HOW THE WEDDING-DAY BEGAN.
Six days later, Sir Victor Catheron and his aunt came home. These six
days had passed very quietly, very pleasantly, to Edith. She was not
in the least lonely; the same sense of relief in her lover's absence
was upon her as she had felt at Torquay. It seemed to her she breathed
freer when a few score miles lay between them. She had her pet books
and music, and she read and played a great deal; she had her long,
solitary rambles through the leafy lanes and quiet roads, her long
drives in the little pony phaeton her future husband had given her.
Sometimes Lady Gwendoline was her companion; oftener she was quite
alone. She was not at all unhappy now; she was just drifting passively
on to the end. She had chosen, and was quietly abiding by her choice;
that was all. She caught herself thinking, sometimes, that since she
felt so much happier and freer in Sir Victor's brief absences, how was
she going to endure all the years that must be passed at his side? No
doubt she would grow used to him after a while, as we grow used and
reconciled to everything earthly.
One circumstance rather surprised her: during those six days of
absence she had received but one note from her lover. She had counted
at least upon the post fetching her one or two per day, as when at
Torquay, but this time he wrote her but once. An odd, incoherent,
hurried sort of note, too--very brief and unsatisfactory, if she had
had much curiosity on the subject of what was going on at St. John's
Wood. But she had not. Whether his father lived or died, so that he
never interfered with her claim to the title of Lady Catheron in the
future, Miss Darrell cared very little. This hurried note briefly told
her his father had died on the day of their arrival; that by his own
request the burial place was to be Kensal Green, not the Catheron
vaults; that the secret of his life and death was still to be kept
inviolate; and that (in this part of the note he grew impassionedly
earnest) their marriage was not to be postponed. On the third of
October, as all had been arranged, it was still to take place. No
other note followed. If Miss Darrell had been in love with her future
husband, this profound silence must have wounded, surprised, grieved
her. But she was not in love. He must be very much occupied, she
carelessly thought, since he could not find time to drop her a daily
bulletin--then dismissed the matter indifferently from her mind.
Late in the evening of the sixth day Sir Victor and Lady Helena
returned home.
Edith stood alone awaiting them, dressed in black silk, and with soft
white lace and ruby ornaments, and looking very handsome.
Her lover rushed in and caught her in his arms with a sort of
rapturous, breathless delight.
"My love! my life!" he cried, "every hour has been an age since I said
good-by!"
She drew herself from him. Sir Victor, in the calm, courteous character
of a perfectly undemonstrative suitor she tolerated. Sir Victor in the
role of Romeo was excessively distasteful to her. She drew herself out
of his arms coldly and decisively.
"I am glad to see you back, Sir Victor." But the stereotyped words of
welcome fell chill on his ear. "You are not looking well. I am afraid
you have been very much harassed since you left."
Surely he was not looking well. In those six days he had grown more
than six years older. He had lost flesh and color; there was an
indescribable something in his face and expression she had never seen
before. More had happened than the death of the father he had never
known, to alter him like this. She looked at him curiously. Would he
tell her?
He did not. Not looking at her, with his eyes fixed moodily on the
wood-fire smoldering on the hearth, he repeated what his letter had
already said. His father had died the morning of their arrival in
London; they had buried him quietly and unobtrusively, by his own
request, in Kensal Green Cemetery; no one was to be told, and the
wedding was not to be postponed. All this he said as a man repeats a
lesson learned by rote--his eyes never once meeting hers.
She stood silently by, looking at him, listening to him.
Something lay behind, then, that she was not to know. Well, it made
them quits--she didn't care for the Catheron family secrets; if it
were something unpleasant, as well _not_ know. If Sir Victor told
her, very well; if not, very well also. She cared little either way.
"Miss Catheron remains at St John's Wood, I suppose?" she inquired
indifferently, feeling in the pause that ensued she must say something.
"She remains--yes--with her two old servants for the present. I
believe her ultimate intention is to go abroad."
"She will not return to Cheshire?"
A spasm of pain crossed his face; there was a momentary contraction of
the muscles of his mouth.
"She will not return to Cheshire. All her life she will lie under the
ban of murder."
"And she is innocent?"
