Transcriber’s note

Variable spelling and hyphenation have been retained. Minor punctuation inconsistencies have been silently repaired. A list of the changes made can be found [at the end of the book].

AN OPEN VERDICT
VOL. III.

AN OPEN VERDICT

A Novel

BY THE AUTHOR OF
‘LADY AUDLEY’S SECRET’
ETC. ETC. ETC.

IN THREE VOLUMES

VOL. III.

LONDON:
JOHN MAXWELL AND CO.
4, SHOE LANE, FLEET STREET,
1878
[All rights reserved]

CONTENTS TO VOL. III.

AN OPEN VERDICT.

CHAPTER I.

PATERNAL DIPLOMACY.

‘What!’ roared Mr. Scratchell, scarlet of visage, ‘you are asked to marry a man with fifteen thousand a year, and you refuse? Did anybody ever hear of such lunacy?’

Bella sat shivering at the paternal wrath. Mrs. Scratchell was weeping dumbly. All the younger Scratchells were ready to lift up their voices in a chorus of condemnation. Bella’s folly in refusing Mr. Piper was, in their eyes, a personal injury.

‘You would not ask me to marry a man I cannot love, would you, father?’ faltered Bella; ‘a man I can hardly respect.’

‘You cannot respect fifteen thousand a year?’ cried Mr. Scratchell. ‘Then, in the name of all that’s reasonable, what can you respect?’

‘He is so rough-mannered and dictatorial,’ urged Bella, ‘so stout and puffy. And it is really dreadful to hear him murder the Queen’s English.’

Mr. Scratchell looked round at his assembled family with a wrathful glare, as if he were calling upon them all to behold this ridiculous daughter of his.

‘That ever I should have bred and reared such foolishness!’ he exclaimed. ‘What’s that fairy tale you were reading the little ones, mother, about the Princess and the seven feather beds? She had seven feather beds to sleep upon, one atop of the other, and couldn’t rest because there was a parched pea under the bottom one. There’s your proud Princess for you!’ pointing at his tearful daughter. ‘She turns up her nose at fifteen thousand a year because the owner of it doesn’t arrange his words according to Lindley Murray. Why, I never had much opinion of Lindley Murray myself, and, what’s more, I never could understand him.’

‘Father, it isn’t a question of bad grammar. If I loved Mr. Piper, or felt that I could teach myself to love him, I shouldn’t care how badly he talked. But I cannot love him.’

‘Who asks you to love him?’ cried Mr. Scratchell, folding and unfolding his newspaper violently, in a whirlwind of indignation. ‘Nobody has made mention of love—not Piper himself, I warrant. He’s too sensible a man. You are only asked to marry him, and to do your duty in that state of life to which it has pleased God to call you. And very grateful you ought to be for having been called to fifteen thousand a year. Think what you can do for your brothers and sisters, and your poor harassed mother! There’s a privilege for you. And if Piper should take to buying property hereabouts, and give me the collection of his rents, there’d be a lift for me.’

Then Mrs. Scratchell feebly, and with numerous gasps and choking sobs, uplifted her maternal voice, and made her moan.

‘I should be the last to press any child of mine to marry against her inclination,’ she said, ‘but I should like to see one of my daughters a lady. Bella has been a lady in all her little ways from the time she could run alone, and I am sure she would become the highest position—yes, even such a station as Mr. Piper, with his fortune, could give her. If there was anything better or brighter before her—any chance of her getting a young good-looking husband able to support her comfortably—I wouldn’t say marry Mr. Piper. But I’m sure I can’t see how any girl is to get well married in Little Yafford, where the young men——’

‘Haven’t one sixpence to rub against another,’ interrupted Mr. Scratchell, impatiently.

‘And I know what life is for those that have to study the outlay of every penny, and to keep their brains always on the rack in order just barely to pay their way,’ continued Mrs. Scratchell.

Bella gave a deep, despondent sigh. It was all true that these worldly-minded parents were saying. She was no romantic girl to believe in an impossible future. She knew that for women of the Scratchell breed life was hard and dry, like the crusts of the stale loaves which she so often encountered at the family breakfast-table. What was there before her if she persisted in refusing this high fortune that was ready to be poured into her lap? Another rebellious family to teach—an unending procession of verbs, and pianoforte exercises, dreary fantasias, with all the old familiar airs turned upside down, and twisted this way and that, and drawn out to uttermost attenuation, like a string of Indian-rubber. If nothing else killed her, Bella thought, she must assuredly die of those hateful fantasias, the ever-lasting triplets, the scampering arpeggios, stumbling and halting, like the canter of a lame horse.

Mr. Scratchell heard that long sigh and guessed its meaning. He checked his loud indignation, all of a sudden, and had recourse to diplomacy. The girl’s own sense was beginning to argue against her foolishness.

‘Well, my dear,’ he said, quite amiably, ‘if you’ve made up your mind there’s no use in our saying any more about it. Your mother and I would have been proud to see you settled in such a splendid way—the envy of all the neighbourhood—holding your head as high as the best of ’em. But let that pass. You’d better look out for another situation. With so many mouths as I’ve got to feed, I can’t afford to encourage idleness. There must be no twiddling of thumbs in this family. The Yorkshire Times comes out on Saturday. There’ll be just time for us to get an advertisement in.’

Bella gave another sigh, an angry one this time.

‘You’re very sharp with me, father,’ she said. ‘I should have thought you’d have been glad to have me at home for a little while, with my time disengaged.’

‘What?’ ejaculated Mr. Scratchell. ‘Haven’t you had your afternoons for idleness? Your time disengaged, indeed! Do you think I want a daughter of mine to be as useless as a chimney ornament, good for nothing but to look at?’

And then Mr. Scratchell took out a sheet of paper, dipped his pen in the ink, and wrinkled his brow in the effort of composition.

‘Governess, residential or otherwise,’ he began, pronouncing the words aloud as he wrote, ‘competent to impart a sound English education, French, Italian, German, music, drawing and painting, and fancy needlework. Able to prepare boys for a public school. Has had the entire charge of a gentleman’s family. First-rate references.’

‘There,’ exclaimed Mr. Scratchell. ‘That will cost a lot of money, but I think it is comprehensive.’

‘I don’t know about drawing and painting,’ objected Bella, with a weary air. ‘I never had much taste that way. I learnt a little with Beatrix, but——’

‘Then you can teach,’ said Mr. Scratchell, decisively. ‘If you’ve learnt you know all the technical words and rules, and you’re quite competent to teach. When your pupil goes wrong you can tell her how to go right. That’s quite enough. Nobody expects you to be a Michael Angelo.’

‘I’m afraid I shall look like an impostor if I attempt to teach drawing,’ remonstrated Bella.

‘Would not object to a school,’ wrote Mr. Scratchell, adding to the advertisement.

‘But I would very, very, very much object, papa,’ cried Bella. ‘I will not go into a school to please anybody.’

‘My dear, you have got to earn your bread, and if you can’t earn it in a private family you must earn it in a school,’ explained her father. ‘I want the advertisement to be comprehensive, and to bring as many answers as possible. You are not obliged to take a situation in a school simply because you get one offered you—but if your only offer is of that kind you must accept it. Hobson’s choice, you know.’

Bella began to cry.

‘The little Pipers are very hateful,’ she sobbed, ‘but I dare say strange children would be worse.’

