ENGAGED
Not wishing to meet Dick until his temper was more composed after that
day’s adventure, Rupert did not go into the smoking or billiard-rooms
before dinner, but retired to the library, purposing to spend there
those dreary three hours which, in a country house, must be got through
somehow between the advance of the mid-winter twilight and the welcome
sound of the dressing-bell. His intention was to read a commentary on
the Koran, if the somewhat agitated state of his mind would allow him to
do so, for he loved to acquire miscellaneous learning, especially if it
bore upon the East, its antiquities, religions, or affairs, a fact that
Edith had good reason to lament. As it happened, this laudable project
for the utilisation of spare time was frustrated by Lady Devene, who,
finding out his whereabouts from the gloomy butler returning with an
empty tea-cup, came to inquire of him the cause of Edith’s accident. He
told her the facts in his usual unvarnished style, minimising Dick’s
share in it as much as possible. But in spite of her phlegmatic
exterior, Lady Devene was a quick judge of truth and character.
“Ach!” she said, “it is Dick’s tricks again, and I do not like Dick; he
is a bad lot, vain of his face, throwing himself head down upon any
pleasure that comes, not working for himself; but what is the English
word? Ah! I have it—a cadger, a bit of bad money that looks all right
outside, no God-fearing man, in that way like his lordship” (she always
called her husband “his lordship”), “but without his brains; one wicked
by weakness, not by will.”
Rupert looked at her, not knowing exactly what to say.
“Ach!” she went on, “you stare at me; you who are his cousin think that
I, who am his wife, am hard upon his lordship, but, _mein Gott!_ who can
be hard upon iron? It is the iron is hardest, and hurts what hits it. I
say he is a terrible man.”
“Then,” asked Rupert solemnly, “why did you marry him?”
She looked up and down the great, lonely room lined with books, into
which none save the housemaids ever penetrated, and then at the closed
door behind her, and answered:
“I will tell you, Rupert, who are honest, who think as I do and believe
in a God and judgment. I am well born in my own country, very well born,
of an older and more distinguished family than any of you, who made your
money out of brewing but the other day. But after my father’s death in
the war we were poor, my mother and I, so when that rich old Lady
Hodgson, who was German born, you know, and a friend of our family,
asked me to come to live with her for eight months of every year, and
paid me well for it, why, I came. There I met his lordship, who found
out that I sent most of my salary home to my mother, and that I thought
otherwise than the fashionable English ladies about many
things—children, for instance, and after the death of her first ladyship
began to take much notice of me. At last one day he proposed, and I
said, ‘No,’ for I always doubted that man. Then, oh! he was clever. What
do you think he did? You see, he knew that I am brought up religious, so
he tells me that he is greatly troubled by doubts, and that the real
reason why he wants to marry me is that he thinks that I would be able
to give him peace of soul again, and to bring him back into the fold of
faith—yes, those were his words, ‘the fold of faith.’ Him! that black
lamb!” she added, with a gasp of indignation, while Rupert burst out
laughing.
“Ah!” she went on, “for you it is funny, but not for me. Well, he
over-persuades me, he tells me I shall be wicked if I turn a penitent
soul back from the door of life by refusing to have anything to do with
it, and so on, and so on, till, sheep’s-head that I am, I believe him:
Also my mother wish the marriage, and I liked to be noble in your
country as well as my own. So I marry him and find out. The fold of
faith! The door of life! Oh! the black goats live in that fold of
his—the black, left-hand goats—and the door he knocks at, it is the door
of hell. I find he believes in nothing, and when I reproach him, he
tells me that it was only his little joke—his little joke to make me
marry him, because he thought I should be a good, useful, domestic wife
and a fine, handsome mother for his children. Ach! _Mein Gott,_ he said
it was a little joke—” and rising from her chair in her woe and
indignation, Tabitha held up her hands and turned her fair face to
heaven, with a look on it like that of a saint who has just felt the
first stroke of martyrdom. Indeed it was a very strange scene, and one
that impressed Rupert deeply.
“And what has been the end about his children?” she went on
tempestuously. “I have had how many—six, seven—oh! I do my duty, I
promise and I pay, but these children they do not live. How can they
live with that wicked man for father? The last—it lived some time, and I
beg him to have it christened—yes, I crawl about on my knees on the
floor after him and beg him let it be made a Christian, and he mocked me
and my ‘silly superstitions,’ and he say he will not have it because the
child will catch cold. And the child it do catch cold, the cold of
death, and now that poor little soul of his it must live on unredeemed
for ever, and perhaps, oh, perhaps suffer terribly because of the sin of
that wicked man.”
