The Village by the River

by H. Louisa Bedford

He had heard nothing from Rose during the week, and her very silence filled him with hope. If she meant to refuse him, he was almost sure that she would have put him out of his misery before this. He was not generally a vain fellow, but to-day his toilet was a matter of moment; his tie was re-adjusted half a dozen times, and he asked his landlady to give him a chrysanthemum for his buttonhole.

"Goin' courtin'?" she said, with a laugh as she pinned it in for him. And Tom coloured rosy red, but said nothing.

He started early for church, hoping that he might catch a glimpse of Rose as she passed in with the other servants from the Court; but either she had got there before him, or, for some unknown cause, she had been detained at home. Dixon presently appeared, smart and neat, giving Tom an affable nod as he passed up the path to the church; but Tom's eyes were fixed straight in front of him, and he ignored the greeting.

"I'll not pretend to be friends when I ain't," he said to himself.

Presently the hurrying bell warned the outside group of stragglers to make their way into church; and Tom took his usual seat at the end of the nave. It is to be feared that his thoughts that morning were not occupied with devotion. Prayer and psalm passed unheeded over his head; but when, at the end of the second lesson, there was a pause, and the rector turned over the leaves of a book in front of him, Tom lifted his head and waited for the banns that would follow. Before long he might be listening to the publishing of his own.

"I publish the banns of marriage between William Dixon, bachelor, and Rose Lancaster, spinster, both of this parish.…"

Was it some ghastly nightmare, Tom wondered, as he clutched at the seat in front of him? But the suppressed grin on the faces near him, the foolish smile with which the publishing of banns is so often received in a village church, convinced him that he had heard aright. The blood was rioting to his brain, and the beating in his throat made him put up his hand with the vain endeavour to loosen his collar lest he should choke there and then with the passion that could find no outlet. For one instant he was possessed by a wild wish to stand up and forbid the banns; but what end would be gained by making himself a greater laughing-stock to the village than he was at present, for already he felt the derisive finger of scorn pointed at him as the man whom Rose had jilted. Even now he saw one or two of the lads nudge each other and look at him with curious eyes. To be watched at such a moment was torture, and, like an animal in pain, Tom longed for solitude. He groped blindly under the seat for his hat, made his way to the door and slipped out. He stumbled on like a man in delirium, looking neither to the right nor left, but following instinctively the path across the fields which led to the river. The turbulence of its grey waters, as it rushed on to the sea, seemed most in keeping with the wild, wicked thoughts that surged unchecked through his brain, and were bearing him he knew not whither. He threw himself upon the long, rank grass on the bank, still wet with the heavy mist of night, and, pillowing his chin in his hands, watched with dilating eyes the swirling river as it swept by. A giddiness dimmed his vision, a singing filled his ears.

"If I slipped over and was carried along with it, there'd be an end of it all," thought Tom. And the chill wind came sighing across the water, and shook the heavy rushes at the edge, which seemed whisperingly to echo his thought, "an end of it all."

Then Tom half-angrily roused himself, and pressed his hands to the eyes that burned like fire, and tried to collect his bewildered senses. What!—slip out of life like a drowned rat and never see Rose again, nor tell her what he knew of the man she had chosen in preference to him. She would be glad to know he was dead, he told himself with fierce bitterness. She had played with him like a cat with a mouse for more than a year but in the long run the mouse died squeaking. Surely she could not be so false-hearted as to break faith with him to-night; she would meet him and say good-bye? She should meet him, whether she liked it or not; and if Dixon were with her so much the better,—and Tom's fists clenched involuntarily.

For hours and hours he wandered, following the windings of the river, until, as the November sun paled and sank in a bank of grey cloud, he discovered that he was some six or eight miles from Rudham, and that his knees were knocking together with mingled emotion and fatigue. A wayside inn seemed a haven of refuge to him in his exhausted condition. Through the red blind of the bar a light shone cheerily, and Tom entered the door without knocking, and, seating himself on the settle by the fire, ordered sixpennyworth of brandy.