CHAPTER XXII.
FAIR STILL, BUT FAIR FOR NO ONE SAVING ME.
Cyrilwould have liked to follow the mysterious lady, but that would have been too discourteous; so he wandered listlessly in the streets of St. Malo for another hour or so, not knowing what to do with himself, and finally came to a standstill at an office on the outskirts of the town, whence a diligence started every afternoon for Dol.
‘Dol,’ he said. ‘What is Dol? I was never at Dol. I wonder if there is anything worth seeing at Dol, and if it be possible that Beatrix can have gone there?’
While he was wondering a hired fly drove up, containing the lady in the gray mantle, and a number of parcels of different kinds and sizes. The driver of the diligence went forward to receive the lady and her parcels. She was evidently a frequentpatron of his conveyance. He took pains to instal her carefully in the wretched interior.
‘I’ll go to Dol,’ decided Cyril. ‘I am bent on finding out who and what this woman is. It will be only the loss of a day, and I shall have time to think out my plan for finding Beatrix.’
It was foolish, perhaps, he thought afterwards, to be so easily diverted from his path; but then the fact was that he had no path to take—he was fairly at a standstill. He could do no good by perambulating the streets of St. Malo. Dol was a place to explore—the chances against finding Beatrix there were as ninety-nine in a hundred perhaps—but it would be one town checked off the map of Europe, and he might be able to find out something about his mysterious sick nurse. So Cyril mounted to the seat beside the driver, where he had the shelter of an ancient leather hood to protect him from the wind, and where he felt very easy in his mind about the lady in the gray mantle. She could not escape him on the road.
He questioned the driver about his passenger, but the man could tell him nothing except that thelady lived at Dol, and that she came into St. Malo once a week to make her purchases. He could not say how long she had lived there, as he had been only driving the diligence for a month.
They drove through lanes and past fields and orchards which were entirely Devonian in their aspect, halted at a village which was quainter and more picturesque, and, sooth to say, a little dirtier than a Devonshire village, and finally arrived, as the shades of evening were falling, at Dol, which impressed Cyril at first sight as the dullest town he had ever beheld. He knew Sandwich in Kent, he had visited Stamford in Lincolnshire, he had even seen Southend out of the Cockney season, but Dol had a more utterly deserted look than any of these. There were some fine mediæval buildings, there was a grand cathedral with two towers, one of which had been left unfinished in the Middle Ages. There were interesting courts and crannies and corners—but Melancholy had claimed Dol for her own. The country round looked flat and depressing—the outskirts of the town were arid and dusty—the modern houses had that intensely newand unfinished aspect peculiar to French architecture; and all ambitious attempts at improvement looked as if they had been nipped in the bud.
There was one rather pretty-looking house, in a small walled garden, and before the door of this garden the diligence stopped, and the lady in the gray mantle alighted. A French maid-servant opened the gate and ran out to take the traveller’s parcels, and then mistress and maid went in at the door, and the walled garden swallowed them up.
The diligence deposited Cyril at an old inn in a small square not far from the cathedral, a good old house enough, where all things were cleanly and comfortable, and where he found a good-natured landlady, who was quite ready to answer his questions while he waited for thetable d’hôtedinner.
He described the white house in the walled garden just outside the town, and asked if she could tell him anything about its inmates.
It was a house which let itself garnished, she told him, the owner being a merchant at Rennes, who only came to Dol occasionally, because it was his birthplace. Of its present inmates Madameknew nothing. She did not even know that it was let. It had been long unoccupied. She excused herself for this ignorance on the ground that she went out so seldom. The house, and then the kitchen occupied all her time, not to speak of her two little angels, who were exacting, like all children.
Of the two little angels, one was then squalling lustily in the adjoining kitchen, while the other hung to its mother’s gown and scowled at the stranger.
‘Have you had many English visitors this season?’ Cyril inquired.
‘Oh yes, Monsieur, a crowd. The English love so much our Brittany—and Dol is the first town in Brittany. It is interesting to the traveller were it only for that reason.’
‘Naturally. Since September now—the end of September—can you recall any English visitors, ladies, who have been with you?’
‘But no, Monsieur. After September our season is over. It is late. We have had no English ladies since then.’
‘There are other hotels at Dol, I suppose?’
