The white dimity curtains overshadowed the loving sleepers. The pretty fluffy knotted fringe--neat Hester"s handiwork--made fantastical tracery upon the sunlit counterpane. Mary slept with one arm folded round her child, and with her face turned to her husband. She had fallen asleep with her hand clasped in his, after a succession of fainting-fits that had left her terribly prostrate.
Edward Arundel watched that tender picture with a smile of ineffable affection.
"I can understand now why Roman Catholics worship the Virgin Mary," he thought. "I can comprehend the inspiration that guided Raphael"s hand when he painted the Madonna de la Chaise. In all the world there is no picture so beautiful. From all the universe he could have chosen no subject more sublime. O my darling wife, given back to me out of the grave, restored to me,--and not alone restored! My little son! my baby-son! whose feeble voice I heard that dark October night. To think that I was so wretched a dupe! to think that my dull ears could hear that sound, and no instinct rise up in my heart to reveal the presence of my child! I was so near them, not once, but several times,--so near, and I never knew--I never guessed!"
He clenched his fists involuntarily at the remembrance of those purposeless visits to the lonely boat-house. His young wife was restored to him. But nothing could wipe away the long interval of agony in which he and she had been the dupe of a villanous trickster and a jealous woman. Nothing could give back the first year of that baby"s life,--that year which should have been one long holiday of love and rejoicing. Upon what a dreary world those innocent eyes had opened, when they should have looked only upon sunshine and flowers, and the tender light of a loving father"s smile!
"O my darling, my darling!" the young husband thought, as he looked at his wife"s wan face, upon which the evidence of all that past agony was only too painfully visible,--"how bitterly we two have suffered! But how much more terrible must have been your suffering than mine, my poor gentle darling, my broken lily!"
In his rapture at finding the wife he had mourned as dead, the young man had for a time almost forgotten the villanous plotter who had kept her hidden from him. But now, as he sat quietly by the bed upon which Mary and her baby lay, he had leisure to think of Paul Marchmont.
What was he to do with that man? What vengeance could he wreak upon the head of that wretch who, for nearly two years, had condemned an innocent girl to cruel suffering and shame? To shame; for Edward knew now that one of the most bitter tortures which Paul Marchmont had inflicted upon his cousin had been his pretended disbelief in her marriage.
"What can I do to him?" the young man asked himself. "_What_ can I do to him? There is no personal chastis.e.m.e.nt worse than that which he has endured already at my hands. The scoundrel! the heartless villain! the false, cold-blooded cur! What can I do to him? I can only repeat that shameful degradation, and I _will_ repeat it. This time he shall howl under the lash like some beaten hound. This time I will drag him through the village-street, and let every idle gossip in Kemberling see how a scoundrel writhes under an honest man"s whip. I will--"
Edward Arundel"s wife woke while he was thinking what chastis.e.m.e.nt he should inflict upon her deadly foe; and the baby opened his round innocent blue eyes in the next moment, and sat up, staring at his new parent.
Mr. Arundel took the child in his arms, and held him very tenderly, though perhaps rather awkwardly. The baby"s round eyes opened wider at sight of those golden absurdities dangling at his father"s watch-chain, and the little pudgy hands began to play with the big man"s lockets and seals.
"He comes to me, you see, Mary!" Edward said, with nave wonder.
And then he turned the baby"s face towards him, and tenderly contemplated the bright surprised blue eyes, the tiny dimples, the soft moulded chin. I don"t know whether fatherly vanity prompted the fancy, but Edward Arundel certainly did believe that he saw some faint reflection of his own features in that pink and white baby-face; a shadowy resemblance, like a tremulous image looking up out of a river.
But while Edward was half-thinking this, half-wondering whether there could be any likeness to him in that infant countenance, Mary settled the question with womanly decision.
