CHAPTER XIII.
THE WEDDING-DAY.
IT was not a pleasant day in Grosvenor Square. When the Duke arrived in his cab the door was opened to him by the humble person who had care of the house while the family were out of town,—an old servant, to whom this charge was a sort of pensioning off. She was very much fluttered, and informed him in an undertone that Lady Jane had arrived a few minutes before “with a gentleman.” “Her ladyship is in the library, your Grace, and the gentleman with her,” the old woman said, curtseying and trembling—for though Lady Jane’s garb was very simple for a bride, still it was a white dress, and in the middle of winter it is well known that ladies do not go about their ordinary business in such garments. The Duke considered a moment and then decided that he would not see his daughter till her companion was gone. He was tremulous with rage and discomfiture, yet with the sense that vengeance was in his hands. This feeling made him conclude that it was more wise not to see Winton, not to run the risk of losing his temper or betraying his intentions, but to remain on the watch till he withdrew, and in the meantime to arrange his own plans. He told the old housekeeper to let him know when the gentleman was gone, and in the meantime hurried up-stairs to his daughter’s room, and examined it carefully. Lady Jane had two rooms appropriated to her use, with a third communicating with them in which her maid slept. This was a large area to put under lock and key, which was her father’s determination: but in the ferment of his excited mind and temper he felt no derogation in the half-stealthy examination he made of the shut-up rooms, their windows and means of communication, the locks on the door, and all the arrangements that would be necessary to shut them off entirely from the rest of the house. With his own hands he removed the keys, locking all the doors but one, and leaving the key on the outside of that to shut off all entrance to the prison.
While he was thus occupied the pair so strangely severed stood together in the library waiting for his appearance, and getting a certain bitter sweetness out of the last hour they were to spend together. They were not aware that it was, in any serious sense of the words, their last hour. “Till to-morrow” was the limit they gave themselves. To-morrow no further interruption would be possible, the incomplete service would be resumed, and all would be well. Even the Duke, unreasonable as he might be, would not think it practicable, when in his sober senses, to endeavour to sunder those who had been almost put together in the presence of God. They believed, notwithstanding the tantalising misery of this interruption, that it could not be but for a few hours; and though Winton’s impatience and indignation were at first almost frenzy, Lady Jane recovered her courage before they reached the house, and did her best to soothe him. She drew good even out of the evil. To-morrow all would be completed in her father’s presence. When once convinced that matters had gone too far to be arrested, how could he refuse to lend his sanction to what must be, whether with his sanction or not? She pleased herself with this solution of all their difficulties. “My mother will come, I am sure,” she said, “as soon as the train can bring her. I shall have her with me, which will be far, far better than Lady Germaine, and there will be no further need of concealment, which is odious, is it not, Reginald? There is a soul of goodness in things evil,” she said. As for Winton, he was past speaking: the disappointment, and those passions that rage in the male bosom, were too much for him—fury and indignation, and pride in arms, and the sense of defeat, which was intolerable. But he permitted himself to be subdued, to yield to her who had put so much force upon herself, and conquered so many natural repugnances and womanly traditions for him. Lady Jane would not even let it appear that she felt the shame of being thus dragged back to her father’s house. “To-morrow,” she said, “to-morrow,” with a thousand tender smiles. When it became apparent that the Duke did not mean to make an appearance, she turned that to their advantage with soothing sophistry. “He has nothing to say now,” she cried, “don’t you see, Reginald? You cannot expect him to come and offer us his consent; if he withdraws his opposition, that is all we can desire. Had he meant to persevere, he would have come to us at once, and ordered you away, and made another struggle. That is what I have been fearing. And now in return for his forbearance you must go. Oh, do you think I wish you to go? but it is best, it will be most honourable. What could be done in the circumstances but that you should bring me home? Yes, till your house is mine this is still home—till to-morrow,” she cried, smiling upon him. Winton paced up and down the gloomy closed-up room in an agony of uncertainty, bewilderment, and dismay.
