“So let my singing say to you,
‘Our hearts are pilgrims going home;
Love’s kingdom shall most surely come
To all who seek Love’s will to do.’”
“Daydreams.”--A. Gurney.
|In the course of the next four months Ralph’s powers of letter-writing
improved amazingly, and thanks to those love letters and to the bright
merry life in the Hereford household Evereld’s engagement proved a happy
one although she and her lover could only spend two Sundays together
during the whole time. They knew each other so well already however
that there was no risk of any misunderstanding between them, and the
waiting-time was too short to be very irksome.
As for Bride O’Ryan she proved herself a friend worth having, threw
herself into all Evereld’s interests with delightful eagerness, and
teased her just enough to add a little salt to the entertainment.
The Lord Chancellor kept them for some time in suspense, and furnished
Bride with endless food for merriment. “He is a very formidable
guardian,” she protested, “and when once you get into his clutches it’s
very hard indeed to get out again. I wonder you dared to appeal to him.”
“It was the only thing to be done,” said Evereld, “but I do wish he
would be quick and give his consent.”
“I have always heard,” said Bride provokingly, “that when once things
get into chancery they stay there for years and years. Remember how it
was in _Bleak House_.”
“Well at any rate Mrs. Hereford says the Lord Chancellor is most
kindhearted,” said Evereld. “And I know he is fond of reading novels,
so he ought to take an interest in the romances of real life. And
particularly he ought to like Ralph, for they say he himself had
dreadful struggles at the beginning of his career when he was a young
barrister on circuit.”
However at length the consent was given and it was arranged that, as
Macneillie’s company were not giving any performances in Holy Week,
Ralph and Evereld should be married on Palm Sunday.
Evereld like a wise little woman was determined not to waste her
substance in the purchase of a trousseau which would be an endless
trouble in their wandering life.
“I have plenty of clothes already,” she protested. “All I shall need is
a nice warm cloak in which I can walk to the theatre in the evening--a
respectable dark sort of garment--and of course my wedding dress; I
won’t be a frumpy bride in a travelling costume.”
“No, have a gown like the bride in Blair Leighton’s picture ‘Called to
arms,’” said Ralph who had come up from Bristol to spend a Sunday at the
Hereford’s directly they had returned to London. “It’s a thousand times
prettier than any of the ugly modern fashions.”
Evereld did not know the picture but she promised to do her best to copy
it, and with the help of a clever American maid of Mrs. Hereford’s, and
Bridget’s ready assistance, and the advice of all the female members of
the household, her skilful fingers succeeded in turning out a very good
reproduction of the artist’s design at about a fifth of the cost of an
ordinary wedding dress.
“Even had I not lost my money,” she said to Bride, “I don’t think I
could have borne to spend much just on clothes when so many people are
ruined and half starving from the failure of all these companies.”
That was the greatest shadow that was cast over the happiness of the two
lovers. The appalling accounts of the trouble caused by Sir Matthew’s
wrong doing, the knowledge that many of the victims had literally died
from the shock, that many more had lost their reason, that thousands
were reduced to dire poverty and distress could not but affect them.
Evereld was touched too by a very kindly but sad letter from Lady
Mactavish. It contained one sentence which puzzled her not a little.
“What does Lady Mactavish mean by speaking of the help you gave Sir
Matthew?” she enquired, a week before their wedding day, as she and
Ralph sat together in the library where in December they had had that
first “business interview.”
“What does she say about it?” asked Ralph.
“Here is her letter, it is a message to you;--‘Tell Ralph that I shall
never cease to be grateful to him for the help he gave my husband. It
saved his life.”
“Well,” said Ralph, “I suppose I am free to speak of it since she
mentioned it to you. He came to me at Southampton, indeed I met him on
my way back from Whinhaven,” and going through the whole story he made
her understand exactly what had taken place. “To this day I don’t know
whether I did right. But if the same thing were to happen again I should
still probably help him. It was the dread of letting one’s private
hatred and resentment bias one against helping a desperate man. As a
matter of fact he has by no means escaped punishment by escaping from
England. I don’t believe there is a corner of the earth where he will
long remain unmolested. He will lead a miserable, hunted life far worse
than the life Bruce Wylie leads in gaol, and with nothing really to look
forward to. But I think he was in earnest when he said that night he
would put an end to himself if they arrested him. And I have never
regretted the little I did to shield him from discovery.”
“You wouldn’t have been yourself if you had acted differently,” said
Evereld. “But it must have been hard work to decide.”
“I hope I may never again have such a decision to make,” said Ralph.
