Филиппа Карр - Daughters of England

He gave her a look of dislike and turned to me, his expression softening.

"I told you I was coming back. Why were you not there? Why should you come back here?"

I was dumbfounded and dismayed and then, in spite of everything, wildly happy. He had come for me. He was going to take me away with him. It had been a foolish mistake.

Maggie was angry. She said: "How dare you come here?"

"This is no matter for you!" he replied shortly. "I must ask you to keep out of it. I should be glad if I might be allowed to talk to Sarah alone."

"She may not wish to," said Maggie. "She has learned a great deal which you have kept from her. Sarah, tell him to go."

I looked at him and, after those days of melancholy misery and uncertainty, I felt my heart filled with hope. I was convincing myself that he would explain everything and then it would be as it had been before.

Maggie said: "Tell him to go, Sarah. You must have nothing to say to his sort."

"A little late in the day for such talk to my wife ..."

Maggie laughed derisively, and he turned to me, and said in an authoritative voice: "Sarah, please tell her to go."

"Maggie," I said, "I have to talk ..."

Maggie's attitude changed suddenly. "Talk ... talk from now to Kingdom Come. Ask him to explain his little tricks. Talk ... Sarah, you shall have your talk in my house, which is your home while you want it. Don't let go of your good sense, that's all I ask. Talk and then do the only thing you can reasonably do. Say goodbye to this villain here and send him on his way forever."

She went out and left us and, as she did so, he came towards me and would have embraced me.

I felt lost and frightened without Maggie. I knew that there was nothing he could say to reassure me, for my good sense told me that Maggie's interpretation of what had happened was the correct one.

"How could you have left my lodgings?" he demanded. "When I came back, I found you gone."

"You were a long time gone, my lord," I said, and was surprised at the coolness of my voice. There was something in his face and perhaps even in his demeanor which told me that he was not finding it so easy to deceive me as he had previously. There was a subtle change in his manner and, while it made me very unhappy, or perhaps because of this, it aroused my anger and indignation and gave me the courage I needed to face him.

"It was business. Did I not tell you?"

"Business on that mysterious estate of yours?"

"What do you mean? Have done with this. What has happened to change you? My darling ..."

"I cannot have done before I have started," I said. "While you have been away I have been learning much. I have met your false priest. Sir Harry Fresham was very good in the part ... but not quite good enough."

For a moment the expression which crossed his face betrayed him and he muttered something beneath his breath.

He recovered himself and asked, almost plaintively: "What are you saying, Sarah? Come, enough of this. I know you are angry because I had to be away from you. It was necessary. Do you think I should have taken myself away if it were not?"

"Oh, yes," I said. "I think you might very well have done so. It is no use hiding the truth now, is it? I have learned it all. That ceremony was no ceremony. It was what you wicked men indulge in. It was a mock marriage, with a mock priest and a mock bridegroom. I have discovered all about it. Do you wonder that I have left your roof and come to my real friends?"

He seemed to come to a decision that further pretense was useless. I believed in that moment that he thought I had not only seen Sir Harry Fresham but had made him admit that he had played the part of the priest at the mock wedding.

"Listen, Sarah," he said. "I will look after you, I promise. You shall have a fine house. It will be as we planned it. I shall be with you ... whenever possible. It will be just as though ..."

Every hope I had had then was gone. Up till that moment I was praying that he would deny the accusation, that he would explain to me why these suspicions had come into being and disprove them in every way.

As I was silent he went on: "Come, Sarah, admit it. Did you not know it was something like this? Did you think that a man in my position could marry like that?"

"Someone so far beneath your station?" I asked.

"Well, you must know something of how these things are arranged."

"I understand now. Good enough to be taken to sport with awhile, but not to marry. That is it, is it not?"

I was humiliated beyond endurance. I hated myself as much as I did him for allowing myself to be so easily deceived.

What a fool I had been! A silly, innocent girl, meek, trusting, overawed by the first man who had noticed me. No wonder Kitty had thought fit to impress on me the danger of fife in London.

I hated him as he stood there, smiling cajolingly, trying to deceive me again.

"Please leave this house," I said, "and never, ever come near it again."

"Sarah, don't be so dramatic."

"It is probably a familiar situation with you. How many trusting women have you betrayed? Did you boast of it with those friends who helped you plan your villainous deeds? I wish to God that I had never seen you. I loathe you, I despise you for the miserable rogue you are. I never wish to see you again. The least you can do after having done so much to ruin my life is to get out of it."

"You do not mean this, Sarah. It is a blow, I am aware of that. But really, you should have realized."

"Go!"

"You will see sense in a day or so."

"I have already seen sense. That is why I ask you to go."

He lifted his shoulders and looked at me regretfully, bowed and said: "This is not the end, you know."

Then he was gone.

I slipped into a chair and stared blankly before me.

Maggie came in and knelt beside me.

"So, he has gone," she said.

I nodded.

"It is for the best," she said. "Sarah, my dear Sarah, we will turn our back on it. We shall do our best to forget it has happened. And we shall go on from here."

