CHAPTER VIII.
KENRICK’S WEDDING DAY.
Theevening after that meeting in the churchyard was a melancholy one for Kenrick. He had counted upon spending it with Beatrix. The settlements were to have been signed at the Water House at nine o’clock, the Vicar, Mr. Scratchell, and Sir Kenrick meeting there for that purpose. When nine o’clock came Sir Kenrick and the two trustees were assembled in Miss Harefield’s drawing-room, Mr. Scratchell’s clerk in attendance with the documents, and ready to sign as witness whenever required; but Miss Harefield herself was not forthcoming. They waited some time, Sir Kenrick full of uneasiness, and then Madame Leonard came to them, looking pale and worried.
‘I am sorry to have bad news for you, Sir Kenrick,’ she said, in her pretty French, ‘but Miss Harefield is much too ill to sign any papers, or tosee any one to-night. Is it absolutely necessary these papers should be signed?’
‘They must be signed before she is married,’ said Mr. Scratchell, ‘but it can be done in the vestry, five minutes before the wedding, if she likes.’
‘But what is the matter?’ asked Sir Kenrick. ‘She was very well—or she seemed very well—when I was with her yesterday.’
‘She is far from well to-night. She is nervous and low-spirited. It would be cruelty to insist upon her coming downstairs to receive you.’
‘I am not going to be cruel,’ said Kenrick, moodily. ‘Perhaps it is cruel of me to ask her to marry me to-morrow. Her low spirits to-night seem to indicate that the prospect is repugnant to her.’
‘Don’t be savage, Kenrick,’ said the Vicar. ‘A young lady’s nerves are a delicate piece of mechanism, and a trifle will put them out of order. The settlements had better stand over till to-morrow morning. We can all meet here at ten.’
‘But I want to know why she is ill, or out of spirits,’ urged Kenrick. ‘Has Mr. Namby seen her?’ he asked abruptly of Madame Leonard.
‘No. She is hardly so ill as to need medical advice. She wants repose, to be left to herself for a little while, not to be worried about business matters. She wished to have no marriage settlement. The whole thing is an annoyance to her.’
‘She wished to play the fool,’ muttered Mr. Scratchell, ‘but I wasn’t going to let her make ducks and drakes of the whole of her property.’
They all went away after a little more talk, Kenrick in a bad temper. This was like his welcome at Southampton, when, with a heart burning with eager love, he had found only coldness and restraint in his betrothed. She had been kinder, and had even seemed happy in his society of late; but there had been moments of coldness, days on which she had been absent-minded and fitful.
‘I am a fool to love her as I do,’ he thought, as he walked silently back to the Vicarage, while Mr. Dulcimer chewed the cud of his afternoon readings, and debated within himself the motiveof Ovid’s exile—a favourite subject of meditation with him, as being a key-note to the domestic history of Augustus, and a social mystery upon which a man might muse and argue for ever without coming any nearer an absolute conclusion.
‘I am a fool to make myself miserable about her,’ mused Kenrick. ‘Why cannot I think of my marriage as a mere matter of convenience—the salvation of a fine old estate—as other people do?’
The tea party at the Vicarage had not been lively. Cyril looked ill, and had little to say for himself.
‘You are overworked at Bridford,’ said the Vicar, decisively. ‘The place is killing you. I must have you back here, Cyril. There is quite work enough to be done, and you may indulge in your new-fangled ways as much as you like, for I know you are too sensible to consider outward fripperies an essential part of an earnest service. You shall do what you like with the choir, and have as many services at unearthly hours of the morning as you please. But you shall not kill yourself in that polluted town.’
‘I am more useful there than I could ever be here,’ urged Cyril.
‘But you will be no use anywhere when you are dead. A living dog, you know, is of more value in the world than a dead lion. If you go on doing the lion’s work yonder you will soon be in the condition of the dead lion, and of less use than the most insignificant live dog. They would stuff you and put you in a glass case, no doubt—or rather they would subscribe for a handsome tablet in the parish church, setting out your virtues—but the tablet would be useful to no one.’
‘Your argument is forcible,’ said Cyril. ‘If I find myself really breaking down at Bridford I will ask you to let me come back to my work here.’
‘Be sure you do.’
The cousins were not alone together during any part of the evening. It was between ten and eleven o’clock when the Vicar and Kenrick returned from the Water House, and they found Mrs. Dulcimer alone in the library.
‘Poor Cyril was tired after his journey,’ she said, ‘and I persuaded him to go to bed half anhour ago. Oh, Clement, I never saw such a change in any young man. I’m afraid he’s going into a decline.’
‘Fiddlesticks!’ exclaimed the Vicar. ‘There’s nothing consumptive about the Culverhouses. Cyril has the shoulders of an athlete, and the constitution of a Spartan, reared at the public tables on the leavings of the old men. But if he goes on working night and day in the tainted air of Bridford, he will get himself into such a feeble state that his next attack of fever will be fatal.’
‘I am sure I had no idea he was so seriously ill last September, or I should have gone to Bridford to see him,’ said Mrs. Dulcimer, ‘but he tells me he had excellent nurses, two Frenchwomen, sisters of some charitable order. You needn’t be frightened, Clement. They were not nuns; and they made no attempt to convert him.’
‘I would not despise them if they had made the attempt,’ answered the Vicar. ‘Every man has a right to offer his idea of salvation to his brother. The feeling is right, though the theology may be wrong.’
