IN THE CHURCHYARD.
‘MY dear,’ said Mrs. Dulcimer to Beatrix quite suddenly one evening,
when she and Kenrick were sitting round the fire in the snug
dining-room, a little while before tea, ‘Cyril must certainly assist at
your marriage.’
Happily for Beatrix, the lamp had not yet been brought in. There was
only the changeful and uncertain firelight, which just at this moment
left her face in shadow.
‘Well, yes,’ returned Kenrick. ‘I think Cyril ought to be invited. If
he were not present it would look as if there were some quarrel between
us. And we are very good friends, are we not, dear?’ he added, turning
to his betrothed.
‘Yes,’ faltered Beatrix.
‘If he were not here people would talk,’ pursued Mrs. Dulcimer. ‘You
see, Bridford is not more than thirty miles distant, and, as Kenrick’s
first cousin and Mr. Dulcimer’s late curate, it would be only natural
for Cyril to assist at the ceremony.’
‘I will write and ask him to-morrow,’ said Kenrick. ‘I ought to have
thought of it before.’
‘He has been very ill,’ suggested Beatrix. ‘He may not be strong enough
to travel.’
‘Thirty miles only, my dear. A mere nothing,’ said Mrs. Dulcimer.
‘Besides, he has quite recovered--or, at any rate, he has gone back to
his duty. Clement told me so a week ago.’
‘Kenrick,’ said Beatrix a little later, when she and her lover were
walking to the Water House together through the wintry night, ‘is it
really necessary for your cousin to be at our wedding?’
‘His absence might cause a scandal, dearest. Remember, he is my nearest
relation, known to be quite near at hand, and closely associated with
this place. Do you not think that people would say unpleasant things if
we left him out?’
‘Yes,’ sighed Beatrix, ‘people have a knack of imagining the worst.’
‘I should be very sorry if any one were to say that Cyril was absent
from my wedding because he and my wife feared to meet,’ said Kenrick,
with a sudden pang of jealousy.
‘They shall have no reason for saying anything of the kind,’ Beatrix
answered, proudly. ‘Pray invite your cousin.’
‘Now you are angry.’
‘Not with you,’ she answered, quickly. ‘I am angry with the world,
life, fate.’
‘What, Beatrix, now, after you have made me so happy, when all our life
is smiling upon us--every cloud gone?’
Beatrix’s only answer was a sigh. But Kenrick was rapt in the placid
delight of his good fortune. He loved his betrothed too well to believe
it possible that she did not love him. They had lived so happily, as it
seemed to him, for nearly four months, in each other’s society. They
had never had a dispute--or even a difference of opinion. Could he
doubt that she had grown fonder of him day by day in all that time? Her
irritation to-night was natural, he argued. It arose from her scorn of
the scandals that had darkened her young life. It was hard for her to
forget these things.
Kenrick wrote next day to his cousin:
‘DEAR CYRIL,--The Dulcimers say you ought to assist at my wedding,
and I think the same. Will you come?
‘Yours always,
‘KENRICK.’
The answer was very little longer:
‘DEAR KENRICK,--I agree with you and the Dulcimers. I will come to
assist in the ceremony, and to wish you and your bride all blessings
that this life and the brighter life after can yield.
‘My time is closely occupied here, so my visit must be of the
shortest. I will come on Tuesday afternoon, and must return on
Wednesday, directly after the wedding.
‘Yours in all affection and good faith,
‘CYRIL.’
This letter made Kenrick happy. It dispelled the one uneasiness of his
mind, the lurking notion that he had helped to spoil his cousin’s
peace. Cyril was evidently reconciled to the existing state of things.
After all it was his own doing, Kenrick thought. He had no right to
complain.
Kenrick showed the letter to Beatrix, who read it slowly and
thoughtfully, and returned it to him without a word.
‘A gentleman-like letter, isn’t it?’ asked Kenrick.
‘Very,’ she answered.
Did it please her that her former lover should write in so friendly a
tone--that he should be willing to assist in the solemn act that was to
make their severance irrevocable? No. His willingness stung her to the
quick.
‘He never loved me,’ she thought. ‘It was Bella’s pretty face that he
really cared for. But he thought my fortune would help him in doing
good, and he was willing to sacrifice his own inclination in order
to be useful to others. He liked me just well enough, perhaps, to be
reconciled to the idea of marrying me and making use of my fortune. And
then when the slander arose he drew back. Honour forbade him marrying
a woman the world suspected of a hideous crime, and whom he did not
love.’
