DORA OF THE RINGOLETS
"I wish I c'd du my ringolets same as yu kin, mother. When I carl 'em over my fingers they don't hang o' this here fashion down my back, but go all of a womble-like; not half s' pretty."
"Tha's 'cause ye twist 'em wrong way, back'ards round yer fingers," the faint voice from the bed made answer. "Yu ha' got to larn to du 'em, Dora, don't, yer'll miss me cruel when I'm gone."
The dying woman was propped on a couple of pillows of more or less soiled appearance; these were raised to the required height by means of a folded flannel petticoat and dingy woollen frock, worn through all the twelve years of her married life, but now to be worn no more. On the man's coat, spread for extra warmth over the thin counterpane, lay a broken comb and brush. Over her fingers, distorted by hard work, but pale from sickness and languid with coming death, the mother twisted the locks, vigorously waving, richly gilded, and dragged them in shining, curled lengths over the child's shoulders.
Because of the extreme weakness of the hands the process was a laborious one. A heavier pallor was upon the face, a cold moisture upon the sunken brow when it was accomplished.
"I'll kape on while I kin—I don' know as I shall ha' the strength much longer, Dora."
The child twitched her curls from the fingers that lay heavily upon them and turned on her mother fiercely. "Yu ha' got ter du 'em, then!" she cried. She glared upon the faint head slipped sideways on the pillow. "Yu ha'n't got ter put none o' them parts on, du I'll let ye ter know."
Her eyes were suddenly wide and brilliant with tears; the fading sight of the mother was dazzled by the yellow shine of them and of the richly-coloured hair. "My pretty gal!" she breathed; "my pretty Dora! I ha'n't got no strength, bor."
"I'll let yer ter know!" Dora cried with fury. "I'll hull yer pillars away, and let yer hid go flop, if ye say yer ha'an't got no strength. I'll let yer ter know!"
She stopped, because the sobs which had been stormily rising choked her. She seized in her red little hands the pillow beneath her mother's head. No word of remonstrance was spoken, the faded eyes gazing wearily upon the child held no reproof.
"What d'ye look at me, that mander, for? Why don't ye ketch me a lump o' the hid?" the child cried fiercely; then gave way to the suppressed sobbing. "Oh, mother, yu ain't a-dyin'? Yu ain't a-dyin' yit?"
She flung her own head on the soiled pillow; all the crisply waving, long ringlets flew over the mother's sunken chest; one fell across her parched lips. She moistened them with her tongue, and made a feeble motion of kissing. A tear slid slowly down her cheek.
"Not yit, my pretty gal," she whispered. "Mother ain't a-goin' ter lave yer yit."
"Promus! Yer ain't a-tellin' no lies? Yer'll stop along of me till I kin carl my ringolets myself. I ha' got ter have 'em carled, and there ain't no one else to du 'em for me."
The mother promised.
"There's Jim and Jack—they don't want ye, mother. Their hairs is short. They kin play hopstick i' th' midder, alonger th' other boys. Both on 'em kin put their own collars on. There's on'y me, what have carls, that'll want yer so. Mother! Mother!"
"Don' I kape on a-tellin' of yer I ain't a-goin'."
There was no time to sob for long on the mother's pillow. Dora was due at school. She wiped her crimsoned cheeks upon the corner of the sheet, stood up and put her sunburnt sailor-hat upon the carefully curled hair. She was neatly dressed in a brown woollen frock nearly covered by a white, lace-trimmed overall; she wore brown stockings and brown shoes. The mother watched her to the door with yearning eyes.
"My pretty gal!" she said.
The neighbour who waited on her in moments spared from her own household labours came in. She held a cup of paste made from cornflour in her hand, and stirred the mixture invitingly.
"It's time yu had suffin' inside of yer, Mis' Green," she said. "Yu ha'n't tasted wittels since that mossel o' bread-an'-butter yu fancied las' night."
She put a spoonful of the food, stirred over a smoky fire, to the parched lips.
"I'd suner, a sight, have a drink o' water," the sick woman said. "There ain't nothin' I fare ter crave 'cept water now."
"There ain't no nouragement in water, Mis' Green. Take this here, instids," the neighbour said firmly.
Two spoonfuls were swallowed with difficulty.
"Come! Tha's as ter should be! That comfort ye, Mis' Green, bor?"
The faint eyes looked solemnly in the healthy, stolid face above her. "There's nothin' don't comfort me, Mis' Barrett."
"An' why's the raisen?" the neighbour reprovingly demanded. "Because yu're a-dyin', Mis' Green, and yu don't give yer mind tu it. I ha' been by other deathbeds—the Lord reward me for it, as 'tis ter be expected He will—and I ha'n't never seed a Christian woman so sot agin goin' as yu are."
