A STOLEN HONEYMOON.
The village to which Edward Arundel took his bride was within a few
miles of Winchester. The young soldier had become familiar with the
place in his early boyhood, when he had gone to spend a part of one
bright midsummer holiday at the house of a schoolfellow; and had ever
since cherished a friendly remembrance of the winding trout-streams,
the rich verdure of the valleys, and the sheltering hills that shut in
the pleasant little cluster of thatched cottages, the pretty
white-walled villas, and the grey old church.
But to Mary, whose experiences of town and country were limited to the
dingy purlieus of Oakley Street and the fenny flats of Lincolnshire,
this Hampshire village seemed a rustic paradise, which neither trouble
nor sorrow could ever approach. She had trembled at the thought of
Olivia's coming in Oakley Street; but here she seemed to lose all
terror of her stern stepmother,--here, sheltered and protected by her
young husband's love, she fancied that she might live her life out
happy and secure.
She told Edward this one sunny morning, as they sat by the young man's
favourite trout-stream. Captain Arundel's fishing-tackle lay idle on
the turf at his side, for he had been beguiled into forgetfulness of a
ponderous trout he had been watching and finessing with for upwards of
an hour, and had flung himself at full length upon the mossy margin of
the water, with his uncovered head lying in Mary's lap.
The childish bride would have been content to sit for ever thus in that
rural solitude, with her fingers twisted in her husband's chestnut
curls, and her soft eyes keeping timid watch upon his handsome
face,--so candid and unclouded in its careless repose. The undulating
meadow-land lay half-hidden in a golden haze, only broken here and
there by the glitter of the brighter sunlight that lit up the waters of
the wandering streams that intersected the low pastures. The massive
towers of the cathedral, the grey walls of St. Cross, loomed dimly in
the distance; the bubbling plash of a mill-stream sounded like some
monotonous lullaby in the drowsy summer atmosphere. Mary looked from
the face she loved to the fair landscape about her, and a tender
solemnity crept into her mind--a reverent love and admiration for this
beautiful earth, which was almost akin to awe.
"How pretty this place is, Edward!" she said. "I had no idea there were
such places in all the wide world. Do you know, I think I would rather
be a cottage-girl here than an heiress in Lincolnshire. Edward, if I
ask you a favour, will you grant it?"
She spoke very earnestly, looking down at her husband's upturned face;
but Captain Arundel only laughed at her question, without even caring
to lift the drowsy eyelids that drooped over his blue eyes.
"Well, my pet, if you want anything short of the moon, I suppose your
devoted husband is scarcely likely to refuse it. Our honeymoon is not a
fortnight old yet, Polly dear; you wouldn't have me turn tyrant quite
as soon as this. Speak out, Mrs. Arundel, and assert your dignity as a
British matron. What is the favour I am to grant?"
"I want you to live here always, Edward darling," pleaded the girlish
voice. "Not for a fortnight or a month, but for ever and ever. I have
never been happy at Marchmont Towers. Papa died there, you know, and I
cannot forget that. Perhaps that ought to have made the place sacred to
me, and so it has; but it is sacred like papa's tomb in Kemberling
Church, and it seems like profanation to be happy in it, or to forget
my dead father even for a moment. Don't let us go back there, Edward.
Let my stepmother live there all her life. It would seem selfish and
cruel to turn her out of the house she has so long been mistress of.
Mr. Gormby will go on collecting the rents, you know, and can send us
as much money as we want; and we can take that pretty house we saw to
let on the other side of Milldale,--the house with the rookery, and the
dovecotes, and the sloping lawn leading down to the water. You know you
don't like Lincolnshire, Edward, any more than I do, and there's
scarcely any trout-fishing near the Towers."
Captain Arundel opened his eyes, and lifted himself out of his
reclining position before he answered his wife.