‘If the little Pipers were your step-children you could do what you liked with them,’ said Mr. Scratchell.

‘Oh, father,’ remonstrated his wife, ‘she would be bound to be kind to them.’

‘Of course,’ replied Mr. Scratchell. ‘Within certain limits. It would be kindness to get them under strict discipline. She could pack them off to school, and needn’t have them home for the holidays unless she liked. Come, I think the advertisement will do. It will cost three or four shillings, so it ought to answer. Herbert can take it with him to-morrow when he goes to his office.’

‘Father,’ cried Bella, desperately, ‘you needn’t waste your money upon that advertisement. I won’t take another situation.’

‘Won’t you?’ cried Mr. Scratchell. ‘Then I’m afraid you’ll have to go to the workhouse, which would be rather disgraceful at your age. I won’t keep you in idleness.’

‘I’d sooner marry Mr. Piper than go on teaching odious children.’

‘You’ll have to wait till Mr. Piper asks you again,’ replied her father, delighted at having gained his point, but too diplomatic to show his satisfaction. ‘You’ve refused him once. He may not care to humiliate himself by risking a second refusal. However, the advertisement can stand over for a day or two, since you’ve come to your senses.’

Mr. Scratchell went off to his official den presently, and Mrs. Scratchell came over to Bella and hugged her.

‘Oh, my darling, it would be the making of us all,’ she exclaimed.

‘I don’t see what good that would be to me, mother, if I was miserable,’ Bella responded, sulkily.

‘But you couldn’t be miserable in such a home as Yafford Park, and with such a good man as Mr. Piper. It isn’t as if you had ever cared for anybody else, dear.’

‘No, of course not,’ said Bella, full of bitterness. ‘That makes a difference.’

‘And think what a lady you would be, and how high you could hold your head.’

‘Yes, I would hold my head high enough, mother. You may be sure of that. I would have something out of life. Beatrix Harefield should see what use I could make of money.’

‘Of course, dear. You have such aristocratic ideas. You could take the lead in Little Yafford society.’

Bella gave a scornful shrug. The society in Little Yafford was hardly worth leading; but Bella was of the temper that deems it better to reign in a village than to serve in Rome. She put on her bonnet and went to call upon Mrs. Dulcimer. That lady was in the garden, her complexion protected by a muslin sun-bonnet, washing the green flies off her roses. To her sympathetic ear Bella imparted the story of Mr. Piper’s wooing and the paternal wrath.

‘My dear, I don’t wonder that your father was angry,’ cried the Vicar’s wife. ‘Why, Mr. Piper is the very man for you. The idea occurred to me soon after Mrs. Piper’s death. But I didn’t mention it, for fear of alarming your delicacy. Such a good homely creature—an excellent husband to his first wife—and so wealthy. Why, you would be quite a little queen. How lucky I was mistaken about Cyril! What a chance you would have lost if you had married him!’

Bella shuddered.

‘Yes, it would have been a pity,’ she said.

And then she thought how if Cyril had loved and married her, she—who was just wise enough to know herself full of faults—might have grown into a good woman—how, looking up at that image of perfect manhood, she might have learned to shape herself into ideal womanhood. Yes, it would have all been possible if he had only loved her. His love would have been a liberal education.

Love had been denied her; but wealth, and all the advantages wealth could give, might be hers.

‘I really begin to think that I was very foolish to refuse Mr. Piper,’ she said.

‘My love, excuse me, but you were simply idiotic. However, he is sure to renew his offer. I shall call and see those dear children of his to-morrow. And when he asks you again, you will give him a kinder answer?’

‘Yes,’ said Bella, with a long-drawn sigh, ‘since everybody thinks it would be best.’

Everybody did not include Beatrix Harefield. Bella had not consulted—nor did she mean to consult—her old friend and playfellow. She knew quite well that Beatrix would have advised her against a mercenary marriage, and in spite of all her sighs and hesitations, Bella’s sordid little soul languished for the possession of Mr. Piper’s wealth.

Mrs. Dulcimer was delighted at the notion of conducting a new courtship to a triumphant issue. She put on her best bonnet early in the afternoon, and went to pay her visit to the Park, feeling that it behoved her to bring matters to a crisis.

Mr. Piper was at home, seated on a garden chair on his well-kept lawn, basking in the sunshine, after a heavy dinner which went by the name of luncheon. He had a sleek, well-fed look at this stage of his existence, which did not encourage sentimental ideas: but Mrs. Dulcimer looked at the big white house with its Doric portico, the stone vases full of bright scarlet geraniums, the velvet lawn and gaudy flower-beds, the belt of fine old timber, the deer-park across the ha-ha, and thought what a happy woman Bella would be as the mistress of such a domain. She hardly gave one thought to poor Mr. Piper. He was only a something that went with the Park; like a bit of outlying land, which nobody cares about, tacked on to a large estate.

‘I hope your dear children are all well and strong,’ said Mrs. Dulcimer, after she had shaken hands with Mr. Piper, and they had confided to each other their opinions about the weather. ‘I came on purpose to see them.’

‘You shall see them all presently, mum,’ replied Mr. Piper. ‘The schoolroom maid is cleaning ’em up a bit. They’ve been regular Turks all this blessed morning. They’ve lost their gov’ness.’

‘Why, how is that?’ cried the hypocritical Mrs. Dulcimer. ‘Bella is so fond of them. She is always talking of her clever little pupils.’

‘She’s left ’em to shift for themselves, for all her fondness,’ said Mr. Piper; and then, being of a candid nature, he freely confided his trouble to the Vicar’s wife.

He told her that he had asked Bella to marry him, and she had said no, and upon that they had parted.

‘It was better for her to go,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t abear the sight of her about the place under the circumstances. I should feel like the fox with the grapes. I should be always hardening my heart against her.’

‘Dear, dear,’ sighed Mrs. Dulcimer. ‘I’m afraid you were too sudden. A woman is so sensitive about such matters. I dare say you took that poor child by surprise.’

‘Well, mum, perhaps I may. I’d been thinking of making her an offer for a long time, but it may have come on her like a thunderclap.’

‘Of course it did. And, being shy and sensitive, she naturally said no.’

‘Don’t you think she meant no?’ asked Mr. Piper, swinging himself suddenly round in his garden chair, and looking very warm and eager.

‘Indeed, I do not. She was with me yesterday afternoon, and I thought her looking ill and unhappy. I felt sure there was something wrong.

‘Now you look here, Mrs. Dulcimer,’ said the widower. ‘I’m not going to offer myself to that young woman a second time, for the sake of getting a second refusal; but if you are sure she won’t say no I don’t mind giving her another chance. I’m not a proud man, but I’ve got a proper respect for myself, and I don’t want to be humiliated. I shan’t ask her again unless I’m very sure of my ground.’

‘Come and take tea with us to-morrow evening,’ said Mrs. Dulcimer. ‘I’ll get Bella to come too, and you’ll be able to judge for yourself. Bring some of your dear children.’

‘Thank you, mum, you’re very kind; but I think until some of the Turk has been flogged out of them I’d rather not take them into company. But I’ll come myself with pleasure, and if you like to ask Bella Scratchell I’ve no objection to meet her.’

