The girl looked up at her husband in a rapture of innocent affection.
"I am too happy, Edward," she said, in a low awe-stricken whisper--"I am too happy! So much happiness can never last."
Alas! the orphan girl"s experience of this life had early taught her the lesson which some people learn so late. She had learnt to distrust the equal blue of a summer sky, the glorious splendour of the blazing sunlight. She was accustomed to sorrow; but these brief glimpses of perfect happiness filled her with a dim sense of terror. She felt like some earthly wanderer who had strayed across the threshold of Paradise.
In the midst of her delight and admiration, she trembled for the moment in which the ruthless angels, bearing flaming swords, should drive her from the celestial gates.
"It can"t last, Edward," she murmured.
"Can"t last, Polly!" cried the young man; "why, my dove is transformed all at once into a raven. We have outlived our troubles, Polly, like the hero and heroine in one of your novels; and what is to prevent our living happy ever afterwards, like them? If you remember, my dear, no sorrows or trials ever fall to the lot of people _after_ marriage. The persecutions, the separations, the estrangements, are all ante-nuptial.
When once your true novelist gets his hero and heroine up to the altar-rails in real earnest,--he gets them into the church sometimes, and then forbids the banns, or brings a former wife, or a rightful husband, pale and denouncing, from behind a pillar, and drives the wretched pair out again, to persecute them through three hundred pages more before he lets them get back again,--but when once the important words are spoken and the knot tied, the story"s done, and the happy couple get forty or fifty years" wedded bliss, as a set-off against the miseries they have endured in the troubled course of a twelvemonth"s courtship. That"s the sort of thing, isn"t it, Polly?"
The clock of St. Cross, sounding faintly athwart the meadows, struck three as the young man finished speaking.
"Three o"clock, Polly!" he cried; "we must go home, my pet. I mean to be businesslike to-day."
Upon each day in that happy honeymoon holiday Captain Arundel had made some such declaration with regard to his intention of being businesslike; that is to say, setting himself deliberately to the task of writing those letters which should announce and explain his marriage to the people who had a right to hear of it. But the soldier had a dislike to all letter-writing, and a special horror of any epistolary communication which could come under the denomination of a business-letter; so the easy summer days slipped by,--the delicious drowsy noontides, the soft and dreamy twilight, the tender moonlit nights,--and the Captain put off the task for which he had no fancy, from after breakfast until after dinner, and from after dinner until after breakfast; always beguiled away from his open travelling-desk by a word from Mary, who called him to the window to look at a pretty child on the village green before the inn, or at the blacksmith"s dog, or the tinker"s donkey, or a tired Italian organ-boy who had strayed into that out-of-the-way nook, or at the smart butcher from Winchester, who rattled over in a pony-cart twice a week to take orders from the gentry round about, and to insult and defy the local purveyor, whose stock-in-trade generally seemed to consist of one leg of mutton and a dish of pig"s fry.
The young couple walked slowly through the meadows, crossing rustic wooden bridges that spanned the winding stream, loitering to look down into the clear water at the fish which Captain Arundel pointed out, but which Mary could never see;--that young lady always fixing her eyes upon some long trailing weed afloat in the transparent water, while the silvery trout indicated by her husband glided quietly away to the sedgy bottom of the stream. They lingered by the water-mill, beneath whose shadow some children were fishing; they seized upon every pretext for lengthening that sunny homeward walk, and only reached the inn as the village clocks were striking four, at which hour Captain Arundel had ordered dinner.
But after the simple little repast, mild and artless in its nature as the fair young spirit of the bride herself; after the landlord, sympathetic yet respectful, had in his own person attended upon his two guests; after the pretty rustic chamber had been cleared of all evidence of the meal that had been eaten, Edward Arundel began seriously to consider the business in hand.
"The letters must be written, Polly," he said, seating himself at a table near the open window. Trailing branches of jasmine and honeysuckle made a framework round the diamond-paned cas.e.m.e.nt; the perfumed blossoms blew into the room with every breath of the warm August breeze, and hung trembling in the folds of the chintz curtains.
Mr. Arundel"s gaze wandered dreamily away through this open window to the primitive picture without,--the scattered cottages upon the other side of the green, the cattle standing in the pond, the cackling geese hurrying homeward across the purple ridge of common, the village gossips loitering beneath the faded sign that hung before the low white tavern at the angle of the road. He looked at all these things as he flung his leathern desk upon the table, and made a great parade of unlocking and opening it.
"The letters must be written," he repeated, with a smothered sigh. "Did you ever notice a peculiar property in stationery, Polly?"
Mrs. Edward Arundel only opened her brown eyes to their widest extent, and stared at her husband.
