“You won’t care one iota for me now you’ve a husband,” murmured Celia.
“You know better, you silly girl. My marriage will not make the slightest difference in my feelings.”
“Oh, but it always does,” said Celia, with an experienced air. “When a man marries the friends of his bachelor days go to the wall; everybody knows that; and it’s just the same thing with a girl. I expect to find myself nowhere.”
Laura declared she would always be true to friendship, and thus they parted, Celia running home by herself, with all her wedding finery smothered under a waterproof Ulster. The rain had ceased by this time, and there was the red gleam of a wintry sunset in the west.
The hall-door shut with a clang that echoed in the silence of the house, and Laura went slowly back to the drawing-room, wondering a little to find herself alone in the gloom of twilight on her wedding day. It was altogether so different from the ordinary idea of a wedding—this delayed departure, this uncomfortable interval between the festivity of the wedding breakfast and the excitement of the wedding journey.
She found the drawing-room empty. She had left John Treverton there with Mr. Sampson half an hour ago, when she went upstairs to assist in packing Celia in the waterproof, and now both were gone. The spacious room, splendid with an old-fashioned splendour, was lighted only by the fading wood fire. The white panelled walls and antique mirrors had a ghostly look; the shadowy corners were too awful to contemplate.
“Perhaps I shall find him in the study,” Laura said to herself. “It is kettledrum time.”
She laughed softly to herself. How new, how strange it would be to sit down tête à tête at the oval tea-table, man and wife, settled in domesticity for life, no further doubt of each other or of their fate possible to either—the bargain made, the bond sealed, the pledge given, that could be broken only by death.
She went slowly through the silence of the house to the room at the end of the corridor, the little book-room opening into the flower garden. She opened the door softly, meaning to steal in and surprise her husband in some pleasant reverie, but on the threshold she stopped appalled, struck dumb.
He was sitting in an attitude of deepest dejection, his forehead resting on his folded arms, his face hidden. Sobs, such as but seldom come from the agonised heart of a strong man, were tearing the heart of John Treverton. He had given himself up, body and soul, to the passion of an unconquerable despair.
Laura ran to him, bent over him, drew her arm gently round his neck.
“Dearest, what is amiss?” she asked, tenderly, with trembling lips. “Such grief, and on such a day as this! Something dreadful must have happened. Oh, tell me, love, tell me.”
“I can tell you nothing,” he answered, hoarsely, putting her arm away as he spoke. “Leave me, Laura. If you pity me, leave me to fight my battle alone. It is the only kindness you can show me.”
“Leave you, and in such grief as this! No, John, I have a right to share your sorrow. I will not go till you have confided in me. Trust me, love, trust me. Whom can you trust, if not your wife?”
“You don’t know,” he gasped, almost angrily. “There are griefs you cannot share—a depth of torture you can never fathom. God forbid that your pure young soul should ever descend into that black gulf. Laura, if you love, if you pity me—and indeed, dear love, I need all your pity—leave me now for a little while; leave me to finish my struggle alone. It is a struggle, Laura, the fiercest this weak soul of mine has ever passed through. Come back in an hour, dear, and then—you will know—I can explain—some part, at least, of this mystery. In an hour, in an hour,” he repeated, with increasing agitation, pointing with a wavering hand to the door.
Laura stood for a moment or so, irresolute, deeply moved, her womanly dignity, her pride as a wife, hurt to the quick. Then, with a smile, half sad, half bitter, she softly quoted the gentle speech of Shakespeare’s gentlest heroine:—
“Shall I deny you? No: Farewell, my lord.
Whate’er you be, I am obedient.”
And with those words she left him, full of painful wonder.
If she could have seen the agonised look he turned upon her as she left him; if she could have seen him start and shiver as the door closed upon her, and rise and rush to the door, and kneel down and press his lips upon the insensible panel her hand had touched, and beat his forehead against the dull wood in a paroxysm of despair, she might have better estimated the strength of his love and the bitterness of his grief.
She went to her own room, and sat wondering helplessly at this trouble and mystery that had come down like a sudden storm-cloud upon the brightness of her new life. What did it mean? Had all his professions of love been false? Had he bound himself to her for the sake of his cousin’s fortune, despite all his protestations to the contrary? Did he love someone else? Was there some older, dearer tie that made this bond of today intolerable to him? Whatever the cause of his repentance it was clear to Laura’s mind that her husband of a few hours bitterly repented his marriage.
