AN ELOPEMENT.
The ball was the most brilliant and the most successful that ever had
been at Blencarrow, and nothing was wanting to make it intoxicating and
delightful to the boys, whose every whim had been thought of and all
their partialities taken into account. Mrs. Blencarrow was perfect as a
mother. She gave the young heir his place without showing any
partiality, or making Bertie one whit less the beloved and favoured son
of the house; and no one could say that she spoilt either of them,
though she considered their every wish. They were as obedient and
respectful as if they had been held within the severest discipline, and
yet how they were indulged!
When everybody was preparing to go in to supper, Mrs. Blencarrow called
Reginald to her in sight of all the crowd. She said to him, ‘I think you
may go and fetch your friend Brown to supper, Rex. He will like to come
to supper; but I am sure he will be too shy unless you go and fetch
him.’
‘Oh, may I, mamma?’ said the boy.
He was enchanted with the commission. Brown was the young steward--Mrs.
Blencarrow’s chief assistant in the management of the estate--the young
fellow whom her husband recommended to her on his death-bed. The group
which gathered round Mrs. Blencarrow, ready for the procession in to
supper, thought this was the most charming way of acknowledging the
claims of Brown. To have brought him to the dance would have been out of
place; he would have felt himself out of it. He could not have ventured
to ask anybody to dance, and to look on while you are young is dull
work. But to ask him to supper was just the right compromise. The old
gentlemen promised to themselves that they would notice Brown; they
would ask him to drink a glass of wine (which was the custom then); they
would show him that they approved of a young man who did such excellent
work and knew his place so well.
It must be allowed that when he came, triumphantly led by Reginald, with
Bertie dancing in front of him (‘Oh, come along, Brown; mamma says
you’re to come to supper. Come along, Brown; here is a place for you’),
his looks did not conciliate these country gentlemen. He was a handsome
young man in a rather rough way, with that look of watchful suspicion so
often to be seen on the face of a man who is afraid of being
condescended to by his superiors. He was in a sort of evening dress, as
if he had been prepared for the invitation, with a doubtful coat of
which it was difficult to say whether it was a morning coat of peculiar
cut, or an old-fashioned one for evening use. He yielded unwillingly, it
seemed, to the encouragements of the boys, and he was placed far down at
the other end of the table, among the children and the youngest of the
grown-up party, where he was totally out of place. Had he been near the
other end, where the honest country gentlemen were, quite prepared to
notice and take wine with him, Brown would have been more at his ease.
He cast one glance at his mistress as he passed, a look which was
gloomy, reproachful, almost defiant. Scotch peasant faces get that look
sometimes without any bad meaning, and Cumberland faces are very like
the Scotch. He was no doubt upbraiding her for having forced him to
appear at all.
At last it was all over, the last carriage rolling away, the last sleepy
group of visitors sent to bed. Mrs. Blencarrow stood on her own hearth,
leaning her head on the marble mantelpiece, looking down into the fire.
She had been very gay to the last, smiling upon her guests; but her face
when in perfect repose, and in the ease of solitude, no one near to spy
upon it, was very different. Anxiety and trouble came into every line of
her fine pale features. She changed her attitude after awhile, and
looked straight into the darkness of the great mirror, behind the clock
and the candelabra which stood in front of it. She looked into her own
face with a determined, steady look, her eyes opened widely. She seemed
to ask herself what she should do, but shook her head afterwards with a
vague, sad smile. The mirror repeated all these changes of countenance,
but gave no counsel. Someone came into the room at this moment, which
made her start. It was one of the ladies staying in the house, who had
forgotten something, and come back to fetch it.
‘Not gone to bed yet?’ she said.
‘No,’ said Mrs. Blencarrow; ‘after a business of this kind, however
tired I may be, I don’t sleep.’
‘I know what you are doing,’ said her friend. ‘You are asking yourself,
now that it’s all over, “What’s the good?”’
‘No; I don’t think so,’ she said quickly; then changed her look and
said, ‘Perhaps I was.’
‘Oh, I am sure you were! and it is no good except for such pleasure as
you get out of it.’
‘Pleasure!’ said Mrs. Blencarrow. ‘But the boys liked it,’ she said.
‘Oh, the boys! They were more happy than words could say. I think you
measure everything by the boys.’
‘Not everything,’ she said with a sigh; and, taking up her candle, she
followed her friend upstairs.
The house had fallen into perfect quiet. There was not a sound in all
the upper part; a drowsy stillness was in the broad staircase, still
dimly lighted, and the corridor above; only a distant echo from below,
from the regions which were half underground--a muffled sound of
laughter and voices--showed that the servants were still carrying on the
festivity. Mrs. Blencarrow said good-night at the door of her friend’s
room, and went on to her own, which was at the further end of the long
gallery. She left her candle upon a small table outside, where it burned
on, a strange, lonely little twinkle of light in the darkness, for half
the wintry night.
Neither Kitty nor Walter could rest next day until they had eluded the
vigilance of their several guardians and escaped to their usual
meeting-place, where they poured into each other’s ears the dire
experiences of the previous night. Kitty had been badly scolded before,
but it had been as nothing in comparison with what she had suffered on
the way home and after her return. Mamma had been terrible; she had
outdone herself; there had been nothing too dreadful for her to say. And
papa had not stood by Kitty--the best that could be said for him was
that he had taken no active part in the demolition of all her hopes.
‘For I am to be sent away to-morrow to my aunt’s in
Gloucestershire--fancy in Gloucestershire!’ as if there was something
specially diabolical in that county.
