"HE HATH AWAKENED FROM THE DREAM OF LIFE."
It was the day which was to have seen Suzette's wedding--the thirteenth
of December, a dull, mild December, promising that green Christmas
which is said to people churchyards with new-comers; a December to
gladden the heart of the fox-hunter, and disappoint the skater.
Sitting in melancholy solitude by the drawing-room fire, on this grey,
rainy morning, Suzette was glad to remember that she had prevented the
sending out of invitation cards, and that very few people in Matcham
knew the intended date of that wedding which was never to be. There
were not many to think of her with especial pity on this particular
day, sitting alone in her desolation, in her dark serge frock, with
the black poodle, Caro, and her piano for her only companions. Even the
companionship of that beloved piano had failed her since Geoffrey's
disappearance. Music was too closely associated with his presence.
There was not a single composition in her portfolio that did not recall
him--not an air she played that did not bring back the words he had
spoken when last her fingers followed the caprices of the composer.
He had been her master as well as her lover--he had taught her the
subtleties of musical expression--had breathed mind into her music.
Bessie Edgefield knew the date; but Bessie was sympathetic, and
never officious or obtrusive. She would drop in by-and-by, no doubt,
pretending not to remember anything particular about the day. She would
be full of some little bit of village news, or a new book from Mudie's,
or Mrs. Roebuck's last bonnet.
The wedding was to have been at two o'clock, a sensible, comfortable
hour; giving the bride ample leisure in which to put on her wedding
finery. The hours between breakfast and luncheon seemed longer than
usual that morning, a long blank weariness, after Suzette had seen her
father mount and ride away on his favourite hunter. The hounds met on
the other side of the downs, on the borders of Hampshire. It would be
late, most likely, before she would welcome that kind father to the
comfortable fireside, and listen, or at least pretend to listen, to the
varying fortunes of an adventurous day. And in the meantime she had the
day all before her, to dispose of as best she might, that day which was
to have seen her a bride.
Was she sorrowing for the lover who had forsaken her, as she sat
looking with sad, tearless eyes into the fire? Was she regretting the
happiness that might have been, thinking of a life which should have
been cloudless? No, she had never contemplated a life of cloudless
happiness with Geoffrey Wornock. She had loved that fiery spirit. Her
love had been conquered by a mind stronger than her own, and she had
submitted, almost as a slave submits to her captor. Mentally she had
been in bondage, able to see all that was faulty and perilous in the
character of her conqueror, yet loving him in spite of his faults.
But to-day his image was associated with a great terror--a terror
of undiscovered crime--the fear that when next she heard his name
spoken she would hear of him as an arrested criminal; or as a suicide,
self-slaughtered in some quiet spot, where the searchers must needs be
slow to find him.
Two o'clock. She had tried all her best-loved books in the endeavour to
forget the dark realities of life; but books did not help her to-day.
She never went into the dining-room for a formal luncheon when her
father was out for the day; preferring some light refreshment of the
kind which one hears of in Miss Austen's novels as "the tray," a modest
meal of cake and fruit, with nothing more substantial than a sandwich.
To-day even the sandwich was impossible. Her lips were dry with an
inward fever. Her hands were cold as ice, her forehead was burning.
"Was it raining?" she asked the servant. "No, the rain had ceased an
hour ago," the man told her. She started up with a feeling of relief
at the idea of escape from the dull, silent house; put on her hat and
jacket, and went out by the glass door into the garden, where the mild
winter had left a few flowers, pale Dijon roses, amidst the thick
foliage of honeysuckle and magnolia on the south wall, a lingering
chrysanthemum here and there in a sheltered bend of the shrubbery. The
air was full of the sweetness of herbs and flowers, and the freshness
of the rain. Yes, it was a relief to be walking about, looking at the
shrubs, shaking the rain from the feathery branches of the deodaras,
searching for late violets behind a border of close-clipped box. It
was a comfortable, old-fashioned garden, full of things that had been
growing for the best part of a century, a garden of broad gravel
walks, and square grass plots, espaliers hiding asparagus-beds, the
scent of sweet herbs conquering the more delicate odours of violets and
rare roses--a dear old garden to be happy in, and a quiet retreat in
which to walk alone with sorrow.
