AN ILL-OMENED WEDDING.
The last day of the year, nature’s dullest, dreariest interval between
the richness of autumn and the fresh young beauty of spring. Not a
flower in the prim old Manor-house garden, save a melancholy tea-rose,
that looked white and wan under the dull grey sky, and a few pallid
chrysanthemums, with ragged petals and generally deplorable aspect.
‘What a miserable morning!’ exclaimed Celia, shivering, as she looked
out of Laura’s dressing-room window at the sodden lawn and the
glistening yew-tree hedge, beyond which stretched a dismal perspective
of leafless apple-trees, and the tall black poplars that marked the
boundary of the home pastures, where the pretty grey Jersey cows had
such a happy time in spring and summer.
Laura and her companion were taking an early breakfast--a meal at which
neither could eat--by the dressing-room fire. Both young women were in
a state of nervous agitation, but while one was restless and full of
talk, the other sat pale and silent, too deeply moved for any show of
emotion.
‘Drip, drip, drip,’ cried Celia, pettishly, ‘one of those odious
Scotch mists, that is as likely to last for a week as for an hour.
Nice draggle-tail creatures we shall look after we have walked up that
long churchyard path under such rain as this. Well, really, Laura,
don’t think me unkind for saying so, but I do call this an ill-omened
wedding.’
‘Do you?’ said Laura, with a faint smile. ‘Do you really suppose that
it will make any difference to my future life whether I am married on a
rainy day or on a fine one? I rather like the idea of going out of the
dulness into the sunshine, for I know our wedded life will be full of
sunshine.’
‘How confident you are!’ exclaimed Celia, wonderingly.
‘What have I to fear? We love each other dearly. How can we fail to be
happy?’
‘That’s all very well, but I should have been easier in my mind if you
had had a wedding gown. Think how awkward it will be, by-and-by, when
you are asked to dinner parties. As a bride you will be expected to
appear in ivory satin and orange blossoms. People will hardly believe
in you.’
‘How many dinner parties are likely to be given within ten miles of
Hazlehurst during the next six months?’ asked Laura.
‘Not many, I admit,’ sighed Celia. ‘One might as well live on the
Gold Coast, or at some remote station in Bengal. Of course, papa and
mamma will give a dinner in your honour, and Miss Sampson will ask
you to tea. Oh, Miss Sampson’s teas, with the tea and coffee handed
round on an electro-plated salver, and Rosellen’s Reverie in G on the
cracked old piano, and _vingt et un_ at the loo-table, and anchovy
sandwiches, blanc-mange, and jelly to wind up the wild dissipations of
the evening. Then there are the county families, bounded on the east
by Sir Joshua Parker, and on the north by the Dowager Lady Barker. You
will have stately calls from them. Lady Barker will regret that she has
left off giving dinner parties since her lamented husband’s death. Lady
Parker will square accounts by sending you a card for a garden party
next July.’
This conversation took place at half-past eight. At ten the two girls
were dressed and ready to drive to the church. Laura looked lovely in
her grey silk travelling dress, and grey Gainsborough hat, with its
drooping ostrich plume.
‘One thing I can honestly say, from the bottom of my heart,’ exclaimed
Celia, and Laura turned to her with a smile, expecting to hear
something interesting; ‘you have out and away the handsomest ostrich
feather I ever saw in my life. You may leave it to me in your will if
you like. I’m sure I took trouble enough to get it; and you ought to be
grateful to me for getting your hat to match your gown so exactly.’
And now they are driving along the muddy road, between bare ranks of
dark and dripping trees, and under as dull and colourless a sky as
ever roofed in Hazlehurst. The old church, with its queer corners
and darksome side-aisles, its curious gallery pews in front of the
organ, something like boxes at a theatre, where the aristocracy sit
in privileged retirement, its hatchments, its old-fashioned pulpit,
reading-desk, and clerk’s desk, its faded crimson cushions and
draperies--a church which the restorer’s hand has never improved, for
whose adornment no devout ladies have toiled and striven, the dull
old-world parish church of the last century--looked its darkest and
gloomiest to-day. Not even the presence of youth and beauty could
brighten and enliven it.
John Treverton, and Mr. Sampson, who was to give the bride away, were
the last to arrive. The bridegroom was deadly pale, and the smile with
which he met his bride, though full of fondest love, was wanting in
gladness. Celia performed her duty as bridesmaid in a business-like
way, worthy of the highest praise. Mr. Clare read the service
deliberately and well, the pale bridegroom spoke out manfully when his
time came; nor did Laura’s low voice falter when she pronounced the
words that sealed her fate.
