INTO THE UNKNOWN
"Graceful as an ivy bough
Born to cling and lean,
Thus she sat to sing and sew....
When she raised her lustrous eyes
A beast peeped at the door."—Christina Rossetti.
Mr. Askew stood at the window, watching the figure of the prospective bridegroom limping down the road. He turned his mild eyes back to the two ladies within the room with something like wonder in their depths.
"Miss Virginia, I congratulate you," he said almost reverently. "You have indeed found a generous husband."
"You think—you are of opinion—that his generosity is exceptional?" faltered Mrs. Mynors.
"Exceptional? But, my dear madam, it is unheard of! Strong indeed must be the attachment! He told me," added the kind old man, with a smile of appreciation at the bride-elect, "that it was a case of love at first sight. Miss Virginia has made a conquest worth boasting of!"
Virginia stood gazing anxiously at the speaker. She longed to ask if he was quite sure that her future husband was sane; but such a question must appear too eccentric for her to venture upon it. Fortunately, the next words of the lawyer practically answered it.
"And such a grasp of business! Such a fine, keen intelligence! He tells me that he runs his estate at a profit, has all these new intensive culture ideas, and plenty of capital to carry them out. A fine fortune, indeed! One wonders how it chances that such a man has remained so long a bachelor!"
Mrs. Mynors bridled, but said nothing. Virginia absorbed the sense of the opinion just given with considerable relief. The information respecting Gaunt's scientific cultivation of his land interested her. Her own father, living on his hereditary acres, had been in like manner devoted to the soil. At Lissendean, however, the land had starved to supply the constantly increasing demands of the mistress of the house; and the shadow of the approaching, inevitable bankruptcy had paralysed all planning, and embittered the premature illness and death of a chivalrous and simple gentleman.
The thought that this free life, of tramping over fields and through spinneys, of riding across one's own acres, and watching the response of the earth to the hand of man, might once more be hers, went far to reconcile the new Andromeda to her lot. The manner and appearance of her suitor had rather puzzled than hurt her. He had pleaded solitude and boorishness as a reason for his extraordinarily abrupt tactics. If he atoned for his surprising rudeness in the matter (for instance) of her mother's ring by being good to his wife, and allowing her to have Pansy to stay with her, then she might be so nearly happy that she need waste little regret upon her own action in shutting upon her youth the gate of dreams. Softly she stole from the room, leaving her mother still in talk with Mr. Askew, finding out all she could as to the extent of her son-in-law's means; and privately speculating as to how far it would be prudent to exceed the miserable allowance which he proposed to make her.
Virginia went upstairs to Pansy's room to console the child for her disappointment in not having seen her future brother. Shyly the elder sister, when Gaunt was taking leave, had suggested a moment's visit to the little invalid. She had been curtly refused. He had barely time in which to catch his train to London. By way of comfort, Virgie now enlarged upon the big, beautiful garden at Omberleigh, wherein, of course, Pansy would ere long find herself installed. Eagerly the child noticed and remarked upon the beautiful ring which her sister wore. She had not previously seen it, and was naturally kept in ignorance of its somewhat humiliating history.
"I wonder what else he will send you, Virgie," said the child eagerly. "I expect that before long lovely wedding presents will begin to come. What dress shall you buy to be married in, darling?"
"I shan't buy any," was the calm reply. "We are to be married with nobody there but mother and Tony, at ten o'clock in the morning, and I shall have to travel back to Omberleigh afterwards. I shall just wear my frock that you are so fond of, with the chiffon tunic, and take a dust-coat to church with me."
Pansy was inclined to be disappointed, but Virginia showed her how impossible it was for her to spend money which they had not got, and how far more honourable she felt it to be going to her marriage in things which had been paid for.
Busy days they were for Virgie, for she had to engage a good, competent servant for Laburnum Villa, and also to make arrangements with their doctor for Pansy to try the treatment he had always been so eager to recommend. Everything had to be so ordered that it might be fully in train by the wedding day, that her mother should not feel too much inconvenienced by the departure of her devoted maid-of-all-work.
