‘I scarcely think,’ she said at last, ‘that it would be fair to bind her to a long engagement. You can assure her of your regard, so that her feelings may not suffer if you behave with more caution. She may get other offers, you know. If she does not love you, she should be free to accept them. If she does, she will wait for you. But you should not go on as you do, for you are exposing her to comment.’
What she said was so kind and rational, it expressed so much genuine concern for Edmée’s welfare, that I could scarcely disagree with it. But I was by no means pleased at having the alternatives before me so plainly stated. I wished to marry Edmée, but I was not sure that I wished to take Orders. An engagement would force me into choosing a profession and I had not yet made up my mind.
My mother set off for Portsmouth upon the following day, and very disconsolate were we without her. I tried to keep out of Edmée’s way, for I could not trust myself to act with caution when actually in her company. Some kind of explanation I must have with her, and I had settled upon nothing. But life without her was intolerable. I endured three days of it and then thought that she looked at me reproachfully when we were obliged to meet at church. That was intolerable. I spent the whole of Sunday afternoon in miserable indecision, trying to determine what I meant to say to her. In the evening, unable to endure the rack any longer, I set off to see her, having come to no conclusion.
I half hoped that I might not see her alone; that the decisive interview might be postponed and that I might be rewarded by an hour spent in the same room with her. But I met her strolling in the moonlight down the avenue. I instantly asked her to marry me, promising to take Orders and to provide a home for her as soon as possible.
She accepted me. What her words were I cannot remember; even a week later I could not be sure of them. But I am positive that I was accepted, else I would not have ventured upon caresses which were received and returned with a warmth equal to my own. I went much further, in that way, than I could have believed possible an hour earlier, further than I had ever permitted myself to imagine in my most rapturous dreams. No word or gesture of protest came from her; my own respect for her youth and innocence restrained me a little, and besides, Ned interrupted us. He came whistling down the avenue and we were forced to part. Edmée ran off and I returned home in a state of remorseful exaltation. I was ashamed of the precipitate liberties which I had taken, but uplifted by the proof they gave me that my passion was returned.
A long engagement was not to be tolerated. She must be all mine as soon as possible. I became certain that I had always meant to be a parson, and decided that I had better see Ludovic at once about a living in Devonshire which was in his father’s gift, and for which I had put in a word on behalf of my friend Newsome. I now required that favour for myself and I set off very early next morning for Brailsford, fearing that a letter might be sent to Newsome if I delayed.
I knew that Ludovic was alone at Brailsford and I was by no means sure that he would receive my news very kindly, for he was no friend to matrimony. He was, however, unexpectedly sympathetic. I told him the whole of Edmée’s history, which was of a kind to capture his interest. He was ready to believe her everything that she should be in the way of poetry and romance; if I must marry he was more content with the child under the cloak than with any other choice I might have made. No letter to Newsome had been sent, and he promised to speak to his father about the Ullacombe living.
‘I am sure,’ said he, as we sat over our wine, ‘that Mile de Cavignac must resemble your mother a little.’
I declared that she did, although I could not imagine my parents in any such scene as had taken place in the avenue twenty-four hours earlier. But to suppose passion in one’s parents is very indecorous.
‘What a good thing,’ said Ludovic, ‘that we have not yet started upon the great picture that I plan, for now we must include your Edmée in the garland.’
This was to be a portrait group of my mother and sisters which he was always proposing, though he never could decide upon the artist who should paint it. His idea was to illustrate some verses which my father had written to my mother upon their wedding anniversary, in which he said that, in that fair garland, she shone forth herself the crown: Eklampei tou stephanou stephanos.
‘If Ullacombe is to be another Bramfield,’ said he, ‘I shall forgive you for marrying.’
‘Ah! Bramfield is one of your dotes.’
‘It is indeed. Everyone is happy there. Some deity protects it. And seriously, Miles, I believe that it is your destiny to be happy. I know no one else of whom I should venture to say that. Of others I should merely enquire how well they might support misery. But you will listen an hour contentedly to a nightingale; in that you are unique among my acquaintance. My mother, I know, has other ideas, but I am glad that you will not listen to her. She means to turn you into Somebody. That would never satisfy you, for you would be for ever regretting the nightingale.
We spent the evening making plans to improve the parsonage house at Ullacombe. Ludovic had never seen it, but he insisted that it must face south, with a slope upon which we could make a flower garden for Edmée.
We went to bed pretty sober and very happy. I was never, before or after, so happy as I was upon that night.
The future cheats us from afar.
Nor can we be what we recall
Nor dare to think on what we are.
I had no human fears
I was awakened in the dawn by a rattling of my bed curtains and the agitated voice of a servant. A letter had come from Bramfield by express, – a few hurried lines from Kitty. Caroline was dead. News of her death in childbirth had reached them soon after I left home. My father was gone to Portsmouth and Kitty wrote begging me to return.
