HER LORD AND MASTER.
It was not much after three o'clock when Elizabeth walked slowly
upstairs to her room, bearing single-handed her own responsibilities.
Now that she was alone and undisturbed, she began to realise how
great they were. She sat down on her little bed to think what she was
doing--to look back upon the past, and forward into the future--until
her head spun round. When she could think no more, she slid down
upon her knees and prayed a fervent, wordless prayer--rested her
over-weighted soul on the pillars of the universe, which bore up the
strange little world in which she was but an infinitesimal atom--and,
feeling that there was a strong foundation somewhere, and perhaps
even feeling dimly that she had touched her point of contact with it
only just now when she touched her true love's lips, she felt less
intolerably burdened with the charge of herself. She rose up with her
nerves steadied and her brain composed. What was done was done, and
it had been done for the best. "We can but do our best, and leave
it," he had said; and, thinking of his words, a sense of his robust
faith, which she did not call faith, permeated her unsettled mind
and comforted her with the feeling that she would have support and
strength in him. She could not repent. She could not wish anything to
be altered. She loved him and needed him; and he loved and needed her,
and had a right to her. Yes, he had a right to her, independently of
that fortune which was hers and which she dared not take away from him
while he was using it so much better than she could, he was her mate
and lord, and she belonged to him. What reason was there against her
marrying him? Only one; Mrs. Duff-Scott's reason, which even she had
abandoned, apparently--one obligation of duty, which conscience, left
to its own delicate sense of good and evil, refused to insist upon as
such. And what reason was there against marrying him to-morrow, if he
desired it, and by doing which, while they would be made so happy, no
one else could be made unhappy? She was unlearned in the social views
and customs concerning such matters, and said in her simple heart there
was no reason whatever--none, none.
So she set to work on her preparations, her eyes shining and her hands
trembling with the overwhelming bliss of her anticipations, which
awed and dazzled her; beset at intervals with chill misgivings, and
thrills of panic, dread and fear, as to what effect upon her blessed
fortune that afternoon's work at Mrs. Duff-Scott's house might have.
She took off her pretty gown, which he had sanctified by his approval,
and laid it tenderly on the bed; put on a loose wrapper, pulled out
drawers and opened cupboards, and proceeded to pack her portmanteau
for that wedding journey which she still could not believe was to be
taken to-morrow. If such a sudden demand upon the resources of her
wardrobe had been made a few months ago, she would have been greatly
perplexed to meet it. Now she had, not only a commodious portmanteau
(procured for their country visit), but drawers full of fine linen,
piles of handkerchiefs, boxes of gloves, everything that she could need
for an indefinite sojourn either in the world or out of it. When Mrs.
Duff-Scott had gained their consent to be allowed to become a mother
to them, she had lost no time in fitting them all out as became her
adopted daughters, in defiance of any scruples or protests that they
might make. Elizabeth's trousseau, it seemed to her, as she filled one
side of the portmanteau with dainty underclothes delicately stitched
and embroidered and frilled with lace, had been already provided for
her, and while her heart went out in gratitude to her munificent
friend, she could not help feeling that one of the dearest privileges
of being rich was to have the power to acknowledge that munificence
suitably. Only that very day, for the first time, she had seen an
indication that tended to confirm her and Patty's instinctive sense
that they had made a mistake in permitting themselves to accept so
many favours. Eleanor, feeling herself already rich and the potential
possessor of unlimited fine clothes, had put on her Cup dress and
bonnet to walk out with Mr. Brion; and Mrs. Duff-Scott, when she
met her in the Exhibition grounds, and while thrown for a moment off
her usual even balance, had looked at the girl with a disapproving
eye, which plainly accused her of extravagance--in other words, of
wasting her (Mrs. Duff-Scott's) substance in riotous living. That
little incident, so slight and momentary as it was, would have been
as terrible a blow to them as was Paul Brion's refusal of their
invitation to tea, had it not been that they were no longer poor, but
in a position to discharge their obligations. She thought how Mrs.
