A STORY OF A CITY.
Wyechester is a small city in the Midlands. It does not contain more
than thirty thousand people, so that it is possible for every man and
woman of the middle class to know everyone of the same class, or, at
all events, to know everything about everybody, which is almost as
good, if not better.
Wyechester is not a place of any importance now, save what it draws
from its cathedral and its bishop, and the other great dignitaries
around the cathedral. If the city disappeared wholly one night the
world of England would hardly miss it, provided the cathedral and
church dignitaries were spared. It does not manufacture anything; it
has no mines near it. No one ever thought of hunting or shooting in
the neighbourhood but those who lived in the neighbourhood. The
fishing is poor; and the land, although fairly fertile, is not held in
much esteem by farmers. It is a faded, washed-out, old cathedral city,
surrounded on all sides by an uninteresting country.
It had one virtue, which, as it concerned only itself, did not spread
its fame--it was pious. It was the most pious city in England. It
could not, of course, be said with truth that there was no hypocrisy
in it; but, speaking relatively, there was very little, much less than
in any other city of its size.
It was pious, and it was severe. To do any wrong there was much worse
than to do the same wrong in any other city or town in England. Going
to church twice on Sunday regularly for thirty years entitled one to
consideration; going once freed one from adverse comment; going only
twice a month was looked on as bad, very bad; but not going at all
made middle-class people in Wyechester think that the sooner the
offender left the diocese the better.
Five-and-thirty years before the pole of the omnibus went through the
door of the Duke of Shropshire's brougham, five-and-thirty years
before Edward Graham decided upon painting that landscape revealed to
him under the bridge at Anerly, Mrs. Mansfield, widow of the Rev.
James Mansfield, lived in Wyechester. The Rev. James Mansfield died
very young. He was, at the time of his death, curate to one of the
city churches, and was looked upon as a very exemplary and clever
young man, who had a career before him. But his career seemed never to
have begun, for he died before he was thirty. He left behind him a
widow and daughter and about a hundred and fifty pounds a year, from
money in the Funds, willed him by an aunt who had the warmest
affection for this nephew.
On this modest income, and about seventy pounds a year coming in from
other sources, the widow managed to live quietly, respectably, and to
give her daughter a very good education. Five-and-thirty years before
what may be taken as the present time of this story, a thing occurred
which horrified all Wyechester and bowed down the head of Mrs.
Mansfield for ever.
At that time Harriet Mansfield was on a visit with some friends in the
country. One morning Miss Mansfield left the house of the friends she
was staying with and did not return. Neither did she go home. After
days of anxiety a letter, in the daughter's handwriting, came from
London, in which she simply said she had left her home for good, and
that there was no chance whatever of her going back.
Mrs. Mansfield was then forty-three years of age, but, with the flight
of her daughter, her life may be said to have closed, although she was
living at the time this story opened, being then seventy-eight years
of age. She loved her daughter with all the love she was capable of.
But she was a hard, cold, stern nature. To her daughter she never
showed her love except in rigours, and insisting on doing her own duty
by her child, without any sympathetic conception of what effect doing
her own duty would have on a gentle, soft, and confiding nature like
her daughter's. The result was that the mother did her duty according
to her own lights. She endeavoured to bring up her daughter according
to her own rigid code, and she justified herself to herself.
But the daughter had no Spartan nature. She loved pretty things and
soft subjects to wear. She was not allowed to keep pets, or to be too
familiar with other children. While in the world, and now and then
coming in contact for a brief period with pleasant people and grateful
things, she was under a discipline as rigid as a convent without any
sustaining code; for she did not believe it necessary to be
uncomfortable in order to be good. So when love for the first time
approached her, and she was from under the immediate eye of her
mother, the oppressive goodness of that cathedral city, and the
prospect of love and brightness and sunshine and freedom were all
presented to her eyes by a man who owned the gift of erratic
eloquence, and who was richer than any other man she had ever met,
richer than even the bishop, she did not hesitate long. She fled with
him. She knew that running away was wrong, but she under-estimated the
risk, or indeed did not think there was any risk at all; for she was
as simple as a child, and did willingly all things her lover told her,
as all her life she had reluctantly obeyed her mother when uncongenial
tasks were imposed.