Mr. Piper’s olive branches now appeared, newly washed and combed, and in their Sunday clothes. Thus attired they looked a little more vulgar than in their every-day garments. They were all angles and sharp lines, and looked embarrassed by their finery, which, from the corkscrew curls at the top of their heads to the tight new shoes upon their afflicted feet, was more or less calculated to give them pain.

Naturally Mrs. Dulcimer pretended to be enraptured with them. She discovered in one an extraordinary likeness to his papa, in another a striking—yes, a painfully striking resemblance to her poor dear mamma. She asked them questions about their studies and recreations, and having completely exhausted herself in less than ten minutes’ performance of these civilities, she rose to wish Mr. Piper and his young family good-bye.

‘At seven to-morrow, remember,’ she said.

‘I shall be there, mum,’ answered Mr. Piper.

CHAPTER II.

MR. PIPER IS ACCEPTED.

Mrs. Dulcimer’s tea party was a success. Bella appeared in her prettiest muslin gown—an embroidered Indian muslin that Beatrix had given her, with a great deal besides, when she went into mourning. She wore blue ribbons, and was bright with all the colour and freshness of her young beauty. Mr. Piper felt himself very far gone as he sat opposite her at tea. He hardly knew what he was eating, though he was a man who usually considered his meals a serious part of life, and though Rebecca had surpassed herself in the preparation of a chicken salad.

The evening was lovely, the sunset a study for Turner, and after tea Mrs. Dulcimer took Mr. Piper into the garden to show him her famous roses. Once there the worthy manufacturer was trapped. Bella was in faithful attendance upon the Vicar’s wife, and presently Rebecca came, flushed and breathless, to say that her mistress was wanted; whereupon, with many apologies, Mrs. Dulcimer left Mr. Piper and Miss Scratchell together.

‘Bella can show you the rest of the garden,’ she said as she hurried off.

‘Take me down by the gooseberry bushes, Bella,’ said Mr. Piper. ‘It’s shadier and more retired there.’

And in that shady and retired spot, with the rugged old plum trees and pear trees on the crumbly red wall looking at them, and the happy snails taking their evening promenades under the thorny gooseberry bushes, and the luxuriant scarlet runners making a curtain between these two lovers and the outside world, Mr. Piper—in fewest and plainest words—repeated his offer, and this time was not refused.

‘Bella,’ he exclaimed, with a little gush of emotion, putting his betrothed’s small hand under his elephantine arm, ‘I’ll make you the happiest woman in the three Ridings. You shall have everything that heart can wish. Poor Maggie never could cotton to her position. My good fortune came too late for her. She had got into a groove when I was a struggling man, and in that groove she stuck. She tried hard to play the lady; but she couldn’t manage it, poor soul. She was always the anxious hard-working housewife at bottom. There’s no rubbing the spots out of the leopard’s hide, or whitening the Ethiopian, you see, Bella. Now you were born a lady.’

Bella simpered and blushed.

‘I shall try not to disgrace your fortune,’ she said, meekly.

‘Disgrace it! Why, you’ll set it off by your prettiness and your nice little ways. I mean to get you into county society, Bella. I never tried it on with Mrs. P., for I felt she wasn’t up to it; but I shall take you slap in among the county folks.’

Bella shuddered. The little she had seen and heard of county people led her to believe that they were very slow to open their doors to such men as Mr. Piper.

‘Mrs. P. never had but one hoss and a broom,’ said the widower, walking his chosen one briskly up and down behind the curtain of scarlet runners. ‘You shall have a pair. I think you was made for a carriage and pair. Shall it be a landau or a b’rouche?’

Bella opined, with all modesty, that she would prefer a barouche.

‘You’re right,’ exclaimed Mr. Piper, ‘a woman looks more queenly in a barouche. And you can have poor Mrs. P.’s brougham done up for night work. And you shall have a chaise and the prettiest pair of ponies that can be bought for money, and then you can drive me about on fine afternoons. I’m getting of an age when a man likes to take his ease, and there’s nothing nicer to my fancy than sitting behind a handsome pair of ponies driven by a pretty woman. Can you drive?’

‘I dare say I could if I tried,’ answered Bella.

‘Ah, I’ll have you taught. You’ll have a good deal to learn when you are Mrs. Piper, but you’re young enough to take kindly to a change in your circumstances. Poor Moggie wasn’t. Her mind was always in the bread-pan or the butcher’s book.’

In this practical manner were matters settled between Mr. Piper and his betrothed. The widower called upon Mr. Scratchell next day, and obtained that gentleman’s consent to his nuptials. The consent was granted with a certain air of reluctance which enhanced the favour.

‘As far as my personal respect for you goes, there is no man living I’d sooner have for a son-in-law,’ said Mr. Scratchell, ‘but you’ll allow that there is a great disparity of age between you and my daughter.’

Mr. Piper was quite willing to allow this.

‘If I couldn’t marry a pretty girl I wouldn’t marry at all,’ he said. ‘I don’t want a housekeeper. I want some one bright and pleasant to look at when I come home to dinner. As for the disparity, well, I shan’t forget that in the settlement I mean to make upon Bella.’

This was exactly what Mr. Scratchell wanted. After this everything was speedily arranged. Mr. Piper was an impetuous man, and would brook no delay. He would like to have been married immediately, but he was persuaded, for decency’s sake, to wait till October. Even this would be very soon after the late Mrs. Piper’s death; but the indulgent Mrs. Dulcimer argued that a man in Mr. Piper’s forlorn position, with a young family running to seed in the custody of servants, might be excused if he hastened matters.

So Bella set to work to prepare her trousseau which was by far the most interesting part of the business, especially after Mr. Piper had slipped a little bundle of bank-notes into her hand one evening at parting, which bundle was found to amount to five hundred pounds. Bella spent long afternoons shopping at Great Yafford, attended by her mother and sisters, who all treated her with a new deference, and were delighted to hang upon her steps and look on while she made her purchases. She had already begun to taste the sweets of wealth. Her betrothed showered gifts upon her, and positively overwhelmed Mrs. Scratchell with garden stuff and farm produce. It was a time of plenty which the little Scratchells had never imagined in their wildest dreams. Mr. Piper tipped them all round every Sunday afternoon. His pockets were like the silver mines of Mexico. He was a man overflowing with new half-crowns and fat five shilling pieces—noble-looking coins that seemed to be worth a great deal more than five meagre shillings.

Beatrix was horrified when she heard of her friend’s engagement.

‘Oh, Bella, how could you?’ she exclaimed. ‘You are sacrificing yourself for the sake of your family.’

Bella blushed, for in her heart of hearts she knew that the interests of her family had been very far from her thoughts when she consented to become the second Mrs. Piper.

‘My father and mother had set their hearts upon it,’ she said.

‘But they had no right to set their hearts upon your marrying such a man as that.’

‘He is a very good man,’ pleaded Bella.

‘Have you really made up your mind to marry him? Do you really believe that you can live happily with him?’ asked Beatrix, earnestly.

‘Yes,’ sighed Bella, thinking of the barouche and pair, the pony carriage, the huge barrack of a house at the end of an avenue of elms, the dignity and importance that all these things would give her. ‘Yes, I have quite made up my mind, Beatrix. It will be such a good thing for my family—and I believe I can be happy.’

‘Then I will not say another word against Mr. Piper. Indeed, I will try my best to like him.’

‘He has a very good heart,’ said Bella, ‘really a noble heart.’

‘And that is of more consequence than the kind of English a man talks.’