"My own precious Polly," he said, smiling fondly at the gentle childish
face turned in such earnestness towards his own; "my runaway little
wife, rich people have their duties to perform as well as poor people;
and I am afraid it would never do for you to hide in this
out-of-the-way Hampshire village, and play absentee from stately
Marchmont and all its dependencies. I love that pretty, infantine,
unworldly spirit of yours, my darling; and I sometimes wish we were two
grown-up babes in the wood, and could wander about gathering wild
flowers, and eating blackberries and hazel-nuts, until the shades of
evening closed in, and the friendly robins came to bury us. Don't fancy
I am tired of our honeymoon, Polly, or that I care for Marchmont Towers
any more than you do; but I fear the non-residence plan would never
answer. The world would call my little wife eccentric, if she ran away
from her grandeur; and Paul Marchmont the artist,--of whom your poor
father had rather a bad opinion, by the way,--would be taking out a
statute of lunacy against you."
"Paul Marchmont!" repeated Mary. "Did papa dislike Mr. Paul Marchmont?"
"Well, poor John had a sort of a prejudice against the man, I believe;
but it was only a prejudice, for he freely confessed that he could
assign no reason for it. But whatever Mr. Paul Marchmont may be, you
must live at the Towers, Mary, and be Lady Bountiful-in-chief in your
neighbourhood, and look after your property, and have long interviews
with Mr. Gormby, and become altogether a woman of business; so that
when I go back to India----"
Mary interrupted him with a little cry:
"Go back to India!" she exclaimed. "What do you mean, Edward?"
"I mean, my darling, that my business in life is to fight for my Queen
and country, and not to spunge upon my wife's fortune. You don't
suppose I'm going to lay down my sword at seven-and-twenty years of
age, and retire upon my pension? No, Polly; you remember what Lord
Nelson said on the deck of the _Victory_ at Trafalgar. That saying can
never be so hackneyed as to lose its force. I must do my duty, Polly--I
must do my duty, even if duty and love pull different ways, and I have
to leave my darling, in the service of my country."
Mary clasped her hands in despair, and looked piteously at her
lover-husband, with the tears streaming down her pale cheeks.
"O Edward," she cried, "how cruel you are; how very, very cruel you are
to me! What is the use of my fortune if you won't share it with me, if
you won't take it all; for it is yours, my dearest--it is all yours? I
remember the words in the Marriage Service, 'with all my goods I thee
endow.' I have given you Marchmont Towers, Edward; nobody in the world
can take it away from you. You never, never, never could be so cruel as
to leave me! I know how brave and good you are, and I am proud to think
of your noble courage and all the brave deeds you did in India. But you
_have_ fought for your country, Edward; you _have_ done your duty.
Nobody can expect more of you; nobody shall take you from me. O my
darling, my husband, you promised to shelter and defend me while our
lives last! You won't leave me--you won't leave me, will you?"
Edward Arundel kissed the tears away from his wife's pale face, and
drew her head upon his bosom.
"My love," he said tenderly, "you cannot tell how much pain it gives me
to hear you talk like this. What can I do? To give up my profession
would be to make myself next kin to a pauper. What would the world say
of me, Mary? Think of that. This runaway marriage would be a dreadful
dishonour to me, if it were followed by a life of lazy dependence on my
wife's fortune. Nobody can dare to slander the soldier who spends the
brightest years of his life in the service of his country. You would
not surely have me be less than true to myself, Mary darling? For my
honour's sake, I must leave you."
"O no, no, no!" cried the girl, in a low wailing voice. Unselfish and
devoted as she had been in every other crisis of her young life, she
could not be reasonable or self-denying here; she was seized with
despair at the thought of parting with her husband. No, not even for
his honour's sake could she let him go. Better that they should both
die now, in this early noontide of their happiness.
"Edward, Edward," she sobbed, clinging convulsively about the young
man's neck, "don't leave me--don't leave me!"
"Will you go with me to India, then, Mary?"
She lifted her head suddenly, and looked her husband in the face, with
the gladness in her eyes shining through her tears, like an April sun
through a watery sky.
"I would go to the end of the world with you, my own darling," she
said; "the burning sands and the dreadful jungles would have no terrors
for me, if I were with you, Edward."
Captain Arundel smiled at her earnestness.
