Beatrix saw nothing. The docks and the people, the blue bright water outside, the muddy green water inside, the big gaily painted steamer, swam before her eyes. He was coming. He was coming to claim the fulfilment of her promise. That weak moment in which she had yielded to an impulse of grateful feeling now meant life-long misery.
A few minutes more and he was standing by her side, her hand clasped in his, Mr. Dulcimer giving him hearty welcome, Mrs. Dulcimer in tears, Beatrix dumb as a statue.
‘Oh, my poor dear Kenrick,’ cried the Vicar’s wife when she could find a voice. ‘How changed you are—how fearfully changed!’
‘I’ve been very ill,’ he answered, quietly. ‘I didn’t want to frighten you all, so I made rather light of it in my letter. But I’ve had a narrow escape. However, here I am, and I don’t mean to knock under now.’
The change was startling. The elegant and aristocratic-looking young man, whom they had parted from less than a year ago, was transformed into a feeble invalid, whose shoulders were bent with weakness, and across whose cadaverous cheek there appeared the deep cicatrice of a sabre wound. There was nothing absolutely repulsive in Kenrick’s aspect, but there was enough to make love itself falter.
They got him into a fly and drove off to the Dolphin, while Mr. Dulcimer stayed behind to look after the luggage.
‘Beatrix,’ said Kenrick, when they were seated opposite each other in the fly, ‘I have not heard your voice yet, and it is your voice that I have been hearing in my dreams every night on board the steamer.’
‘I am very sorry to see you looking so ill,’ she answered, gently.
‘My boot maker or my tailor would say as much as that. Tell me you are glad to see me—me—even the poor wreck I am.’
There are pardonable hypocrisies in this life. Beatrix’s eyes brimmed over with tears. She was deeply sorry for him, sorry that she could find no love for him in her heart, only infinite pity.