The reluctant one shut her eyes wearily; the dropped lids trembled for a minute, then were raised upon the same hard face.
"She don' look like a labourer's gal, Dora don't," she said faintly. "She ha'n't got th' mander o' them sort o' truck."
"What then, Mis' Green?" the neighbour inquired, stern with the consciousness of her own large family of "truck." The supposed superiority of Dora of the ringolets hurt her maternal pride and raised a storm of righteous anger in her breast.
Mrs Green did not explain; the discoloured lids fell again waveringly over the dim eyes, the upper lip was drawn back showing the gums above the teeth.
It was the mere skeleton of a woman who lay there. She had suffered long and intensely; no one could look upon her now and doubt that the hour of discharge was very near. The woman standing above her reasoned that if a word of reproof or advice was to be given there was not much time to lose. Often, from open door to open door (for the pair inhabited a double dwelling), often, across the garden fence, she had called aloud her opinion of her neighbour's goings on; she would seize the opportunity to give it once again.
"And why ain't yer Dora like a labourer's gal, then?" she demanded, shrilly accusing. "Oh, Mis' Green! Don't yu, a-layin' there o' your deathbed, know right well the why and the wherefore? Ha'n't yu borrered right and left, ha'n't you got inter debt high and low, to put a hape o' finery on yer mawther's back? Ha'n't yu moiled yerself, an' yu a dyin' woman, over her hid o' hair? Put her i' my Gladus's clo'es, an' see what yer Dora 'ud look like. Har, wi' her coloured shues, an' all!"
"They was giv' her," the dying woman faintly protested. "Her Uncle Willum sent them brown uns along of her brown hat wi' th' welwet bow."
"Now, ain't yu a-lyin', Mis' Green, as yu lay there o' yer deathbed? Them tales may ha' flung dust i' th' eyes o' yer old man, them i' my hid is too sharp for no sech a story. Di'n't I see th' name o' 'Bunn o' Wotton' on th' bag th' hat come out of? An' don't yer brother Willum live i' London, and ha'n't he got seven of's own to look arter? Ter think as I sh'd come ter pass ter say sich wards, an' yu a-layin' there a-dyin'! Ain't yer ashamed o' yerself, Mis' Green. I'm a-askin' of yer th' question; ain't yer ashamed o' yerself?"
"No, an' ain't," said Mrs Green, feebly whispering.
Beneath the flickering, bruised-looking lids, tears slowly oozed. The neighbour felt for a pocket-handkerchief under the pillow, and wiped them away.
"Fact o' th' matter, Mis' Green," she inflexibly pursued her subject, "yu ha' made a raglar idle o' that gal; yu ha' put a sight o' finery on 'er back, an' stuffed 'er hid wi' notions; an' wha's a-goin ter become on 'r when you're gone?"
"I was a-wonderin'," the dying woman said, "s'posin' as I was willin' to speer this here parple gownd o' mine, rolled onder my pillar—I was a-wonderin', Mis' Barrett, ef so bein' as yu'd ondertake ter carl my gal's ringolets, now an' agin, for 'er?"
"No," the other said, spiritedly, nobly proof against the magnitude of the bribe. "That'd go agin my conscience, Mis' Green. I'm sorrer ter be a denyin' of yer, but yer mawther's hid o' hair I ha'n't niver approved on; I can't ondertake it, an' so, I say, straight forrerd, at oncet."
The face so "accustomed to refusings" did not change, no flush of resentment relieved its waxen pallor or lightened its fading eyes. "'Tis th' last thing I'm a-askin' of yer," the poor woman said, weakly. "Try as I kin, I can't live much longer. 'Tis on'y nat'ral I should think o' Dora an' th' child'en."
"Yu think a sight too much on 'em, bor! 'Tis time yu give 'em up. Yu lay o' yer deathbed, Mis' Green, an' yu a mis'rable sinner; can't you put up a prayer to ask th' Lord ter have marcy on yer?"
"No," said Mrs Green.
"'No'—an' why not?"
"Cos I don' keer."
"Don' keer, Mis' Green?"
"No, Mis' Barrett, so's He look arter Dora an' th' child'en, I don't keer what He du ter me."
"Mother!"
No answer, but a quiver of drooping lids.
"Mother!"
At the sharp terror of the voice the lids lifted themselves and fell again.
"Yu ain't a-dyin', mother?"
"'Course I ain't."
"Yer promussed! Yer said yer warn't a-dyin'!"
"An' I ain't."
"Then don't kape a-lookin' o' that mander. Lay hold o' th' comb an' du my ringolets."
The comb was thrust within cold fingers which did not close upon it.
"If so bein' yer don't set ter wark and comb 'em out I'll shake ye. I'll shake ye, mother, du yer hare? Du yer hare, mother? Th' bell's gone, an' how'm I ter go ter school an' my ringolets not carled?"