“My home is yours!” he cried; “and what sort of place is this to bring you to, my darling, without a soul to take care of you or look after your comfort, without a fire even, or a servant:—on this day! It is intolerable! And how, how can I go and leave you, on our wedding-day? It is more than flesh and blood can bear. Jane, I have a foreboding; I can’t be hopeful like you. If you submitted to the force of circumstances in that wretched church, there is no force of any kind here. Don’t send me away; come with me, my love, my dearest. The way is clear, there is nothing but that old woman——”
“There is our honour,” said Lady Jane. “I pledged it to my father. And if I went with you, it would only be to separate again. Surely I am better at home than at Lady Germaine’s:—till to-morrow—till to-morrow,” she repeated softly. The library was next the door, it was close to the open street, the free air out-of-doors. The temptation, though she rejected it, was great upon Lady Jane too. There was a moment in which, though she did not allow it, she wavered. The next moment, with more fortitude than ever, she recovered the mastery of herself. It was she at last who, tenderly persuading and beseeching, induced him to go away. She went to the door with him and almost put him out with loving force. “You will come back for me to-morrow—to-morrow! it is not long till to-morrow,” she said, waving her hand to her distracted bridegroom as he hurried away. It was well that there was nobody in town—nobody in Grosvenor Square—except a passing milk-boy, to see the Duke’s daughter standing in the doorway like the simplest maiden, in her white dress, a wonderful vision for a murky London day, taking farewell of her love. She closed the door after him with her own hand, while poor old Mrs Brown, in such a flutter as she had never before experienced in her life, came bobbing out from the corner in which she had been keeping watch. “Oh, my lady! my lady!” the old woman said. She had scarcely been high enough up in the hierarchy of service below-stairs to have come to speech of Lady Jane at all, and now to think that she was all the attendance possible for that princess royal! Lady Jane, it may be supposed, was in no light-hearted mood, but she stopped with a smile to reassure the old servant.
“Nurse Mordaunt is with me,” she said; “she will, no doubt, be here directly, Mrs Brown. You must not vex yourself about me. It will only be till to-morrow. If you will have a fire lighted in my room, I will go there.
“Yes, my lady; oh, my lady! but I’m afraid there’s some sad trouble,” said the old housekeeper.
Lady Jane was far too high-bred to reject this sympathy, but it was almost more than in her valour she could bear. Her eyes filled in spite of herself. “It is only an extraordinary accident,” she said. “But Mordaunt will tell you when she comes.” She was glad to escape into the library that she might not break down. Turning round to re-enter alone that huge, cold, uninhabited place, her mind was seized with a spasm of terror. The blinds were drawn down, the fireplace was cold, it was like a room out of which the dead had been newly carried, not a place to receive a woman in the most living moment of life—on her wedding-day! She had borne herself very bravely as long as her lover was there—almost too bravely, trying to make him believe that it was nothing, that she had scarcely any feeling on the subject. But when she saw him go, the clouds and darkness closed in upon Lady Jane, her lips quivered sadly as she spoke to Mrs Brown. When she was alone, her swelling heart and throbbing forehead were relieved by a sudden passion of tears. Would it be nothing as she had made believe? or was it a parting, an ending, a severance from Reginald and hope? A black moment passed over her—blacker than anything that Winton felt, as, distracted and furious, burning with intentions of vengeance, and a sense of injury in which there was some relief from the misery of the situation, he hurried along towards the Germaines’ house. There, at least, he could plan and arrange, and talk out his fury and wretchedness. But Lady Jane had no such solace. When she had yielded to that bitter accès of tears, and felt herself pass under the cloud, she had to gather herself together again all unaided, and recover her composure as best she could. That sensation of overwhelming cold which so often accompanies a mental crisis made her shiver. She drew her cloak closely round her, and went slowly up-stairs through the hollow silence of the great house, pausing now and then to take breath in her nervous exhaustion, and looking anxiously for the appearance of her father. Did he not mean to come to her at all? Lady Jane had no idea that she was going with all those hesitations and pauses straight into a prison. Such a thought had never occurred to her. She believed still in reason and loving-kindness and truth. Her father, when he saw it impossible, would after all yield, she thought. Her mother would come to succour her in this extraordinary emergency. “There is a soul of goodness in things evil,” she murmured again to herself, but not so bravely as she had said it to her lover. The house was so cold, such an echoing solitude, no living thing visible, and she alone in it, left to wear through the weary hours as she could—on her wedding-day!