‘And he is very intelligent,’ said Bella, anxious to make the best of her bargain. ‘You should hear him talk of Jeremy Bentham. Papa says it is quite wonderful.’

‘And what about his children, Bella? Are they nice? Do you feel that you can love them?’

Bella involuntarily made a wry face.

‘They are not very nice,’ she answered, ‘but it will be my duty to love them, and of course I shall do so.’

This conversation took place at the Water House one afternoon at the beginning of October. Beatrix and her companion, Madame Leonard, had been away for nearly two months, living quietly at Whitby and other seaside places, and Beatrix had come back improved in health and spirits.

Sir Kenrick had been absent six months, and was likely to return at the end of the year, unless the war continued. He would not care to leave the army while there was any hard fighting going on, and his regiment was in the thick of it. Mrs. Dulcimer loudly lamented this Burmese outbreak, which made it impossible for Kenrick to sell out with a good grace yet awhile. She was always talking to Beatrix about him, and entreating to hear little bits of his letters. Lately there had been an irregularity in the letters. Kenrick’s regiment had been moving about. He had been off the track of civilization and postal facilities.

One morning in October, just a week before Bella’s wedding day, there came a startling letter—a letter which Beatrix brought to Mrs. Dulcimer.

‘Oh, my dear, my dear!’ cried the Vicar’s wife, ‘something dreadful has happened to Kenrick. I see it in your face. Is he dead?’

This last question was almost a shriek, and it was evident that Mrs. Dulcimer was prepared to go into hysterics at a moment’s notice.

‘No,’ answered Beatrix, ‘but he has been severely wounded, and he is on his way home.’

‘Coming home,’ cried Mrs. Dulcimer, ‘how delightful! But severely wounded! How dreadful!’

‘He writes in very good spirits, but I think though he hardly admits as much, that he has been badly hurt, and very ill from the effects of his wounds,’ said Beatrix. ‘He wishes you and Mr. Dulcimer to go to Southampton with me to meet him.’

‘Dear boy, how touching! Read me a little of the letter. Do, my love.’

Beatrix complied, and read all her lover’s letter, save those little gushes of sentiment which she would have considered it a kind of treason to confide even to Mrs. Dulcimer.

‘It is selfish of me to ask you to take so much trouble, perhaps,’ he wrote, ‘but it would make me very happy if you would come to Southampton to meet me. I know our good friends the Dulcimers would bring you, if you expressed a wish to that effect. I want to see you directly I land, Beatrix. I want your dear face to be the first to smile upon me when the steamer touches the English shore. The journey would be interminable if I had to wait till the end of it to see you. I am not very strong yet, and should be obliged to travel slowly. But if you will meet me and greet me, I think all my ills will be cured at once. A week or so at Culverhouse, with you for my daily companion, will make me as strong as a lion. I am bringing you home a poor little leaflet of laurel, dear, to lay at your feet. That last skirmish of ours brought me to the fore. Happy accidents favoured me, and our chief has said all manner of kind things about my conduct at the retaking of Pegu. I come back to you a major. I have not said a word yet about selling out. That shall be as you wish; but I confess that my own inclination points the other way. This last business has made me fonder than I used to be of my profession. I have tasted the sweets of success. What do you think, love? Could you be happy as a soldier’s wife? I write this at Alexandria. The steamer leaves to-morrow, and ought to arrive at Southampton on the 7th or 8th of November. Shall I be so blest as to see you among the eager crowd on the quay when the boat steams into the famous old docks, whence so many a soldier has gone to his fate—where there have been such sad partings and joyous meetings. Come, love, come, and let me think I do not return unlooked for and unloved.’

‘What do you think I ought to do, Mrs. Dulcimer?’ asked Beatrix, humbly.

‘Do, my love? Why, go, of course. There isn’t a doubt about it. Clement and I will take you.’

‘You are very good,’ faltered Beatrix. ‘Yes, I will go to meet him.’

CHAPTER III.

A WEDDING MARCH.

Bella’s marriage was to take place on the last day of October. It had been laid down from the beginning that it was to be a very quiet wedding. There was a newness and brightness about that splendid monument to the late Mrs. Piper in Little Yafford churchyard which seemed to forbid high jinks at Mr. Piper’s second nuptials. ‘People might talk,’ as Mrs. Scratchell said, happily ignorant that people were talking about her daughter and Mr. Piper with all their might already.

Hardly anybody was to be invited to the wedding. This was what Mr. Piper and everybody else concerned kept on saying; yet every day some fresh invitation was given. Mr. Piper had a good many friends among the manufacturing classes, innumerable middle-aged men with red faces and expansive waistcoats, every one of whom was, according to Mr. Piper, the oldest friend he had. These, one by one, were bidden, with their wives and families,—‘the more the merrier.’ In no case was the invitation premeditated, but it came naturally from Mr. Piper’s lips when he met an old acquaintance on ‘Change, or in the club-house at Great Yafford.

‘Never mind, my dear,’ he said, apologetically, to Bella. ‘They are all carriage people. And they’ll make a fine show at the church door.’

‘But I thought we were going into county society,’ said Bella.

‘So we are, my pet, but we aren’t going to cut old friends. There’s Joe Wigzell, the jolliest fellow I know, and making twelve thousand a year out of hat linings. Mrs. Wigzell’s a perfect lady, and there’s a fine family of grown-up daughters. You ought to know the Wigzells.’

‘I think if you want to be in county society you’ll have to give up your Wigzells,’ said Bella. ‘They won’t mix.’

‘But they must mix,’ cried Mr. Piper. ‘I shall make it worth their while to mix. Such dinners as I shall give will bring the two classes together——’

‘Like oil and vinegar,’ said Bella, who was a little out of humour with her affianced.

These invitations of Mr. Piper’s, given at random, had swelled the wedding party into an alarming number. Poor Mrs. Scratchell was troubled in mind as to how she should seat her guests. There was a difficulty about the tables. But Mr. Piper made light of everything. He would have no cutting and contriving, no humble devices of Mrs. Scratchell’s, no home-made pastry. He went to Great Yafford and contracted with the principal confectioner of that town to supply everything, from the tables and decorations down to the salt spoons. The breakfast was to be a magnificent banquet, at a guinea a head, exclusive of wines, and Mr. Piper was to write a cheque for everything.

This arrangement pleased everybody except Bella, whose pride was keenly wounded by it.

‘You have made a pauper of me among you,’ she cried angrily, to the family circle, on the night before her wedding. ‘I had rather have had the quietest, simplest breakfast that mother could have arranged, with the Dulcimers and Beatrix Harefield for our only visitors, than all this finery paid for by Mr. Piper.’

‘Fiddlesticks!’ exclaimed Mrs. Scratchell. ‘You weren’t ashamed to take his money for your wedding clothes. Why should you be ashamed of his paying for your wedding breakfast? I hate such humbug.’

‘I have a little pride left,’ said Bella.

‘Very little, I should think,’ answered her father, ‘and what you have doesn’t become you. It’s like the peacock’s feathers on the jackdaw. You weren’t born with it.’

‘Come upstairs and let us try on the wedding bonnets,’ said Clementina. ‘And be kind and nice, Bella. Recollect it is your last night at home.’

‘Thank God for that, at any rate,’ ejaculated Bella, piously.

