Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon
Page 680
“Jilted!” cried Vixen, her big brown eyes shining, in pleasantest mockery. “Why I thought Lady Mabel adored you?”
“So did I,” answered Roderick naïvely, “and I pitied the poor dear thing for her infatuation. Had I not thought that, I should have broken my bonds long ago. It was not the love of the Duke’s acres that held me. I still believe that Mabel was fond of me once, but Lord Mallow bowled me out. His eloquence, his parliamentary success, and, above all, his flattery, proved irresistible. The scoundrel brought a marriage certificate in his pocket when he came to stay at Ashbourne, and had the art to engage rooms at Southampton and sleep there a night en passant. He left a portmanteau and a hat-box there, and that constituted legal occupancy; so, when he won Lady Mabel’s consent to an elopement — which I believe he did not succeed in doing till the night before our intended wedding-day — he had only to ride over to Southampton and give notice to the parson and clerk. The whole thing was done splendidly. Lady Mabel went out at eight o’clock, under the pretence of going to early church. Mallow was waiting for her with a fly, half a mile from Ashbourne. They drove to Southampton together, and were married at ten o’clock, in the old church of St. Michael. While the distracted Duchess and her women were hunting everywhere for the bride, and all the visitors at Ashbourne were arraying themselves in their wedding finery, and the village children were filling their baskets with flowers to strew upon the pathway of the happy pair, emblematical of the flowers which do not blossom in the highway of life, the lady was over the border with Jock o’ Hazeldean! Wasn’t it fun, Vixen?”
And the jilted one flung back his handsome head and laughed long and loud. It was too good a joke, the welcome release coming at the last moment.
“At half-past ten there came a telegram from my runaway bride:
“‘Ask Roderick to forgive me, dear mamma. I found at the last that my heart was not mine to give, and I am married to Lord Mallow. I do not think my cousin will grieve very much.’
“That last clause was sensible, anyhow, was it not, Vixen?”
“I think the whole business was very sensible,” said Vixen, with a sweet grave smile; “Lord Mallow wanted a clever wife and you did not. It was very wise of Lady Mabel to find that out before it was too late.”
“She will be very happy as Lady Mallow,” said Roderick. “Mallow will legislate for Ireland, and she will rule him. He will have quite enough of Home Rule, poor beggar. Hibernia will be Mabelised. She is a dear good little thing. I quite love her, now she has jilted me.”
“But how did you come here?” asked Vixen, looking up at her lover in simple wonder. “All this happened only yesterday morning.”
“Is there not a steamer that leaves Southampton nightly? Had there not been one I would have chartered a boat for myself. I would have come in a cockle-shell — I would have come with a swimming-belt — I would have done anything wild and adventurous to hasten to my love. I started for Southampton the minute I had seen that too blessed telegram; went to St. Michael’s, saw the register with its entry of Lord Mallow’s marriage, hardly dry; and then went down to the docks and booked my berth. Oh, what a long day yesterday was — the longest day of my life!”
“And of mine,” sighed Vixen, between tears and laughter, “in spite of the Shepherd Kings.”
“Are those Jersey people you have picked up?” Rorie asked innocently.
This turned the scale, and Vixen burst into a joyous peal of laughter.
“How did you find me here?” she asked.
“Very easily. Your custodian — what a grim-looking personage she is, by-the-way — told me where you were gone, and directed me how to follow you. I told her I had a most important message to deliver to you from your mother. You don’t mind that artless device, I hope?”
“Not much. How is dear mamma? She complains in her letters of not feeling very well.”
“I have not seen her lately. When I did, I thought her looking ill and worn. She will get well when you go back to her, Vixen. Your presence will be like sunshine.”
“I shall never go back to the Abbey House.”
“Yes, you will — for one fortnight at least. After that your home will be at Briarwood. You must be married from your father’s house.”
“Who said I was going to be married, sir?” asked Vixen, with delicious coquetry.