Thus with tired and lingering steps, and despondency taking possession of her soul, Lady Jane went softly up-stairs, longing to divest herself of her wedding-gown and hide her humiliation, looking vainly for her father, whose appearance in this wilderness, even if it were only to upbraid and denounce her, would still have had a certain consolation in it. The Duke, unseen, watched her progress with a vindictive pleasure in the downcast air and slow, languid step. He watched her to her very door with an eagerness not to be described. At the last moment she might turn round, she might still leave the house, she might escape. In no case could he have used violence to his daughter. To level thunderbolts of speech was one thing, to use force was quite another. To lift his hand was impossible. If she turned round and fled down the stairs and out at the door, she must do so: there was no way in which he could stop her: if any third person were present, even Mrs Brown, he would be obliged to keep a watch upon himself, to demand no more obedience than she would give, to treat her as a reasonable being. All this the Duke felt, spying upon her steps as she went slowly up, following her, his footsteps falling noiselessly on the thick carpets. He heard her sigh, but this made no difference. To any one else this sigh of the widowed bride, alone in this dismal empty house on the day that was to have been, that almost was, her wedding-day, would have contained something touching. But it did not touch the Duke. He followed at a distance, keeping out of sight, determined to give her no opportunity to appeal to him. When he heard her door close, a certain glow of satisfaction came over his face. He went forward quickly, and turned the key in the lock and put it in his pocket. He heard her moving about in the room, and he could hear that she stopped short at the noise and stood listening to know what it was. But all was quiet again, and Lady Jane suspected nothing. She had begun to look in her wardrobe for something to put on instead of her white dress. She thought it was some jar of one of the doors as she opened them. And he stole down-stairs again, unnoticed and unobserved. Who was there to notice him? no one in the house, except his daughter locked into the room, and Mrs Brown with her little niece down-stairs. The Duke withdrew into the library, where he had sat and pondered for many a day, but never as now. The old housekeeper had bestirred herself and had lighted a fire and set out a table with two places for luncheon. She at least could do her duty if no one else did. Mrs Brown, indeed, felt as a neglected general has often done when the moment arrived in which he could distinguish himself. She had never had this opportunity. Now, at last, in the end of her life it had come to her. His Grace, who was so particular, should for once in his life know what it was to eat a chop, an English chop, in its perfection. She had sent out her handmaiden to fetch them, and lit the fire herself in her devotion. This is an extent of enthusiasm to which few people would go. And Lady Jane, sweet creature, who was evidently in trouble somehow with her papa, who had sent that nice young gentleman off as fast as ever she could, that the Duke and he might not meet, poor thing! what would be so good for her as a chop? The old housekeeper betook herself to her work with the warmest sense at once of benevolence and of power—power to ameliorate and soften the hardness of destiny, and to win fame and honour to herself. What enterprise could have a finer motive? Of the three people in the house, she was the happy one, as happens not unfrequently among all the twists and entanglements of fate.
Before, however, Mrs Brown had begun to cook her chops, Nurse Mordaunt, Lady Jane’s devoted attendant since her childhood, arrived in much anxiety and distress. Nurse had been detained by various matters, by Lady Germaine, and by the delay in getting her ladyship’s things, which had been left that morning at Lady Germaine’s house. With a heavy heart nurse had effaced the direction of Lady Jane Winton from the box. She had never herself approved of such a marriage any more than the Duke did. It injured her pride sadly to think of “My Lady” marrying a commoner at all, and marrying him secretly at a poky little church in the city! But that she should be married and not married, half a wife, “dragged from the altar,” was something which no one could contemplate with calmness. Nurse was more shamed, distracted, broken-hearted than any of the party. “Oh, don’t ask me,” she answered, shaking her head, when Mrs Brown humbly, with every respect, begged to know what had happened. “It is as bad as a revolution—it’s worse than the Chartists; even Radicals respect the marriage vow,” nurse cried in her dismay. “I don’t approve of it, and never did, and never will. Up to the church door I’d have done anything to stop it. But bless us! if you don’t keep the altar sacred, what have you got to trust to?” She caused the boxes to be brought into the hall with their erased addresses. There was nobody to carry them anywhere,—none of the attendance about to which Mrs Mordaunt was accustomed. “Fetch one of the men,” she had said at first, but then she remembered there was no man in Grosvenor Square at this time of the year. “Drat it! as if things were not bad enough already; no servants, no comfort, nobody but Mrs Brown to look to everything!” Mrs Mordaunt was too much broken down to go to her young lady at once. She condescended to go into the kitchen, where it was at least warm, to eat one of the chops and to rest a little before she went up-stairs. And her arrival was scarcely over before it was followed by another more urgent and important. The old housekeeper almost fainted when, opening the door in answer to the impatient summons of another arrival, she saw the Duchess herself get out of a hackney-cab. “Bless us!” the old woman cried; if the Queen had come next she could not have been more surprised.