Bitter thoughts for the bride of to-morrow! Tuesday morning had come.
Mr. Scratchell had called at the Water House to tell Miss Harefield
that everything was done according to her wish. The equitable charge on
Kenrick’s estate had been paid off. Culverhouse Castle was as free as
it had been in the reign of its wealthiest possessors.
‘I am very glad it is done,’ said Beatrix, and it was the first
gladness she had shown for some days.
Madame Leonard wanted her to be interested in her trousseau, which was
being packed by that clever little Frenchwoman and the honest unhandy
English maid. Everything had been left to Madame Leonard.
Beatrix had taken no trouble about this mountain of new clothes which
people had declared she must have, as if to mark distinctly that to get
married is to turn over a new leaf in the volume of life.
‘It is all well to let me do in these things, to choose ze colours,
and to devise ze modes, but it must be that you interest yourself
a little now that it is all achieved, or I shall think you are not
content,’ remonstrated Beatrix’s companion.
‘Dear Madame Leonard, I am more than content. But I am not very fond
of fine clothes. They do not fill my mind as they seem to do with some
people.’
‘Ah, my dear,’ cried the Frenchwoman, ‘it is all very well to be high
and mighty; but I can tell you there are times in a woman’s life when
if she did not think about her dress she would have nothing to think
of. And it is better to think of a new gown than a new lover. That
amuses. And after all it is innocent. To talk of dress does no one any
harm. It is not like scandal.’
‘Dear Madame Leonard, you are wiser than I. But never mind the
trousseau just now. Please pack my plainest dresses and wraps in one
trunk. I am not going to travel with all those huge boxes, am I?’
‘No, the biggest of those are to be sent straight to India. And the
smaller are to meet you at Brindisi.’
Sir Kenrick and his bride were to spend their honeymoon in Paris and in
Italy, travelling by easy stages to Brindisi, whence they were to start
for India early in April, a fact which Mrs. Dulcimer bitterly bewailed.
‘I thought Kenrick would sell out,’ she said, ‘and that you would
divide your lives between Culverhouse Castle and the Water House.’
‘That would have been to spoil Kenrick’s career, just as it promises
distinction,’ answered Beatrix. ‘I should regard that as a kind of
assassination.’
Upon this last day of her maiden life Beatrix was strangely absent
and troubled in manner. She shrank even from Madame Leonard’s gentle
sympathy, and while the anxious little woman was busy with the trunk
and packing-cases, the owner of all that finery paced the garden walk
by the dull gray river, reckless of the biting east wind, wrapped in
gloomy thoughts. The swollen waters were rushing under the old stone
arch, the moor was darkly purple against a sunless sky. All nature
seemed in harmony with the mind of to-morrow’s bride.
The packing business kept Madame Leonard and Mary closely occupied
all day, so Beatrix was undisturbed. Sir Kenrick had gone to Great
Yafford to get the odds and ends wanted to complete his outfit. Mrs.
Dulcimer was engaged with her dress for the wedding, which was being
made at home, a process which necessitated frequent discussions and
consultations with Rebecca and the dressmaker, and which, undertaken
from motives of economy, was likely to result in an expensive failure.
Cyril was not expected till the evening. He was to arrive in time for
the Vicarage tea, and was to occupy Mrs. Dulcimer’s second best spare
bedroom.
Beatrix had promised to call at the Vicarage some time in the
afternoon. It was a visit she would gladly have avoided in her present
frame of mind, but she thought if she did not go Mrs. Dulcimer would
be likely to come to the Water House in quest of her, and that might
prove a heavier infliction. So she put on her bonnet directly after
luncheon, and walked across the windy bridge, and up the windy street
to the Vicarage. It was between two and three o’clock, a very safe hour
at which to pay her visit, since Cyril was not expected until half-past
seven. She had seen his letter to Mrs. Dulcimer, in which he named the
train that was to bring him.
Mrs. Dulcimer was in her bedroom, with Rebecca and the dressmaker.
Beatrix went up, at the housemaid’s request, and found these three
stitching and talking, as fast as tongues and needles could be driven.
The dress had been three days in hand, but just at the last it was
found necessary to put on an extra pressure to get it finished. Mrs.