“Don’t say that,” said Rupert, “it’s a hard creed, and I won’t believe a
word of it. The innocent can’t be made to suffer for the guilty.”
“Ah! but I do say it, and I do believe it, for I was so taught, and I
tell you it torments me, and, Rupert, no child of mine will ever live!
You will be the heir of all these lands and drink-shops and moneys, and
may they bring you joy. As for me, I wish I were where her first
ladyship is. Oh! I know they say he murdered her, that poor Clara, or
drove her to death, and I daresay when I have no more children he will
do the same to me. Well, I care nothing. And now I have told you and
eased my heart, who have no friend but God since my mother died, and I
thank you for listening so patient to my sad story, because I should
like one of you to know the truth after it is all over—the truth of what
comes to women who are led away by false words and the love of place and
riches;” and once more throwing up her arms, she uttered two or three
dry, hard sobs, then to Rupert’s infinite relief, turned and left the
room.
It seemed to be his fate to receive the confidences of the wives of Lord
Devene, and Heaven knows he did not desire this second edition of them.
Yet his heart bled for the poor German lady who had been beguiled to
fill a place which, for all its seeming grandeur, was to her a very
habitation in Purgatory, since day by day she saw her most cherished
convictions trampled upon and scorned; while the cruel articles of her
narrow creed bred in her mind the belief, or rather the mania, that the
sin of the father was wreaked upon the bodies of her children, and even
had power to pursue and torment their innocent souls. In its way, this
tragedy was as great as that of her whom she succeeded, the wretched
woman who, in her lawless search for relief from loveless misery, had
found but death. Yet, alas! upon the head of that one he had brought
down the evil, and the head of this one he was powerless to protect.
Nor, indeed, did Rupert wish to encourage such painful conversations,
confidences, and the intimacy that must result from them. Therefore he
was determined that he would get away from Tabitha’s house as soon as
possible. But first he must find an opportunity of speaking to Edith and
learn his fate. Indeed, after the words which had broken from his lips
that day, it was his duty so to do. If only it could be accomplished
this night, as it chanced he had a good excuse for departing on the
following morning, since he had received a telegram from an old
brother-officer, with whom he was engaged to stay in Norfolk, shifting
the date of the visit and begging him, if possible, to come down on the
morrow instead of that day week.
As Rupert reflected thus, staring at the fire before which he stood, he
heard the door open and close behind him, and turned round in alarm,
thinking that Lady Devene had come back again. But it was not Lady
Devene, it was Edith already dressed for dinner in a clinging robe of
some soft white material, high because of the bruise on her shoulder; a
bunch of forced lilies of the valley at her breast, her rich golden hair
rippling upon either side of her small head and twisted into a great
knot behind, and for ornaments a close-fitting necklace of fine pearls,
Lord Devene’s latest gift to her, and Rupert’s great blue scarabæus, a
single and imposing touch of colour in the whiteness of her dress.
“Oh,” she said, “I came to look for Tabitha. What an awful name that is,
it always sticks in my throat”—(this was a fib, because she had passed
Lady Devene on the stairs, but it served her purpose)—“not to disturb
your studies, my learned cousin. Don’t look so alarmed, I will go away
again.”
“Oh, please don’t,” he answered. “Sit down here, do, and warm yourself.
I was just—hoping to see you, and—behold! you glide into the room like,
like—an angel into a dream.”
“In answer to the prayers of a saint, I suppose,” she replied. “Really,
Rupert, you are growing quite poetical. Who taught you such pretty
metaphors? It must have been a woman, I am sure.”
“Yes,” he answered boldly, “that is, if it is pretty—a woman called
Edith.”
She coloured a little, not expecting anything so direct, but sat down in
the chair staring at the fire with her beautiful dark blue eyes, and
said, as though to turn the conversation:
“You asked about my shoulder, or if you didn’t, you ought to have done.
Well, there is a bruise on it as big as a saucer, all here,” and with
her first finger she drew a ring upon her dress.
“Confound him!” muttered Rupert.
“Him! Who? Dick or the cock-pheasant? Well, it doesn’t matter. I agree,
confound both of them.”