The wedding breakfast was quietly cheerful. That the bridegroom
should have very little to say, and that the bride should be pale
and thoughtful, surprised no one. The vicar and the lawyer were
in excellent spirits; Celia’s lively tongue chimed in at every
opportunity. Mrs. Clare was full of friendly anticipations about what
the young couple would do when they settled down. The dull, damp
morning had sharpened people’s appetites, and there was a good deal
said in praise of the game pie and the truffled turkey; while the old
wines that had been brought forth, mantled in cobwebs, from the dark
recesses of Jasper Treverton’s cellar, were good enough to evolve
faint flashes of wit from the most sluggish brain. Thus the wedding
breakfast, which had the air of a small family gathering, went off
pleasantly enough.
The bride and bridegroom were not to start on their travels till after
dark. They were going northward by the mail, on their way to Dover.
Very little had been said about the honeymoon. It was only vaguely
understood that John Treverton and his wife were going to the South of
France. The vicar had to hurry off soon after breakfast, to read the
funeral service over the coffin of a venerable parishioner, and the
rest of the company took his departure as a signal to disperse. There
was nothing to detain them. This marriage was not as other marriages.
There were to be no evening revels, there was no dazzling array of
wedding gifts to stare at and talk about. Laura had so few friends that
her wedding presents could have been reckoned on the fingers of the
little white hand that looked so strange and wonderful in her eyes,
glorified with a brand new ring, a broad and solid band of gold, strong
enough to wear till her golden wedding. The few guests felt that there
was nothing more for them to do but to take their leave, with much
reiteration of good wishes, and cheery anticipations of the festivities
which were to enliven the old house, when the honeymoon should have
waned.
And now all were gone; the brief winter day was closing, the new year
was coming with hastening footsteps. Only the merest remnant of the old
year remained. How silent the house was in the winter gloaming, silent
with an almost death-like stillness! Laura and Celia had spun out their
parting to the last moment, lingering together in the hall long after
the rest had gone. Celia had so much to say, so many injunctions about
cuffs and collars, and the time and seasons at which Laura was to wear
her various gowns. And then there were little gushes of affection, hugs
and squeezes.
‘You won’t care one iota for me now you’ve a husband,’ murmured Celia.
‘You know better, you silly girl. My marriage will not make the
slightest difference in my feelings.’
‘Oh, but it always does,’ said Celia, with an experienced air. ‘When a
man marries, the friends of his bachelor days go to the wall; everybody
knows that; and it’s just the same thing with a girl. I expect to find
myself nowhere.’
Laura declared she would always be true to friendship, and thus they
parted, Celia running home by herself, with all her wedding finery
smothered under a waterproof Ulster. The rain had ceased by this time,
and there was the red gleam of a wintry sunset in the west.
The hall-door shut with a clang that echoed in the silence of the
house, and Laura went slowly back to the drawing-room, wondering a
little to find herself alone in the gloom of twilight on her wedding
day. It was altogether so different from the ordinary idea of a
wedding--this delayed departure, this uncomfortable interval between
the festivity of the wedding breakfast and the excitement of the
wedding journey.
She found the drawing-room empty. She had left John Treverton there
with Mr. Sampson half an hour ago, when she went upstairs to assist in
packing Celia in the waterproof, and now both were gone. The spacious
room, splendid with an old-fashioned splendour, was lighted only by the
fading wood fire. The white panelled walls and antique mirrors had a
ghostly look; the shadowy corners were too awful to contemplate.
‘Perhaps I shall find him in the study,’ Laura said to herself. ‘It is
kettledrum time.’
She laughed softly to herself. How new, how strange it would be to sit
down _tête à tête_ at the oval tea-table, man and wife, settled
in domesticity for life, no further doubt of each other or of their
fate possible to either--the bargain made, the bond sealed, the pledge
given, that could be broken only by death.
She went slowly through the silence of the house to the room at the
end of the corridor, the little book-room opening into the flower
garden. She opened the door softly, meaning to steal in and surprise
her husband in some pleasant reverie, but on the threshold she stopped
appalled, struck dumb.
He was sitting in an attitude of deepest dejection, his forehead
resting on his folded arms, his face hidden. Sobs, such as but seldom
come from the agonized heart of a strong man, were tearing the heart of
John Treverton. He had given himself up, body and soul, to the passion
of an unconquerable despair.
Laura ran to him, bent over him, drew her arm gently round his neck.
‘Dearest, what is amiss?’ she asked, tenderly, with trembling lips.