Suzette walked alone with her sorrow for nearly an hour, thankful for
the hazard which had carried her energetic aunt to Salisbury two days
before, on a visit to her friends in the Close, and had thus spared
her Mrs. Mornington's society on this particular day. To have been
comforted, or to have been bewailed over, would have added to her
burden. To walk alone in this dull old garden was best.
Not alone any more! She heard the rustling of branches at the other
end of the long green alley, and a footstep--a heavier footfall than
Bessie Edgefield's--on the moist gravel. Her heart throbbed with a
startled expectancy. Joy or fear? She had no time to know which feeling
predominated before she saw her lover coming quickly towards her. He
was dressed, not as she had been accustomed to see him in the corduroy
waistcoat, short tweed coat, and knickerbockers of rustic out-of-door
life, but in a frock-coat, light grey trousers, and white waistcoat,
and was wearing a tall hat. She had time to note these details, and
the malmaison carnation in his coat, and the light gloves which he was
carrying, before he was at her side, looking down at her with wild,
bloodshot eyes, grasping her arm with a strong hand, while those smart
lavender gloves dropped from his unconscious grasp, and fell on the wet
gravel, to be trampled underfoot like weeds.
"Why were you not at the church? Why are you wearing that dingy frock?
You and your bridesmaids ought to have been ready an hour ago. I have
been waiting for you. Have you forgotten what this day means?"
"Geoffrey! have not _you_ forgotten? What madness to come back like
this! What have you been doing with your life since the fourteenth of
November? Where have you been hiding?"
"Where? Hiding! Nonsense! I have been travelling. I took it into
my head, when Allan was coming back, that you didn't care for me,
that he was the favoured lover, in spite of all. I had extorted your
promise--and you were sorry you had ever given it. And I thought the
best thing for me would be to make myself scarce, to go to Africa,
Australia, anywhere. The world is big enough for two people to give
each other a wide berth, but not big enough for Allan and me, if you
liked him better than me. I was a fool, that's all: a fool to doubt my
dearest! But there's no time to lose. We must be married before three.
Come to the church as you are. What does it matter? I've put on my
war-paint, you see. My valet seemed to think I was mad."
"You have seen your mother?"
"Yes, she has been plaguing me with questions. I gave her the slip.
Allan is there, in my house. The irony of fate, isn't it? Hovering
between life and death, my mother told me. How long will he hesitate
between two opinions? I left them wondering, and hurried to the church
to meet you, only to find emptiness. No one there! Not even the sexton.
But there is still time. We can be married--you and I--with the sexton
and pew-opener for witnesses, and can start for the other end of the
world to-night."
"Geoffrey, why did you go away?" she asked, looking up at that wild
face with infinite terror in her own.
The restless eyes, the convulsive working of the dry hot lips told
their story only too plainly, the story of a mind distraught.
"Dear Geoffrey!" she said gently, with unspeakable pity for this
human wreck, "there can be no marriage to-day. We are all in great
trouble--about Allan."
"About Allan--always about Allan!" he interrupted savagely. "What has
Allan to do with the matter? It is our wedding-day, yours and mine. I
don't want Allan for my best man."
"There can be no marriage while Allan is ill, lying in your house, so
nearly murdered; perhaps even yet to die from that cruel usage. They
are looking for his murderer, Geoffrey. Was it wise for you to come
back to this place, knowing that?"
"Knowing what?"
"That Allan's mother is determined to find the man who so nearly killed
her son."
"What have I to do with her determination? I shall neither hinder nor
help her."
Oh, the crafty smile, the malice and the cunning in that face, a look
which Suzette had never seen till now! A look which made that once
splendid countenance seem the face of a stranger.
She shrank from him involuntarily. He saw the sudden look of repulsion,
and tightened his grasp upon her arm, until she gave a cry of pain.
"Did I hurt you?" loosening his grasp with a laugh. "What a fluttering
little dove it is; so easily scared, so easily hurt. Come, Suzette, you
are not going to cheat me, are you? This is the thirteenth of December.
Do you hear? the thirteenth, the date fixed and appointed by you, by
your very self. You shall not evade your own appointment. Come, love,
come."
He took a few rapid steps forward, dragging her along with him, lifting
her off her feet in his vehemence, but stopping suddenly when he found
she was nearly falling.
