CHAPTER VII.
IN THE CHURCHYARD.
‘Mydear,’ said Mrs. Dulcimer to Beatrix quite suddenly one evening, when she and Kenrick were sitting round the fire in the snug dining-room, a little while before tea, ‘Cyril must certainly assist at your marriage.’
Happily for Beatrix, the lamp had not yet been brought in. There was only the changeful and uncertain firelight, which just at this moment left her face in shadow.
‘Well, yes,’ returned Kenrick. ‘I think Cyril ought to be invited. If he were not present it would look as if there were some quarrel between us. And we are very good friends, are we not, dear?’ he added, turning to his betrothed.
‘Yes,’ faltered Beatrix.
‘If he were not here people would talk,’ pursued Mrs. Dulcimer. ‘You see, Bridford is not more thanthirty miles distant, and, as Kenrick’s first cousin and Mr. Dulcimer’s late curate, it would be only natural for Cyril to assist at the ceremony.’
‘I will write and ask him to-morrow,’ said Kenrick. ‘I ought to have thought of it before.’
‘He has been very ill,’ suggested Beatrix. ‘He may not be strong enough to travel.’
‘Thirty miles only, my dear. A mere nothing,’ said Mrs. Dulcimer. ‘Besides, he has quite recovered—or, at any rate, he has gone back to his duty. Clement told me so a week ago.’
‘Kenrick,’ said Beatrix a little later, when she and her lover were walking to the Water House together through the wintry night, ‘is it really necessary for your cousin to be at our wedding?’
‘His absence might cause a scandal, dearest. Remember, he is my nearest relation, known to be quite near at hand, and closely associated with this place. Do you not think that people would say unpleasant things if we left him out?’
‘Yes,’ sighed Beatrix, ‘people have a knack of imagining the worst.’
‘I should be very sorry if any one were to saythat Cyril was absent from my wedding because he and my wife feared to meet,’ said Kenrick, with a sudden pang of jealousy.
‘They shall have no reason for saying anything of the kind,’ Beatrix answered, proudly. ‘Pray invite your cousin.’
‘Now you are angry.’
‘Not with you,’ she answered, quickly. ‘I am angry with the world, life, fate.’
‘What, Beatrix, now, after you have made me so happy, when all our life is smiling upon us—every cloud gone?’
Beatrix’s only answer was a sigh. But Kenrick was rapt in the placid delight of his good fortune. He loved his betrothed too well to believe it possible that she did not love him. They had lived so happily, as it seemed to him, for nearly four months, in each other’s society. They had never had a dispute—or even a difference of opinion. Could he doubt that she had grown fonder of him day by day in all that time? Her irritation to-night was natural, he argued. It arose from her scorn of the scandals that had darkened her young life. It was hard for her to forget these things.
Kenrick wrote next day to his cousin:
‘Dear Cyril,—The Dulcimers say you ought to assist at my wedding, and I think the same. Will you come?‘Yours always,‘Kenrick.’
‘Dear Cyril,—The Dulcimers say you ought to assist at my wedding, and I think the same. Will you come?
‘Yours always,‘Kenrick.’
The answer was very little longer:
‘Dear Kenrick,—I agree with you and the Dulcimers. I will come to assist in the ceremony, and to wish you and your bride all blessings that this life and the brighter life after can yield.‘My time is closely occupied here, so my visit must be of the shortest. I will come on Tuesday afternoon, and must return on Wednesday, directly after the wedding.‘Yours in all affection and good faith,‘Cyril.’
‘Dear Kenrick,—I agree with you and the Dulcimers. I will come to assist in the ceremony, and to wish you and your bride all blessings that this life and the brighter life after can yield.
‘My time is closely occupied here, so my visit must be of the shortest. I will come on Tuesday afternoon, and must return on Wednesday, directly after the wedding.
‘Yours in all affection and good faith,‘Cyril.’
This letter made Kenrick happy. It dispelled the one uneasiness of his mind, the lurking notionthat he had helped to spoil his cousin’s peace. Cyril was evidently reconciled to the existing state of things. After all it was his own doing, Kenrick thought. He had no right to complain.
Kenrick showed the letter to Beatrix, who read it slowly and thoughtfully, and returned it to him without a word.
‘A gentleman-like letter, isn’t it?’ asked Kenrick.
‘Very,’ she answered.