"I won't take you into the jungle, my love," he answered, playfully;
"or if I do, your palki shall be well guarded, and all ravenous beasts
kept at a respectful distance from my little wife. A great many ladies
go to India with their husbands, Polly, and come back very little the
worse for the climate or the voyage; and except your money, there is no
reason you should not go with me."
"Oh, never mind my money; let anybody have that."
"Polly," cried the soldier, very seriously, "we must consult Richard
Paulette as to the future. I don't think I did right in marrying you
during his absence; and I have delayed writing to him too long, Polly.
Those letters must be written this afternoon."
"The letter to Mr. Paulette and to your father?"
"Yes; and the letter to my cousin Olivia."
Mary's face grew sorrowful again, as Captain Arundel said this.
"_Must_ you tell my stepmother of our marriage?" she said.
"Most assuredly, my dear. Why should we keep her in ignorance of it?
Your father's will gave her the privilege of advising you, but not the
power to interfere with your choice, whatever that choice might be. You
were your own mistress, Mary, when you married me. What reason have you
to fear my cousin Olivia?"
"No reason, perhaps," the girl answered, sadly; "but I do fear her. I
know I am very foolish, Edward, and you have reason to despise me,--you
who are so brave. But I could never tell you how I tremble at the
thought of being once more in my stepmother's power. She said cruel
things to me, Edward. Every word she spoke seemed to stab me to the
heart; but it isn't that only. There's something more than that;
something that I can't describe, that I can't understand; something
which tells me that she hates me."
"Hates you, darling?"
"Yes, Edward; yes, she hates me. It wasn't always so, you know. She
used to be only cold and reserved, but lately her manner has changed. I
thought that she was ill, perhaps, and that my presence worried her.
People often wish to be alone, I know, when they are ill. O Edward, I
have seen her shrink from me, and shudder if her dress brushed against
mine, as if I had been some horrible creature. What have I done,
Edward, that she should hate me?"
Captain Arundel knitted his brows, and set himself to work out this
womanly problem, but he could make nothing of it. Yes, what Mary had
said was perfectly true: Olivia hated her. The young man had seen that
upon the morning of the girl's flight from Marchmont Towers; he had
seen vengeful fury and vindictive passion raging in the dark face of
John Marchmont's widow. But what reason could the woman have for her
hatred of this innocent girl? Again and again Olivia's cousin asked
himself this question; and he was so far away from the truth at last,
that he could only answer it by imagining the lowest motive for the
widow's bad feeling. "She envies my poor little girl her fortune and
position," he thought.
"But you won't leave me alone with my stepmother, will you, Edward?"
Mary said, recurring to her old prayer. "I am not afraid of her, nor of
anybody or anything in the world, while you are with me,--how should I
be?--but I think if I were to be alone with her again, I should die.
She would speak to me again as she spoke upon the night of the ball,
and her bitter taunts would kill me. I _could_ not bear to be in her
power again, Edward."
"And you shall not, my darling," answered the young man, enfolding the
slender, trembling figure in his strong arms. "My own childish pet, you
shall never be exposed to any woman's insolence or tyranny. You shall
be sheltered and protected, and hedged in on every side by your
husband's love. And when I go to India, you shall sail with me, my
pearl. Mary, look up and smile at me, and let's have no more talk of
cruel stepmothers. How strange it seems to me, Polly dear, that you
should have been so womanly when you were a child, and yet are so
childlike now you are a woman!"
The mistress of Marchmont Towers looked doubtfully at her husband, as
if she feared her childishness might be displeasing to him.
"You don't love me any the less because of that, do you, Edward?" she
asked timidly.
"Because of what, my treasure?"
"Because I am so--childish?"
"Polly," cried the young man, "do you think Jupiter liked Hebe any the
less because she was as fresh and innocent as the nectar she served out
to him? If he had, my dear, he'd have sent for Clotho, or Atropos, or
some one or other of the elderly maiden ladies of Hades, to wait upon
him as cupbearer. I wouldn't have you otherwise than you are, Polly, by
so much as one thought."
