CHAPTER IX.
JILTED.
‘Nowedding!’ screamed Mrs. Dulcimer, putting down the old silver teapot and staring aghast into space.
‘No wedding?’ repeated the Vicar.
‘No,’ answered Kenrick, hoarsely, and with a hardness of manner which he maintained all through that painful day. ‘Beatrix has been fooling me all this time. She has written to tell me that she never loved me—and—at the last—it came into her head that she ought not to marry me without loving me. An afterthought. And she flings me fifty thousand pounds as a peace-offering. As you throw an importunate dog a biscuit, when you don’t want him to follow you.’
‘It is most extraordinary,’ exclaimed the Vicar. ‘She was in such a hurry to pay off those mortgagesbefore her marriage. I thought she was romantically in love with you.’
‘You don’t understand,’ said Kenrick. ‘That was how she meant to make amends to me. She valued my love, my manhood, my self-respect at fifty thousand pounds. I am paid in full, she thinks, and I have no right to complain.’
‘Women are an inscrutable species,’ said the Vicar.
‘I am a most unlucky woman,’ wailed Mrs. Dulcimer. ‘I took such a pride in bringing Kenrick and Beatrix together—such an excellent match—so well suited to each other—a large fortune—a fine position in the county—title—everything.’
‘My love, it will not mend the matter for you to get hysterical,’ remonstrated the Vicar. ‘Where are you going, Kenrick?’ he asked, as Kenrick moved towards the door.
‘To the Water House. Where is Cyril?’
‘He got an early cup of tea from Rebecca, and went round to see some of his old parishioners. He promised to be at the church before eleven.’
‘A superfluous civility,’ said Kenrick. ‘No doubt he knew there would be no wedding.’
‘Kenrick,’ remonstrated Mrs. Dulcimer, but Kenrick was gone.
He walked down to the Water House faster than he had ever walked there in his life, though Love had lent him Mercury’s winged sandals. To-day rage and baffled love, and gnawing jealousy, drove him as fast as if they had been palpable scourges wielded by the Furies.
Everything looked very quiet at the old house by the river. The butler came to the door. Miss Harefield had gone away with Madame Leonard at six o’clock that morning. The carriage had taken them to the railway station at Great Yafford. No one had gone with them but the coachman, and he had not left his box. The porters had carried the luggage into the station. Yes, there was a good deal of luggage. The big cases were to be sent to a furniture warehouse in London.
The house was to remain in the care of the butler, and Mrs. Peters, the housekeeper. The servants were to be on board wages. Mr. Scratchell was to arrange everything.
Mr. Scratchell came in while Sir Kenrick wasquestioning the butler. He too had received a letter from Beatrix, which he allowed Kenrick to read.
‘Dear Mr. Scratchell,—I am going abroad, most likely for a long time. Please receive the rents, as usual, attend to all repairs, and pay in all moneys to the bank, as heretofore. I shall be obliged if you will give the servants whatever allowance is liberal and proper for board wages. This had better be paid monthly, in advance. Please see that the house and grounds are kept in good order, and that all my subscriptions to local and other charities are regularly paid.‘Mr. Dulcimer is to have any money he may require for his poor.’‘Yours very truly,‘Beatrix Harefield.’
‘Dear Mr. Scratchell,—I am going abroad, most likely for a long time. Please receive the rents, as usual, attend to all repairs, and pay in all moneys to the bank, as heretofore. I shall be obliged if you will give the servants whatever allowance is liberal and proper for board wages. This had better be paid monthly, in advance. Please see that the house and grounds are kept in good order, and that all my subscriptions to local and other charities are regularly paid.
‘Mr. Dulcimer is to have any money he may require for his poor.’
‘Yours very truly,‘Beatrix Harefield.’
‘Business-like,’ said Mr. Scratchell, ‘but I’m afraid the poor young woman is not quite right in her mind. Do you know what she has done about the mortgages on your property?’
‘Yes,’ answered Kenrick. ‘You don’t suppose I am going to keep the money?’
‘I don’t suppose you’d be so demented as to give it back,’ said Mr. Scratchell. ‘You’d better keep it. If she doesn’t make ducks and drakes of it one way, she will another. What was your quarrel about?’
‘Quarrel,’ echoed Kenrick, and then it occurred to him that it was just as well to let this vulgarian Scratchell believe that he and Beatrix had quarrelled.
How could a piece of such common clay as Mr. Scratchell comprehend the finer feelings of human porcelain? He only thought it cracked.
