"Dick!" Curiously enough Dick had not thought till then that even a
high gate may be vaulted by a man whose heart has leaped it before him,
and who is in perfect training, and knows no fear. He had been more
discouraged by Eustace Thynne than any authority on the part of that
poor creature at all warranted, and his heart had failed him still more
when he thought that perhaps Chatty might have been talked over, and
might stand by him no longer. She was his wife, but what if her heart
had given him up! But when a man hears the voice he loves best in the
world calling him, everything takes a different aspect. "Dick!" Her
voice came first faint, so that he scarcely believed it; then nearer
and nearer, giving life to the silent world. The thin brown face of
the vagabond, as he had called himself, grew crimson with a flush of
happiness and new life. He could not wait until she came; his soul flew
to meet her in a great revulsion of confidence and joy. The gate was
high, but he was eager and she was coming. He put his sinewy, thin
hands upon it, and was over in a moment. And there she came, flying,
fluttering, her light dress making a line of whiteness under the trees.
She did not stop to ask a question, but ran straight to him, into his
arms. "Dick, Dick!" and "Chatty, my darling, at last!"--that was all
they said.
Minnie did not run so fast. She had not the same inducement; for
opposition, though very nearly as swift, has not quite the same impetus
as love. She only came up to them when these first greetings were over,
and when, to the consciousness of both, life had taken up its threads
again exactly where they had broken off. Chatty did not ask any
questions,--his presence was answer enough to all questions; but indeed
she did not think of any. Everything else went out of her mind except
that he was there.
"Mr. Cavendish!" Minnie came up breathless, putting her hand to her
side. "Oh, Chatty, you are shameless! Do you know what you are doing? It
was his duty--to satisfy us first. Mr. Cavendish, if she is lost to--all
sense of shame----"
Panting, she had got up to them, and was pulling Chatty away from him by
her arm.
"There is no shame in the matter," he said. "But, Chatty, your sister is
right, and I must explain everything to your relatives at once. There is
no time to lose, for the train leaves at six, and I want to take you
away with me. If you can be ready."
"Yes, Dick, I can be ready. I am ready, whenever you please."
He pressed her arm, which she had placed within his, with a look that
said everything there was to say. But Minnie replied with a scream.
"Take her away! What right have you to take her away? Eustace will never
consent, and my mother--oh, even my mother will not hear of that. If you
were a hundred times divorced,--which it is a shame to think of,--you
can't take her away like that; you will have to be married again."
"I am sorry to push past you, Mrs. Thynne. It is your husband's fault,
who stopped my entrance in the natural way. But we have no time to
lose." He looked back, waving his hand to Minnie, whose wrath took away
the little breath she had left. "I am not a divorced man," he said.
Mrs. Eustace looked after them with feelings indescribable. They went
hurrying along, the two figures melting into one, swift, straight,
carried as by a wind of triumph. What did he mean? It was horrible to
Minnie that she could not go so fast, that she had to wait and take
breath. With a pang of angry disappointment she felt at once that they
were on the winning side, and that they must inevitably reach the Warren
before she could, and that thus she would not hear what Dick had to say.
It may here be added that Minnie had, like Chatty, the most perfect
confidence that all was right. She no more believed that Dick would
have been there had the end of his mission been unsatisfactory than
she believed that night was day. She would not have owned this for the
world, and she was vexed and mortified by the conviction, but yet at the
bottom of her heart, being not at all so bad as she wished to believe
she was, felt a sense of consolation and relief, which made it at once
easier and more tantalising to have to wait.
Foolish Chatty held Dick's arm fast, and kept up a murmur of happiness.
"Oh, Dick, are you sure it is you? Have you come at last? Are you well
now? And I that could not go to you, that did not know, that had no one
to ask! Oh, Dick, didn't you want me when you were ill? Oh, Dick! oh,
Dick!" After all, his mere name was the most satisfactory thing to say.
And as he hurried her along, almost flying over the woodland path, Chatty
too was soon out of breath, and ended in a blissful incapacity to say or
do anything except to be carried along with him in his eager progress
towards the tribunal which he had to face.
Eustace Thynne opposed his entrance, but quite ineffectually, at the
drawing-room door. Dick with his left hand was more than a match for the
Reverend Eustace. Warrender stood in the middle of the room, with his
head towards the sofa, over which his mother was bending, though his
eyes turned to the new-comers as they entered. He made a step towards
them as if to stop them, but a movement on the sofa drew him back again
as by some fascination. It was Geoff, who struggled up with a little
pale gray face and a cut on his forehead, like a little ghost. His
sharp voice piped forth all at once in the silence: "I told her, Mr.
Cavendish. I gave her your message. Oh, I'm all right, I'm all right.
But I told Chatty. I--I did what you said."
"Mr. Cavendish!" cried Mrs. Warrender, turning from the child. She was
trembling with the excitement of these hurrying events, though the sick
terror she had been seized with in respect to Geoff was passing away.