The girl looked up at her husband in a rapture of innocent affection.
"I am too happy, Edward," she said, in a low awe-stricken whisper--"I
am too happy! So much happiness can never last."
Alas! the orphan girl's experience of this life had early taught her
the lesson which some people learn so late. She had learnt to distrust
the equal blue of a summer sky, the glorious splendour of the blazing
sunlight. She was accustomed to sorrow; but these brief glimpses of
perfect happiness filled her with a dim sense of terror. She felt like
some earthly wanderer who had strayed across the threshold of Paradise.
In the midst of her delight and admiration, she trembled for the moment
in which the ruthless angels, bearing flaming swords, should drive her
from the celestial gates.
"It can't last, Edward," she murmured.
"Can't last, Polly!" cried the young man; "why, my dove is transformed
all at once into a raven. We have outlived our troubles, Polly, like
the hero and heroine in one of your novels; and what is to prevent our
living happy ever afterwards, like them? If you remember, my dear, no
sorrows or trials ever fall to the lot of people _after_ marriage. The
persecutions, the separations, the estrangements, are all ante-nuptial.
When once your true novelist gets his hero and heroine up to the
altar-rails in real earnest,--he gets them into the church sometimes,
and then forbids the banns, or brings a former wife, or a rightful
husband, pale and denouncing, from behind a pillar, and drives the
wretched pair out again, to persecute them through three hundred pages
more before he lets them get back again,--but when once the important
words are spoken and the knot tied, the story's done, and the happy
couple get forty or fifty years' wedded bliss, as a set-off against the
miseries they have endured in the troubled course of a twelvemonth's
courtship. That's the sort of thing, isn't it, Polly?"
The clock of St. Cross, sounding faintly athwart the meadows, struck
three as the young man finished speaking.
"Three o'clock, Polly!" he cried; "we must go home, my pet. I mean to
be businesslike to-day."
Upon each day in that happy honeymoon holiday Captain Arundel had made
some such declaration with regard to his intention of being
businesslike; that is to say, setting himself deliberately to the task
of writing those letters which should announce and explain his marriage
to the people who had a right to hear of it. But the soldier had a
dislike to all letter-writing, and a special horror of any epistolary
communication which could come under the denomination of a
business-letter; so the easy summer days slipped by,--the delicious
drowsy noontides, the soft and dreamy twilight, the tender moonlit
nights,--and the Captain put off the task for which he had no fancy,
from after breakfast until after dinner, and from after dinner until
after breakfast; always beguiled away from his open travelling-desk by
a word from Mary, who called him to the window to look at a pretty
child on the village green before the inn, or at the blacksmith's dog,
or the tinker's donkey, or a tired Italian organ-boy who had strayed
into that out-of-the-way nook, or at the smart butcher from Winchester,
who rattled over in a pony-cart twice a week to take orders from the
gentry round about, and to insult and defy the local purveyor, whose
stock-in-trade generally seemed to consist of one leg of mutton and a
dish of pig's fry.
The young couple walked slowly through the meadows, crossing rustic
wooden bridges that spanned the winding stream, loitering to look down
into the clear water at the fish which Captain Arundel pointed out, but
which Mary could never see;--that young lady always fixing her eyes
upon some long trailing weed afloat in the transparent water, while the
silvery trout indicated by her husband glided quietly away to the sedgy
bottom of the stream. They lingered by the water-mill, beneath whose
shadow some children were fishing; they seized upon every pretext for
lengthening that sunny homeward walk, and only reached the inn as the
village clocks were striking four, at which hour Captain Arundel had
ordered dinner.
But after the simple little repast, mild and artless in its nature as
the fair young spirit of the bride herself; after the landlord,
sympathetic yet respectful, had in his own person attended upon his two
guests; after the pretty rustic chamber had been cleared of all
evidence of the meal that had been eaten, Edward Arundel began
seriously to consider the business in hand.
