Ambrose Bradley returned home that day like a man in a dream; and
it was not till he had sat for a long time, thinking alone, that he
completely realised what he had done. But the state of things which led
to so amatory a crisis had been going on for a long time; indeed,
the more his worldly prosperity increased, and the greater his social
influence grew, the feebler became his spiritual resistance to the
temptation against which he had fought so long.
It is the tendency of all transcendental forms of thought, even of
a transcendental Christianity, to relax the moral fibre of their
recipient, and to render vague and indetermined his general outlook
upon life. The harshest possible Calvinism is bracing and invigorating,
compared with any kind of creed with a terminology purely subjective.
Bradley’s belief was liberal in the extreme in its construction, or
obliteration, of religious dogmas; it soon became equally liberal, or
lax, in its conception of moral sanctions. The man still retained,
and was destined to retain till the end of his days, the very loftiest
conception of human duty. His conscience, in every act of existence,
was the loadstone of his deeds. But the most rigid conscience, relying
entirely on its own insight, is liable to corruption. Certainly
Bradley’s was. He had not advanced very far along the easy path which
leads to agnosticism, before he had begun to ask himself--What, after
all, is the moral law? are not certain forms of self-sacrifice Quixotic
and unnecessary? and, finally, why should I live a life of martyrdom,
because my path was crossed in youth by an unworthy woman?
Since that nocturnal meeting after his visit to the theatre, Bradley had
seen nothing of Mrs. Montmorency, but he had ascertained that she
was spending the greater part of her time somewhere abroad. Further
investigations, pursued through a private inquiry office, convinced him
of two things: first, that there was not the faintest possibility of the
lady voluntarily crossing his path again, and, second, that his secret
was perfectly safe in the keeping of one whom its disclosure might
possibly ruin.
Satisfied thus far of his security, he had torn that dark leaf out of
his book of life, and thrown it away into the waters of forgetfulness.
Then, with his growing sense of mastery, grew Alma’s fascination.
She could not conceal, she scarcely attempted to conceal, the deep
passion of worship with which she regarded him. Had he been a man ten
times colder and stronger, he could scarcely have resisted the spell.
As it was, he did not resist it, but drew nearer and nearer to the sweet
spirit who wove it, as we have seen.
One sunny morning, about a month after the occurrence of that little
love scene in Regent’s Park, Bradley rose early, packed a small hand
valise, and drove off in a hansom to Victoria Station. He was quietly
attired in clothes not at all clerical in cut, and without the white
neckcloth or any other external badge of his profession.
Arriving at the station, he found himself just in time to catch the nine
o’clock train to Russetdeane, a lonely railway station taking its
name from a village three miles distant, lying on the direct line to
Eastbourne and Newhaven. He took his ticket, and entered a first-class
carriage as the train started. The carriage had no other occupant, and,
leaning back in his seat, he was soon plunged in deep reflection.
At times his brow was knitted, his face darkened, showing that his
thoughts were gloomy and disturbed enough; but ever and anon, his eyes
brightened, and his features caught a gleam of joyful expectation.
Whenever the train stopped, which it did very frequently, he shrank back
in his corner, as if dreading some scrutinising eye; but no one saw or
heeded him, and no one entered the carriage which he occupied alone.
At last, after a journey of about an hour and a half, the train stopped
at Russetdeane.
It was a very lonely station indeed, quite primitive in its
arrangements, and surrounded on every side by green hills and white
quarries of chalk. An infirm porter and a melancholy station-master
officiated on the platform, but when Bradley alighted, valise in hand,
who should step smilingly up to him but Alma, prettily attired in a
quiet country costume, and rosy with the sweet country air.
The train steamed away; porter and station-master standing stone still,
and watching it till the last faint glimpse of it faded in the distance;
then they looked at each other, seemed to awake from a trance, and
slowly approached the solitary passenger and his companion.
‘Going to Russetdeane, measter?’ demanded the porter, wheezily, while
the station-master looked on from the lofty heights of his superior
position.
Bradley nodded, and handed over his valise.
‘I have a fly outside the station,’ explained Alma; and passing round
the platform and over a wooden foot-bridge, to platform and offices on
the other side, they found the fly in question--an antique structure of
the postchaise species, drawn by two ill-groomed horses, a white and a
roan, and driven by a preternaturally old boy of sixteen or seventeen.
‘At what hour does the next down train pass to Newhaven?’ asked Bradley,
as he tipped the porter, and took his seat by Alma’s side.
‘The down-train, measter?’ repeated the old man. ‘There be one at three,
and another at five. Be you a-going on?’
Bradley nodded, and the fly drove slowly away along the country road.
The back of the boy’s head was just visible over the front part of
the vehicle, which was vast and deep; so Bradley’s arm stole round his
companion’s waist, and they exchanged an affectionate kiss.
‘I have the licence in my pocket, dearest,’ he whispered. ‘Is all
arranged?’
‘Yes. The clergyman of the parish is such a dear old man, and quite
sympathetic. He thinks it is an elopement, and as he ran away with
his own wife, who is twenty years younger than himself, he is sympathy
itself!’ ‘Did he recognise my name, when you mentioned it?’
‘Not a bit,’ answered Alma, laughing. ‘He lives too far out of the world
to know anything or anybody, and, as I told you, he is eighty years
of age. I really think he believes that Queen Victoria is still an
unmarried lady, and he talks about Bonaparte just as if it were sixty
years ago.’
‘Alma!’
‘Yes, Ambrose!’
‘You don’t mind this secret marriage?’
‘Not at all--since it is your wish.’
‘I think it is better to keep the affair private, at least for a little
time. You know how I hate publicity, in a matter so sacred; and since we
are all in all to each other----’
He drew her still closer and kissed her again. As he did so, he was
conscious of a curious sound as of suppressed laughter, and, glancing
up, he saw the eyes of the weird boy intently regarding him.