"Geoffrey, how rough you are!"
"I didn't mean to be rough. But there's not a moment to lose. Why won't
you come?"
"I am not coming. It is sheer madness to talk of our wedding. You have
been away for a whole month of your own accord. Our marriage has been
put off indefinitely. Poor Geoffrey!" looking at his haggard face with
sudden tenderness, "how dreadfully ill you look! worse than the night
you arrived from Zanzibar. I will go back to the Manor with you, and
see you safe and at rest with your dear mother."
"No, no, I am never going back to the Manor where that dead man lies."
"Dead! Oh, God! He is not dead! What do you mean?"
"I don't want their dead man there. Well, he may be alive still,
perhaps. I don't want him there. His presence poisons my house, as his
influence has poisoned my life. He has been a blight upon me. Like me,
they say--like me, but of a different fibre. I know how to fight for
my own hand. Will you come with me to the church quietly, of your own
accord?"
"No, no. Impossible."
"Then I'll make you," he cried savagely, seizing her in his arms. "I
won't be fooled. I won't be cheated. I am here to fulfil my part of the
bond. I have not forgotten the date."
Then with a swift change of mood he loosened his angry hold upon her,
fell on his knees at her feet, crying over the poor little hand which
he clasped in both his own.
"Pity me, Suzette, pity me! I am the most miserable wretch in the
world. I have been wandering about England like a criminal; a hateful
country, no solitude, people staring and prying everywhere; a miserable
over-crowded place where a man cannot be alone with his troubles, where
there is no space for thought or memory. But I did not forget you. Your
image was always there," touching his forehead; "_that_ never faded.
Only I forgot other things, or hardly knew which were dreams, or which
were real. That grey afternoon in the wood, and the words that were
said, and his face when I struck him! A dream? Yes, a dream! And then
only yesterday the date upon a newspaper seen by accident--I have read
no newspapers since I left Discombe--reminded me of to-day. I was at
Padstow yesterday afternoon, an out-of-the-way village on the Cornish
coast; and it has taken me all my time to get here to Discombe to-day
in time to dress for my wedding. You should have seen my servant's
face when I rang for him. I went into the house by the old door in the
lobby, and walked up to my dressing-room without meeting a mortal. One
never does meet any one at Discombe. The house is like the tomb of the
Pharaohs--long passages, emptiness, silence."
He had risen from his knees at Suzette's entreaty, and was walking
by her side, walking fast, speaking with breathless rapidity, eager,
self-absorbed, holding her, lightly now, by the arm, as they paced the
gravel walk.
"Higson was always a fool. I could see what he was thinking when I made
him put out my frock-coat. The fellow thought I was mad. He wanted me
to take a warm bath, and lie down for a bit before I saw my mother. He
talked in the smooth wheedling way common people use with lunatics, as
if they were children; and then he ran off to fetch my mother; and she
came, poor soul, and kissed and cried over me, and thanked God with
one breath for my return, and with the next wailed about Allan. Allan
was there, close by, in my room. I was not to speak above my breath,
lest I should disturb him. I went to another room to dress, but I
had ever so much trouble with Higson before I could get the things
I wanted--London things he called them--and wouldn't I have this, or
that, anything except what I asked for? So you see I had a lot of
trouble, and then I walked to the church, and found it was two o'clock,
and not a soul there."
"Geoffrey, what could you expect?"
"I expected you to keep your word. This is our wedding-day. I expected
to find my bride."
"We must wait, Geoffrey. There is plenty of time."
"No, there is no time. I want to take you with me to the Great Lake,
far away from this cramped narrow country, these teeming over-crowded
cities, a soil gridironed with railways, shut in with streets and
houses, not one wide horizon like that inland sea. Ah, how you would
adore it, as I do, in storm or in calm, always beautiful, always grand,
a place made for the mind to grow in, for the heart to rest in. Ah,
how often in the deep of the moonlight nights I have wandered up and
down those smooth sands, thinking of you, conjuring up your image in
such warm reality that it froze my blood when I looked round and saw
that the real woman was not at my side. You will go to Africa with me,
Suzette?"
"Yes, dear, yes; by-and-by."