"Isn"t he like you, Edward?" she whispered. "It was only for his sake that I bore my life all through that miserable time; and I don"t think I could have lived even for him, if he hadn"t been so like you. I used to look at his face sometimes for hours and hours together, crying over him, and thinking of you. I don"t think I ever cried except when he was in my arms. Then something seemed to soften my heart, and the tears came to my eyes. I was very, very, very ill, for a long time before my baby was born; and I didn"t know how the time went, or where I was. I used to fancy sometimes I was back in Oakley Street, and that papa was alive again, and that we were quite happy together, except for some heavy hammer that was always beating, beating, beating upon both our heads, and the dreadful sound of the river rushing down the street under our windows. I heard Mr. Weston tell his wife that it was a miracle I lived through that time."
Hester Jobson came in presently with a tea-tray, that made itself heard, by a jingling of teaspoons and rattling of cups and saucers, all the way up the narrow staircase.
The friendly carpenter"s wife had produced her best china and her silver teapot,--an heirloom inherited from a wealthy maiden aunt of her husband"s. She had been busy all the afternoon, preparing that elegant little collation of cake and fruit which accompanied the tea-tray; and she spread the lavender-scented table-cloth, and arranged the cups and saucers, the plates and dishes, with mingled pride and delight.
But she had to endure a terrible disappointment by-and-by; for neither of her guests was in a condition to do justice to her hospitality. Mary got up and sat in the roomy easy-chair, propped up with pillows. Her pensive eyes kept a loving watch upon the face of her husband, turned towards her own, and slightly crimsoned by that rosy flush fading out in the western sky. She sat up and sipped a cup of tea; and in that lovely summer twilight, with the scent of the flowers blowing in through the open window, and a stupid moth doing his best to beat out his brains against one of the diamond panes in the lattice, the tortured heart, for the first time since the ruthless close of that brief honeymoon, felt the heavenly delight of repose.
"O Edward!" murmured the young wife, "how strange it seems to be happy!"
He was at her feet, half-kneeling, half-sitting on a ha.s.sock of Hester"s handiwork, with both his wife"s hands clasped in his, and his head leaning upon the arm of her chair. Hester Jobson had carried off the baby, and these two were quite alone, all in all to each other, with a cruel gap of two years to be bridged over by sorrowful memories, by tender words of consolation. They were alone, and they could talk quite freely now, without fear of interruption; for although in purity and beauty an infant is first cousin to the angels, and although I most heartily concur in all that Mr. Bennett and Mr. Buchanan can say or sing about the species, still it must be owned that a baby _is_ rather a hindrance to conversation, and that a man"s eloquence does not flow quite so smoothly when he has to stop every now and then to rescue his infant son from the imminent peril of strangulation, caused by a futile attempt at swallowing one of his own fists.
Mary and Edward were alone; they were together once more, as they had been by the trout-stream in the Winchester meadows. A curtain had fallen upon all the wreck and ruin of the past, and they could hear the soft, mysterious music that was to be the prelude of a new act in life"s drama.
"I shall try to forget all that time," Mary said presently; "I shall try to forget it, Edward. I think the very memory of it would kill me, if it was to come back perpetually in the midst of my joy, as it does now, even now, when I am so happy--so happy that I dare not speak of my happiness."
She stopped, and her face drooped upon her husband"s cl.u.s.tering hair.
"You are crying, Mary!"
"Yes, dear. There is something painful in happiness when it comes after such suffering."
The young man lifted his head, and looked in his wife"s face. How deathly pale it was, even in that shadowy twilight; how worn and haggard and wasted since it had smiled at him in his brief honeymoon.
Yes, joy is painful when it comes after a long continuance of suffering; it is painful because we have become sceptical by reason of the endurance of such anguish. We have lost the power to believe in happiness. It comes, the bright stranger; but we shrink appalled from its beauty, lest, after all, it should be nothing but a phantom.
Heaven knows how anxiously Edward Arundel looked at his wife"s altered face. Her eyes shone upon him with the holy light of love. She smiled at him with a tender, rea.s.suring smile; but it seemed to him that there was something almost supernal in the brightness of that white, wasted face; something that reminded him of the countenance of a martyr who has ceased to suffer the anguish of death in a foretaste of the joys of Heaven.