‘You shall not be sent away; the time has come for us to take it into
our own hands,’ said Walter soberly, with a strain of resolution.
He had to tell her of not unsimilar barbarities on his side. His mother
had written to her trustees. She expected Mr. Wadsett from Edinburgh,
who was also her man of business (for her property was in Scotland),
next day.
‘To-morrow is the crisis for both of us; we must simply take it into our
own hands and forestall them,’ said Walter. ‘I knew that one day it
would come to this. If they force it on us it is their own doing,’ he
said, with a look of determination enough to make any trustee tremble.
‘Oh, Walter!’ cried Kitty, rubbing her head against his shoulder like
the kitten she was.
His resolute air gave her a thrill of frightened delight. Usually she
was the first person in all their conjoint movements; to be carried
along now, and feel it was not her doing, but his, was a new, ecstatic,
alarming sensation, which words could not express.
They then began to consider without more ado (both feeling themselves
elevated by the greatness of the crisis) what was to be done. Kitty had
fondly hoped for a postchaise, which was the recognised way of romance;
but Walter pointed out that on the railway--still a new thing in that
district--there was an early train going to Edinburgh, which they could
enter far more easily and with less fear of being arrested than a
postchaise, and which would waft them to Gretna Green in less time than
it would take to go ten miles in a carriage. Gretna Green was still the
right place to which lovers flew; it was one of the nearest points in
Scotland, where marriage was so easy, where the two parties to the
union were the only ones concerned.
Kitty was slow to give up the postchaise, but she yielded to Walter’s
argument. The train passed very early, so that it would be necessary for
her to start out of the house in the middle of the night, as it were, to
join her lover, who would be waiting for her; and then a walk of a mile
or two would bring them to the station--and then! Their foolish hearts
beat high while they made all the arrangements. Kitty shivered at the
idea of the long walk in the chill dark morning. She would have so much
preferred the sweep of the postchaise, the probable rush in pursuit, the
second postchaise rattling after them, probably only gaming the goal ten
minutes too late. She had imagined that rush many a time, and how she
might see her father or brother’s head looking out from the window,
hurrying on the postilion, but just too late to stop the hasty ceremony.
The railway would change it all, and would be much less triumphant and
satisfactory; but still, if Walter said so, it must be done, and her
practical imagination saw the conveniences as well as the drawbacks.
Walter walked back with Kitty as near as he dared to The Leas, and then
Kitty walked back again with him. They thus made a long afternoon’s
occupation of it, during which everything was discussed and over again
discussed, and in which all the responsibility was laid on the proper
shoulders, i.e., on those of the parents who had driven them to this
only alternative. Neither of them had any doubt as to the certainty of
this, and they had at the same time fair hopes of being received back
again when it was all over, and nothing could be done to mend it. After
this, their people must acknowledge that it was no manner of use
struggling, and that it behoved them to think of making some provision
for the young pair, who after all were their own flesh and blood.
Kitty did not undress at all, considering the unearthly hour at which
she was to set out. She flung off her evening dress into a corner,
reflecting that though it must be prepared after, instead of before, her
marriage, she must have a trousseau all the same, and that no bride puts
on again her old things after that event. Kitty put on her new winter
dress, which was very becoming, and had a pretty hat to match it, and
lay down to snatch an hour or two’s rest before the hour of starting.
She woke reluctantly to the sound of a handful of pebbles thrown against
her window, and then, though still exceedingly sleepy and greatly
tempted to pay no attention to the summons, managed at last to rouse
herself, and sprang up with a thump of her heart when she recollected
what it was--her wedding morning! She lighted a candle and put on her
hat, studying the effect in the glass, though she knew that Walter was
blowing his fingers with cold below; and then, with a fur cloak over her
arm, she stole downstairs. How dark it was, and how cold! The country
black with night, nothing visible but the waving, close to the house, of
some spectral trees. But Walter pulled her hand through his arm the
moment she slipped out, and her spirits rose. Two can face the darkness
where one would shrink before it. They had the strangest, merriest
walk--stumbling in the maddest way, jolting over stiles, going astray
into ploughed fields, rousing all the dogs in all the farms and cottages
for miles round--but at last found their way, worn out with stumbling
and laughing, to the station, where the train had not yet arrived. And
then came the rush and sweep through the night, the arrival in the gray
morning at the station, the rousing up of the grim priest known as ‘the
blacksmith’--though I am not sure that this was his trade. Kitty found
time to smarten herself up a little, to straighten the brim of her hat
and put it on as if she had taken it fresh out of its bandbox, and to
put on her white gloves--the only things truly bride-like, which she
had put in her pocket before she left home--and then the ceremony,
whatever it was, was performed, and the boy and girl were made man and
wife.
After it was all over, Kitty and Walter looked at each other in the gray
morning light with a pale and frightened look. When the thing was done
the excitement suddenly failed, and for a moment everything was black.
Kitty cried a little, and Walter, if it had not been for his pride of
manhood, was very near following her example. What awful thing was it
they had done? Kitty was the first to recover her courage.
‘I am dreadfully hungry,’ she said, ‘and so tired. Walter, do go and see
if we can have some breakfast anywhere. I must have some breakfast, or I
shall die.’ Kitty was very fond of this alternative, but had shown no
intention of adopting it as yet.
‘I’ll go on to that public-house over there; but won’t you come too,
Kitty?’
‘No; go and order breakfast, and then come and fetch me. I’ll look over
the books and see who have gone before us,’ said Kitty.
He left her seated, half leaning over the table, studying the records
which she had spread out before her. At that moment Kitty had a great
sympathy for everybody who had been married, and a wondering desire to
know what they had felt.