Then there came a pause, and Rupert wrung his hands as though he were
washing them or suffering pain, so that Edith could not help observing
how large and red they looked in the firelight. She wished that he were
wearing gloves, or would keep them in his pockets. It would make matters
easier for her.
“I’m awfully glad you have come,” he said awkwardly, feeling that if he
didn’t say something soon she would shortly go, “because I want to speak
to you.”
“What about? Nothing disagreeable, I hope. Has Tabitha been making
confidences to you? If so, please do not pass them on to me, for they
obliterate the romance and discredit the holy state of matrimony.”
“Confound Tabitha,” said Rupert again, “and her confidences!” for he was
quite bewildered, and uttered automatically the first words that came
into his mind.
“Again I agree, but soon we shall involve all our relatives in one
universal condemnation, so let us drop that topic.”
Then wearying of this fence, desiring to get the thing over, to have
done with it, to see the doubtful bond signed, sealed, and delivered,
suddenly Edith sat up in her chair and looked at him. The blue eyes
opened wide, and there came into them a light which he had never seen
before, a splendid, dazzling light as though some veil of darkness had
been withdrawn, revealing a hid glory; as though at last she suffered
him to behold her soul. The face changed also, upon it the mask of
coldness broke as ice breaks suddenly beneath the blaze of the sun and
the breath of the western wind, disclosing, or seeming to disclose, a
river of pure love that ran beneath. For one moment he resisted her as
sometimes a moth appears to resist the splendour of flame, not because
he desired to fight against his fate, but rather to let the wonder and
the mystery of this sudden change engrave themselves for ever on his
heart. Then as the white lids sank extinguishing those fires, till the
shadow of the long lashes lay upon her cheek, he spoke in a low and
hurried voice:
“I am all unworthy,” he said, “I am not fit to touch your hand; but I
cannot help it. I love you, and I dare to ask—oh, Edith, I dare to
ask!—that you will give your life to me.”
She sat quite still, making no motion of acceptance or dissent. It was
as though she wished to hear more ere she spoke. But he, too, was
silent—frightened, perhaps, by her stillness—finding no other words in
which to recast the truth that he had uttered once and for all. Again
the white lids were lifted, and again the wide eyes looked at him, but
this time with no syren glance, for they were troubled—almost tearful.
Then whilst he wondered how he should read their message, Edith rose
slowly, and with an infinite deliberation raised her hand and held it
out towards him. At length he understood, and taking that delicate hand,
he pressed his lips upon it, then, greatly daring, placed his arms about
her, drew her to him, and kissed her on the brow and lips.
“My shoulder,” she murmured faintly; “it hurts,” and full of contrition
he let her sink back into her chair.
“Do you love me? Say that you love me, Edith,” he whispered, bending
over her.
“Have I not said?” she answered, glancing at her hand. “Do women—” and
she ceased, and to Rupert this speech, and all that it conveyed, seemed
the most beautiful avowal that ever passed the lips of pure and perfect
maidenhood.
When the heart is too full for words, surely they are best left untried.
Another thought came to him—a painful thought—for he moved uneasily, and
turned red to the eyes, or rather, to the puckered brow above them.
“I must tell you,” he said presently; “it is only right, and after you
have heard you must finally decide, for I will not begin our engagement
by keeping back anything from you whom I worship. Only you will not ask
for names.”
She lifted her head, as though in remonstrance, then reflecting that it
is always well to know a man’s secrets, checked herself. Also she was
curious. What could this saint of a Rupert have done that was wrong?
“Once,” he continued, slowly and painfully, “I committed a great sin—a
love affair—a married woman. She is dead; it is all over, and, thank
God! I have nothing more to confess to you.”
Edith tried to appear grieved, but in reality, she was so intensely
interested—so astonished, too, that any woman could have betrayed Rupert
into an _affaire galante_—that to a dispassionate observer her effort
might have seemed unsuccessful.
“I don’t want to preach,” she said. “I have been told that men are very
different from what they expect us to be. Still, it was good of you to
tell me, and there is no more to say, is there, except—” and she clasped
her hands and looked up at him—“Oh, Rupert! I do hope that it was
not—lately—for I thought—I thought—”
“Great Heavens!” he said, aghast; “why, it was when I was a boy, years
and years ago.”
“Oh!” she answered, “that makes it better, doesn’t it?”
“It makes it less dreadful, perhaps,” he said, “for I lost my reason
almost, and did not understand.”