The house had been transformed by an artificial and almost awful tidiness. Everything had been put away. The swept and garnished rooms were scarcely habitable.

‘I never saw such discomfort,’ cried Mr. Scratchell, looking discontentedly round his office, which smelt of soft soap, and was cleaner than he had ever seen it in his life.

His papers had all been stowed away, he knew not where. Valuable leases and agreements might have been thrust into obscure corners where they would be forgotten. The whole process horrified him.

‘You oughtn’t to have touched my office,’ he said, ‘business is business.’

‘I couldn’t help it,’ pleaded Mrs. Scratchell. ‘The men from Great Yafford said we must have a room for the gentlemen to put their hats and things, so I was obliged to give them this. You have no idea how they order us about. And then they asked me where they were to put your things, and almost before I told them, and while I was so flurried I scarcely knew what I was saying, your papers and tin boxes were all swept off.’

‘And pray where are they?’ demanded Mr. Scratchell, furiously.

‘I—don’t be angry, Scratchell. I couldn’t help it. They’re all safe—quite, quite safe—in the hay-loft.’

‘Where the rats are eating the Harefield leases, no doubt,’ said Mr. Scratchell.

‘It’s for a short time, dear,’ said Mrs. Scratchell, soothingly. ‘We’ll put everything back in its place the day after to-morrow; and I don’t think rats like parchment.’

The wedding day dawned, and to all that busy and excited household the sky seemed to be of another colour, and the atmosphere of another quality than the sky and atmosphere of common days. The Scratchell girls rose with the lark, or rather with the disappearance of the cockroaches in the old kitchen, where those black gentlemen scampered off to their holes, like Hamlet’s ghost, at cockcrow. The younger sisters were in high spirits. The idea of an inordinately rich brother-in-law opened a new hemisphere of delight. What picnics, and carpet dances, and other dissipations Bella could provide for them when she was mistress of Little Yafford Park! To-day they were to wear handsome dresses for the first time in their lives; dresses of Bella’s providing. As bridesmaids they were important features in the show. The maid-of-all-work was no less excited. She, too, was to wear a fine dress; and she had the prospect of unlimited flirtation with the young men from the pastrycook’s. She brought the girls an early cup of tea, and helped them to plait their hair. Ordinary plaits would not do for to-day.

‘I’ll have mine plaited in ten, if you can manage it, Sally,’ said Flora.

‘And I’ll have mine in the Grecian plait,’ said Clementina.

‘I don’t know what’s the matter with Miss Beller,’ said the faithful Sally. ‘It’s my belief she has been crying all night. Her eyes are as red as pickled cabbage. All I can say, if she isn’t fond of Mr. Piper she ought to be. I never see such a free-spoken, open-handed gentleman.’

Mr. Piper was intensely popular in the Scratchell household. Nobody considered that Bella was sacrificing herself in marrying so charming a man. His fifty years, his puffiness, his coarse red hands, about which Nature had made a trifling mistake, and supplied thumbs in place of fingers, his bald head with its garnish of iron-gray bristles—all these things went for nothing. He had won everybody’s favour, except perhaps that of his young bride.

At a quarter to eleven everybody was ready; Mr. Scratchell in an entire new suit, which circumstance was such a novelty to him that he felt as if he had been changed in his sleep, like the tinker in the old story; Mrs. Scratchell, flushed and nervous, tightly encased in a shining purple silk gown, which made her presence felt as a mass of vivid colour wherever she appeared, like a new stained glass window in an old church. The bridesmaids looked bright and pretty in sky-blue, with wreaths of forget-me-nots round their white chip bonnets. The boys wore sleek broadcloth, like their father’s, buff waistcoats and lavender trousers. Everything was intensely new. They all stood in the hall waiting for the bride, and contemplating each other curiously, like strangers.

‘I never thought father could have come out so good-looking,’ whispered Clementina to her eldest brother. ‘I should hardly have known him.’

‘Ah!’ ejaculated Herbert, ‘money makes all the difference.’

They felt as if they were all going to be rich now. It was not Bella only who went up in the social scale. Her family ascended with her. Even the faithful domestic drudge, Sally, rejoiced at the change in her fortunes. The fragments that fell to her share after the family dinner would be daintier and more plentiful. Her scanty wages would be more secure.

At last Bella came down, in glistening white apparel, clouded over with lace. That delicate taste which had always been hers, the instinctive refinement in all external things which made her mother say that Bella had been a lady from her cradle, had regulated her wedding dress. She looked as pure and aërial as some pale spring floweret, tremulous upon its slender stem. Her family bowed down and worshipped her, like Joseph’s brethren, as represented in the vision of the sheaves.

‘God bless you, my pet!’ cried her father, in an unprecedented burst of affection. ‘It is something to have such a beauty as you in one’s family.’

The gray old chancel was like a bed of gaudy tulips, so varied and so brilliant were the dresses of Mr. Piper’s manufacturing friends, waiting impatiently to behold him at the altar. Among all these bright colours and startling bonnets, Beatrix Harefield, in her gray silk dress and old Brussels lace, looked like a creature belonging to another world. All the manufacturing people noticed her, and wanted to know who that distinguished-looking young lady was. Mrs. Dulcimer and Beatrix had the Vicarage pew all to themselves.

Presently the bride entered the porch, leaning on her father’s arm, pale against the whiteness of her bridal dress. Mr. Piper, crimson with agitation, and breathing a little harder than usual, hurried forward to receive her. He offered her his arm. The four bridesmaids followed, two and two, the organist played a spirited march, and the business of the day began.

Bella gave the responses in a clear little voice. Mr. Piper spoke them with gruff decision. Mr. Dulcimer read the service beautifully, but Mr. Piper’s manufacturing friends hardly appreciated the Vicar’s deliberate and impressive style. They would rather have had the ceremony rattled over with modern celerity, so that they might get to the wedding breakfast.

‘If there’s any hot ontries they’ll be spoiled,’ whispered Mrs. Wigzell, the hat-lining manufacturer’s wife, to Mrs. Porkman, whose husband was in the provision line.

‘I’m beginning to feel quite faint,’ answered Mrs. Porkman. ‘Getting up so early and coming so far! It’s trying for a weak constitution.’

‘Did you ever see such a young thing?’ asked Mrs. Wigzell, indicating the bride with a motion of her head.

Mrs. Porkman’s only answer was a profound sigh.

‘What can be expected from such an unsuitable marriage?’ demanded Mrs. Wigzell, still in a whisper. ‘After such a sensible wife as poor Moggie, too.’

‘Oh, my dear, Moggie Piper never rose to the level of her position,’ answered Mrs. Porkman.

And now all was over, and for ever and ever—or at least for the ever and ever of this lower world—Ebenezer Piper and Isabella Scratchell were made one. Whatever the incongruity of the union, the thing was done. Disgrace or death only could loosen the knot.

The organ crashed out the tremendous chords of the Wedding March, everybody looked delighted at the near prospect of breakfast. People crowded into the vestry to see Bella and her husband sign the register. There was much kissing of bride and bridesmaids, while poor Mrs. Scratchell, wedged into a corner by the vestry door, wept a shower of hot tears over her purple dress.

‘I hope she’ll be happy,’ she ejaculated. ‘Marriage is a solemn thing. God grant she may be happy.’

And in her inmost heart the mother prayed and feared lest all should not be well with her daughter in this marriage which she as well as her husband had striven so hard to bring to pass.