“And all the time there was the maddening remembrance of what he had
made you suffer. What a strange, complex character he had: there was
a sort of greatness about him all the time. I suppose that was how he
deceived people in such an extraordinary way,--he managed to deceive
himself. Even now a sort of panic seizes me lest he should somehow
interfere between us. I shall never feel at rest about you till we are
safely married.”
“Next Sunday,” she whispered. “Where shall you be all this week?”
“At Manchester,” he replied “and as ill luck will have it there is a
matinée of the new play and an evening performance of ‘Much Ado’ next
Saturday. However there will be plenty of time to sleep in the train,
and I will meet you somewhere for the early service.”
“Let it be at the Abbey then, that seems specially to belong to us.
Bride and I often go there and we can meet you just by the Baptistry at
the west end.”
“What time is the wedding to be? I have not even learnt that yet,” he
said laughing.
“Mrs. Hereford arranged that it should be at two, that will leave us
plenty of time to catch our train, and I have not told anyone where we
mean to go. That is our secret.”
“Yes, we will keep that dark,” said Ralph. “Otherwise it may be creeping
into the papers. Did you see there was a paragraph about Sir Matthew
Mactavish’s late ward in yesterday’s ‘Veracity’?”
“Yes. We couldn’t help laughing over it, but I hope Janet and Minnie
won’t see it. Oh, Ralph! what a nightmare the past is to look back on!
and how happy and safe I am with you!”.
Now that all was arranged, she seemed perfectly at rest, able even
to enjoy all the manifold little plans and the cheerful bustle
that heralded the wedding-day. But Ralph down at Manchester spent a
feverishly anxious week, and found it difficult indeed to concentrate
his mind on his work. Most managers would have lost all patience
with him, but Macneillie with the genial breadth of mind and the rare
patience that characterised him took it all very quietly, and perhaps in
his secret soul rather enjoyed the sight of such unusual and unsullied
enthusiasm.
By the time Saturday arrived, Ralph had become very “ill to live with.”
He wandered about the house imagining that he was busy packing but
contriving to forget half his possessions. He could hardly stir
without singing or whistling, and he would have neglected to put in an
appearance at “Treasury” if Macneillie himself had not reminded him.
“You are like your namesake Sir Ralph the Rover,” said the manager, who
had been answering his correspondence as well as he could to a running
accompaniment of Ralph’s voice.
“He felt the cheering power of spring,
It made him whistle, it made him sing--“
“We won’t finish the quotation. But my dear fellow you will be quite
played out to-morrow if you go on at this rate.”
“How about the train?” said Ralph. “That’s the thing that bothers me.
Shall we ever get through to-night in time to catch the mail?”
“For pity’s sake don’t begin to fuss about that already!” said
Macneillie with a comical expression about the corners of his mouth.
“It’s a mercy that marrying and giving in marriage are not every-day
occurrences or a manager’s life would not be worth living.”
“I’ll promise never to do it again, Governor,” said Ralph with mock
penitence.
“Well well,” said Macneillie with a patient shrug of the shoulders,
“it all comes in the day’s work. You will understand now how to render
Claudio’s words ‘Time goes on crutches till love have all his rites.’”
Ralph thought it extremely obnoxious of the Manchester folk to have
petitioned for a performance of “Much ado about Nothing” on this
particular day, and though he acted Claudio very well it was always
to him an uncongenial character. Macneillie’s Benedick was however
considered one of his best parts and though perhaps he enjoyed playing
it as little just then as Ralph enjoyed going through the wedding scene
on the eve of his own marriage, he was the last man to let his private
feelings interfere with his work either as actor or as manager.
The play was carefully rendered, and after a most uncomfortable rush and
scramble, Ralph, thanks chiefly to the help of his many friends in the
company, found himself at the station just as the Scotch mail steamed
up to the platform. Whether Macneillie would arrive in time seemed
doubtful, however as the guard’s whistle sounded he emerged from the
booking office, and with his usual imperturbably grave face sprang in
while the train moved off.
Ivy Grant and Myra Brinton had packed up a most tempting little supper
for the two and had taken care to see that it was not forgotten in the
hurry of the last moment; and Macneillie, who always retained the power
of enjoying a holiday under any circumstances, proved a very genial
companion until the advent of another passenger at Crewe, when they
relapsed into silence and settled down to sleep.
The night was stormy; torrents of rain washed the windows, and the wind
howled and moaned as the train sped on through the darkness. Ralph tried
in vain to follow the example of his two companions who, quite oblivious
of their surroundings slept composedly through all the din. He was far
too much excited to lose consciousness even for a minute. The carriage
lamp was shaded and, in the dim light, visions of Evereld kept rising
before him.
She was a little girl once more, in a black frock, and with soft, bright
hair falling about her shoulders.
