What the Duke said further it is scarcely necessary to record. He had to stand by at last, half stupefied, and watch them walk down the aisle arm in arm, bride and bridegroom, to the evidence of everybody’s senses. He followed himself as in a dream, and got in, cowed, but vowing vengeance, into the cab, which was all his Grace could find to reach St Alban’s in from the railway,—and in that followed the brougham which conveyed his daughter and her—not husband, and yet not lover—to Grosvenor Square. But when he had once got her there!
The Rector and his wife stood open-mouthed to see the pageant thus melt away. The Duke, to whom they had done so great a favour, took no more notice of them than of the two poor women, who vaguely felt themselves in fault somehow, and still kept crying, looking after the bride. Not a word to the poor clergyman, who had almost done wrong for his sake—not a look even, not the faintest acknowledgment, any more than if he had nothing to do with it! Simms and his wife stood gaping, too, at the church door, looking after the party which had been far too much preoccupied to think of half-crowns. “This is how people are treated after they have done their best. I always told you not to meddle,” Mrs Marston said, which was very ungenerous, as well as untrue. But the Rector said nothing. He was mortified to the bottom of his heart. But when the excitement had a little died away, he said to himself with vindictive pleasure that he hoped they were having a pleasant day, those fine people in Grosvenor Square.
CHAPTER XIII.
THE WEDDING-DAY.
It was not a pleasant day in Grosvenor Square. When the Duke arrived in his cab the door was opened to him by the humble person who had care of the house while the family were out of town,—an old servant, to whom this charge was a sort of pensioning off. She was very much fluttered, and informed him in an undertone that Lady Jane had arrived a few minutes before “with a gentleman.” “Her ladyship is in the library, your Grace, and the gentleman with her,” the old woman said, curtseying and trembling—for though Lady Jane’s garb was very simple for a bride, still it was a white dress, and in the middle of winter it is well known that ladies do not go about their ordinary business in such garments. The Duke considered a moment and then decided that he would not see his daughter till her companion was gone. He was tremulous with rage and discomfiture, yet with the sense that vengeance was in his hands. This feeling made him conclude that it was more wise not to see Winton, not to run the risk of losing his temper or betraying his intentions, but to remain on the watch till he withdrew, and in the meantime to arrange his own plans. He told the old housekeeper to let him know when the gentleman was gone, and in the meantime hurried up-stairs to his daughter’s room, and examined it carefully. Lady Jane had two rooms appropriated to her use, with a third communicating with them in which her maid slept. This was a large area to put under lock and key, which was her father’s determination: but in the ferment of his excited mind and temper he felt no derogation in the half-stealthy examination he made of the shut-up rooms, their windows and means of communication, the locks on the door, and all the arrangements that would be necessary to shut them off entirely from the rest of the house. With his own hands he removed the keys, locking all the doors but one, and leaving the key on the outside of that to shut off all entrance to the prison.
While he was thus occupied the pair so strangely severed stood together in the library waiting for his appearance, and getting a certain bitter sweetness out of the last hour they were to spend together. They were not aware that it was, in any serious sense of the words, their last hour. “Till to-morrow” was the limit they gave themselves. To-morrow no further interruption would be possible, the incomplete service would be resumed, and all would be well. Even the Duke, unreasonable as he might be, would not think it practicable, when in his sober senses, to endeavour to sunder those who had been almost put together in the presence of God. They believed, notwithstanding the tantalising misery of this interruption, that it could not be but for a few hours; and though Winton’s impatience and indignation were at first almost frenzy, Lady Jane recovered her courage before they reached the house, and did her best to soothe him. She drew good even out of the evil. To-morrow all would be completed in her father’s presence. When once convinced that matters had gone too far to be arrested, how could he refuse to lend his sanction to what must be, whether with his sanction or not? She pleased herself with this solution of all their difficulties. “My mother will come, I am sure,” she said, “as soon as the train can bring her. I shall have her with me, which will be far, far better than Lady Germaine, and there will be no further need of concealment, which is odious, is it not, Reginald? There is a soul of goodness in things evil,” she said. As for Winton, he was past speaking: the disappointment, and those passions that rage in the male bosom, were too much for him—fury and indignation, and pride in arms, and the sense of defeat, which was intolerable. But he permitted himself to be subdued, to yield to her who had put so much force upon herself, and conquered so many natural repugnances and womanly traditions for him. Lady Jane would not even let it appear that she felt the shame of being thus dragged back to her father’s house. “To-morrow,” she said, “to-morrow,” with a thousand tender smiles. When it became apparent that the Duke did not mean to make an appearance, she turned that to their advantage with soothing sophistry. “He has nothing to say now,” she cried, “don’t you see, Reginald? You cannot expect him to come and offer us his consent; if he withdraws his opposition, that is all we can desire. Had he meant to persevere, he would have come to us at once, and ordered you away, and made another struggle. That is what I have been fearing. And now in return for his forbearance you must go. Oh, do you think I wish you to go? but it is best, it will be most honourable. What could be done in the circumstances but that you should bring me home? Yes, till your house is mine this is still home—till to-morrow,” she cried, smiling upon him. Winton paced up and down the gloomy closed-up room in an agony of uncertainty, bewilderment, and dismay.