‘Yes, Monsieur, but this is the first.’
Cyril dined with a few sleepy-looking inhabitants, and a couple of sub-lieutenants from the neighbouring barracks, and after his dinner went to look at the cathedral, which had a shadowy grandeur by the light of a few solitary lamps burning here and there before a shrine.
After this he was glad to go to bed, having slept very little on board the St. Malo steamer. He put Christian Harefield’s letter under his pillow.
He was up before daybreak next morning, and was out with the first streak of pallid light in the east. He went first to look at the house which had swallowed up the lady in the gray mantle. He made a circuit of the garden-wall, but discovered nothing except that there were poultry on the premises, a fact imparted to him shrilly by a peculiarly energetic cock, apparently of the bantam breed, so eager was he, like all small creatures, to assert his importance. There was no indication of the life within to be drawn from the blank white wall, the closed venetians of theupper windows, or the gilded vane upon the roof. Neighbours there were none. So he left the spot no wiser than when he had approached it.
The morning was lovely, the air balmy, despite the lateness of the season. It was just that calm, delightful hour when earth seems as fresh as if the Creator’s work were but newly finished. Cyril set out on a perambulation of the neighbourhood of Dol. His hostess had talked to him last night of a certain Mont Dol, as a thing to be seen, so he went to see what this Mont Dol was like.
He walked for about a couple of miles through a level country, somewhat Flemish in its character, a country that had only the charm of rusticity to recommend it. Then he came all at once upon a raw-looking church, of a commonplace order, a few straggling cottages, and a steep rugged-looking hill, which rose out of the level plain with an extraordinary suddenness. He climbed this hill by a rough road, which dwindled by and by into a narrow winding track, and mounted in the early sunlight to an undulating heathy hill-top looking wide over the blue waters of the Channel. Onthis hill-top there was no human habitation, only a votive chapel and the white statue of a saint, looking down upon the quiet hillocks and hollows, the clumps of furze, and tranquil sheep cropping the dewy grass in the sweet morning air. He had never looked on a more pleasant scene. The world, life, and all its cares lay far below him—the blue wood smoke was curling up from the chimneys of many-gabled Dol, the church tower and its stunted twin brother, the tower that had never been finished, rose darkly above all meaner things on the level plain, white sails of passing vessels were shining yonder against the blue horizon. He felt himself alone upon this lonely hill, in a serener atmosphere than the air of every-day life. A saintly hermit of old time might have passed his contemplative days pleasantly enough in a cell adjoining the chapel yonder.
He rambled round the hill-top, lingering every now and then to look landward or seaward, for on either side the prospect was full of beauty. It was a spot where any man, with a genuine love of nature, might feel that he could spendhours and days of life, alone with his own thoughts and the peaceful beauty round him. The big bell of Dol chimed nine, the bright autumn sun climbed higher in the blue clear sky, a sheep-bell tinkled, an elderly lamb bleated, a little shepherd boy sang his little nasal song, a late bumble-bee buzzed among late furze bloom. There were no other sounds.
Cyril made the circuit of the chapel, which was closely locked against intrusion. He looked at the statue, and turned his face idly seaward for the twentieth time, thinking within himself how foolishly he was wasting his day, and how little this perambulation of the Mont Dol would help him towards the accomplishment of his mission; and as he was thinking thus, and as he turned from the statue to the sea, he found himself face to face with something sweeter than the glad blue sea, dearer than all the wide bright earth, the face of the woman he loved.
She was standing before him, looking at him with a grave sad smile, dressed in black, and thin and careworn, beautiful only for eyes that lovedher, since she had wasted the freshness of her youth and beauty in tears and sleepless nights, and untimely cares.
‘Beatrix!’ he cried, with a rush of gladness that almost stifled him. ‘Beatrix, Providence has sent us to meet here. I had sworn to myself to travel all over the world in search of you.’
‘Why should you want to find me?’ she asked. ‘I thought there were no two persons on this earth with less reason to wish to meet than you and I.’
‘I should not have presumed to follow you if I had not a motive strong enough to excuse my audacity. I have brought you this.’
He took Christian Harefield’s last letter from his pocket, and gave it her without a word of explanation.