Dulcimer was sewing the braid on the skirt, Rebecca was pushing strips
of whalebone into the body, which looked as stiff as a strait-waistcoat
or a suit of plate-armour; the dressmaker was cording a flounce. The
room was strewn with snippings of silk, satin, sarcenet, and lining,
as thick as leaves in Vallombrosa. Mrs. Dulcimer looked the image of
anxiety. If she had been a beauty of seventeen preparing for her first
ball, or a young actress about to make her _début_ in London, she could
not have been more deeply concerned.
‘Oh, Beatrix, I am so glad you have come,’ she exclaimed, without
stopping her needle. ‘I long to know if you like it.’
‘It’ was the dress, now in scattered portions.
Beatrix looked puzzled.
‘My love, how absent-minded you are!’ said Mrs. Dulcimer. ‘Of course
you can’t judge of the general appearance till the flounces are on, and
it all comes together. But you can tell me what you think of the colour
and the style of trimming.’
‘Oh, you mean the dress,’ answered Beatrix, with cruel indifference. ‘I
think that silver-gray is a pretty colour.’
‘It’s the new shade,’ said Mrs. Dulcimer. ‘You are sure it’s the new
shade, are you not, Miss Killick?’ she asked, turning to the dressmaker.
‘Yes, ma’am, it’s quite the new shade,’ answered Miss Killick solemnly.
Beatrix seated herself by the fire, and idly watched the blaze,
while Mrs. Dulcimer went on working. There was not much sustained
conversation. Everybody except Beatrix was thinking of the dress. Miss
Killick and Rebecca had their mouths full of pins, and dropped a few
whenever they spoke, like the girl in the fairy tale. After half an
hour or so Beatrix rose to go, but Mrs. Dulcimer entreated her to stop
till the dress was tried on.
‘It will be ready in a quarter of an hour, won’t it, Miss Killick?’ she
inquired.
They were all sitting close together now, Rebecca sewing the body to
the skirt, the dressmaker sewing on the final flounce.
‘I don’t suppose we shall be much longer, ma’am,’ said Miss Killick.
‘And at four we are going to have a refreshing cup of tea,’ said the
Vicar’s wife, ‘so you really must stop, Beatrix.’
Beatrix could not refuse so small a favour, so she went on staring at
the fire; while the three workers hastened the finish of their task,
with their heads close together, like the three fatal sisters intent
upon the web of some particular destiny which Jove had ordered them to
hurry to its conclusion.
‘There,’ said the three simultaneously, ‘it’s done.’
Five minutes later Mrs. Dulcimer was standing before her cheval
glass, buttoned into her new gown, and trying to make it look as if
it belonged to her, every fold having the stiffness, strangeness, and
awkwardness which are characteristic of a new garment.
Beatrix had to assist at the discussion as to whether the sleeve should
not be shortened a quarter of an inch, or the shoulder seam taken up
a little, or the waist tightened, or the skirt lengthened. When she
found herself free to depart the church clock was striking the quarter
after four. The sky, which had brightened a little in the afternoon,
was yellow in the west, where the sun would soon go down behind yonder
black ridge of moor. The wind had dropped, and there was a mildness in
the air like the sweet breath of early spring.
There was a circuitous way to the Water House, through meadows that lay
behind the churchyard. It was a solitary walk, that Beatrix liked at
all times, and which particularly suited her humour just now. She went
in at the wicket gate in the angle of the churchyard, and followed the
narrow path between the crowded headstones,--commonplace memorials of
harmless uneventful lives.
The pathway took her by the side of the fine old parish church, close
by the vestry, which was curiously squeezed in at an angle between
transept and chancel, under the diamond-paned casement, beside which
the white surplices were hanging, past the sunken door.
Just as she came to the door it opened, and a man came out.
She gave a little cry, and the whole scene seemed to rock before her
eyes, the old gray wall, the crumbling tablets, the leafless elm
branches, the tall black poplars, which rose like watch-towers between
her and the sky. For a moment all seemed in tumultuous motion, as if
a whirlwind had risen. Then, with a great effort, she clasped the
railings of a tomb close by, and commanded brain and body to be still.
A hand was held out to her, and she took it with a mechanical air. Her
lips moved slowly.
‘Cyril.’
Only his name, and the ice was broken. The next instant she had burst
into passionate tears, and was hiding her face against the rusty
insensible railings, anywhere, only to be out of his sight.
Her whole frame was shaken by those sobs. He could not but perceive, he
could not even pretend not to perceive, her distress.
