Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon

by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

  He stood before them smiling, self-assured, light as Ariel himself, clad from top to toe in white, and with glints of sunlight in his blonde hair, and a delicate transparency in his blonde complexion, untouched by wind or weather. He looked as if nothing were further from his thoughts than the suspicion that his company could be in any wise distasteful.

  Hester had risen in confusion, and stood leaning a little against one of the low branches of the ash, blushing painfully. This was the first visitor who had broken the spell of their sweet solitude, and, as in her meeting with the Rector, she felt again the sharp bitter sense of being brought face to face with that outer world which could but think ill of her.

  “Mr. Jermyn — my wife,” said Gerard, gravely, with emphasis upon the word wife.

  Justin Jermyn dropped into one of the low chairs, settled himself in a nest of dainty Moorish cushions, and waited to be refreshed with tea, which Hester prepared for him with hands which trembled a little, despite her efforts at self-control. In her conversation with the Rector the sense of the old man’s fatherly pity had been more than she could bear without tears. In the presence of Justin Jermyn that which she felt was the sense of hidden malignity, the consciousness of being despised and made light of by the man who fawned upon her.

  She handed him his cup in silence, offered him the light dainties from the prettily decked table with the air of performing a social duty in which her inclination had no part, and when she had done this she opened a big Florentine umbrella, and walked slowly away, leaving the two men under the ash.

  “How shy she is,” said Jermyn, looking after her, “and how lovely! Even your rapturous tirades had hardly prepared me for be much beauty. Yes, it is the true Raffaelle face — the transparent purity of colouring — the delicate and harmonious features—”

  “Why did you hunt me down here?” demanded Gerard, rudely breaking in upon these encomiums. “Do you suppose that when a man has made a paradise for himself — remote and secret — he wants to be intruded upon by — —”

  “The serpent,” interrupted Jermyn. “Perhaps not. Yet the serpent always finds his way in through some gap in the hedge. And after all there must be limits to the pleasures of a dual solitude. Love may remain unchanged, but ideas become exhausted, and the tête-à-tête begins to bore. If the serpent hadn’t upset everything at an early stage in their union, how heartily sick of Eden Adam and Eve must have become by the time Cain and Abel were weaned. Don’t be angry, Gerard. Granted that I am a pushing cad, and that I go where I like to go rather than where I am wanted. I come to you with all the news of the town — of the world — fresh in my mind, the scandals, and follies, and the social entanglements of which your newspapers tell you nothing. You can surely put up with me for an hour or so.”

  Gerard put up with him till midnight. He dined at the Rosary, and the little dinner of three had a gaiety which the tête-à-tête dinners had somewhat lacked lately. Even Hester was amused by a style of conversation that was new to her, and the unpleasant effect of Mr. Jermyn’s personality wore off, and was almost forgotten. He evidently liked and admired Gerard, and that was much in his favour.

  The moon was at the full, silvering wood and meadow, river and eyot, as they bade the visitor good night, and stood and watched him row down the stream towards Wargrave, a ghost-like figure in his white raiment, under that cold white light.

  “He amused you, Gerard,” said Hester, as they walked slowly back to the house. “I was glad to hear you laugh so merrily. We have been too serious of late. Our books have saddened us.”

  “Yes, they all tell the same story; that nature is everything and we are nothing. Jermyn is an amusing rascal, and as I told you yesterday, I like him well enough when I am with him.”

  “You called me your wife when you introduced him to me,” murmured Hester, hiding her face upon his shoulder. “You will never let him find out that I am — anything less than your wife — will you, Gerard? I feel as if that man’s scorn would wither me.”

  “His scorn! My dearest, he admires you beyond measure, and do you think he is the kind of man to be influenced in his opinion of any woman by a marriage certificate? He knows that I adore you. He shall never know anything else about us but that we are devoted to each other. And if he is ever wanting in reverence for you, in the smallest degree, he shall never enter our house again.”

  CHAPTER XXII. “COMPARE DEAD HAPPINESS WITH LIVING WOE.”

