‘OH, THINK’ST THOU WE SHALL EVER MEET AGAIN?’
BELLA’S hopes were realized insomuch that her offer to visit his cottagers certainly did bring her more directly in contact with Mr. Culverhouse than she had ever been yet. From that hour Cyril became friendly and confidential—he had found some one besides the Vicar and Mrs. Dulcimer to whom he could talk about his poor parishioners, their wants, their virtues, and their vices. He found Bella full of sympathy. She took up her new work with ardour. She made friends wherever she went. His people were full of her praises. Perhaps, if Cyril’s heart had been free, he might have obliged Mrs. Dulcimer by falling in love with her latest protégée. There was something so nice about Bella Scratchell—a winning softness, a gentle submission to other people, a kittenish sleekness and grace, accompanied with all a petted kitten’s caressing ways.
‘That girl has really a remarkable sweetness of character,’ said Cyril, who, like most young men fresh from the university, fancied he understood mankind.
He praised Isabella warmly to Mrs. Dulcimer, and thereby stimulated that lady’s efforts.
‘How clever it was of you to propose to visit the poor!’ said the Vicar’s wife to Bella, approvingly. ‘Just the very thing to please him.’
‘Oh, dear Mrs. Dulcimer, I hope you don’t think I did it on that account,’ cried Bella, with a shocked look. ‘It is a real pleasure to me to be of some little use. When I see how good you and Mr. Dulcimer are——’
‘Oh, my dear, I’m afraid I don’t go among the poor as much as I ought. Anxious as I am to do good, I don’t get on with them as well as Clement does. I can’t help telling them when I see things going wrong, and trying to set them in the right way. And they resent that. One must look on and smile as if everything was right—dirt—muddle—extravagance—everything. It is too trying for any one with an energetic temper. I’m sure only the other day I said to Maria Bowes—whom I’ve known all my life—“If I were you, Maria, I’d try to have your keeping-room a little neater—and a few flowers in the window—and the hearth always swept up. It would be so much nicer for Bowes when he comes home from his work.” “I dare say I should have it so if I’d three women-servants, and a boy to clean up after them,” she answered, quite impertinently, “and, if my keeping-room wasn’t kitchen and chamber too.” “Do you mean to say that I keep too many servants, Maria?” I said. “No, ma’am,” she answered, “but I mean that gentlefolks can’t tell how difficult poor folks find it to cook a bit of victuals, and keep their children from getting ragged, without fiddle-faddling with cleaning up a place that’s no sooner cleaned than it’s mucked again.”’
‘I can pity her, poor wretch,’ said Bella, ‘for it’s like that with us at home, though we make believe to think ourselves gentlefolks. It’s as much as mother can do to keep things together anyhow; and every Saturday night is a struggle to get the children’s clothes decent for Sunday. Mother and I often sit up till after twelve o’clock, sewing on buttons, and darning stockings.’
‘Ah, what a wife you will make, Bella!’ exclaimed Mrs. Dulcimer, as if a wife’s one duty were the repair of her husband’s garments.
The woods were growing browner, the moorland grayer. The mists of chill November crept up from the valley, and hung upon the hill-side. The river was half hidden under a silvery veil, on those dim November afternoons. An autumnal tranquillity hung over the sombre old Water House. The dahlias and hollyhocks were dead, the chrysanthemums were fading—autumn primroses showed pale in quiet nooks of the garden, and along by the old-fashioned borders stole the welcome odour of late violets.
How often Cyril Culverhouse lingered on the old Roman bridge to look at the house which held the one woman he loved! The entrance tower and a couple of fine old yew trees hid the river walk from him, or he might have seen Beatrix pacing slowly up and down in melancholy solitude.
She had not answered his letter, but he had received a brief note from Mr. Harefield.
‘SIR,—I have delivered your letter to my daughter unread. I hope the next two years will bring her wisdom.
‘Yours obediently,
‘CHRISTIAN HAREFIELD.’
Cyril had questioned Bella Scratchell more than once about her friend, without betraying the warmth of his interest in Beatrix.
‘Yes, she is very dull, poor thing,’ said Bella. ‘I am more sorry for her than I can say. I go there as often as I can, and do what I can to cheer her. But Beatrix was never a cheerful girl, you know, and she gets graver and more silent every day. Miss Scales is quite anxious about her, and wants her to take bark.’
‘I doubt if bark is a cure for an unhappy home,’ said Cyril.
‘No—if you call her home unhappy. But really she has everything a girl could wish. Handsome old rooms to herself—no disorder—no noisy brothers upsetting things. She has her books—and a governess who adores her—a fine old garden beautifully kept—a pony carriage—a horse to ride.’
‘Unfortunately those things won’t make youth happy,’ answered the curate: ‘they might be sufficient for happiness at the end of life; they are not enough for it at the beginning.’
‘I know that life is a very different thing without them,’ sighed Bella.
‘Would you change places with Miss Harefield?’ asked Cyril.
Bella blushed and cast down her eyes.
‘No,’ she said softly.
She meant that she would not barter her hope of Cyril’s love for the advantages of Beatrix Harefield’s position, though she had envied those advantages ever since the childish days in which she first became Miss Harefield’s playfellow.
One afternoon, towards the close of November, Cyril was returning from a tramp across the moor. He had been to a distant village to see the ailing married daughter of one of his parishioners, who had fancied that a visit from the kind curate would do her sick daughter more good than ‘doctor’s stuff.’ It was a clear afternoon, a yellow sunset brightening the western horizon. This long lonely walk had given him much time for thought, and he had been thinking of Beatrix all the way. She was so much in his thoughts that, although he had had no hope of meeting her, it seemed scarcely strange to him when he heard the muffled sound of hoofs upon the short grass, and looking round saw her riding towards him at a fast canter.