They were not curled that morning, however, for at the sound of the child's angry, frightened voice Mrs Barrett came running upstairs and seized her and dragged her from the room.
"Yer baggige, yu! Ter spake i' that mander to a dyin' woman!"
"She ain't a-dyin', then," the child screamed as she was thrust from the house. "She ain't a-dyin', an' I want my ringolets carled."
Once, when Dora had announced in the hearing of a pupil-teacher that she was the prettiest girl in the school: "You ain't, then," the older girl had told her. "You are not pretty at all, Dora, but exactly like your brother Jim."
"Jim's ugly! You're a-tazin' of me!" Dora had fiercely cried.
"If you hadn't your curls you'd be Jim over again," the teacher had persisted.
She was a tempestuous little animal. She had flown to her mother with the horrid insinuation, had sobbed and screamed, and kicked the innocent, ugly Jim. If she had not her curls!
But she had them. Even this morning, when for the first time she must appear in school without having them freshly curled, the consciousness of their weight upon her shoulders was a comfort to the child. As well as she could without disarranging the set of it, she smoothed each long curl into order as she walked along. The sun of autumn shone, lying like a benediction upon the land whose fruits were gathered; among the hips and haws in the hedges the birds, their family cares all over, sang lightsomely, with vacant hearts. Happiness was in the air. Perhaps someone would say how pretty the curls were, to-day. Perhaps, as once, blessedly, before had happened, a lady riding slowly along the green wayside might pull up her horse to inquire whose little girl she was, to give her sixpence, to ask how much she would take for her beautiful curls.
Ah, with what joy on that happy morning Dora had galloped home to give the account to her mother! The sixpence had gone to buy the blue ribbon Dora wore among her locks on Sundays; but how the mother had cheered up! She had seemed almost well for half an hour that evening, and Dora had told the tale again and again.
"I was a-walkin' along, like this here, not a thinkin' a mite o' my ringolets, an' I see th' woman on th' horse keep a-smilin'. So I made my manners, an' she pulled up 'r horse. 'Whu's little gal be yu?' she say; 'an' where did yu git yer lovely hair?'"
Her mother had eaten two bits of bread-and-butter, that evening, and had drunk the tea Dora all alone had made her. How happy it had been! Perhaps it would all happen again.
Morning school over, she was putting on her hat among a struggling mass of children anxious to get into the open, where there was a great blue vault to shout under, and stones to shy, when the schoolmistress from the empty class-room called her back. The woman stood by her silently for a minute, one hand on the child's shoulder, the other moving thoughtfully over the shining fell of hair.
"Don't shout and play with the others to-day, Dora," she said at length. "Wait till they clear off, and then go right home."
"Yes, tacher."
The schoolmistress waited for another minute, smoothing the curls.
"You're only right a little girl, Dora, but you're the only one. You must try to be good, and look after poor little Jack and Jim, and your father—and be a comfort."
"Yes, tacher." Dora took courage beneath the caressing hand: "I like to be a comfit to mother best," she vouchsafed, brightly daring.
"But your mother——" the governess said, then stopped and turned away her head; she could not bring herself to tell the child the news of the mother she had heard that morning, since school began.
So Dora went, sedately for the first few steps, afterwards with a happy rush, the curls dancing on her shoulders.
"Yer mother is a-dyin', she 'ont be here long; you must try to be a better gal"; how often of late had that phrase offended her ears! She had met such announcements with a fury of denial, with storms of tears. She had rushed to her mother with wild reproach and complaint. "Why don't ye tell 'm yu ain't a-dyin', stids o' layin' there, that mander. They're allust a-tazin' of me?"
To-day no one had said the hated words; and mother would like to hear how teacher had "kep'" her at her side, and coaxed her hair. "I ha'n't niver seed her du that to Gladus, nor none on 'em," she would say, and would remind her mother how these less fortunate girls had not her "hid o' hair."
So, her steps quickened with joyful anticipation, she came running across the meadow in which was her home.
"Here come Dora," Mrs Barrett, who had been busy in Mrs Green's room, said to the neighbour who had helped her. Both women peeped through the lowered blind. "She'll come poundin' upstairs to her mother. There ain't no kapin' of 'r away; and a nice how-d'ye-do there'll be!"
The elder boy, Jim, whose ugly little face Dora's was said to resemble, was standing against the gate of the neglected garden. He did not shout at her, nor throw a stone at her, in the fashion of his usual greeting, but pulled open the rickety gate as she came up.
"Mother's dead," he whispered, and looked at her with curiosity.
"She ain't, then," Dora said. He drew his head back to avoid the blow she aimed at it, and shut the gate after her.
