Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon

by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

  She rose suddenly, as if this outburst had never been, and laid her hand upon Edward Arundel’s arm.

  “Come!” she said; “come!”

  “To her––to Mary––my wife?”

  They had taken Belinda away by this time; but Major Lawford stood looking on. He tried to draw Edward aside; but Olivia’s hand upon the young man’s arm held him like a vice.

  “She is mad,” whispered the Major. “Mr. Marchmont came to me last night, and warned me of all this. He told me to be prepared for anything; she has all sorts of delusions. Get her away, if you can, while I go and explain matters to Belinda. Edward, if you have a spark of manly feeling, get this woman away.”

  But Olivia held the bridegroom’s arm with a tightening grasp.

  “Come!” she said; “come! Are you turned to stone, Edward Arundel? Is your love worth no more than this? I tell you, your wife, Mary Marchmont, is alive. Let those who doubt me come and see for themselves.”

  The eager spectators, standing up in the pews or crowding in the narrow aisle, were only too ready to respond to this invitation.

  Olivia led her cousin out into the churchyard; she led him to the gate where the carriages were waiting. The crowd flocked after them; and the people outside began to cheer as they came out. That cheer was the signal for which the school–children had waited; and they set to work scattering flowers upon the narrow pathway, before they looked up to see who was coming to trample upon the rosebuds and jessamine, the woodbine and seringa. But they drew back, scared and wondering, as Olivia came along the pathway, sweeping those tender blossoms after her with her trailing black garments, and leading the pale bridegroom by his arm.

  She led him to the door of the carriage beside which Major Lawford’s gray–haired groom was waiting, with a big white satin favour pinned upon his breast, and a bunch of roses in his button hole. There were favours in the horses’ ears, and favours upon the breasts of the Hillingsworth tradespeople who supplied bread and butcher’s meat and grocery to the family at the Grange. The bell–ringers up in the church–tower saw the crowd flock out of the porch, and thought the marriage ceremony was over. The jangling bells pealed out upon the hot summer air as Edward stood by the churchyard–gate, with Olivia Marchmont by his side.

  “Lend me your carriage,” he said to Major Lawford, “and come with me. I must see the end of this. It may be all a delusion; but I must see the end of it. If there is any truth in instinct, I believe that I shall see my wife––alive.”

  He got into the carriage without further ceremony, and Olivia and Major Lawford followed him.

  “Where is my wife?” the young man asked, letting down the front window as he spoke.

  “At Kemberling, at Hester Jobson’s.”

  “Drive to Kemberling,” Edward said to the coachman,––”to Kemberling High Street, as fast as you can go.”

  The man drove away from the churchyard–gate. The humbler spectators, who were restrained by no niceties of social etiquette, hurried after the vehicle, raising white clouds of dust upon the high road with their eager feet. The higher classes lingered about the churchyard, talking to each other and wondering.

  Very few people stopped to think of Belinda Lawford. “Let the stricken deer go weep.” A stricken deer is a very uninteresting object when there are hounds in full cry hard by, and another deer to be hunted.

  “Since when has my wife been at Kemberling?” Edward Arundel asked Olivia, as the carriage drove along the high road between the two villages.

  “Since daybreak this morning.”

  “Where was she before then?”

  “At Stony–Stringford Farm.”

  “And before then?”

  “In the pavilion over the boat–house at Marchmont.”

  “My God! And––”

  The young man did not finish his sentence. He put his head out of the window, looking towards Kemberling, and straining his eyes to catch the earliest sight of the straggling village street.

  “Faster!” he cried every now and then to the coachman; “faster!”

  In little more than half an hour from the time at which it had left the churchyard–gate, the carriage stopped before the little carpenter’s shop. Mr. Jobson’s doorway was adorned by a painted representation of two very doleful–looking mutes standing at a door; for Hester’s husband combined the more aristocratic avocation of undertaker with the homely trade of carpenter and joiner.

  Olivia Marchmont got out of the carriage before either of the two men could alight to assist her. Power was the supreme attribute of this woman’s mind. Her purpose never faltered; from the moment she had left Marchmont Towers until now, she had known neither rest of body nor wavering of intention.

