The whole house was roused. The boys came tumbling from their beds.
“What’s happened? What have they done?”
James Burton, seizing the situation in a glance, retreated, with raised eyebrows, to his room.
This, then, was shame. This was something that should never be. She had been found out, discovered, made to look guilty and foolish and young.
“I don’t care,” said Mary Anne loudly. “I love him. He loves me. We are going to be married. Aren’t we, Joseph?”
Why did he not answer at once? Why did he stand there with that odd, sheepish look on his face? Why did he stammer something about not knowing his prospects, he was uncertain of getting his father’s permission, they were both rather young to marry, he was sorry for Mrs. Farquhar being disturbed, they had heard rats, they were doing no harm?
“But it’s not true. We were not looking for rats. We do love each other. And of course we intend to be married.”
Mary Anne, passionate, outraged, turned to her mother. Joseph stood dumbly, the weak, ineffectual smile marring the handsome face.
Some latent strength came to the aid of Mrs. Farquhar, perhaps the memory of Mr. Thompson and the better days. She held herself with dignity.
“There is no question of marriage. Joseph Clarke leaves my house in the morning with a letter to Mr. Burnell. Mary Anne, you are not yet sixteen and are under my care. Please go to your room.”
The moment of storm was over. The aftermath set in. Mary Anne went to her room and locked the door, and now it was she who wept, and not her mother. Her tears were not for the discovery, but for the memory of Joseph, anxious, awkward, unable to say a word in defense of love.
She stayed in her room all day. She heard the sounds of removal, of luggage being bumped downstairs. Isobel, with a scared face, brought her some food which she did not touch.
No longer was she Miss Farquhar, who made all the arrangements for the house. She was a child of fifteen, hurt, disgraced, and most painfully in love.
It was like a house of mourning. Voices were hushed. Callers came. First Mr. Burnell. Next Mr. Day. Would the third be the principal of the boarding school in Ham? Was she to be sent back there at once?
“I won’t!” she said to herself. “I shall run away.”
She longed suddenly for her stepfather, Bob Farquhar. He would not have scolded. He would have understood. He would have patted her shoulder, with a twinkle in his eye, and said, “So the monkey slipped. Where’s her rich husband now?”
There was only one answer to her turmoil of mind. She must find Joseph, and once he was alone with her she would obtain his promise of marriage. His father’s permission did not matter, for Joseph was of age. He had told her repeatedly that money played a small part in his life. His father was rich. Joseph could work or not, just as he pleased. He could leave Mr. Burnell and set up on his own, or do nothing. It did not matter. Once she and Joseph were married, everything would be all right. What had seemed like deceit would be looked upon with favor. A married woman could do no wrong. Her mother would relent.
Mary Anne’s natural optimism returned. She had only to gain her mother’s consent and find Joseph, and the future was assured.
It was not, however, this kind of future that Mrs. Farquhar had in mind. Her plans were very different.
“I am not going to speak of what has happened,” she said that night to her daughter. “I am to blame for permitting lodgers under my roof. I always disliked the idea, and my dislike was well founded. Joseph Clarke has left here for good and he has left Mr. Burnell also. Mr. Burnell, like the true gentleman he is, was horrified at his conduct and has written to his father. We are all of us well rid of him.”
“Where has Joseph gone?”
“I did not enquire. And if I knew I should not tell you. His whereabouts do not concern you because you are also going away.”
“If you mean I’m to go back to Ham, I refuse. I’m grown up, I’m too old for school.”
“I was not speaking of school. There is no question of that. You are to go as housekeeper to Mr. Day.”
Mary Anne burst out laughing. “You must be mad. I should never consider such a thing. I have seen his house, a stuffy, mournful place in Islington, and I don’t much care for Mr. Day, a pernickety, preaching sort of man.”
Her mother looked at her in disapproval. This was her daughter’s answer to all her benefactor had done for her. A pernickety, preaching man.