Jack, an ugly urchin of five, the youngest of the family, was sitting on the doorstep, hammering with the iron-shod heel of his heavy boot a hazel nut he had found on his way home. The nut, instead of cracking, was being driven deep into the moist earth. He did not desist from his employment, or lift his head.
"Father's gone for mother's corffin," he said.
The howl he gave when Dora knocked him off the step brought Mrs Barrett upon the scene. She pulled the girl off the fallen Jack with a gentler touch than usual.
"You come along upstairs, along o' me," she said.
There was not only the coffin to be ordered in Wotton, but suits of black for himself and children, besides the joint of meat to be cooked for the meal after the funeral. Mr Green did not hurry over his purchases, but went about them with the leisurely attentiveness of one anxious to do the right thing, but unaccustomed to the business of making bargains.
His wages had been "made a hand on," lately; there had been brandy and "sech-like" to buy for the missus; the neighbour to pay, leaving little more than enough for bread for the rest of them. But now, with this burying money—! The new-made widower enjoyed the hitherto undreamed-of experience of knowing that he might put in for a glass at every public-house he passed, and not exhaust it.
He treated himself to a tin of salmon to have with his supper, when he got back to Dulditch. While his wife had been well and about, she had been wont at rare intervals to supply such a "ralish" to the evening meal. Having the means to indulge himself, his thoughts had at once travelled to the luxury.
Yet, arrived at home, he had had too much beer to be very hungry, and the thought of the dead wife, up there, just beyond the ceiling, destroyed what little pleasure the feast might have held.
"Happen she'd been alive, she'd maybe ha' picked a mossel," he said to himself.
That she could be totally indifferent to the delicacy, even although dead and fairly started on her heavenward journeying, was a bewildering fact his dull brain could scarcely grasp. He got up from the table, and taking the unshaded lamp, walked heavily upstairs to look upon this marvel—his wife who was no more.
He was a stolid creature, but was shaken enough to give a sharp growl of fear when, from the other side of the rigid form upon the bed, a head was lifted.
"Hello!" he called. "Hello! What yu a-doin' here? Now then! Come out o' that, yu young warmint; don't, I'll hide ye."
The figure lying by the dead woman slipped to the ground. It wore a brown frock and a crumpled white overall trimmed with lace.
"Hello!" the man said again. He looked stupidly at his little daughter, then pulled aside the sheet which covered his wife.
In the waxen face, with lids still half-open above the dull eyes, with lips drawn back to show the gums, was little change. Beneath the chin a large white bow of coarse muslin had been tied. It was designed to hide the thinness of the throat, but gave, besides, a dreadful air of smartness to the poor corpse. Above the sunken chest the arms were crossed, but, over them, and over the thin hands, in a burning, shining mass of resplendent colour lay—
The husband held the lamp nearer, and bent his dull, red face to peer closer at the scattered heap—the miracle of bronze and red, red living gold. "Hello!" he said again, then moved the lamp to let its light shine on his daughter's face, and stared at her.
"Hello!"
"I ha'n't got no one now to carl my ringolets," the child sobbed, her voice rising high in the scale of rebellious misery; "my ringolets ain't no good to me no more. I ha' cut 'em off; mother, she kin have 'em. They ain't no good ter me."
The glare of the lamp held awry was upon the broad red face of the girl with the streaming, yellow eyes, with the unevenly cropped head.
"I thought yu was the boy Jim," her father said.
PINK CARNATIONS
"You see, they are my lucky flowers," she said. "I can't very well wear them on my wedding-dress, but I'm to have some to go away with. Jack's going to bring them down from town with him to-night."
I asked of Daphne, who had been the favourite of fortune from her birth, in whose cup of sweet no bitter had ever mingled, who had walked for all her happy days along a flowery path, what she meant by such nonsense.
She was ready enough to give me her absurd girlish reasons.
What she told me was the feeblest folly, of course; but even silly superstition must be pardoned to such a pretty person; and the words of a young woman who is going to be married on the morrow must be treated by a hopeless spinster, I suppose, with, at least, a semblance of respect. There had been an occasion, it seemed, long ago in her childhood, when she, having lost from her neck a locket which held her dead father's portrait, had found it, all search for it having ceased, on the carnation-bed where she had stooped to pick a flower. On the day that the news reached them that Hugh, her brother, had won the hurdle race at Cambridge (one of the chief triumphs, it appeared, of her eventless life) she had just finished arranging a vase of pink carnations for her dressing-table. Once, when her mother had been seriously ill and there had been a fear the disease from which she suffered was going to take a dangerous turn, she, Daphne, had been frightened and very unhappy. Longing for, yet dreading the doctor's arrival, she had watched him descend from his carriage, wearing a pink carnation in his coat. She had known at once that his verdict on her mother's state would be favourable; and it was. A burglar had tried to get in at Daphne's sitting-room window—at least Daphne, on what appeared to me insufficient evidence, declared that he had done so. The window-box had fallen to the ground, and had put the burglar to flight—that is, if there had been one. At any rate it was clearly proved that the window-box had fallen. It contained, of course, pink carnations.