Duff-Scott would come to Yelverton by-and-bye, and to the London house,
and how she (Elizabeth) would lavish the best of everything upon her.
It was a delightful thought.
While she was building air castles, she sorted and folded her clothes
methodically, and with motherly care turned over those belonging to
her sisters, to see that they were well provided for and in need
of nothing for the time of her brief absence. While investigating
Patty's wardrobe, she thought much of her dear companion and that
next-door neighbour, still in their unreconciled trouble, and still
so far from the safe haven to which she was drawing nigh; and she was
not too selfish in her own happiness to be unable to concern herself
anxiously about theirs. Well, even this was to be set right now. She
and Kingscote, with their mutually augmented wisdom and power, would
be able to settle that matter, one way or another, when they returned
from their wedding journey. Kingscote, who was never daunted by any
difficulties, would find a way to solve this one, and to do what
was best for Patty. Then it occurred to her that if Patty and Paul
were married, Paul might want to keep his wife in Australia, and the
sisters, who had never been away from each other, might be doomed
to live apart. But she persuaded herself that this also would be
prevented, and that Paul, stiff-necked as he was, would not let Patty
be unhappy, as she certainly would be if separated by the width of the
world from herself--not if Kingscote were at hand, to point it out
to him in his authoritative and convincing manner. As for Nelly, she
was to comfort Mrs. Duff-Scott for awhile, and then she was to come,
bringing the fairy godmother with her, to Yelverton, to live under her
brother-cousin's protection until she, too, was married--to someone
better, far better, than Mr. Westmoreland. Perhaps the Duff-Scotts
themselves would be tempted (by the charms of West-End and Whitechapel
society, respectively) to settle in England too. In which case there
would be nothing left to wish for.
At five o'clock she had finished her packing, put on her dress--not
the wedding dress, which was laid smoothly on a cupboard shelf--and
sat down by the sitting-room window to wait for her sisters, or for
somebody, to come to her. This half-hour of unoccupied suspense was
a very trying time; all her tremulous elation died down, all her
blissful anticipations became overcast with chill forebodings, as
a sunny sky with creeping clouds, while she bent strained eyes and
ears upon the street, watching for the news that did not come. In
uncontrollable excitement and restlessness, she abandoned her post
towards six o'clock, and set herself to prepare tea in the expectation
of her sisters' return. She spread the cloth and set out the cups and
saucers, the bread and butter, the modest tin of sardines. As the warm
day was manifestly about to close with a keen south wind, she thought
she would light a fire in the sitting-room and make some toast. It
was better to have something to do to distract her from her fierce
anxieties, and, moreover, she wished the little home nest to be as cosy
and comfortable as possible to-night, which might be the last night
that the sisters would be there together--the closing scene of their
independent life. So she turned up her cuffs, put on gloves and apron,
and fetched wood and coals from their small store in the back-yard;
and then she laid and lit a fire, blew it into as cheerful a blaze as
the unsatisfactory nature of city fuel and a city grate permitted,
and, having shaken down her neat dress and washed her hands, proceeded
to make the toast. She was at this work, kneeling on the hearthrug,
and staring intently into the fire over a newly-cut slice of bread
that she had just put upon the fork, when she heard a sound that made
her heart stand still. It was the sound of a cab rattling into the
street and bumping against the kerb at her own gate. Springing to her
feet and listening breathlessly, she heard the gate open to a quiet,
strong hand that belonged to neither of her sisters, and a solid tread
on the flags that paved a footpath through the little garden to the
door. At the door a quick rapping, at once light and powerful, brought
the servant from her underground kitchen, and a sonorous, low voice
spoke in the hall and echoed up the stairs--the well-known voice of
Kingscote Yelverton. Kingscote Yelverton, unaccompanied by anybody
else--paying his first visit to this virgin retreat, where, as he knew
very well, his sweetheart at this moment was alone, and where, as he
also knew, the unchaperoned male had no business to be. Evidently his
presence announced a crisis that transcended all the circumstances and
conventionalities of every-day life.
