“I am delighted to make your acquaintance,” he said.
It was the same voice which had said “We shall pray together” in the chapel.
I stammered: “I thought we had met before.”
Both he and Joan were looking at me in surprise. I had been so taken aback that I feared I was behaving oddly.
“Mistress,” Sir Harry was saying, “I think there must be some mistake. If we had met before, I am sure I should never have forgotten the occasion.”
“They say we all have doubles,” said Joan lightly. “I am glad you were able to meet Sarah. She is an actress, you know.”
He was smiling at me and the likeness seemed more pronounced than ever. His was an unusual face, and the more I saw him the more like Reverend Martin he seemed to become. Mannerisms…voice, and that long upper lip. It was quite uncanny.
“What are you ladies drinking?” he said, and it was the voice of Reverend Martin.
“Coffee,” said Joan.
“Coffee,” he said, faintly contemptuously, and then smiling at us both. “You must use a little wine for the stomach’s sake. That is a command from the Bible,” he added, looking at me with an expression which might have held some mischief in it.
I was too shaken to listen to their conversation. The resemblance was too strong and I could not rid myself of the conviction that the man who was sitting opposite me in Will’s Coffee House was Reverend Martin.
I quickly took my leave of them and hurried back to the lodgings.
That night I had strange dreams. They were incoherent and muddled. Jack was in them, and he was laughing at me as though he was enjoying some joke at my expense, and then he was Reverend Martin sitting in the coffee house in his clerical garb and calling himself Sir Harry Fresham. It was all nonsense, yet when I awoke I could not dismiss it. I had been mistaken, of course. Why shouldn’t there be two people so much alike that they could be mistaken for each other?
If I saw them together I should see the difference.
But my uneasiness had increased. I began to think that from the moment Jack had taken me to that house in Knightsbridge I had stepped out of reality. When I looked back, nothing seemed quite normal.
Why had Jack disappeared like this? I asked myself. Why had he not taken me to his home? I did not even know where it was. Was that not very strange? Why? Why? There were so many questions to be answered. I had brushed them aside, but now I needed to know the answers.
I should demand to know, I assured myself, as soon as he came back. Was he not coming at the end of the week? I was being foolish to allow myself to fall into such a state of uncertainty, merely because I had met a man who looked like that strange Reverend Martin.
The next day I arose early. It was Wednesday. On Saturday the week of Jack’s absence should be over. It was not long to wait.
I stayed in the next day, waiting, hoping that he would come. All I needed was to see him, to tell him of my meeting with Sir Harry Fresham, and how it had startled me.
All would be well. I was just fanciful because he was not here. When he came back, he would reassure me.
On Friday I could not rest, so I decided I would call at the house to see Martha and Rose.
When I arrived I knew something had happened and I was overcome with relief when Maggie rushed out to greet me.
We fell into each other’s arms and then I saw the consternation in her face.
“Sarah!” she cried. “Where have you been? I’m sure they have not told me aright. Tell me it is not true.”
I said: “I don’t understand…”
“Martha and Rose…they said you had married Lord Rosslyn.”
“It’s true, Maggie. I am so happy. It is wonderful.”
She did not speak. Her lips were trembling. Then she was fierce and angry.
“Oh, Sarah, Sarah, what have you done? What have you done?”
“Maggie…” I began.
She was staring at me in utter dismay. “You cannot have married Lord Rosslyn. He is already married. He has been married for the last ten years or more.”
I sat in the parlor with Maggie. I was numb, bewildered, and I asked myself whether of late in the depths of my mind I had guessed that something was not as it should be.
She made me tell her all about it. How he had taken me to his lodgings and there had tried to make me his mistress.
“And when I refused…he thought up this plan.”
“And you were deceived by it.”
“Kitty had always talked to me about men and how I must never be taken in…I was in love with him. He is very charming, Maggie.”
“Charming!” she snorted. “Yes. I’ll warrant he can lay on the charm thick and fast when it’s about ruining some innocent young girl.”
“Oh, Maggie, Maggie, what have I done?”
“Nothing that can’t be mended in time.”
“But I…it’s not the same. Kitty…”
“Kitty would have been the first to understand, and you’re not the only one, I might tell you, to be deceived in this way. I’ve heard for some time that it’s been a habit of these young town dandies, and some not so young either, old enough to have a bit more decency. Mock Marriage, they call it…the game they go in for when they can’t get their way without. They look on it as a sort of sport.”
“Oh no, no, Maggie.” And I took refuge from my shame in disbelief. “It could not be true.” I could not believe it.
“If you take my advice, you’ll never see him again,” Maggie said. “That is, if you can help it.”
I was silent. I thought of him returning to the lodgings, calling my name, waiting to catch me up in his arms.
Never to see him again. When I loved him, wanted to be with him. I wanted to hear him deny this charge against him.
Yet in my heart I believed it. I had the evidence of my own eyes, had I not? From the moment Sir Harry Fresham looked at me in the coffee house, I had felt this suspicion. I had known that the man sitting opposite me, calling himself Sir Harry Fresham, was the same Reverend Martin who had conducted a bogus form of marriage in the chapel in Knightsbridge.
I knew Maggie was right, yet I was fighting hard to prove her wrong. I was bewildered and miserable, and very much afraid.
Maggie was brisk and practical.
“It’s not the first time this has happened to a girl…not by a long way, I can tell you. You’re lucky. Some might have left home, romantically eloped…Romantic! I’d give these villains romantic! Poor things, what can they do? Deceived just to satisfy the lust of these rakes and give themselves up to be joked about. What can the poor girl do when she learns the truth? But it is not so with you, Sarah. You have a home. I thank the Lord that I came back in time.”
