Thefollowing day was one of singular discomfort, and of private interviews that were held to be of the greatest necessity, in spite of the fact that the participants always emerged from them in worse plight than they went in.
The Canon saw Valeria in his study, and she came out crying.
Valeria sought Flora, and both wept.
Quentillian deliberately demanded an interview from Captain Cuscaden, but was baffled in his design of a rational discussion of the three-cornered situation by Cuscaden’s honest bewilderment at the mere suggestion of disinterested counsel.
It seemed, indeed, that Captain Cuscaden would have understood Owen better, and certainly have thought more highly of him, had the traditional horsewhip,abhorred of all Owen’s most deeply-rooted prejudices, held a place in their conversation, at least as threat, if not as actual fact.
Failing the horsewhip, Cuscaden was inclined to follow in the wake of the Canon and attribute to Valeria’s discardedfiancéa spirit of generous heroism that was even less to Quentillian’s liking.
“Captain Cuscaden takes primitive views,” Quentillian observed to Lucilla, whom alone he suspected of summing up the whole situation very much at its true value.
“Yes, that will suit Val very well.”
“You think she takes primitive views, too?”
“Yes, don’t you?”
Owen realized that, although he had never thought Valeria subtle, he had at least supposed her to be capable of appreciating his own subtlety. But subtleties had not, apparently, really weighed with Val at all.
The sight of her tear-mottled face annoyed Owen’s æsthetic sense so much, and he felt so sincerely ashamed of his annoyance, that it constrained him to absent himself from the house all the afternoon. He would gladly have left St. Gwenllian altogether and felt sure that the Canon expected nothing less of him, but Flora brought him a piteous little message from Val to beg that he would remain until “something was settled.”
In the forlorn hope that this had been achieved, Quentillian returned.
An eager grasp met him almost upon the threshold.
“Owen, dear lad! Where have you been? I havebeen uneasy—most uneasy, at your prolonged absence.”
“I’m very sorry, sir.”
“Nay, so long as all is well with you! I should have had more faith.”
The Canon smiled gravely, and relief was latent in the smile. Quentillian suddenly realized that Canon Morchard had not improbably known the sub-conscious fear of his guest andprotégéhaving sought some drastic means of ending an existence in the course of which he had been played so ill a turn.
His sense of his own inadequacy increased every moment.
“May I know how things stand?” he enquired abruptly.
“Mayyou? Who has a better right than yourself, dear Owen? Come you out with me, and let us have a few words together.”
Owen followed his host.
“It has been a trying day—a sad and trying one. But I need not tell youthat—you, whose grief is so much greater than mine own, even. Though you, at least, Owen, have nothing to reproach yourself with, whereas I am responsible for the weakness in my poor child which has led to this unhappy state of affairs. But at least she is fully sensible of error—she knows what she has done.”
It would be strange indeed if she did not, Owen reflected, in the universalbouleversementthat had characterized Valeria’s surroundings ever since her sudden departure from the conventions.
“To my surprise, Lucilla, upon whose judgment Iplace a certain reliance, although it may sound somewhat odd to hear of a father seeking counsel of his child—Lucilla advocates my sanctioning her sister’s marriage. My first instinct was of course to cut her short at the mention of anything so premature—so—so lacking in all taste or feeling. But—I hardly know——”
“There is nothing against Captain Cuscaden, is there?”
Quentillian made the observation in the simple hope of expediting the Canon’s decision, but he immediately perceived that it led him open once more to the imputation of high-minded generosity.
“I mean to say, he can afford to marry?” he amended hastily.
“He has satisfied me upon that score,” Canon Morchard admitted. “I have never desired wealth for my dear ones, nor have they been brought up to it. Valeria is not unfitted to become the wife of a poor man. Nay, had she but acted an honourable and high-minded part throughout, I should gladly send her forth into the New World. Valeria has something of the pioneer spirit, I have always felt.”
He sighed heavily.
“In short, Owen, if, as Lucilla tells me, you share her own view, then I shall not withhold my consent to this marriage. The haste is strange and unseemly, but Captain Cuscaden cannot postpone his departure, in view of the position awaiting him, and my unhappy child, left here, would be in a difficult and awkward situation, nor have I any security, alas, that she has sufficient discretion to face such a situation.”
“It might be difficult for her,” Quentillian admitted. “Lucilla is looking for us, I think, sir.”
Lucilla was indeed advancing towards them.
The Canon frowned slightly.
“Am I wanted, my child?”
“It was Owen that I wanted, father.”
“My dear, Owen is engaged with me.”
“I know,” Lucilla seemed slightly perplexed, but quite unruffled. “I know, but the post is just going, and I thought Owen ought to see this before I send it to the papers.”
She handed him a sheet of notepaper, upon which he read a brief and conventionally-worded announcement to the effect that the marriage arranged between himself and Valeria Morchard would not take place.
He passed it to the Canon, who groaned.
“Must this be?” he enquired, with some superfluity.
The superfluity seemed to strike himself, for he added almost at once:
“‘If ’t’were done, ’t’were well ’t’were done quickly’, no doubt.”
“There is the other announcement to be thought of,” said Lucilla with merciless common-sense. “If Val is married at the end of this week, we shall have to put that in the papers.”
The Canon gave Owen a quick, anxious glance.
“Come into the house, my daughter,” he said to Lucilla. “We can speak of such matters there.”
Owen understood that Canon Morchard was thinking of him.
On a sudden impulse he went to seek Valeria.