“Are you not hungry?” she said to him confidentially as they stood
together, strangers and yet somehow already friends, in a drearily grand
London drawing-room.
Again she was sitting beside him on the stairs, a fairylike little
figure in white, eating ice pudding supplied to them by the goodnatured
Geraghty. “I somehow think your father and mine will be talking together
to-night?” she said, her sweet blue eyes looking as though they could
see right into that spirit world of which she spoke.
On thundered the train, and yet another vision rose before Ralph. He was
in Westminster Abbey and there before him he suddenly saw a face which
took his heart by storm--the face of his old playfellow grown into
gentle gracious womanhood. Then the same face, but with wistful love-lit
eyes was lifted up to his outside the house in Queen Anne’s Gate
kindling hope in his heart and filling him with a glow of happiness
which had carried him through the pain of the parting. These same
love-lit eyes and a yet more wonderful response of soul to soul rose in
vision before him as he recalled a certain summer afternoon by the sea
shore. What did it matter to him that the cold spring wind raged round
the carriage piercing every crevice, or that the hail-stones rattled
angrily against the glass! He was far away from it all, seeing blue
waves and the mellow brown side of a boat and Evereld’s blushing face.
The memory of that August day lasted him all the rest of the way to
London; then in the chilly dawn they made their way to the nearest
hotel, where the order of things was reversed for Ralph at last fell
sound asleep on a sofa in the reading room and it was Macneillie who was
wakeful and saw visions of the past--visions that he dared not dwell
upon because with them there came the maddening recollection that he was
close to Christine, that it would be the easiest thing in the world, yet
the most fatal, to go that afternoon and call upon her. What was she
doing? How did she struggle on in the difficult life on which she had
embarked? All the craving to know, all the longing to serve her must be
crushed down in his heart. Alone she must dree her weird. Alone he must
bear the anguish of her pain and his own bitter loss.
Almost involuntarily, those hard views of God from which years ago
he had been rescued by Thomas Erskine’s book “The Spiritual Order,”
returned now to him, flooding his mind with rebellious thoughts.
Why did all this misery come to him? Why were the mistakes and sins of
others visited upon him? Why were the ways of God so unequal? Other men
prospered. Other men had the desire of their hearts granted. Why was he
for ever to be thwarted? For years he knew that he had made strenuous
efforts to live uprightly, yet there seemed nothing before him but
sorrow; while over yonder there was a mere boy of one and twenty about
to gain after the briefest of struggles the woman he loved.
The Tempter had however defeated his own object by introducing the
thought of Ralph Denmead. Macneillie’s heart was too large for jealousy
to harbour in it. Jealousy can only rest long and comfortably in narrow,
and cramped hearts where self love and petty absorption in trifles has
contracted the space.
As he glanced across the room he saw that the sunlight was streaming
full upon the sleeper, he got up and lowered the blind pausing for a
minute by the sofa to look at his companion. Ralph was sound asleep, and
his untroubled, boyish face was worth looking at if only for its peace.
To Macneillie it suggested many thoughts.
He remembered his first impression of Ralph, lying in the last stage of
misery on the banks of the Leny, and he delighted to think that partly
by his aid the lad had battled through his difficulties and had got his
foot firmly planted on the ladder of success.
There is nothing so strange in life as the manner in which a kindly deed
re-acts in a thousand subtle ways on the doer. And now, as had been the
case before, Macneillie was lured back to life by the one he had helped
long ago. The hard thoughts passed, he stood there in the bright spring
morning strong once more in the belief that the eternal patience of the
All-Father schools each son in the best possible way.
Sitting down to the writing-table he filled up a couple of hours with
answering the letters of the previous day, then when the time came,
set off with Ralph to the Abbey and finding the way to the Baptistry
unbarred waited there beside the busts of Maurice and Kingsley, lifted
a degree nearer to that Light and Love of which their epitaphs spoke by
the struggle he had just passed through.
They were joined here by Mrs. Hereford, Bride, and Evereld, and
Macneillie thought he had never seen anything more winning than
Evereld’s eager welcome of her lover. He felt very much in harmony with
their happiness as they all went together into the choir, and indeed
throughout the day the depression which had overwhelmed him since he had
received the bad news at Brighton was banished by the unalloyed bliss of
the two who were just stepping into their goodly heritage of mutual love
and companionship.
It was a thoroughly unconventional wedding with merely the merry Irish
family in the house, with Bride and the two little Hereford girls for
bridesmaids, and Macneillie and an old school fellow who had returned
from Canada just in time to be Ralph’s best man, as the only outsiders.