Did it please her that her former lover should write in so friendly a tone—that he should be willing to assist in the solemn act that was to make their severance irrevocable? No. His willingness stung her to the quick.
‘He never loved me,’ she thought. ‘It was Bella’s pretty face that he really cared for. But he thought my fortune would help him in doing good, and he was willing to sacrifice his own inclination in order to be useful to others. He liked me just well enough, perhaps, to be reconciled to the idea of marrying me and making use of my fortune. And then when the slander arose he drew back. Honourforbade him marrying a woman the world suspected of a hideous crime, and whom he did not love.’
Bitter thoughts for the bride of to-morrow! Tuesday morning had come. Mr. Scratchell had called at the Water House to tell Miss Harefield that everything was done according to her wish. The equitable charge on Kenrick’s estate had been paid off. Culverhouse Castle was as free as it had been in the reign of its wealthiest possessors.
‘I am very glad it is done,’ said Beatrix, and it was the first gladness she had shown for some days.
Madame Leonard wanted her to be interested in her trousseau, which was being packed by that clever little Frenchwoman and the honest unhandy English maid. Everything had been left to Madame Leonard.
Beatrix had taken no trouble about this mountain of new clothes which people had declared she must have, as if to mark distinctly that to get married is to turn over a new leaf in the volume of life.
‘It is all well to let me do in these things,to choose ze colours, and to devise ze modes, but it must be that you interest yourself a little now that it is all achieved, or I shall think you are not content,’ remonstrated Beatrix’s companion.
‘Dear Madame Leonard, I am more than content. But I am not very fond of fine clothes. They do not fill my mind as they seem to do with some people.’
‘Ah, my dear,’ cried the Frenchwoman, ‘it is all very well to be high and mighty; but I can tell you there are times in a woman’s life when if she did not think about her dress she would have nothing to think of. And it is better to think of a new gown than a new lover. That amuses. And after all it is innocent. To talk of dress does no one any harm. It is not like scandal.’
‘Dear Madame Leonard, you are wiser than I. But never mind the trousseau just now. Please pack my plainest dresses and wraps in one trunk. I am not going to travel with all those huge boxes, am I?’
‘No, the biggest of those are to be sentstraight to India. And the smaller are to meet you at Brindisi.’
Sir Kenrick and his bride were to spend their honeymoon in Paris and in Italy, travelling by easy stages to Brindisi, whence they were to start for India early in April, a fact which Mrs. Dulcimer bitterly bewailed.
‘I thought Kenrick would sell out,’ she said, ‘and that you would divide your lives between Culverhouse Castle and the Water House.’
‘That would have been to spoil Kenrick’s career, just as it promises distinction,’ answered Beatrix. ‘I should regard that as a kind of assassination.’
Upon this last day of her maiden life Beatrix was strangely absent and troubled in manner. She shrank even from Madame Leonard’s gentle sympathy, and while the anxious little woman was busy with the trunk and packing-cases, the owner of all that finery paced the garden walk by the dull gray river, reckless of the biting east wind, wrapped in gloomy thoughts. The swollen waters were rushing under the old stone arch, the moor was darkly purple against a sunlesssky. All nature seemed in harmony with the mind of to-morrow’s bride.
The packing business kept Madame Leonard and Mary closely occupied all day, so Beatrix was undisturbed. Sir Kenrick had gone to Great Yafford to get the odds and ends wanted to complete his outfit. Mrs. Dulcimer was engaged with her dress for the wedding, which was being made at home, a process which necessitated frequent discussions and consultations with Rebecca and the dressmaker, and which, undertaken from motives of economy, was likely to result in an expensive failure. Cyril was not expected till the evening. He was to arrive in time for the Vicarage tea, and was to occupy Mrs. Dulcimer’s second best spare bedroom.
Beatrix had promised to call at the Vicarage some time in the afternoon. It was a visit she would gladly have avoided in her present frame of mind, but she thought if she did not go Mrs. Dulcimer would be likely to come to the Water House in quest of her, and that might prove a heavier infliction. So she put on her bonnet directly afterluncheon, and walked across the windy bridge, and up the windy street to the Vicarage. It was between two and three o’clock, a very safe hour at which to pay her visit, since Cyril was not expected until half-past seven. She had seen his letter to Mrs. Dulcimer, in which he named the train that was to bring him.