"Mary," he said, presently, "tell me every cruelty that Paul Marchmont or his tools inflicted upon you; tell me everything, and I will never speak of our miserable separation again. I will only punish the cause of it," he added, in an undertone. "Tell me, dear. It will be painful for you to speak of it; but it will be only once. There are some things I must know. Remember, darling, that you are in my arms now, and that nothing but death can ever again part us."
The young man had his arms round his wife. He felt, rather than heard, a low plaintive sigh as he spoke those last words.
"Nothing but death, Edward; nothing but death," Mary said, in a solemn whisper. "Death would not come to me when I was very miserable. I used to pray that I might die, and the baby too; for I could not have borne to leave him behind. I thought that we might both be buried with you, Edward. I have dreamt sometimes that I was lying by your side in a tomb, and I have stretched out my dead hand to clasp yours. I used to beg and entreat them to let me be buried with you when I died; for I believed that you were dead, Edward. I believed it most firmly. I had not even one lingering hope that you were alive. If I had felt such a hope, no power upon earth would have kept me prisoner."
"The wretches!" muttered Edward between his set teeth; "the dastardly wretches! the foul liars!"
"Don"t, Edward; don"t, darling. There is a pain in my heart when I hear you speak like that. I know how wicked they have been; how cruel--how cruel. I look back at all my suffering as if it were some one else who suffered; for now that you are with me I cannot believe that miserable, lonely, despairing creature was really me, the same creature whose head now rests upon your shoulder, whose breath is mixed with yours. I look back and see all my past misery, and I cannot forgive them, Edward; I am very wicked, for I cannot forgive my cousin Paul and his sister--yet. But I don"t want you to speak of them; I only want you to love me; I only want you to smile at me, and tell me again and again and again that nothing can part us now--but death."
She paused for a few moments, exhausted by having spoken so long. Her head lay upon her husband"s shoulder, and she clung a little closer to him, with a slight shiver.
"What is the matter, darling?"
"I feel as if it couldn"t be real."
"What, dear?"
"The present--all this joy. Edward, is it real? Is it--is it? Or am I only dreaming? Shall I wake presently and feel the cold air blowing in at the window, and see the moonlight on the wainscot at Stony Stringford? Is it all real?"
"It is, my precious one. As real as the mercy of G.o.d, who will give you compensation for all you have suffered; as real as G.o.d"s vengeance, which will fall most heavily upon your persecutors. And now, darling, tell me,--tell me all. I must know the story of these two miserable years during which I have mourned for my lost love."
Mr. Arundel forgot to mention that during those two miserable years he had engaged himself to become the husband of another woman. But perhaps, even when he is best and truest, a man is always just a shade behind a woman in the matter of constancy.
"When you left me in Hampshire, Edward, I was very, very miserable,"
Mary began, in a low voice; "but I knew that it was selfish and wicked of me to think only of myself. I tried to think of your poor father, who was ill and suffering; and I prayed for him, and hoped that he would recover, and that you would come back to me very soon. The people at the inn were very kind to me. I sat at the window from morning till night upon the day after you left me, and upon the day after that; for I was so foolish as to fancy, every time I heard the sound of horses"
hoofs or carriage-wheels upon the high-road, that you were coming back to me, and that all my grief was over. I sat at the window and watched the road till I knew the shape of every tree and housetop, every ragged branch of the hawthorn-bushes in the hedge. At last--it was the third day after you went away--I heard carriage-wheels, that slackened as they came to the inn. A fly stopped at the door, and oh, Edward, I did not wait to see who was in it,--I never imagined the possibility of its bringing anybody but you. I ran down-stairs, with my heart beating so that I could hardly breathe; and I scarcely felt the stairs under my feet. But when I got to the door--O my love, my love!--I cannot bear to think of it; I cannot endure the recollection of it--"
She stopped, gasping for breath, and clinging to her husband; and then, with an effort, went on again:
"Yes; I will tell you, dear; I must tell you. My cousin Paul and my stepmother were standing in the little hall at the foot of the stairs.