"The letters must be written, Polly," he said, seating himself at a
table near the open window. Trailing branches of jasmine and
honeysuckle made a framework round the diamond-paned casement; the
perfumed blossoms blew into the room with every breath of the warm
August breeze, and hung trembling in the folds of the chintz curtains.
Mr. Arundel's gaze wandered dreamily away through this open window to
the primitive picture without,--the scattered cottages upon the other
side of the green, the cattle standing in the pond, the cackling geese
hurrying homeward across the purple ridge of common, the village
gossips loitering beneath the faded sign that hung before the low white
tavern at the angle of the road. He looked at all these things as he
flung his leathern desk upon the table, and made a great parade of
unlocking and opening it.
"The letters must be written," he repeated, with a smothered sigh. "Did
you ever notice a peculiar property in stationery, Polly?"
Mrs. Edward Arundel only opened her brown eyes to their widest extent,
and stared at her husband.
"No, I see you haven't," said the young man. "How should you, you
fortunate Polly? You've never had to write any business-letters yet,
though you are an heiress. The peculiarity of all stationery, my dear,
is, that it is possessed of an intuitive knowledge of the object for
which it is to be used. If one has to write an unpleasant letter,
Polly, it might go a little smoother, you know; one might round one's
paragraphs, and spell the difficult words--the 'believes' and
'receives,' the 'tills' and 'untils,' and all that sort of
thing--better with a pleasant pen, an easy-going, jolly, soft-nibbed
quill, that would seem to say, 'Cheer up, old fellow! I'll carry you
through it; we'll get to "your very obedient servant" before you know
where you are,' and so on. But, bless your heart, Polly! let a poor
unbusinesslike fellow try to write a business-letter, and everything
goes against him. The pen knows what he's at, and jibs, and stumbles,
and shies about the paper, like a broken-down screw; the ink turns
thick and lumpy; the paper gets as greasy as a London pavement after a
fall of snow, till a poor fellow gives up, and knocks under to the
force of circumstances. You see if my pen doesn't splutter, Polly, the
moment I address Richard Paulette."
Captain Arundel was very careful in the adjustment of his sheet of
paper, and began his letter with an air of resolution.
"White Hart Inn, Milldale, near Winchester,
"August 14th.
"MY DEAR SIR,"
He wrote as much as this with great promptitude, and then, with his
elbow on the table, fell to staring at his pretty young wife and
drumming his fingers on his chin. Mary was sitting opposite her husband
at the open window, working, or making a pretence of being occupied
with some impossible fragment of Berlin wool-work, while she watched
her husband.
"How pretty you look in that white frock, Polly!" said the soldier;
"you call those things frocks, don't you? And that blue sash, too,--you
ought always to wear white, Mary, like your namesakes abroad who are
_vouee au blanc_ by their faithful mothers, and who are a blessing to
the laundresses for the first seven or fourteen years of their lives.
What shall I say to Paulette? He's such a jolly fellow, there oughtn't
to be much difficulty about the matter. 'My dear sir,' seems absurdly
stiff; 'my dear Paulette,'--that's better,--'I write this to inform you
that your client, Miss Mary March----' What's that, Polly?"
It was the postman, a youth upon a pony, with the afternoon letters
from London. Captain Arundel flung down his pen and went to the window.
He had some interest in this young man's arrival, as he had left orders
that such letters as were addressed to him at the hotel in Covent
Garden should be forwarded to him at Milldale.
"I daresay there's a letter from Germany, Polly," he said eagerly. "My
mother and Letitia are capital correspondents; I'll wager anything
there's a letter, and I can answer it in the one I'm going to write
this evening, and that'll be killing two birds with one stone. I'll run
down to the postman, Polly."
Captain Arundel had good reason to go after his letters, for there
seemed little chance of those missives being brought to him. The
youthful postman was standing in the porch drinking ale out of a
ponderous earthenware mug, and talking to the landlord, when Edward
went down.
"Any letters for me, Dick?" the Captain asked. He knew the Christian
name of almost every visitor or hanger-on at the little inn, though he
had not stayed there an entire fortnight, and was as popular and
admired as if he had been some free-spoken young squire to whom all the
land round about belonged.