“My home is yours!” he cried; “and what sort of place is this to bring you to, my darling, without a soul to take care of you or look after your comfort, without a fire even, or a servant:—on this day! It is intolerable! And how, how can I go and leave you, on our wedding-day? It is more than flesh and blood can bear. Jane, I have a foreboding; I can’t be hopeful like you. If you submitted to the force of circumstances in that wretched church, there is no force of any kind here. Don’t send me away; come with me, my love, my dearest. The way is clear, there is nothing but that old woman——”
“There is our honour,” said Lady Jane. “I pledged it to my father. And if I went with you, it would only be to separate again. Surely I am better at home than at Lady Germaine’s:—till to-morrow—till to-morrow,” she repeated softly. The library was next the door, it was close to the open street, the free air out-of-doors. The temptation, though she rejected it, was great upon Lady Jane too. There was a moment in which, though she did not allow it, she wavered. The next moment, with more fortitude than ever, she recovered the mastery of herself. It was she at last who, tenderly persuading and beseeching, induced him to go away. She went to the door with him and almost put him out with loving force. “You will come back for me to-morrow—to-morrow! it is not long till to-morrow,” she said, waving her hand to her distracted bridegroom as he hurried away. It was well that there was nobody in town—nobody in Grosvenor Square—except a passing milk-boy, to see the Duke’s daughter standing in the doorway like the simplest maiden, in her white dress, a wonderful vision for a murky London day, taking farewell of her love. She closed the door after him with her own hand, while poor old Mrs Brown, in such a flutter as she had never before experienced in her life, came bobbing out from the corner in which she had been keeping watch. “Oh, my lady! my lady!” the old woman said. She had scarcely been high enough up in the hierarchy of service below-stairs to have come to speech of Lady Jane at all, and now to think that she was all the attendance possible for that princess royal! Lady Jane, it may be supposed, was in no light-hearted mood, but she stopped with a smile to reassure the old servant.
“Nurse Mordaunt is with me,” she said; “she will, no doubt, be here directly, Mrs Brown. You must not vex yourself about me. It will only be till to-morrow. If you will have a fire lighted in my room, I will go there.
“Yes, my lady; oh, my lady! but I’m afraid there’s some sad trouble,” said the old housekeeper.
Lady Jane was far too high-bred to reject this sympathy, but it was almost more than in her valour she could bear. Her eyes filled in spite of herself. “It is only an extraordinary accident,” she said. “But Mordaunt will tell you when she comes.” She was glad to escape into the library that she might not break down. Turning round to re-enter alone that huge, cold, uninhabited place, her mind was seized with a spasm of terror. The blinds were drawn down, the fireplace was cold, it was like a room out of which the dead had been newly carried, not a place to receive a woman in the most living moment of life—on her wedding-day! She had borne herself very bravely as long as her lover was there—almost too bravely, trying to make him believe that it was nothing, that she had scarcely any feeling on the subject. But when she saw him go, the clouds and darkness closed in upon Lady Jane, her lips quivered sadly as she spoke to Mrs Brown. When she was alone, her swelling heart and throbbing forehead were relieved by a sudden passion of tears. Would it be nothing as she had made believe? or was it a parting, an ending, a severance from Reginald and hope? A black moment passed over her—blacker than anything that Winton felt, as, distracted and furious, burning with intentions of vengeance, and a sense of injury in which there was some relief from the misery of the situation, he hurried along towards the Germaines’ house. There, at least, he could plan and arrange, and talk out his fury and wretchedness. But Lady Jane had no such solace. When she had yielded to that bitter accès of tears, and felt herself pass under the cloud, she had to gather herself together again all unaided, and recover her composure as best she could. That sensation of overwhelming cold which so often accompanies a mental crisis made her shiver. She drew her cloak closely round her, and went slowly up-stairs through the hollow silence of the great house, pausing now and then to take breath in her nervous exhaustion, and looking anxiously for the appearance of her father. Did he not mean to come to her at all? Lady Jane had no idea that she was going with all those hesitations and pauses straight into a prison. Such a thought had never occurred to her. She believed still in reason and loving-kindness and truth. Her father, when he saw it impossible, would after all yield, she thought. Her mother would come to succour her in this extraordinary emergency. “There is a soul of goodness in things evil,” she murmured again to herself, but not so bravely as she had said it to her lover. The house was so cold, such an echoing solitude, no living thing visible, and she alone in it, left to wear through the weary hours as she could—on her wedding-day!