He walked upstairs to her sitting-room, and rapped at the door. She
could not tell him to come in, for her heart seemed to be beating in
her throat, and she felt too suffocated to speak; she stumbled across
to the door, and, opening it, looked at him dumbly, with a face as
white as the white frills of her gown. He, for his part, neither spoke
to her nor kissed her; his whole aspect indicated strong emotion,
but he was so portentously grave, and almost stern, that her heart,
which had fluttered so wildly at the sight of him, collapsed and sank.
Taking her hand gently, he shut the door, led her across the room to
the hearthrug, and stood, her embodied fate, before her. She was so
overwhelmed with fear of what he might be going to say that she turned
and hid her face in her hands against the edge of the mantelpiece, that
she might brace herself to bear it without showing him how stricken she
was.
"Well," he said, after a little pause, "I have been having a great
surprise, Elizabeth. I little thought what you were letting me in for
when you arranged that interview with Mr. Brion. I never was so utterly
out of my reckoning as I have found myself to-day."
She did not speak, but waited in breathless anguish for the sentence
that she foreboded was to be passed upon her--condemning her to keep
that miserable money in exchange for him.
"I know all about the great discovery now," he went on. "I have read
all the papers. I can testify that they are perfectly genuine. I have
seen the marriage register that that one was copied from--I can verify
all those dates, and names, and places--there is not a flaw anywhere
in Mr. Brion's case. You are really my cousins, and you--_you_,
Elizabeth--are the head of the family now. There was no entail--it was
cut off before my uncle Patrick's time, and he died before he made a
will: so everything is yours." After a pause, he added, brokenly, "I
wish you joy, my dear. I should be a hypocrite if I said I was glad,
but--but I wish you joy all the same."
She gave a short, dry sob, keeping her face hidden; evidently, even to
him, she was not having much joy in her good fortune just now. He moved
closer to her, and laid his hand on her shoulder.
"I have come now to fetch you," he said, in a low, grave tone, that was
still unsteady. "Mrs. Duff-Scott wanted to come herself, but I asked
her to let me come alone, because I have something to say to you that
is only between ourselves."
Then her nervous terrors found voice. "Oh, tell me what it is!" she
cried, trembling like a leaf. "Don't keep me in suspense. If you have
anything cruel to say, say it quickly."
"Anything cruel?" he repeated. "I don't think you are really afraid
of that--from me. No, I haven't anything cruel to say--only a simple
question to ask--which you will have to answer me honestly, Elizabeth."
She waited in silence, and he went on. "Didn't you tell
me"--emphasising each word heavily--"that you had been induced by
something outside yourself to decide in my favour?"
"Not altogether induced," she protested; "helped perhaps."
"Helped, then--influenced--by outside considerations?"
"Yes," she assented, with heroic truthfulness.
"You were alluding to this discovery, of course?"
"Yes."
"And you have consented to marry me in order that I may not be deprived
of my property?" She did not speak immediately, from purely physical
incapacity, and he went on with a hardening voice. "I will not be
married on those grounds, Elizabeth. You must have _known_ that I would
not."
For a moment she stood with her face hidden, struggling with a rising
tide of tears that, when these terrible words were spoken, would not
be kept in check; then she lifted her head, and flung out her arms,
and clasped him round his great shoulders. (It is not, I own, what a
heroine should have done, whose duty was to carry a difficulty of this
sort through half a volume at least, but I am nevertheless convinced
that my real Elizabeth did it, though I was not there to see--standing,
as she did, within a few inches of her lover, and with nothing to
prevent their coming to a reasonable understanding.) "Oh," she cried,
between her long-drawn sobs, "_don't_ cast me off because of that
horrid money! I could not bear it _now!_"
"What!" he responded, stooping over her and holding her to his breast,
speaking in a voice as shaken as her own, "is it really so? Is it for
love of me only, my darling, my darling?"--pouring his long pent-up
passion over her with a force that seemed to carry her off her feet and
make the room spin round. "Would you have me if there was no property
in the question, simply because you feel, as I do, that we could not do
without each other? Then we will be married to-morrow, Elizabeth, and
all the world shall be welcome to brand me a schemer and fortune-hunter
if it likes."