‘Such grief, and on such a day as this! Something dreadful must have
happened. Oh, tell me, love, tell me!’
‘I can tell you nothing,’ he answered, hoarsely, putting her arm away
as he spoke. ‘Leave me, Laura. If you pity me, leave me to fight my
battle alone. It is the only kindness you can show me.’
‘Leave you, and in such grief as this! No, John, I have a right to
share your sorrow. I will not go till you have confided in me. Trust
me, love, trust me. Whom can you trust if not your wife?’
‘You don’t know,’ he gasped, almost angrily. ‘There are griefs you
cannot share--a depth of torture you can never fathom. God forbid that
your pure young soul should ever descend into that black gulf. Laura,
if you love, if you pity me--and indeed, dear love, I need all your
pity--leave me now for a little while; leave me to finish my struggle
alone. It is a struggle, Laura, the fiercest this weak soul of mine has
ever passed through. Come back in an hour, dear, and then--you will
know--I can explain some part, at least, of this mystery. In an hour,
in an hour,’ he repeated, with increasing agitation, pointing with a
wavering hand to the door.
Laura stood for a moment or so, irresolute, deeply moved, her womanly
dignity, her pride as a wife, hurt to the quick. Then, with a smile,
half sad, half bitter, she softly quoted the gentle speech of
Shakespeare’s gentlest heroine:--
‘Shall I deny you? No: Farewell, my lord.
Whate’er you be, I am obedient.’
And with those words she left him, full of painful wonder.
If she could have seen the agonized look he turned upon her as she left
him; if she could have seen him start and shiver as the door closed
upon her, and rise and rush to the door, and kneel down and press his
lips upon the insensible panel her hand had touched, and beat his
forehead against the dull wood in a paroxysm of despair, she might have
better estimated the strength of his love and the bitterness of his
grief.
She went to her own room, and sat wondering helplessly at this trouble
and mystery that had come down like a sudden storm-cloud upon the
brightness of her new life. What did it mean? Had all his professions
of love been false? Had he bound himself to her for the sake of his
cousin’s fortune, despite all his protestations to the contrary? Did
he love some one else? Was there some older, dearer tie that made
this bond of to-day intolerable to him? Whatever the cause of his
repentance, it was clear to Laura’s mind that her husband of a few
hours bitterly repented his marriage. Never surely had such deep
humiliation fallen upon a woman.
She sat in the firelit dressing-room, looking straight before her,
numbed and helpless in her grief and humiliation. Reflection could
throw no new light upon her husband’s conduct. What reason could he
have for grief or regret, if he loved her? Never had fortune smiled
more kindly upon man and wife than upon these two.
She looked back upon the days of their brief courtship, and remembered
many things which favoured the idea that he had never really loved
her, that he had been actuated by mercenary considerations alone. She
remembered how cold a lover he had been, how seldom he had courted
her confidence, how little he had told of his own life, how glad he
had always seemed of Celia’s company, frivolous and even fatiguing as
that young lady’s conversation was apt to be. It was all too clear.
She had been duped and fooled by this man to whom she had so freely
given her heart, from whom she had asked nothing but candour and plain
dealing. She lived through that hour of waiting somehow. It was the
longest hour she had ever known. Her maid came to attend to the fire,
and light the candles on dressing-table and mantelpiece, and lingered a
little, pretending to be busied about the trunks and travelling bags,
expecting her mistress to talk to her, and then departed softly, to go
back to the revellers in the housekeeper’s room, where the atmosphere
was heavily charged with tea and buttered toast, and to tell them how
dull the bride looked, and how she had sat like a statue and said never
a word.
‘Who was it went out at the front door just now?’ asked the old butler,
looking up from a cup of tea which he had been gently fanning with his
breath. ‘I heard it shut to.’
‘It must ’ave bin Mr. Treverton,’ said Mary, Laura’s maid. ‘I met ’im
in the ’all. I dessay he were goin’ out to smoke his cigar. It was too
dark for me to see his face, but he didn’t walk as gay and light as
a gentleman ought on his wedding day, to my mind,’ added Mary, with
authority.
‘Well, I dunno,’ remarked Mr. Trimmer, the butler, solemnly. ‘Perhaps a
wedding ain’t altogether the comfortablest day in a man’s life. There’s
too many eyes upon him. He feels as he’s the objick of everybody’s
notice, and if he’s a delicate-minded man it kind of preys upon him. I
can quite understand Mr. Treverton’s not feeling quite himself to-day.
And then you see he comes into the estate by a fluke, as you may say,
and he ain’t got it yet, and he won’t feel himself independent till the
year’s out, and the property is ’anded over to him.’
