He drew his hat lower over his eyes; his face still looked white and drawn.
“There’s no one who walks this earth good enough for her,” he muttered to himself as he went along; and his eyes assuredly were not turned in the direction where Juliet, in her pretty white robes, stood “gushing” over guests whom Lady Culvers would fain have kept at a distance.
II
Five o’clock chimed from All Saints tower as Captain Culvers handed his bride from the carriage at the churchyard gates. It was now over three hours since the wedding had taken place, and the neighbourhood had returned to its normal quietude. When Hastings is crowded with holidaymakers, this unfashionable quarter of the town is comparatively deserted; and in June weather it is forsaken even by its inhabitants for the breezier hills and Marina. A shabby “fly” went crawling along; a few curly-headed, unwashed children came trooping forth from one of the alleys leading off the old-world street; a fisherman in a blue jersey strolled down from the Tackleway and paused for a moment to look at the handsome equipage drawn up alongside the pavement. Otherwise, Captain Culvers and his bride had the street to themselves.
A double flight of steps leads from the pavement to All Saints churchyard, which runs up the side of one of the two hills that dominate the old town. At the foot of these steps Ida paused.
“Let me go alone to my mother’s grave, Sefton; I particularly wish it,” she said; and once more her tone appeared to have more of command than of entreaty in it.
But it was not a request to be met with a demur, so Captain Culvers drew back, and allowed her to pass on alone.
Although the street was in shadow, the churchyard, on higher ground, lay in sunlight still. Very peaceful and picturesque it looked in the silence and brightness of the summer afternoon, with its gravestones gleaming white from out the greenness of the hillside.
The path which Ida followed took a sharp curve at the east end of the church, and she was very quickly out of sight. Captain Culvers stood watching the tall, graceful figure, in its soft grey draperies, till it disappeared, saying to himself what a lucky fellow he was, after all his ups and downs in life, to have fallen on his feet at last.
Then he took out his cigar-case, and telling the coachman to walk the horses up and down, strolled down the street towards the sea.
He knew so little of Hastings, that the fish-market and the tall, black, shiny rope-houses came upon him as a surprise. The odours of the place, however, at the close of this summer’s day were intolerable; so he turned his back on it, and the loitering fishermen, and the lazy, lapping summer sea, and returned to the shadow and quaintness of the old street, with its ancient overhanging houses, and queer byways.
Quarter-past five struck.
“The Captain will be getting impatient, I take it, soon,” said John to Jehu on the box of the carriage, as they saw Captain Culvers pull out his watch and time it by the church clock.
“It’s a big churchyard; there are a mighty lot of tombs there, perhaps the lady has lost her way,” answered Jehu, lazily flicking the flies from his horses’ manes.
Half-past five struck.
A little Italian boy with a barrel-organ and monkey rounded the corner of the street, and began grinding a feeble, droning sort of version of Garibaldi’s Hymn, to which the monkey beat time with toy cymbals, much to the delight of the urchins, who now came trooping forth from all corners.
Jehu pulled up his horses with a jerk at the churchyard gate, saying that half an hour was time enough and to spare for the lady to have lost her way and found it again, deposited her flowers, and returned.
“They’ll lose their train,” whispered John, with a grin. “And then the Captain will lose something else, I take it—his temper.”
Possibly Captain Culvers’s fears had flown in the same direction, for, as he came sauntering up the street, he suddenly paused, pulled out his timetables, and began consulting them with something of a frown gathering on his brow.
A quarter to six struck.
The little Italian boy ended his droning ditty, shouldered his organ and monkey, and departed, followed by a detachment of the admiring urchins.
Captain Culvers threw away his cigar, opened the churchyard gate, and began with rather a hurried tread to mount the steep flight of steps. It had not been swept since the wedding, and Captain Culvers as he went along crushed under his feet the remnants of the rosebuds and daisies that had been scattered for his bride.
Precisely at that moment Juliet, at the garden gates of Glynde Lodge, was saying a laughing goodbye to some of her girl friends, who were telling her that they hoped shortly to be called upon to officiate as her bridesmaids.
“I’m not sure that I hope it,” she answered. “A wedding like this, where everybody does what everybody else has done for generations, would be intolerable to me. I told Ida last night I wondered how she could endure it. No; when I’m married I must do something to make a sensation—wear a nun’s dress, or a riding-habit, or—”
“Juliet!” exclaimed her friend, “if you’re going to do that sort of thing, I shall make a point of getting up in church and forbidding your banns!”
Juliet clapped her hands.
“The very thing! That would be heavenly!” she cried. “I only wish father would do it instead of you, and then there would be some fun in getting married. But there’s no such luck in store for me. Father always approves our choice so exasperatingly, it takes all the delight out of getting engaged. I should adore, positively adore, Clive—not just like him, as I do now—if only everyone