I DO NOT KNOW how I should have lived through the weeks that followed but for Maggie. She was there all the time when I needed her. I had not realized until I had sent Jack away that it was all over, and I rejoiced that only a few people knew what had happened.

Maggie had talked seriously to Martha and Rose. She had told them the truth because she felt it was better for them to know the full story of which they already knew a great deal, and then they would draw their own conclusions. They were part of the family, she told them, and this was our secret.

I scarcely went out during those days. I was afraid of meeting someone. I had the feeling that I wanted to crawl away and hide.

Maggie understood. She helped me in every possible way and in the midst of my unhappiness I thanked God for this good friend.

A few weeks passed in this state. I began to think of the theater and the thought excited me. Maggie brought in news of what was happening and who was playing in what. I knew some of the plays and would imagine myself in them. I went over the parts I had played; I felt the old excitement creeping back, and I wanted to be there, a part of it all again.

I tried not to think of Jack. That was not possible, of course. I had wild fantasies in which he returned and proved it was all a mistake. We were truly married and he was begging me to go back with him.

How foolish I was!

"Forget it," said Maggie.

There were times when I felt the need to be alone. Then I would go outside sometimes at dusk in my hooded cloak so that I could not be easily recognized, walk past the theater and watch the people going in.

I felt that if I could go back to work I might begin to be happy again.

Sometimes I would talk to Maggie about it. She was in agreement with me. "You'll make a fresh start," she said. "If you were back on the stage you'd grow away from all this as time passes."

"Some will know what happened. They will laugh at me for a simpleton who was an easy victim."

"It has happened to others before you."

"I could not bear the sly looks."

"You cannot think Rosslyn has talked."

"No. I do not think so. Harry Fresham ..."

"They will not wish to expose themselves as such heartless villains."

"They might think they are very clever to have arranged such a farce."

"I think not. You will have to have courage. We will construct a story and keep to it. You have been away visiting your family in the country. Your mother was ill, perforce you had to stay and nurse her."

"As you did your sister."

"Exactly so."

"Perhaps one day, Maggie ..."

"When you are ready," she said.

So I took my evening jaunts past the theater and when I came back Maggie would be waiting for me. She was convinced that one day I should be ready to face anything that would take me back and she believed that the theater could be my salvation.

There were times when I felt deeply depressed, when I lured myself into thinking that Jack would come for me and would explain everything. It was the old theme that there had been a terrible mistake. I found it becoming harder to convince myself, but I still went on dreaming.

Maggie would quite rightly dismiss my fancies, but on one particular night I did not want to hear her do this. I wanted to go on deluding myself.

It started to rain but I had no wish to return to the house. The gray dark skies and the rain on my face fitted my mood. I wanted to go on walking.

The rain was falling fast but I was hardly aware of my damp cloak. There were few people in the streets. Who wanted to walk on a night such as this one? Only those like me who were deeply sunk in a life of never-ending regrets, of lost hopes and with a view of only the dismal future.

At length I was cold and tired and I turned my steps homewards.

Maggie shrieked when she saw me. They had been worried about me.

She cried: "You are wet to the skin!"

Martha and Rose were fussing round me.

"Get those wet things off. Do you want to kill yourself? What have you been doing?"

My teeth were chattering. Martha came up brandishing the warming pan and soon they had me in bed, still shivering— chilled, as Maggie said, to the bone.

The next morning I was very ill.

I believe that during the week that followed I came near to death. The shock of my discovery had had a deep effect on me, and I was vulnerable. I must have walked in the rain for more than an hour. There was a cold wind and I had already been suffering from a cold.

To have walked through the rain in wet clothes as I had done was asking for trouble, Maggie pointed out. But I had not been aware of my wet clothes or the weather. I had been thinking of that last scene with Jack and that moment when, knowing it was useless, he had made no attempt to deny how he had deceived me.

I was delirious on occasions that first day and, when I returned to reality, Maggie told me she had been very frightened.

She brought a doctor to me. I was only vaguely conscious of what was going on around me. Maggie gave orders which Martha and Rose obeyed.

I do remember Maggie's sitting by my bed, holding my hand, talking to me. I was half aware of what she said. We would all be together, all of us. We had a great deal to look forward to.

Had we, I wondered, and in my half-conscious state I thought I was with Jack and he was talking of the future. I was listening to him avidly but all the time a black shadow was hanging over me.

The doctor came to see me several times. I had emerged from my hazy dream. I knew that I was very ill and I was in my bed in Maggie's house, that I had gone through a mock marriage ceremony with Lord Rosslyn who had now gone away forever.

Then I began to get better. Maggie looked happy; so did Martha and Rose, and I kept telling myself how lucky I was to have such friends. What should I have done without them? I tried to think, where should I have gone? I had very little money. What should I have done? Perhaps of necessity I should have had to accept Jack's offer ... the fine house ... the life of a mistress whose lover came to see her when it was convenient for him to do so. I should not have been happy thus. I saw now that my upbringing had not fitted me for that kind of life. Although I had deplored the strict rules of my childhood home, and indeed had escaped from them, they had had some effect upon me. I could never be happy in the sort of life I should have had with Jack Adair.