Of course, when at two o’clock they drove to the church, it was crowded
with spectators, for the marriage of the heiress who had been defrauded
of her fortune by Sir Matthew Mactavish had found its inevitable
way into the hands of the paragraph-mongers. But then, as Macneillie
remarked, a marriage ought to take place before a congregation, and it
would have been a thousand pities if this particular marriage had been
smuggled through in secret at some chilly hour of the morning in an
empty church.
“As it was,” he added, “some idle London folk had the chance of singing
‘All people that on earth do dwell’ to the old hundredth, and that’s a
chance that doesn’t often come to us in these degenerate days of flabby
modern hymns. All the women, moreover, will go away persuaded in their
own minds that the conventional wedding dress of modern days is ugly and
that the old-world dress of Mrs. Ralph Denmead is far more artistic.”
There was one thing, however, which baffled the Press. It described
the service with gusto, and gave the most elaborate details as to the
dresses, but it could not discover where the Bride and Bride-groom
intended to spend the honeymoon. It was reduced at length to the
desperate expedient of a good round lie, and said that they left _en
route_ for the continent.
Ralph and Evereld, who had kept this detail entirely to themselves,
laughed contentedly as they read this fable in their snug little
sitting-room at Stratford-on-Avon.
“We knew a trick worth two of that,” said Ralph. “Fancy rushing off
to the Continent for a week! It never seemed to occur to anyone that
Stratford was the ideal place for an actor’s honeymoon. We are not going
to leave our Mecca entirely to the Yankees.”
Evereld hoped she thought enough of Shakspere as they wandered about
the quaint old place and enjoyed the bright spring weather in the lovely
country around.
“It was a delightful thought of yours to come here,” she said, “one
likes to have a beautiful background for the happiest time of one’s
life. But after all, darling, it’s very much in the background, we
should really be as happy in the black country.”
“Of course,” said Ralph laughing. “And there’ll be plenty of the black
country to come by and bye. You have no idea what dreary towns we have
sometimes to go to. Are you not afraid when you look forward to that
sort of thing?”
“Not a bit,” she said with a radiant face. “Don’t I know now what the
song means when it speaks of ‘The desert being a paradise’? That used to
seem such nonsense in the old days! But with you Ralph------”
She was interrupted. They had been walking beside the pollarded willows
by the river, Evereld’s hands were full of the early spring flowers,
cowslips and primroses and delicate white anemones which they had
gathered in the country. She looked up, for a daintily dressed little
lady suddenly stood before her, having deserted a camp-stool and easel
though she still retained palette and brushes in one hand.
“Miss Ewart!” she exclaimed with a faint touch of American intonation
which instantly recalled Evereld to Glion. “I am so delighted to meet
you again, and in this spot of all others, this sacred shrine which you
lucky English people possess, though we would give millions of dollars
if we could but transplant it right over the ocean!”
“How glad I am to see you!” said Evereld warmly. “I shall never forget
your kindness last September. May I introduce my husband to you? Mr.
Denmead, Miss Upton.”
“Ah,” said Miss Upton shaking hands with him, “I congratulate Mr.
Denmead very warmly. And to think that the third volume which you were
to have sent me in America should greet me here by the banks of the
Avon! It is delightful!”
“You have not gone back as soon as you expected,” said Evereld.
“Well, no. You see the storm at Glion somehow cleared the atmosphere
and many things were altered by it sooner or later,” said Miss Upton her
bright eyes twinkling with fun. “In fact, thanks to you, another romance
began there, and next year when Mr. Lewisham has taken his degree at
Oxford, why he’ll be coming over the ocean to New York, and we have an
idea of following the good example which you and Mr. Denmead have set
us.
“How glad I am!” said Evereld. “That is charming. Some day we all
four ought to meet at Glion, for it is hard that I should have any
disagreeable associations left with that lovely little place. You ought
to see it Ralph.”
“Why not plan a meeting here on one of Shakspere’s birthday’s? We may
possibly be here for some of the performances in the Memorial theatre.”
“Yes, that’s a better idea still,” agreed both Evereld and the American
girl.
And after walking back to the town together they parted on the best of
terms.
That evening a note and a little packet were brought to Evereld. They
were from Miss Upton.
“Just one line in great haste,” the letter ran, “we are off to Woodstock
to-night, being as they call us true Yankee rushers. You told me you
were not going to set up house yet awhile, but wherever you are I know
you will drink afternoon tea as you did in Switzerland. Stir your tea
with these Stratford Memorial spoons and drink to our next merry meeting
in the birthplace of the Swan of Avon. With all good wishes
“Yours cordially,
“Minnie K. Upton.
“I hope my romance will have as satisfactory an end to its third Volume
as yours.”
“What a jolly sort of girl she seems,” said Ralph as Evereld read him
the note, “but that postscript is all wrong, darling. We are not at the
end of things, we are only just at the beginning.”