Mr. Trimmer did not drop his aspirates habitually, like Mary; he only
let one slip now and then when he was impressive.
The hour was ended. For the last twenty minutes Laura had been sitting
with her watch in her hand. Now she rose with her heart beating
tumultuously, and went quickly down the wide old staircase, hastening
to hear her husband’s explanation of his extraordinary conduct. He had
promised to explain.
Had she not been very foolish in torturing herself for this last hour
with vain endeavours to fathom the mystery?
Had she not been still more foolish when she jumped at conclusions, and
made up her mind that John Treverton did not love her? There might be
twenty other reasons for his grief, she told herself, now that the hour
of suspense was ended, and that she was going to hear his explanation.
She trembled as she drew near the door, and felt as if in another
moment she might stumble and fall fainting on the threshold. She
was approaching the most critical moment of her life, the very
turning-point of her destiny. All must depend upon what John Treverton
had to say to her in the next few minutes. She opened the door and went
in, breathless, incapable of speech. She felt that she could ask him no
questions, she could only stand there and listen to all he had to tell.
The room was empty, Laura could just see as much as that in the
fitful glow of the fire; and then a jet of flame leaped suddenly out
of the dimness like a living thing, and showed her a letter lying on
the table. He had written to her. That which he had to tell was too
terrible for speech, and he had, therefore, written. Hope and comfort
died within her at the sight of that letter. She hurried back to her
dressing-room, where she had left the candles burning, locked herself
in, and then, standing, faint and still trembling, by the mantelpiece,
she tore open the envelope and read her husband’s letter.
‘DEAREST AND EVER DEAREST,--
‘When this letter is in your hands I shall have left you, in all
probability for a long time, perhaps for ever. I love you as dearly,
as fondly, as passionately as ever man loved woman, and the pain of
leaving you is worse than the pain of death. Life is not so sweet to
me as you are. This world holds no other delight for me but your sweet
company, your heavenly love; yet I, the most miserable of men, must
forego both.
‘Dearest, I have done a shameful and perhaps a foolish act. I have
committed a crime in order to bind your life with mine, somehow, in
the rash hope that some day that bond may be made legal and complete.
Two ends are served by this act of mine. I have won you from all other
men--John Treverton’s wife will have no suitor--and I have secured you
the possession of your old home and your adopted father’s fortune. His
desire is at least realized by this sad and broken wedding of ours.
‘Dearest love, I must leave you, because there is an old tie which
forbids me as a man of honour to be more to you than I now am. Your
husband in name; your defender and champion, if need were, before all
the world; your adoring slave, in secret and in absence, to the day
of my death. If Fate prove kind, this bond of which I speak will not
last for ever. My fetters will fall off some day, and I shall return
to you a free man. Oh, my love, pity and forgive me, keep a place in
your heart for me always, and believe that in acting as I have acted I
have been prompted by love alone. I shall not touch a sixpence of my
cousin’s fortune till I can come back to you, a free man, and receive
wealth and happiness from you. Till then you will be sole mistress of
Hazlehurst Manor, and all that goes with it. Mr. Sampson will tell you
what settlement I have made--a settlement that will be duly executed
by me upon the day on which I become the ostensible owner of my cousin
Jasper’s estate.
‘My beloved, I can say no more; I dare reveal no more. If you deign
to think at all of one who has so deceived you, think of me pityingly
as the most deeply wretched of men. Forgive me if you can; and I dare
even to hope for pardon from the infinite goodness of your nature. It
is sweet to me in my misery to know that you bear my name--that there
is a link between us that can never be broken, even though Fate should
be cruel enough to part us for life. But I hope for better things from
destiny; I hope for and look forward to a time when I shall sign myself
with pride and gladness more intense than the pain I feel to-day, your
loving husband, JOHN TREVERTON.’
She stood for some minutes pale as marble, with the letter in her hand,
and then she lifted the senseless paper to her lips, and kissed it
passionately.
‘He loves me,’ she cried involuntarily. ‘Thank God for that. I can bear
anything now I am sure of that.’
She believed implicitly in the letter. A woman with wider knowledge of
the evil things of this world might have seen only a tissue of lies in
these wild lines of John Treverton’s; but to Laura they meant truth and
truth alone. He had acted very wickedly; but he loved her. He had done
her almost the deepest wrong a man could do to a woman; but he loved
her. He had duped and fooled her, made her ridiculous in the sight of
her friends and acquaintance; but he loved her. That one virtue in him
almost atoned for all his crimes.