In that letter from London, a letter dictated by the companion of her
flight, she said nothing about him, nothing about marriage. It was
therefore plain to the mother that the daughter was not married. So
the mother cast the image of her daughter out of her heart, and shut
up her heart against her child for ever. All through her widowhood
this girl had been the sole source of her secret love and happiness,
as far as worldly things were allowed to count in the love and
happiness of one who ruled herself by the rule of duty.
Now that child had become the only source of secret and open reproach
to her. Soon after she got that letter everyone in the city knew all
about her misfortune, and the neighbours turned up their eyes and held
aloft their hands in virtuous shame. Her daughter had disgraced her
home, had disgraced the sacred order to which she might be said to
belong, had disgraced the city which had given her birth. Into the
mother's heart the image of the daughter should come no more. Across
the mother's threshold the foot of the daughter should never pass. It
was hard to keep the image out always; but no sooner did it gain an
entrance than she cast it forth with bitter reproaches against herself
for her sinful weakness in holding commune with the only thing which
had ever brought shame to her.
The mother made no steps to follow the daughter. Several people came
and offered help. She wanted no help. Her daughter had taken her fate
into her own hands, and there matters should rest. She was inflexible.
Nothing could move her in the least way.
Clergymen who had been friends of her husband called and expostulated,
and said that it was wrong and sinful of her not to do something to
win back the fugitive. But she would not listen to them with patience.
She told them she had done her duty by the girl, and the girl had
taken herself off, and she, the mother, could not think of receiving
her daughter back. They then told her this was not a Christian spirit,
and that she must remember the story of the poor Prodigal. And, upon
this, she grew angry with them, for it hurt her beyond endurance to
hear her daughter, her only child, referred to in such a way. She told
them she knew her duty as a Christian as well as anyone, that they
ought to be aware she had been under good guidance, the guidance of
her husband, for many years, and that she was much obliged to them,
but that her mind was made up beyond the chance of change.
Time proved she could adhere to her resolve, for she never made the
least inquiry. Nor did she ever see her child again.
Harriet Mansfield had behaved very badly. There could be no excuse for
her running away as she did. She was weak by nature, and her weakness
betrayed her; but her weakness was no justification. Yet her folly had
not betrayed her into such a desperate position as her mother
imagined. She had run away, and she had run away with a lover; but
there the disgrace ended.
The people with whom Harriet Mansfield was staying when she eloped
were Mr. and Mrs. Gore, old friends of Mrs. Mansfield. They were
childless, and lived in good style in a comfortable house close by an
excellent trout-stream. Mr. Gore went to his office in town close by
every day, and came home to a late dinner. During most of the day Mrs.
Gore was engaged about domestic affairs, and could give little
attention to her guest. This was the first time Harriet had ever been
free. It was lovely weather, and she soon found out a few pleasant
walks in the neighbourhood. The place was beautiful compared to the
dull monotony of the scenery round Wyechester. Her favourite walk was
along the banks of this trout-stream, which wound in and out through
delightful shady glens and peaceful meadows.
One day by chance she met here a fine stalwart gentleman fishing. He
was more impetuous than careful, and he managed to fix one of the
flies of his casting-line in her dress. The hook had to be extracted
at the cost of some slight injury to the dress; apologies had to be
made; and by the time apologies had been offered and accepted, an
acquaintance had been established. He asked if he might be permitted
to know the name of the lady to whom he had caused such annoyance, and
whose dress he had so shamefully injured. She told him her name, and
then he in return told her his name was Cheyne.
From that day forth they met daily by the stream, and before a
fortnight had gone he had asked her to marry him and she had
consented. He was impulsive, chivalric, romantic; the man more than
any other calculated to set on fire the heart of a girl who had been
so repressed all her life.