“Mr. Day has behaved very generously. I told him what had happened and he agreed that you are in need of protection, of a father’s protection. By becoming his housekeeper he can give you just that. After what happened last night, it is too much responsibility for me.”
“Very well.”
The sudden change of mind should have warned Mrs. Farquhar. But she was too anxious to have her daughter out of harm’s way to question her further.
To Mary Anne the solution was simple. She could do as she pleased at Mr. Day’s, and as soon as he left for the printing house in the morning she would look for Joseph. Nothing was easier.
The atmosphere of mourning departed from the house. The boys whistled once again, all except Charley, who wept and refused to be consoled.
The following day Mary Anne left for Islington in a hackney carriage. She was received by Mr. Day, a little graver than his custom, perhaps, on first meeting, but presently unbending, and later, when he handed her the keys of the store cupboard, positively cheerful.
“I think we shall suit one another very well,” he said. “No homesickness, I trust, and no regrets.”
She asked him at what time he would want his breakfast before leaving for the printing house in the morning.
He looked at her in surprise.
“Didn’t your mother tell you?” he said. “I have retired from the printing house. I made up my mind to it some time ago. I intend to spend my days at home, with my books and other interests. These things we can share. We shall get on capitally. Later, when my daughter returns from school, you will have her companionship too, but in the meantime my company must suffice.”
He smiled, he bowed, his manner was altogether gallant. This was quite ridiculous. Mary Anne had not bargained for a Mr. Day at home. She had hoped to shut the door on him at half past eight in the morning. It was all part of a plot, then, between him and her mother, so that she should not escape supervision.
Mary Anne did her mother an injustice. The plot was Mr. Day’s. It was true that he had left the printing house and had done very well for himself. But Mrs. Farquhar’s account of her daughter’s lapse from grace had fired his imagination. The young woman needed discipline, but discipline of a kind they might mutually enjoy.
Far from Mary Anne shutting the door upon him at half past eight in the morning, she found herself locking the door on him at half past ten at night. She had retired early, worn with the emotions of the preceding days, and, hearing his knock, thought something must be wrong, that he was ill, that the house was burning. She saw him standing there, candlestick in hand, a nightcap on his head, a foolish, hopeful, unattractive figure.
“Lonely?” he said.
Then she knew. She slammed the door in his face and turned the key. Clothes did not matter. A drainpipe close to her window served as exit in the first light of morning. So that was why he had educated her at Ham. But he had not reckoned on Joseph. The final touch was his.
6
She had enough money for a hackney carriage. She would leave Islington in style as she had come—no trudging of streets in the small hours, with every passer-by a potential Mr. Day. The lesson had been learned. The trouble was that no one would believe her story, least of all her mother. The respected Mr. Day a wolf in sheep’s clothing? Never! Mary Anne must have imagined the whole thing. Mr. Day would have his own version. A man past forty was to be trusted before a girl of fifteen.
Jogging back to Holborn in the hackney carriage Mary Anne decided upon two things. The first, to remember in f
uture that face value counted for nothing, that every act of apparent generosity hid an ulterior motive, and one motive only when the benefactor was male. The second, not to return home until she was married, when, flaunting a ring and her marriage certificate, she would have the whip hand of her mother. Mary Anne would be the benefactress then. The daughter-in-law of rich Mr. Clarke of Snow Hill would have a very different status from Miss Farquhar of Black Raven Passage. No necessity for lodgers anymore. Her mother, Isobel, the boys, would appreciate at long last the better days. Mrs. Joseph Clarke would keep them all.
She had nothing with her but the clothes she wore and a few shillings in a small purse, but she was young and her hopes were high.
She stepped with dignity from the hackney carriage and paid the man his fare. Then she went to find James Burton in the Inner Temple. Yes, it was true. Joseph had left Mr. Burnell. There had been, said James Burton, a devil of a scrap. Joseph had torn up his articles of apprenticeship and thrown them on the ground at Mr. Burnell’s feet. Mr. Burnell had called Joseph a waster and a seducer of young girls. Joseph had called Mr. Burnell a bully and a miser.