And so on to many other instances, chief among which was the fact that the first time she had beheld the handsome face of the Jack she was to marry to-morrow she had worn a bunch of her favourite flowers in the bodice of her white silk dress. Afterwards, on the day of the County Ball, at which function he had proposed, he had sent her a bouquet composed entirely of pink carnations, and had chosen one of those blooms for his own buttonhole.
"Without knowing—without my having even mentioned to him that they brought me luck!" Daphne assured me, the dark, poetic eyes in her small face large with the mystery of it. "Do you wonder Jack agrees with me Imustnot be without them on my wedding-day?"
By her mother's command, and in order that she might not look, as I am assured many brides do look, a "perfect rag" on her wedding-day, Daphne was to rest for a certain number of hours, that afternoon. She was forbidden, even, to write one of the seventy still remaining out of the three hundred letters of thanks to the donors of wedding-presents.
She should have to work them off—so many a day—on her honeymoon, Daphne ruefully supposed. Jack would help. She would make him direct the envelopes. She bore a grudge apparently against the givers of the treasures under which the tables in the morning-room were groaning.
"If you could only know what it has been!" she sighed. "However hard I wrote I couldn't keep pace. No sooner had I wiped one name off the list than three more presents had come!"
From this onerous duty, however, she was now to desist, and from all fatigue of receiving the guests who were arriving by different trains throughout the day. She was to lie at her ease on silken cushions in that pretty room of her own, upon whose window-box the supposititious burglar had set his too heavy boot. I was amused to see that the white chintzes of the chairs and hangings were flowered with pink carnations, and that garlands of the flower, tied with pink ribbons, formed the frieze of the white wallpaper.
"Well, you were always a petted and spoilt child," I said to her; "and I suppose you are going to be so to the end of the chapter."
"Only more so," she said, with her youthful arrogance. "You can't think what a splendid hand at spoiling Jack is."
I laughed, told her to let me know how much he spoilt her in five years' time, and left her. For a servant had interrupted our conversation with the announcement that Mr Mavor, who had returned from town, would be glad to speak to me.
"Hughie? how absurd!" Daphne said, who wanted to go on talking to me about her lover. "As if Hughie could possibly have a thing to say to you which would not keep, Hannah!"
"It is to make me an offer of marriage I have not the slightest doubt," I told her, being of an age when a woman can make jokes of that kind about herself and pretend not to feel the heartprick.
I found the head of the house in the room which had been turned into a museum of objects of art—precious and not precious—for exhibition on the morrow. I had known the young man from boyhood, and I saw at once that something was amiss. He had left for town before my arrival that morning, and this was our first meeting, but he forgot to come forward and put out his hand. He stalked past me, instead, and banged the door by which I had entered; then he seized me by the arm.
"Hannah," he said, "I want to talk to you. I want your advice. We're in a devil of a mess."
"It's the wedding-dress, or the wedding-cake!" I said, staring at him. "One of them hasn't come!"
"It's about Marston. Something I only heard to-day. He must not be allowed to marry my sister."
"Hughie!"
He took his hand from my arm, laid it on one of the tables spread with the presents. There was a faint ringing of silver and china to show the hand was not steady. He is a self-contained, sturdily-built, matter-of-fact young man in the early twenties; quite unlike his sister, whose appearance is elegantly fragile, who is filled with nerves, and sensitive to the fingertips.
"I got a letter this morning," he went on, and for a moment fumbled in his coat-pocket as if with the intention, quickly relinquished, of showing it. "It was from a woman; telling me of certain incidents in Marston's career."
"Probably all made up. Lies."
"It isn't. Once for all, don't waste time in saying that. I went up this morning to the address she gave me. I saw her. She told me worse than she wrote—poor wretch! I didn't take it for gospel. I got confirmation, all round. There isn't room for the shadow of a doubt. She left her husband a year ago for Marston——"
"A year ago? Only a year?"
"A year. The husband got a divorce; this brute refused to marry her."
"Oh, Hugh!"
"It's worse. I can't tell you all. Sufficient that he played the traitor, the coward, the beast. Left her to face shame, and poverty, and—everything, alone."
"Can it be so bad! You are certain?"
He lifted the unsteady hand and laid it open, heavily again upon the table where the Crown Derby coffee services, the silver inkstands, muffineers and bridge boxes, whose donors had not even been thanked, jingled with a tiny music once more.
