No one ever thought that May Forster would marry John Charrington; but
he thought differently, and things which John Charrington intended had a
queer way of coming to pass. He asked her to marry him before he went up
to Oxford. She laughed and refused him. He asked her again next time he
came home. Again she laughed, tossed her dainty blonde head, and again
refused. A third time he asked her; she said it was becoming a confirmed
bad habit, and laughed at him more than ever.
John was not the only man who wanted to marry her: she was the belle of
our village _coterie,_ and we were all in love with her more or less;
it was a sort of fashion, like heliotrope ties or Inverness capes.
Therefore we were as much annoyed as surprised when John Charrington
walked into our little local Club--we held it in a loft over the
saddler's, I remember--and invited us all to his wedding.
"Your wedding?"
"You don't mean it?"
"Who's the happy fair? When's it to be?"
John Charrington filled his pipe and lighted it before he replied. Then
he said--
"I'm sorry to deprive you fellows of your only joke--but Miss Forster
and I are to be married in September."
"You don't mean it?"
"He's got the mitten again, and it's turned his head."
"No," I said, rising, "I see it's true. Lend me a pistol some one--or a
first-class fare to the other end of Nowhere. Charrington has bewitched
the only pretty girl in our twenty-mile radius. Was it mesmerism, or a
love-potion, Jack?"
"Neither, sir, but a gift you'll never have--perseverance--and the best
luck a man ever had in this world."
There was something in his voice that silenced me, and all chaff of the
other fellows failed to draw him further.
The queer thing about it was that when we congratulated Miss Forster,
she blushed and smiled and dimpled, for all the world as though she were
in love with him, and had been in love with him all the time. Upon my
word, I think she had. Women are strange creatures.
We were all asked to the wedding. In Brixham every one who was anybody
knew everybody else who was any one. My sisters were, I truly believe,
more interested in the _trousseau_ than the bride herself, and I was to
be best man. The coming marriage was much canvassed at afternoon
tea-tables, and at our little Club over the saddler's, and the question
was always asked: "Does she care for him?"
I used to ask that question myself in the early days of their
engagement, but after a certain evening in August I never asked it
again. I was coming home from the Club through the churchyard. Our
church is on a thyme-grown hill, and the turf about it is so thick and
soft that one's footsteps are noiseless.
I made no sound as I vaulted the low lichened wall, and threaded my way
between the tombstones. It was at the same instant that I heard John
Charrington's voice, and saw Her. May was sitting on a low flat
gravestone, her face turned towards the full splendour of the western
sun. Its expression ended, at once and for ever, any question of love
for him; it was transfigured to a beauty I should not have believed
possible, even to that beautiful little face.
John lay at her feet, and it was his voice that broke the stillness of
the golden August evening.
"My dear, my dear, I believe I should come back from the dead if you
wanted me!"
I coughed at once to indicate my presence, and passed on into the shadow
fully enlightened.
The wedding was to be early in September. Two days before I had to run
up to town on business. The train was late, of course, for we are on the
South-Eastern, and as I stood grumbling with my watch in my hand, whom
should I see but John Charrington and May Forster. They were walking up
and down the unfrequented end of the platform, arm in arm, looking into
each other's eyes, careless of the sympathetic interest of the porters.
Of course I knew better than to hesitate a moment before burying myself
in the booking-office, and it was not till the train drew up at the
platform, that I obtrusively passed the pair with my Gladstone, and took
the corner in a first-class smoking-carriage. I did this with as good an
air of not seeing them as I could assume. I pride myself on my
discretion, but if John were travelling alone I wanted his company. I
had it.
"Hullo, old man," came his cheery voice as he swung his bag into my
carriage; "here's luck; I was expecting a dull journey!"
"Where are you off to?" I asked, discretion still bidding me turn my
eyes away, though I saw, without looking, that hers were red-rimmed.
"To old Branbridge's," he answered, shutting the door and leaning out
for a last word with his sweetheart.
"Oh, I wish you wouldn't go, John," she was saying in a low, earnest
voice. "I feel certain something will happen."