“Yes,” said Mary Anne impatiently, “but where is Joseph now?”
“In lodgings in Clerkenwell,” said Burton. “I can give you his address. He is full of wild ideas of going to America. I took him on the town last night, and he got very drunk. We ended up at the Ring O’ Bells at three. Joseph had the luck to win ten pounds at hazard. If you go to his lodgings now you’ll find him asleep.”
The lodging house in Clerkenwell, though situated in a street and not in a passage, was a different affair from Mrs. Farquhar’s trim dwelling. The front door stood wide open. Anyone could pass in. A thin child on her knees scrubbed the dirty entrance, watched by a lounging woman with painted cheeks. The place had an air of shabby, stale neglect.
“Clarke? Second floor back, first door,” said the woman, jerking her head.
Mary Anne went up the narrow stairs, high spirits momentarily damped. If Joseph was too proud to return to his father’s house, surely he might have chosen somewhere better than this in which to lodge?
He was asleep, just as James Burton had surmised. If he had really been drunk the night before he showed little sign of it. His face was flushed, perhaps, but the flush was becoming. He had the childish look of innocence that Charley wore when sleeping, and Mary Anne knew that she loved him more than ever. She tiptoed about the room, restoring the disorder, the clothes flung anyhow on the floor, then lay down beside him on the bed.
When Joseph awoke to find Mary Anne upon his pillow, any ideas he may have had of sailing to America died a natural death. Propinquity had its instant fatal effect. And they were no longer under the parental roof. Creaking stairs held no menace in a lodging house where questions were not asked.
By mid-afternoon nothing mattered in the whole world but that they were together again. The future was theirs. They could do what they liked with it.
“Nothing but this,” said Joseph dreamily, “day after day, night after night. No rising early, no Tommy Burnell, no plans.”
“We have to eat,” said Mary Anne, “and I don’t think much of this room. There is no blind to the window and the bed’s too small.”
He told her she had no temperament. She told him he had no common sense. At half past seven they went out to dinner.
If Joseph’s idea of a lodging house was below his station, his idea of where to eat was distinctly above. Not for him a hole-and-corner tavern off one of the alleys. They must dine in splendor in the Strand. Nor would they go on foot, they must go by chair.
Mutton and ale? Good heavens, what a suggestion. Sweetbreads, and a light French wine. A duckling to follow, but it must be tender. His manner of ordering was magnificent, his manner of paying better still. Serving-men bowed low before him. If he was unsteady when he stood upon his feet in the open air it did not really matter—he looked so handsome, and it was such an easy matter to summon another chair.
“What now? The Opera?” he suggested, jingling his change. The thought was tempting, but how much was left of the ten pounds he had won at hazard? Mary Anne shook her head. “Not tonight,” she said, and was just in time to catch him as he fell. It was, after all, a very good thing that no questions were asked in the lodging house at Clerkenwell.
During the days that followed, Mary Anne realized that she must be the practical one of the two. She must take charge. Joseph, rejoicing in his freedom from apprenticeship, wished for nothing more than to lie abed until after midday, and then to saunter abroad and take the air. “Why look ahead? Why plan?” he used to say, then fall to discussing where they might dine that night. Money? Pooh! No worry. He had plenty for the time being. Later, if he found himself short, he could always win another tenner at hazard, and if the worst came to the worst, and pride must be humbled, he would condescend to approach his father. Meanwhile, it was so pleasant to be idle, to make love.
While Joseph slumbered on her shoulder, Mary Anne planned the moves ahead. The first step was to make her whereabouts known to Charley, so that the boy could act as go-between, fetching clothes, necessities, even food, if possible, from the house in Black Raven Passage. This was easy. Charley, stifling his jealousy, gave way to adventure and romance. If the descendant of the clan Mackenzie could not crawl in the heather with a dirk between his teeth, he could at least slip out of his mother’s house with loaves in a basket, and receive a shilling for his pains.