‘From my father!’ she cried, looking at the address, and then tearing open the envelope with trembling hands. ‘In heaven’s name how did you come by this letter—from my dead father? You who suspected me——’
Tears choked her. She brushed the hot drops from her eyes, and began to read the letter.
‘“Sunday night, December 23rd,”’ she began, falteringly.
‘Why, that was the night before his death,’ she cried. ‘Read it for me. I cannot see the words. They swim before my eyes.’
Cyril stood by her side, reading the letter across her shoulder. He put his arm round her to hold her up, and she leaned against him trembling, hardly able to stand.
‘My Poor Child,—When you open this letter you will be fatherless—a little loss, for I have never been a father to you in anything save the name. For the last ten years I have been a miserable man, too miserable to care for my own flesh and blood, all that was good in me turned to evil.‘I loved your mother as women are not often loved, with an intense and concentrated affection that goes hand in hand with intense jealousy. I do not think it is possible for a man to love as I loved, and endure the knowledge that his love was unrequited, without having his nature perverted. My unrequited love engendered suspicion, evil thoughts, hatred of myself and the thing I loved.‘By a series of fatalities, which I need not set forth here, I was led to believe your mother false and unworthy—a degraded woman—a disgrace to you as she was a dishonour to me. To-night I learn that she was innocent—that her only sin against me was a sin of my own creation. She might have loved me, as the years went on, had I shown myself worthy of her love by trusting her truth and honour. My jealousy made her life miserable, and my groundless suspicion drove her from me, to die alone, friendless, hidden in an Italian convent.‘Knowing what I know, knowing how happiness—the purest and deepest—was within my reach, and that I let it go, knowing that the bitterest miseries of my life were engendered in my own perverted mind, knowing that I made the misery of the being I fondly loved—I feel that I can no longer support the burden of a life without hope. Every chain must wear out in time. Mine was worn to attenuation before to-night—this last blow snaps it. To-morrow, when the world wakes to its petty round of cares and joys, my troubles will be over.You will find me as calm as if my life had been all peace. Saint and sinner are equal in death.‘God bless you, poor child. May He be kinder to you than your earthly father has been. Love I could not give you—but the wealth which is mine to bestow I give you freely. Take warning from my miserable fate, and do not marry without the certainty that you are beloved. Your fortune will mark you out as a prey for every adventurer.‘Should there be an inquiry about my death you can show this letter to the coroner. Should things pass, as, for your sake, I hope they may, without comment, let these last words of mine be sacred, the one only confidence I have ever given to my only child.‘Enclosed you will find a statement from the principal of the convent where your ill-used mother spent her last days. It may please you some day to visit her grave in that lonely spot, and to weep there for the injuries my love inflicted on her, as I have wept for her this night, tears of blood, wrung from a heart tortured by vain remorse.‘Your erring, unhappy father,‘Christian Harefield.’
‘My Poor Child,—When you open this letter you will be fatherless—a little loss, for I have never been a father to you in anything save the name. For the last ten years I have been a miserable man, too miserable to care for my own flesh and blood, all that was good in me turned to evil.
‘I loved your mother as women are not often loved, with an intense and concentrated affection that goes hand in hand with intense jealousy. I do not think it is possible for a man to love as I loved, and endure the knowledge that his love was unrequited, without having his nature perverted. My unrequited love engendered suspicion, evil thoughts, hatred of myself and the thing I loved.
‘By a series of fatalities, which I need not set forth here, I was led to believe your mother false and unworthy—a degraded woman—a disgrace to you as she was a dishonour to me. To-night I learn that she was innocent—that her only sin against me was a sin of my own creation. She might have loved me, as the years went on, had I shown myself worthy of her love by trusting her truth and honour. My jealousy made her life miserable, and my groundless suspicion drove her from me, to die alone, friendless, hidden in an Italian convent.
‘Knowing what I know, knowing how happiness—the purest and deepest—was within my reach, and that I let it go, knowing that the bitterest miseries of my life were engendered in my own perverted mind, knowing that I made the misery of the being I fondly loved—I feel that I can no longer support the burden of a life without hope. Every chain must wear out in time. Mine was worn to attenuation before to-night—this last blow snaps it. To-morrow, when the world wakes to its petty round of cares and joys, my troubles will be over.You will find me as calm as if my life had been all peace. Saint and sinner are equal in death.
