The Hand of Ethelberta Part 50

A little further, and Christopher stopped to enter, when Ethelberta bade him farewell. 'I thought at one time that our futures might have been different from what they are apparently becoming,' he said then, regarding her as a stall-reader regards the brilliant book he cannot afford to buy. 'But one gets weary of repining about that. I wish Picotee and yourself could see us oftener; I am as confirmed a bachelor now as Faith is an old maid. I wonder if--should the event you contemplate occur--you and he will ever visit us, or we shall ever visit you!'

Christopher was evidently imagining the elderly gentleman to be some retired farmer, or professional man already so intermixed with the metamorphic cla.s.ses of society as not to be surprised or inconvenienced by her beginnings; one who wished to secure Ethelberta as an ornament to his parlour fire in a quiet spirit, and in no intoxicated mood regardless of issues. She could scarcely reply to his supposition; and the parting was what might have been predicted from a conversation so carefully controlled.

Ethelberta, as she had intended, now went on further, and entering the nave began to inspect the sallow monuments which lined the grizzled pile.

She did not perceive amid the shadows an old gentleman who had crept into the mouldy place as stealthily as a worm into a skull, and was keeping himself carefully beyond her observation. She continued to regard feature after feature till the choristers had filed in from the south side, and peals broke forth from the organ on the black oaken ma.s.s at the junction of nave and choir, shaking every cobweb in the dusky vaults, and Ethelberta's heart no less. She knew the fingers that were pressing out those rolling sounds, and knowing them, became absorbed in tracing their progress. To go towards the organ-loft was an act of unconsciousness, and she did not pause till she stood almost beneath it.

Ethelberta was awakened from vague imaginings by the close approach of the old gentleman alluded to, who spoke with a great deal of agitation.

'I have been trying to meet with you,' said Lord Mountclere. 'Come, let us be friends again!--Ethelberta, I MUST not lose you! You cannot mean that the engagement shall be broken off?' He was far too desirous to possess her at any price now to run a second risk of exasperating her, and forbore to make any allusion to the recent pantomime between herself and Christopher that he had beheld, though it might reasonably have filled him with dread and petulance.

'I do not mean anything beyond this,' said she, 'that I entirely withdraw from it on the faintest sign that you have not abandoned such miserable jealous proceedings as those you adopted to-day.'

'I have quite abandoned them. Will you come a little further this way, and walk in the aisle? You do still agree to be mine?'

'If it gives you any pleasure, I do.'

'Yes, yes. I implore that the marriage may be soon--very soon.' The viscount spoke hastily, for the notes of the organ which were plunging into their ears ever and anon from the hands of his young rival seemed inconveniently and solemnly in the way of his suit.

'Well, Lord Mountclere?'

'Say in a few days?--it is the only thing that will satisfy me.'

'I am absolutely indifferent as to the day. If it pleases you to have it early I am willing.'

'Dare I ask that it may be this week?' said the delighted old man.

'I could not say that.'

'But you can name the earliest day?'

'I cannot now. We had better be going from here, I think.'

The Cathedral was filling with shadows, and cold breathings came round the piers, for it was November, when night very soon succeeds noon in spots where noon is sobered to the pallor of eve. But the service was not yet over, and before quite leaving the building Ethelberta cast one other glance towards the organ and thought of him behind it. At this moment her attention was arrested by the form of her sister Picotee, who came in at the north door, closed the lobby-wicket softly, and went lightly forward to the choir. When within a few yards of it she paused by a pillar, and lingered there looking up at the organ as Ethelberta had done. No sound was coming from the ponderous ma.s.s of tubes just then; but in a short s.p.a.ce a whole crowd of tones spread from the instrument to accompany the words of a response. Picotee started at the burst of music as if taken in a dishonest action, and moved on in a manner intended to efface the lover's loiter of the preceding moments from her own consciousness no less than from other people's eyes.