"Certain. Now, don't keep repeating that word, Hannah. I don't want to waste time producing proofs, but I've got them. It's as certain as death. And it's not the only thing. Once I was on his track—late in the day as it was—I learnt more. We live so in a hole, down here, and nothing like this has ever come near us. We've taken people for what they seemed to be—as I, ass that I was, took Marston—and never poked into their histories. The man's got a bad record, all along. Decent people have closed their doors in his face."
"Whatwill you do, Hugh? Whatcanyou do now?"
"Do? Stop the marriage," he said. He glared for a minute upon the costly display on the table, then turned his back on it all, and carried his white face to the window. "My sister shall never marry that scoundrel," he said.
"Daphne's heart will break."
"I know." He looked out on the wintry landscape with gloomy eyes, and a resolutely held underlip. "That is what my mother says. I do not believe it; but if it is so, it does not alter what is the right and only course to take."
"What else does your mother say?"
He moved his shoulders impatiently. "That the wedding must go on; that it is too late to draw back." He turned swiftly upon me. "Could you have believed thatmy mother, of all people, could take such a view as that?"
"I can see how she feels about it. To break it off now is too hideously painful——"
"And what will it be for Daphne if it goes on? Don't you suppose her life with a brute like that would be hideously painful?" He held the back of his hand to his forehead for a moment and shut his eyes tightly as if in painful thought. "My poor little sister!" he said. "Poor Dapple!"
I sat down and stared stupidly before me, too overcome by the situation to be able even to think.
"Your mother says the wedding is to go on; you say it is to be stopped——"
He pounced upon me. "I am master here," he said.
He had always seemed a boy to me, and I had never known him to exert his authority before. His mother and young sister had taken their own way in affairs, and had never been hampered by the consideration that "Hughie" was a person of importance. Yet, there was no doubt about his position. Looking at, and listening to him now, I saw that he meant to have his way; and my conscience told me that his way was the right one.
A word or two more he said to me of incidents in Jack Marston's history; showed me how it had happened that these were only recently revealed to him; how, to the Mavors' circle he had been entirely a stranger; how the few friends of Hugh's who had had any acquaintance with the man had wondered at the sister's engagement, but thought it no business of their own.
"Have you made your mother understand you are determined in the matter?"
"I have told her I will shoot the man before he shall marry my sister."
"And what is she doing? Your mother?"
"She is raving like a madwoman in her bedroom."
The stupendousness of the situation, to which at moments I felt insensible, kept coming over me in waves of comprehension.
"Well, I don't wonder!" I said.
Long pauses fell between our fragments of speech. He stood before the square centre table, black-browed, staring at its glittering burden.
The footman appeared at the door. "If you please, sir, Hamley wishes to know if the dog-cart as well as the brougham and omnibus is to meet the 5.15 this evening?"
His master looked at the man with knit brows, as if making a painful effort to understand what was said. He pulled out his watch, and for a minute studied it.
"Tell Hamley," then he said, "not to meet the 5.15 at all. No one will come by that train. In ten minutes I shall want to send some telegrams."
The man, staring at the strange order, withdrew.
"You are going to stop the rest of the guests?" I asked.
"Of course. They were coming to the wedding. There will be no wedding."
"And Jack Marston? You can'ttelegraphthis horrible thing to him!"
"Can't I? I shall."
"And Daphne? She is sitting in her room counting the minutes till he comes to her."
"Hannah, I want you to go and tell her."
"I, Hugh! Why should I be picked out to do such a horrible thing?"
"My mother will not. Daphne has always known you. You have sense——"
"I will not. So that is the finish, Hugh. I haven't got a stone for a heart. I would cut out my tongue rather than do it."
"Then, I must," he said, turned on his heels and made for the door.
Having reached it and flung it open, he looked back at me with his distressed, scowling face. "This is how one's friends fail one in an emergency!" he said.
His scorn, at the moment, was nothing to me, but I was beside myself with sorrow and dismay. Daphne, with her sweet, small face lying among her cushions, her dark eyes filled with visions of the lover who was speeding to her, of the joyful life just opening before her—and Tragedy, pitiless, relentless, awaiting her! Her messenger, oh so much more cruel than the messenger of Death, crossing corridors, mounting stairs, hurrying with the inevitableness of Fate upon her! Was there nothing to be done? Was there no hand to save?
Hugh was right. Boy as he was, he was acting as a man should act. His mother, who, to save her ears from the despairing cries of her child, to avoid the painful explanation to invited guests, the perplexity of interrupted plans, was willing that the marriage should continue, was weak, wicked even, perhaps. But I found it in my heart to wish that she might have her way, that the suffering, since there must be suffering, should be, at any rate, postponed.