Mrs. Dulcimer was in her bedroom, with Rebecca and the dressmaker. Beatrix went up, at the housemaid’s request, and found these three stitching and talking, as fast as tongues and needles could be driven. The dress had been three days in hand, but just at the last it was found necessary to put on an extra pressure to get it finished. Mrs. Dulcimer was sewing the braid on the skirt, Rebecca was pushing strips of whalebone into the body, which looked as stiff as a strait-waistcoat or a suit of plate-armour; the dressmaker was cording a flounce. The room was strewn with snippings of silk, satin, sarcenet, and lining, as thick as leaves in Vallombrosa. Mrs. Dulcimer looked the image of anxiety. If she had been a beauty of seventeen preparing forher first ball, or a young actress about to make herdébutin London, she could not have been more deeply concerned.
‘Oh, Beatrix, I am so glad you have come,’ she exclaimed, without stopping her needle. ‘I long to know if you like it.’
‘It’ was the dress, now in scattered portions.
Beatrix looked puzzled.
‘My love, how absent-minded you are!’ said Mrs. Dulcimer. ‘Of course you can’t judge of the general appearance till the flounces are on, and it all comes together. But you can tell me what you think of the colour and the style of trimming.’
‘Oh, you mean the dress,’ answered Beatrix, with cruel indifference. ‘I think that silver-gray is a pretty colour.’
‘It’s the new shade,’ said Mrs. Dulcimer. ‘You are sure it’s the new shade, are you not, Miss Killick?’ she asked, turning to the dressmaker.
‘Yes, ma’am, it’s quite the new shade,’ answered Miss Killick solemnly.
Beatrix seated herself by the fire, and idly watched the blaze, while Mrs. Dulcimer went onworking. There was not much sustained conversation. Everybody except Beatrix was thinking of the dress. Miss Killick and Rebecca had their mouths full of pins, and dropped a few whenever they spoke, like the girl in the fairy tale. After half an hour or so Beatrix rose to go, but Mrs. Dulcimer entreated her to stop till the dress was tried on.
‘It will be ready in a quarter of an hour, won’t it, Miss Killick?’ she inquired.
They were all sitting close together now, Rebecca sewing the body to the skirt, the dressmaker sewing on the final flounce.
‘I don’t suppose we shall be much longer, ma’am,’ said Miss Killick.
‘And at four we are going to have a refreshing cup of tea,’ said the Vicar’s wife, ‘so you really must stop, Beatrix.’
Beatrix could not refuse so small a favour, so she went on staring at the fire; while the three workers hastened the finish of their task, with their heads close together, like the three fatal sisters intent upon the web of some particular destiny which Jove had ordered them to hurry to its conclusion.
‘There,’ said the three simultaneously, ‘it’s done.’
Five minutes later Mrs. Dulcimer was standing before her cheval glass, buttoned into her new gown, and trying to make it look as if it belonged to her, every fold having the stiffness, strangeness, and awkwardness which are characteristic of a new garment.
Beatrix had to assist at the discussion as to whether the sleeve should not be shortened a quarter of an inch, or the shoulder seam taken up a little, or the waist tightened, or the skirt lengthened. When she found herself free to depart the church clock was striking the quarter after four. The sky, which had brightened a little in the afternoon, was yellow in the west, where the sun would soon go down behind yonder black ridge of moor. The wind had dropped, and there was a mildness in the air like the sweet breath of early spring.
There was a circuitous way to the Water House, through meadows that lay behind the churchyard. It was a solitary walk, that Beatrix liked at all times, and which particularly suited her humour just now. She went in at the wicket gate in the angle of the churchyard, and followed the narrow path betweenthe crowded headstones,—commonplace memorials of harmless uneventful lives.
The pathway took her by the side of the fine old parish church, close by the vestry, which was curiously squeezed in at an angle between transept and chancel, under the diamond-paned casement, beside which the white surplices were hanging, past the sunken door.
Just as she came to the door it opened, and a man came out.
She gave a little cry, and the whole scene seemed to rock before her eyes, the old gray wall, the crumbling tablets, the leafless elm branches, the tall black poplars, which rose like watch-towers between her and the sky. For a moment all seemed in tumultuous motion, as if a whirlwind had risen. Then, with a great effort, she clasped the railings of a tomb close by, and commanded brain and body to be still.
A hand was held out to her, and she took it with a mechanical air. Her lips moved slowly.
‘Cyril.’
Only his name, and the ice was broken. The next instant she had burst into passionate tears, andwas hiding her face against the rusty insensible railings, anywhere, only to be out of his sight.