"Ah, that's what Higson said when I told him to put out a frock-coat,
'By-and-by.' But I answered with a 'Now!' that made him jump. Hark!
there's some one coming; a step on the gravel."
A light step, a girl's quick footfall. It was the vicar's daughter,
fresh and blooming in winter frock and winter hat. A creature of the
kind that is usually nailed flat on a barn door was coiled gracefully
round the little felt hat, pretending to have come from Siberia.
At the first sight of Geoffrey, she started and looked aghast.
"Mr. Wornock! I thought you were hundreds of miles away."
"So I was, yesterday afternoon; but I happened to remember my
wedding-day, and here I am, only to find that other people had
forgotten."
"Oh, you happened to remember!" said Bessie, still staring at the white
waistcoat, the malmaison carnation, the light grey trousers stained
with rain and mud from the knee downwards, and worst of all the haggard
countenance of the wearer. "You only remembered yesterday. How funny!"
Miss Edgefield would have made the same remark about a funeral in her
present startled condition of mind.
* * * * *
Matcham had plenty of stuff for conversation within the next few days;
for by that subtle process by which facts or various versions of
facts are circulated in a rustic neighbourhood, people became aware
of Geoffrey Wornock's return to Discombe, and of dreadful scenes that
had occurred at Marsh House, where he had stayed for a couple of days,
during which period Suzette was living at the Grove under her aunt and
uncle's protection.
Yes, there had been scenes, tragical scenes, at Marsh House. Mrs.
Wornock had been hastily summoned there, and had stayed under General
Vincent's roof till her unhappy son was removed in medical custody,
whither Matcham people knew not, though there were positive assertions
as to locality on the part of the more energetic talkers. A physician
had been summoned from London, a man of repute in mental cases; and
Mrs. Wornock's brougham had driven away from Marsh House in wintry
dusk, with a pair of horses, and had not returned to the Manor till
late on the following day; whereby it was concluded that the journey
had been at least twenty miles.
Mr. Wornock had been taken away, placed under restraint, people told
each other, arriving at the fact by the usual inductive process, and
on this occasion unhappily accurate in their deduction. Geoffrey was
in a doctor's care; a madman with lucid intervals; not violent, except
in brief flashes of angry despair, but with occasional hallucinations,
that delirium without fever which constitutes lunacy from the
standpoint of law and medicine.
Before he passed into that dim under-world of the private lunatic
asylum, he had, in more than one wild torrent of self-accusation,
confessed his treacherous desertion of Allan in Africa, his savage
assault upon Allan in the wood. They had met, and Allan had upbraided
him for that treacherous desertion, and for stealing his sweetheart.
Suzette's name had been like a lighted fuse to an infernal machine;
and then the latent savage which is in every man had leapt into life,
and there had been a deadly struggle, a fight for existence on Allan's
part, a murderous onslaught from Geoffrey.
It needed not the opinion of the detective police, nor yet the
discovery of Allan's watch and signet-ring under the rotten leaves
in the deep hollow of an old oak half a mile from the spot where he
himself had been found, to substantiate Geoffrey's self-accusation. His
unhappy mother, who was with him at Marsh House throughout those last
dreadful hours of raving and unrest, had never doubted his guilt from
the time of his reappearance at Discombe.
* * * * *
It was months before Allan returned to the world of active life; but he
left the Manor long before actual convalescence.
Not once, during those slow hours of returning health, did he allude
to the cause of his terrible illness; and, on his mother timidly
questioning him, he professed to have no recollection of the assault
which had been so nearly fatal.
"Let the past remain a blank, mother. No good can come by trying to
remember."
He was especially gentle and affectionate to Mrs. Wornock on her rare
visits to his room during the earlier stages of his convalescence.
Geoffrey's name was not spoken by either; but Allan's sympathetic
manner told the unhappy mother that he knew her grief and pitied her.
Lady Emily was by no means ungrateful for the lavish hospitality with
which Mrs. Wornock's house and household had been devoted to her
son, yet she shrank with a natural abhorrence from a scene which was
associated with Allan's peril and Geoffrey's crime. No kindness of
Mrs. Wornock's could lessen that horror; and Lady Emily did her utmost
to hasten the patient's removal to his own house, short of risking a
relapse. When she saw him established in his cheerful bedchamber at
Beechhurst, she felt as if she had taken him out of a charnel-house
into the pleasant world of the living and the happy; a world to which
Geoffrey Wornock was fated never to return.