  AFTER that one evening’s hospitable entertainment Mr. Jermyn considered himself free of the Rosary. He dropped in at any hour he liked, and always brought cheerfulness with him. He joined Hester and Gerard in their long, lazy mornings in the punt, discussed their books, old and new, seeming to know every book that had ever made its mark in the world, and to remember, as few readers remember. Gerard was certainly the gayer for his company, and listened with interest to an account of the visitors on the Pegotty, where Matt Muller received a society that could only be described as mixed. Happily the Pegotty was berthed at a distance of ten miles, and the painter’s Bohemian guests rarely went over a mile beyond her moorings.

  All the dreamy seriousness that had tinctured Hester and Gerard’s long duologue evaporated in the presence of Justin Jermyn, as the mist wreaths melt from the riverside meadows under the broadening sunshine. The greatest problems in life and time were touched as lightly by Jermyn as the airiest nothings of tea-table gossip. It was impossible to be earnest in the society of a man for whom existence was a jest, and the Sybarite’s luxury the supreme good below the stars.

  “If I ever contemplate another world, it appears to me as a planet in which there is perpetual summer; a place where there are no bad cooks, and where the fowls of the air have no legs,” he said, with his joyous laugh, when Hester pleaded for that last forlorn hope of man’s progressive existence, somewhere, somehow.

  Mr. Gilstone called twice at the Rosary during these halcyon days at the beginning of October, only to find that Mr and Mrs. Hanley were out on the river. Gerard tossed the Rector’s cards aside with a contemptuous laugh on the second time of finding them on the hall table.

  “What pushing rascals these parsons are!” he exclaimed. “This fellow calls twice in ten days, instead of taking offence at my neglect. Wants money out of me for his schools, or his coal-club, no doubt. Well, the parson’s life is not a happy life, as I know by home experience, and I’ll reward his pertinacity with a comfortable cheque.”

  Hester turned red, and then pale, at the sight of the Rector’s cards.

  “He may not want money,” she faltered.

  “May not! My dearest, he is a priest. The priest who doesn’t go for your purse is a black swan that I don’t expect to find along this river.”

  “He may wish to see you.”

  “Then his wish shall remain ungratified. I am not going to let the world into our paradise by the thin end of the clerical wedge.”

  “You need not fear the world,” Hester answered, with the first touch of bitterness that Gerard had heard in any speech of hers.

  “People know that there is something wrong in our lives. They have all held themselves aloof.” —

  “The voice is the voice of my poetic Hester, but the words are the words of the Philistine,” said Gerard lightly, as he left her.

  She stood looking at the Rector’s cards, lying far apart where Gerard’s careless hand had flung them. She felt that she had offended the man whom she loved better than all the world besides. Oh, fool, self-conscious fool, to care for what that shallow or self-seeking world might think or say of her. Whatever she had sacrificed of womanly pride and self-respect, was it not enough reward to have made him happy — him for whom life was to be so brief, who had need to crowd into a few summers the love and gladness which for other men may be spread over the length of prosaic years, making a little spot of colour and light here and there on the dull grey woof of domestic monotony.

  The Rector called a third time, and this time met the master of the house at
the hall door.

  “Good morning, Mr. Gilstone. Pray step inside my den here,” said Gerard, throwing ‘aside his hat. “I am ashamed that you should have troubled to pay me a third visit. I was on the point of sending you a cheque.” —

  “I have not asked you for any money, Mr. Hanley,” answered the Rector, gravely, seating himself in the proffered chair, and looking round the room with the shrewd glance of eyes that have been observing things for sixty-six years.

  There was nothing in the cottage parlour, transformed into a study, to indicate dissipated habits; none of the slovenliness of the Bohemian idler. Many books, flowers everywhere, and an all-pervading neatness distinguished the apartment.

  “You have not asked me? No, no,” said Gerard, lightly, “but I know that in an agricultural parish there must be a good deal of poverty, and every well-to-do parishioner should pay his quota. Winter is approaching, though we may be beguiled into forgetting all about him in this delicious autumn. You are thinking of your coal and blanket club, I dare say. Allow me to write you a cheque.” He opened a drawer, took out his cheque-book, and dipped his pen in the ink.