I rose and dressed myself, so stunned that I was almost calm. Ludovic was fast asleep when I went to his room. I woke him. A kind of frost settled upon his thin face as he heard me. He could not speak save to urge food upon me before I set out; he cried to his man to see that I breakfasted well. No word of condolence came from him, but, as I turned from his bed, I heard him mutter: A slumber did my spirit seal. He vanished under the bedclothes, leaving only the tassel of his nightcap visible as a hint that he had nothing else to say. But I understood him. It was a line from one of his odd Lucy poems. It haunted me, the whole piece haunted me strangely, all through that long and lovely day as I rode homewards, past busy market towns and fields where the corn was carrying.
We had supposed that nothing could touch Bramfield, – that it was exempt from the toll of human woe. My consternation was still so great that I did not wholly believe in Kitty’s note. Childish hopes were mingled with premonitions of the truth; some mistake might have been made, – the first news might have been a false report. At times I thought of my mother and her anguish. Then I would see Caroline, radiant, a bride, as I handed her into the carriage at the church door and she drove away from us all: A thing that could not feel the touch of earthly years. I remembered her, always waiting for me at the turn of the lane when I came home for the holidays. Now she lay, stiff, white and shrouded, upon some bed in Portsmouth. No motion has she now, no force; she neither hears nor sees. It could not be true. It was impossible. When I reached home other news might have come.
My father too! What a journey for him! And her young husband, at sea, already cheated by the future, believing himself a happy man. It might be months before he knew. Her grave might be growing green and she at one with these busy harvest fields: rolled round in earth’s diurnal course…. Ah Caroline! Ah my sister, my beloved sister!
They were still harvesting in the twilight as I rode into Bramfield. But here the cottagers did not turn to shout after me as my tired horse clattered past; they knew why I came and watched me in silence. Every window at the Parsonage was alight. Kitty came running from the house as I dismounted and threw herself upon my neck, and wept with relief to see me, and wept again because it made no difference. Grief, to our young hearts, was as
yet an unstudied book.
Mrs. Cotman and Maria were in the house. They had been there all day and, though my sisters found them very tiresome, nobody knew how to send them away. They sat in the parlour, consuming cake and wine, while my sisters sobbed above stairs and the maids sobbed in the kitchen. Kitty did not warn me that they were there. She ran up to tell Harriet and Sukey that I was come, and I blundered into the parlour.
‘Old heads are better than young ones,’ said Mrs. Cotman, in answer, I suppose, to some look of astonishment from me. ‘Your sisters should have some older person about them.’
Maria, who had risen and curtsied slightly, said nothing. She gazed upon me with a kind of frightful curiosity. Perhaps she had never seen a man weep before.
‘The Lord giveth,’ continued Mrs. Cotman with unction, ‘and the Lord taketh away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. Maria, my love, step into the kitchen and tell Betty to bring the ham, for I daresay Mr. Miles is hungry.’
I said that I wanted no ham, and was beating a retreat when Maria spoke. Casting down her eyes for a moment she murmured:
‘Had any of the Chadwicks been able to come, we should not have intruded. But since they are in such trouble themselves—’
‘Troubles never come singly!’ sighed Mrs. Cotman.
‘What?’ cried I, turning at the door. ‘Is there trouble too at the Park?’
‘Did Kitty not tell you?’ exclaimed Maria. ‘I made sure she would have told you immediately.’
Both were fixing me now with this avid glare. The thought that Edmée must be dead burst upon me and turned me to ice. I could not speak. I could only wait for them to say it.
Their merciless eyes were before me and their intolerable whining voices rang in my ears. But it seems as though they must have talked for a long time before I was quite able to comprehend what they said.
Edmée was gone, and Ned with her. They had disappeared upon the preceding night, when I was sitting with Ludovic and planning a flower garden for Ullacombe. It was thought that they had gone to Scotland. Ned’s father had had some kind of seizure at the news and all was in confusion at the Park.
Mrs. Ned
I WILL BEGIN this chapter by mentioning an agreeable circumstance, for I have little else that is cheerful to relate. The Ullacombe living went to Newsome, who was a thousand times more deserving of it than I. He subsequently married Kitty, upon whom his heart had long been set. He sticks to it that he made up his mind when she was but fourteen and was suffered, as a great favour, to field for us at cricket. But he did not immediately make her an offer, when he got his preferment. He thought her too young. He knew that he was a favourite with her, upon my account, and feared lest inexperience might lead her to suppose her preference greater than it was.
‘I wished her to get about a little,’ he told me once, ‘and see the world, and compare me with others, before choosing. If, after meeting livelier fellows, she still preferred me, I might be sure that she knew her own heart.’
Kitty, when applied to, accepted at once and laughed at him for all this caution. She declared that she had never meant to marry anyone else, and had been sure that he would offer as soon as he could, supposing some good reason for the delay. She knew that his first care, upon getting Ullacombe, must be to assist his own family in the education of his younger brothers and sisters. It was, indeed, three years before he could afford to marry.