She got her breath in a few seconds, and recovered sufficient
consciousness to grasp the vanishing tail of those last words.
"A fortune-hunter! Oh, how _preposterous!_ A fortune-hunter!"
"That is what I shall seem," he insisted, with a smile, "to that worthy
public for whose opinion some people care so much."
"But you don't care?"
"No; I don't care."
She considered a moment, with her tall head at rest on his tall
shoulder; then new lights dawned on her. "But I must care for you," she
said, straightening herself. "I must not allow anything so unjust--so
outrageous--to be said of you--of _you_, and through my fault. Look
here"--very seriously--"let us put off our marriage for a while--for
just so long as may enable me to show the world, as I very easily can,
that it is _I_ who am seeking _you_--"
"Like a queen selecting her prince consort?"
"No, like Esther--seeking favour of her king. I would not be too proud
to run after you--" She broke off, with a hysterical laugh, as she
realised the nature of her proposal.
"Ah, my darling, that would be very sweet," said he, drowning her
once more in ineffable caresses, "but to be married to-morrow will
be sweeter still. No, we won't wait--I _can't_--unless there is an
absolute necessity for it. That game would certainly not be worth the
candle. What is the world to me if I have got you? I said we would be
married to-morrow; I told Mrs. Duff-Scott so, and got her consent--not
without some difficulty, I must own--before Mr. Brion opened his
budget. I would not hear what he had to say--little thinking what it
was I was going to hear!--until I had announced my intentions and the
date of our wedding. Think of my cheek! Conceive of such unparalleled
impudence! But now that everything is square between us, that date
shall be kept--it shall be faithfully kept. Come, then, I must take you
away. Have you done your packing? Mrs. Duff-Scott says we are to bring
that portmanteau with us, that she may see for herself if you have
furnished it properly. And you are not to come back here--you are not
to come to me to the Exhibition to-morrow. She was terribly scandalised
at that item in our programme."
"In yours," said Elizabeth, ungenerously.
"In mine. I accept it cheerfully. So she is going to take charge of you
from this hour until you are Mrs. Yelverton, and in my sole care for
the rest of your life--or mine. Poor woman, she is greatly cut up by
the loss of that grand wedding that she would have had if we had let
her."
"I am sure she must be cut up," said Elizabeth, whose face was suffused
with blushes, and whose eyes looked troubled. "She must be shocked and
vexed at such--such precipitancy. It really does not seem decorous,"
she confessed, with tardy scrupulousness; "do you think it does?"
"Oh, yes, I think it is quite decorous. It may not be conventional, but
that is quite another thing."
"It is like a clandestine marriage--almost like an elopement. It _must_
vex her to see me acting so--so--"
"So what? No, I don't think it does. She _was_ a little vexed at first,
but she has got over it. In her heart of hearts I believe she would be
disappointed now if we didn't do it. She likes a little bit of innocent
unconventionalism as well as anybody, and the romance of the whole
thing has taken hold of her. Besides," added Mr. Yelverton, "you know
she intended us for each other, sooner or later."
"You have said as much before, but _I_ don't know anything about it,"
laughed Elizabeth.
"Yes, she told me I might have you--weeks ago."
"She was very generous."
"She was. She was more generous than she knew. Well"--catching himself
up suddenly--"we really must go to her now, Elizabeth. I told her I
would only come in here, where I have no business to be to-day, for
half a minute, and I have stayed more than half an hour. It is nearly
dinner time, and I have a great deal to do this evening. I have more to
do even than I bargained for."
"Why more?" she asked, apprehensively.
"I am going to have some papers prepared by Mr. Brion and the major's
lawyers, which you will have to sign before you surrender your
independence to-morrow."
"I won't sign anything," said Elizabeth.
"Oh, won't you! We'll see about that."
"I know what it means. You will make me sign away your freedom to use
that money as your own--and I won't do it."
"We'll see," he repeated, smiling with an air which said plainly that
if she thought herself a free agent she was very much mistaken.