Perhaps the most difficult task of all that fell to the bride was the writing of her news to Miriam Rosenberg. Long did she sit with the tip of her penholder laid thoughtfully on her lip, her eyes gazing gravely forth, but seeing nothing. She felt the extraordinary circumstances needed some handling. She must try to put things in their most favourable light without actually violating truth. And it was only a few days before her day of doom that she finally achieved the following:
My dearest Mims,
I am writing a line to tell you a piece of news which will, I think, astonish you. I am going to be married! More surprising still, I am going to be married next Tuesday! It sounds wild, I know, considering that when I was with you there was no such idea; but it is not quite as sudden as it seems, for Mr. Gaunt is a very old friend, and knew mother before I was born. He is being most incredibly good, and is to provide for mother, Pansy and Tony. Is it not wonderful? Like a story in a book. He lives in Derbyshire, and has a big estate, so I shall be in the country, as in old days—and you know how I love a country life. When we are settled down, you must come and stay with us.
Nobody is invited to the wedding, Mr. Gaunt having no near relative. It is to be early in the morning, with only mother and Tony present, as we have a long way to go afterwards.
I send you much love, and I shall never forget all your goodness to me.—Your constant friend,
Virginia Mynors.
For the two days which followed the despatch of this letter Virginia lived in secret suspense. She did not really believe that there was any likelihood that Perseus, in the handsome person of Gerald Rosenberg, would arrive to unchain her from her rock; yet the tiny chance that he might fought and struggled within her. Each time the postman passed she felt her heart lift in her side. Each time the bell rang she wondered whether there might not be a tall figure waiting on the other side of the door.
As might have been expected, no such thing happened. A letter came from Mims by return of post, full of congratulation and excitement, and stating that a consignment of wedding presents had been despatched. In fact, Mr. Rosenberg, senior, was so transported with gratitude to Virginia for refraining from becoming his daughter-in-law that he bestowed on her a set of ermine furs fit for a princess. Mims sent a mirror in a silver frame; Gerald a pendant.
Except for a silver cream-jug from Mr. Askew, these were the only presents the girl received. Tony and Pansy almost broke their hearts at being unable to give anything, until Mrs. Mynors, roused to most unexpected generosity, allowed them to go shares with her in pressing upon Virgie's acceptance some articles of her mother's silver toilet set—brush, comb, and so on.
Small time had the bride for reflection, until the dawn of the fatal day.
The rain had changed the weather. The heat was no longer great—in fact, the day was chilly and grey, with a gusty little wind which blew up the dust in sudden puffs.
The bride's toilette, of pale blue over white, was extremely pretty. As she stood in the drawing-room awaiting the fly which would drive her, her mother and Tony to the church, Mrs. Mynors thought she had never seen a more perfect picture of girlish fairness. Excitement and nervous trepidation had chased the pallor with which a sleepless night had invested her. Up to the last moment she had been at work upon this and that—rearranging her own room to accommodate the professional nurse who would be in charge of Pansy during her treatment, trying to think out and plan everything so exactly that her mother would not be able to upset it afterwards. It was not until nearly two o'clock in the morning that she finished her own packing, and lay down to the thoughts of unspeakable dread with which she now knew that she regarded her approaching marriage.
Since the day of Gaunt's visit her mother had hardly spoken to her. Her silence was not exactly hostile, but it was very wounding. It was as though she had suddenly discovered that her daughter was not the girl she took her to be; as if the poor child was abandoning her home and duties to make a rich marriage—leaving her mother to pine in the little villa, cut off from all her own set. There was nothing to take hold of, nothing that Virginia could plead against; it was just an atmosphere of coldness, of pained surprise, but it seemed to the depressed girl to be the last straw.
