CHAPTER IV.
But he did not quite know Frederick Walcheren. Perhaps, also, he did not how know cunning Love makes a man. The younger man had assumed his overcoat and hat, and gone forth at the hall door, as if he had but one intention—to seek the railway station, since his brougham had returned to town. But, once clear of the scrutiny of the servants, he skirted the house on the left side, and passed from the front garden to the back, which is easily done in most suburban houses. This brought him on to a large lawn, from which the interior of the lighted ballroom might be easily seen through the open windows. Also, by turning the other corner of themansion, he could, by pressing his face against the glass, see if the picture gallery was occupied or not, though he remained himself unseen. The windows of this room were also thrown open, and Frederick waited at one of them until he saw the white-robed figure of Jenny Crampton steal in, and glance furtively around as if in search of him.
‘Jenny, Jenny,’ he called softly, lest she should be followed by the friend of the family, ‘Jenny, my love, come here, to this window.’
‘What is this?’ cried the girl as she perceived him; ‘why are you here? Is anything wrong?’
‘Nothing is wrong whilst you love me,’ said Frederick, ‘but we are watched, darling, so I have pretended to go home again. Have you the pluck to join me in the garden? There are any number of arbours here where we can talk undisturbed.’
‘Pluck,’ cried Jenny, jumping on the window sill, ‘of course I have. Pluckenough to follow you over a precipice, if you wish me to do so.’
‘You angel. I will ask you to take no more dangerous leap than into my arms. But were you seen? Did anyone follow you? We must not have an open row.’
‘No, no one even saw me leave the ballroom, for I was at the buffet with Captain Rawson, when number five dance struck up, so I told him to go and find his partner and leave mine to seek me out. And as soon as his back was turned I slipped out here.’
‘You dear girl! Give me your hand, then, and jump out; there is a lovely seat under that acacia tree—but what will you say if your mother asks where you have been?’
‘That I have been strolling in the garden with my partner. She will think it was Captain Rawson; but she will not ask. She is used to my vagaries, and lets me do just as I choose.’
‘But, darling, they won’t let you do that any longer, I’m afraid. I’ve had a lectureas well as you, Jenny. Mr Hindes followed me to the picture gallery just now, by your father’s request, and made me promise I would give up all pretensions to your hand, and leave off visiting at your house.’
‘And do you mean to keep your promise?’ inquired the girl, pouting.
‘Not unless you tell me to do so, Jenny; I love you too much for that. I only did it to prevent a row, for if Mr Crampton carried his threat of taking you away from Hampstead into execution, I might find it very difficult to have any communication with you again.’
‘But what is the good of my staying here if I am never to see you, Fred?’ asked Jenny.
‘That depends upon yourself, my darling; you can’t do it from your father’s house, that’s certain.’
‘Who’s from, then?’ said Jenny.
‘From mine, sweetheart! Don’t think me very bold, but, if you love me as you say, you will marry me whether your parents give their consent or not.’
‘So I will, if you will only tell me how, Fred.’
‘We must elope together, dearest; heaps of husbands and wives have done it before us, and been none the worse. Your father says that if you marry without his consent, he will leave you none of his money; that is a thing you must take into serious consideration, before you give me your answer. I have enough for both of us, still, you would be a richer woman if you remained your father’s heiress; his fortune cannot be less than ten thousand a year, whilst mine is only two thousand.’
‘What do I care for money in comparison with you, Fred?’ whispered Jenny.
‘That’s my own true girl,’ he answered, folding her closely to him, ‘and once you have made up your mind to marry me without your father’s consent, the rest is easy enough. Tell me to get a licence, and to give notice at the nearest registrar’s office to my place, and you have only toarrange how you can join me, so as to give us a few hours’ start of Mr Crampton, and I will have you out of his reach and power before the day is over.’
‘To join you, dearest, is easily managed,’ replied the girl. ‘I must take a few things with me, you know, Fred! To run away in the clothes I stand up in, would be altogether too romantic for the nineteenth century. But I can send a box to my dressmaker’s, under pretence of wanting some dresses altered—no one interferes with my dress at home—and then, when you let me know which day I am to be in town, I will drive myself over, as if to go shopping; tell Brunell to put the cobs up for a few hours, and call for me at Madame Costello’s at 5 o’clock, andapres ça, le deluge!’