He reported shock and alarm at home. Mr. Day, primed with his own version of the night in Islington, had declared Mary Anne a baggage. Mrs. Farquhar had posted her daughter missing. Descriptions of both Mary Anne and Joseph had been forwarded to the newspapers. The same descriptions had been nailed to the doors of shops, taverns, eating houses.
“You’ll have to shift lodgings or you’ll be caught,” warned Charley. “And then you’ll both be brought to trial and sent to prison.”
“We can’t be sent to prison for being in love,” said Mary Anne.
“You can if you’re not married,” returned Charley. “I heard Mr. Day say so. They call it living in sin, and he should know.”
He should indeed. A bunch of housekeeping keys was the answer to him.
“We’ll have to get married. That’s all there is to it. Joseph, do you hear?”
Joseph, his feet over the bedrail, his head pillowed in cushions, was manicuring his nails. A pleasant, soporific occupation. He yawned. “I know nothing of legal affairs,” he said, “and I care less. But you are under the age of consent—you are only fifteen. So how do we get over that?”
This was the poser. Her mother held the trump card still, unless… What if Bob Farquhar could be found? And, once found, bribed, cajoled, coaxed, threatened, blackmailed into giving his consent as legal protector? Here was the germ of an idea, and once it took root in her mind it expanded and grew.
The search for Bob Farquhar had never been thorough. It had been left entirely to Mr. Day. And now she knew Mr. Day better, Mary Anne could well believe his interest had lain in quite an opposite direction. It would never have suited Mr. Day to find her stepfather. She could imagine the familiar wink, the well-remembered chuckle.
“Housekeeper? Fiddlesticks!” he would have said.
Mary Anne pulled the pillows from under Joseph’s head and dragged him to his feet. He stared down at her, yawning, useless, reluctant, but impossibly handsome.
“What now?”
“Hurry and dress yourself. We’re going to Deptford.”
Bob Farquhar was elusive. He was slippery. He was sly. It was not for nothing that he had printed scandal sheets for twenty years. He knew all the ropes—where to disappear, where to hide, how to prepare for himself a comfortable nest with an amiable companion, and so escape responsibility and a reproving wife.
Yes, he had been seen at the Crown and Anchor but not for three weeks. A square, heavy fellow with a twinkle in his eye? Yes, but not at the Crown and Anchor, at the White Hart.
Five days, eight days ago. Lodging after lodging was tried in vain. Deptford knew him not. Finally, the last inn on the London road had firmer news.
“Farquhar? A party of that name was here two nights ago. Man and wife. Room number four. They took the coach to London, and the daughter too.”
Wife and daughter. It was not living in sin. It was bigamy. If you were found committing bigamy there must be punishment for that.
“Did they say where they were going?”
“No. But I heard the daughter talk about Pancras Fields.”
Back to London, the other side of town. And while they were about it, she and Joseph, would it not be wise to flit themselves?
The painted sloven who kept the lodging house in Clerkenwell had stared after them suspiciously that morning, and she had a copy of the Advertiser in her hand. Charley must be go-between again. Charley must be sent to collect their few belongings and bring them to the next address. The next address was Pancras, on the outskirts of town. If her stepfather was in this district he should be easy to find. It was hardly more than a village, and there were only two taverns.
“But this is the end of the earth,” protested Joseph. “I can see a farm across the way, and cows grazing. We shall bore ourselves to death in such a spot.”
A kiss, a word of love, a rumpling of his hair, and he was as easy to handle as Charley. She left him hanging his cravats in a line from wall to wall.
Bob Farquhar was at neither tavern. The second one gave her the hint, and she found him sitting down to a homely meal of bacon, bread and cheese in a small house the other side of Pancras Fields. Opposite him was a stout, comfortable woman of his own age who could never have known better days, and a very plain-looking girl who, oddly enough, bore a strong resemblance to Bob Farquhar.
Whoever hits hardest always wins, thought Mary Anne. She prepared her blow.
Mary Anne Page 6