I think I fainted in my stepmother"s arms; and when my consciousness came back, I was in our sitting-room,--the pretty rustic room, Edward, in which you and I had been so happy together.
"I must not stop to tell you everything. It would take me so long to speak of all that happened in that miserable time. I knew that something must be wrong, from my cousin Paul"s manner; but neither he nor my stepmother would tell me what it was. I asked them if you were dead; but they said, "No, you were not dead." Still I could see that something dreadful had happened. But by-and-by, by accident, I saw your name in a newspaper that was lying on the table with Paul"s hat and gloves. I saw the description of an accident on the railway, by which I knew you had travelled. My heart sank at once, and I think I guessed all that had happened. I read your name amongst those of the people who had been dangerously hurt. Paul shook his head when I asked him if there was any hope.
"They brought me back here. I scarcely know how I came, how I endured all that misery. I implored them to let me come to you, again and again, on my knees at their feet. But neither of them would listen to me. It was impossible, Paul said. He always seemed very, very kind to me; always spoke softly; always told me that he pitied me, and was sorry for me. But though my stepmother looked sternly at me, and spoke, as she always used to speak, in a harsh, cold voice, I sometimes think she might have given way at last and let me come to you, but for him--but for my cousin Paul. He could look at me with a smile upon his face when I was almost mad with my misery; and he never wavered; he never hesitated.
"So they took me back to the Towers. I let them take me; for I scarcely felt my sorrow any longer. I only felt tired; oh, so dreadfully tired; and I wanted to lie down upon the ground in some quiet place, where no one could come near me. I thought that I was dying. I believe I was very ill when we got back to the Towers. My stepmother and Barbara Simmons watched by my bedside, day after day, night after night.
Sometimes I knew them; sometimes I had all sorts of fancies. And often--ah, how often, darling!--I thought that you were with me. My cousin Paul came every day, and stood by my bedside. I can"t tell you how hateful it was to me to have him there. He used to come into the room as silently as if he had been walking upon snow; but however noiselessly he came, however fast asleep I was when he entered the room, I always knew that he was there, standing by my bedside, smiling at me. I always woke with a shuddering horror thrilling through my veins, as if a rat had run across my face.
"By-and-by, when the delirium was quite gone, I felt ashamed of myself for this. It seemed so wicked to feel this unreasonable antipathy to my dear father"s cousin; but he had brought me bad news of you, Edward, and it was scarcely strange that I should hate him. One day he sat down by my bedside, when I was getting better, and was strong enough to talk. There was no one besides ourselves in the room, except my stepmother, and she was standing at the window, with her head turned away from us, looking out. My cousin Paul sat down by the bedside, and began to talk to me in that gentle, compa.s.sionate way that used to torture me and irritate me in spite of myself.
"He asked me what had happened to me after my leaving the Towers on the day after the ball.
"I told him everything, Edward--about your coming to me in Oakley Street; about our marriage. But, oh, my darling, my husband, he wouldn"t believe me; he wouldn"t believe. Nothing that I could say would make him believe me. Though I swore to him again and again--by my dead father in heaven, as I hoped for the mercy of my G.o.d--that I had spoken the truth, and the truth only, he wouldn"t believe me; he wouldn"t believe. He shook his head, and said he scarcely wondered I should try to deceive him; that it was a very sad story, a very miserable and shameful story, and my attempted falsehood was little more than natural.
"And then he spoke against you, Edward--against you. He talked of my childish ignorance, my confiding love, and your villany. O Edward, he said such shameful things; such shameful, horrible things! You had plotted to become master of my fortune; to get me into your power, because of my money; and you had not married me. You had _not_ married me; he persisted in saying that.