“Well, who am I that I should judge you, Rupert? Let us never speak of
it again.”
“I am sure I don’t want to,” he replied, with fervour; “but indeed you
are good and kind, Edith. I never expected it; I was afraid that when
you had heard you would turn your back upon me.”
“We are taught to forgive one another,” she answered, a little smile
that would not be suppressed trembling about the corners of her mouth;
and again she held out her hand—this time the left—and suffered him to
kiss it.
In fact, he did more, for drawing off the only ring he ever wore, an
ancient gold ring carved with a strange device—it was the throne-name of
a Pharaoh, which Pharaoh himself had worn for three thousand years
within the tomb—he put it on her third finger as a sign and a token for
ever.
“Another of those unlucky mummy things,” reflected Edith. “I wish I
could get clear of the Egyptians and everything to do with them. They
seem to haunt me.”
But she said nothing, only lifting the ring she touched it with her
lips, a sight that may have surprised the spirit of Pharaoh.
“Rupert,” she said, “don’t say anything of this to-night, except to your
mother, if you wish. You understand, Dick’s temper is so very
unpleasant, though,” she added, with emphasis, “I hope you understand
also that _I_ have no confessions to make to you about him or anybody
else. I can’t help it if he has always—pursued me.”
“He had better give up his pursuit now,” grumbled Rupert, “or there will
be trouble.”
“Quite so. Well, I have no doubt he will, when he comes to know, only,
to tell the truth, I would rather he didn’t know while you are here. I
don’t want a scene.”
“Well, if you like, dearest,” said Rupert, “although I hate it, I can go
away to-morrow morning, and meet you in a few days in London,” and he
told her of his shooting engagement.
“That will suit very well indeed,” she said, with relief, “although, as
you say, it is horrid under our new circumstances, especially as to
catch that train at Liverpool Street, you will have to leave by eight
to-morrow. Well, you will be back on Saturday, so we must make the best
of it. Good gracious, look at the clock, the dinner-bell will ring in
two minutes, and you are not dressed. Go at once, dear, or—it will be
noticed. There, that is enough. Go, darling, my lover who will be my
husband, go.”
And Rupert went.
“It was not so bad as it might have been,” thought Edith to herself, as
rubbing her face with her lace handkerchief the while, she watched the
door close behind him, “and really he is very nice. Oh, why can’t I care
for him more? If I could, we should be happy, whereas now, I don’t know.
Fancy his telling me that story! What a curious man! It must have been
Clara. I have heard something of the sort. Dick suggested as much, but I
thought it was only one of his scandals. That’s why Cousin George hates
him so—for he does hate him, although he insists upon my marrying him.
Yes, I see it all now, and I can remember that she was a very beautiful
and a very foolish woman. Poor innocent Rupert!”
Rupert came down to dinner ten minutes late, to find that everybody had
gone in. Arriving under cover of the fish, he took the chair which was
left for him by Lady Devene, who always liked him to sit upon her right
hand. Edith, he noted with sorrow, was some way off, between two of the
shooting guests, and three places removed from Dick, who occupied the
end of the table.
“Ach! my dear Rupert,” said Lady Devene, “you are terribly late, and I
could wait no longer, it spoils the cook. Now you shall have no soup as
a punishment. What? Did you go to sleep over that big book of yours up
in the library?”
He made some excuse, and the matter passed off, while he ate, or
pretended to eat his fish in silence. Indeed to him, in his excited
state of mind, this splendid and rather lengthy New Year’s feast proved
the strangest of entertainments. There was a curious air of unreality
about it. Could he, Rupert, after the wonderful and glorious thing that
had happened to him utterly changing the vista of his life, making it
grand and noble as the columns of Karnac beneath the moon, be the same
Rupert who had gone out shooting that morning? Could the handsome,
phlegmatic German lady who sat by him discoursing on the cooking be the
same passion-torn, doom-haunted woman, who told him how she had crawled
upon her knees after her mocking husband for the prize of her infant’s
soul? Nay, was it she who sat there at all? Was it not another, whom he
well remembered in that seat, the lovely Clara, with her splendid,
unhappy eyes full of the presage of death and destruction; those eyes
that he felt still watched him, he knew not whence, reproaching him,
warning him he knew not of what? Was the gay and beautiful lady yonder,
who laughed and joked with her companions, the same Edith to whom he had
vowed himself not an hour gone? Yes, it must be so, for there upon her
finger gleamed his golden ring, and what was more, Dick had seen it, for
he was watching her hand with a frown upon his handsome face.