"Quite hopeless," was the verdict of medical authority.
Mrs. Wornock left Discombe, and was said to be living in complete
seclusion, attended upon by two or three of the oldest of the Manor
servants, in a cottage near the private asylum where her son was a
prisoner for life.
Before midsummer Allan's health was completely restored, and mother
and son left for Suffolk, for the pastures and pine-woods, the long
white roads and sandy commons, the wide horizons and large level spaces
flooded with the red and gold of sunsets that are said to surpass the
splendour of sunsets in more picturesque scenery. Lady Emily would have
been completely happy in this quiet interlude, this tranquil pause in
the drama of life, had not Allan talked of going back to Africa before
the end of the year.
"Why not?" he asked, when she remonstrated with him. "There is nothing
for me to do in England, and Africa doesn't mean a lifelong separation,
mother, or I would not dream of going there. Every year shortens
the journey. Six weeks, I think Consul Johnstone called it, to Lake
Tanganyika. If I go, I promise to return in less than two years. You
would hardly have time to miss me in your busy days here----"
"Busy about such poor trifles, Allan? Do you think my farm could fill
the place of my son? If you were away, one great care and sorrow would
fill every hour of my life. And think what an anxious winter I went
through--a season of fear and trembling."
This plea prevailed. He could not disregard the care and love that had
been lavished upon him. No, he would not allow himself to be drawn back
to that dark continent which is said to exercise a subtle influence
over those who have once crossed her far-reaching plains, and rested
beside her wide waters, and lived her life of adventure and surprise.
No, it was too soon for the son to leave his mother, she having none
but him. He had done with love; but duty still claimed him; and he
stayed.
A quiet winter at Beechhurst, with his mother to keep house for him,
a good deal of hunting, and so much attention and kindly feeling from
everybody in the neighbourhood, that he could not altogether play the
hermit. He was forced into visiting, and into entertaining his friends,
and Lady Emily was very happy in playing her part of hostess in the
livelier circle of Matcham, while the shutters were closed at Fendyke,
and the bailiff had full sway on the white farm, allowed to do what
he liked there, which was generally something different from what his
mistress liked.
Life was made easier for Allan that winter by the absence of Suzette,
who was travelling with her father--easier, and emptier, for the one
presence which would have given a zest to life was wanting. He told
himself that it was better so, better for his peace, since she could
never be anything to him. The disappearance of his rival would make no
difference in her feelings for Allan; for no doubt her affection for
Geoffrey would only be strengthened by their tragical separation and
her lover's miserable fate.
"If she should ever care for any one else, it will be a stranger,"
Allan told himself in those long reveries which the mere sight of a
well-known garden wall, or the chimneys of Marsh House seen above the
leafless elms as he rode past, could evoke. "She will never waste a
thought upon me."
Other people were more hopeful. Mrs. Mornington told her friends in
confidence that her niece's acceptance of that unfortunate young man
had been a folly, into which she had been entrapped by Geoffrey's
dominant temper, and by her passion for music.
"She never loved that unhappy young man as she once loved Allan Carew."
"And now, no doubt, she and Mr. Carew will make it up and marry," said
the confidant, male or female, as the case might be.
"Not now: but some day, yes, perhaps," replied Suzette's aunt, with a
significant nod.
And the day came--when Geoffrey Wornock's passionate heart was still
for ever--had been stilled for more than two years--and when to him, at
rest in the silence of the family burial-place at Discombe, by the side
of the mother who had only survived him by a few weeks, the sound of
Suzette's wedding-bells, the knowledge of Allan's happiness could bring
no pain.
Allan's day came--long and late, after years of patient waiting, when
Suzette had attained the sober age of six and twenty; but it was a day
of cloudless happiness, which promised to last to the end of life. No
fear of the future marred the joy of the present. The later love that
had grown up in Suzette's heart for her first lover, was too strongly
based upon knowledge and esteem to suffer the shadow of change.
THE END.
LONDON: PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED,
STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS.
[Transcriber's Note: Inconsistent hyphens left as printed.]