“I said it — I say it. Do you think I am too bold, darling? Ought I to go on my knees, love, and make you a formal offer? Why I have loved you all my life; and I think you have loved me as long.”
“So I have, Rorie,” she answered softly, shyly, sweetly. “I forswore myself that night in the fir-wood. I always loved you; there was no stage of my life when you were not dearer to me than anyone on earth, except my father.”
“Dear love, I am ashamed of my happiness,” said Roderick tenderly. “I have been so weak and unworthy. I gave away my hopes of bliss in one foolishly soft moment, to gratify my mother’s dying wish — a wish that had been dinned into my ear the last years of her life — and I have done nothing but repent my folly ever since. Can you forgive me, Violet? I shall never forgive myself.”
“Let the past be like a dream that we have dreamt. It will make the future seem so much the brighter.”
“Yes.”
And then under the blue August sky, fearless and unabashed, these happy lovers gave each other the kiss of betrothal.
“What am I to do with you?” Vixen asked laughingly. “I ought to go home to Les Tourelles.”
“Don’t you think you might take me with you? I am your young man now, you know. I hope it is not a case of ‘no followers allowed.’”
“I’m afraid Miss Skipwith will feel disappointed in me. She thought I was going to have a mission.”
“A mission!”
“Yes; that I was going for theology. And for it all to end in my being engaged to be married! It seems such a commonplace ending, does it not?”
“Decidedly. As commonplace as the destiny of Adam and Eve, whom God joined together in Eden. Take me back to Les Tourelles, Vixen. I think I shall be able to manage Miss Skipwith.”
They left the battlements, and descended the narrow stairs, and went side by side, through sunlit fields and lanes, to the old Carolian manor house, happy with that unutterable, immeasurable joy which belongs to happy love, and to love only; whether it be the romantic passion of a Juliet leaning from her balcony, the holy bliss of a mother hanging over her child’s cradle, or the sober affection of the wife who has seen the dawn and close of a silver wedding and yet loves on with love unchangeable — a monument of constancy in an age of easy divorce.
The distance was long; but to these two the walk was of the shortest. It was as if they trod on flowers or airy cloud, so lightly fell their footsteps on the happy earth.
What would Miss Skipwith say? Vixen laughed merrily at the image of that cheated lady.
“To think that all my Egyptian researches should end in — Antony!” she said, with a joyous look at her lover, who required to be informed which Antony she meant.
“I remember him in Plutarch,” he said. “He was a jolly fellow.”
“And in Shakespeare.”
“Connais pas,” said Rorie. “I’ve read some of Shakespeare’s plays, of course, but not all. He wrote too much.”
It was five o’clock in the afternoon when they arrived at Les Tourelles. They had loitered a little in those sunny lanes, stopping to look seaward through a gap in the hedge, or to examine a fern which was like the ferns of Hampshire. They had such a world of lovers’ nonsense to say to each other, such confessions of past unhappiness, such schemes of future bliss.
“I’m afraid you’ll never like Briarwood as well as the Abbey House,” said Rorie humbly. “I tried my best to patch it up for Lady Mabel; for, you see, as I felt I fell short in the matter of affection, I wanted to do the right thing in furniture and decorations. But the house is lamentably modern and commonplace. I’m afraid you’ll never be happy there.”
“It’s very good of you to say that. Do you like sage-green?” Rorie asked with a doubtful air.
“Pretty well. It reminds me of mamma’s dress-maker, Madame Theodore.”
“Because Mabel insisted upon having sage-green curtains, and chair-covers, and a sage-green wall with a chocolate dado — did you ever hear of a dado? — in the new morning-room I built for her. I’m rather afraid you won’t like it; I should have preferred pink or blue myself, and no dado. It looks so much as if one had run short of wall-paper. But it can all be altered by-and-by, if you don’t like it.”
They found Miss Skipwith pacing the weedy gravel walk in front of her parlour window, with a disturbed air, and a yellow envelope in her hand.
