Volume Three—Chapter Fourteen.
“And this is being Married.”
“You are sure you don’t mind me talking about it, sir?”
“Mind! Oh, no, Mrs Sarson, say what you like.”
“Well, you see, sir, even if one is a widow and growing old, one can’t help feeling interested in weddings. I suppose it’s being a woman. Everybody’s dreadfully disappointed.”
“Indeed,” said Chris coldly.
“And, yes, indeed, sir. No big party; no wedding breakfast and cake; no going away in chaises and fours. If poor Mr Gartram had been alive, it wouldn’t have been like this. Why, do you know, sir, the quarry folk were getting ready powder and going to fire guns, and make a big bonfire on the cliffs; but Mr Trevithick, the lawyer, went to them with a message from Miss Claude, sir, asking for them to do nothing; and they’re just going to the church and back to the big house, and not even going away.”
“Indeed!”
“Oh, yes, sir, and I did hear that Miss Claude actually wanted to be married in black, but Miss Mary Dillon persuaded her not. I heard it on the best of authority, sir.”
Chris made no reply, and, finding no encouragement, Mrs Sarson cleared her lodger’s breakfast things away, and left the room.
The moment he was alone, Chris started from his chair to stand with his back to the light; his teeth set hard and fists clenched as a spasm of mental agony for the moment mastered him.
“No,” he said, after a few moments, with a bitter laugh, “this won’t do. What is it to me? I can bear it now like a man. She shall see how indifferent I am.”
For it was the morning of the ill-starred wedding—a morning in which Nature seemed to be in the mood to make everything depressing, for the wind blew hard, bringing from the Atlantic a drenching shower, through which, with Gellow for his best man, Glyddyr would have to drive to the little church. Meanwhile, he was having so severe a shivering fit at the hotel where he had been staying, that his companion had become alarmed, and suggested calling in the doctor.
“Bah! nonsense! Ring for some brandy.”
“And I’ll take a flask to the church,” said Gellow to himself, “or the brute will breakdown. We’re going to have a jolly wedding seemingly. Only wants that confounded Frenchwoman to get scent of it, and come down, and then we should be perfect.”
“That’s better,” said Gellow, after the brandy had been brought. “But what a day! What a cheerful lookout! I say, Glyddyr, am I dreaming? Is it a wedding this morning or a funeral?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, it looks more like the latter. I say: Young Lisle won’t come and have a pop at you in the church?”
Glyddyr turned ghastly.
“You—you don’t think—”
“Bah! My chaff. You are out of sorts; on your wedding-day, too. Hold hard with that brandy, or it will pop you off, and not Lisle. Steady, man, steady.”
“Gellow, it’s all over,” gasped the miserable man. “I shall never be able to go through with it.”
“Oh, if I can only get this morning over,” said Gellow to himself; and then aloud—
“Nonsense, my dear boy, you’re a bit nervous, that’s all. I suppose a man is when he’s going to be married. You’re all right. Come, have a devilled kidney or a snack of something. You don’t eat enough.”
“Eat?” said Glyddyr, with a shudder. “No; I seem to have no appetite now.”
“Come on, and let’s get it over. Here’s the carriage waiting. Steady, man, steady. No; not a drop more.”
“The carriage is at the door, sir,” said the waiter; and striving hard to be firm, and to master a tremulous sensation about his knees, Glyddyr walked out into the hall, where a buzzing sound that was heard suddenly ceased till the pair were in the carriage, from whose roof the rain was streaming. Then, after banging too the door, the waiter dashed back under shelter, the dripping horses started off, and the carriage disappeared in the misty rain.
“Looks as if he was going to execution,” said the man, with a laugh, as he dabbed the top of his head with his napkin. “Well, it do rain to-day.”
At the Fort everything had gone on that morning in a calm, subdued way that seemed to betoken no change. Claude came down to breakfast as usual, and sat looking dreamily before her, while Mary, red-eyed and sorrowful, had not the heart to speak.
Trevithick had slept there the previous night, and was the only guest, for Doctor Asher had declined to be present, on the score of professional calls.
“I’m afraid there is very little chance of its holding up,” said Trevithick, when they rose from the scarcely-touched breakfast.
“No, Mr Trevithick,” said Claude quietly. “I think we shall have a very wet day. Mary, dear, we must take our waterproofs. It is fifty yards from the lych-gate to the church door. Isn’t it time we went up to dress?”
She moved towards the door, but came back, and held out her hand to the lawyer.
“Forgive me for being so absent and strange with you,” she said, with a faint smile. “You have been very good and kind to me, but I dare say you think all this odd and unnatural.”
“Oh, no; not at all,” said Trevithick, colouring like a girl.
“It was the only thing in which I asked to have my way—to let the wedding be perfectly quiet. Don’t be long, Mary.”
Trevithick looked at his little betrothed as the door closed, and she looked up at him.
“I say, Mary, dear,” he said, “is she quite—you know what I mean. I feel almost as if I ought to interfere.”
“Oh, John, John,” cried the little thing, bursting into a passionate fit of weeping; “if we could only stop it even now!”
She sobbed on his breast for a few seconds, and then hastily wiped her eyes.
“There, I’m better now,” she said. “I’ve talked to her till I’m tired, but it’s of no use. ‘It’s my duty’ is all she will say. Oh! why did people ever invent the horrid word. Don’t say anything, John, dear. Let’s get it over, and hope for the best; but if there’s any chance of our wedding being like this, let’s shake hands like Christians, forgive one another, and say good-bye.”
