, for certain, and then I would show you no mercy.'

CROWNED.

Chapter II

He arrived at the village, and soon found the house where the two sisters lived. He sent in his card, and was shown into a room where both were sitting. They rose to receive him with stately courtesy, and one motioned him to a chair without speaking, leaving to him the duty of beginning the conference.

Wentworth reconnoitred his position at a glance. A fool would have found before him two old ladies, very much alike, seated stiffly in an old-fashioned room, a rather stem aspect on their faces, holding an imposing silence ; and that is pretty well all he would have seen. Wentworth saw three more things, at least : these were, first, that the ladies were simple, high-toned women ; second, that they had warm hearts, crusted over with a film of cautious coldness, through a little, which they thought a great, knowledge of the world ; third, that one was the leading spirit

To the leading spirit he addressed himself.

' I have come,' he said, ' to ask you if you can give me any information about a young girl who came to this village a few years ago, and of whom, I believe, you saw something, though whether much or little, I do not know.*

'Your words might apply to a great many young girls, Sir,* said the lady, with what she considered a caution and acuteness worthy of the bar.

lO CROWNED.

'That is true. Then you don't know what young girl I mean ? ' said Wentworth. It was unkind. He might have recognised a skilful fence, or imagined it.

' I do not say that/ answered the lady.

' Then I may assume that you do know to whom I refer. I am an old friend of Annie and her father. He has just died, and I have just learned something about her history. I want to learn more if I can; for I am very sorry that so much trouble should have befallen my old friends, and I promised her father, before he died, to try to find her.*

' You are a stranger to us. Sir/ said the lady. But the other sister, not being in the battle, and so being more free to be impressed by something besides words, said —

' Yes, Penny, he is a stranger ; but he may be quite sincere and kind for all that.'

* It behoves -us to be cautious, sister/ returned the other, gravely.

' I think you are quite right to be very cautious, Madam/ said Wentworth ; ' I am not at all annoyed at your wanting proofs of my right to ask information of you, and I honour you for your care on Annie's behalf, if, indeed, your caution is for her sake, as I doubt not'

The lady bowed, and Wentworth continued —

* My name is Wentworth. Annie may have happened to mention my name.'

* She has spoken of you and your father. Sir.'

'That is fortunate. She was one of my greatest friends when she was a little girl. I have never known a sweeter child, and her father was a good and noble old man.'

The second sister had surrendered at discretion. The other demanded but the honours of war.

Wentworth gave her the honours of war after his own fashion, for he told her the story of his first interview with Maxwell. It amused him to watch the battle in the minds of both sisters between their instinctive horror of physical violence and their profound satisfaction at the punishment and humiliation of a traitor. The latter and deeper sentiment of course triumphed, and a common glow of exultation warmed and thawed the crust of coldness that had at first kept Wentworth at a distance, and now they were ready to give him their fullest confidence. But before the confidence began, the second sister, pondering over the punishment of Maxwell, remarked, musingly —

*I wonder how he got through the streets in that state ; I should think he must have taken a cab/

' I shouldn't wonder,' said Wentworth ; * it never occurred to me.'

Then the old ladies told him, with much shyness and indignation and tenderness, the story of Annie. They had seen and spoken to her once in the village, when she had sprained her ankle, and could not walk, for a few minutes. They had been struck by the sweetness and childishness and refinement of her manner ; but they had not at all liked the man they supposed to be her husband. Then some time after she had come to them, with a wild, dreadful look in her face, and had told them the wickedness that had been done to her. It never occurred to them to doubt the truthfulness of her story. Presently, the man came after her, and received the answer that has been recorded. Annie, thinking that the love that betrayed was at all events as strong as the love that was betrayed, however base in kind it might be, was in terror lest he should find her. So they had bidden her for a time, until the man had altogether disappeared. Then she had come back to stay with them. All the neighbours wondered and blamed them, but they did not care ; they were as sure of her as they would have been of their own child. So she had stayed with them ; and bye and bye her child was born. Then the neighbours wondered more, and blamed them more. But they cared less than ever, for they were more sure of her and loved her more than ever. It was a wonderful sight to see her with her baby. Such a passion of emotion and tears seemed to hold her all the day and night. Whether it was most love for him, and thankfulness at having him, or most regret and pity for him, they could not say ; but to see her was a wonderful sight. Gradually, she grew happier, and the love and thankfulness seemed to be her only feelings. Then their home and their hearts seemed lighted as with a light from heaven by the presence of the mother and her boy. They hoped she would stay with them to the end, and let them also love her boy and be happy in him.

But she said it could not be. She must work for her boy. He must not eat gift-bread, even though it came from friends as tender and true as they were. (* We tell you these words,' said the sisters, ' that you may know what her heart was to us.') So they had to try and find her some work. At last they found some that she said would do perfectly. They had a brother, a clergyman away in Devonshire, and he wanted a mistress for his village school. Annie said that nothing would please her so well. She would be in her right place among villagers again, and she could have her boy always in the school, and teach him when he became old enough, and he might grow up with the simple mind and the true and loving heart of her own dear father. So Annie had gone to her village school, and they had not seen her since : but she wrote to them often, and they loved her as if she were their daughter.

Before he left them, Wentworth said to the sisters — 'I have known one sweet girl-child, aAd that was Annie ; I know one girl just passing into womanhood, who seems to me all that a man could ask for a sister or a wife ; but I have never known, only imagined, what a woman may become when she has passed away from youth, and when her womanhood alone remains to form her true beauty. Now I know as well as imagine/ And he made obeisance to them in his heart.