Her whole frame was shaken by those sobs. He could not but perceive, he could not even pretend not to perceive, her distress.
‘Forgive me,’ he said gently. ‘I am more than sorry that I came, if my presence grieves you. I ought not to have come, but,’ he faltered a little here, ‘respect for you, regard for my cousin, made it impossible for me to refuse.’
‘Respect for me!’ she exclaimed bitterly, lifting up her head, and choking down her sobs with a desperate effort, just as she had held herself back from unconsciousness a few moments before. ‘Respect for me—for a woman whom you could believe a poisoner!’
‘Beatrix, I never believed——’ he began.
‘You did not believe me innocent, or you would not have forsaken me,’ she said, confronting him with eyes that kindled as she spoke.
He could not gainsay her. She had spoken truth. No, not if all the world had been against her, not at the scaffold’s foot, could he have abandoned her, could he honestly have believed her guiltless.
But now that he stood face to face with her, now that he saw that noble countenance, the splendid indignation of those eyes, he was as convinced of her innocence as if he had never doubted her. His past doubts seemed madness, or worse than madness, diabolical possession.
‘If I had spoken with you after your father’s death,’ he said, ‘if we had met face to face as we meet now, I should never have gone away. I would have borne the hardest things men could say of me, that I had married you for the sake of your fortune—that I had been unscrupulous because you were rich. I would have laughed such poisoned arrows to scorn for your dear sake.’
‘You left me,’ she said, growing colder as he grew warm, gaining strength and firmness as he showed himself weak. ‘You left me. That is all. Perhaps you really never cared for me. Indeed, I have some reason to know there was some one else you secretly preferred.’
‘Thatis wholly false,’ cried Cyril. ‘I never loved but one woman, and you are she.’
‘What does it matter? Why try to explain thepast? It is all over and done with. To-morrow will make me your cousin’s wife. And you are come to assist at my wedding. But how is it you are here so early? You are not expected at the Vicarage till half-past seven.’
‘I came by an earlier train than I intended, and having time to spare I went in to look at the old church,’ he answered, hurriedly.
‘And to pray for strength to bear to-morrow’s agony,’ he might have added, for he had been on his knees before the altar at which he had so often officiated, praying that his burden might be lightened for him.
There was a silence. Beatrix still stood with her back to the railings that guarded the once splendid tomb of a knight banneret of Elizabeth’s reign. She had just strength to stand calmly there, steadily confronting her old lover, but she had no power to drag her limbs away from the spot. She knew that if she tried to move she must fall like a log at his feet; so she stood there, cold and white as the marble the tomb was made of.
‘Beatrix,’ cried Cyril, losing all mastery of himselfin the bewilderment of being alone with her, close to her, as far from the outside world in that quiet corner of the churchyard as if they two had been lost upon the wildest bit of moorland in the country. ‘Beatrix, why are you going to marry Kenrick? Why have you been in such haste to prove how utterly you had forgotten me?’
‘Are you not glad my wounds have healed so quickly? You have nothing to reproach yourself with on my account. Not even a broken heart.’
‘And you love Kenrick?’ he asked, wonderingly.
‘He has never suspected me of a hideous crime. When every one spoke against me, he was staunch and true. I am very grateful to him.’
‘Gratitude is not love.’
‘Perhaps not, but affection and gratitude are near akin, and Kenrick is satisfied with affection.’
‘I would not be if I were he,’ cried Cyril, beside himself with anger and jealousy. ‘I would have nothing less than your love, your whole-hearted passionate love. What! be content to dwell beside the narrow sluggish river, and never sicken for the wide wild sea? I would not be your husband on suchterms. I despise my cousin that he can marry you, knowing, as he must know, that you do not love him.’
‘You have no right to say that. Do you think yourself so much better than he that no woman, having once loved you, can love him?’
‘I know that no true woman ever loved truly twice. There is no such thing as second love worth having. It is the mere ghost of feeling, like a rose cut at midsummer to be shut up in a box and brought out at Christmas, revived by sulphur fumes—a phantom flower, with no more bloom or freshness than if it were made of paper. Just so much for second love.’
If she could have stirred she would have left him, but she had still an acute sense of her helplessness. She must stay and listen, let him say what he would. What was this conflict of feeling in her breast? Passionate love, passionate anger, scorn that made it sweet to wound him, fondness that made her long to fling herself upon his breast and cry, ‘Oh, give me shelter, give me rest! Let all the world go by. You and I can be all the world to each other.’