"Do you think I should let anything happen to keep me, and the day after
to-morrow our wedding-day?"
"Don't go," she answered, with a pleading intensity which would have
sent my Gladstone on to the platform and me after it. But she wasn't
speaking to me. John Charrington was made differently; he rarely changed
his opinions, never his resolutions.
He only stroked the little ungloved hands that lay on the carriage
door.
"I must, May. The old boy's been awfully good to me, and now he's dying
I must go and see him, but I shall come home in time for----" the rest
of the parting was lost in a whisper and in the rattling lurch of the
starting train.
"You're sure to come?" she spoke as the train moved.
"Nothing shall keep me," he answered; and we steamed out. After he had
seen the last of the little figure on the platform he leaned back in his
corner and kept silence for a minute.
When he spoke it was to explain to me that his godfather, whose heir he
was, lay dying at Peasmarsh Place, some fifty miles away, and had sent
for John, and John had felt bound to go.
"I shall be surely back to-morrow," he said, "or, if not, the day after,
in heaps of time. Thank Heaven, one hasn't to get up in the middle of
the night to get married nowadays!"
"And suppose Mr. Branbridge dies?"
"Alive or dead I mean to be married on Thursday!" John answered,
lighting a cigar and unfolding the _Times_.
At Peasmarsh station we said "good-bye," and he got out, and I saw him
ride off; I went on to London, where I stayed the night.
When I got home the next afternoon, a very wet one, by the way, my
sister greeted me with--
"Where's Mr. Charrington?"
"Goodness knows," I answered testily. Every man, since Cain, has
resented that kind of question.
"I thought you might have heard from him," she went on, "as you're to
give him away to-morrow."
"Isn't he back?" I asked, for I had confidently expected to find him at
home.
"No, Geoffrey,"--my sister Fanny always had a way of jumping to
conclusions, especially such conclusions as were least favourable to her
fellow-creatures--"he has not returned, and, what is more, you may
depend upon it he won't. You mark my words, there'll be no wedding
to-morrow."
My sister Fanny has a power of annoying me which no other human being
possesses.
"You mark my words," I retorted with asperity, "you had better give up
making such a thundering idiot of yourself. There'll be more wedding
to-morrow than ever you'll take the first part in." A prophecy which, by
the way, came true.
But though I could snarl confidently to my sister, I did not feel so
comfortable when, late that night, I, standing on the doorstep of John's
house, heard that he had not returned. I went home gloomily through the
rain. Next morning brought a brilliant blue sky, gold sun, and all such
softness of air and beauty of cloud as go to make up a perfect day. I
woke with a vague feeling of having gone to bed anxious, and of being
rather averse to facing that anxiety in the light of full wakefulness.
But with my shaving-water came a note from John which relieved my mind
and sent me up to the Forsters' with a light heart.
May was in the garden. I saw her blue gown through the hollyhocks as the
lodge gates swung to behind me. So I did not go up to the house, but
turned aside down the turfed path.
"He's written to you too," she said, without preliminary greeting, when
I reached her side.
"Yes, I'm to meet him at the station at three, and come straight on to
the church."
Her face looked pale, but there was a brightness in her eyes, and a
tender quiver about the mouth that spoke of renewed happiness.
"Mr. Branbridge begged him so to stay another night that he had not the
heart to refuse," she went on. "He is so kind, but I wish he hadn't
stayed."
I was at the station at half-past two. I felt rather annoyed with John.
It seemed a sort of slight to the beautiful girl who loved him, that he
should come as it were out of breath, and with the dust of travel upon
him, to take her hand, which some of us would have given the best years
of our lives to take.
But when the three o'clock train glided in, and glided out again having
brought no passengers to our little station, I was more than annoyed.
There was no other train for thirty-five minutes; I calculated that,
with much hurry, we might just get to the church in time for the
ceremony; but, oh, what a fool to miss that first train! What other man
could have done it?