"Mr. Cavendish, my son is right in this,--that before you saw Chatty we
should have had an account of you, he and I."
"I should have said so too, in other circumstances," said Dick holding
Chatty's arm closely within his own. "If my presence or my touch could
harm her, even with the most formal fool,"--he flashed a look at Eustace,
angrily, which glowed over the pale parson like a passing lamp, but
left him quite unconscious. "As it is, you have a right to the fullest
explanation, but not to keep my wife from me for a moment."
"She is not your wife," cried Warrender. "Leave him, Chatty. Even in the
best of circumstances she cannot be your wife."
"Chatty, do not move. I have as full a right to hold her here as you
have, or any married man. Mrs. Warrender, I don't want to get angry. I
will tell you my story at once. On our wedding-day, when that terrible
interruption occurred, the poor creature whom I then thought, whom I
then believed, to have been----"
"You mean Mrs. Cavendish, your lawful wife."
"Poor girl, do not call her by that name; she never bore it. She did not
mean to do any harm. There was no sanctity to her in that or any other
tie."
Chatty pressed his arm more closely in sympathy. "Oh, Dick, I know, I
know."
"She meant no harm, from her point of view. She scarcely meant to deceive
me. Mrs. Warrender, it was a fiction all through. There has been no need
of any divorce. She was already married when--she made believe to marry
me. The delusion was mine alone. I hunted the man over half the continent.
I did not dare to tell you what I was doing, lest it should prove to be
a false hope. But at last I found him, and I have all the evidence. I have
never had any wife but Chatty. She forgives me what was done in folly so
long ago, before I ever saw her. There was no marriage. What was done
was a mere idle form, in deference to my prejudices," he said, with a
short laugh of excitement. "I was a fool, it appears, all through; but
it was not as a wise man that Chatty married me," he said, turning to
her. "Our marriage is as true as ever marriage was. I have no wife but
Chatty. Mrs. Warrender, I have all the evidence. Don't you believe me?
Surely you must believe me!" Dick cried.
His voice was interrupted by a shrill little outburst from the sofa
behind. "Hurrah! Hurrah!" cried little Geoff before Dick had ended.
"Chatty, it was me that brought the first news! Chatty, are you happy
now?"
Mrs. Warrender, in the act of going forward to the pair who stood before
her awaiting her judgment, turned with a thrill of anxious terror. "Oh,
hush, hush!" she cried, putting herself before the boy.
Theo, too, had turned round with a suppressed but passionate exclamation,
clenching his hands. "Mother, I can think of nothing till that imp is
out of the way."
"He shall go, Theo. Speak to them, speak to them!" cried the mother
anxiously, bending over the sofa, with an indescribable tumult in her
heart. She had to leave her own child's fate at its crisis to look after
and protect this child who was none of hers, who was the stumbling-block
in her son's way. And yet her heart condemned her son, and took part
with the little intruder. Thus Chatty for the moment was left to stand
alone before her husband's judge, but was not aware of it, thought
nothing of it, in her confidence and joy. Warrender stood looking darkly
after them till his mother had taken his stepson out of the room. The
pause, perhaps, was useful in calming the excitement of all. When the
door closed Theo turned round, mastering himself with an effort. Geoff
had diverted the rush of hasty temper which was natural to him. He
looked upon the new-comer less severely.
"We can have no interest," he said, "but that your story should be true.
But it cannot rest on your word, Cavendish. You have been deceived once;
you may be deceived again. My mother is no judge of points of law, and
she is favourable, too favourable, to you. You had better come with us
into another room, and let us see what proofs you have of what you say."
"That is quite just," said Dick. "I'd like you to kiss that little
beggar for me, Chatty; he knows what it is to stand by a man in trouble.
It is all right, Warrender. Of course it is the interest of all of us
that there should be no mistake. Send for Wilberforce, who will be
impartial; and if you could have Longstaffe too----"
Minnie came in, out of breath, at this stage of the affairs. "What does
he say, Eustace,--oh, what does he say? Are you sure it is true? What
has he got to say? And what does he mean about Mr. Longstaffe and Mr.
Wilberforce? Aren't you good enough for him? Can't you judge without
Wilberforce? Wilberforce," she cried, with professional contempt for
another clergyman, "is nothing so very wonderful; and he is _his_
friend and will be sure to be on his side. Why can't Eustace do?"
Mrs. Warrender, with her anxious face, had now come back again alone.
She went up to Dick, holding out both her hands. "God bless you!" she
said. "I believe you, dear Dick, every word you say. But everything must
be made as clear as daylight both for her sake and your own."
"I know it, dear mother," he replied. "I am quite ready. I should be the
first to ask for a full examination. Take care of my Chatty while I show
my papers. I want to take my wife away with me. I cannot be parted from
her again."
"Oh, Dick! oh, Dick!" The mother, like the daughter, could find no other
words to say.