‘God bless you, poor child. May He be kinder to you than your earthly father has been. Love I could not give you—but the wealth which is mine to bestow I give you freely. Take warning from my miserable fate, and do not marry without the certainty that you are beloved. Your fortune will mark you out as a prey for every adventurer.
‘Should there be an inquiry about my death you can show this letter to the coroner. Should things pass, as, for your sake, I hope they may, without comment, let these last words of mine be sacred, the one only confidence I have ever given to my only child.
‘Enclosed you will find a statement from the principal of the convent where your ill-used mother spent her last days. It may please you some day to visit her grave in that lonely spot, and to weep there for the injuries my love inflicted on her, as I have wept for her this night, tears of blood, wrung from a heart tortured by vain remorse.
‘Your erring, unhappy father,‘Christian Harefield.’
‘Do you believe now that I did not murder my father?’ cried Beatrix, turning to Cyril, with eyes that flashed indignant scorn through her tears.
‘I never believed otherwise, after we met face to face in the churchyard. I needed but to see you to know that you were innocent, and pure, and true. My suspicion was a monster of my own growth—the offspring of too much thought—and the fear that in winning your love I should seem a worshipper of mammon. Beatrix, I have been weak and despicable in this matter. My love should have been strong enough to withstand even a harder trial. I confess myself unworthy of your forgiveness, and yet I ask you to forgive me.’
‘Forgive you!’ she said, that changeful face of hers melting from scorn to tenderness. ‘There is no moment of the past in which you were not forgiven. I was too ready to make excuses for you. I had no womanly pride, where you were concerned. It was only when I was made to believe that you had never cared for me—that from the first you had liked Bella Scratchell better than me—it was only then that I was weak enough to listen to Kenrick’spleading. I thought it mattered so little what became of me, that I might as well give way. And then, when the time for our marriage drew near, I knew that I was going to commit a great sin, and I began to look for some way of escape. I only waited to arrange the release of Kenrick’s estate. I had made up my mind to run away before I saw you in the churchyard. You might have spared me some of your bitter speeches.’
‘Forgive me, beloved, forgive me.’
His arm was round her, her head lying on his breast, his lips bent down to hers, unreproved. There was no need of many words between them. Both knew that this chance meeting on the hill-top above the brightening sea meant eternal reunion. Who should part them now—these twin souls that had been parted and buffeted by the billows of fate, and had drifted together again at last? They clung to each other in a silent rapture, knowing that their hour of happiness had come.
‘I have never been angry with you,’ she faltered at last. ‘Fate has seemed unkind, not you. I have always believed you good, and true, and noble—evenwhen you renounced me. Even when I thought that you had cared for Bella——’
‘Who could have told you that utter falsehood?’
‘It was Bella herself who hinted——’
‘Poor child, don’t you know that people who hint things they dare not assert are always liars? But Bella is gone, with all her sins upon her head. I will tell you more of her by and by. It is by her act that you have suffered. It was she who stole your father’s letter. On her death-bed——but I will tell you all by and by. You have had too much agitation already. How pale you are looking! And you are shivering too. We have been standing too long in this keen air. Let me take you home, dearest. Do you live far from here?’
‘A good way, but I shall be better presently.’
‘Lean on my arm, love.’
And so supported, Beatrix walked slowly down the narrow track, to the village at the foot of the hill, and by and by a faint colour came back to her cheeks, and a happy light shone in her lovely eyes. The clock struck ten as they passed the church.
‘I came out only for a ramble before breakfast,’ said Beatrix. ‘Poor Madame Leonard will be wondering what has become of me.’
‘Madame Leonard? Ah, that is your companion.’
‘Yes, the dearest creature in the world. I could never tell you what a comfort she has been to me—indulging all my caprices—consoling me in my sorrows—a second mother. And now she and I will go together to see my own mother’s grave—the convent where she died. I have been already to see the place of her birth.’
‘My Beatrix, do you think I will ever let you take any journey again without my company? A man who has lost a jewel and found it again knows how to guard his treasure. You are mine henceforward—mine till death—unless you tell me I have forfeited your love.’
