BELINDA'S WEDDING-DAY.
The sun shone upon Belinda Lawford's wedding-day. The birds were
singing in the garden under her window as she opened her lattice and
looked out. The word lattice is not a poetical license in this case;
for Miss Lawford's chamber was a roomy, old-fashioned apartment at the
back of the house, with deep window-seats and diamond-paned casements.
The sun shone, and the roses bloomed in all their summer glory. "'Twas
in the time of roses," as gentle-minded Thomas Hood so sweetly sang;
surely the time of all others for a bridal morning. The girl looked out
into the sunshine with her loose hair falling about her shoulders, and
lingered a little looking at the familiar garden, with a half-pensive
smile.
"Oh, how often, how often," she said, "I have walked up and down by
those laburnums, Letty!" There were two pretty white-curtained
bedsteads in the old-fashioned room, and Miss Arundel had shared her
friend's apartment for the last week. "How often mamma and I have sat
under the dear old cedar, making our poor children's frocks! People say
monotonous lives are not happy: mine has been the same thing over and
over again; and yet how happy, how happy! And to think that we"--she
paused a moment, and the rosy colour in her cheeks deepened by just one
shade; it was so sweet to use that simple monosyllable "we" when Edward
Arundel was the other half of the pronoun,--"to think that we shall be
in Paris to-morrow!"
"Driving in the Bois," exclaimed Miss Arundel; "and dining at the
Maison Doree, or the Cafe de Paris. Don't dine at Meurice's, Linda;
it's dreadfully slow dining at one's hotel. And you'll be a young
married woman, and can do anything, you know. If I were a young married
woman, I'd ask my husband to take me to the Mabille, just for half an
hour, with an old bonnet and a thick veil. I knew a girl whose
first-cousin married a cornet in the Guards, and they went to the
Mabille one night. Come, Belinda, if you mean to have your back-hair
done at all, you'd better sit down at once and let me commence
operations."
Miss Arundel had stipulated that, upon this particular morning, she was
to dress her friend's hair; and she turned up the frilled sleeves of
her white dressing-gown, and set to work in the orthodox manner,
spreading a network of shining tresses about Miss Lawford's shoulders,
prior to the weaving of elaborate plaits that were to make a crown for
the fair young bride. Letitia's tongue went as fast as her fingers; but
Belinda was very silent.
She was thinking of the bounteous Providence that had given her the man
she loved for her husband. She had been on her knees in the early
morning, long before Letitia's awakening, breathing out innocent
thanksgiving for the happiness that overflowed her fresh young heart. A
woman had need to be country-bred, and to have been reared in the
narrow circle of a happy home, to feel as Belinda Lawford felt. Such
love as hers is only given to bright and innocent spirits, untarnished
even by the knowledge of sin.
Downstairs Edward Arundel was making a wretched pretence of
breakfasting _tete-a-tete_ with his future father-in-law.
The Major had held his peace as to the unlooked-for visitant of the
past night. He had given particular orders that no stranger should be
admitted to the house, and that was all. But being of a naturally
frank, not to say loquacious disposition, the weight of this secret was
a very terrible burden to the honest half-pay soldier. He ate his dry
toast uneasily, looking at the door every now and then, in the
perpetual expectation of beholding that barrier burst open by mad
Olivia Marchmont.
The breakfast was not a very cheerful meal, therefore. I don't suppose
any ante-nuptial breakfast ever is very jovial. There was the state
banquet--_the_ wedding breakfast--to be eaten by-and-by; and Mrs.
Lawford, attended by all the females of the establishment, was engaged
in putting the last touches to the groups of fruit and confectionery,
the pyramids of flowers, and that crowning glory, the wedding-cake.
"Remember the Madeira and still Hock are to go round first, and then
the sparkling; and tell Gogram to be particular about the corks,
Martha," Mrs. Lawford said to her confidential maid, as she gave a
nervous last look at the table. "I was at a breakfast once where a
champagne-cork hit the bridegroom on the bridge of his nose at the very
moment he rose to return thanks; and being a nervous man, poor
fellow,--in point of fact, he was a curate, and the bride was the
rector's daughter, with two hundred a year of her own,--it quite
overcame him, and he didn't get over it all through the breakfast. And
now I must run and put on my bonnet."