“My dear, this has been an eventful day,” she exclaimed. “I have been very anxious for your return. Here is a telegram for you; and as it is the first you have had since you have been staying here, I conclude it is of some importance.”
Vixen took the envelope eagerly from her hand.
“If you were not standing by my side, a telegram would frighten me,” she whispered to Roderick. “It might tell me you were dead.”
The telegram was from Captain Winstanley to Miss Tempest:
“Come home by the next boat. Your mother is ill, and anxious to see you. The carriage will meet you at Southampton.”
Poor Vixen looked at her lover with a conscience-stricken countenance.
“Oh, Rorie, and I have been so wickedly, wildly happy!” she cried, as if it were a crime to have so rejoiced. “And I made so light of mamma’s last letter, in which she complained of being ill. I hardly gave it a thought.”
“I don’t suppose there is anything very wrong,” said Rorie, in a comforting tone, after he had studied those few bold words in the telegram, trying to squeeze the utmost meaning out of the brief sentence. “You see, Captain Winstanley does not say that your mother is dangerously ill, or even very ill; he only says ill. That might mean something quite insignificant — hay-fever or neuralgia, or a nervous headache.”
“But he tells me to go home — he who hates me, and was so glad to get me out of the house.”
“It is your mother who summons you home, no doubt. She is mistress in her own house, of course.”
“You would not say that if you knew Captain Winstanley.”
They were alone together on the gravel walk, Miss Skipwith having retired to make tea in her dingy parlour. It had dawned upon her that this visitor of Miss Tempest’s was no common friend; and she had judiciously left the lovers together. “Poor misguided child!” she murmured to herself pityingly; “just as she was developing a vocation for serious things! But perhaps if is all for the best. I doubt if she would ever have had breadth of mind to grapple with the great problems of natural religion.”
“Isn’t it dreadful?” said Vixen, walking up and down with the telegram in her hand. “I shall have to endure hours of suspense before I can know how my poor mother is. There is no boat till to-morrow morning. It’s no use talking, Rorie.” Mr. Vawdrey was following her up and down the walk affectionately, but not saying a word. “I feel convinced that mamma must be seriously ill; I should not be sent for unless it were so. In all her letters there has not been a word about my going home. I was not wanted.”
“But, dearest love, you know that your mother is apt to think seriously of trifles.”
“Rorie, you told me an hour ago that she was looking ill when last you saw her.”
Roderick looked at his watch.
“There is one thing I might do,” he said, musingly. “Has Miss Skipwith a horse and trap?”
“Not the least in the world.”
“That’s a pity; it would have saved time. I’ll get down to St. Helier’s somehow, telegraph to Captain Winstanley to inquire the exact state of your mother’s health, and not come back till I bring you his answer.”
“Oh, Rorie, that would be good of you!” exclaimed Vixen. “But it seems too cruel to send you away like that; you have been travelling so long. You have had nothing to eat. You must be dreadfully tired.”
“Tired! Have I not been with you? There are some people whose presence makes one unconscious of humanity’s weaknesses. No, darling, I am neither tired nor hungry; I am only ineffably happy. I’ll go down and set the wires in motion; and then I’ll find out all about the steamer for to-morrow morning, and we will go back to Hampshire together.”
And again the rejoicing lover quoted the Laureate:
“And on her lover’s arm she leant,
And round her waist she felt it fold;
And far across the hills they went,
In that new world which is the old.”
Rorie had to walk all the way to St. Helier’s. He dispatched an urgent message to Captain Winstanley, and then dined temperately at a French restaurant not far from the quay, where the bon vivants of Jersey are wont to assemble nightly. When he had dined he walked about the harbour, looking at the ships, and watching the lights beginning to glimmer from the barrack-windows, and the straggling street along the shore, and the far-off beacons shining out, as the rosy sunset darkened to purple night.
He went to the office two or three times before the return message had come; but at last it was handed to him, and he read it by the office-lamp:
“Captain Winstanley, Abbey House, Hampshire, to Mr. Vawdrey, St. Heliers.