What was he to do? He had promised to hold himself aloof from her. He was neither to see nor write to her during the two years of probation. He had made up his mind that she would pass him at that flying pace, that he would see the slim figure—erect in the saddle, firmly seated as an Arab on his loosely held courser—flash by him like a vision of pride and beauty, and be gone. He stood bare-headed to see her pass, expecting to receive no more notice than a bow, or doubtful even whether she would see him, when she pulled her horse almost on his haunches, wheeled round, and met him face to face.
‘How lucky!’ she cried, flushing with delight. ‘I have been dying to see you. I thought I could not be mistaken, when I saw your figure in the distance, and I rode after you.’
She slipped lightly out of the saddle, and stood beside him, bridle in hand, the petted horse rubbing his velvet nose against her shoulder.
‘William is half a mile behind,’ she said. ‘He’s on one of papa’s old hunters. Don’t you hear him?’
A distant noise, like the puffing of a steam-engine, announced the groom’s approach.
‘Cyril,’ cried Beatrix, ‘are you as glad to see me as I am to see you?’
‘It is more than gladness that I feel, dear,’ he answered, clasping her hands and looking earnestly at the expressive face, which had faded to a sickly pallor after the flush of joy, ‘but, my dearest, how ill you are looking, how changed——’
‘Oh, I have been miserable,’ she said, impetuously, ‘simply miserable. I miss you every day in the week, every hour in the day. I did not see you very often, did I? And yet, now that I am forbidden to go to the Vicarage, it seems as if my life had been spent in your society. Oh, you have work to do, you have noble ideas to fill your mind! How can you tell the blankness of a woman’s life, parted from all she loves?’
‘My darling, it is not for life; it is only for a little while.’
‘A little while!’ she cried, impatiently. ‘A day is an age when one is miserable. I wake every morning, oh so early! and see the dreary gray light, and say to myself, “What does it matter? Night and day are alike to me. I shall not see him.” Cyril, why did you write me that cruel letter?’
The groom had ridden up by this time on his roaring hunter, and was standing at a respectful distance, wondering what his young mistress could have to say to the curate, and why she had dismounted in order to say it.
‘My own love, how could I write otherwise? I promised your father that for two years I would respect his desires, that I would counsel you to no act of disobedience till you were old enough to take the full measure of your acts—till time had changed impulse into conviction. How could I have written otherwise than as I did?’
‘You could have said, “Defy your father as I do, laugh to scorn the loss of fortune, as I do. Be my wife. We shall be very poor, perhaps, for the first few years. But Heaven will take care of us as the ravens cared for Elijah.” That is how you ought to have written to me.’
He was sorely tempted by her—tempted to take her to his heart that moment, to rain kisses on the sweet pale face that he had never kissed—to mount her on her lively young bay horse, and steal the groom’s hunter for himself, and ride off to the Scottish border with her, and be married by the unlearned priest of Gretna, who was still plying his profitable trade. Never was man more tempted. But he had given his promise, and meant to keep it.
‘Two years hence, my dearest, please God, I will have a home for you that shall not mean absolute poverty. I cannot break my word, love. We must wait till you are one-and-twenty. It is not a long time.’
‘It would not seem long if my father had been reasonable—if he had not forbidden me to see you, or write to you. Cyril,’ she said, looking at him with sudden intensity, ‘is it a sin to wish for the death of any one?’
‘My dear one, you must know that it is—a deadly sin: “Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer.”’
‘I do not hate my father; but sometimes I find myself thinking of what would happen if he were to die. I should be free—rich. I could give you my fortune—you could lavish it all on acts of charity and beneficence. We would live like poor people. We would devote our lives to doing good. We would show the world how a parish priest and his wife ought to live.’
‘Beatrix, pray continually against wicked thoughts. There could be no deadlier sin than to desire your father’s death. God forbid that you should fall into it! I have never sighed for wealth—nor do I believe that a man’s opportunities of doing good depend upon the length of his purse. For one man who will find will and energy, patience and perseverance, to help his fellow-men, there are a hundred ready to give their money. No, dear love, we can be happy without your father’s wealth. We should be no happier for his death. We have but to be true to each other, and all will be well.’
The groom came up to remind his mistress that the short day was closing, and that the moorland road was dangerous after dark.
‘God bless you, dearest, and good-bye,’ said Cyril.
‘Oh, why are you in such haste to get rid of me?’ she cried, impatiently, in French, the groom standing close by, ready to lift her on to her horse. ‘It may be ages before we meet again. You talked in that cruel letter of leaving Little Yafford. When is that to be?’
‘I have taken no step yet. This place is dear to me. But I shall leave soon after Christmas, if I can do so without inconvenience to the Vicar.’
‘I shall feel just a shade more miserable when you are gone,’ said Beatrix.
She put her slim foot upon William’s broad palm, and sprang lightly into her saddle.
Cyril watched her as she rode slowly down the hill, looking back at him now and then, forlornly, as from the vessel that was carrying her into exile. His heart bled for her, but the idea that she had calculated the possibilities that hung upon her father’s death—that she had even sinned so deeply as to wish him dead—haunted him painfully.
Was there a strain of hardness in this impetuous nature—a flaw in this gem which he had hitherto counted peerless? Well, she was not perfect, perhaps. His creed taught him that there was no soul so pure but on its virgin whiteness showed some dark spot of sin. And she had been hardly treated—held at arm’s length by her father’s coldness. She had been reared in a home unsanctified by affection.
He pleaded for her, and excused her in his own mind, and was full of sorrow for her.
But for him, as she had said, life was full of interest and action. For him two years seemed a little while.