He obtained a complete mastery over her. She submitted herself to his
word as she had submitted herself to her mother's; only one submission
was voluntary, joyous--the other a task, a burden. He made passionate
speeches to her, explaining how, if they got married now, it must for
his sake be kept an inviolate secret. She did not understand the
reasons he gave, but she understood his wish--that no word of their
marriage should go abroad then or it would injure him--and she made
the necessary promise. She understood only one thing of the reason why
their marriage should not be made known at present; and that was, that
if it was known he had married a poor woman now, a property worth ten
thousand a year might be taken from him. Whereas, under the will of
his father, he would in a year or so come into more than would pay all
his debts twice over.
He had told her the simple truth. If he had told her the simplest lie,
it would have been just as satisfactory to her; for she did not think
in any matter which concerned him. She was willing to do, to dare, to
suffer anything for the love of him. So she took him at his word, and
ran away with him on the understanding that they were to be married in
some quiet out-of-the-way place, and that she was to say nothing of
their marriage until he came into his fortune.
He brought her first to London, where she wrote that letter dictated
by him. Then he took her to Anerly, where he married her. Between the
time of his taking her away from the Gores' house until the ceremony
at Anerly Church he treated her as though she were a foreign princess
whom he was escorting to espouse a prince.
For a few months after the marriage the life of Harriet Cheyne went on
like a dream of delight. Her husband was erratic; but he was kindly
erratic. He never tired of inventing or devising some agreeable treat
or pleasing wonder for her. They travelled much in England and on the
Continent. Every place she went to was Fairyland, and he was the
enchanter. He was never from her side. He told her he would rather
hear her call his name than find the praise of all the world else
within his ears. She was intoxicated with happiness, and could
scarcely speak, her joy was so great. The black dreary past was more
than a million times compensated for. When she lay down at night she
dreaded to go to sleep, lest on waking she should find herself back in
cold wretched Wyechester. Each waking of mornings was a new delivery
from the past. She now knew how unwise her mother's treatment of her
had been. But she forgave her; and often, when she woke at dead of
night, she thought of her hard-faced stern mother at home, and a tear
stole down her cheek--a tear of pity for the poor woman who had the
misfortune to bring up a daughter that had acted with such perfect
indifference to a mother's feelings.
But at last a sad change came. They were abroad. A letter arrived one
day to her husband, saying that some of his enemies had got hold of
the fact of his marriage, and were preparing to sell the information
to his creditors. Something must be done at once. The bride and
bridegroom were then at Brussels. It was essential he should set off
at once for England, and under the circumstances it would be
exceedingly dangerous for her to accompany him. So he went, giving her
emphatic instructions not to leave Brussels, no matter what might
happen, until she saw him or heard from him.
She never heard from him nor saw him afterwards.
He got to England safely, and reached Anerly, made an ineffectual
attempt to bribe Goolby, left Anerly that day, and died within a
couple of days. His death made a final settlement with his creditors,
and whether he had married or not was no longer a matter of the least
consequence to them.
At Brussels, Cheyne's child was born months afterwards. The mother,
whose stock of money had by this time dwindled down to almost nothing,
had saved a twenty-pound note, and this she gave to a woman whom she
knew she could trust to bring her baby-boy to Wyechester to her
mother; for she was dying, and knew it. She sent a very brief note
with the boy, saying he had not been christened, that his name was
Charles Augustus Cheyne, that she was dying, that she had been legally
married, but that owing to circumstances the fact of her marriage
could not be divulged. Then she appealed to her mother in very
pathetic terms to be kind to the boy and provide for him, as she had
no means, and had not heard of her husband for months. She also said
she sent by bearer a sealed packet of letters and papers belonging to
her husband, and begged her mother to keep it, and not to break the
seals until some momentous occasion arose for doing so, as she was
under important promises to her husband regarding certain matters
reference to which was contained in the papers in the packet. Then
there came a plea for forgiveness.
At first Mrs. Mansfield was filled with dismay. It was horrible to
think of her daughter dying, deserted by the man who had taken her
away, and dying in a foreign land too. There was of course an appeal
for forgiveness in the letter; but to Mrs. Mansfield's mind the appeal
came far too late, and even if it had come earlier it would have
appeared an appeal to an affection of the flesh, which was in itself
an offence against the spirit.