There was nothing more to be discovered at the Water House. Beatrix and her companion had gone. That was all. Miss Harefield had made her arrangements with coolness and promptitude. It might be just possible to follow her. But to what end?
Kenrick went in quest of Cyril. After a good deal of inquiry he found him with a bedridden old woman, listening to a doleful story of the winter’s sufferings.
‘I want to talk to you, Cyril,’ said Kenrick, and, with a gentle apology, Cyril cut short the dame’s rambling account of her bodily ills.
‘What is the matter, Ken?’ asked Cyril, whenthey were outside in the windy road. ‘You look as pale as a ghost.’
‘There is to be no marriage. Beatrix has gone away—and you know all about it. You planned it together yesterday when you met in the churchyard.’
‘Upon my honour, Kenrick, I know nothing,’ answered the other, solemnly.
‘Why should I believe you? She, whom I thought the noblest of women, has fooled and jilted me. In whose honour am I to believe after that?’
‘Kenrick, I am deeply sorry for you.’
‘Pray spare me that. Your pity would be the last drop of gall in my cup. Will you swear to me that you do not know where she is gone—that you had nothing to do with her going?’
‘Directly, nothing,’ answered Cyril, very pale.
His conscience smote him for that scene of yesterday. He had given the reins to passion, he, a man who had hitherto shaped his life upon principle. He felt himself guilty.
‘Directly, no. You are equivocating with me, as only your virtuous man can equivocate. You arePharisees, every one of you, straining at gnats and swallowing camels. What about your indirect influence? It was that which broke off my marriage.’
‘I met your betrothed wife yesterday, by accident. I was taken off my guard. In the bewilderment of that moment I may have said foolish things—’
‘Yes, you urged her to break off her marriage. You left her a year ago, of your own accord. And now, finding that I had won her, it came into your head to try and take her away from me. A manly course throughout.’
‘Kenrick, when I went away conscience was my dictator. Yesterday I let passion master me. I confess it with deepest humiliation. But trust me, if Beatrix did not love you, it is better—infinitely better—that you and she should be parted for ever. No happiness would have come out of your union——’
‘Preach your sermons to more patient listeners,’ cried Kenrick, savagely. ‘I will have none of them.’
And so the cousins parted. Kenrick went to Great Yafford to make inquiries at the station, but at that busy place there had been nobody withleisure enough to particularize two ladies—one tall and the other short—going away by the seven o’clock train. Neither Miss Harefield’s carriage nor Miss Harefield’s person had made any impression upon the mind of the porter who had carried her luggage into the station.
There was a train that started for London at seven, there was another that went northward at a quarter past. There was the Liverpool train at 7.30. She might have travelled by any one of these.
Kenrick went back to the Vicarage in a savage humour. No good could have come from the pursuit of his lost bride, but it was hard not to know where she had gone. Fortunately Cyril passed him unawares on the road between the town and the village, so those two did not meet again.
‘I shall go to London to-morrow,’ Kenrick told the Dulcimers that evening, ‘and present myself at the War Office next day.’
‘You want to go back to India directly?’ asked the Vicar.
‘Yes, I shall cut short my leave by a month or six weeks.’
‘Dear Kenrick, why not stop with us till you recover your spirits after this cruel blow?’ urged Mrs. Dulcimer.
‘My kindest of friends, I could never recover my spirits at Little Yafford. Forgive me for saying so, but the place has become hateful to me. Even your kindness could not make it endurable.’
‘Kenrick is right,’ said the Vicar. ‘He has been very badly treated, and his profession will be his best consolation.’
‘There is one thing that must be settled before I go back to India,’ said Kenrick. ‘I must give—Miss Harefield—back her money. I cannot carry that burden away with me. You are her guardian and one of her trustees, Vicar. You and Mr. Scratchell must manage the business between you. I can only raise the money by a new mortgage. Would it not be best for Miss Harefield’s trustees to take a mortgage on my estate for the amount they have advanced? I paid the other people only four per cent. I might pay her five.’
‘I do not think she will take a mortgage. I do not believe she will take her money back inany form whatsoever,’ said the Vicar. ‘She has written me a letter, which I shall show you when you are calmer and more disposed to forgiveness. It is a very touching letter, full of truth and generous feeling. She has treated you very badly—she has been foolish, mistaken; but she is a noble girl, and she is much to be pitied. You will be ungenerous if you insist on giving her back the money. She has more than enough without it.’
‘I shall be a mean hound if I keep it,’ said Kenrick.