The engagement had been a short one, and circumstances had of late limited my intercourse with the family; the bridegroom and I had met but once. Yet now his handsome face rose before me—a face whose only fault was that it was, perhaps, too handsome. I thought of the tales Daphne's mother had told me of his extraordinary passion for the girl with whom he had fallen in love at first sight. Women love love. No woman is too old to thrill at the story of a lover's ardour. The man was a sinner, no doubt; to Hugh he seemed a scoundrel; but—
I caught up with Hugh as he was going—very slowly going, poor boy—round the last turning to his sister's room.
"Hughie," I gasped, breathless with my haste. "You are right—but don't be brutal. Don'tkillthe child. Listen. Instead of writing to Jack Marston, let him come. Let him tell her himself. Give her a chance. Give him one, even. It is a cruel business, anyhow. Don't let's blunder into making it worse than it is."
I suppose as he had gone to the accomplishment of his heavy task he had become more appreciative of its difficulty. He was very fond of his sister, and must have shrunk with dread from the contemplation of her pain. Anyhow, his purpose had weakened. With a few words more I got him to acquiesce in the amended plan.
"How can we be certain he tells her? He will lie to her," he objected.
"We will take measures to be sure he does not."
"He is a specious beggar; she will marry him all the same."
"Then, if he has such an ascendency over her, would she not in any case? She is of age; her own mistress."
"But not from my house," the boy said.
However, in what I proposed there was respite; and, for better or worse, I had my way.
I could not return to witness the innocent happiness of Daphne, and I spent the rest of the afternoon in trying to soothe the agitation of Daphne's mother; listening to her tirades against her suddenly masterful son, hearing her protestations of faith in the rectitude of Jack Marston, alternating with her outbursts of anger and grief at his hitherto unsuspected villainy.
"Hugh will see him when he arrives, will confront him with the story," I told her. "I don't suppose he can utterly deny, but he can palliate. There will be nothing told to Daphne which she can't forgive. The wedding will go on."
Calm came to her presently, even cheerfulness—so mercifully is the mature heart case-hardened to bear its burdens. It is, I am sure of it, the heart of the young only which can break. Terrible things were hanging over the house. Sin and shame in the person of Jack Marston were approaching it by the 5.15 train. Its most idolised inmate was to be killed with disappointment, or to bind herself on the morrow to a life of misery, perhaps disgrace; but in the drawing-room was already a sprinkling of guests, many more were on their way. The wolf may gnaw at the vitals, but a hostess must wear a smiling face.
The omnibus and the brougham returned duly from the station with the last expected guests, vehicles containing their luggage and their servants followed; but the dog-cart, sent specially to meet Jack Marston, came back empty.
The master of the house heard the intelligence without comment. Presently he came across to me with an ugly look on his set face.
"The beggar has got wind of it, you see, and has made a bolt," he said.
I hardly know if it was a relief or not to find that this was not the case. One of the Mayors' newly-arrived cousins, who had seen the bridegroom at Liverpool Street, had been entrusted with a note to the bride which satisfactorily explained his absence.
I carried this note in to Daphne as she dressed for dinner. It was only a hurried scrawl on a leaf torn from a memorandum book, and, having read it, she passed it on to me.
"Four whole hours before he gets here!" she lamented. "Oh, Hannah! could anything have been more truly unlucky?"
"Darling," the pencilled lines ran, "I find those beggars in Covent Garden have not sent the carnations. I shall wait till the last minute, and if not here must go after them. I dare not come to you without the carnations! Have me met by the 9.30. Yours for ever, and ever, and ever—Jack."
"Darling," the pencilled lines ran, "I find those beggars in Covent Garden have not sent the carnations. I shall wait till the last minute, and if not here must go after them. I dare not come to you without the carnations! Have me met by the 9.30. Yours for ever, and ever, and ever—Jack."
"My dear, four hours isn't much," I reminded her.
"Four hours is a lifetime," she said.
She stared, positively with tears in her eyes, at her pretty reflection in the glass. "I don't know how I shall get through this evening," she said.
I don't know how we all did; but it passed somehow, although it did not pass gaily. Hugh was too young and honest to hide with any success the care that harassed him; his glum face at the head of the dinner-table was discouraging to the most persistent cheerfulness. Mrs Mavor did her best, but she was ill at ease, and, as must have been patent to all, strongly disinclined to talk of to-morrow's event. To Daphne, disappointed of her lover's presence and support, the gathering of the clans was an ordeal and an embarrassment.
Standing beside her when coffee was brought to her, I heard her ask of the servant if the dog-cart was yet gone to meet Mr Marston. He believed it was just upon the start, the man said.
"Let me know as soon as it goes, please," Daphne said, and presently the footman came in again with the desired intelligence.