One more great stage there was, then, in Wentworth's search. From the Suffolk village he made his way to the Devonshire village. He reached the end of his journey at night, and before he went to bed, he walked out to stroll through the village, and see where Annie's school-house lay. He thought he would not speak to her till after her duties of the morrow were over. So at the time when he supposed that afternoon school would be nearly ended, he made his way to the school-house again. He stood a little back from the door, that he might see her as she came out, without her seeing him, and watched for her coming. First trooped out the children, and before long there followed a slight-made woman, very quietly dressed, with a still, subdued, though not listless walk, leading by the hand a little boy who prattled up to her as she bent her head to listen. Her face Wentworth scarcely caught at all ; he was not sure whether he should have recognised her by her figure. After a moment he stepped up lightly to her side, and said — ' Annie.'

She turned round sharply, and became deadly pale, for she recognized the voice as one she had heard before, without having time to bethink her whose voice it was. So her first thought was one of fear.

She was very much changed, but Wentworth thought he would have known her. At all events, he saw the old face now, in the new.

' Don't you remember me, Annie ? '

* Oh, yes. I was afraid — ' She stopped short. Wentworth knew what sh« feared.

She did not say any more. There was an uneasy, almost a distressed look in her face, which Wentworth understood. She thought he did not know all that had happened. She did not know how he might regard her if he knew. Moreover, she felt safe as long as no one who had ever known her before knew where she was. Now she would not any more feel safe. Wentworth "knew that he had to speak to these fears, if he would see the distressed look pass away from her face.

' I have come from your friends in Suffolk,' he said.

' How did you come to know them ? *

* I went there to find you.'

'Who told you that you would find me by going there ? '

* A man told me.'

Annie shuddered, and turned her face away from Wentworth down to her boy.

* That is your boy, Annie } ' be said.

' Yes,' she answered, with a calm, proud look, as to ask, ' And what will you say ? '

' I know all about you, Annie. I was very fond of you when you Were a little girl. I should be proud of you, if you were my sister, now.'

That touched her. The tears came into her eyes. She could be herself to him now, and old memories brought the tears faster.

' Why did you come to find me ? ' she asked.

' I will tell you, presently. You need not be afraid of being found ; that man will never trouble you any more,'

' How do you know ? Are you sure ? Is he dead ? '

' Never mind how I know, Annie. I am quite sure. He is not dead.'

'I did not wish him to be dead/ she said, quickly, thinking he might have misunderstood her.

' I understand. He is dead to you. That is all you wish.'

' Yes ; that is all,' she said, with a far-off touch in her manner.

* We will never speak of him again, if we can help it' 'No.'

And so Annie grew calm, and the thought of having some one who was kind and good to her in her childish days walking by her side moved her so, that she could not keep the tears from her eyes. So Wentworth, seeing how she was moved, talked with the boy instead, that she might have time to recover herself.

Annie had always had the instincts of what for want of a less-misused word we call a lady. Her intercourse with Wentworth in her childhood, the books he had lent her, and the earlier conversations with Maxwell, had all helped on the cultivation of her powers and her taste, and so had given her many of the acquired graces of a lady. And now that self-sustaining power, that sufficient indifference to the fluctuating estimate of others which is one of the chief advantages that good birth brings with it, had come to her through her sorrow. And so, as Wentworth walked by her side, he thought that he had not often seen a completer lady than this carpenter's daughter and village school-mistress.

Wentworth saw that she was too deeply moved to recover herself easily until she was alone, so he said —

* I will leave you now, Annie ; we will talk again presently. I hope you did not mind my coming to find you. There was good reason for it'

* I was afraid at first ; I am very glad now. I shall be better soon.'

' May I go and see your clergyman } ^

She understood his care for her. ' Yes, do/ she said, and gave him her hand.

That grave, sad woman's hand was the same hand that had boxed his ears, and plunged in among his hair, and played all sorts of games in the childish times not many years gone by. The contrast struck Wentworth with sadness. The impulse was strong upon him to lay his other hand soothingly upon hers, and say some comforting words, as he had done a hundred times in the childish days not many years gone by. But he resisted the impulse. It would have seemed very strange to her had he followed it, for to her those years were a long way off.

Wentworth saw that she was yearning to ask about her father. But he said nothing. It seemed better that he should not tell her there and then. After he left her, he went straight to the clergyman and told him who he was, and his errand in coming, and so placed his further intercourse with Annie under the old man's sanction. He was a kind and fatherly old man, worthy to be the brother of his sisters, and the doer of such acts of goodness as that which he had done to Annie, which should be so common, but which are so rare, because men so deeply mistrust their hold upon the soul of goodness, that they must needs cling frantically, though with results akin to cruelty and wickedness, to its body and its outer forms.

After an hour or two, Wentworth went to Annie's home. It was the home of a cottager, touched with the grace of a delicate gentlewoman. Annie's boy had gone to bed, and she herself awaited, calm now, Wentworth's coming. He could not get over her effect upon him; her grave sadness would call up the image of the happy child he had known, and almost move him to tears. She seemed the braver of the two now, and spoke- first

•* ' I am very grateful to you for coming to find me, now. Have you anything to tell me ? '

' About what, Annie ? '

' There is only one thing, you know. Have you ever seen my father ? '

* It was he who sent me to find you, just before he died.'

'He is dead, then. I am very grateful Was it soon ? '

Then Wentworth told her the story of the old man, as he had learned it from Maurice, who had learned it from Edith. Annie was not grateful then. She had hoped he had died sooner. That he had sorrowed for her all those years broke her heart. The only softness and comfort was in the thought of the end, and his hope for her, and Edith's tenderness to him, and the light of God that fell upon him at the last.