They spent a calm and quiet week at the castle. Beatrix liked the gray old buildings, with their quaint mixture of ecclesiastical and domestic uses. First a castle, then an abbey, then a good old Tudor dwelling-house. That was the history of Culverhouse. Kenrick brought out old county chronicles to prove what a big place it had been in its time. How it had belonged to a warrior of the Culverhouse breed in the days of the first crusade; how it had been afterwards surrendered to the Church by a sinning and repenting Culverhouse; and how, after sequestration and malappropriation under the tyrant Harry, it had come back by marriage to the Culverhouses, in a most miraculous way.
‘Your house seems to have always been buttressed by heiresses,’ said Mr. Dulcimer, poring over a musty parchment that Kenrick had produced for his inspection. ‘You have been a very lucky family.’
‘Luckier than we have deserved, I fear,’ answered Kenrick, with a glance at Beatrix.
They all went to Little Yafford at the end of the week, and Kenrick was established at the Vicarage, under strict charge of Rebecca. That worthy woman exercised an awful tyranny over him, feeding him with jellies and soups with as off-hand authority as if he had been a nest of young thrushes, or a turkey in process of fattening for Christmas. He bore it all meekly, for was not Mrs. Dulcimer the best friend he had, since it was she who had first suggested his winning Beatrix?
They were to be married early in the year. Everybody was talking about it already. It would be a much more interesting marriage than Mr. Piper’s second nuptials, though that event had kept the village gossips alive for full six weeks. The tide of popular feeling had turned, and Beatrix now stood high in the estimation of her neighbours. Even Miss Coyle was silent, contenting herself with an occasional shrug of her shoulders, or a significant elevation of her grizzled eyebrows. The slander had died a natural death, it had expired of inanition.
Beatrix and her lover saw each other daily. Madame Leonard was delighted with the wounded soldier, who had fought so well at Pegu. Everybody praised him. Even Beatrix’s manner grew a shade warmer, and she began to feel a calm and sober pleasure in her lover’s company, such a mild regard as she might have given to an elder brother, with whom she had not been brought up.
As Kenrick grew stronger they rode together across the wild bleak moor, and the fierce winds blew health and power into the soldier’s lungs. Kenrick spent some of his evenings at the dull old Water House, in that pretty white panelled sitting-room that had been so long shut up. Madame Leonard petted and pampered him in her cordial little way. Beatrix was kind, and read or played to him according to the humour of the hour. It was a placid, happy life.
CHAPTER V.
MR. SCRATCHELL GOES TO LONDON.
The short days and fireside evenings of December, and the festivities of Christmas, were to Sir Kenrick Culverhouse brief and fleeting as a dream when one awakeneth. He had never been so happy in his life. To ride across the dull brown moorland with Beatrix, looking down upon the smiling village nestling in the hollow of the dark hills; to sit by her side in the lamplight listening while she read or played; these things made the sum of his delight. Life had nothing for him beyond or above them. And thus the weeks slipped by till February, and the 10th of February was to be Sir Kenrick’s wedding day. He had improved wonderfully in health by this time. His bent back had straightened itself. He was able to endure the fatigue of a day’s fishing, in the wintry wind and rain. He was altogether a changed man. Yorkshire breezes had done much for him, but happiness had done more.