  “Come,” she said to Edward Arundel, looking back as she stood upon the threshold of Mr. Jobson’s door; “and you too,” she added, turning to Major Lawford,––”follow us, and see whether I am MAD.”

  She passed through the shop, and into that prim, smart parlour in which Edward Arundel had lamented his lost wife.

  The latticed windows were wide open, and the warm summer sunshine filled the room.

  A girl, with loose tresses of hazel–brown hair falling about her face, was sitting on the floor, looking down at a beautiful fair–haired nursling of a twelvemonth old.

  The girl was John Marchmont’s daughter; the child was Edward Arundel’s son. It was his childish cry that the young man had heard upon that October night in the pavilion by the water.

  “Mary Arundel,” said Olivia, in a hard voice, “I give you back your husband.”

  The young mother got up from the ground with a low cry, tottered forward, and fell into her husband’s arms.

  “They told me you were dead! They made me believe that you were dead!” she said, and then fainted on the young man’s breast. Edward carried her to a sofa and laid her down, white and senseless; and then knelt down beside her, crying over her, and sobbing out inarticulate thanksgiving to the God who had given his lost wife back to him.

  “Poor sweet lamb!” murmured Hester Jobson; “she’s as weak as a baby; and she’s gone through so much a’ready this morning.”

  It was some time before Edward Arundel raised his head from the pillow upon which his wife’s pale face lay, half hidden amid the tangled hair. But when he did look up, he turned to Major Lawford and stretched out his hand.

  “Have pity upon me,” he said. “I have been the dupe of a villain. Tell your poor child how much I esteem her, how much I regret that––that––we should have loved each other as we have. The instinct of my heart would have kept me true to the past; but it was impossible to know your daughter and not love her. The villain who has brought this sorrow upon us shall pay dearly for his infamy. Go back to your daughter; tell her everything. Tell her what you have seen here. I know her heart, and I know that she will open her arms to this poor ill–used child.”

  The Major went away very downcast. Hester Jobson bustled about bringing restoratives and pillows, stopping every now and then in an outburst of affection by the slippery horsehair couch on which Mary lay.

  Mrs. Jobson had prepared her best bedroom for her beloved visitor, and Edward carried his young wife up to the clean, airy chamber. He went back to the parlour to fetch the child. He carried the fair–haired little one up–stairs in his own arms; but I regret to say that the infant showed an inclination to whimper in his newly–found father’s embrace. It is only in the British Drama that newly discovered fathers are greeted with an outburst of ready–made affection. Edward Arundel went back to the sitting–room presently, and sat down, waiting till Hester should bring him fresh tidings of his wife. Olivia Marchmont stood by the window, with her eyes fixed upon Edward.

  “Why don’t you speak to me?” she said presently. “Can you find no words that are vile enough to express your hatred of me? Is that why you are silent?”

  “No, Olivia,” answered the young man, calmly. “I am silent, because I have nothing to say to you. Why
you have acted as you have acted,––why you have chosen to be the tool of a black–hearted villain,––is an unfathomable mystery to me. I thank God that your conscience was aroused this day, and that you have at least hindered the misery of an innocent girl. But why you have kept my wife hidden from me,––why you have been the accomplice of Paul Marchmont’s crime,––is more than I can even attempt to guess.”

  “Not yet?” said Olivia, looking at him with a strange smile. “Even yet I am a mystery to you?”

  “You are, indeed, Olivia.”

  She turned away from him with a laugh.