Little Geoff found himself alone in Mrs. Warrender's room. She had taken
him there with much kindness and many tender words, and made a little
nest for him upon the sofa. "Lie down and try to go to sleep," she
said, stooping to kiss him, a caress which half pleased, half irritated,
Geoff. But he obeyed, for his head was still aching and dazed with the
suddenness and strangeness of all that had passed. To lie down and try
to sleep was not so hard for him as for most children of his age, and
for the first moment no movement of revolt was in him. He lay down in
the silence, not unwilling to rest his head on a soft pillow. But the
fire of excitement was in Geoff's veins, and a restlessness of energy
and activity which after a minute or two forebade all possibility of
rest. Something had happened to him which had never happened before.
He had not been quite clear what it was at first; whether it was the
wonder of Dick's return or of his own part in it,--the fact that he had
been the messenger and had discharged his trust. But presently it all
came to him, as he lay quietly with his aching head pressed against the
cool pillow. Geoff had encountered many new experiences in the last two
years of his life, but he had not known at any time what personal violence
was. Everybody round him had made much of him; his delicate health had
always been in the thoughts of those who were about him, and perhaps the
rank to which he was so indifferent, of which he was scarcely conscious.
Till Theo had appeared upon the scene, Geoff had been the central figure
in his own little world. Since that time, the boy had suffered with a
magnanimity which few men could have equalled a gradual deposition
from most of the things he prized most. He was no longer first; he
had partially lost the mother who for so long had been his companion
and playfellow as well as the chief object in his existence. Many
humiliations had come to the keen feelings and sensitive heart of the
little dethroned boy. Many a complaint and reproach had been on his
lips, though none had got utterance. But now a deeper indignity still
had befallen him. As Geoff lay in the room to which he had been banished
to be out of Warrender's sight, all this swept across his little soul
like a tempest. He remembered the suffocating sensation in his throat,
the red mist in his eyes, the feeling that he had but a moment left in
which to deliver his message; and then the giddy whirl of movement as he
was flung away like a rag or a stone, the crash in his ears, the sharp
blow which brought back his scattered faculties for a moment, only to
banish them again in the momentary unconsciousness which brought all the
tingling and thrilling into his ears of which he had not yet got free.
How had all this come about? It was Warrender who had seized him, who
had flung him upon the floor, who had--had he? tried to kill him? had
he tried to kill him? Was that what Warrender meant? A wild flood of
feeling, resentment, terror, desire for revenge, swept through Geoff's
mind. Warrender, to whom already he owed so much; Warrender, who had
taken his mother from him, and his home, and everything he cared for in
the world,--Warrender now wanted to kill him! If mamma knew! Mamma had
not ceased to care for her boy. Even now that the babies had come she
still loved Geoff,--and if she knew! The boy jumped up from his couch.
He was pale and trembling, and the cut on his forehead showed doubly
from the total absence of colour in his little gray face; but he got
himself a great draught of water, and, restored by that and by the rush
of rage that swelled all his veins, he flew downstairs, past Joseph in
the hall, who gave an outcry of astonishment, to where the gardener's
boy was still holding his pony outside. Geoff, scarcely able to stand,
what with the shock and what with the emotion, clambered up upon the
pony, and turned its head homewards. The pony was well pleased to find
himself in that way, and obeyed with enthusiasm his little master's
impulse. The small steed and rider flew along the road to Markland.
Geoff had no cap; he was dusty, as if he had been for days on the road;
and as he flew by, the cottagers came out to the doors to look, and said
to each other that the little lord must be mad, that he would have an
accident like his father. He went on thus, with scarcely a pause, till
he reached the gates of Markland, wrath and pain carrying him on at a
swifter rate even than the pony, eager for sympathy and for revenge.
Something stayed this headlong race all at once. It was when he came
within sight of the avenue, which was so bare, which had no trees except
at distant intervals. There he saw a speck upon the way, a slowly moving
figure which he recognised at once. It was his mother, coming down, as
was her wont, to meet--whom? Her husband. Geoff's hot heart, all blazing
with childish rage, sank into a shivering calm at the sight of her. In a
moment he turned from heat to cold, from headlong passion to the chill
of thought and self-sacrifice. Mamma! She it was now who was "delicate,"
as he had been all his life. It might make her ill; it would make her
miserable. What! she who had been everything to him,--was he now going
to seize upon her as Theo had seized him, and shake her and hurt her,
he, her own boy? The child drew up his unwilling pony with a sudden
force which almost carried him over its head. No, he could not do that.
He would not. He would rather be shaken, strangled, thrown down, anything
in the world, rather than hurt mamma. His little heart swelled with a
new spring of impassioned emotion. He would bear it for her sake; he
would bear anything, he did not mind what, rather. He would never, he
cried to himself, with a rush of scalding tears to his eyes, hurt _her_.
He turned the pony's head round with a force of passion which that
astonished animal could not resist, to give himself, after the wild rush
of his flight homeward, a little time to think. And he thought, knitting
his little brows, twitching his little face, his heart aching, his little
body, even, all strained with the effort. No! whatever he did, whatever
he had to bear, he would not hurt mamma.