‘Forgive me,’ he said gently. ‘I am more than sorry that I came, if my
presence grieves you. I ought not to have come, but,’ he faltered a
little here, ‘respect for you, regard for my cousin, made it impossible
for me to refuse.’
‘Respect for me!’ she exclaimed bitterly, lifting up her head, and
choking down her sobs with a desperate effort, just as she had held
herself back from unconsciousness a few moments before. ‘Respect for
me--for a woman whom you could believe a poisoner!’
‘Beatrix, I never believed----’ he began.
‘You did not believe me innocent, or you would not have forsaken me,’
she said, confronting him with eyes that kindled as she spoke.
He could not gainsay her. She had spoken truth. No, not if all the
world had been against her, not at the scaffold’s foot, could he have
abandoned her, could he honestly have believed her guiltless.
But now that he stood face to face with her, now that he saw that
noble countenance, the splendid indignation of those eyes, he was as
convinced of her innocence as if he had never doubted her. His past
doubts seemed madness, or worse than madness, diabolical possession.
‘If I had spoken with you after your father’s death,’ he said, ‘if we
had met face to face as we meet now, I should never have gone away. I
would have borne the hardest things men could say of me, that I had
married you for the sake of your fortune--that I had been unscrupulous
because you were rich. I would have laughed such poisoned arrows to
scorn for your dear sake.’
‘You left me,’ she said, growing colder as he grew warm, gaining
strength and firmness as he showed himself weak. ‘You left me. That is
all. Perhaps you really never cared for me. Indeed, I have some reason
to know there was some one else you secretly preferred.’
‘_That_ is wholly false,’ cried Cyril. ‘I never loved but one woman,
and you are she.’
‘What does it matter? Why try to explain the past? It is all over and
done with. To-morrow will make me your cousin’s wife. And you are come
to assist at my wedding. But how is it you are here so early? You are
not expected at the Vicarage till half-past seven.’
‘I came by an earlier train than I intended, and having time to spare I
went in to look at the old church,’ he answered, hurriedly.
‘And to pray for strength to bear to-morrow’s agony,’ he might have
added, for he had been on his knees before the altar at which he had so
often officiated, praying that his burden might be lightened for him.
There was a silence. Beatrix still stood with her back to the railings
that guarded the once splendid tomb of a knight banneret of Elizabeth’s
reign. She had just strength to stand calmly there, steadily
confronting her old lover, but she had no power to drag her limbs away
from the spot. She knew that if she tried to move she must fall like a
log at his feet; so she stood there, cold and white as the marble the
tomb was made of.
‘Beatrix,’ cried Cyril, losing all mastery of himself in the
bewilderment of being alone with her, close to her, as far from the
outside world in that quiet corner of the churchyard as if they two had
been lost upon the wildest bit of moorland in the country. ‘Beatrix,
why are you going to marry Kenrick? Why have you been in such haste to
prove how utterly you had forgotten me?’
‘Are you not glad my wounds have healed so quickly? You have nothing to
reproach yourself with on my account. Not even a broken heart.’
‘And you love Kenrick?’ he asked, wonderingly.
‘He has never suspected me of a hideous crime. When every one spoke
against me, he was staunch and true. I am very grateful to him.’
‘Gratitude is not love.’
‘Perhaps not, but affection and gratitude are near akin, and Kenrick is
satisfied with affection.’
‘I would not be if I were he,’ cried Cyril, beside himself with
anger and jealousy. ‘I would have nothing less than your love, your
whole-hearted passionate love. What! be content to dwell beside the
narrow sluggish river, and never sicken for the wide wild sea? I would
not be your husband on such terms. I despise my cousin that he can
marry you, knowing, as he must know, that you do not love him.’
‘You have no right to say that. Do you think yourself so much better
than he that no woman, having once loved you, can love him?’
‘I know that no true woman ever loved truly twice. There is no such
thing as second love worth having. It is the mere ghost of feeling,
like a rose cut at midsummer to be shut up in a box and brought out at
Christmas, revived by sulphur fumes--a phantom flower, with no more
bloom or freshness than if it were made of paper. Just so much for
second love.’
If she could have stirred she would have left him, but she had still
an acute sense of her helplessness. She must stay and listen, let him
say what he would. What was this conflict of feeling in her breast?
Passionate love, passionate anger, scorn that made it sweet to wound
him, fondness that made her long to fling herself upon his breast and
cry, ‘Oh, give me shelter, give me rest! Let all the world go by. You
and I can be all the world to each other.’