The Duchess, it need not be said, was in the secret of all those arrangements which were to make Lady Jane into Reginald Winton’s wife. She had a cold that day, partly real, partly no doubt emotional, but enough to make her keep her room in the morning, leaving her guests to the care of her sister, who was at Billings on a visit. She got up, as may be supposed, with a great deal of agitation from her broken rest, thinking of her Jane, how she would be preparing for her marriage, with nobody but Lady Germaine to comfort and support her. Lady Germaine was very kind: she had taken charge of the whole business; she and her husband had gone to town on purpose to facilitate everything; but still it was dreadful to the Duchess to think that her child should have no one but Lady Germaine to lean upon at such a moment of her life. In her own room, in the stillness of the morning, the thoughts of the mother were bent upon this subject, which she went over and over, thinking of everything. She figured to herself how her child would wake, and realise what a fateful morning it was, and wish for her mother. How she would say her prayers with all the fervour of such a crisis, and linger upon the contemplation of the past, and the sweet but awful thought of the future. Though her husband and his reign were so near, Jane would think of her home, of the parents who loved her, and shed some tears to think that the most momentous act of her life was taking place away from them, in opposition to one of them. The Duchess, who was very much overcome, at once by what she knew and what she did not know, by imagination and by fact, shed more tears herself at this point, and she had to dry them hastily to look up with an unconcerned face when her maid came into the room bringing a piece of news which in a moment startled her into activity and alarm. The Duke had gone suddenly off to town by the early train. After he had read his letters he had seemed agitated, but said nothing to Bowles (who was his Grace’s valet) except that business called him to town. And he had been gone an hour when the news was brought to his wife. The reader may suppose how short a time elapsed before the anxious mother followed him. She went out quietly in a close carriage, nobody knowing, and got the next train, arriving in London two hours later than that by which her husband had travelled. He was sitting down with a little shrug of his shoulders, but not without appetite, to Mrs Brown’s chops, when she drove up to the door, and suddenly came in upon him, pale and full of anguish. Her eye ran round the room questioning before she said a word:—then she loosened her cloak and sat down upon the nearest seat with a sigh of relief.
“What have you done with Jane?” she was about to say: but then it appeared to her that Jane must have escaped, that everything was accomplished. She could have wept or laughed in the extreme blessedness of this relief, but she dared not do either. She looked at him instead, as he sat looking suspiciously at her. “It made me very anxious to hear of your going,” she said. “I feared something might be wrong. I am going back directly, and nobody knows I am out of my room: but I felt that I must hear——”
“What?” he asked with watchful suspicion; it was a terrible ordeal to go through. The Duchess did all a woman could to take the meaning out of her own face and put upon it an aspect of affectionate concern alone. “I did not know what to think,” she said; “I was very anxious: but it cannot be anything very bad, I hope, since I find you——” How hard it is to say what is not the truth! While she uttered these commonplace words her eyes were watching him, keenly questioning everything about him. At last her heart seemed to stand still. She perceived the two covers laid on the table. “You have some one with you,” she said, with a catching of her breath.
He looked at her still more keenly. “I have Jane with me,” he said.
“Jane!” It was all her mother could do not to break down altogether, and show her anguish and disappointment in passionate tears; but her heart was leaping in her throat, and she could not speak.
“That is to say,” he added slowly, with unspeakable enjoyment in the sense of having got the better of the women altogether, and holding them in his hand, “she is in the house. I arrived in time to save her from becoming the victim—of a villain. I shall keep her safe now I have got her,” the Duke said, with an ineffable flourish of his hand.
“The victim—of a villain? What do you mean by such words? They sound as if you had got them out of a novel,” the Duchess said; but her heart was beating so that she could scarcely hear herself speak.
“Then you knew nothing about it?” said her husband calmly.
The Duchess got up from her seat. She was too much agitated to be able to keep still. “I knew, if that is what you mean, that she was to marry—the man she loved—to-day. What have you done? Have you parted your own child from her happiness and her life?”
