SPRETÆ INJURIA FORMÆ.
DURING the time which had intervened between William Holl's arrest
and his trial, and during the anxious time of the trial itself, Carry
Walker had called in nearly every day to comfort Mrs. Holl. When the
trial was over, however, she had, for a few days, ceased her visits,
for she felt that she could do or say nothing to alleviate Bessy's
distress. Upon her first visit she was surprised to find Bessy
sitting at her needlework with a look of absolute contentment upon
her face; while Mrs. Holl was, as usual, engaged in washing.
“How are you, Mrs. Holl? I am glad to see your sister-in-law is
looking better. How are you, Bessy?”
“Oh! I am quite well, Miss Walker, and so happy now.”
Carry looked surprised.
“Happy!” she repeated. “Has your husband been pardoned?”
“No, miss; but haven't you heard?”
“No,” Carry said, “I have heard nothing. I have not been in for the
last few days because I was afraid of being in the way. What has
happened?”
“Why, Miss Carry,” Sarah Holl broke out, “you'd hardly believe it,
but it's true; a gentleman, God bless him, has offered to pay Bessy's
passage out to Australia to join William there, and in another year
she'll be starting.”
“That is very kind of him, Mrs. Holl. Who is he?”
“His name is Maynard, him as our Evan is with.”
James was watching Carry's face, and saw a sudden rush of colour come
up into it at the name. To tell the truth, Carry had thought a good
deal of Frank Maynard since that solitary visit of his. His having
saved her father's life had endowed him in her eyes with all the
qualities of a hero of romance. She had thought over that interview
very many times, and never without blushing at the thoughts of the
kiss she had given him. He had said he would come again, and very
eagerly had she looked forward to his next visit, but as days and
weeks had passed on without his coming, she felt both very resentful
and hurt. Did he think her so forward that he would not come again?
Or did he not think them worth another visit? Her only consolation
had been that perhaps he was out of town all this time. And now this
hope was dispelled, and Carry blushed even deeper than before with
pique and wounded pride.
“Is it the Mr. Maynard who lives in the Temple?” she asked, clinging
to a last hope.
“Yes, Miss Carry. Do you know him?”
“A little,” Carry said, coldly; “he picked my father up one evening
last winter when he had slipped down in Knightsbridge.”
The cripple lad noticed all this—the first sudden blush at his
name, then the coldness of manner and the slighting way in which she
spoke of a service which, he remembered well, she had described in
such enthusiastic terms not long before. What could this mean? Carry
afterwards was rather ashamed of her little fit of petulance, and
listened with great interest to the account of Bessy Holl's hopes and
plans for the future. Then, after a few words to James, she took her
leave.
Very often afterwards James pondered the matter over in his mind,
while his fingers almost mechanically worked at his wax flowers.
“Why should Carry have blushed so deeply upon hearing Mr. Maynard's
name suddenly mentioned, and why should she have spoken so coldly of
him when she had formerly been so enthusiastic in his praises as the
preserver of her father's life?” All this was utterly beyond James's
comprehension. His knowledge of the world was completely confined to
what he had learned from books, and he owned with a sigh that his
books were of no assistance whatever to him in the present case. All
that, after great thought, he arrived at satisfactorily, or rather
unsatisfactorily, to himself was, that there was some mystery or
other, although of what nature he could not even guess, between Carry
Walker and Mr. Maynard.
Carry Walker was a spoilt child. She had managed her father from the
day when she was able to climb upon his knee, and insist, with much
coaxing certainly and patting of his cheeks, and other pretty ways,
but insisting nevertheless, upon having her own way. Very spoilt she
had grown up, with no mother to control or check her, and with a
father who allowed her to do in every respect as she pleased. Very
spoilt had she afterwards been—for all the admiration and flattery
she had received during the last two years was enough to have turned
the heads of half-a-dozen girls. She had never had a mother's care or
advice, or the healthy society of girls of her own age. The chances
had been all against her, and she was little to be blamed in that
she had grown up somewhat vain and flighty. Carry was indignant all
that afternoon, and was angry with herself for being so. During that
time she had no opportunity of speaking to her father, and it was not
until she eat down to tea that she had an opportunity of doing so.
“I was in at the Holls' this afternoon, father.”
“And how is that unfortunate woman, my dear? Dear me, dear me, I
cannot understand why men will neglect their business and go about
talking about affairs which don't concern them. I cannot see, Carry,
upon my life I cannot, what good can possibly come of it. I told
William Holl so. I cautioned him that he would find out his mistake
too late. But there, I might as well have talked to the wind. These
all but uneducated young fellows have an idea that the whole wisdom
of the nation is centred in their heads. All the questions which
have occupied and puzzled the wisest men of the nation, who have
given their whole attention to them, these young fellows solve in
the twinkling of an eye to their own perfect satisfaction. And now
what has come of it? He has got transported, and upon my life I don't
pity him at all. But there's his poor wife left behind to shift for
herself. I am very sorry for her. But for the matter of that, she
will do as well without him as with him. He has been a world of
trouble to her, and I believe he has done no work at all for the last
four or five months; talk, talk, talk, nothing but talk, my dear. It
won't keep the pot boiling. Still it is sad for her, for I believe
she loves him, idle scamp as he is. I wonder what will become of her?”