  “No, Mr. Hanley,” said the Rector, decisively; “I cannot take your money. I am here to talk to you of something much more precious than money.”

  “Of my soul, perhaps?” questioned Gerard, his countenance hardening. “I may as well tell you at once, Mr. Gilstone, that I am an unbeliever in the Christian revelation, and, indeed, in transcendentalism of all kinds.”

  “You are a Darwinian, I conclude?”

  “No; I am nothing! I neither look before nor after. I want to make the most of life in the present, while it is mine. God knows, it is short enough for the longest lived amongst us — and death comes no easier to me, the unit, because I know the universe is working steadily towards the same catastrophe.”

  “You dread death?” asked the Rector.

  “Who does not? Contemplate death in whatever form you will, he is the same hideous spectre. Sudden destruction, slow decay — who shall say which is the more terrible? But come now, Mr. Gilstone, you are not here to talk metaphysics. I say again, let me write you a cheque for your schools, your cottage hospital, your something.”

  “And I say again, Mr. Hanley, that I cannot take your money.”

  “Why not?”

  “I cannot take money for alms from a man who is living in sin.”

  “Oh, that’s your drift, is it, sir?” cried Gerard, springing to his feet. “You force yourself into my house in order to insult me!”

  “No, Mr. Hanley. I am here in the hope of helping you to mend your life.”

  “What right have you to suppose that my life needs mending?”

  “Say that it is only the shrewdness of an old man who has lived long enough to know something of human nature. Two young people with ample means do not live as you and Mrs. Hanley are living without some reason for their isolation, and in your case I take it the reason is that the lady is not your wedded wife. If that is so, let me, while your relations are still unknown to the world at large, marry you to this young lady, quietly, some morning, with no witness but my sexton and my dear old maiden sister, both of whom know how to keep a secret.”

  “My dear Mr. Gilstone, you arc vastly obliging; but I am really a little amused at your naïveté. Do you really forget — suppose I am not legally married to the lady I call my wife — that there are plenty of registrars in England who would marry me to her as quietly as you can, and make no favour of the business?”

  “I do not ignore the existence of registry offices where any groom in the county may be married to his master’s daughter at a day or two’s notice; but I think Mrs. Hanley would prefer to stand by your side at the altar, and to be married to you according to the ordinances of the Church.”

  “I do not think Mrs. Hanley has any profound belief in those ordinances. She is satisfied with the knowledge that she possesses my whole heart, and that her love has made me happy.” —

  “And you accept her too willing sacrifice of virtue and good name, and reserve to yourself the privilege of deserting her when you are weary of her.”

  “You have no right to talk to me in this strain.”

  “Yes, Mr. Hanley, I have a right — the right of an old man and a parish priest, the right which comes from my deep pity for that innocent-looking girl whom you have made your victim. I have talked with her, and every word she uttered helped to assure me that she was not created to be happy in a life of sin. She is not the kind of woman to accept such a life readily — there must have been more than common art in the seducer who betrayed her—”

  “Hold your tongue, sir,” cried Gerard passionately. “How dare you pry into the lives of a man and woman whom you see united and happy; who ask nothing from you; neither your friendship nor your countenance; nothing except to be let alone. My wife — the wife of my heart and of my home — the wife I shall never forsake — is satisfied with her position, and neither you nor any one else has the right to interfere in her behalf. Your priesthood involves no privileges for one to whom all creeds are alike mischief-making and superstitious.”

  “I have been taught that the men who set aside old creeds have adopted humanitarianism as their religion,” said the Rector; “but there is not much humanity in your reckless sacrifice of this young lady — who, I say again, was born for better things than to be —— anything less honoured than your wife.”

  “You have talked with her?” said Gerard, suddenly; “when and where?”

  “I found her in the churchyard one afternoon, and we had a little quiet talk together.”

  “I understand; just enough to make her unhappy and absurdly sensitive upon a question which I thought she and I had settled for ever,” retorted Gerard angrily. “Did she ask you to call upon me? Are you her ambassador?”