The yellow wintry light faded in the west, the sky grew dull and bleak,
the headstones had a grayer look.
‘Why do you concern yourself about me?’ she asked bitterly. ‘You have
come to assist at my wedding, in order that the conventionalities may
not be outraged. That is all very right. My name has been bandied about
on people’s lips quite enough already. It is just as well to avoid the
scandal of your absence. But that ends all between us. We need never
see each other’s faces after to-morrow. Why should we say hard things,
or talk about the past? Had you not better go to the Vicarage, and let
me go quietly home?’
She was much the calmer of the two, despite that inward struggle
between love and resentment. He was mad with the pent-up feeling of
all those long dreary days and nights in which he had fought with his
passion, believing he had beaten it, only to find it now starting up in
his soul, indestructible as the principle of evil.
‘Let you go! No,’ he cried, with his strong grasp upon her wrist. He
who had been weak as a child a few short weeks ago, was strong now
with all the strength of a desperate tempted soul. ‘No, I have got you,
and I will not let you go. Oh, my love, my love, my lost and only love,
I will not let you go till I have told you something of the truth.’
His arms were round her now, her head drawn close to his breast, his
eyes looking down into hers, with fond despairing love, his words
hurrying thick and fast from lips that trembled as they spoke.
‘Yes, you shall hear me, you shall know the truth--all the mad foolish
truth. When your father died, and people began to whisper, and to shrug
their shoulders, and insinuate vile slanders against you, the devil
got into my mind, as into the minds of those village gossips, and a
horrible fear took hold of me. I thought it was just possible--just
within the compass of human error--that, maddened by your father’s
tyranny and injustice, you had blackened your soul with murder--your
fair young soul, which till that hour I had deemed stainless. I saw you
at the inquest, and I thought, God help me, that I could read guilt
in your face and manner. I struggled against the conviction--I tried
to believe you innocent, and all the world mistaken--but the more I
fought against it the stronger that conviction grew. In my darkest
hours I believed you guilty--at my best moments I was doubtful. So I
swore I would pluck your image out of my heart. How could I cherish
you, sin incarnate, and be faithful to my God? What was my individual
happiness upon this little spot of earth when weighed against duty
and honour? And so I left you, love--went away to forget you--worked
as few men have worked--strove as few have striven--prayed without
ceasing--and remembered you all the more vividly for the distance that
severed us, and loved you all the more dearly because I had lost you.
And now,’ he cried, straining her against his heart in one desperate
embrace, pressing his lips to hers in one impassioned kiss, ‘now, marry
Kenrick Culverhouse if you dare, and let the memory of me be your
curse, as it is mine to remember you.’
After that kiss he loosed his hold and let her go. She tottered a
few paces from the railing that had supported her, and then her feet
seemed to get entangled in the long grass of a neglected grave, and
she fell headlong at the foot of a gloomy old yew which stretched its
crooked branches across her as she lay, like the scraggy arms of weird
women--pointing to a foredoomed victim of Fate.
Cyril ran back to the vestry to get some water, and there happily
encountered Mrs. Pomfret, the pew-opener, who had come to dust and
garnish the church for to-morrow’s ceremony.
‘Miss Harefield has fainted,’ he cried. ‘Bring some water, and see what
you can do for her, while I go and get a fly.’
He went into the street, intending to order a carriage at the inn,
but luckily found the flyman who had brought him from Great Yafford,
refreshing his horse with a nosebag and himself with a pint of ale
before a small beer-shop over against the churchyard. He told this man
to bring his fly close up to the gate for a lady.
‘I must get back to the town directly,’ said the man.
‘I only want you to drive half a mile or so, and I’ll give you a crown
for the job.’
‘Very well, sir, I’ll do it.’
Cyril went back to the spot where he had left Beatrix. She was seated
upon a low stone tomb, supported by Mrs. Pomfret, and looking dazed and
white.
‘I have got a fly to drive her home,’ he said to the pew-opener. ‘Bring
her as soon as you can. It is getting cold here.’
The wind had risen. The tall poplars were swinging against the chill
evening sky. The old yew was groaning drearily, like a giant in pain.
Cyril waited silently, and as silently accompanied Beatrix, when she
was able to move slowly towards the gate, leaning on Mrs. Pomfret as
she went. He handed her into the fly, with Mrs. Pomfret, who was to see
her safe at home, directed and paid the driver, and waited bareheaded
till the fly was out of sight. A wild white face looked out at him from
the carriage window.