"OUR DREAMS PURSUE OUR DEAD, AND DO NOT FIND."
Miss Vincent's engagement met with everybody's approval, with the one
exception of the marriageable young ladies of the neighbourhood, who
thought that Allan Carew had made a foolish choice, and might certainly
have done better for himself. What good could come of marrying a girl
who was neither English nor French; who had been educated in a Parisian
convent, and who drove to Salisbury every Sunday morning to hear mass?
"What uncomfortable Sundays they will have!" one of these young ladies
remarked to Bessie Edgefield; "and then how horrid for him to have a
wife of a different creed! They are sure to quarrel about religion.
Isn't the Vicar dreadfully shocked?"
"My father is rather sorry that Mr. Carew should marry a Roman
Catholic. There is always the fear that he might go over to Rome----"
"Of course. He is sure to do that. It will be the only way to stop the
quarrelling. She will make him a pervert."
Mrs. Mornington, on the other hand, flattered herself that, by her
marriage with a member of the English Church, her niece would be
brought to see the errors of Rome, and would very soon make her
appearance in the family pew beside her husband.
Lady Emily cherished the same hope, since, although a less ardent
Churchwoman than Mrs. Mornington, she believed in Anglicanism as the
surest road to salvation, and she dwelt also upon the difficulties that
might arise by-and-by about the poor dear children, talking of those
potential beings as if they were already on the scene.
The Roman Church was severe upon that question, and it would perhaps
be impossible for Suzette to be married in her own church unless her
husband would promise that their children should be baptized and
educated in the true faith.
While other people were thinking about these things for him, Allan had
no room for thought of any kind, unless a lover's meditation upon the
image of the girl he loved could be dignified by the name of thought.
For Allan, life was a perpetual ecstasy. To be with Suzette in her own
home, at the Grove, on the links, anywhere--to be with her was all
he needed for bliss. For his sake, his mother had prolonged her stay
at Beechhurst, in order that the two young people might be together
in the house where they were to live as man and wife. It was Allan's
delight to make Suzette familiar with her future home. He wanted her
to feel that this was the house in which she was to live; that under
her father's roof she was no longer at home; that her books, her
bric-à-brac, the multifarious accumulations of a happy girlhood,
might as well be transferred at once to the sunny, bow-windowed
upstair room which was to be her den. It was now a plainly furnished,
matter-of-fact morning room, a room in which the Admiral had kept his
boots, cigar-boxes, and business documents, and transacted the fussy
futilities of his unoccupied life. The mantelpiece, which had been
built up with shelves and artful cupboards for the accommodation of
the Admiral's cigars, would serve excellently to set off Suzette's
zoological china; her Dresden pugs, and rats, and lobsters, and
pigs, and rabbits, her morsels of silver, and scraps of wrought
copper would adorn the shelves; and all her little odds and ends and
never-to-be-finished bits of fancy-work could be neatly stowed away in
the cupboards.
"But won't you want those dear little cubby-houses for your own
cigars?" asked Suzette. "It seems too cruel to rob you of your uncle's
snuggery. I've no doubt you smoke just as much as the Admiral."
"Not cigars. My humble pipe and pouch can stow themselves away
anywhere. I only smoke cigars out hunting, and I keep a box or two in
the saddle-room for handiness. No, this is to be your room, Suzette. I
have imagined you in it until it seems so to belong to you that I feel
I am taking a liberty in writing a letter here. When are you going to
bring the Dresden bow-wows, and the elephants, and mice, and lobsters,
and donkeys?--all about of a size, by the way."
"Oh, I could not possibly spare them," Suzette answered quickly, making
for the door.
They had come in to look at the room, and for Suzette to give her
opinion as to the colour and style of the new papering. It was to be a
Morris paper, although that would entail new carpet and curtains, and a
complete revolution as to colouring.
"Spare them!" echoed Allan, detaining her. "Who wants you to spare
them? When will you bring them with you? When are you coming to take
possession of the house which is no home for me until you are mistress
of it?"
This was by no means the first time the question had been asked.
Again and again had Allan pleaded that his marriage might be soon.
There was no reason why he should wait for his wife. His position
was established, his house was ready; a house as well found as that
flagship had been on whose quarter-deck the Admiral had moved as a
king. Why should he wait? He could never love his future wife more
dearly than he loved her now. All the framework of his life would be
out of gear till he had brought her home to the house which seemed
joyless and empty for want of her.
"When is it to be, Suzette? When am I to be completely happy?"
