THE WEDDING NIGHT
It was over. Maud sat before the open fireplace in Jake's oak-panelled parlour, gazing into the red heart of the fire with a stunned sense of finality, a feeling that she had been overtaken and made prisoner by Fate. She was terribly tired. Every limb seemed weighted as if with iron fetters. She longed with a sick longing for sleep and oblivion. She ached for solitude and repose.
Overhead she could hear Jake moving. He was helping Bunny to prepare for the night, by Bunny's own decree. Very soon he would come down again, and she would have to rouse herself and make conversation. She wondered wearily how she would do it.
The best room in the house had been given to Bunny. Out of it led a smaller room in which she could sleep and be within call when he needed her. Jake had made every provision he could think of for their comfort. She felt that she ought to be very grateful to him; but somehow she was too tired for gratitude. And she could not concentrate her thoughts; they wandered so.
Now it was the glint of the firelight on her wedding-ring that drew them. It shone with a burning, intolerable sparkle that somehow reminded her of Jake--and the look in his eyes when he had said-- But she pulled her mind up short at this point, with a sharp, involuntary shiver. She would not dwell on that thought. She would bury it deep; deep, far below all others. For she knew she would never cast it out.
She clenched her hand and covered the ring from sight.
The thought of Uncle Edward presented itself, and she seized upon it with relief. He had been with them during the greater part of the day, and had left but an hour before to catch the night train to town. He had been very kind to her, and had taken a shrewd interest in Bunny. Just at parting he had drawn her aside for a moment, looking at her with his sharp eyes under their shaggy brows with just the look of a terrier on the hunt.
"And if at any time you should be in need of a change of air, my dear," he had said, "don't forget that you've got an old uncle at Liverpool who wouldn't be sorry to see you--and the boy too--however busy he happened to be."
He had meant that as an offer of help, should she ever stand in need of it. She had recognized that, though neither he nor she had emphasized the fact. He foresaw a possibility of difficulties ahead with which she might be unable to cope single-handed. He wanted her to know that she would never call upon him a second time in vain. She had thanked him with simplicity, and now she registered the offer in her mind. Almost unconsciously, she had begun already to seek for a way of escape, should her captivity become at any time unendurable.
For a captive she undoubtedly was. She had given herself, voluntarily but completely, into the keeping of a man whom she felt she hardly knew,--a man who had shown her every consideration in his power, but upon whom even yet she was half-afraid to lean. Full of kindness as she had found him to be she knew instinctively that he possessed other qualities, was capable of other impulses. Something of the caged beast, something of the pirate on shore, there was about him. He was quiet, he was considerate, he was kind. But on his own ground, in his own element, would he be always thus? Would he be always the generous captor; the steadfast friend? Her heart misgave her a little. Words that Giles Sheppard had uttered only that morning arose suddenly in her memory, gibing words that sent the hot blood again to her cheeks.