“Oh, Maggie, I’m so miserable…But it’s not true. I am sure you are mistaken. I’m sure it’s not true.”
She held me against her and stroked my hair. “You’ve got a home. Always remember that. I’m back now and if he comes here I’ll know what to say to him.”
“He is coming back. He will be at the lodgings in a few days.”
“That is, if he gets there. Like as not Master Rosslyn will find he has more pressing business to keep him occupied.”
“I am staying in his lodgings.”
“No more, you’re not. This is your home, and if he wants to see you, he can come here.”
“Maggie, I have to see him. I have to hear what he has to say.”
“Some well-thought-out tale, I shouldn’t wonder. Yes, he had a wife…but your charms so blinded him that you caused a lapse of memory and he forgot all about her.”
“Oh, Maggie, this is very important to me. I would never be satisfied unless I saw him…unless I heard from his own lips…”
“Oh yes, I know. And when he tells you he was a naughty man who loved you so much that he resorted to this trickery and he’ll die of a broken heart if you leave him, what are you going to say, eh?”
“You are wrong, Maggie. If this is true
, I shall not stay with him. I shall always remember what Kitty said to me. If I knowingly did anything that was wrong, I should feel she was reproaching me. She was so anxious that nothing…nothing like this…should happen to me.”
Maggie put her arms round me.
“When this sort of thing happens,” she said, “or any misfortune, for that matter, it helps not to sit down and mourn. You get up, my girl. You start from there. What’s done is done. You’ll come back here. Who knows about this so-called marriage? Only those who took a part in it, and they won’t tell. They might not be all that proud of it, and, more to the point, too much talk about something like this and their part in it spoils the next little game they might want to play. Listen to me. I have been around a good deal. You’ll come back here. You have been away for a little while, visiting perhaps relations in the country—that’s the tale if the need arises. When you’ve calmed down a little, you’ll see it my way.”
“Maggie, I am sure you are right…if this is true. I’ve heard it more than once.”
“It is true, I tell you he’s married. And did you not see the rogue who played the part of the priest? I’ve heard of Sir Harry Fresham…they’re a wild band. Friends of my Lord Rochester, as wild as any. Why the King does not forbid them the court, I do not know. Yes, I do, because he is as much a rake as any of them. There. You have to be watchful. This is a different world we live in now. The times have changed and these little adventures of merry young men are not frowned on and treated with severity as they would have been in the days of Oliver Cromwell.”
“I must hear of it from his own lips.”
She looked at me in exasperation.
“Take my advice. Don’t go near him. He’ll get round you with some tale.”
“I shall demand an explanation.”
“No need for what’s clear as daylight. If you take my advice, you’ll forget you ever set eyes on him.”
“If only it were as easy!”
“Listen. Don’t you go back to that place. This was your home before all this started, and it still is. You stay here. Try and forget all about this grand marriage to a not-so-noble lord.”
I did not know what to do. Good sense told me that Maggie was right. There was Harry Fresham to prove it.
I was very unhappy and very undecided.
Maggie took me up to my old room.
“There,” she said. “This is where you’ll be safe.”
I stayed that night and what a restless night it was. I did not sleep at all. My mind changed continuously.
I would go back to him the next day. I had to wait for his return: and when I thought of how he had deceived me, I was bitterly angry and in despair at the enormity of what I had done.
I could see Kitty’s reproachful eyes. Sarah, Sarah, how often did I warn you? Would you go back and be his mistress? And when he tires of you…what then? Have you not seen the fate of others?
How could I have been so foolish, I asked myself one moment; and the next: But I do not believe it. Am I not judging him because of what Maggie has heard? How could she be sure? It might be that his wife had died…that he did not like to tell. Naturally he would not call attention to the difference in our ages. That was it. And then in my mind I saw the cynical smile of Sir Harry Fresham across the coffee room table, and I knew that Maggie was right.
So passed that tragic night.
By the light of day I felt sure that Maggie was right, and my wretchedness returned. Before the morning was out I was finding all sorts of reasons why she could be wrong. So the mood of uncertainty continued.
I had to go back to the lodgings. He would return and find me gone. What if he were so angry that he went away back to his estate? How should I know?
I had to see him.
I went to the lodgings. It was Saturday and still he had not come back. I waited for a while and then left. I went back to Maggie. I could find some solace there. Maggie cared for me. Maggie would look after me.
She found me weeping quietly and she stayed beside me.
She said: “Life is hard at times, dear child. When we fall we must perforce pick ourselves up and start walking again. It will mend itself. And we should rejoice that we have become wiser and will not fall into the same trap again. Sarah, my dear Sarah, trust me. We will show this man that his attempts to ruin you have not succeeded, for they can only do so if you allow them to.”
I listened to her words and thought how wise she was. She was a great comfort to me.
I did not go back to the lodgings again. The days passed. I thought of him continually. Had he returned, found me gone and then shrugged his shoulders and gone away again? Had he laughed at the simplicity of the stupid unworldly girl who had been so easily duped by a false ceremony and a false priest?
Perhaps I had made it easy for him. He had had the amusement he sought, played out his little charade, and now I had conveniently gone away so that he did not have the trouble of deserting me.
It was Tuesday of the following week at five of the afternoon when there was a loud knocking on the door.
We both started up. I thought: He has come; and my heart leaped with sudden joy, for if he had come it would be to take me back with him and to explain all that I had not understood until now.
As we went into the hall we saw him brush Martha aside and come in.
“Sarah!” he cried, seeing me. “Why have you not been at the lodgings these last days?”
He seemed angry, and I managed to say: “There is much to explain.”
“Explain?” he said. He had come into the parlor. Maggie was standing there militantly, as though waiting for him.
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?”
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