"What, are you not happy, _par exemple_? You talked about
overwhelming happiness when I said 'Yes.'"
"That was the promise of happiness. It lifted me to the skies; but it
was only the promise. I am pining for the realization. I want you all
to myself--to have and to hold for ever and ever; beside my hearth;
interwoven with my life; mine always and always; no longer a bright,
capricious spirit, glancing about me like a gleam of sunshine, and
vanishing like the sunbeam; but a woman--my very own--of one mind and
of one heart with me. Suzette, if you love me, you will not spin out
the time of dreams; you will give yourself to me really and for ever."
There was an earnestness in his tone that scared her. The blushes faded
from her cheeks, and she looked at him, pale and startled, and sudden
tears rushed to her eyes.
"You said you would give me time," she faltered; "time to know
you better--to be certain." And then recovering her gaiety in an
instant--"Now, Allan, it is too bad of you. Did I not tell you that I
would not be married till my one-and-twentieth birthday? Why do you
tease me to alter the date? Surely you don't want to marry an infant."
"And your birthday will be on the twenty-third of June," said Allan,
rather sullenly. "Nearly a year from now."
"Nearly a year from October to June! What odd ideas you have about
arithmetic! And now I must run and find Lady Emily. We are going to
drive to Morton Towers together."
Allan made way for her to pass, and followed her downstairs, vexed and
disheartened. His mother was to leave him next day; and then there
would be one house the less in which he and Suzette could meet--the
house which was to be their home.
He had not visited Mrs. Wornock since her nocturnal perambulation, and
he had prevented his mother paying her a second visit, albeit the hope
of a white peacock and a certain interest in the widow's personality
had made Lady Emily anxious to call at the Manor. Allan had found
reasons for putting off any such call, without saying one disparaging
word about the lady. He had heard of Mrs. Wornock from Suzette, who
reproached him for going no more to Discombe.
"I did not know you were so fickle," she said. "I really think you have
behaved abominably to poor Mrs. Wornock. She is always asking me why
you don't go to see her; and I am tired of inventing excuses."
Suzette was at the Manor every other day. Mrs. Wornock was teaching her
to play the organ.
"Is it not sweet of her?" she asked Allan. "And though I don't suppose
she ever gave any one a lesson in her life till she began to teach me,
she has the teaching gift in a marked degree. I love to learn of her.
I can play some simple things of Haydn's not altogether badly. Perhaps
you will do me the honour to come and hear me some day, when I have got
a little further."
"I will go to hear you to-morrow, if I may."
"What! Then you have no objection to Discombe in the abstract, though
you have cut poor Mrs. Wornock for the last six weeks?"
"I was so much occupied with my mother."
"And your mother wanted badly to call upon Mrs. Wornock, and you
always put a stumbling-block in her way. But I am happy to say Lady
Emily is to have the white peacock all the same. She is to have a pair
of birds. I have taken care of that."
"Like a good and thoughtful daughter."
* * * * *
When Allan came back from the station, after seeing his mother safely
seated in the London train, he found a letter from Mrs. Wornock on the
hall table--a hand-delivered letter which had just arrived. It was
brief and to the point.
"Why have you deserted me, Allan? Have I unconsciously offended
you, or is there no room in your heart for friendship as well as
love? I hear of your happiness from Suzette; but I want to see
you and your sweetheart roaming about the gardens here as in the
old days, before you were engaged lovers. Now that Lady Emily is
leaving Beechhurst, you will have time to spare for me."
The letter seemed a reproach, and he felt that he deserved to be
reproached by her. How kind she had been, how sympathetic, how
interested in his love-story; and what an ingrate he must appear in her
eyes!
He did not wait for the following morning and the music-lesson, lest
Mrs. Wornock should think he went to Discombe only on Suzette's
account. He set out immediately after reading that reproachful little
letter, and walked through the lanes and copses to the Manor House.
It was four o'clock when he arrived, and Mrs. Wornock was at home and
alone. The swelling tones of that wonderful organ answered his question
on the threshold. No beginner could play with that broad, strong
touch, which gave grandeur to the simple phrases of an "Agnus Dei" by
Palestrina.
She started up as Allan was announced, and went quickly to meet him,
giving him both her hands.
"This is so good of you," she exclaimed.
"Then you are not offended, and you have forgiven me?"
"My dear Mrs. Wornock, why should I be offended? I have received
nothing but kindness from you."
