“I really think I should like to spend my life on these hills,” said Laura, as she and John Treverton sat side by side behind the sturdy little coachman, whose quaintly comical face might have made the fortune of a low comedian. “It seems such a beautiful world, even in its wildness and solitude, so pure and fair, and free from the taint of sin.”
The sunlight behind the big brown tors was fading, and the air growing crisp and cool, keenly biting, even at odd times, though it was midsummer. John drew a soft woollen shawl round his companion’s shoulders, and even in this little action his heart thrilled at the thought that henceforward it was his duty to protect her from all the ills of life. And so through the deepening gloom they came to Camelot, a narrow street on the slant of a hill, folded in grey twilight as in a mantle.
The inn where Laura and her maid were to put up for the night was commonplace and commercial—a house that had evidently seen better days, but which had plucked up its spirits and furbished up its rickety old furniture since the establishment of the North-Cornwall coach, a blessed institution, linking a wild and solitary district with railways and civilisation.
Here Laura rested comfortably enough through the short summer night, while John Treverton endured the discomforts of a second-rate tavern over against the marketplace. At eight o’clock next morning he presented himself at the hotel where Laura and her maid were waiting for him, and then the three went on foot to the outlying church where John Treverton was to take this woman, Laura, for his wife for the second time within six months.
“I could not have been happier in my choice of a locality than I was in fixing upon Camelot,” said John, as they walked side by side along the country lane, between tall banks of briar and fern, in the sweet morning air, with the faithful Mary strolling discreetly in the rear. “I found the most accommodating old parson, who quite entered into my views when I told him that for certain reasons which I need not explain, I wished my marriage to be kept altogether quiet. ‘I shall not speak of it to a creature,’ replied the good old soul. ‘No man would come to Camelot to be married who did not wish to hide himself from the eye of the world. I shall respect your secret, and I’ll take care that my clerk does the same.’ ”
The old church smelt rather like a vault when they went in out of the breezy summer day, but it was a cleanly whitewashed vault, and the sun was shining full upon the faded crimson velvet of the communion table, above which appeared the ten commandments and the royal arms in the good old style. Steeped in that sunshine stood the bride and bridegroom, gravely, earnestly repeating the solemn words of the service; no witnesses of the act save the grey-headed clerk and the girl Mary, who seemed to think it incumbent upon somebody to be moved to tears, and who therefore gently sniffed and faintly sobbed in the background. Never had Laura looked lovelier than when she stood beside her husband in the little closet of a vestry, signing her name in the mouldy old register; never had she felt happier than when they walked away from the lonely old church, after a friendly leave-taking of the good vicar, who blessed them and gave them Godspeed as heartily as if they had been born and bred in his parish. The coach was to pick them up at the cross roads about half a mile from the church, having previously picked up their luggage in Camelot, and they were to go back across the moor to Lyonstown, and from Lyonstown by rail to the extreme west, and thence to the Scilly Isles.
“Can nothing happen now to part us, John?” Laura asked while they were sitting on a ferny bank waiting for the coach. “Are our lives secure from all evil in the future?”
“Who can be armed against all misfortune, love?” he asked. “Of one thing I am certain. You are my wife. Against the validity of our marriage of today no living creature can say a word.”
“And the legality of our previous marriage might have been questioned.”
“Yes, dearest, there would have always been that hazard.”
XXI
Halcyon Days
There were no bonfires or floral arches, no rejoicings of tenantry or farm labourers, when John Treverton and his wife came home to Hazlehurst Manor. They came unannounced one fine July afternoon, arriving in a fly hired at Beechampton, much to the distress of Mrs. Trimmer, who declared that there was absolutely nothing in the house. Yet many an anxious city housekeeper would have considered the noble array of hams, pendant from the massive beams of the kitchen ceiling, the flitch of bacon, the basket of new-laid eggs, the homely saffron-hued plum cakes, the dainty sweet biscuits, the ox tongues and silverside of beef in pickle, the chickens waiting to be plucked—worthy to count as something.
“You might have sent me a telegram, mum, and then I might have done myself credit,” said Mrs. Trimmer, dolefully. “I don’t believe there’s a bit of fish to be had in Hazlehurst. I was in the village at twelve o’clock this blessed day, and there was one sole frizzling on the slates at Trimpson’s, and I’ll warrant he’s been sold by this time.”
“If he isn’t sold he must be