  “No. She is only too unselfish. You do not look like a scoundrel, Mr. Hanley, and your conduct in this matter is a mystery to me. You are rich, independent. Why should you refuse to legalise a tie which you own has made you happy? Is there any impediment? Are you married already?”

  “I have no wife but Hester.”

  “But you have some reason — ?”

  “Yes, I have my reason — and as I do not believe in priestcraft or in father-confessors you must pardon me, Mr. Gilstone, if I refuse to explain that reason to you, a total stranger, whose sympathy, or whose curiosity, I have not invited.”

  “Enough, Mr. Hanley. I am sorry for that ill-used young lady, about whose conscience and whose social status you are equally indifferent. If you should alter your determination and make up your mind to act as a man of honour, you may command me in any way or at any time; but until you do so I shall not again cross your threshold.”

  “So be it — but pray bear in mind, Rector, that you have crossed my threshold unasked, and that you cannot expect me to be appalled at your threat of withholding an acquaintance which I never sought.” He rang for the servant, and himself accompanied the Rector to the hall door, where they parted with ceremonious politeness.

  He was angry with this stranger’s intrusion upon his life, angry with Hester for having betrayed their secret. She came in from the garden directly after Mr. Gilstone’s departure, fluttered and pale, having seen the Rector going out at the gate.

  For the first time Gerard received her with a frowning brow, and in gloomy silence.

  “The Rector has been with you,” she said timidly, seating herself in her accustomed nook by the window, where she had her work-basket and little book-table.

  Gerard was slow to answer. She had time to take her work out of the basket, and to put in a few tremulous stitches before he spoke.

  “Yes, the Rector has been here — an old acquaintance of yours, it seems.”

  “Not very old, Gerard. I have only spoken to him once in my life.”

  “Only once; and in that once you contrived to make him acquainted with all your grievances.”

  “Gerard, how cruelly you spe
ak! I told him nothing — nothing. He guessed that all was not well — that I was living a life which, in his sight, is a life of sin. Oh, Gerard, don’t be hard upon me. I have never worried you with my remorse for my own weakness, but when that good old man talked to me so kindly, so gently—”

  “You played the tearful Magdalen — allowed a bigoted old Pharisee to humiliate you by his pitying patronage — sent him to me to urge me to legalise our union — to legalise, forsooth! As if law ever held love.”

  “I did not send him to you. I begged him not to interfere.”

  “You could at least have told me of your conversation with this man, and so prepared me for being sermonised.”

  “I could not speak of it, Gerard. There are things one cannot speak of.”

  She bent very low over her work to hide her tears, feeling instinctively that tears would be hateful to him in his present humour.

  In all the days they had spent together she had kept tears and sadness to herself. For him she had been all sunshine.

  He took two or three impatient turns in the small room, where the cramped space only irritated him.

  “Hester, are you tired of me, and our life here?” he asked, stopping suddenly in front of the window by which she was seated.

  “Tired! Gerard, you know my life begins and ends with you.

  I have given up everything else — this world and the next. I have nothing to care about, nothing to hope for but you.”

  “If I were free to marry you I should need no priestly bidding; but I am not free. I am bound hard and fast by an old tie, which I cannot loosen, yet awhile at any rate. I may be able hereafter to free myself — without dishonour: or I may never be free.”

  “Do not speak of it, Gerard. I have asked nothing of you. Mr. Gilstone believed that he had a duty to do. He has done it. That is all.” Her gentle patience touched him. He seated himself by her side, took the work out of the unsteady hands which were only spoiling it, and drew her to his heart.

  “You are only too good to me, Hester,” he said; “let us be happy, dearest, happy in spite of the conventionalities, happy as Shelley and his Mary were, in the beginning of their union, before law had set its seal upon the bond of love. Some day Church and State may seal our marriage — but it will make the bond no stronger.” He had not forgotten what the Rector had said of her. Yes, she was of the stuff of which wives are made. She was not the kind of woman to accept degradation easily. And then he told himself that there was no degradation in their union, that he was a fool to consider the world’s opinion, or be influenced by the narrow views of a village parson.