In the excitement over the bride, even the man who had brought this awful news was for the moment forgotten. When they looked for him he was leaning against the altar-rails, as if about to fall, and some of the blood was spotted on the sacred altar-cloth. The men rushed at him; the women, afraid, held back and watched what new harm must come. They deemed that it was some horrible creature; they could not believe that it was only the old gardener at The Place—Waldron’s oldest servant.
Only the gardener. He was as helpless as themselves. He had over-exerted himself running to the church with his dreadful tidings, and being subject to heart disease, he could barely stand, and only gasp out that “Master was killed, and quite dead!”
The men, finding nothing could be got from him, ran out, and made direct for The Place. Some leapt on their horses, but those on foot crossing the meadow, as the gardener had done, got there first. All the men made for The Place—all the women stayed to see what would become of the bride.
It was a dead faint, but it was not long before she came to, and immediately insisted upon being taken home. They would have detained her in the vestry till at least confirmation of the dreadful intelligence had arrived. But no, she begged and prayed them to take her; and fearing lest uncertainty should do more harm than certainty, they half-led, half-carried her from the church.
There was not a dry eye among the sympathising women who had remained—not one among those rude, half-educated people whose heart was not bursting with sorrow for the poor shrinking form that was borne through their midst.
But a few short moments since, and how proud and happy had she been advancing up the aisle! The children were gone from the churchyard; their flowers cast away, not in the pathway of the bride, but on the graves. In their haste, they had trod upon the scarlet cloth laid down, and discoloured and stained it. The ringers had deserted the bell-ropes, the village street was empty and silent—only the unconscious flag waved upon the tower, and the arch stood for them to pass beneath, with its motto—now a bitter mockery—“Joy be with you!”
The carriage rolled along the road, and as they approached The Place, Merton began to recover his professional calm; and the return of his mind to a more normal state was marked by doubt—Was it true?
But no sooner had they entered the garden than he saw it was. The faces of the knots of men, their low, hushed voices, all told but one tale—death had been there!
They tried to get Violet to go upstairs to her own room, but she would not. “I must see him!” was her cry. “I must see him!”
She pushed through them. All gave way before her. Not there, surely? Yes, there—in the very room where the wedding-breakfast was laid out, where the cake stood upon the table, and the champagne-bottles at the side; there, in the place of joy, was the dead—dead in his armchair, close to the window, with a ghastly wound upon the once-peaceful brow!