‘We have done all for the best,’ she told herself, ‘and Mr. Piper is a kind, good man.’

Her maternal heart thrilled with pride presently at the church door when she saw the manufacturing people’s carriages, the sleek well-groomed horses, the smart liveries, the consequential coachmen and pampered footmen. They were a long time getting away from the church, and there was a good deal of fuss, and some offence given to punctilious minds, in bringing the carriages to the porch. Mrs. Porkman’s landau came before Mrs. Wigzell’s, which was wrong, as everybody knows that hat linings rank before provisions; and the great Mr. Timperley of the Linseed Mills—quite the most important person present—was left with his aggrieved wife and daughter till nearly the last. However, they all got off ultimately, and five minutes brought them to Mr. Scratchell’s door.

The breakfast was laid on two long tables in the common parlour; the best parlour did duty as a reception-room, and for the display of the wedding presents, which were exhibited on a side table. Mr. Piper’s friends had all sent offerings, scaly golden snakes with emerald or ruby eyes, mother-o’-pearl envelope boxes, filigree bouquet holders, lockets, fans, personal finery of all kinds. To the bride of a gentleman in Mr. Piper’s firmly established position, no one could think of offering the butter dishes and dessert knives, claret jugs and fish carvers, pickle bottles and biscuit boxes, which are presented to modest young couples just setting up in domestic business. Bella’s presents were therefore all of a strictly useless character. Beatrix gave her a set of pearl ornaments, Mrs. Dulcimer a dressing-case. The Vicar’s gift was a Bible in an exquisite antique binding, and a pocket edition of Shakespeare.

‘You need never be at a loss for something worth reading while you have those two books, my dear,’ he told Bella when he presented them.

The breakfast was a success. The Great Yafford confectioner had done his duty. There were perigord pies, and barley sugar temples, hecatombs of poultry and game, highly decorated hams and tongues, trifles, jellies, creams, hothouse fruit, ices, wafers, coffee and liqueurs. To the minds of the young Scratchells it was the most wonderful feast. They played havoc among all the dishes, reckless of after-consequences. Such a banquet as that was well worth the cost of a bilious attack. The wines had been sent from the Park, and were the choicest in Mr. Piper’s collection.

‘There’s a bookay about that ‘ock,’ said Mr. Porkman, smacking his lips approvingly, ‘that I don’t remember to have tasted for the last ten years. You don’t get such ‘ock now-a-days. Money won’t buy it, no more than it won’t buy Madeira.’

‘I hope you’ll crack many a bottle before the next ten years, Porkman,’ roared Mr. Piper. ‘It’s Skloss Johnny’s Berger that I bought out of old Tom Howland’s cellar, after the poor old gentleman’s death. He was a Connysewer, was Tom. I’ve got a whole bin, and it will be your fault if you don’t punish it.’

‘And so I will, sir, for it’s real good stuff,’ answered Mr. Porkman, blinking at the straw-coloured wine in his green glass.

The newly-married couple were to spend their honeymoon in Italy. Coarse as he was in appearance and manners, Mr. Piper had vague yearnings after the pleasures of refinement. He wanted to see the cities of Italy, and the pictures and statues with which he had been informed those cities abounded. He had not cared to travel in the first Mrs. Piper’s time, firstly because that lady’s health had been precarious, and secondly because she could not speak a word of any language except her own. Mr. Piper wanted a companion who could interpret for him, and assist him to squabble with innkeepers and hackney coachmen. Such a companion he felt he could have in Bella, and he would take a pride in exhibiting his pretty young wife at table-d’hôtes and in public places. He would like to be pointed out as a comfortable well-to-do man of middle age who had married a girl young enough to be his daughter. He was not ashamed of the disparity. It flattered his vanity.

Bella looked very pretty by and by in a fawn coloured travelling dress and a pale blue bonnet. There was a carriage and four to take Mr. Piper and his bride to the railway station at Great Yafford. He had insisted upon four horses, though two could have done the work just as well. The postillions were an imposing spectacle—smartly clad in sky blue jackets, with satin favours pinned upon their breasts, and slightly the worse for beer. Happily the hired horses were of a sober breed, or Mr. and Mrs. Piper might have come to grief on the first stage of their journey.

They were gone—amidst the usual shower of old slippers. The wedding guests departed immediately after. There was to be no dance, nothing to wind up the evening, as Clementina and all her younger sisters and brothers loudly lamented.

‘I should think you’d better all go off to your beds, after the way you stuffed yourselves all through the breakfast,’ said Mr. Scratchell. ‘I saw you.’

‘What was the use of leaving things?’ demanded Herbert. ‘The pastrycook’s men will take everything back. They won’t leave us a crumb for to-morrow.’

Herbert was right. The confectioner’s men were already sweeping off the fragments of the feast—half-tongues—bodies of fowls—dilapidated pies. Mrs. Scratchell stood and watched them with regretful looks. The family might have subsisted for a week upon the savoury remains. The small Scratchells prowled round the tables and picked little bits out of the plates. Those manufacturing people had been delicate and wasteful in their eating. The broken bits were daintier than anything the little Scratchells had ever tasted before.

‘Come, clear out,’ cried the father, ‘you’ve all eaten too much already.’

But he thought it a hard thing that the pastrycook’s men should come down, like the locusts of Scripture, and make barrenness in the land, after Mr. Piper had paid for everything.

The house had a desolate look when the van had driven off with all the glass and china and long deal tables, the epergnes and artificial flowers. Bella’s room looked unutterably dismal. It was but a poor attic, at best, and now, in the untidiness of departure, strewed all over with crumpled scraps of paper, ends of old ribbon, cast-off cuffs and collars, and worn-out shoes, looked horrible. The younger sisters explored the chamber after all was over, in the faint hope of gleaning something valuable.

‘She hasn’t left a morsel of anything behind her,’ said Clementina.

‘I don’t think you can complain of that,’ said Flora. ‘She’s given us all her old clothes.’

‘If she’d had a spark of generosity she’d have given us some of her new,’ answered Clementina. ‘This is to be my room now. It’s a horrid hole. I’m sure the furniture must have been second-hand when Noah built the ark. Think of Bella, with her apple-green bedroom and dressing-room at the Park—all the furniture new and her own choice—and her barouche and pair—and her brougham for evenings. Doesn’t it seem too ridiculous?’

Clementina went to the shabby little looking glass on the chipped mahogany chest of drawers, and submitted her small blunt features to a severe scrutiny.

‘I’m not particularly ugly, and I’ve Bella’s complexion, which is the best part of her,’ she said, ‘but I don’t suppose there’s a Mr. Piper growing for me anywhere.’

‘Oh yes, there is,’ answered the cheerful Flora. ‘Bella will give lots of parties, and we shall meet with young manufacturers.’

‘Bella will do nothing except for her own gratification,’ said Clementina. ‘She won’t give parties to please us.’

CHAPTER IV.

KENRICK’S RETURN.

In the dull dark days of November Mr. and Mrs. Dulcimer took their ward to Southampton, there to await her lover’s return. They were to spend a week at Culverhouse with Sir Kenrick, and then he was to go with them when they went back to Little Yafford. Mrs. Dulcimer had planned it all. If Kenrick was ailing still—though that was not likely, Mrs. Dulcimer said, after the sea voyage—Rebecca could nurse him. There was no beef tea like Rebecca’s, no such calves’ foot jelly.