  “Then I had better remain so till the end,” she said, looking out into the garden. But after a moment’s silence she turned her head once more towards the young man. “I will speak,” she said; “I will speak, Edward Arundel. I hope and believe that I have not long to live, and that all my shame and misery, my obstinate wickedness, my guilty passion, will come to an end, like a long feverish dream. O God, have mercy on my waking, and make it brighter than this dreadful sleep! I loved you, Edward Arundel. Ah! you start. Thank God at least for that. I kept my secret well. You don’t know what that word ‘love’ means, do you? You think you love that childish girl yonder, perhaps; but I can tell you that you don’t know what love is. I know what it is. I have loved. For ten years,––for ten long, dreary, desolate, miserable years, fifty–two weeks in every year, fifty–two Sundays, with long idle hours between the two church services––I have loved you, Edward. Shall I tell you what it is to love? It is to suffer, to hate, yes, to hate even the object of your love, when that love is hopeless; to hate him for the very attributes that have made you love him; to grudge the gifts and graces that have made him dear. It is to hate every creature on whom his eyes look with greater tenderness than they look on you; to watch one face until its familiar lines become a perpetual torment to you, and you cannot sleep because of its eternal presence staring at you in all your dreams. It is to be like some wretched drunkard, who loathes the fiery spirit that is destroying him, body and soul, and yet goes on, madly drinking, till he dies. Love! How many people upon this great earth know the real meaning of that hideous word! I have learnt it until my soul loathes the lesson. They will tell you that I am mad, Edward, and they will tell you something near the truth; but not quite the truth. My madness has been my love. From long ago, when you were little more than a boy––you remember, don’t you, the long days at the Rectory? I remember every word you ever spoke to me, every sentiment you ever expressed, every look of your changing face––you were the first bright thing that came across my barren life; and I loved you. I married John Marchmont––why, do you think?––because I wanted to make a barrier between you and me. I wanted to make my love for you impossible by making it a sin. So long as my husband lived, I shut your image out of my mind as I would have shut out the Prince of Darkness, if he had come to me in a palpable shape. But since then––oh, I hope I have been mad since then; I hope that God may forgive my sins because I have been mad!”

  Her thoughts wandered away to that awful question which had been so lately revived in her mind––Could she be forgiven? Was it within the compass of heavenly mercy to forgive such a sin as hers?

  CHAPTER XII. MARY’S STORY.

  One of the minor effects of any great shock, any revolution, natural or political, social or domestic, is a singular unconsciousness, or an exaggerated estimate, of the passage of time. Sometimes we fancy that the common functions of the universe have come to a dead stop during the tempest which has shaken our being to its remotest depths. Sometimes, on the other hand, it seems to us that, because we have endured an age of suffering, or half a lifetime of bewildered joy, the terrestrial globe has spun round in time to the quickened throbbing of our passionate hearts, and that all the clocks upon earth have been standing still.

  When the sun sank upon the summer’s day that was to have been the day of Belinda’s bridal, Edward Arundel thought that it was still early in the morning. He wondered at the rosy light all over the western sky, and that great ball of molten gold dropping down below the horizon. He was fain to look at his watch, in order to convince himself that the low light was really the familiar sun, and not some unnatural appearance in the heavens.

  And yet, although he wondered at the closing of the day, with a strange inconsistency his mind could scarcely grapple with the idea that only last night he had sat by Belinda Lawford’s side, her betrothed husband, and had pondered, Heaven only knows with what sorrowful regret, upon the unknown grave in which his dead wife lay.

  “I only knew it this morning,” he thought; “I only knew this morning that my young wife still lives, and that I have a son.”

  He was sitting by the open window in Hester Jobson’s best bedroom. He was sitting in an old–fashioned easy–chair, placed between the head of the bed and the open window,––a pure cottage window, with diamond panes of thin greenish glass, and a broad painted ledge, with a great jug of homely garden–flowers standing on it. The young man was sitting by the side of the bed upon which his newly–found wife and son lay asleep; the child’s head nestled on his mother’s breast, one flushed cheek peeping out of a tangled confusion of hazel–brown and babyish flaxen hair.

  The white dimity curtains overshadowed the loving sleepers. The pretty fluffy knotted fringe––neat Hester’s handiwork––made fantastical tracery upon the sunlit counterpane. Mary slept with one arm folded round her child, and with her face turned to her husband. She had fallen asleep with her hand clasped in his, after a succession of fainting–fits that had left her terribly prostrate.

  Edward Arundel watched that tender picture with a smile of ineffable affection.