She ran out of the room, and Trevithick sat watching the rain trickle down the window-panes, and tried to follow the course of a big ship struggling up Channel, its storm topsails dimly seen through the mist of rain.
“I wouldn’t be on that ship for all I’ve saved,” he said, shaking his head. “Looks as if there was going to be a wreck.
“So there is,” he said, after a pause, “a social wreck, and I’m going to assist. No, I’m not. I’m looking after the salvage. Poor girl! Gartram must have been mad.”
His meditations were broken in upon by the sound of wheels. Half-an-hour later the door was thrown open.
“Now, Mr Trevithick, please,” said Mary; and he hurried into the hall to find Claude ready and looking very calm and composed.
“Good-bye,” she was saying to first one and then another of the maids, who, catching the contagion, burst into tears.
“As if it wasn’t wet enough already,” said Reuben Brime, who stood with the footman by the carriage-door.
“Good-bye, Woodham, dear,” said Claude, holding out her hand, but snatching it back directly as she yielded to a sudden impulse, and threw her arms around the stern-looking woman’s neck. “Thank you for all that you have done.”
“Good-bye! Why did she say good-bye?” thought Woodham, as Trevithick handed the bride into the carriage, the drops from the edge of the portico falling like great tears upon her hair. “Yes: good-bye to youth and happiness and your sweet young life.”
The carriage-door was banged, and banged again, for the wet had made it hard to shut. Then, as the footman mounted to his place on the box, the gardener hurried round in front of the horses, and ran for the short cut over the cliffs to the church.
“Shouldn’t you go, Mrs Woodham?” said one of the maids.
Sarah Woodham shook her head.
“They will soon be back,” she said. “I’m going to stay to meet the new master.”
“Why does not something happen to stop this hateful match?” she muttered to herself. “My poor girl. My poor, dear girl.”
The carriage sped on through the driving rain, and the little party descended at the church gate, where a few fishermen were gathered in their yellow and black oilskins to follow them, dripping, into the little church, while it seemed to Claude that it was only the other day that her father was borne to his resting-place. And there they were, standing face to face before God’s altar, she pale, sad and composed, having to give her whole love and life to the pale trembling man who faced her, and who, though she knew it not, exhaled a strong odour of the spirits he had taken to enable him to go through the task.
But Claude saw nothing, realised nothing but the words of the clergyman, repeating every response in a low, earnest tone right on to the end, when, as the last words of the service was uttered, there was the sound of some one drawing a long, deep breath.
It was only Gellow’s way of congratulating himself on the fact that his money and much more were safe at last.
“Now!” he muttered, as he hugged himself. “Now you may have DT, or anything you like.”
The book was signed, and the few fishermen and women who had braved the storm began to go clattering out of the church as Glyddyr, making an effort to look happy and content, held his arm to his newly-made bride to lead her down the little nave.
“Father, dear, it was your wish,” said Claude softly, and, with a sigh, she raised her eyes towards the faint light which came through the west window.
Then she stopped short, gazing wildly at where Chris Lisle stood like a black silhouette against the dim lattice panes, as he had stood with folded arms right through the service.
He made no sign; he uttered no sound, his features hardly visible from the position against the light; but the sight of that figure was enough to bring like a flood the recollections of the past, and of what might have been, but for her irrevocable step; and, snatching her hand from her husband’s arm, Claude clasped her forehead as she uttered a low, faint cry, and fell heavily upon the floor.
“Keep back, all of you!” cried Glyddyr excitedly. “Do you hear, keep back. The carriage, there. Do you hear me? Keep back!”
He lifted Claude from where she lay, and bore her out, holding her tightly in his arms, as if he feared that she might be snatched away by him who had caused this shock.
“Curse him!” he muttered, as the carriage was driven back to the Fort at a canter; “but he’s too late. The dark horse has won, Chris Lisle, and the stakes are mine.”
Claude was still insensible when the carriage stopped, and Glyddyr resigned her to Sarah Woodham’s arms.
“A bit faint, that’s all,” he said, with a half laugh. “She’ll be better soon.”
“You—you are married, sir?” faltered the woman, looking at him wildly.
“You bet!” he snarled, as he turned away, and strode into the library, but came back looking ghastly and slamming the door. “Here, some one bring the spirits into the dining-room; not in there. Quick! don’t you see your mistress is taken ill?”
“Open the door,” whispered Woodham; “we’ll take her in there.”
“No; in the dining-room—anywhere,” cried Glyddyr. “Don’t take her there.
“And this is being married!” he muttered, as soon as he was alone. “The cad! The coward! But I’ve bested him, and I’m a free man once again, and master here.”
They had carried Claude into the dining-room; and, hardly caring where he went, Glyddyr had entered the drawing-room, thrown to the door, and was walking hurriedly up and down, till, as he uttered the last words, his eyes fell upon the large photograph of Gartram.
He stopped short, with his eyes showing a ring of white about the iris, and the cold sweat glistening upon his forehead till the spasm of dread passed away. Then dashing forward, he was about to tear the likeness from its easel and frame, but the door was suddenly opened, and he recovered himself, and turned to face Trevithick and his best man, for he had not heard the wheels as the second carriage stopped.