There was nothing but putting on bonnets, and pinning lace-shawls, and
wild outcries for hair-pins, and interchanging of little feminine
services, upon the bedroom floor for the next half-hour.
Major Lawford walked up and down the hall, putting on his white gloves,
which were too large for him,--elderly men's white gloves always are
too large for them,--and watching the door of the citadel. Olivia must
pass over a father's body, the old soldier thought, before she should
annoy Belinda on her bridal morning.
By-and-by the carriages came round to the door. The girl bridesmaids
came crowding down the stairs, hustling each other's crisped garments,
and disputing a little in a sisterly fashion; then Letitia Arundel,
with nine rustling flounces of white silk ebbing and flowing and
surging about her, and with a pleased simper upon her face; and then
followed Mrs. Arundel, stately in silver-grey moire, and Mrs. Lawford,
in violet silk--until the hall was a show of bonnets and bouquets and
muslin.
And last of all, Belinda Lawford, robed in cloudlike garments of
spotless lace, with bridal flowers trembling round her hair, came
slowly down the broad old-fashioned staircase, to see her lover
loitering in the hall below.
He looked very grave; but he greeted his bride with a tender smile. He
loved her, but he could not forget. Even upon this, his wedding-day,
the haunting shadow of the past was with him: not to be shaken off.
He did not wait till Belinda reached the bottom of the staircase. There
was a sort of ceremonial law to be observed, and he was not to speak to
Miss Lawford upon this special morning until he met her in the vestry
at Hillingsworth church; so Letitia and Mrs. Arundel hustled the young
man into one of the carriages, while Major Lawford ran to receive his
daughter at the foot of the stairs.
The Arundel carriage drove off about five minutes before the vehicle
that was to convey Major Lawford, Belinda, and as many of the girl
bridesmaids as could be squeezed into it without detriment to lace and
muslin. The rest went with Mrs. Lawford in the third and last carriage.
Hillingsworth church was about three-quarters of a mile from the
Grange. It was a pretty irregular old place, lying in a little nook
under the shadow of a great yew-tree. Behind the square Norman tower
there was a row of poplars, black against the blue summer sky; and
between the low gate of the churchyard and the grey, moss-grown porch,
there was an avenue of good old elms. The rooks were calling to each
other in the topmost branches of the trees as Major Lawford's carriage
drew up at the churchyard gate.
Belinda was a great favourite amongst the poor of Hillingsworth parish,
and the place had put on a gala-day aspect in honour of her wedding.
Garlands of honeysuckle and wild clematis were twined about the stout
oaken gate-posts. The school-children were gathered in clusters in the
churchyard, with their pinafores full of fresh flowers from shadowy
lanes and from prim cottage-gardens,--bright homely blossoms, with the
morning dew still upon them.
The rector and his curate were standing in the porch waiting for the
coming of the bride; and there were groups of well-dressed people
dotted about here and there in the drowsy-sheltered pews near the
altar. There were humbler spectators clustered under the low ceiling of
the gallery--tradesmen's wives and daughters, radiant with new ribbons,
and whispering to one another in delighted anticipation of the show.
Everybody round about the Grange loved pretty, genial Belinda Lawford,
and there was universal rejoicing because of her happiness.
The wedding party came out of the vestry presently in appointed order:
the bride with her head drooping, and her face hidden by her veil; the
bridesmaids' garments making a fluttering noise as they came up the
aisle, like the sound of a field of corn faintly stirred by summer
breezes.
Then the grave voice of the rector began the service with the brief
preliminary exordium; and then, in a tone that grew more solemn with
the increasing solemnity of the words, he went on to that awful charge
which is addressed especially to the bridegroom and the bride:
"I require and charge you both, as ye will answer at the dreadful day
of judgment, when the secrets of all hearts shall be disclosed, that if
either of you know any impediment, why ye may not be lawfully joined
together in matrimony, ye do now confess it. For be ye well
assured----"
The rector read no further; for a woman's voice from out the dusky
shadows at the further end of the church cried "Stop!"
There was a sudden silence; people stared at each other with scared
faces, and then turned in the direction whence the voice had come. The
bride lifted her head for the first time since leaving the vestry, and
looked round about her, ashy pale and trembling.