"I thought you might be angry with me for refusing the invitation to
your luncheon-party."
"It would have been very impertinent of me to be angry, when I know
what a recluse you are."
"It is a month since you were here--a whole calendar month. Why didn't
you bring Lady Emily to see me? But perhaps she did not wish to come.
Was that so?"
"No, Mrs. Wornock," he answered coldly. "My mother wished to call upon
you."
"And you prevented her?"
"Yes."
"Why did you do that?"
"Dare I be frank with you?"
"Yes, yes, yes! You cannot be too frank. I love you, Allan. Always
remember that. You are to me as a second son."
Her warmth startled and scared him. His face flushed hotly, and he
stood before her in mute embarrassment. If the secret of the past
was indeed the guilty secret which he had suspected, there was utter
shamelessness in this speech of hers.
"Allan, why are you silent?"
"Because there are some things that can hardly be said; least of all by
a man of my age to a woman of yours."
"There is nothing that you can say to me, Allan, about myself or my
regard for you, that can bring a blush to my face or to yours. There is
nothing in my life of which I need be ashamed in your sight or in the
sight of my son."
"Forgive me, forgive me, if my secret thoughts have sometimes wronged
you. There has been so much to surprise and mystify me. Your agitation
on hearing my father's name; your painful embarrassment when I brought
my mother here; and last, and most of all, your secret visit to
Beechhurst when my father was there."
"What! you know of that?"
"Yes; I saw your face at the open window, looking in at him."
She clasped her hands, and there were tears in her eyes.
"Yes," she faltered, after a silence of some moments, "I was looking
at the face I had not seen for nearly thirty years--the face that
looked at me like a ghost from the past, and had no knowledge of me,
no care for me. I knew--I have known in all these years that George
Beresford was to be looked for among the living. I have sought for
him in the spirit-world, again and again and again, in long days and
nights of waiting, in my dreams, in long, far-reaching thoughts that
have carried my soul away from this dull earth; but there was no
answer--not a thought, not a breath out of that unseen world where my
spirit would have touched his had he died while he was young, and while
he still loved me. But he lived, and grew old like me, and found a new
love, and so we are as wide apart as if we had never met. I stood in
the darkness outside your window for nearly an hour, looking at him,
listening to his voice when he spoke--the dear, kind voice! _That_
was not changed."
"It is true, then? You knew and loved my father years ago?"
"Yes, knew him and loved him, and would have been his wife if it had
been for his happiness to marry me. Think of that, Allan! I was to have
been his wife, and I gave him up for his own sake."
"Why did you do that? Why should you not have married him?"
"Because I was only a poor girl, and he was a gentleman--the only son
of a rich widow, and his mother would never have forgiven him for such
a marriage. I knew nothing of that when he asked me to be his wife. I
only knew that we loved each other truly and dearly. But just before
the day that was to have been our wedding-day his mother came to me,
and told me that if I persisted in marrying him I should be the bane of
his life. It would be social extinction for him to marry me. Social
extinction! I remember those words, though I hardly knew then what they
meant. I was not eighteen, Allan, and I knew less of the world than
many children of eight. But I did not give up my happiness without a
struggle. There was strong persuasion brought to bear upon me; and at
last I yielded--for his sake."
"And blighted his life!" exclaimed Allan. "My mother is the best of
women, and the best and kindest of wives; but I have always known
that my father's marriage was a loveless marriage. Well," he went on,
recovering himself quickly, apprehensive lest he should lower his
mother's dignity by revealing too much, "you acted generously, and no
doubt for the best, in making that sacrifice, and all has worked round
well. You married a good man, and secured a position of more importance
than my father's smaller means could have given you."
"Position! means!" she repeated, in bitterest scorn. "Oh, Allan, don't
think so poorly of me as to suppose that it was Mr. Wornock's wealth
which attracted me. I married him because he was kind and sympathetic
and good to me in my loneliness--a pupil at a German conservatoire,
living with stony-hearted people, who only cared for me to the extent
of the money that was paid for my board and lodging, and who were
always saying hard things to me because they had agreed to take me so
cheaply--too cheaply, they said. I used to feel as if I were cheating
them when I sat at their wretched meals, and I was thankful that I had
a wretched appetite."
"You were cruelly used, dear Mrs. Wornock. I can just remember my
grandmother, and I know she was a hard woman. She had no right to
interfere with her son's disposal of his life."