‘Well, what is it?’ cried Bradley, impatiently, while Alma shrank away
blushing crimson.
The eyes of the weird boy did not droop, nor was he at all abashed.
Still indulging in an internal chuckle, like the suppressed croak of a
young raven, he pulled his horses up, and pointed with his whip towards
the distant country prospect.
‘There be Russetdeane church spire!’ he said.
Bradley glanced impatiently in the direction so indicated, and saw,
peeping through a cluster of trees, some two miles off, the spire in
question.
He nodded, and ordered the boy to drive on. Then turning to Alma, he saw
her eyes twinkling with merry laughter.
‘You see we are found out already!’ she whispered. ‘He thinks we are a
runaway couple, and so, after all, we are.’
The carriage rumbled along for another mile, and ever and anon
they caught the eyes of the weird boy, peeping backward; but being
forewarned, they sat, primly enough, upon their good behaviour.
Suddenly the carriage stopped again.
‘Missis!’ croaked the weird boy.
‘Well?’ said Alma, smiling up at him.
‘Where be I a-driving to? Back to the “Wheatsheaf”?’
‘No; right to the church door,’ answered Alma, laughing.
The boy did not reply, but fixing his weather eye on Bradley, indulged
in a wink of such preternatural meaning, that Alma was once more
convulsed with laughter. Then, after giving vent to a prolonged whistle,
he cracked his whip, and urged his horses on.
Through green lanes, sweet with hanging honeysuckle and sprinkled with
flowers of early summer; past sleepy ponds, covered with emerald slime
and haunted by dragon flies glittering like gold; along upland stretches
of broad pasture, commanding distant views of wood-land, thorpe and
river; they passed along that sunny summer day; until at last, creeping
along an avenue of ashes and flowering limes, they came to the gate of
an old church, where the carriage stopped.
The lovers alighted, and ordering the boy to remain in attendance,
approached the church--a time-worn, rain-stained edifice half smothered
in ivy, and with rooks cawing from its belfry tower.
They were evidently expected. The clerk, a little old man who walked
with a stick, met them at the church door, and informed them that the
clergyman was waiting for them in the vestry.
A few minutes later, the two were made man and wife--the solitary
spectator of the ceremony, except the officials, being the weird boy,
who had stolen from his seat, and left his horses waiting in the road,
in order to see what was going on. The clergyman, ancient and time-worn
as his church, mumbled a benediction, and, after subscribing their names
in the register and paying the customary fees, they shook hands with
him, and came again out into the sunshine.
Whatever the future might bring forth to cloud her marriage path, that
bridal morning was like a dream of paradise to Alma Craik. In a private
room of the old ‘Wheatsheaf,’ a room sweet with newly-cut flowers, and
overlooking orchards stretching down to the banks of a pretty river,
they breakfasted, or lunched, together--on simple fare, it is true, but
with all things clean and pure. A summer shower passed over the orchards
as they sat by the open window hand in hand; and then, as the sun
flashed out again, the trees dript diamonds, and the long grass
glittered with golden dew.
‘How sweet and still it is here, my darling! I wish we could stay in
such a spot for ever, and never return again to the dreary city and the
busy world.’
She crept to his side as he spoke, and rested her head upon his
shoulder.
‘Are you happy now, dear Ambrose?’
‘Quite happy,’ he replied.
Presently a buxom serving maid tript in to say that the carriage was
waiting; and, descending to the door, they found the vehicle, with
Alma’s travelling trunk and the clergyman’s valise upon the box. The
weird boy was still there, jubilant. Somehow or other he had procured a
large white rosette, which he had pinned to the breast of his coat. Two
or three sleepy village folk, whom the lews of the wedding had partially
aroused from their chronic state of torpor, were clustering on the
pavement; and the landlord and landlady stood at the door to wish the
strange couple God speed.
Away they drove, while one of the slumberous villagers started a feeble
cheer. Through the green lanes, along the grassy uplands, they passed
back to the railway station, which they reached just in time to catch,
as they had planned, the down train to Newhaven.
That afternoon they crossed by the tidal boat to Dieppe, where, in a
brand-new hotel facing the sea, they slept that night. They were almost
the only visitors, for the summer bathing season had scarcely begun, and
they would have found the place cheerless enough had they been in a less
happy mood of mind.
The next day found them wandering about the picturesque old town,
visiting the wharves and the old churches, and strolling on the deserted
esplanade which faced the sea. They thought themselves unsuspected, but
somehow everyone knew their secret--that they were a married couple on
their honeymoon. When they returned to the hotel to lunch, they found
a bunch of orange-blossoms on the table, placed there by the hands of a
sympathetic landlady.
‘We must go on farther,’ said Bradley, rather irritably. ‘I suppose
the newly-married alight here often, and being experts in that sort of
commodity, they recognise it at a glance.’
So that afternoon they went on to Rouen, where they arrived as the sun
was setting on that town of charming bridges. When their train reached
the station, a train arrived almost simultaneously from Paris, and
as there was a ten minutes’ interval for both upward and downward
passengers, the platform was thronged.
Bradley passed through the crowd, with Alma hanging upon his arm. He
looked neither to right nor left, but seemed bent on passing out of the
station; and he did not notice a dark-eyed lady by whom he was evidently
recognised.
On seeing him, she started and drew back among the crowd, leading by the
hand a little boy. But when he had passed she looked after him, and more
particularly after his beautiful companion.
‘It is he, sure enough!’ she muttered ‘But who is that stylish party in
his company? I should very much like to know.’
The lady was ‘Mrs. Montmorency,’ clad like a widow in complete weeds,
and travelling with her little boy, also dressed in funeral black, from
Paris to London.