'Do you see that?' said Ethelberta. 'That little figure is my dearest sister. Could you but ensure a marriage between her and him she listens to, I would do anything you wis.h.!.+'

'That is indeed a gracious promise,' said Lord Mountclere. 'And would you agree to what I asked just now?'

'Yes.'

'When?' A gleeful spark accompanied this.

'As you requested.'

'This week? The day after to-morrow?'

'If you will. But remember what lies on your side of the contract. I fancy I have given you a task beyond your powers.'

'Well, darling, we are at one at last,' said Lord Mountclere, rubbing his hand against his side. 'And if my task is heavy and I cannot guarantee the result, I can make it very probable. Marry me on Friday--the day after to-morrow--and I will do all that money and influence can effect to bring about their union.'

'You solemnly promise? You will never cease to give me all the aid in your power until the thing is done?'

'I do solemnly promise--on the conditions named.'

'Very good. You will have ensured my fulfilment of my promise before I can ensure yours; but I take your word.'

'You will marry me on Friday! Give me your hand upon it.'

She gave him her hand.

'Is it a covenant?' he asked.

'It is,' said she.

Lord Mountclere warmed from surface to centre as if he had drunk of hippocras, and, after holding her hand for some moments, raised it gently to his lips.

'Two days and you are mine,' he said.

'That I believe I never shall be.'

'Never shall be? Why, darling?'

'I don't know. Some catastrophe will prevent it. I shall be dead perhaps.'

'You distress me. Ah,--you meant me--you meant that I should be dead, because you think I am old! But that is a mistake--I am not very old!'

'I thought only of myself--nothing of you.'

'Yes, I know. Dearest, it is dismal and chilling here--let us go.'

Ethelberta mechanically moved with him, and felt there was no retreating now. In the meantime the young ladykin whom the solemn vowing concerned had lingered round the choir screen, as if fearing to enter, yet loth to go away. The service terminated, the heavy books were closed, doors were opened, and the feet of the few persons who had attended evensong began pattering down the paved alleys. Not wis.h.i.+ng Picotee to know that the object of her secret excursion had been discovered, Ethelberta now stepped out of the west doorway with the viscount before Picotee had emerged from the other; and they walked along the path together until she overtook them.

'I fear it becomes necessary for me to stay in Melchester to-night,' said Lord Mountclere. 'I have a few matters to attend to here, as the result of our arrangements. But I will first accompany you as far as Anglebury, and see you safely into a carriage there that shall take you home. To- morrow I will drive to Knollsea, when we will make the final preparations.'

Ethelberta would not have him go so far and back again, merely to attend upon her; hence they parted at the railway, with due and correct tenderness; and when the train had gone, Lord Mountclere returned into the town on the special business he had mentioned, for which there remained only the present evening and the following morning, if he were to call upon her in the afternoon of the next day--the day before the wedding--now so recklessly hastened on his part, and so coolly a.s.sented to on hers.

By the time that the two young people had started it was nearly dark.

Some portions of the railway stretched through little copses and plantations where, the leaf-shedding season being now at its height, red and golden patches of fallen foliage lay on either side of the rails; and as the travellers pa.s.sed, all these death-stricken bodies boiled up in the whirlwind created by the velocity, and were sent flying right and left of them in myriads, a clean-fanned track being left behind.

Picotee was called from the observation of these phenomena by a remark from her sister: 'Picotee, the marriage is to be very early indeed. It is to be the day after to-morrow--if it can. Nevertheless I don't believe in the fact--I cannot.'

'Did you arrange it so? n.o.body can make you marry so soon.'

'I agreed to the day,' murmured Ethelberta languidly.

'How can it be? The gay dresses and the preparations and the people--how can they be collected in the time, Berta? And so much more of that will be required for a lord of the land than for a common man. O, I can't think it possible for a sister of mine to marry a lord!'

'And yet it has been possible any time this last month or two, strange as it seems to you. . . . It is to be not only a plain and simple wedding, without any lofty appliances, but a secret one--as secret as if I were some under-age heiress to an Indian fortune, and he a young man of nothing a year.'