With her usual patience she shouldered the burden and bore it. She guessed, with her quick, sensitive sympathy, that perhaps it hurt mamma less to adopt this attitude. Her daughter was sacrificing herself to her family. To admit this stunning weight of obligation must, of course, be painful. Mamma always shrank from painful things. She had discovered this pose of hers as a kind of refuge from humiliation. Virgie accepted it meekly. Nevertheless, the tears which it wrung from her in the darkness of her last night at home were bitter, and could not be checked for a long time.
The knowledge that Gaunt was in the town, that he had arrived by the last train the previous night, and was putting up at the Ducal Arms near the station, seemed to render sleep impossible. She could not tell why. Not till five o'clock had struck was she compelled by mere exhaustion to close her eyes.
All her life Virginia had been a poor eater, and the least excitement was wont to deprive her of appetite. As a result of this, she had eaten, during the past ten days, barely enough to keep her alive. There was nobody to notice what she ate, or whether she took a sufficient quantity. As she had been under-nourished for the last two years, with the sole exception of her fortnight with the Rosenbergs, during great part of which mental agitation had made it difficult for her to eat, she was in a state of real debility. Wholly inadequate did she feel for what lay before her—the new beginning, the effort to understand the unknown being whom she was to marry, the settling into strange surroundings. Her weakness and discouragement were so profound that, by the time she had arisen, dressed for church, and passed through the sharp and biting agony of her parting from Pansy, she was reduced to a state of passive endurance.
All the way to church she talked feverishly, eagerly to Tony of what they would do in the future. She would pay his pocket money out of her own allowance. He was to join the school O.T.C. at once, so that he might go into camp at the end of term....
In such plans as these lay her only anodyne.
Her mother was reduced to complete silence. Mrs. Mynors—in her own opinion—was the interesting and tragic heroine of this occasion. She, in all her beauty, all her desolation, had been passed by in favour of her inexperienced, immature daughter. The pathos of her position—left in Laburnum Villa while Virginia went to take up a place in county society—flooded her with self-pity. Never had she felt capable of such an intensity of emotion as upon this day, when she was carried helpless to church to give her daughter away. Never had she come so near to being primally and brutally elementary as at the moment when the carriage stopped at the church door, and Gaunt came forward, greeting her with:
"Good morning, my mother-in-law!"
She drew in her breath with a sound like a moan; but in a flash she had seen that she must make no manifestation. The time for that had gone by. As she moved up the church, side by side with her daughter, she realised two things, sharply and simultaneously. One, that she could and ought to have prevented this marriage; the other, that it was now too late.
What was Gaunt's plan she could not exactly know. If it was simply to mortify her, then she could not see why he should be unkind to Virgie. Yet she distrusted and feared him; and she had given no warning to the simple creature at her side, going like a lamb to the slaughter, blind to all life's mysterious issues, blind to the sinister motive which her mother so clearly saw behind Gaunt's eccentric marriage. For Virginia, the old truth held good, that at the actual moment one ceases to realise what is happening. The service struck her with a sense of detachment. She heard it with interest, almost for the first time. The vows were, indeed, comprehensive. One had, however, the comforting knowledge that the vowing was mutual. He promised things as well as she. There was a curious consolation in the reflection that he vowed to love, cherish, and even worship his wife. There seemed nothing detached about his own participation in the rite. He grasped her fingers so strongly as to be almost painful as he vowed "to have and to hold."
And now it was done, and there was no more use in wondering whether one had been right or wrong.
The bare and unadorned service was quickly over. The elderly vicar read a short and platitudinous address to the newly married out of a small pastoral book. Gaunt took his wife's hand, placed it on his arm, and marched her into a stuffy, small vestry, wherein she was to write for the last time her name, Virginia Mynors.
She wrote it; and turning, fixed her troubled gaze upon her mother with an expression so bewildered, so lost, that it pierced even through the crust of egotism. Mrs. Mynors began to gasp hysterically, but, after a momentary fight for composure, managed to say, "Osbert, Osbert, I conjure you! Be good to her! Be good to my Virgie!"
"My dear mother-in-law, I promise you that Virgie shall have the treatment she deserves," was his reply. "Come, Mrs. Gaunt, we must be off, if we are to catch the London train."