He looked up at her--a strange, hunted, tortured sort of look.
"She is innocent."
As he made the answer he turned abruptly away. Edith asked no more
questions. The secret of his mother's murder was a secret she was not
to hear.
Lady Helena did not make her appearance at all in the lower rooms,
that night. Next day at luncheon she came down, and Edith was honestly
shocked at the change in her. From a hale, handsome, stately, upright,
elderly lady, she had become a feeble old woman in the past week. Her
step had grown uncertain; her hands trembled; deep lines of trouble
were scored on her pale face; her eyes rarely wandered long from her
nephew's face. Her voice took a softer, tenderer tone when she
addressed him--she had always loved him dearly, but never so dearly,
it would seem, as now.
The change in Sir Victor was more in manner than in look. A feverish
impatience and restlessness appeared to have taken possession of him;
he wandered about the house and in and out like some restless ghost.
From Powyss Place to Catheron Royals, from Catheron Royals to Powyss
Place, he vibrated like a human pendulum. It set Edith's nerves on
edge only to watch him. At other periods a moody gloom would fall upon
him, then for hours he sat brooding, brooding, with knitted brows and
downcast eyes, lost in his own dark, secret thoughts. Anon his spirits
would rise to fever height, and he would laugh and talk in a wild,
excited way that fixed Edith's dark, wondering eyes solemnly on his
flushed face.
With it all, in whatever mood, he could not bear her out of his sight.
He haunted her like her shadow, until it grew almost intolerable. He
sat for hours, while she worked, or played, or read, not speaking, not
stirring--his eyes fixed upon her, and she, who had never been nervous,
grew horribly nervous under this ordeal. Was Sir Victor losing his
wits? Now that his insane father was dead and buried, did he feel it
incumbent upon him to keep up the family reputation and follow in that
father's footsteps?
And the days wore on, and the first of October came.
The change in the young baronet grew more marked with each day. He
lost the power to eat or sleep; far into the night he walked his room,
as though some horrible Nemesis were pursuing him. He failed to the
very shadow of himself, yet when Lady Helena, in fear and trembling,
laid her hand upon his arm, and falteringly begged him to see a
physician, he shook her off with an angry irritability quite foreign
to his usual gentle temper, and bade her, imperiously, to leave him
alone.
The second of October came; to-morrow would be the wedding-day.
The old feeling of vagueness and unreality had come back to Edith.
Something would happen--that was the burden of her thoughts. To-morrow
was the wedding-day, but the wedding would never take place. She
walked through the glowing, beautiful rooms of Catheron Royals,
through the grounds and gardens, bright with gay autumnal flowers--a
home luxurious enough for a young duchess--and still that feeling of
unreality was there. A grand place, a noble home, but she would never
reign its mistress. The cottage at Carnarvon had been weeks ago
engaged, Sir Victor's confidential servant already established there,
awaiting the coming of the bridal pair; but she felt she would never
see it. Upstairs, in all their snowy, shining splendor, the bridal
robe and veil lay; when to-morrow came would she ever put them on, she
vaguely wondered. And still she was not unhappy. A sort of apathy had
taken possession of her; she drifted on calmly to the end. What was
written, was written; what would be, would be. Time enough to wake
from her dream when the time of waking came.
The hour fixed for the ceremony was eleven o'clock; the place,
Chesholm church. The bridemaids would arrive at ten--the Earl of
Wroatmore, the father of the Ladies Gwendoline and Laura Drexel, was
to give the bride away. They would return to Powyss Place and eat the
sumptuous breakfast--then off and away to the pretty town in North
Wales. That was the programme. "When to-morrow comes," Edith thinks,
as she wanders about the house, "will it be carried out?"
It chanced that on the bridal eve Miss Darrell was attacked with
headache and sore throat. She had lingered heedlessly out in the rain
the day before (one of her old bad habits to escape from Sir Victor,
if the truth must be told), and paid the natural penalty next day. It
would never do to be hoarse as a raven on one's wedding-day, so Lady
Helena insisted on a wet napkin round the throat, a warm bath, gruel,
and early bed. Willingly enough the girl obeyed--too glad to have this
last evening alone. Immediately after dinner she bade her adieux to
her bridegroom-elect, and went away to her own rooms.
