XX
The Church Near Camelot
Celia opened her eyes to their widest extent a fortnight later when Mrs. Treverton informed her that she was going to meet her husband, and that, after a few weeks’ holiday, they were coming home together for good.
“For good,” repeated Celia, drily, after which her eyes slowly resumed their normal state, and her lips drew themselves tightly together. “I am glad to hear that your existence as a married woman is about to assume a reasonable shape. Up to this time you have been as insoluble a mystery as that horrid creature, the man in the iron mask; and, pray, may I be permitted to ask, without being considered offensive, where you are to meet the returning wanderer?”
“At Plymouth,” said Laura, who had received minute instructions from John as to what she was to say.
“Why blush at the mention of Plymouth,” asked Celia. “There is nothing improper in the name of Plymouth; nothing unfit for publication. I presume that, as Mr. Treverton arrives at Plymouth he comes from some distant portion of the globe?”
“He is coming from Buenos Aires, where he had business that absolutely required his personal attention.”
“What an extraordinary girl you are, Laura,” ejaculated Celia, her eyes again widening.
“Why extraordinary?”
“Because you must have been perfectly aware that I, and I think I may go so far as to say all the inhabitants of Hazlehurst, have been bursting with curiosity about your husband for the last six months, and yet you could not have the good grace to enlighten us. If you had said he had gone to Buenos Aires on business, we should have been satisfied.”
“I told you he had affairs that detained him abroad.”
“But why not have given his affairs a local habitation and a name?”
“My husband did not wish me to talk about him.”
“Well, you are altogether the oddest couple. However, I am very glad things are going to be different. Would it be too much to ask if Mr. Treverton will remain at the Manor House, or if he is going to reappear only in his usual meteoric fashion?”
“I hope he will stay at Hazlehurst all his life.”
“Poor fellow,” sighed Celia. “If he does I’m sure I shall pity him.”
“You need not be so absurdly literal. Of course we shall go far afield sometimes and see the world, and all that is interesting and beautiful in it.”
“How glibly you talk about what ‘we’ are going to do. A week ago you could not be induced to mention your husband’s name. And how happy you look; I never saw such a change.”
“It is all because I am going to see him again. I hope you do not begrudge me my happiness?”
“No, but I rather envy you. I only wish some benevolent old party would leave me a splendid estate on condition I married a handsome young man. You would see how willingly I would obey him. There should be no mystery about my conduct, I assure you. I should not make an iron mask of myself.”
Celia wrote next day to her brother to tell him how that most incomprehensible of husbands, John Treverton, was expected home from Buenos Aires, and how his wife was going to Plymouth to meet him. “And I never saw any human creature look so happy in my life,” wrote Celia. “I have seen dogs look like it when one has given them biscuits, and cats when they sit blinking at the fire, and young pigs lying on a bank in the sunshine. Yes, I have seen those dumb things appear the image of perfect, unreasoning, unquestioning happiness, which looks neither behind nor before; but such an expression is rarely to be seen in humanity.”
A nice letter for Edward Clare to get—disappointed, more or less out at elbows, with a growing sense of failure upon him, sick to death of his London lodging, sick of the few literary men whose acquaintance he had contrived to make, and with whom he did not amalgamate as well as he had anticipated. He tore his sister’s lively epistle into morsels and sent them flying over Waterloo Bridge, upon the light summer wind, and felt as if he would like to have gone over with them.
“Yet once I thought she loved me,” he said to himself, “and so she did, before that plausible scoundrel came in her way. But I ought to remember how much she gains by loving him. If the old man had happened to leave me his estate, perhaps she might have looked unutterably happy at the idea of my return after a long absence, Only God, who made women, knows what hypocrites they are,” and then Mr. Clare went home to his shabby lodging, and sat down in bitterest mood, and dipped his pen in the ink, and wrung out of himself a passionate page of verse for one of the magazines—not without labour and the sweat of his brow—and then took his poem and sold it, and dined luxuriously on the proceeds, hugging his wrongs and nursing his wrath to keep it warm, as he sat in a corner of the bright little French restaurant he liked best, slowly sipping his modest half-bottle of Pomard.
That which Celia had told him was perfectly true. There never was a happier woman than Laura, after that interview by the river. During the last week before her departure she was full of business, preparing for her husband’s return.
“Your master will be here in a few weeks,” she said to the old housekeeper, with infinite pride, “and we must have everything ready for him.”
“So we will, ma’am, spick and span,” answered Mrs. Trimmer. “It will be happiness to have him settle down among us. It must have been a sore trial to you both, to be parted so, just at the beginning of your married life, too. It would have come more nat’ral