“Look here, my dear, I’d do anything to help you, but do you really want me to stay on here any longer? It’s more than I can stand.”
“Oh, Owen! I thought you’d forgiven me—I thought you didn’t mind, so very much, after all,” she cried in dismay.
“I don’t mind in the least,” Quentillian told her desperately. “But it’s a false position altogether, and I want to be out of it.”
“Of course you do, it was very selfish of me to want to keep you. Only somehow Father is less—dreadful—when you’re there, Owen. But he’s forgiven me,” her tears came falling fast, “and I’m going out with George when he sails, at the beginning of next week. We shall be married very, very quietly, on Saturday.”
“I’m very glad to hear it. Indeed I am, Val. I’m sure he’s a good fellow, and I hope he’ll make you very happy.”
She was crying too much to speak, as he went away from her.
And Quentillian, definitely, could tell himself that he had no regrets in relinquishing Valeria.
Her warm emotionalism had not been without its appeal, but he had no liking for tears at a crisis, nor indeed for a crisis at all. His mind reverted to Lucilla’s matter-of-fact fashion of dealing with the crucial instances of life at St. Gwenllian, and theoretically, he met her attitude with applause. But he also remembered that he had not found her sympathetic, upon the preceding evening.
Impartially, he acknowledged with a rueful smile, his own exactingness.
He must go, and decided that it should be to London. As for Stear, he would face it later. The thought of Stear, and the loneliness there, brought the realest sense of loss to him that he had yet experienced over the defection of Valeria.
He had thought to hear her laughter there, to see the apricot bloom on her lovely face, her children growing up there.
With a long sigh, Owen let the vision go. The warm, human things of life had come very near to him, but he had not known how to hold them. Some subtle, inner sense warned him that Valeria had done well to betake herself and the rich gifts of her ardent nature, to the simple and primitive life of the colonies, and the man who was offering that life to her.
He went away to make his preparations for leaving St. Gwenllian.
Valeria’s wedding, not unnaturally, provided no occasion for festivity.
The bride herself remarked in private to her sisters:
“I feel exactly as though I was one of those unfortunate girls who come to Father for him to marry them so as to ‘make honest women of them’ at the eleventh hour. You know the way that sort of wedding is hurried through, in a hole-and-corner style....”
“It’s lucky for you you’ve got a good deal of your trousseau made already,” was Lucilla’s practical reply.
“Yes, and ‘V. Q.’ embroidered on more than half of it!” cried Val hysterically.
“You can’t possibly use it,” Flora declared austerely. “Unless I can alter it for you in time.”
“Of course she can use it,” said Lucilla.
Valeria left them both. In the overstrained condition of her nerves, Lucilla’s crudely-worded common-sense and Flora’s fastidiousness were equally little to her taste. Her father’s sorrowful gravity struck her with despair, and Owen Quentillian’s magnanimous detachment puzzled her sincerely, and made her doubly remorseful.
It was only when George Cuscaden was actually with her that she knew with real certainty that she had done right at the last moment.
On the night before her wedding, Canon Morchard called Valeria, gave her his blessing and forgiveness, and handed to her some of her dead mother’s jewelry.
“God bless and help you in the way that you have chosen, and may He bring all things together for good, as He alone can do.”
“Forgive me, Father.”
“My child, I have nothing to forgive. It was not I whom you wronged, but yourself,—and one other. His pardon is yours, fully and freely, as you know well. And now, my Valeria, you owe it to your husband to put the past behind you. You will enter into your new life purified by that very sense of past error, humbled by repentance.”
The Canon’s voice was very gentle.
It was long after midnight when Valeria heard him go upstairs.
George Cuscaden and Valeria were married by Mr. Clover, immediately after Matins next day, and Canon Morchard, throughout the ceremony, knelt with his face hidden by his hand.
The sense of irrevocability that comes to most brides assailed Valeria irresistibly for a moment as she walked, alone with her husband, the short distance from the church back to St. Gwenllian.
She glanced up at him, and in the look that met hers she found all the reassurance that she was ever to need.
“A new life, and a new world, my Val. We’re going to face things together, now.”
She was no longer afraid or doubtful, but felt the strangest rush of pure exhilaration.
It was her justification for the past.
“A new life, and a new world,” she repeated. “We’re going to be very happy, in spite of everything that’s happened.”
“Wearevery happy,” said George Cuscaden firmly, her hand held fast in his.
“I think they’ll forgive me, at home, in time. Father was very kind last night, and Flossie and Lucilla have been so good.”
“Val, my darling,” said the young man very seriously, “there’s one thing I do want to say, and you mustn’t mind. You’ve got to leave the past behind you, now. Isn’t there something or other in the Bible about forgetting thy father’s house and thine own people?”
“Something like that.”
“Well, I don’t really mean forgetting them, you know. But you’ve got your own life now, and it isn’t going to run on the old lines any more. It seems to me there’s been such a lot of talking and thinking in your life up to now, that there’s been no room fordoing anything. You and I are going to change all that.”
“Yes, George,” said Valeria.
She had, mysteriously, become absolutely happy and absolutely secure. Nothing mattered any more at all except the fact that George and she had found one another in time.
And she was able to surmise, not without a smile, that she had that moment heard almost the only Scriptural quotation from her husband of which he was ever likely to deliver himself.
Quotations, collections, barren discussions, abstract ideals, all lay behind her. In future her preoccupations would concern the health and welfare of her husband and perhaps his children, food and clothing and warmth, pots and pans, and the work of her own hands.
And from the depths of her heart, Valeria was glad.