An open verdict

by M. E. Braddon

The wedding was to have been strictly private—altogether different from the imposing ceremonial that had made Bella Scratchell the second Mrs. Piper. There were no guests to be put off at the last moment; there was no confusion anywhere; but there was a great deal of talk in Little Yafford when it became generally known, through Mrs. Pomfret, the pew-opener, that Sir Kenrick’s marriage was not to be.

There were various theories as to Beatrix Harefield’s motive for her extraordinary conduct. ‘Guilty conscience,’ said Miss Coyle and her party. ‘A prior attachment,’ said the more charitably inclined. ‘The girl must be wrong in her head,’ said the matter-of-fact matrons and middle-aged husbands, who could not understand the fits and starts of passion.

Perhaps in all the neighbourhood there was only one person, except the rival cousins themselves, who guessed the real cause of Miss Harefield’s flight. That person was Mrs. Piper. She knew how deeply Beatrix had loved Cyril, and it hardly surprised her that, at the last moment, she should refuse to consummate a loveless bond.

‘It might have been happier for me if I had run away,’ thought Bella, looking round her apple-green dressing-room, with all the gewgaws Mr. Piper’s generosity had heaped upon her, ‘yet any other life than this would be almost unbearable now.’

Time went on. Kenrick returned to India, leaving his honour in Mr. Dulcimer’s hands. Miss Harefield’s money was to be paid back, and without loss of time. Kenrick’s lawyers and Mr. Dulcimer were to arrange the matter between them somehow; Kenrick did not care how; but the thing must be done. On that point Sir Kenrick was firmly resolved.

The lawyers were as slow as most of their craft, and saw no reason why such a business as this should be precipitated. Mr. Dulcimer was the last man to hasten the movements of the lawyers. Happy in his world of shadows—now digging out the forgotten temples of Nineveh and Babylon—anon wandering with the lost tribes of Israel—he was apt to let the actual business of life slip out of his mind altogether. Mrs. Dulcimer had to remind him of everything, to tell him what bills he ought to pay, what people he ought to visit—all the details of his quiet life. Now Mrs. Dulcimer was not disposed to remind her husband of Kenrick’s desire to refund Miss Harefield’s fifty thousand pounds. She hoped that Kenrick might, by fair means or foul, be made to keep the money. He had been cruelly wronged. The least atonement that could be made to him was the liberation of his estate from its old burdens. Thus argued Mrs. Dulcimer, while Kenrick was busy fighting the Burmese.

Before the bleak winds of March had ceased to blow their keenest across the wide waste of withered heather and sandy barrenness, before the last of the daffodils had faded in Mrs. Pomfret’s neat garden, Cyril Culverhouse had come back to his old place at Little Yafford. He had done good work at Bridford, but the work had been too much for him. He could not be content to do half the work wanted, and leave the rest undone. Another man in his position would have been easy in his conscience after doing a quarter of the good that Cyril had done in that crowded lazar-house; but the knowledge of unconquerable evils, of cures only half wrought, weighed upon Cyril’s spirits like an ever-present nightmare. He could not sleep for the thought of the evils round about him—the loathsome miseries—the rampant vices—the selfishness of the rich—the godlessness of the poor. His health broke down under the burden. This time it was no fierce attack of fever—no brain sickness and delirium,—but his strength went down like the sand in a glass when the hour is nearly done—appetite failed—the power of sleep left him, and Dr. Bolling told him, in plainest terms, that if he wished to go on living he must leave Bridford.

Brought face to face with this solemn question of life or death, Cyril discovered that existence was not altogether worthless. He, who a little time ago had courted death, had now no desire to die. There were mysteries that he wanted to solve in this life, before he went to investigate the awful mystery beyond it. He wanted to stand face to face with Beatrix Harefield once more. He wanted to know whether it was indeed for love of him she had at the last moment jilted his cousin. He wanted to find some stronger proof of her innocence than the sudden conviction that had flashed into his mind when he looked into her steadfast eyes, and saw scorn of his weak doubts, and fondest love for himself, at war in her soul. While he lived there was always a chance, however remote, of his discovering the truth. While he lived there was always the possibility that Beatrix and he might meet. She was not his cousin’s wife. Fate had spared him that last bitterness. He could think of her without sin.

So he came back to Little Yafford, to his old rooms, his old friends, his old ways, and the old quietly busy life which seemed so easy after his vain endeavour to cleanse that Augean stable, an overcrowded manufacturing town.

‘I never feel as if I had too much work to do, so long as it is work that can be done,’ he said to the gentle Vicar. ‘To grapple with impossibilities and feel one’s self being daily worsted! That is the trial.’