They went to the Dolphin Hotel at Southampton, and Mr. Dulcimer at once descended upon the old book-shops in the High Street, like a vulture upon carrion—very much like a vulture, since he cared only for the dead. Mrs. Dulcimer took Beatrix for a gentle walk, which meant a contemplation of all the shop windows. Beatrix looked pale and out of spirits.

‘I know you are anxious about Kenrick,’ said Mrs. Dulcimer.

Beatrix blushed. Her conscience smote her for not being anxious enough about her wounded lover. Had it been Cyril thus returning, what agonies of hope and fear would have rent her breast! But it was only Kenrick, the man she had promised, out of simple gratitude and esteem, to marry. Her feeling about him, as the hour of their meeting drew nigh, was an ever-increasing dread.

The day came for the arrival of the steamer. The weather had been favourable, late as it was in the year, and the boat came into the docks on the very day she was expected. Mrs. Dulcimer and Beatrix had been walking on the platform for an hour in the afternoon, when the Vicar came bustling up to them.

‘The steamer is just coming in,’ he cried, and they were all hurried off to the docks.

There were a great many people, a crowd of anxious faces all looking towards the open water across which the big steamer was cleaving her steady way.

Who was that on the high bridge beside the captain, looking shoreward through a glass?

‘Kenrick,’ exclaimed Mr. and Mrs. Dulcimer simultaneously.

Beatrix saw nothing. The docks and the people, the blue bright water outside, the muddy green water inside, the big gaily painted steamer, swam before her eyes. He was coming. He was coming to claim the fulfilment of her promise. That weak moment in which she had yielded to an impulse of grateful feeling now meant life-long misery.

A few minutes more and he was standing by her side, her hand clasped in his, Mr. Dulcimer giving him hearty welcome, Mrs. Dulcimer in tears, Beatrix dumb as a statue.

‘Oh, my poor dear Kenrick,’ cried the Vicar’s wife when she could find a voice. ‘How changed you are—how fearfully changed!’

‘I’ve been very ill,’ he answered, quietly. ‘I didn’t want to frighten you all, so I made rather light of it in my letter. But I’ve had a narrow escape. However, here I am, and I don’t mean to knock under now.’

The change was startling. The elegant and aristocratic-looking young man, whom they had parted from less than a year ago, was transformed into a feeble invalid, whose shoulders were bent with weakness, and across whose cadaverous cheek there appeared the deep cicatrice of a sabre wound. There was nothing absolutely repulsive in Kenrick’s aspect, but there was enough to make love itself falter.

They got him into a fly and drove off to the Dolphin, while Mr. Dulcimer stayed behind to look after the luggage.

‘Beatrix,’ said Kenrick, when they were seated opposite each other in the fly, ‘I have not heard your voice yet, and it is your voice that I have been hearing in my dreams every night on board the steamer.’

‘I am very sorry to see you looking so ill,’ she answered, gently.

‘My boot maker or my tailor would say as much as that. Tell me you are glad to see me—me—even the poor wreck I am.’

There are pardonable hypocrisies in this life. Beatrix’s eyes brimmed over with tears. She was deeply sorry for him, sorry that she could find no love for him in her heart, only infinite pity.

‘I am very glad you are safe at home,’ she said, ‘we have all been anxious about you.’

A poor welcome for a man who had lived through six months’ hard fighting with brown Buddhist soldiers, for the sake of this moment. But he could not upbraid his betrothed for unkindness just now. Mrs. Dulcimer was there, tearful but loquacious, and he could not open his heart before Mrs. Dulcimer.

After breakfast next morning Kenrick asked Beatrix to go for a walk on the platform with him. They were to drive over to Culverhouse Castle in the afternoon.

It was a dim autumnal morning, the opposite shore veiled in mist, the water a dull gray, everything placid and subdued in colour—a morning that had the calmness and grayness of advancing age—the dull repose which befits man’s closing years.

‘My dearest love, your letters have been all kindness,’ said Kenrick. ‘There has not been much love in them, but I suppose I have no right to complain of that. You did not promise to love me. Your letters have made me happy. But yesterday I confess I was wounded by your reception of me. You were so cold, so silent. I looked in vain for the greeting I had foreshadowed. It seemed that you had come to meet me as a duty, that you wished yourself away. And then I thought perhaps the change in me was too great, that you were horror-struck at seeing so deplorable a wreck. If this was the cause of your silence——’

‘It was not,’ cried Beatrix, eagerly. ‘Pray do not imagine anything of the kind. The change in you makes no difference in me. I am proud to think that you have done your duty, that you have been brave and noble, and have won praise and honour. Do you suppose I do not like you better for that?’

‘If I thought otherwise, Beatrix, if I fancied that you were revolted by my lantern jaws, and this ugly gash across my cheek, I would say at once let all be at an end between us. I would give you back your freedom.’

‘I could not accept it on such terms. There is nothing revolting in your appearance. If there were, if you were maimed and scarred so as to be hardly recognisable, I would remember that you had been wounded in the performance of your duty, and I would honour your wounds. No, Kenrick, believe me that could not make any barrier between us.’

‘Yet there is a barrier.’

She had not the cruelty to answer the cold hard truth. He was ill and weak. He looked at her with eyes that seemed to implore any deception rather than a reality that would crush him. He had loved her and believed in her, when the man she loved had doubted and left her. He was at least entitled to gratitude and regard.

‘I have promised to be your wife, and I am going to keep my promise,’ she said, gravely.

‘Then I am happy. Shall it be soon, dearest?’

‘It shall be when you like after the new year.’

‘And am I to leave the army?’

‘No,’ she answered, quickly. ‘I am proud of your profession. I should be very sorry if for my sake you were to exchange the career of a soldier for the stagnation of a country gentleman’s life.’

‘There would be no stagnation for me at Culverhouse; yet I had much rather remain in the army. But is my profession to separate us? You may not like to go to India.’

‘It will be my duty to go with you.’

‘My love, I have no words to say how happy you have made me. It would have been a grief to give up my profession, but I would have done it without a word, in obedience to your wish.’

‘A wife should have no wish about serious things in opposition to her husband,’ answered Beatrix.

They were at Culverhouse Castle before dusk, and again the village gossips were bobbing to Beatrix, this time with the assurance, derived from Betty Mopson’s direct assertion, that she was to be their Lady Bountiful, the source of comfort and blessing at Christmastide, and in all time of trouble.

They spent a calm and quiet week at the castle. Beatrix liked the gray old buildings, with their quaint mixture of ecclesiastical and domestic uses. First a castle, then an abbey, then a good old Tudor dwelling-house. That was the history of Culverhouse. Kenrick brought out old county chronicles to prove what a big place it had been in its time. How it had belonged to a warrior of the Culverhouse breed in the days of the first crusade; how it had been afterwards surrendered to the Church by a sinning and repenting Culverhouse; and how, after sequestration and malappropriation under the tyrant Harry, it had come back by marriage to the Culverhouses, in a most miraculous way.

‘Your house seems to have always been buttressed by heiresses,’ said Mr. Dulcimer, poring over a musty parchment that Kenrick had produced for his inspection. ‘You have been a very lucky family.’

‘Luckier than we have deserved, I fear,’ answered Kenrick, with a glance at Beatrix.