‘I could not say anything so false. I have never left off loving you,’ she answered gently. ‘Do not let us talk of the past. Let us forget it, if we can. When I saw the announcement of poor Kenrick’s death in theTimesI felt myselffree—and—I thought—perhaps—some day I should go back to Yorkshire to see the kind Dulcimers, and my good old servants—and then—you and I might meet. But I never thought it would be so soon.’
‘God has been good to us, love. And now tell me, Beatrix, can you bear to give up your liberty and share the lot of a hard-working parish priest? Could you bear even to go with me into a busy, smoky town, full of foulest things—if I felt that duty constrained me to take up my abode there? Could you endure to live in such a place as Bridford, for instance? But, I forget, you do not know Bridford.’
‘I could endure life even at Bridford with you.’
‘Ah, but you have never seen the place, love.’
‘I repeat that I could share your life and labours even at Bridford,’ she said, smiling at him.
He gave a little sigh.
‘I am afraid you hardly know what you are promising. Know then, dearest, that I am in treaty with the Vicar of Bridford, with a view to getting his living transferred to me. It is a charge for which heis eminently unfitted. I began some good work there, and left it unfinished. As vicar I could do much that I vainly attempted as curate. I should have larger scope, better opportunities. I could get a band of hard-working young men round me. Yes, I believe I could transform the place.’
‘I am like Ruth,’ said Beatrix, tenderly. ‘I follow where I love. Your duties shall be my duties, and your home my home. It shall go hard with me if I cannot make home pleasant to you, even at Bridford.’
‘And you will be content to see your wealth applied to doing good among a rough and often ungrateful population?’
‘I can imagine no better use for my wealth.’
‘Would you not rather that we should live at Culverhouse, in that fine old house, in the midst of that beautiful country? Poor Kenrick’s death has made Culverhouse mine, you know.’
‘I had rather live where your life can be most useful—noblest—and where I can help you.’
‘My own dear love, you make me happier than words can say!’
They came to the sleepy old town of Dol, andbeyond it to a house half hidden behind a high white wall. Beatrix opened a green door leading into a garden, and Cyril followed her, full of wonder, into the very garden which had swallowed up the lady in the gray mantle.
That very lady came out, through an open window, to receive Beatrix.
‘My love, how you have given me a beautiful fright!’ she cried, in French; and then, seeing Cyril, stopped and looked confused.
‘Madame Leonard, let me present Mr. Culverhouse. He will stop to breakfast with us, I dare say, if you ask him.’
‘I begin to understand something,’ said Cyril, looking at Beatrix. ‘Madame Leonard was one of my nurses, though she denied it yesterday.’
‘Pardon!’ exclaimed Madame Leonard. ‘I said that I did not belong to a nursing sisterhood. I did not say that I had not nursed you.’
And then the little Frenchwoman gave a joyous laugh, out of pure satisfaction at the new aspect of things, and ran back to the house to order certain savoury additions to the breakfast, in honour of the unexpected guest.
‘Madame Leonard was one of my nurses,’ repeated Cyril. ‘And you were the other. Oh, Beatrix! how could I be so blind?’
‘Dear love, you were in the dark valley of death,’ said Beatrix. ‘It was my sweetest privilege to watch and succour you. I owed all to Madame Leonard. When I read of your dangerous illness in the Bridford paper I was wretched at the thought of your loneliness, your helplessness, and I longed to come to you. Then this dear Madame Leonard suggested that we should come, in the disguise of nursing sisters, and take care of you. I should never have dared such a thing without her help. She arranged all—managed everything—smoothed away every difficulty. I can never be grateful enough to her for her goodness in that sorrowful time.’
‘And to think that I should never have guessed! When you went from me I yearned for you, not knowing why. Your shadowy eyes haunted me, your image stayed with me like the memory of a dream. Oh, my dearest, my truest, how can I love you well enough for such love as this?’
They stayed in the wintry garden, talking of thepast and the future, till poor Madame Leonard began to be unhappy about her carefully arranged breakfast. And then, after she had summoned them three times, they went in and sat at the snug round table drinking coffee, and making believe to eat, and arranging what was to be done next.
They were all to go back to Little Yafford together. Cyril and Beatrix were to be quietly married in the old village church, as soon as the Bridford living was his. The Water House was to be kept up in all its old comfort, and Madame Leonard was to be mistress there. It would serve as a country retreat for the Vicar of Bridford and his wife.