‘A deluge of love, my darling—a life of happiness, during which I shall have but one thought—one aspiration—how I can best repay my darling angel for the sacrifice she has made for me. And, perhaps, after a time, your parents will comeround. I cannot believe but that they will forgive our temerity in the end, and all will be merry as a marriage bell.’
‘Oh! poor mamma has nothing to do with it, Fred. I honestly believe she would let me marry a crossing-sweeper if I had set my heart upon it. I never remember her saying “No” to me since I was a baby. It is papa who is making all the fuss, and he is as obstinate as a pig. He thinks it is a sign of his own religion, to kick up such a dust about your being a Catholic, but I say he only proves he is no Christian by it. What can it signify if one is a Protestant or a Catholic? I am sure, for my own part, I would as soon be one as the other, and preferably neither. If you wish me to become a Catholic, Fred, I will to please you, but I hope you won’t expect me to go to church and hear sermons, for if there is one thing beyond another for which I long to get married, it is to have my liberty in such matters. Papa and mamma have sickened me ofchurch-going. Aunt Clem, too, who is so very pious, has a face long enough to turn the milk sour. It is not encouraging to a girl to go and do likewise.’
Frederick Walcheren laughed as he kissed the speaker.
‘My darling!’ he answered, ‘I daresay your people have warned you that I am not a particularly good young man, but I can boast of one merit—I have never pretended to be better than I am. My cousin, Philip, and his great friend, Father Tasker, consider me a lost soul, but they cannot say that I am a dishonest one. They have heard some rumour—how, Heaven only knows—that I am veryéprisin a certain quarter, and put in an appearance at my rooms this afternoon to learn if it was true that I contemplated matrimony. You may take your oath that I did not gratify their curiosity. They want to get me into the church, so that they may grab my money. They’ve been trying it on for years, but this fish won’t bite!’
‘But, Fred, darling, would anything on earth ever make you go into the church?’ inquired Jenny, rather anxiously.
‘Nothing on earth,’ he replied, quickly; but, after a slight pause, he added, ‘at least onlyonething, and that is too dreadful to contemplate. If you were taken from me, my treasure—if anything happened to you and I were left alone—I should be mad enough for anything—even to go into a monastery, and sacrifice every farthing I possess. What good would money be to me without my love?’
He pressed her closely to him as he spoke, and the two young faces were laid against each other, and the two young forms seemed to melt for a moment into one. But in another moment Jenny had sprung up to a standing position.
‘I must go, dear Fred,’ she exclaimed, ‘or they will miss me, and Mr Hindes may be sent to find out where I am. Good-bye, good-bye, my darling. How soon do you think I shall have your letter?’
‘The day after to-morrow, love! To-morrowmorning I shall be in Doctors’ Commons for the licence, and will wire you simply, “All right, Costello.” Then, should the telegram fall into other hands, it will be thought to come from the dressmaker. On receipt of this, you must drive over on the following day to Madame Costello’s, and leave your box there, and as soon as you have dismissed Brunell and the trap, I will take you to the registrar’s office, and, when the knot is securely tied, we will pick up the box and be off to Dover. Will that suit your ladyship? Brunell will call for you at Costello’s at five o’clock, and, after waiting about for a considerable time, will return to Hampstead and give the alarm. By which time my wife and I will be enjoying our dinner at the Castle Warden, and laughing over the adventures of our wedding-day.’
‘Oh, Fred, it seems too good to come true,’ said the girl, with a slight shiver.
‘Nonsense, my dearest. It will come true, sure enough. But you are cold, my pretty Jenny. I have been a selfishbrute to keep you out here so long. Let me take you back to the picture gallery. Or is it wiser you should go alone? Good-night, then, and God bless you. Give me one kiss, and don’t forget to meet me the day after you receive that wire!’
‘As if Icouldforget,’ replied the girl reproachfully, as she raised her face for her lover’s embrace, and, with his assistance, re-entered the picture gallery, and walked slowly back to the ballroom, to tell her mother she had such a terrible fit of neuralgia, she would rather return home at once.
