Anne Hereford. Mrs. Henry Wood

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       CHAPTER VII.

      AT MISS FENTON'S.

      I must have been a very impressionable child; easily swayed by the opinions of those about me. The idea conveyed to my mind by what I had heard of Mrs. Hemson was, that she was something of an ogre with claws; and I can truthfully say, I would almost as soon have been consigned to the care of an ogre as to hers. I felt so all the while I was going to her.

      Charlotte Delves placed me in the ladies' carriage at Nettleby station under charge of the guard--just as it had been in coming. And once more I, poor lonely little girl, was being whirled on a railroad journey. But ah! with what a sad amount of experience added to my young life!

      Two o'clock was striking as the train steamed into Dashleigh station. I was not sure at first that it was Dashleigh, and in the uncertainty did not get out. Several people were on the platform, waiting for the passengers the train might bring. One lady in particular attracted my notice, a tall, fair, graceful woman, with a sweet countenance. There was something in her face that put me in mind of mamma. She was looking attentively at the carriages, one after another, when her eyes caught mine, and she came to the door.

      "I think you must be, Anne," she said, with a bright smile, and sweet voice of kindness. "Did you not know I should be here? I am Mrs. Hemson."

      That Mrs. Hemson! that the ogre with claws my imagination had painted! In my astonishment I never spoke or stirred. The guard came up.

      "This is Dashleigh," said he to me. "Are you come to receive this young lady, ma'am?"

      Mrs. Hemson did receive me, with a warm embrace. She saw to my luggage, and then put me in a fly to proceed to her house. A thorough gentlewoman was she in all ways; a lady in appearance, mind, and manners. But it seemed to me a great puzzle how she could be so; or, being so that she could have married a retail tradesman.

      Mr. Hemson was a silk-mercer and linendraper. It appeared to me a large, handsome shop, containing many shopmen and customers. The fly passed it and stopped at the private door. We went through a wide passage and up a handsome staircase, into large and well-furnished sitting-rooms. My impression had been that Mrs. Hemson lived in a hovel, or, at the best, in some little dark sitting-room behind a shop. Mrs. Jones, who kept the little shop where mamma used to buy her things, had only a kitchen behind. Upstairs again were the nursery and bedrooms, a very large house altogether. There were six children, two girls who went to school by day, two boys out at boarding-school, and two little ones in the nursery. In the yard behind were other rooms, occupied by the young men engaged in the business, with whom Mrs. Hemson appeared to have nothing whatever to do.

      "This is where you will sleep, Anne," she said, opening the door of a chamber which had two beds in it. "Frances and Mary sleep here, but they can occupy the same bed while you stay. Make haste and get your things off, my dear, for the dinner is ready."

      I soon went down. There was no one in the drawing-room then, and I was looking at some of the books on the centre table, when a gentleman entered: he was tall, bright, handsome; a far more gentlemanly man than any I had seen at Mr. Edwin Barley's, more so than even George Heneage. I wondered who he could be.

      "My dear little girl, I am glad you have arrived in safety," he said, cordially taking my hand. "It was a long way for them to send you alone."

      It was Mr. Hemson. How could they have prejudiced me against him? was the first thought that struck me. I had yet to learn that people in our Keppe-Carew class of life estimate tradespeople not by themselves but by their callings. The appearance of Mrs. Hemson had surprised me; how much more, then, did that of her husband! Mrs. Jones's husband was a little mean man, who carried out the parcels, and was given, people said, to cheat. Since Selina mentioned Mr. Hemson's trade to me, I had associated the two in my mind. Well educated, good and kind, respected in his native town, and making money fast by fair dealing, Mr. Hemson, to my ignorance, was a world's wonder.

      "Is she not like Ursula, Frederick!" exclaimed Mrs. Hemson, holding up my chin. "You remember her?"

      He looked at me with a smile. "I scarcely remember her. I don't think Ursula ever had eyes like these. They are worth a king's ransom; and they are honest and true."

      We went into the other room to dinner--a plain dinner of roast veal and ham, and a damson tart, all nicely cooked and served, with a well-dressed maid-servant to wait upon us. Altogether the house seemed thoroughly well conducted; a pleasant, plentiful home, and where they certainly lived as quiet gentlepeople, not for show, but for comfort. Mr. Hemson went downstairs after dinner, and we returned to the drawing-room.

      "Anne," Mrs. Hemson said, smiling at me, "you have appeared all amaze since you came into the house. What is the reason?"

      I coloured very much; but she pressed the question.

      "It is--a better house than I expected, ma'am."

      "What! did they prejudice you against me?" she laughed. "Did your mamma do that?"

      "Mamma told me nothing. It was my Aunt Selina. She said you had raised a barrier between--between----"

      "Between myself and the Carews," she interrupted, filling up the pause. "They say I lost caste in marrying Mr. Hemson. And so I did. But--do you like him, Anne?"

      "Very, very much. He seems quite a gentleman."

      "He is a gentleman in all respects save one; but that is one which people cannot get over, rendering it impossible for them to meet him as an equal. Anne, when I became acquainted with Mr. Hemson, I did not know he was in trade. Not that he intentionally deceived me, you must understand; he is a man of nice honour, incapable of deceit; but it fell out so. We were in a strange place, both far away from home, and what our relative position might be at home never happened to be alluded to by either of us. By the time I heard who and what he was, a silk-mercer and linendraper, I had learnt to value him above all else in the world. After that, he asked me to be his wife."

      "And you agreed?"

      "My dear, I first of all sat down and counted the cost. Before giving my answer, I calculated which I could best give up, my position in society as a gentlewoman and a gentleman's daughter of long pedigree, or Frederick Hemson. I knew that constant slights--not intentional ones, but what I should feel as such--would be my portion if I married him; that I should descend for ever in the scale of society--must leap the great gulf which separates the gentlewoman from the tradesman's wife. But I believed that I should find my compensation in him: and I tried it. I have never repented the step; I find more certainly, year by year, that if I threw away the shadow, I grasped the substance."

      "Oh, but surely you are still a gentlewoman!"

      "My dear, such is not my position: I have put myself beyond the pale of what the world calls society. But I counted all that beforehand, I tell you, and I put it from me bravely. I weighed the cost well; it has not been more than I bargained for."

      "But СКАЧАТЬ