They all went to Little Yafford at the end of the week, and Kenrick was established at the Vicarage, under strict charge of Rebecca. That worthy woman exercised an awful tyranny over him, feeding him with jellies and soups with as off-hand authority as if he had been a nest of young thrushes, or a turkey in process of fattening for Christmas. He bore it all meekly, for was not Mrs. Dulcimer the best friend he had, since it was she who had first suggested his winning Beatrix?

They were to be married early in the year. Everybody was talking about it already. It would be a much more interesting marriage than Mr. Piper’s second nuptials, though that event had kept the village gossips alive for full six weeks. The tide of popular feeling had turned, and Beatrix now stood high in the estimation of her neighbours. Even Miss Coyle was silent, contenting herself with an occasional shrug of her shoulders, or a significant elevation of her grizzled eyebrows. The slander had died a natural death, it had expired of inanition.

Beatrix and her lover saw each other daily. Madame Leonard was delighted with the wounded soldier, who had fought so well at Pegu. Everybody praised him. Even Beatrix’s manner grew a shade warmer, and she began to feel a calm and sober pleasure in her lover’s company, such a mild regard as she might have given to an elder brother, with whom she had not been brought up.

As Kenrick grew stronger they rode together across the wild bleak moor, and the fierce winds blew health and power into the soldier’s lungs. Kenrick spent some of his evenings at the dull old Water House, in that pretty white panelled sitting-room that had been so long shut up. Madame Leonard petted and pampered him in her cordial little way. Beatrix was kind, and read or played to him according to the humour of the hour. It was a placid, happy life.

CHAPTER V.

MR. SCRATCHELL GOES TO LONDON.

The short days and fireside evenings of December, and the festivities of Christmas, were to Sir Kenrick Culverhouse brief and fleeting as a dream when one awakeneth. He had never been so happy in his life. To ride across the dull brown moorland with Beatrix, looking down upon the smiling village nestling in the hollow of the dark hills; to sit by her side in the lamplight listening while she read or played; these things made the sum of his delight. Life had nothing for him beyond or above them. And thus the weeks slipped by till February, and the 10th of February was to be Sir Kenrick’s wedding day. He had improved wonderfully in health by this time. His bent back had straightened itself. He was able to endure the fatigue of a day’s fishing, in the wintry wind and rain. He was altogether a changed man. Yorkshire breezes had done much for him, but happiness had done more.

‘How he loves you!’ cried Mrs. Dulcimer to Beatrix one day, in a rapture of admiration for her protégée. ‘I never saw a man so devoted.’

‘Do you really think he is so very fond of me?’ asked Beatrix, gravely.

‘My dear, how sad and distressed you look! as if his love were a thing to be sorry about. Yes, I do think and know so. Can you for a moment doubt it?’

‘I have fancied that our marriage was on both sides rather one of convenience than inclination. He can give me the protection of an honourable name, my fortune can free his estate. We like each other very much, and, I hope, esteem each other. But I don’t think there is much love on either side. He makes pretty speeches, of course. That is a compliment to my sex and my fortune. Don’t you remember Mr. Dulcimer telling us that Solon made it a law that heiresses should be treated with particular respect?’

‘I know nothing about Solon,’ exclaimed the Vicar’s wife, getting angry, ‘but I know that poor young man is passionately in love with you. Why, child, he idolizes you. One can see it with half an eye.’

‘Then I am very sorry for him,’ said Beatrix, and there was an earnestness in her tone that startled the easy-tempered Mrs. Dulcimer.

‘Sorry that your affianced husband is devoted to you! My dear Beatrix, you must be going out of your mind.’

‘I sometimes think I am,’ answered Beatrix, in a low voice.

This conversation occurred about a fortnight before the wedding day. It made Mrs. Dulcimer very uncomfortable, but she said no word about it to anybody, not even to her chosen confidante, Rebecca.

Was it possible, poor Mrs. Dulcimer asked herself, that this match, the crowning glory of all her efforts, was going to turn out ill?

Beatrix sent for Mr. Scratchell next day, and received him alone in her morning-room.

‘I suppose you know that Sir Kenrick’s estate is heavily encumbered?’ she said.

‘Yes,’ answered the lawyer, ‘of course that will be considered in the settlements. It will be my care to protect your interests.’

‘Never mind my interests or the settlements, yet awhile. I want to pay off those mortgages before there is any question of settlements.’

‘You pay them off, before you are Sir Kenrick’s wife! My dear Miss Harefield, what an extraordinary notion!’

‘I cannot see that. My money is to release the estate sooner or later. That is an understood thing between Sir Kenrick and me. Why should I not do it before I am his wife? I, Beatrix Harefield, for him as my future husband, am surely able to pay off these mortgages.’

‘As the title deeds are deposited with Sir Kenrick’s bankers, under an engagement to execute a formal deed when requested, anybody can pay off the mortgage,’ answered the lawyer, ‘but there is some hazard in such a proceeding. Suppose Sir Kenrick were to die before your wedding day, or were to offend you. Marriages are sometimes broken off, you know. At the church door even. Then again, suppose you were married without a settlement, and Sir Kenrick were to die without having made a will in your favour. Failing a son of yours, the estate would go to his cousin Cyril. Ah, I see that fact rather startles you,’ said the unconscious lawyer, perceiving that Beatrix paled at the mention of her lost lover’s name.

‘These are serious considerations,’ urged Mr. Scratchell. ‘I should strongly recommend you not to touch those mortgages with your little finger until you have two or three sons of your own. Why should you throw away fifty thousand pounds for Mr. Cyril Culverhouse’s ultimate benefit?’

‘It will be for Sir Kenrick’s benefit as long as he lives.’

‘Yes, but Sir Kenrick may not be a long-lived man. I don’t want to make you unhappy about him, but I don’t think he looks like one. And then there are the fortunes of war. He may be killed in battle. He had a narrow escape last time. It would be absurd for you to risk fifty thousand pounds upon such a life as his.’

‘Absurd or not, I am going to run the risk,’ answered Beatrix, with a firmness that frightened Mr. Scratchell. In a twelvemonth I shall be of age to do what I like with my money, without consulting anybody. You may just as well make yourself agreeable while I am in your power, and let me have my own way.’

Mr. Scratchell hesitated, sorely perplexed. To make himself disagreeable to Beatrix, even in the endeavour to protect her interests, might be fatal. Women are such self-willed, unreasonable creatures, he argued within himself. If he thwarted her in this ridiculous whim, she might resent his conduct all her life. In a year, as she had reminded him, she would be sole mistress of her fortune. She might dismiss him from his agency, which would be simple and unmitigated ruin. He was as dependent upon the Harefield estate for sustenance as a barnacle on a ship’s bottom. In a word he could not afford to offend her.

‘You have another trustee to consult,’ he suggested.

‘Mr. Dulcimer? Oh, I know he will consent.’

‘Because he’s a fool.’

‘No, because he’s a generous-minded man, and would like to see Sir Kenrick’s estate set free.’

‘Humph!’ muttered the lawyer. ‘It’s a foolish business altogether. And pray where is the money to come from?’

‘Have I not stocks or shares, or something that can be turned into money immediately?’

‘Yes, you have a nice little fortune in consols and railway debentures. We might scrape up about thirty thousand that way, perhaps.’

‘Then you can mortgage the Lincolnshire estate for the other twenty thousand.’