Mr and Mrs Hindes, who were seated near Mrs Crampton, were all solicitude for her assumed indisposition, and Mr Hindes suggested taking her for a turn in the fresh air to see if the change from the heated ballroom would relieve her. Mrs Hindes, a tall, slight woman, with dark eyes and hair, and a graceful figure, who was really attached to Jenny, inquired with whom she had been dancingthe last set, as she had looked for her in vain.
‘I have not been dancing at all,’ replied Jenny, boldly; ‘I have been sitting in the picture gallery with Lord Craven, but my head gets worse instead of better. Come along, mother, the carriage must be waiting for us by this time, and I am tired to death. I want to get to bed.’
‘Certainly, my love,’ replied Mrs Crampton, with her usual lamb-like acquiescence to all her daughter’s demands; ‘perhaps Mr Hindes will be good enough to see us to the carriage.’
And Henry Hindes, who was convinced that Miss Crampton’s neuralgia was due to Mr Walcheren’s defalcation, smiled inwardly, and conducted the ladies to their barouche, with much satisfaction that he had conducted the business he had taken on himself so successfully.
When Jenny Crampton reached home and found herself in the seclusion of her bedroom, she did not give way to any access of nervous agitation, or feelany trepidation at the thoughts of the important step which she had taken on herself. That might be all very well for a damsel of romance of a hundred years ago, but it is not the way the young women of the present day manage their affairs. They are too strong-minded, to cry and shake and faint over the deeds they have put their sign and seal to. Jenny had made an appeal to become the wife of Mr Walcheren in a fair way, and her request had been denied her, for what she considered a frivolous objection. She knew there was no chance of altering her father’s decision, and having always been given her own way since a child, she determined to take it now. She regretted having to be married privately, but she saw no wrong in it. Her parents might be sorry when they heard of it, but they had brought it on themselves. She was not going to keep Frederick waiting for an indefinite period, and perhaps lose him altogether, because her father did not like RomanCatholics as well as he did Protestants.Shedidn’t object to his religion, and she was the principal party concerned, so the young lady looked out the dresses she wished to take with her, and made her maid Ellen pack them in the box to take to the dressmaker’s, and, when the key was in her own hands, she unlocked it again and added the articles of linen and jewellery that she needed, and managed the whole affair as coolly as if she had been preparing for elopements all her life. On the Friday—it was on a Thursday that she received the wire to tell her all was right, and it was on a Friday that her ill-regulated marriage took place—she dressed herself in her most becoming tailor-made costume, and drove gaily off to town, with a wave of her hand and a crack of her whip as a last adieu to the mother and aunt who loved her devotedly. She had promised them privately that she would be back to luncheon, unless her cousins, the Burtons, were at home again (whichshe did not anticipate), and pressed her to stay the afternoon.
‘But, Jenny, love!’ expostulated her mother, ‘don’t stay later than two, even if they do! Pray be home before papa comes back from the city. Remember how very particular he is about your driving in town by yourself, and I’m afraid he may blame me, if he finds I have let you go with only Brunell.’
‘My dear mother, as if Brunell were not a better protection for me than fifty fat old men like papa. Now, don’t worry, there’s a good creature, for I shall be back long before dinner time, but you know what Costello is, and how difficult it is to get away from her. And perhaps I sha’n’t go to the Burtons at all. So keep up your pecker, and don’t expect me till you see me. Good-bye,’ and with a flourish she was off.
She drove rapidly to Kensington, and, on arrival, directed her groom to put up the cobs and get himself some dinner, and call for her at Mrs Burton’s house inCromwell Road at five o’clock. The man touched his hat, the box was lifted out, and Miss Jenny entered the dressmaker’s abode.
‘Madame Costello,’ she commenced, ‘this is a box of things belonging to my cousin, Miss Burton, which I am just going to take to her in Cromwell Road. I have brought it here first that you may take out the canvas dress you made for me, and which is just a trifle tight under the arms. No, I have no time to have it fitted on, thank you. Tell the dressmaker to let it out half an inch under both sleeves. That will be quite sufficient.’
And, unlocking the box, the little diplomatist took out an old dress, which she had laid at the top, and locked the rest of its contents up again. Frederick Walcheren was waiting for her round the corner, she had spied him as she drove up to the door.