"O Edward, Edward!" she cried, "what is it?"
The rector waited, with his hand still upon the open book. He waited,
looking towards the other end of the chancel. He had no need to wait
long: a woman, with a black veil thrown back from a white, haggard
face, and with dusty garments dragging upon the church-floor, came
slowly up the aisle.
Her two hands were clasped upon her breast, and her breath came in
gasps, as if she had been running.
"Olivia!" cried Edward Arundel, "what, in Heaven's name--"
But Major Lawford stepped forward, and spoke to the rector.
"Pray let her be got out of the way," he said, in a low voice. "I was
warned of this. I was quite prepared for some such disturbance." He
sank his voice to a whisper. "_She is mad!_" he said, close in the
rector's ear.
The whisper was like whispering in general,--more distinctly audible
than the rest of the speech. Olivia Marchmont heard it.
"Mad until to-day," she cried; "but not mad to-day. O Edward Arundel! a
hideous wrong has been done by me and through me. Your wife--your
wife--"
"My wife! what of her? She--"
"She is alive!" gasped Olivia; "an hour's walk from here. I came on
foot. I was tired, and I have been long coming. I thought that I should
be in time to stop you before you got to the church; but I am very
weak. I ran the last part of the way--"
She dropped her hands upon the altar-rails, and seemed as if she would
have fallen. The rector put his arm about her to support her, and she
went on:
"I thought I should have spared her this," she said, pointing to
Belinda; "but I can't help it. _She_ must bear her misery as well as
others. It can't be worse for her than it has been for others. She must
bear--"
"My wife!" said Edward Arundel; "Mary, my poor sorrowful
darling--alive?"
Belinda turned away, and buried her face upon her mother's shoulder.
She could have borne anything better than this.
His heart--that supreme treasure, for which she had rendered up thanks
to her God--had never been hers after all. A word, a breath, and she
was forgotten; his thoughts went back to that other one. There was
unutterable joy, there was unspeakable tenderness in his tone, as he
spoke of Mary Marchmont, though _she_ stood by his side, in all her
foolish bridal finery, with her heart newly broken.
"O mother," she cried, "take me away! take me away, before I die!"
Olivia flung herself upon her knees by the altar-rails. Where the pure
young bride was to have knelt by her lover's side this wretched sinner
cast herself down, sunk far below all common thoughts in the black
depth of her despair.
"O my sin, my sin!" she cried, with clasped hands lifted up above her
head. "Will God ever forgive my sin? will God ever have pity upon me?
Can He pity, can He forgive, such guilt as mine? Even this work of
to-day is no atonement to be reckoned against my wickedness. I was
jealous of this other woman; I was jealous! Earthly passion was still
predominant in this miserable breast."
She rose suddenly, as if this outburst had never been, and laid her
hand upon Edward Arundel's arm.
"Come!" she said; "come!"
"To her--to Mary--my wife?"
They had taken Belinda away by this time; but Major Lawford stood
looking on. He tried to draw Edward aside; but Olivia's hand upon the
young man's arm held him like a vice.
"She is mad," whispered the Major. "Mr. Marchmont came to me last
night, and warned me of all this. He told me to be prepared for
anything; she has all sorts of delusions. Get her away, if you can,
while I go and explain matters to Belinda. Edward, if you have a spark
of manly feeling, get this woman away."
But Olivia held the bridegroom's arm with a tightening grasp.
"Come!" she said; "come! Are you turned to stone, Edward Arundel? Is
your love worth no more than this? I tell you, your wife, Mary
Marchmont, is alive. Let those who doubt me come and see for
themselves."
The eager spectators, standing up in the pews or crowding in the narrow
aisle, were only too ready to respond to this invitation.
Olivia led her cousin out into the churchyard; she led him to the gate
where the carriages were waiting. The crowd flocked after them; and the
people outside began to cheer as they came out. That cheer was the
signal for which the school-children had waited; and they set to work
scattering flowers upon the narrow pathway, before they looked up to
see who was coming to trample upon the rosebuds and jessamine, the
woodbine and seringa. But they drew back, scared and wondering, as
Olivia came along the pathway, sweeping those tender blossoms after her
with her trailing black garments, and leading the pale bridegroom by
his arm.