Virginia was now quite numb. She took his arm because he offered it, and because there seemed nothing else to do. They were at the church door. She broke away from Gaunt to fling her arms round Tony. The boy was radiant, showing her with glowing eyes a sovereign which his new brother-in-law had just bestowed. The sight did more to encourage the bride than might be supposed. She kissed her mother next, finding it out of the question to give any parting message or direction, because the attempt to articulate would let loose a flood of feeling hardly complimentary to her husband.
Then she was in the carriage, alone with the man who was to walk through life at her side. Still the merciful numbness held her.
Gaunt, in an unconcerned way, said he thought they had better lunch at the Savoy, and she agreed, not knowing what he meant. He made one or two other trifling remarks concerning the disposal of her luggage, which awaited them at the station.
They found the train, and he put her in, walking away himself, and returning with the news that all the trunks were safe, and in the van. He laid upon her lap a pile of magazines and one or two novels.
"I hate talking in a train," he remarked. She could have loved him for such marvellous consideration.
He had a small bag, stuffed with legal-looking documents, which he diligently perused. Virginia, thus released momentarily from strain, lay back against the cushions. The breeze fluttered into the carriage, sweet with the breath of summer. She tried to rest, and not to think. It was impossible not to think, however. Her thoughts were glued, as it were, to the consideration of this man to whom she was so strangely tied.
"He loved me at first sight. He guessed who I was. He got into communication with mother in order to be introduced. He suggested marriage there and then. When will he begin to woo me? What will he tell me? What shall I answer? Shall I be able to help flinching, from letting him see how abjectly afraid I am?"
He did not put her to the test. Was it possible that he divined her exhaustion, and respected it?
She was still wondering when the non-stop express ran into the terminus.
He put her into a taxi while he went and looked after their baggage. Then he rejoined her, and directed the driver to the Savoy Hotel.
They secured a table near the window, whence could be seen the waters of the Thames, the endless movement of the traffic on the Embankment and the brilliant flowers of the public gardens.
The beauty of it revived Virgie a little. She ate some lunch, drank a glass of champagne, and began to make small, shy comments upon the scene, to which her husband listened tolerantly, but not as though interested. She reflected that she must seem to him altogether young and childish.
Her slender grace and charm drew many eyes. As Gaunt glanced about him, he was keenly conscious of this. Presently he leant back with the smile that his mother-in-law hated.
"Glad you are pleased," said he. "Make the most of it. You are going to be buried in the heart of the country from to-day onward."
She laughed lightly. "That will be no hardship," said she. "What I should not like would be to be buried in the heart of London. The walls in London seem as if they must fall down and crush you—so near together. Have you ever felt that?"
"I don't like London."
"Then that is one taste we share," said she thoughtfully, leaning back to survey him. "How strange that I should know so little of your tastes! We shall have to begin at the very beginning, shall we not?"
"The beginning of what?" asked Gaunt.
"Of acquaintanceship," she answered.
"Pardon me. I know you through and through. You have not a taste, a habit, nor an idea that I am not intimately acquainted with. Gives me an unfair advantage, does it not?"
"If it's true, it does indeed; but I don't think it is true," was her frank answer.
He gave something between a grunt and a laugh. "You are not competent to form an opinion," he replied, looking at his watch. "It is now five minutes to two," he went on, "and our train leaves St. Pancras at four. What will you do? I am going to have a smoke. Perhaps you would like to lie down and rest a while—eh?"
It was so exactly what she craved that she thought his sympathy wonderful. That he was dismissing her to solitude on her wedding day, while he smoked, did not occur to her. She thanked him quite eagerly, a maid was summoned, and she was shown into a room with a deliciously downy bed. The maid removed her hat, took off her shoes, drew the blinds, and left, promising to call her in plenty of time.
She could not sleep, but the silence and the recumbent posture helped her. She went down to the entrance hall after her rest, feeling much more able to endure the remainder of her journey than she had dared to hope.