The yellow wintry light faded in the west, the sky grew dull and bleak, the headstones had a grayer look.
‘Why do you concern yourself about me?’ she asked bitterly. ‘You have come to assist at my wedding, in order that the conventionalities may not be outraged. That is all very right. My name has been bandied about on people’s lips quite enough already. It is just as well to avoid the scandal of your absence. But that ends all between us. We need never see each other’s faces after to-morrow. Why should we say hard things, or talk about the past? Had you not better go to the Vicarage, and let me go quietly home?’
She was much the calmer of the two, despite that inward struggle between love and resentment. He was mad with the pent-up feeling of all those long dreary days and nights in which he had fought with his passion, believing he had beaten it, only to find it now starting up in his soul, indestructible as the principle of evil.
‘Let you go! No,’ he cried, with his strong grasp upon her wrist. He who had been weak as achild a few short weeks ago, was strong now with all the strength of a desperate tempted soul. ‘No, I have got you, and I will not let you go. Oh, my love, my love, my lost and only love, I will not let you go till I have told you something of the truth.’
His arms were round her now, her head drawn close to his breast, his eyes looking down into hers, with fond despairing love, his words hurrying thick and fast from lips that trembled as they spoke.
‘Yes, you shall hear me, you shall know the truth—all the mad foolish truth. When your father died, and people began to whisper, and to shrug their shoulders, and insinuate vile slanders against you, the devil got into my mind, as into the minds of those village gossips, and a horrible fear took hold of me. I thought it was just possible—just within the compass of human error—that, maddened by your father’s tyranny and injustice, you had blackened your soul with murder—your fair young soul, which till that hour I had deemed stainless. I saw you at the inquest, and I thought, God help me, that I could read guilt in your face and manner. I struggled against the conviction—I tried to believe youinnocent, and all the world mistaken—but the more I fought against it the stronger that conviction grew. In my darkest hours I believed you guilty—at my best moments I was doubtful. So I swore I would pluck your image out of my heart. How could I cherish you, sin incarnate, and be faithful to my God? What was my individual happiness upon this little spot of earth when weighed against duty and honour? And so I left you, love—went away to forget you—worked as few men have worked—strove as few have striven—prayed without ceasing—and remembered you all the more vividly for the distance that severed us, and loved you all the more dearly because I had lost you. And now,’ he cried, straining her against his heart in one desperate embrace, pressing his lips to hers in one impassioned kiss, ‘now, marry Kenrick Culverhouse if you dare, and let the memory of me be your curse, as it is mine to remember you.’
After that kiss he loosed his hold and let her go. She tottered a few paces from the railing that had supported her, and then her feet seemed to get entangled in the long grass of a neglected grave, andshe fell headlong at the foot of a gloomy old yew which stretched its crooked branches across her as she lay, like the scraggy arms of weird women—pointing to a foredoomed victim of Fate.
Cyril ran back to the vestry to get some water, and there happily encountered Mrs. Pomfret, the pew-opener, who had come to dust and garnish the church for to-morrow’s ceremony.
‘Miss Harefield has fainted,’ he cried. ‘Bring some water, and see what you can do for her, while I go and get a fly.’
He went into the street, intending to order a carriage at the inn, but luckily found the flyman who had brought him from Great Yafford, refreshing his horse with a nosebag and himself with a pint of ale before a small beer-shop over against the churchyard. He told this man to bring his fly close up to the gate for a lady.
‘I must get back to the town directly,’ said the man.
‘I only want you to drive half a mile or so, and I’ll give you a crown for the job.’
‘Very well, sir, I’ll do it.’
Cyril went back to the spot where he had left Beatrix. She was seated upon a low stone tomb, supported by Mrs. Pomfret, and looking dazed and white.
‘I have got a fly to drive her home,’ he said to the pew-opener. ‘Bring her as soon as you can. It is getting cold here.’
The wind had risen. The tall poplars were swinging against the chill evening sky. The old yew was groaning drearily, like a giant in pain.
Cyril waited silently, and as silently accompanied Beatrix, when she was able to move slowly towards the gate, leaning on Mrs. Pomfret as she went. He handed her into the fly, with Mrs. Pomfret, who was to see her safe at home, directed and paid the driver, and waited bareheaded till the fly was out of sight. A wild white face looked out at him from the carriage window.