She led him to the door of the carriage beside which Major Lawford's
gray-haired groom was waiting, with a big white satin favour pinned
upon his breast, and a bunch of roses in his button hole. There were
favours in the horses' ears, and favours upon the breasts of the
Hillingsworth tradespeople who supplied bread and butcher's meat and
grocery to the family at the Grange. The bell-ringers up in the
church-tower saw the crowd flock out of the porch, and thought the
marriage ceremony was over. The jangling bells pealed out upon the hot
summer air as Edward stood by the churchyard-gate, with Olivia
Marchmont by his side.
"Lend me your carriage," he said to Major Lawford, "and come with me. I
must see the end of this. It may be all a delusion; but I must see the
end of it. If there is any truth in instinct, I believe that I shall
see my wife--alive."
He got into the carriage without further ceremony, and Olivia and Major
Lawford followed him.
"Where is my wife?" the young man asked, letting down the front window
as he spoke.
"At Kemberling, at Hester Jobson's."
"Drive to Kemberling," Edward said to the coachman,--"to Kemberling
High Street, as fast as you can go."
The man drove away from the churchyard-gate. The humbler spectators,
who were restrained by no niceties of social etiquette, hurried after
the vehicle, raising white clouds of dust upon the high road with their
eager feet. The higher classes lingered about the churchyard, talking
to each other and wondering.
Very few people stopped to think of Belinda Lawford. "Let the stricken
deer go weep." A stricken deer is a very uninteresting object when
there are hounds in full cry hard by, and another deer to be hunted.
"Since when has my wife been at Kemberling?" Edward Arundel asked
Olivia, as the carriage drove along the high road between the two
villages.
"Since daybreak this morning."
"Where was she before then?"
"At Stony-Stringford Farm."
"And before then?"
"In the pavilion over the boat-house at Marchmont."
"My God! And--"
The young man did not finish his sentence. He put his head out of the
window, looking towards Kemberling, and straining his eyes to catch the
earliest sight of the straggling village street.
"Faster!" he cried every now and then to the coachman; "faster!"
In little more than half an hour from the time at which it had left the
churchyard-gate, the carriage stopped before the little carpenter's
shop. Mr. Jobson's doorway was adorned by a painted representation of
two very doleful-looking mutes standing at a door; for Hester's husband
combined the more aristocratic avocation of undertaker with the homely
trade of carpenter and joiner.
Olivia Marchmont got out of the carriage before either of the two men
could alight to assist her. Power was the supreme attribute of this
woman's mind. Her purpose never faltered; from the moment she had left
Marchmont Towers until now, she had known neither rest of body nor
wavering of intention.
"Come," she said to Edward Arundel, looking back as she stood upon the
threshold of Mr. Jobson's door; "and you too," she added, turning to
Major Lawford,--"follow us, and _see_ whether I am MAD."
She passed through the shop, and into that prim, smart parlour in which
Edward Arundel had lamented his lost wife.
The latticed windows were wide open, and the warm summer sunshine
filled the room.
A girl, with loose tresses of hazel-brown hair falling about her face,
was sitting on the floor, looking down at a beautiful fair-haired
nursling of a twelvemonth old.
The girl was John Marchmont's daughter; the child was Edward Arundel's
son. It was _his_ childish cry that the young man had heard upon that
October night in the pavilion by the water.
"Mary Arundel," said Olivia, in a hard voice, "I give you back your
husband."
The young mother got up from the ground with a low cry, tottered
forward, and fell into her husband's arms.
"They told me you were dead! They made me believe that you were dead!"
she said, and then fainted on the young man's breast. Edward carried
her to a sofa and laid her down, white and senseless; and then knelt
down beside her, crying over her, and sobbing out inarticulate
thanksgiving to the God who had given his lost wife back to him.
"Poor sweet lamb!" murmured Hester Jobson; "she's as weak as a baby;
and she's gone through so much a'ready this morning."
It was some time before Edward Arundel raised his head from the pillow
upon which his wife's pale face lay, half hidden amid the tangled hair.
But when he did look up, he turned to Major Lawford and stretched out
his hand.