  “I can understand now why Roman Catholics worship the Virgin Mary,” he thought. “I can comprehend the inspiration that guided Raphael’s hand when he painted the Madonna de la Chaise. In all the world there is no picture so beautiful. From all the universe he could have chosen no subject more sublime. O my darling wife, given back to me out of the grave, restored to me,––and not alone restored! My little son! my baby–son! whose feeble voice I heard that dark October night. To think that I was so wretched a dupe! to think that my dull ears could hear that sound, and no instinct rise up in my heart to reveal the presence of my child! I was so near them, not once, but several times,––so near, and I never knew––I never guessed!”

  He clenched his fists involuntarily at the remembrance of those purposeless visits to the lonely boat–house. His young wife was restored to him. But nothing could wipe away the long interval of agony in which he and she had been the dupe of a villanous trickster and a jealous woman. Nothing could give back the first year of that baby’s life,––that year which should have been one long holiday of love and rejoicing. Upon what a dreary world those innocent eyes had opened, when they should have looked only upon sunshine and flowers, and the tender light of a loving father’s smile!

  “O my darling, my darling!” the young husband thought, as he looked at his wife’s wan face, upon which the evidence of all that past agony was only too painfully visible,––”how bitterly we two have suffered! But how much more terrible must have been your suffering than mine, my poor gentle darling, my broken lily!”

  In his rapture at finding the wife he had mourned as dead, the young man had for a time almost forgotten the villanous plotter who had kept her hidden from him. But now, as he sat quietly by the bed upon which Mary and her baby lay, he had leisure to think of Paul Marchmont.

  What was he to do with that man? What vengeance could he wreak upon the head of that wretch who, for nearly two years, had condemned an innocent girl to cruel suffering and shame? To shame; for Edward knew now that one of the most bitter tortures which Paul Marchmont had inflicted upon his cousin had been his pretended disbelief in her marriage.

  “What can I do to him?” the young man asked himself. “What can I do to him? There is no personal chastisement worse than that which he has endured already at my hands. The s
coundrel! the heartless villain! the false, cold–blooded cur! What can I do to him? I can only repeat that shameful degradation, and I will repeat it. This time he shall howl under the lash like some beaten hound. This time I will drag him through the village–street, and let every idle gossip in Kemberling see how a scoundrel writhes under an honest man’s whip. I will––”

  Edward Arundel’s wife woke while he was thinking what chastisement he should inflict upon her deadly foe; and the baby opened his round innocent blue eyes in the next moment, and sat up, staring at his new parent.

  Mr. Arundel took the child in his arms, and held him very tenderly, though perhaps rather awkwardly. The baby’s round eyes opened wider at sight of those golden absurdities dangling at his father’s watch–chain, and the little pudgy hands began to play with the big man’s lockets and seals.

  “He comes to me, you see, Mary!” Edward said, with naïve wonder.

  And then he turned the baby’s face towards him, and tenderly contemplated the bright surprised blue eyes, the tiny dimples, the soft moulded chin. I don’t know whether fatherly vanity prompted the fancy, but Edward Arundel certainly did believe that he saw some faint reflection of his own features in that pink and white baby–face; a shadowy resemblance, like a tremulous image looking up out of a river. But while Edward was half–thinking this, half–wondering whether there could be any likeness to him in that infant countenance, Mary settled the question with womanly decision.

  “Isn’t he like you, Edward?” she whispered. “It was only for his sake that I bore my life all through that miserable time; and I don’t think I could have lived even for him, if he hadn’t been so like you. I used to look at his face sometimes for hours and hours together, crying over him, and thinking of you. I don’t think I ever cried except when he was in my arms. Then something seemed to soften my heart, and the tears came to my eyes. I was very, very, very ill, for a long time before my baby was born; and I didn’t know how the time went, or where I was. I used to fancy sometimes I was back in Oakley Street, and that papa was alive again, and that we were quite happy together, except for some heavy hammer that was always beating, beating, beating upon both our heads, and the dreadful sound of the river rushing down the street under our windows. I heard Mr. Weston tell his wife that it was a miracle I lived through that time.”