He rose too. He had kept up his calm demeanour as long as he could. Now his rage got the better of him. “So you were in the plot!” he cried, “you! I felt it, and yet I could not believe it. You who ought to have been the first to carry out my will and respect my decision.”
“Augustus,” said his wife, very pale, standing up before him, her hand upon the back of a tall chair, her head erect, “this must not go too far. Jane has not one but two parents, and she has always had her mother’s sanction. You are aware of that.”
“Her mother’s sanction!” cried the Duke, with a tremendous laugh of passion. “That is a mighty advantage, truly. Her mother! what has her mother to do with it? Nothing! These are pretty heroics, and do very nicely to say to the ignorant; but you know very well that, save as my agent, you have no more to do with Jane or her marriage—no more——”
“It may be so in law,” said the Duchess, recovering her composure, “but it is certainly not so in nature; nor have I ever considered myself your agent, in respect to my child. I have yielded to you in a hundred ways—and so much the worse for you that I have done so; but, as regards Jane, I have never thought it my duty to yield—and never will; such a suggestion is intolerable,” she said, with a touch of feminine passion. “My right and my authority are the same as yours—neither of them absolute—for she is old enough to judge for herself.”
“Ah, poor girl!” he said, with a knowledge that it was the most irritating thing he could say, and at the same time a coarse sort of pleasure in insulting the women, though they were so near to him; “that is at the bottom of everything. You made her believe it was her last chance. She was determined anyhow to have a husband.”
The Duchess grew scarlet, but she was sufficiently enlightened by experience to restrain the angry reply that almost forced its way from her lips. She looked at him with a silent indignation not unmingled with pity, then turned her head away. Poor Mrs Brown! Her chops, that had been so good, so hot, stood neglected on the table. Her opportunity was over. It was no fault of hers that she had not distinguished herself. So many another disappointed genius has done its best, and some accident has stepped in and balked its highest effort. Had the Duchess delayed but half an hour, his Grace, after so much French cookery, would have experienced the wholesome pleasure of at least one British chop, and probably in consequence would have promoted Mrs Brown to a post near his person. But it was not to be. There was no luncheon eaten that day in Grosvenor Square. The discussion was prolonged for some time, and then the Duchess was heard to go hastily up-stairs. She went to her daughter’s room with tears of hot passion in her eyes and an intolerable pang in her heart, and knocking softly, called to Jane with a voice which she could scarcely keep from breaking. “My darling!” she cried, “my sweet, my own girl!” with something heartrending in her accents. All had been still before; but now there was a stir in reply.
“Oh, mother dear, come in, come in! How I have longed for you!” Lady Jane cried; and then there was a little pause of expectation, breathless with a strange suspicion on one side, and such miserable humiliation and anguish on the other, as can scarcely be put into words.
“I cannot come in, my dear love. Oh, my darling, you must be patient. I must go back directly to all those people in the house. You know it would never do——” Here the Duchess, unable to keep up the farce, began all at once to cry and sob piteously outside the door.
Lady Jane, fully roused, hurried to it and turned the handle vainly, and shook the heavy door. “I cannot open it,” she cried wildly. “Mother, mother! what does this mean? Cannot you come in? What can take you away from me when I want you—the people in the house? Oh, mother, I want you, I want you!” she cried as she had never done in her life before. And then there was such a scene as might be put into a comedy and made very ridiculous, and which yet was very heartrending as it happened, and overpowered these two women with a consternation, a sense of helplessness, a bitter perception of the small account they were of, which paralysed their very souls—not only that he had the power to do it, but also the heart: he with whom they had lived in the closest ties, whom they had loved and served, for whom they had been ready to do all that he pleased, one for the greater part of her life, the other since ever she had been born. What did it matter, any one would have said, the power such a man had over his wife and his daughter? He would never use it to make them unhappy. But there are capabilities of human misery in families which no one can fathom, which may seem to make it doubtful by moments how far the family relation is so blessed as it is thought to be. The Duke felt that now, for the first time, he had these women under his thumb, so to speak. He had them so bound that they could not resist, could not move, could not even call for help from any one without betraying the secrets of the family. He kept possession of his library, and, with the key in his pocket, had a moment of triumph. They had united against him; but now they should feel his power.