“My wife is seriously ill, but in no immediate danger. The doctors order extreme quiet; all agitation is to be carefully avoided. Let Miss Tempest bear this in mind when she comes home.”
Roderick drove back to Les Tourelles with this message, which was in some respects reassuring, or at any rate afforded a certainty less appalling than Violet’s measureless fears.
Vixen was sitting on the pilgrim’s bench beside the manor house gateway, watching for her lover’s return. Oh, happy lover, to be thus watched for and thus welcomed; thrice, nay, a thousandfold happy in the certainty that she was his own for ever! He put his arm round her, and they wandered along the shadowy lane together, between dewy banks of tangled verdure, luminous with glow-worms. The stars were shining above the overarching roof of foliage, the harvest moon was rising over the distant sea.
“What a beautiful place Jersey is!” exclaimed Vixen innocently, as she strolled lower down the lane, circled by her lover’s arm. “I had no idea it was half so lovely. But then of course I was never allowed to roam about in the moonlight. And, indeed, Rorie, I think we had better go in directly. Miss Skipwith will be wondering.”
“Let her wonder, love. I can explain everything when we go in. She was young herself once upon a time, though one would hardly give her credit for it; and you may depend she has walked in this lane by moonlight. Yes, by the light of that very same sober old moon, who has looked down with the same indulgent smile upon endless generations of lovers.”
“From Adam and Eve to Antony and Cleopatra,” suggested Vixen, who couldn’t get Egypt out of her head.
“Antony and Cleopatra were middle-aged lovers,” said Rorie. “The moon must have despised them. Youth is the only season when love is wisdom, Vixen. In later life it means folly and drivelling, wrinkles badly hidden under paint, pencilled eyebrows, and false hair. Aphrodite should be for ever young.”
“Perhaps that’s why the poor thing puts on paint and false hair when she finds youth departed,” said Vixen.
“Then she is no longer Aphrodite, but Venus Pandemos, and a wicked old harridan,” answered Rorie.
And then he began to sing, with a rich full voice that rolled far upon the still air.
“Gather ye rose-buds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying;
And this same flower that smiles to-day
To-morrow will be dying,
“Then be not coy, but use your time,
And while ye may, go marry;
&n
bsp; For having lost but once your prime,
You may for ever tarry.”
“What a fine voice you have, Rorie!” cried Vixen.
“Have I really? I thought that it was only Lord Mallow who could sing. Do you know that I was desperately jealous of that nobleman, once — when I fancied he was singing himself into your affections. Little did I think that he was destined to become your greatest benefactor.”
“I shall make you sing duets with me, sir, by-and-by.”
“You shall make me stand on my head, or play clown in an amateur pantomime, or do anything supremely ridiculous, if you like. ‘Being your slave what can I do — —’”
“Yes, you must sing Mendelssohn with me. ‘I would that my love,’ and ‘Greeting.’”
“I have only one idea of greeting, after a cruel year of parting and sadness,” said Rorie, drawing the bright young face to his own, and covering it with kisses.
Again Vixen urged that Miss Skipwith would be wondering, and this time with such insistence, that Rorie was obliged to turn back and ascend the hill.
“How cruel it is of you to snatch a soul out of Elysium,” he remonstrated. “I felt as if I was lost in some happy dream — wandering down this path, which leads I know not where, into a dim wooded vale, such as the fairies love to inhabit?”
“The road leads down to the inn at Le Tac, where Cockney excursionists go to eat lobsters, and play skittles,” said Vixen, laughing at her lover.
They went back to the manor house, where they found Miss Skipwith annotating a tremendous manuscript on blue foolscap, a work whose outward semblance would have been enough to frighten and deter any publisher in his right mind.
“How late you are, Violet,” she said, looking up dreamily from her manuscript. “I have been rewriting and polishing portions of my essay on Buddha. The time has flown, and I had no idea of the hour till Doddery came in just now to ask if he could shut up the house. And then I remembered that you had gone out to the gate to watch for Mr. Vawdrey.”