‘My victim!’ said Oliver.
But what was the use of any explanation? He began to recognise that in ordinary parlance she was his victim, and that it might be considered an act of justice; and also that to explain to a severe purist, a man burning with the highest canons and sentiments of morality, how such a thing could be without any victim in the matter, or any personal wrong, however hideous the sin, would be an offence the more. He stood by almost stupidly while the young priest, with his keen, clear-cut, Churchman-like face, put on his surplice and prepared himself for the ceremony; then, with a sinking of heart beyond description, followed him up the narrow wooden stairs, which creaked at every step. He said to himself that this was the fiend endowed with every virtue who had put it in the woman’s head to drag him to his undoing; but so miserable was he that he felt no anger, no resentment against the meddling priest, as men are so apt to do. He recognised that it was no doubt his nature, that he thought it his duty; that to this man he himself was a vile seducer, and that the poor victim upstairs was the confiding, loving girl, whose fame had been ruined and her heart broken! These thoughts were so strangely out of keeping with the facts, and he regarded them with such a dazed impartiality, that when he entered the room in which this dreadful ceremony was to take place, there was a smile upon his lips. But the smile was soon driven away by the sight which now met his eyes. In the soft suffusion of the daylight the dying woman was scarcely so ghastly as by the light of the candle on the night before, but the spectacle she presented was more dreadful than anything that Oliver had been able to conceive. The decorations of a bride dressed for her wedding, or, rather, a hideous travesty of those decorations, surrounded the worn and sunken face. Some dreadful artificial flowers—orange blossom, of all things in the world! no idea of the meaning of it being in their minds, but only a grotesque acquaintance with its general use at weddings—were placed in a bristling wreath about her head. The pink ribbon was withdrawn, and bows of ghostly white placed at her throat and hands; and over all there was thrown a veil costly worked with huge flowers, through which the gleaming eyes, the mouth distended with its ghastly smile, showed like a living death.
A cry of horror burst from Oliver in spite of himself; and even the rigid priest was moved.
‘Why did you do her up like that?’ he said, in a sharp tone to Matilda, who stood admiring her handiwork.
The poor creature herself had a look of delighted vanity in her terrible gleaming eyes. The mother had a mirror in her hands, in which she had been displaying her own appearance to the bride. The bride! Oliver turned away and hid his face in his hands.
‘I cannot—I cannot carry out this farce,’ he said.
The curate placed his hand upon Wentworth’s arm. ‘You must,’ he said, with his severe, unpitying voice. ‘Whose fault is it that this is a farce? Stand forward, sir, and give this poor wreck, this creature you have ruined, what compensation you can at the last.’
Oliver raised his eyes to his uncompromising judge with a wonder which paralysed all effort. ‘You are mistaken,’ he said: but to pause now was impossible; he went forward doggedly and placed himself by the bed, and listened with a dull horror, as under a spell, to those words—those words which he had thought of under so different a meaning—words of solemn joy and devotion, words that could only be endured for the sake of the pledge they sanctified. He listened and he took his part like a man in a dream. He had provided no ring, and the ceremony was interrupted till an old, shabby little trinket, set with some discoloured turquoises, was hunted up from a drawer. But it was completed at last, and she was his wife—his wife! She put back the veil with a nervous movement, and inclined her head towards his. Was that necessary, too? Was there to be no end to these exactions? ‘Oliver!’ she cried.
He turned from her, sick to the heart. ‘Take those fooleries away—don’t you see how horrible it is?’ he said to Matilda, and hurried downstairs, flying from the look and the touch of the woman who—oh, Heaven!—was now his wife.
The little priest followed him. He was as severe as ever. ‘You have done something in the way of atonement,’ he said, ‘but if this is how you are to follow it up, I warn you that such an atonement will not be accepted. It must be from the heart.’