Why, too, Rupert wondered, did another vision thrust itself upon him at
this moment, that of the temple of Abu-Simbel bathed in the evening
lights which turned the waters of the Nile red as though with blood, and
of the smiling and colossal statues of the first monarch of long ago,
whose ring was set upon Edith’s hand in token of their troth? Of the
dark, white-haired figure of old Bakhita also, who had not crossed his
mind for many a day, standing there among the rocks and calling to him
that they would meet again, calling to Dick and Edith also, something
that he could not understand, and then turning to speak to a shadow
behind her.
The meal ended at last, and as was the custom in this house, everyone,
men and women, left the table together to go into the great hall hung
with holly and with mistletoe, where there would be music, and perhaps
dancing to follow, and all might smoke who wished. Here were some other
guests, the village clergyman’s daughters and two families from the
neighbourhood, making a party of twenty or thirty in all, and here also
was Mrs. Ullershaw, who had dined in her own room, and come down to see
the old year out.
Rupert went to sit by his mother, for a kind of shyness kept him away
from Edith. She laid her hand on his, and with a smile that made her
grey and careworn face beautiful, said how happy she was, after so many
lonely years, to be at the birth of one more of them with him, even
though it should prove her last.
“Don’t talk like that, mother,” he answered, “it is painful.”
“Yes, dear,” she replied, in her gentle voice, “but all life is painful,
a long road of renunciation with farewells for milestones. And when we
think ourselves most happy, as I do to-night, then we should remember
these truths more even than at other times. The moment is all we have,
dear; beyond it lies the Will of God, and nothing that we can call our
own.”
Rupert made no answer, for this talk of hers all seemed part of his
fantastic imaginings at the dinner-table, a sad music to which they were
set. Yet he remembered that once before she had spoken to him of
renunciation when, as a lad, he lay sick after the death of Clara;
remembered, too, that from that day to this he had practised its stern
creed, devoting himself to duty and following after faith. Why, now on
this joyous night, the night of his re-birth in honest love, did his
mother again preach to him her stern creed of renunciation?
At least it was one in which that company did not believe. How merry
they were, as though there were no such things as sorrow, sickness, and
death, or bitter disillusionment, that is worse than death. Listen! the
music began, and see, they were dancing. Dick was waltzing with Edith,
and notwithstanding her hurt shoulder, seemed to be holding her close
enough. They danced beautifully, like one creature, their bodies moving
like a single body. Why should he mind it when she was his, and his
alone? Why should he feel sore because he whose life had been occupied
in stern business had never found time to learn to dance?
Hark! the sound of the bells from the neighbouring church floated
sweetly, solemnly into the hall, dominating the music. The year was
dying, the new year was at hand. Edith ceased her waltzing and came
towards Rupert, one tall, white figure on that wide expanse of polished
floor, and so graceful were her slow movements that they put him in mind
of a sea-gull floating through the air, or a swan gliding on the water.
To him she came, smiling sweetly, then as the turret clock boomed out
the hour of midnight, whispered in his ear:
“I whom you have made so happy wish you a happy New Year—with me,
Rupert,” and turning, she curtseyed to him ever so little.
In the chorus of general congratulations no one heard her low speech,
though Mrs. Ullershaw noted the curtsey and the look upon Edith’s
face—Rupert’s she could not see, for his back was to her—and wondered
what they meant, not without anxiety. Could it be—well, if it was, why
should the thing trouble her? Yet troubled she was, without a doubt, so
much so that all this scene of gaiety became distasteful to her, and she
watched for an opportunity to rise and slip away.
Meanwhile Rupert was enraptured, enchanted with delight, so much so that
he could find no answer to Edith’s charming speech, except to
mutter—“Thank you. Thank you.” Words would not come, and to go down upon
his knees before her, which struck him as the only fitting
acknowledgment of that graceful salutation, was clearly impossible. She
smiled at his embarrassment, thinking to herself how differently the
ready-witted Dick, whose side she had just left, would have dealt with
such a situation, then went on quickly:
“Your mother is preparing to leave us, and you will wish to go with her.
So good-night, dearest, for I am tired, and shan’t stop here long. I
shall count the days till we meet in London. Again, good-night,
good-night!” and brushing her hand against his as she passed, she left
him.