‘My cousin is waiting to take me on to Cromwell Road,’ she said to Madame Costello, as she beckoned him to advance.‘Ah, Fred,’ she continued, ‘you must call a cab for me, for I have been obliged to send the trap on to pick up papa, who wishes to join us. Have you one ready? That’s right. Good-morning, Madame Costello. You needn’t hurry with the alterations, for I shall not want that dress again just yet.’
And with that Miss Crampton entered the cab and was soon whirling away to the registrar’s office.
‘I never saw anything more neatly managed in my life,’ was her first remark. ‘Mamma has reason not to expect me home till five or six. I told Brunell not to call for me at Cromwell Road till five, so he can’t be back in Hampstead till six or seven, and by that time—’
‘By that time you will be Mrs Frederick Walcheren past all recall,’ said her lover, joyfully.
But at that the girl seemed suddenly to lose her self-possession for the first time.
‘Oh! Fred,’ she cried, ‘what am Idoing? Oh! do stop and let me out before it is too late! I was mad to come! It is too wicked! My people will never forgive me,’ and she struggled to loose herself from his detaining clasp.
‘Jenny, my dearest,’ he exclaimed, ‘be reasonable, for my sake, do! It is too late to go back now. I have made every arrangement for our staying at the Castle Warden Hotel. Besides, would you disappoint me in so terrible a manner, after having passed your plighted word to be my wife? I am sure you won’t! What should I do without you, Jenny? What would you do without me? If we part now, it must be for ever! Don’t make both our lives unhappy for a little want of courage.’
‘No, no, I must go on, I feel it! I cannot live without you, Fred. I love you too dearly! Do just as you will with me!’
‘I had a little difficulty with the licence business yesterday,’ he whispered, as they travelled onwards; ‘they wanted to havethe written consent of your guardians, or my assurance that you were of age, so I swore you were. It was the only way out of it, my darling, and quite justifiable, in my eyes, under the circumstances; but I thought I would put you on your guard in case the registrar put any awkward questions to you concerning it.’
‘It doesn’t signify,’ replied the girl in a dejected tone. Now that the goal of her desires was so nearly reached, her high spirits seemed all to have evaporated, and she was trembling and nervous. ‘I have had to tell so many lies to manage the business, that one more or less cannot make much difference.’
‘Jenny, my own girl, what has come over you?’ asked Walcheren in some alarm. ‘Are you not well? Do you not love me as much as you thought you did? Your mood is not complimentary, dearest, to the coming ceremony. If you really repent the step you have taken, say so, and at all costs, if it breaks my heart, I will get out of the cab and you shallreturn to Madame Costello’s. Jenny, do you no longer wish to be my wife?’
But, at that awful alternative, Jenny’s sudden weakness evaporated and she clung to her lover, as if all her hopes in this world and the next centred in him.
‘Yes! yes! yes!’ she exclaimed eagerly, ‘you are my life—my all. I cannot live without you, or away from you. It is only a sudden fear of the consequences of this step we are taking which terrified me. It is gone now, dear Frederick, indeed it has. What fear could I have in becoming your wife. You, whom I love beyond all other things. Only, my poor parents, my poor, good mother, Fred. How I wish she had said, “God bless you, Jenny,” as we parted. She has been such a kind mother to me, and she will miss me so. She will have nothing to occupy her thoughts, or her hands, poor mother, now I am gone. Do you think I shall ever see them again, Fred?—my parents, and poor old Aunt Clem. Doyou think my father will keep them from meallmy life?’
She spoke so rapidly and excitedly, and she clung to him so tightly, that Frederick Walcheren feared she was what the lower orders call ‘going off her head,’ and said all he could think of to soothe her.
‘No! no! my darling girl, what can you be thinking of, to ask me such a silly question? Of course, your father will come round in time. The old gentleman is too fond and proud of you himself to hold out very long. It isIon whom he will pour out the vials of his wrath. Come, let me dry those tears. We are almost at the registrar’s office now, and he will think I am inveigling you into a marriage against your will if he sees you crying. Perhaps he will take it for a case of abduction, and order me to be locked up, until he has found out where you come from, and if I have carried you off by force. And then there will be the old gentleman to pay, and no pitch hot.’
Jenny laughed at the expression and let Frederick kiss away her tears, and in another half hour, they walked out of the registrar’s office together man and wife.