That thirty-five minutes seemed a year, as I wandered round the station
reading the advertisements and the time-tables, and the company's
bye-laws, and getting more and more angry with John Charrington. This
confidence in his own power of getting everything he wanted the minute
he wanted it was leading him too far. I hate waiting. Every one does,
but I believe I hate it more than any one else. The three thirty-five
was late, of course.
I ground my pipe between my teeth and stamped with impatience as I
watched the signals. Click. The signal went down. Five minutes later I
flung myself into the carriage that I had brought for John.
"Drive to the church!" I said, as some one shut the door. "Mr.
Charrington hasn't come by this train."
Anxiety now replaced anger. What had become of the man? Could he have
been taken suddenly ill? I had never known him have a day's illness in
his life. And even so he might have telegraphed. Some awful accident
must have happened to him. The thought that he had played her false
never--no, not for a moment--entered my head. Yes, something terrible
had happened to him, and on me lay the task of telling his bride. I
almost wished the carriage would upset and break my head so that some
one else might tell her, not I, who--but that's nothing to do with his
story.
It was five minutes to four as we drew up at the churchyard gate. A
double row of eager on-lookers lined the path from lychgate to porch. I
sprang from the carriage and passed up between them. Our gardener had a
good front place near the door. I stopped.
"Are they waiting still, Byles?" I asked, simply to gain time, for of
course I knew they were by the waiting crowd's attentive attitude.
"Waiting, sir? No, no, sir; why, it must be over by now."
"Over! Then Mr. Charrington's come?"
"To the minute, sir; must have missed you somehow, and, I say, sir,"
lowering his voice, "I never see Mr. John the least bit so afore, but my
opinion is he's been drinking pretty free. His clothes was all dusty and
his face like a sheet. I tell you I didn't like the looks of him at all,
and the folks inside are saying all sorts of things. You'll see,
something's gone very wrong with Mr. John, and he's tried liquor. He
looked like a ghost, and in he went with his eyes straight before him,
with never a look or a word for none of us; him that was always such a
gentleman!"
I had never heard Byles make so long a speech. The crowd in the
churchyard were talking in whispers and getting ready rice and slippers
to throw at the bride and bridegroom. The ringers were ready with their
hands on the ropes to ring out the merry peal as the bride and
bridegroom should come out.
A murmur from the church announced them; out they came. Byles was right.
John Charrington did not look himself. There was dust on his coat, his
hair was disarranged. He seemed to have been in some row, for there was
a black mark above his eyebrow. He was deathly pale. But his pallor was
not greater than that of the bride, who might have been carved in
ivory--dress, veil, orange blossoms, face and all.
As they passed out the ringers stooped--there were six of them--and
then, on the ears expecting the gay wedding peal, came the slow tolling
of the passing bell.
A thrill of horror at so foolish a jest from the ringers passed through
us all. But the ringers themselves dropped the ropes and fled like
rabbits out into the sunlight. The bride shuddered, and grey shadows
came about her mouth, but the bridegroom led her on down the path where
the people stood with the handfuls of rice; but the handfuls were never
thrown, and the wedding-bells never rang. In vain the ringers were urged
to remedy their mistake: they protested with many whispered expletives
that they would see themselves further first.
In a hush like the hush in the chamber of death the bridal pair passed
into their carriage and its door slammed behind them.
Then the tongues were loosed. A babel of anger, wonder, conjecture from
the guests and the spectators.
"If I'd seen his condition, sir," said old Forster to me as we drove
off, "I would have stretched him on the floor of the church, sir, by
Heaven I would, before I'd have let him marry my daughter!"
Then he put his head out of the window.
"Drive like hell," he cried to the coachman; "don't spare the horses."
He was obeyed. We passed the bride's carriage. I forebore to look at it,
and old Forster turned his head away and swore. We reached home before
it.
We stood in the hall doorway, in the blazing afternoon sun, and in about
half a minute we heard wheels crunching the gravel. When the carriage
stopped in front of the steps old Forster and I ran down.
"Great Heaven, the carriage is empty! And yet----"