"No, I see you haven"t," said the young man. "How should you, you fortunate Polly? You"ve never had to write any business-letters yet, though you are an heiress. The peculiarity of all stationery, my dear, is, that it is possessed of an intuitive knowledge of the object for which it is to be used. If one has to write an unpleasant letter, Polly, it might go a little smoother, you know; one might round one"s paragraphs, and spell the difficult words--the "believes" and "receives," the "tills" and "untils," and all that sort of thing--better with a pleasant pen, an easy-going, jolly, soft-nibbed quill, that would seem to say, "Cheer up, old fellow! I"ll carry you through it; we"ll get to "your very obedient servant" before you know where you are," and so on. But, bless your heart, Polly! let a poor unbusinesslike fellow try to write a business-letter, and everything goes against him. The pen knows what he"s at, and jibs, and stumbles, and shies about the paper, like a broken-down screw; the ink turns thick and lumpy; the paper gets as greasy as a London pavement after a fall of snow, till a poor fellow gives up, and knocks under to the force of circ.u.mstances. You see if my pen doesn"t splutter, Polly, the moment I address Richard Paulette."
Captain Arundel was very careful in the adjustment of his sheet of paper, and began his letter with an air of resolution.
"White Hart Inn, Milldale, near Winchester, "August 14th.
"MY DEAR SIR,"
He wrote as much as this with great prompt.i.tude, and then, with his elbow on the table, fell to staring at his pretty young wife and drumming his fingers on his chin. Mary was sitting opposite her husband at the open window, working, or making a pretence of being occupied with some impossible fragment of Berlin wool-work, while she watched her husband.
"How pretty you look in that white frock, Polly!" said the soldier; "you call those things frocks, don"t you? And that blue sash, too,--you ought always to wear white, Mary, like your namesakes abroad who are _vouee au blanc_ by their faithful mothers, and who are a blessing to the laundresses for the first seven or fourteen years of their lives.
What shall I say to Paulette? He"s such a jolly fellow, there oughtn"t to be much difficulty about the matter. "My dear sir," seems absurdly stiff; "my dear Paulette,"--that"s better,--"I write this to inform you that your client, Miss Mary March----" What"s that, Polly?"
It was the postman, a youth upon a pony, with the afternoon letters from London. Captain Arundel flung down his pen and went to the window.
He had some interest in this young man"s arrival, as he had left orders that such letters as were addressed to him at the hotel in Covent Garden should be forwarded to him at Milldale.
"I daresay there"s a letter from Germany, Polly," he said eagerly. "My mother and Let.i.tia are capital correspondents; I"ll wager anything there"s a letter, and I can answer it in the one I"m going to write this evening, and that"ll be killing two birds with one stone. I"ll run down to the postman, Polly."
Captain Arundel had good reason to go after his letters, for there seemed little chance of those missives being brought to him. The youthful postman was standing in the porch drinking ale out of a ponderous earthenware mug, and talking to the landlord, when Edward went down.
"Any letters for me, d.i.c.k?" the Captain asked. He knew the Christian name of almost every visitor or hanger-on at the little inn, though he had not stayed there an entire fortnight, and was as popular and admired as if he had been some free-spoken young squire to whom all the land round about belonged.
""Ees, sir," the young man answered, shuffling off his cap; "there be two letters for ye."
He handed the two packets to Captain Arundel, who looked doubtfully at the address of the uppermost, which, like the other, had been re-directed by the people at the London hotel. The original address of this letter was in a handwriting that was strange to him; but it bore the postmark of the village from which the Dangerfield letters were sent.
The back of the inn looked into an orchard, and through an open door opposite to the porch Edward Arundel saw the low branches of the trees, and the ripening fruit red and golden in the afternoon sunlight. He went out into this orchard to read his letters, his mind a little disturbed by the strange handwriting upon the Dangerfield epistle.
The letter was from his father"s housekeeper, imploring him most earnestly to go down to the Park without delay. Squire Arundel had been stricken with paralysis, and was declared to be in imminent danger.
Mrs. and Miss Arundel and Mr. Reginald were away in Germany. The faithful old servant implored the younger son to lose no time in hurrying home, if he wished to see his father alive.
The soldier leaned against the gnarled grey trunk of an old apple-tree, and stared at this letter with a white awe-stricken face.
What was he to do? He must go to his father, of course. He must go without a moment"s delay. He must catch the first train that would carry him westward from Southampton. There could be no question as to his duty. He must go; he must leave his young wife.
His heart sank with a sharp thrill of pain, and with perhaps some faint shuddering sense of an unknown terror, as he thought of this.