I suppose the poor child wanted to follow in fancy the dog-cart along the silent roads and the dark lanes, beneath the starlit sky; to see it arrive at the little wayside station in time for the rush and roar of the train, dashing like a jewelled monster out of the desert of night; dashing off again, its great ruby eyes shining in its tail, into the blackness of space, having deposited the one precious item of its freight on the platform.
A half-hour before Marston could arrive Daphne slipped away. "I shall wait up for Jack," she said to her mother. "Send him,the instant he comes, to me in my sitting-room."
One by one the ladies of the party followed Daphne's example. The men went off into the smoking-room. Mrs Mavor and I were left alone. Her nervousness and excitement, suppressed hitherto, were now at fever heat. She moved about the room, pushing chairs into fresh positions, shaking their cushions, taking up and setting down, now this now that ornament, with trembling fingers pulling out and pushing in flowers in the vases, not improving their arrangement by any means.
"The question is what Hughie will do," she said for the twentieth time. "If only he would leave it alone! If he would not interfere! It has gone so far, only Heaven should intervene. You know, Hannah, we all marry men with our eyes blinded. Daphne must take her chance like the rest. Supposing it was you, Hannah; if the man was a—murderer—and you loved him, and knew that he madly loved you, would you thank anyone for coming between? You'd marry him, wouldn't you?"
I declined to say how I should proceed with my murderer. If I had it in me to love a man against my reason and my conscience I could not tell.
"It's eleven o'clock," I said. "I thought you told me he would be here by half-past ten."
She ceased to fidget with the furniture, and came to the mantelpiece by which I was standing.
"The clock's wrong," she said. "Fast, a good half-hour." She seized the little gold carriage clock and shook it in her nervous fingers as if that would put the matter right. The door opened.
"Here he is!" she said, and started violently, almost dropping the clock.
It was Hugh who came in, his face pale, a fire of excitement gleaming in his eyes, his watch in his hand. "He should have been here half an hour ago. It is as I told you: he has made a bolt," he said.
"The dog-cart is not back?"
"No; but you'll see!"
"Are the men gone to bed, Hugh?"
"No, they're in there"; he gave a backward toss of his head in the direction of the smoking-room. "It all makes me sick," he said. "I can't sit there and hee-haw with them."
He took up his position between his mother and me, his hands on the mantelpiece, his foot on the fender, and gloomed down upon the hearth.
When the hands of the little clock showed that another half-hour had flown, the door was flung open and Daphne came in.
"Hasn't he come?" she asked. "I thought you were keeping him away from me, downstairs. Hasn't he evencome?"
"The train is late," the mother said.
But Daphne was overwrought. She flung herself upon a chair, and twisting herself so that her arms embraced its back and her face was hidden, began to cry hysterically.
"There has been an accident," she sobbed, presently, lifting her head. "Hamley has overturned the dog-cart in the dark; Jack has been pitched out; there is no one to help,—and you all stand here! You all stand here!"
She insisted that her brother should go at once on his bicycle to see what was amiss. Her distress unnerved the boy, and softened him. He lifted her from the chair, and put his arm round her and led her to the door.
"You go to bed, Dapple-ducky," he said, calling her by the name he had given her in childhood. "It's all right, dear. Don't you be a silly. I'll go along at once and fetch him."
His stern resolve was shaken. If Jack Marston had come then he would have relented; I think the marriage would have taken place.
But he did not come. He never came.
Halfway to the station Hugh Mavor met the dog-cart returning, the groom alone seated in it. There had been an accident, he said; a couple of carriages had run off the line and overturned. He had waited for the surviving passengers to be brought in. The train bringing them had at length arrived; Mr Marston was not among them.
The accident had happened ten miles down the line. Hugh got into the dog-cart and drove to the scene of the disaster.
Mrs Mavor spent the night in Daphne's room. I awaited Hugh, sitting alone by the drawing-room fire, when he returned at four o'clock in the morning of what was to have been his sister's wedding-day. He came in, carrying a florist's tin box in his hand, and I read the news in his face before he spoke.
"Only three killed. He was one. I saw him. I thought I had to. It was awful."
He sank into the chair where Daphne had sat, hid his face on its back as she had done, while his shoulders heaved with painful sobbing. After a few minutes he turned to me.
"We shall have to tell her," he said. "That is the next thing to do."
He got up, and with shaking fingers, not knowing, I think, that he did so, pulled the string from the tin box, which lay on the table beneath the lamp, pulled it open.
"Everything else in the carriage seemed to be in shivers—but this," he said.
Inside, beneath the snowy wrappings of cotton wool, great perfect blooms of pink carnations lay. The spicy fragrance rose in our faces; in the light of the lamp the glowing flowers smiled in their faultless beauty.
"Poor Dapple's lucky flowers!" the boy said.
Those among us who know more of her dead lover than was ever told to Daphne are disposed to call them her lucky flowers still.