"'Ees, sir," the young man answered, shuffling off his cap; "there be
two letters for ye."
He handed the two packets to Captain Arundel, who looked doubtfully at
the address of the uppermost, which, like the other, had been
re-directed by the people at the London hotel. The original address of
this letter was in a handwriting that was strange to him; but it bore
the postmark of the village from which the Dangerfield letters were
sent.
The back of the inn looked into an orchard, and through an open door
opposite to the porch Edward Arundel saw the low branches of the trees,
and the ripening fruit red and golden in the afternoon sunlight. He
went out into this orchard to read his letters, his mind a little
disturbed by the strange handwriting upon the Dangerfield epistle.
The letter was from his father's housekeeper, imploring him most
earnestly to go down to the Park without delay. Squire Arundel had been
stricken with paralysis, and was declared to be in imminent danger.
Mrs. and Miss Arundel and Mr. Reginald were away in Germany. The
faithful old servant implored the younger son to lose no time in
hurrying home, if he wished to see his father alive.
The soldier leaned against the gnarled grey trunk of an old apple-tree,
and stared at this letter with a white awe-stricken face.
What was he to do? He must go to his father, of course. He must go
without a moment's delay. He must catch the first train that would
carry him westward from Southampton. There could be no question as to
his duty. He must go; he must leave his young wife.
His heart sank with a sharp thrill of pain, and with perhaps some faint
shuddering sense of an unknown terror, as he thought of this.
"It was lucky I didn't write the letters," he reflected; "no one will
guess the secret of my darling's retreat. She can stay here till I come
back to her. God knows I shall hurry back the moment my duty sets me
free. These people will take care of her. No one will know where to
look for her. I'm very glad I didn't write to Olivia. We were so happy
this morning! Who could think that sorrow would come between us so
soon?"
Captain Arundel looked at his watch. It was a quarter to six o'clock,
and he knew that an express left Southampton for the west at eight.
There would be time for him to catch that train with the help of a
sturdy pony belonging to the landlord of the White Hart, which would
rattle him over to the station in an hour and a half. There would be
time for him to catch the train; but, oh! how little time to comfort
his darling--how little time to reconcile his young wife to the
temporary separation!
He hurried back to the porch, briefly explained to the landlord what
had happened, ordered the pony and gig to be got ready immediately, and
then went very, very slowly upstairs, to the room in which his young
wife sat by the open window waiting for his return.
Mary looked up at his face as he entered the room, and that one glance
told her of some new sorrow.
"Edward," she cried, starting up from her chair with a look of terror,
"my stepmother has come."
Even in his trouble the young man smiled at his foolish wife's
all-absorbing fear of Olivia Marchmont.
"No, my darling," he said; "I wish to heaven our worst trouble were the
chance of your father's widow breaking in upon us. Something has
happened, Mary; something very sorrowful, very serious for me. My
father is ill, Polly dear, dangerously ill, and I must go to him."
Mary Arundel drew a long breath. Her face had grown very white, and the
hands that were linked tightly round her husband's arm trembled a
little.
"I will try to bear it," she said; "I will try to bear it."
"God bless you, my darling!" the soldier answered fervently, clasping
his young wife to his breast. "I know you will. It will be a very short
parting, Mary dearest. I will come back to you directly I have seen my
father. If he is worse, there will be little need for me to stop at
Dangerfield; if he is better, I can take you back there with me. My own
darling love, it is very bitter for us to be parted thus; but I know
that you will bear it like a heroine. Won't you, Polly?"
"I will try to bear it, dear."
She said very little more than this, but clung about her husband, not
with any desperate force, not with any clamorous and tumultuous grief,
but with a half-despondent resignation; as a drowning man, whose
strength is well-nigh exhausted, may cling, in his hopelessness, to a
spar, which he knows he must presently abandon.