"It was lucky I didn"t write the letters," he reflected; "no one will guess the secret of my darling"s retreat. She can stay here till I come back to her. G.o.d knows I shall hurry back the moment my duty sets me free. These people will take care of her. No one will know where to look for her. I"m very glad I didn"t write to Olivia. We were so happy this morning! Who could think that sorrow would come between us so soon?"
Captain Arundel looked at his watch. It was a quarter to six o"clock, and he knew that an express left Southampton for the west at eight.
There would be time for him to catch that train with the help of a st.u.r.dy pony belonging to the landlord of the White Hart, which would rattle him over to the station in an hour and a half. There would be time for him to catch the train; but, oh! how little time to comfort his darling--how little time to reconcile his young wife to the temporary separation!
He hurried back to the porch, briefly explained to the landlord what had happened, ordered the pony and gig to be got ready immediately, and then went very, very slowly upstairs, to the room in which his young wife sat by the open window waiting for his return.
Mary looked up at his face as he entered the room, and that one glance told her of some new sorrow.
"Edward," she cried, starting up from her chair with a look of terror, "my stepmother has come."
Even in his trouble the young man smiled at his foolish wife"s all-absorbing fear of Olivia Marchmont.
"No, my darling," he said; "I wish to heaven our worst trouble were the chance of your father"s widow breaking in upon us. Something has happened, Mary; something very sorrowful, very serious for me. My father is ill, Polly dear, dangerously ill, and I must go to him."
Mary Arundel drew a long breath. Her face had grown very white, and the hands that were linked tightly round her husband"s arm trembled a little.
"I will try to bear it," she said; "I will try to bear it."
"G.o.d bless you, my darling!" the soldier answered fervently, clasping his young wife to his breast. "I know you will. It will be a very short parting, Mary dearest. I will come back to you directly I have seen my father. If he is worse, there will be little need for me to stop at Dangerfield; if he is better, I can take you back there with me. My own darling love, it is very bitter for us to be parted thus; but I know that you will bear it like a heroine. Won"t you, Polly?"
"I will try to bear it, dear."
She said very little more than this, but clung about her husband, not with any desperate force, not with any clamorous and tumultuous grief, but with a half-despondent resignation; as a drowning man, whose strength is well-nigh exhausted, may cling, in his hopelessness, to a spar, which he knows he must presently abandon.
Mary Arundel followed her husband hither and thither while he made his brief and hurried preparations for the sudden journey; but although she was powerless to a.s.sist him,--for her trembling hands let fall everything she tried to hold, and there was a mist before her eyes, which distorted and blotted the outline of every object she looked at,--she hindered him by no noisy lamentations, she distressed him by no tears. She suffered, as it was her habit to suffer, quietly and uncomplainingly.
The sun was sinking when she went with Edward downstairs to the porch, before which the landlord"s pony and gig were in waiting, in custody of a smart lad who was to accompany Mr. Arundel to Southampton. There was no time for any protracted farewell. It was better so, perhaps, Edward thought. He would be back so soon, that the grief he felt in this parting--and it may be that his suffering was scarcely less than Mary"s--seemed wasted anguish, to which it would have been sheer cowardice to give way. But for all this the soldier very nearly broke down when he saw his childish wife"s piteous face, white in the evening sunlight, turned to him in mute appeal, as if the quivering lips would fain have entreated him to abandon all and to remain. He lifted the fragile figure in his arms,--alas! it had never seemed so fragile as now,--and covered the pale face with pa.s.sionate kisses and fast-dropping tears.
"G.o.d bless and defend you, Mary! G.o.d keep----"
He was ashamed of the huskiness of his voice, and putting his wife suddenly away from him, he sprang into the gig, s.n.a.t.c.hed the reins from the boy"s hand, and drove away at the pony"s best speed. The old-fashioned vehicle disappeared in a cloud of dust; and Mary, looking after her husband with eyes that were as yet tearless, saw nothing but glaring light and confusion, and a pastoral landscape that reeled and heaved like a stormy sea.
It seemed to her, as she went slowly back to her room, and sat down amidst the disorder of open portmanteaus and overturned hatboxes, which the young man had thrown here and there in his hurried selection of the few things necessary for him to take on his hasty journey--it seemed as if the greatest calamity of her life had now befallen her. As hopelessly as she had thought of her father"s death, she now thought of Edward Arundel"s departure. She could not see beyond the acute anguish of this separation. She could not realise to herself that there was no cause for all this terrible sorrow; that the parting was only a temporary one; and that her husband would return to her in a few days at the furthest. Now that she was alone, now that the necessity for heroism was past, she abandoned herself utterly to the despair that had held possession of her soul from the moment in which Captain Arundel had told her of his father"s illness.