The war was ended, the Peace of Utrecht signed, and what remained of our
armies after the twelve years’ conflict was free to come home once more.
With the soldiers came back the surgeons, to practise in peace the
suggestive proficiency they had gained in war-time; and cleverest among
them all was Dr. Sebastian Shepley.
Like all successful doctors, Shepley owed something to his personality.
There was that in him which inspired others with a sense of his
capacity. Not very much of a gentleman, but very much of a man; of
gigantic size and easy rough address, he suggested all that was most
cheerful and prosperous in life. Shepley had been through half the
campaigns of the war, and now that peace was proclaimed he had the good
luck to obtain an appointment under the then celebrated Dr. Joseph
Barrington of Harley Street, Surgeon in Ordinary to his newly ascended
Majesty King George the First. The appointment was a fortunate one for
Shepley; but perhaps it was not quite so fortunate for Barrington, who
found ere long that Sebastian Shepley was likely to prove an Absalom who
would steal away the hearts of fashionable London from himself. But
Barrington was very magnanimous—strangely magnanimous,—and seemed
rather to like than to dislike the praises that were heaped upon the
young man. The reason of his magnanimity was not very far to seek, nor
had he any false delicacy in telling Shepley of it; for, as they sat
together one day, the older man gave it as his opinion that marriage was
a prudent step for a young man to take before taking up a practice.
‘You should in truth be looking out for a wife, Shepley,’ he concluded,
and he gave a suggestive cough.
‘Some day, mayhap, sir, some day,’ said Shepley. His face fell suddenly
into a half hard, half tragical expression, very foreign to that it
generally wore, and he passed his hand quickly across his lips.
Barrington, a keen observer of faces, gave a sharp glance at him for a
moment.
‘Such wounds, Shepley, are best treated not too tenderly,’ he said. ‘It
but keeps them open.’
‘There may be truth in that you say, sir, but it goes against nature,’
said Shepley.
‘Like many a good drastic cure,’ said Barrington. ‘Come (if you will
have my advice), bury this old trouble, whatever it may be, and begin
life from where you are. Many a happy match hath begun coolishly, many
an ill one hotly: and this is the wisdom of a man old enough to be your
father.’
‘I thank you, sir; I shall give some thought to the matter,’ said
Shepley, and would have changed the subject, but Barrington pursued—
‘You scarce need a proof of my goodwill; Shepley; yet I’ll give you one.
There’s not another man in London to whom I would sooner give my
daughter Emma than yourself.’
‘My dear sir——’
‘There, there, I have but given you a piece of my mind and something of
a hint. Let the matter rest. I pray you to be in no haste: no prudent
marriage was ever yet hasty, nor any hasty one prudent; time, time and
thought——’
‘Yes, sir, as you say, time and thought—’tis a great step in life,’
said Shepley. But he took the older man’s hand in his as he spoke, and
shook it warmly.
‘I thank you, sir,’ he said. ‘And this story you guess at—well, I give
you my hand on’t that if ever I marry Emma she hears it all.’
‘Tush! keep your heart’s history to yourself,’ said Barrington, smiling.
‘The woman who supposes herself any man’s first love is a fool.’
Emma, whose name had been thus bandied between Sebastian Shepley and her
father, was the younger of Dr. Barrington’s two daughters. The elder
daughter, Charlotte by name, had married early, and ‘well,’ as the
phrase goes, having allied her fortunes with those of a certain Sir
James Mallow, who, though only a knight, was the possessor of a handsome
income, and had converted Charlotte from plain Miss Barrington without a
fortune to ‘My Lady’ with one. The marriage had been a source of vast
gratification to Emma as well as to the fortunate Charlotte, for it
seemed to be in the very blood and bones of the Barringtons to aspire in
matters social. Their father’s promotion to Court practice had given
these young women another help on the painful uphill path, and had made
it not only possible but quite natural for them to mention persons of
title frequently in conversation. Now Emma drove out daily in Lady
Mallow’s coach, and dreamt of even greater splendours to come. She was
an extremely pretty girl, slim and tall, with fine auburn hair and
delicate colouring. ‘With her looks,’ said Lady Mallow, ‘Emma must have
a baronet.’ And indeed she repeated this so often that Emma came to
think of the baronet as a reality, and never contemplated the
possibility of any suitor of lower degree.
It gave her, therefore, quite a painful shock to discover suddenly one
fine day that she was beginning to care a great deal about a man who was
not even distantly connected with a baronetcy. Emma made this discovery
some time after Sebastian Shepley had been presented to her; but she put
the thought aside at first as quite unworthy. To confirm herself in
dismissing such an idea, she spoke with some sharpness to Charlotte
about the spectral bridegroom.
‘I wish you would in truth present me to a baronet, Charlotte, instead
of speaking so frequently of doing so,’ she said.
Charlotte was a little nettled by the remark, probably because she knew
no baronet whom she could present to her sister, yet was unwilling to
acknowledge the fact.
‘I take good care to present no man to you whom I do not consider
suitable to be your husband,’ she said coldly.
‘I may get tired of waiting,’ said pretty Emma. This was all she said
then, but some months later, in a burst of girlish despair, she confided
to Lady Mallow what she feared was her hopeless passion for Dr.
Sebastian Shepley. ‘I should not care for fifty baronets now,’ she
concluded, burying her face on Charlotte’s not very sympathetic breast.
‘Tush! Emma,’ said her Ladyship; ‘you should look higher——’ She could
think of no more weighty argument. But Emma could not listen even to
this. She sobbed and sobbed, and prayed Charlotte, if she loved her, to
try to help her. For a long time Charlotte resisted these entreaties,
then she determined to tell her father the state of the case.
‘So this is what ails Emma?’ he said. ‘Gad! but I’ll make short work
with it. Shepley is a fine man—no finer surgeon have I come across this
many a year. If he will take Emma he shall have her, and welcome.’
So not very many days later, Dr. Barrington, as you have heard,
approached Shepley on the subject of marriage.
At first it seemed as if nothing were to come of the conversation; then
quite suddenly Shepley came one day to announce to Dr. Barrington that
Emma had agreed to marry him.
‘My blessings on you for a sensible man,’ said Barrington. ‘You were so
long about it I half feared you would not take my counsel at all.’
‘I took it so well that I did not hurry in the matter,’ laughed
Sebastian.
He laughed himself down-stairs, laughed his adieus to Emma, and
swaggered off down the street with his fine swinging gait, as gay and
hearty a man as you might see in all England.
But oh, inscrutable heart of man! what were these curious old words that
so rang in his ears? He seemed to be walking to the tune of them.
‘_If I forget thee_,’ said the voice of the heart that speaks ever
whitest truth,—‘_If I forget thee, let my right hand forget its
cunning._’
And he shook his head and smiled, and looked down at his clever right
hand.