Mrs. Mansfield had tried to crush down Nature, but Nature was too
strong for her; and when the messenger threw back the covering from
the face of the infant, the tears, tears of the flesh, stood in her
eyes, and her hand trembled. For that small, white, contented,
sleeping baby-face reminded her of the time when her own infant lay in
her own arms, and she speculated as to what her baby's future might
be. And now here was her child's child; and the little one who had
lain sleeping in her lap years ago, that seemed no farther off than
yesterday, was dying in disgrace among strangers. Her own baby had
come into the world sanctified, to her mind, by the very atmosphere in
which it was born. Its father was an exemplar of what a man and a
clergyman should be. There was every reason to suppose her baby would
grow up into a woman who would be spoken of as a model of all a woman
should be. Now here was her child's child. It was an unholy, an
unrighteous child. There was no blessing or grace about it.
Ah, it was hard to hold that babe in her arms and think of her own
child, and have a proper Christian feeling towards its father!
And the grandmother, who was not yet forty-five years of age, undid
the baby's hood and passed her hand over the child's beating head, and
touched the little fat double chin with her bent finger, softly
pinched its white cheeks, and forgot for a while all that had happened
since, and was back again in the old time.
Then all at once, as though God had taken pity on her, her tears began
to fall, and she became less of a rigid Christian of the poor and
narrow kind, and more of a Christian in light of the Sermon on the
Mount and the story of the Good Samaritan. She said: "I'll take the
boy and do my duty by him." She added after a pause: "I'll take the
boy and do all I can for him," At that moment she did not so much want
to do her own duty as to be good to him.
But when the messenger had gone, and she found herself alone with the
baby, she receded somewhat from the advanced position she had taken.
She had resolved for a few moments to keep the boy and live down the
talk of idle tongues. Now that idea seemed no more than a temptation
to give way to vainglory, and she resolved to send the boy away as
speedily as possible.
She took the boy with her to a town a hundred miles from Wyechester,
and had him there baptized Charles Augustus Cheyne. Subsequently she
got a nurse for him, and, having made a liberal arrangement with the
nurse, she said:
"I shall come and see you and him at irregular intervals; and whenever
I come and find him looking well and comfortable, I will give you a
guinea in addition to what I have arranged with you for."
By this she intended to secure the continual good treatment of the
child; for though she had failed in her heroic resolve of living down
talk of the idle tongues of Wyechester, she had made up her mind to be
as good to the orphan as she could.
When she got home she found news awaiting her of the death of her
daughter. She put away the thought of her daughter as much as she
could from her mind; and, in a few years, when the boy was old enough
to go to school, she went to that town again, and having requested an
attorney to preserve secrecy in the matter, without giving him any
reason for it, she asked the lawyer to find a school for the boy.
Accordingly he was sent to the school kept by the old maid, and later
to a college. Subsequently he was put to business in London; but from
the time he left the place where he had been brought up, he had never
seen his grandmother, and the early days at his nurse's had completely
faded out of his memory.
The grandmother was now a very old woman. She still lived in her house
at Wyechester. She had altered greatly in face and figure, but her
nature had softened in no way with years. She was still as stiff and
intellectually assured as ever she had been. She had the willing power
of one hundred and fifty pounds a year; the other seventy died with
her; and she had made this will in favour of Charles Augustus Cheyne,
of Long Acre, in London. Although he had never within his memory heard
her name, she had always taken care to know what he was doing, and how
he was getting on.
She had even so far given way to worldliness as to read the
publications to which he contributed; and as she read them she thought
of how strange it should be that his grandfather was younger than his
grandson when he died, and here was she now reading what the grandson
had written!
But in all that Charles Augustus Cheyne had ever written, there was
nothing so surprising as would have been the result of bringing
together the sealed packet held by his grandmother, the registry of
Anerly Church, and Charles Augustus Cheyne.