"No, she had no right. If I had known even as much of the world as I
know now, when Miss Marjorum--Mrs. Beresford's messenger--came to me,
I would have acted differently. I know now that a gentleman need not
be ashamed of marrying a penniless girl if there is nothing against
her but her poverty; but then I believed what Miss Marjorum told
me--believed that I should blight the life of the man who loved me with
such generous self-sacrificing love. Why should he alone be generous,
and I selfish and indifferent to his welfare?"
"But how did he suffer you to sacrifice yourself at his mother's
bidding?"
"He had no power to stop me. It was all settled without his knowledge.
I hope he was not very sorry--dear, dear George!--so generous, so true,
so noble. Oh, how I loved him--how I have loved him--all my life,
all my life! My husband knew that I had no heart to give him--that I
could be his obedient wife--but that I could never love him as I had
loved----"
Again her sobs choked her speech. She threw herself into a chair and
abandoned herself to that passionate grief.
"Dear Mrs. Wornock, forgive me for having revived these sorrowful
memories. I was wrong--I ought not to have spoken----"
"No, no, there is nothing to forgive. It does me good to talk of the
past--with you, Allan, with you, not with any one else. And now you
know why my heart went out to you from the first. Why you are to me
almost as a son--almost as dear as my own son--and your future wife
as my daughter. It does me good to talk to you of that time--so long
and long ago. It does me good to talk of my dead self. I have never
forgotten. The past has always been dearer to me than anything in this
life that came afterwards."
"I do not think my father has forgotten that past, any more than you
have, Mrs. Wornock. I know that there has always been a cloud over his
life--the shadow of one sad memory. I have felt and understood this,
without knowing whence the shadow came."
"He was too true-hearted to forget easily," Mrs. Wornock said, gently,
"and we were both so young. I was his first love, as he was mine. And
when a first love is pure and strong as ours was, it must be first and
last, must it not, Allan?"
"Yes," he answered, half doubtfully, remembering certain sketchy loves
of his own, and hoping that they could hardly be ranked as love, so
that he might believe that his passion for Suzette was essentially the
first; essentially, if not actually.
"No, I have never forgotten," Mrs. Wornock repeated musingly, seating
herself at the piano, and softly touching the notes now and then,
playing a few bars of pensive melody sotto voce as she talked--now a
phrase from an Adagio of Beethoven's, now a resolution from a prelude
by Bach, dropping gravely down into the bass with softly repetitive
phrases, from piano to pianissimo, melting into silence like a sigh.
"No, I have never forgotten--and I have suffered from the pains as well
as the pleasures of memory. Before my son was born, and after, there
was a long interval of darkness when I lived only in the past, when the
shadows of the past were more real to me than the living things of the
present, when my husband's face was dim and distant, and that dear face
from the past was always near me, with the kind smile that comforted
me in my desolate youth. Yes, I loved him, Allan, loved him, and gave
him up for his own sake. And now you tell me my sacrifice was useless;
that, even with the wife his mother chose for him, the good amiable
wife, he has not been altogether happy."
"His life has been placid, studious, kindly, and useful. It may be that
he was best fitted for that calm, secluded life--it may be that if you
had taken the more natural and the more selfish course--and in so doing
parted him for ever from his mother, who was a proud woman, capable of
lifelong resentment--it may be that remorse might have blighted his
life, and that even your love would not have consoled him under the
conviction that he had broken his mother's heart. I know that, after
her strong-minded masterful fashion, she adored him. He was all she
had in this world to love or care for; and it is quite possible that
a lasting quarrel with him might have killed her. Dear Mrs. Wornock,
pray do not think that your sacrifice was altogether in vain. No such
self-surrender as that can be without some good fruit. I do not pretend
to be a holy person, but I do believe in the power of goodness. And,
consider, dear friend, your life has not been all unhappy. You had a
kind and good husband."
"Good! He was more than good, and for over a year of our married life
I was a burden to him. He was an exile from the home he loved, for my
sake--for me, who ought to have brightened his home for him."
"But that was only a dark interval," said Allan, remembering what Mrs.
Mornington had told him, of the long residence at Grindelwald, and
the birth of the heir in that remote spot. "There were happier days
afterwards."
"Yes, we had a few peaceful years here, before death took him from me,
and while our boy was growing in strength and beauty."
"And in these long years of widowhood music has been your comforter. In
your devotion to art you have lived the higher life."
"Yes," she answered, with an inspired look, striking a triumphant
chord, "music has been my comforter--music has conjured back my dead
father, my lost lover. Music has been my life and my hope."