The short October day had long ago darkened down, the curtains were
drawn, a fire burned, the candles were lit. She took the bath, the
gruel, the wet napkin, and let herself be tucked up in bed.
"Romantic," she thought, with a laugh at herself, "for a bride."
Lady Helena--was it a presentiment of what was so near?--lingered by
her side long that evening, and, at parting, for the first time took
her in her arms and kissed her.
"Good-night, my child," the tender, tremulous tones said. "I pray you
make him happy--I pray that he may make _you_."
She lingered yet a little longer--her heart seemed full, her eyes were
shining through tears. Words seemed trembling on her lips--words she
had not courage to say. For Edith, surprised and moved, she put her
arms round the kind old neck, and laid her face for a moment on the
genial old bosom.
"I will try," she whispered, "dear, kind Lady Helena--indeed I will
try to be a good and faithful wife."
One last kiss, then they parted; the door closed behind her, and Edith
was alone.
She lay as usual, high up among the billowy pillows, her hands clasped
above her head, her dark, dreaming eyes fixed on the fire. She looked
as though she were thinking, but she was not. Her mind was simply a
blank. She was vaguely and idly watching the flickering shadows cast
by the firelight on the wall, the gleam of yellow moonlight shimmering
through the curtains; listening to the faint sighing of the night wind,
the ticking of the little fanciful clock, to the pretty plaintive
tunes it played before it struck the hours. Nine, ten, eleven--she
heard them all, as she lay there, broad awake, neither thinking nor
stirring.
Her maid came in for her last orders; she bade the girl good-night,
and told her to go to bed--she wanted nothing more. Then again she was
alone. But now a restlessness, as little to be understood as her
former listless apathy, took hold of her. She could not lie there and
sleep; she could not lie there awake. As the clock chimed twelve, she
started up in bed in a sudden panic. Twelve! A new day--her wedding
day!
Impossible to lie there quiet any longer. She sprang up, locked her
door, and began, in her long, white night-robe, pacing up and down. So
another hour passed. One! One from the little Swiss musical clock; one,
solemn and sombre, from the big clock up in the tower. Then she
stopped--stopped in thought; then she walked to one of her boxes, and
took out a writing-case, always kept locked. With a key attached to
her neck she opened it, seated herself before a table, and drew forth
a package of letters and a picture. The picture was the handsome
photographed face of Charley Stuart, the letters the letters he had
written her to Sandypoint.
She began with the first, and read it slowly through--then the next,
and so on to the end. There were over a dozen in all, and tolerably
lengthy. As she finished and folded up the last, she took up the
picture and gazed at it long and earnestly, with a strangely dark,
intent look. How handsome he was! how well he photographed! that was
her thought. She had seen him so often, with just this expression,
looking at her. His pleasant, lazy, half-sarcastic voice was in her
ear, saying something coolly impertinent--his gray, half-smiling,
half-cynical eyes were looking life-like up at her. What was he doing
now? Sleeping calmly, no doubt--she forgotten as she deserved to be.
When to-morrow came, would he by any chance remember it was her
wedding-day, and would the remembrance cost him a pang? She laughed at
herself for the sentimental question--Charley Stuart feel a pang for
her, or any other earthly woman? No, he was immersed in business, no
doubt, head and ears, soul and body; absorbed in dollars and cents,
and retrieving in some way his fallen fortunes--Edith Darrell
dismissed contemptuously, as a cold-blooded jilt, from his memory.
Well, so she had willed it--she had no right to complain. With a
steady hand she tied up the letters and replaced them in the desk. The
picture followed. "Good-by, Charley," she said, with a sort of smile.
She could no more have destroyed those souvenirs of the past than she
could have cut off her right hand. Wrong, you say, and shake your head.
Wrong, of course; but when has Edith Darrell done right--when have I
pictured her to you in any very favorable light? As long as she lived,
and was Sir Victor's wife, she would never look at them again, but
destroy them--no, she could not do that.
Six! As she closed and locked the writing-case the hour struck; a
broad, bright sunburst flashed in and filled the room with yellow
glory. The sun had risen cloudless and brilliant at last on her
wedding-day.