‘There’s not the least use in my trying to hate him,’ she told herself,
in piteous self-abasement, ‘for I love him with all my heart and soul.
I suppose I am a mean-spirited young woman, a poor creature, for I
cannot leave off loving him, though he has treated me very cruelly, and
almost broken my heart.’
She locked the letter in the secret drawer of her dressing-case, and
then sat down on a low stool by the fire and wept very quietly over
this new, strange sorrow.
‘Celia was right,’ she said to herself, by-and-by, with a bitter smile.
‘It was an ill-omened marriage. She need not have taken so much trouble
about my collars and cuffs.’
And then later she began to think of the difficulties, the absurdity of
her position.
‘Wife and widow,’ she thought, ‘with a husband who ran away from me on
my wedding-day. How am I to account to the world for his conduct? What
a foolish, miserable creature I shall appear.’
It came suddenly into her mind that she could not endure, not yet
awhile, at any rate, to have to explain her husband’s conduct--to give
some reason for his desertion of her. Anything would be better than
that. She must run away somewhere. She must leave the revelation to
time. It would be easier for her to write to her old friend the vicar
from a distance.
She could bear anything rather than to be cross-examined by Celia, who
had always distrusted John Treverton, and who might be secretly elated
at his having proved himself an impostor.
‘I must go away at once,’ she decided; ‘this very night. I must go for
my honeymoon alone.’
She rang, and Mary came quickly, flushed with tea, buttered toast, and
the hilarity below stairs.
‘What time is the carriage to come for us, Mary?’ asked Mrs. Treverton.
‘At a quarter to eight, ma’am. The mail goes at twenty minutes before
nine.’
‘And it is just half-past six. Mary, do you think you could get ready
to go with me in an hour and a quarter?’
It had been arranged that Laura was to travel without a maid, much to
the disappointment of Mary, who had an ardent desire to see foreign
lands.
‘Lor’, ma’am, I haven’t a thing packed; but I should dearly like to go.
Do you really mean it?’
‘I do mean it, and I shall be very much pleased with you if you’ll
contrive to pack your trunk in time to go with me.’
‘I’ll do it, ma’am,’ cried Mary, clasping her hands in ecstasy, and
then she tore downstairs like a mad thing to announce to the assembly
in the housekeeper’s room that she was going to France with her
mistress.
‘That’s a sudden change,’ said the butler. ‘And where’s Mr. Treverton
all this time? He didn’t ought to be out of doors in the dark, smoking
his cigar, instead of keeping his wife company.’
‘No more he didn’t,’ said Mary, with indignation; ‘he ain’t my notion
of a ’usband, leaving her to mope alone on her wedding day, poor dear!
It’s my belief she’d been crying her eyes out just now, tho’ she was
artful enough to keep her face turned away from me while she spoke. I
dessay she’s made up her mind to take me abroad with her for company,
because she feels she’ll be dull and lonesome with ’im.’
‘You’d better go and pack up your box,’ said the housekeeper, ‘and not
stand gossiping there. What do you know of the ways of gentry, married
or single, I should like to know? When you’ve been in service as long
as I have you may talk.’
‘Well, I’m sure,’ cried Mary, indignantly, and then she expressed a
hope that her soul was her own, even at Hazlehurst Manor.
Before half-past seven, Mary had packed her box, and had it conveyed
to the hall. Mrs. Treverton’s trunks and bags had also been brought
down. At a quarter to eight the carriage drove up to the door, an
old-fashioned landau in which Jasper Treverton used to take his
daily airing, drawn by a pair of big horses that had begun life at
the plough. Since the lamps had been lighted no one had seen the
bridegroom. The tea-things had been taken into the book-room, and the
urn had hissed itself to silence, but no one had come there to take
tea. Laura only came downstairs when the carriage was at the door.
‘Joe, run and look for Mr. Treverton,’ cried the butler to his
underling.
‘Mr. Treverton will meet us at the station,’ Laura said, hurriedly; and
then she got into the carriage, and called to Mary to follow her.
‘Tell Berrows to drive quickly to the station,’ she told the butler,
and at the first crack of the whip the overfed horses swung the big
carriage round, as if they meant to annihilate the good old house, and
went off along the avenue with the noise of a Barclay and Perkins dray.
‘Well, I never did!’ exclaimed the housekeeper. ‘Fancy his meeting her
at the station, instead of their going off together, sitting side by
side, like true lovers.’
‘I’m afraid there’s not much true love about it, Martha,’ said her
husband, sententiously, and then, waxing familiar, he said, ‘When you
and me was married we didn’t manage matters so did we, my lass?’