Kenrick was up soon after seven o’clock next morning, a wintry gray morning, without a ray of sunshine to gild his hopes. He was nearly dressed when he was startled by the sharp voice of Rebecca.
‘A letter, sir, brought by hand from the Water House. I’ve put it under the door.’
Kenrick seized the letter, with a vague foreboding of evil. It was in Beatrix Harefield’s hand.
‘Forgive me, Kenrick, forgive me, if you can, for what I am going to do. Oh, forgive me, my poor friend, pray forgive me for having played fast and loose with you. I am going away to some corner of the world, where neither you nor any one I have ever known can follow me or hear of me. I am fleeing from a marriage which could only result in misery to both you and me. You love me too well, you are too generous-minded to be satisfied with less than my true love; and that I cannot give you. I have prayed God to turn my heart towards you, to let me love you, but I cannot. There is always another whose image comes between me and my thoughts ofyou. I have tried to forget him—to thrust him out of my heart. I have tried to be angry with him for his doubt of me, but once having given him my heart I could not take it back again.‘For the last few days my mind has been full of hesitation and perplexity. I knew that if I married you I should be doing a wicked thing—I should stand before God’s altar with a lie upon my lips. I knew that if I broke my promise I should give you pain. I have argued the question with myself a hundred times, but could come to no fixed conclusion. I have been swayed to and fro like a reed in the wind. I wanted to do right, to act generously and justly to you who have been so full of trustfulness and generosity for me. This afternoon I saw your cousin. The meeting was neither his seeking nor mine, Kenrick. Be sure of that. An accident brought us face to face in the churchyard. Oh, then I knew, in a moment, that I must not marry you—that it would be better to break a hundred promises than to be your wife. Before he had spoken a word, while he stood looking at me in silence, Iknew that I had never ceased to love him, that, let him scorn me as he might, I must go on loving him to the end.‘So there was no alternative but this which I am taking, and this letter is my last farewell to you and all who have ever known me in England.‘Your estate is free from the mortgage that encumbered it. In the beginning of my trouble of mind—when I found myself hesitating as to what course I ought to take—I resolved that the home you love should be set free. It is done. I beg you to take this as a gift from one who has learned to love you very truly as a friend and brother, but who could never have loved you with the love you would have claimed from a wife.‘Yours affectionately and regretfully,‘Beatrix Harefield.‘The Water House, Tuesday, Eleven o’clock.’
‘Forgive me, Kenrick, forgive me, if you can, for what I am going to do. Oh, forgive me, my poor friend, pray forgive me for having played fast and loose with you. I am going away to some corner of the world, where neither you nor any one I have ever known can follow me or hear of me. I am fleeing from a marriage which could only result in misery to both you and me. You love me too well, you are too generous-minded to be satisfied with less than my true love; and that I cannot give you. I have prayed God to turn my heart towards you, to let me love you, but I cannot. There is always another whose image comes between me and my thoughts ofyou. I have tried to forget him—to thrust him out of my heart. I have tried to be angry with him for his doubt of me, but once having given him my heart I could not take it back again.
‘For the last few days my mind has been full of hesitation and perplexity. I knew that if I married you I should be doing a wicked thing—I should stand before God’s altar with a lie upon my lips. I knew that if I broke my promise I should give you pain. I have argued the question with myself a hundred times, but could come to no fixed conclusion. I have been swayed to and fro like a reed in the wind. I wanted to do right, to act generously and justly to you who have been so full of trustfulness and generosity for me. This afternoon I saw your cousin. The meeting was neither his seeking nor mine, Kenrick. Be sure of that. An accident brought us face to face in the churchyard. Oh, then I knew, in a moment, that I must not marry you—that it would be better to break a hundred promises than to be your wife. Before he had spoken a word, while he stood looking at me in silence, Iknew that I had never ceased to love him, that, let him scorn me as he might, I must go on loving him to the end.
‘So there was no alternative but this which I am taking, and this letter is my last farewell to you and all who have ever known me in England.
‘Your estate is free from the mortgage that encumbered it. In the beginning of my trouble of mind—when I found myself hesitating as to what course I ought to take—I resolved that the home you love should be set free. It is done. I beg you to take this as a gift from one who has learned to love you very truly as a friend and brother, but who could never have loved you with the love you would have claimed from a wife.
‘Yours affectionately and regretfully,‘Beatrix Harefield.‘The Water House, Tuesday, Eleven o’clock.’
‘This is Cyril’s doing,’ cried Kenrick, beside himself with rage. ‘They have plotted this between them. And she throws her money in my face. She thinks that I am so tame a hound asto take the wealth, for which the world would say I chose her, and let her go—the money without the wife. They have planned it between them. It is like Cyril. “Kenrick only cares about Culverhouse Castle,” he told her. “Set the estate free, and he will forgive you all the rest.” But I will not forgive either of them. I will follow both with my undying hatred. I will fling back her pitiful gift into her false face. She let me think I had won her love, while she meant to buy my forgiveness with her money.’
And then he flung himself face downward on the floor, and gave vent to his passion in angry tears. He had been happier lying on the blood-soaked ground under the walls of Pegu, with the brown Burmese soldiers trampling upon him, and a very acute consciousness of a bullet in his shoulder. Never had he been so wretched as at this moment, never so angry with fate or his fellow-men.
He had to conquer his passion presently, and go calmly downstairs to tell Mr. and Mrs. Dulcimer that there was to be no wedding.