I like to think of Newsome and Kitty. I still call him so, although he is now my brother, because his baptismal name is Augustus, which suits him so ill that I refuse to pronounce it. I like to think of people who knew their own minds so well and who managed their affairs so rationally. They are as happy at Ullacombe as ever I intended to be, though neither of them attends much to the nightingale. And they never change. Time’s foot spares Ullacombe and will do so, I hope, for many years. Newsome is still the same tall, thin, black-haired creature with whom I climbed Hills at Winchester. Not all the cream in Devonshire will put an ounce of flesh upon him. The wig which he wears in church so transforms him that I always feel as though a stranger were preaching his sermons. He talks of discarding it; many parsons have begun to do so, I believe. I hope that I shall be present when he does, for the first sight of that black poll in the Ullacombe pulpit will, I am sure, cause an immense sensation among his flock.
I write of Newsome because I shrink from getting back to Edmée and the days which followed her disappearance from Bramfield. She gave me so much pain that my mind still falls into a kind of confusion when I remember it, although it is so long ago. I could not think. I could only suffer.
Her conduct was, for some time, a complete mystery to me. Only when I came to understand her character better, as I have since had every opportunity to do, did I begin to piece it out. She was determined to secure a husband. She would have preferred Ned or Pinney, as better matches, but had despaired of her power with either when she accepted me. To marry a parson was better than nothing.
It appears that there had been some trouble at the Park during those three days when I kept away. Ned’s admiration became more apparent to his family when I was not by to cut him out. His mother felt some alarm. They had all thought of me as her suitor and had flattered themselves that she would settle well. To welcome her as a wife for Ned was another matter. They were too kind to put her out of doors forthwith, but plans were making to despatch her to Lincolnshire as companion to an elderly lady, a distant connection. Edmée got wind of this, no doubt, and made haste to provide for herself.
Some love passages must have already taken place with Ned, and I expect her trouble lay in getting him to run off. He was a good and affectionate son; he must have balked at so open an offence to his parents. For her, nothing short of an elopement would do. She would not trust to his constancy, once she had been sent to Lincolnshire. Knowing nothing of honour herself she would not, naturally, depend upon it in other people. I think that Ned would have been true to her, for he was very much in love. He would have wished to wait until his parents came round. But she bore him down, at some time during the twenty-four hours after she had accepted me. Perhaps he caught sight of me, parting from her in the avenue; perhaps there was some jealous scene and her hopes of him revived. I know what her power is, for I have had a taste of it. She can put a man beside himself; she can excite him to any act of folly. I am sure now that she meant me to compromise myself beyond retreat. She suspected that my mother was against her, and meant to put me into such a position that the Chadwicks could insist upon my marrying her. I daresay that she had tried the same tactics with Ned, and our gentlemanly scruples must have annoyed her very much. Pinney, who had fewer, got off better than we did. He had quitted Gloucestershire suddenly, just before all this, and gone on a visit to friends in Scotland. Long afterwards, when in his cups, he once let fall something which explained this prudent flight. Somebody had spoken contemptuously of Ned, and Pinney said:
‘He should have run away, as I did.’
Of one thing I am certain. Ned never suspected that he had done me any injury. He was jealous. He knew that we were rivals. But he thought that he had cut me out quite fairly.
I had, fortunately, told nobody at Bramfield of my engagement. Ludovic had been my only confidant. I sent him a line telling him that I no longer wanted Ullacombe and begging him to renew his efforts on Newsome’s behalf. I did not tell him why, and he never asked. We did not refer to the episode again.
Nobody else knew. I had meant to tell the whole to my mother, but I never did. During the first weeks we were all in such grief that I felt unable to obtrude my private sorrow upon anyone. I felt indeed a little ashamed of myself for having a private sorrow. Caroline’s remains were brought back to Bramfield for burial. Her poor little infant had survived her, and he provided a certain degree of consolation for the women of the family. Our old nurseries were set up again. My mother had a child in her arms once more, – a child who pretty well monopolised her attention for a long period. When she was at
leisure to listen to me, I no longer cared to speak, or to reopen a wound which had healed after a fashion.
Ned’s father suffered no lasting damage from his fit, if he ever had one. (I daresay that particular had been invented by the Cotmans.) He did not disown or disinherit his son. I have heard of parents who do such things, but I never met any. Some talk there was of never receiving Edmée at the Park, but I doubt if anyone took it seriously. Ned had a little money of his own, inherited from a great-aunt. The young couple were next heard of at Tunbridge Wells, where they took lodgings and waited for the Chadwicks to come round. By Christmas they were back at Bramfield, not forgiven perhaps, but accepted.
I dreaded the idea of meeting her again and would have avoided it if I could, but I shrank from the comment which my absence at Christmas would provoke. I feared my own feelings, lest her beauty might still have power with me, in spite of her conduct. Those feelings were not now restrained by any illusions as to her character. There were moments when I was visited by the notion of serving Ned as he had served me, though I fought against it, for I knew that he was blameless. Had I confided in my mother I should not, perhaps, have been plagued by such base thoughts. Nor need I have apprehended a temptation which was not in the least likely to arise. I must have been very green if I really entertained the idea of seducing her. I believed her, by this time, to be all that was bad, and was innocent enough to suppose that bad women are easily seduced. I still could not quite believe that her ardour had all been calculated, and that I was nothing to her; I was half persuaded that she had wanted me and only took Ned for his money.
Troy Chimneys Page 7