"Have pity upon me," he said. "I have been the dupe of a villain. Tell
your poor child how much I esteem her, how much I regret that--that--we
should have loved each other as we have. The instinct of my heart would
have kept me true to the past; but it was impossible to know your
daughter and not love her. The villain who has brought this sorrow upon
us shall pay dearly for his infamy. Go back to your daughter; tell her
everything. Tell her what you have seen here. I know her heart, and I
know that she will open her arms to this poor ill-used child."
The Major went away very downcast. Hester Jobson bustled about bringing
restoratives and pillows, stopping every now and then in an outburst of
affection by the slippery horsehair couch on which Mary lay.
Mrs. Jobson had prepared her best bedroom for her beloved visitor, and
Edward carried his young wife up to the clean, airy chamber. He went
back to the parlour to fetch the child. He carried the fair-haired
little one up-stairs in his own arms; but I regret to say that the
infant showed an inclination to whimper in his newly-found father's
embrace. It is only in the British Drama that newly discovered fathers
are greeted with an outburst of ready-made affection. Edward Arundel
went back to the sitting-room presently, and sat down, waiting till
Hester should bring him fresh tidings of his wife. Olivia Marchmont
stood by the window, with her eyes fixed upon Edward.
"Why don't you speak to me?" she said presently. "Can you find no words
that are vile enough to express your hatred of me? Is that why you are
silent?"
"No, Olivia," answered the young man, calmly. "I am silent, because I
have nothing to say to you. Why you have acted as you have acted,--why
you have chosen to be the tool of a black-hearted villain,--is an
unfathomable mystery to me. I thank God that your conscience was
aroused this day, and that you have at least hindered the misery of an
innocent girl. But why you have kept my wife hidden from me,--why you
have been the accomplice of Paul Marchmont's crime,--is more than I can
even attempt to guess."
"Not yet?" said Olivia, looking at him with a strange smile. "Even yet
I am a mystery to you?"
"You are, indeed, Olivia."
She turned away from him with a laugh.
"Then I had better remain so till the end," she said, looking out into
the garden. But after a moment's silence she turned her head once more
towards the young man. "I will speak," she said; "I _will_ speak,
Edward Arundel. I hope and believe that I have not long to live, and
that all my shame and misery, my obstinate wickedness, my guilty
passion, will come to an end, like a long feverish dream. O God, have
mercy on my waking, and make it brighter than this dreadful sleep! I
loved you, Edward Arundel. Ah! you start. Thank God at least for that.
I kept my secret well. You don't know what that word 'love' means, do
you? You think you love that childish girl yonder, perhaps; but I can
tell you that you don't know what love is. _I_ know what it is. I have
loved. For ten years,--for ten long, dreary, desolate, miserable years,
fifty-two weeks in every year, fifty-two Sundays, with long idle hours
between the two church services--I have loved you, Edward. Shall I tell
you what it is to love? It is to suffer, to hate, yes, to hate even the
object of your love, when that love is hopeless; to hate him for the
very attributes that have made you love him; to grudge the gifts and
graces that have made him dear. It is to hate every creature on whom
his eyes look with greater tenderness than they look on you; to watch
one face until its familiar lines become a perpetual torment to you,
and you cannot sleep because of its eternal presence staring at you in
all your dreams. It is to be like some wretched drunkard, who loathes
the fiery spirit that is destroying him, body and soul, and yet goes
on, madly drinking, till he dies. Love! How many people upon this great
earth know the real meaning of that hideous word! I have learnt it
until my soul loathes the lesson. They will tell you that I am mad,
Edward, and they will tell you something near the truth; but not quite
the truth. My madness has been my love. From long ago, when you were
little more than a boy--you remember, don't you, the long days at the
Rectory? _I_ remember every word you ever spoke to me, every sentiment
you ever expressed, every look of your changing face--you were the
first bright thing that came across my barren life; and I loved you. I
married John Marchmont--why, do you think?--because I wanted to make a
barrier between you and me. I wanted to make my love for you impossible
by making it a sin. So long as my husband lived, I shut your image out
of my mind as I would have shut out the Prince of Darkness, if he had
come to me in a palpable shape. But since then--oh, I hope I have been
mad since then; I hope that God may forgive my sins because I have been
mad!"
Her thoughts wandered away to that awful question which had been so
lately revived in her mind--Could she be forgiven? Was it within the
compass of heavenly mercy to forgive such a sin as hers?