Mary Arundel followed her husband hither and thither while he made his
brief and hurried preparations for the sudden journey; but although she
was powerless to assist him,--for her trembling hands let fall
everything she tried to hold, and there was a mist before her eyes,
which distorted and blotted the outline of every object she looked
at,--she hindered him by no noisy lamentations, she distressed him by
no tears. She suffered, as it was her habit to suffer, quietly and
uncomplainingly.
The sun was sinking when she went with Edward downstairs to the porch,
before which the landlord's pony and gig were in waiting, in custody of
a smart lad who was to accompany Mr. Arundel to Southampton. There was
no time for any protracted farewell. It was better so, perhaps, Edward
thought. He would be back so soon, that the grief he felt in this
parting--and it may be that his suffering was scarcely less than
Mary's--seemed wasted anguish, to which it would have been sheer
cowardice to give way. But for all this the soldier very nearly broke
down when he saw his childish wife's piteous face, white in the evening
sunlight, turned to him in mute appeal, as if the quivering lips would
fain have entreated him to abandon all and to remain. He lifted the
fragile figure in his arms,--alas! it had never seemed so fragile as
now,--and covered the pale face with passionate kisses and
fast-dropping tears.
"God bless and defend you, Mary! God keep----"
He was ashamed of the huskiness of his voice, and putting his wife
suddenly away from him, he sprang into the gig, snatched the reins from
the boy's hand, and drove away at the pony's best speed. The
old-fashioned vehicle disappeared in a cloud of dust; and Mary, looking
after her husband with eyes that were as yet tearless, saw nothing but
glaring light and confusion, and a pastoral landscape that reeled and
heaved like a stormy sea.
It seemed to her, as she went slowly back to her room, and sat down
amidst the disorder of open portmanteaus and overturned hatboxes, which
the young man had thrown here and there in his hurried selection of the
few things necessary for him to take on his hasty journey--it seemed as
if the greatest calamity of her life had now befallen her. As
hopelessly as she had thought of her father's death, she now thought of
Edward Arundel's departure. She could not see beyond the acute anguish
of this separation. She could not realise to herself that there was no
cause for all this terrible sorrow; that the parting was only a
temporary one; and that her husband would return to her in a few days
at the furthest. Now that she was alone, now that the necessity for
heroism was past, she abandoned herself utterly to the despair that had
held possession of her soul from the moment in which Captain Arundel
had told her of his father's illness.
The sun went down behind the purple hills that sheltered the western
side of the little village. The tree-tops in the orchard below the open
window of Mrs. Arundel's bedroom grew dim in the grey twilight. Little
by little the sound of voices in the rooms below died away into
stillness. The fresh rosy-cheeked country girl who had waited upon the
young husband and wife, came into the sitting-room with a pair of
wax-candles in old-fashioned silver candlesticks, and lingered in the
room for a little time, expecting to receive some order from the lonely
watcher. But Mary had locked the door of her bedchamber, and sat with
her head upon the sill of the open window, looking out into the dim
orchard. It was only when the stars glimmered in the tranquil sky that
the girl's blank despair gave way before a sudden burst of tears, and
she flung herself down beside the white-curtained bed to pray for her
young husband. She prayed for him in an ecstatic fervour of love and
faith, carried away by the new hopefulness that arose out of her ardent
supplications, and picturing him going triumphant on his course, to
find his father out of danger,--restored to health, perhaps,--and to
return to her before the stars glimmered through the darkness of
another summer's night. She prayed for him, hoping and believing
everything; though at the hour in which she knelt, with the faint
starlight shimmering upon her upturned face and clasped hands, Edward
Arundel was lying, maimed and senseless, in the wretched waiting-room
of a little railway-station in Dorsetshire, watched over by an obscure
country surgeon, while the frightened officials scudded here and there
in search of some vehicle in which the young man might be conveyed to
the nearest town.
There had been one of those accidents which seem terribly common on
every line of railway, however well managed. A signalman had mistaken
one train for another; a flag had been dropped too soon; and the
down-express had run into a heavy luggage-train blundering up from
Exeter with farm-produce for the London markets. Two men had been
killed, and a great many passengers hurt; some very seriously. Edward
Arundel's case was perhaps one of the most serious amongst these.