“That is just what I am going to tell you, father, when you give me
a chance,” Carry, who had been quietly continuing her tea, said. “I
am only waiting till you give me an opportunity of slipping in a
word. It seems that the gentleman, Evan Holl is with as a servant,
has heard of William Holl's sentence to transportation, and of
his leaving a wife behind him, and he has offered to pay Bessy's
expenses out to join him. It seems that in a year or so he can get a
ticket-of-leave, and then she can be with him.”
“That is very good of him, Carry.”
“It is Mr. Maynard, father, the gentleman who picked you up when you
slipped down in Knightsbridge that night, you know.”
“You don't say so, Carry? How extraordinary. I remember now John Holl
telling me his boy had gone out to service with a gentleman named
Maynard, but I didn't know, it never struck me, as being the same.
Dear me, what a kind-hearted young man, to be sure.”
Carry was silent a moment, and then said pettishly, “Of course he is
very kind-hearted, father; but I think he might have come again. I
call it downright rude.”
Stephen Walker paused in his tea in utter astonishment. He had never
given the matter a thought since the evening of Frank Maynard's
visit, and this displeasure on the part of his daughter was to him
singular and unreasonable in the extreme.
“Bless me, Carry,” he said, “you surprise me. Why should Mr. Maynard
come again? He came over to see after me, and I was very glad that he
did come that we might thank him; but why, in the name of goodness,
should he come again?”
Carry had no particular reason to give, so she only said generally
that she “thought he would come again.”
“Now, Carry, that is not at all like you. I call that unreasonable.
Why, because Mr. Maynard saved my life, and afterwards took the
trouble to come down to see me, he should be bound to come again to
a place like this to talk to people like ourselves, I really can't
conceive. No, Carry, for once in your life you are wrong, and I am
sure you will own it.”
Carry did not own it, but tossed her head a little in dissent at the
light in which her father put it.
“But, father, I am sure Mr. Maynard was pleased with you, very
pleased; you chatted together like friends, upon travels and all
sorts of things, and I am sure he did not look down upon you at all.”
“Not for the time being, Carry,” Stephen Walker said gravely; “Mr.
Maynard was a gentleman and treated me under my own roof as a
gentleman. He found that we had topics upon which we could discourse
in common. He was no doubt surprised, and perhaps, as you say,
pleased; but, Carry, there are thousands of men of his own class in
life with whom he has not only that but a hundred other topics in
common, and why should he come down here to talk to me? No, Carry,
you are really not reasonable.”
Carry was silent. She could not explain that she was angry that Frank
Maynard had not come down to see her, and was therefore obliged to
let the matter drop. Still, upon subsequent reflection, Carry did not
feel the less piqued. She was hurt, and was angry with herself for
being so.
If he did not care to see her, she certainly did not care for seeing
him. There were plenty of other gentlemen, the same as he was, who
could appreciate her and were eager enough to talk with her. If Mr.
Maynard came again she would take care to let him know that there
were other people, just as good as he was, who were not too high and
mighty to admire her. There was Mr. Bingham, for instance, he was
always there, always kind and pleasant and cheerful. Evidently he
cared for her. Here Carry's thoughts wandered off: “Yes, it would be
very nice to be a lady, no more living in a little shop and selling
newspapers and tobacco, but a real lady, with nice dresses and
servants, and, perhaps, carriages, and above all a home for dear old
father after all his troubles and cares. Oh! how nice that would be,
how very happy!” And Carry's thoughts, which had been gloomy enough
at the commencement of her reverie, ended by drawing a very bright
picture indeed.
Carry's thoughts once fairly directed to this subject they returned
again to it very frequently. By what her father had said she would
have been a lady had he not been unfortunate, and why should she
not regain the position for herself and him? Indeed, she had felt
strongly attracted by Fred Bingham. She liked the merry, good
tempered, cheerful young fellow; he was so attentive, so evidently
fond of her. Indeed, it was only the strong influence which the one
visit of Frank Maynard had exercised over her which had hitherto
kept this feeling in check. Now, smarting with pique and resentment
against Frank, the feeling returned with redoubled force. Why, she
asked herself, should she throw away an honest love for a chimera?
Why should she not make herself happy with Fred Bingham? And so from
this time she relaxed in her stiffness with him, and his visits to
the tobacconist's became longer and more frequent, the conversations
between them more interesting and confidential, and there was less of
badinage now, and more of blushing on her part.
Carry was a very simple, innocent girl. Brought up under her father's
wing, she had absolutely no thought of evil. As soon as she really
felt Fred Bingham loved her, she had little hesitation in giving her
whole heart to him, and in feeling very happy in so doing. And so
time went on, and the gossips of the street began to remark how very
often that fair young gentleman was in at Walker's shop, and the
ill-natured ones soon began to shake their heads and to say, it was a
pity Carry Walker had not a mother to look after her. Which, indeed,
it was. She was ignorant and unsuspicious of harm as Una herself,
only, unfortunately, she had no lion to protect her. A mother would
have told her that even if she considered herself engaged to Fred
Bingham, as in another two or three months she did, it would yet be
much wiser not to meet him accidentally so often during the walks,
which, at her father's wish, she was in the habit of taking daily.
But Carry had no such adviser, and never dreamt on the edge of what a
precipice she was walking.