Chapter V (1)
The Rector had just closed the door of his study on the retreating form of Mary Straker, a blushing village damsel who had come to impart to him the news of approaching matrimony. Mr. Grenville had a peculiar interest in the announcement, for some three years previously he had intervened to shield her inamorato from the consequences of a poaching adventure, and had emigrated him up to Yorkshire as a groom. The grateful swain had now written to his betrothed to inform her that he had saved enough money to marry upon, and that he intended to return this spring for the ceremony, and would Mary please tell his Reverence so, and he hoped, with his best respects, as his Reverence would say the words over them come Easter.
Mr. Grenville was pleased, and went smiling to the window. Drumming on the pane a moment, he looked out at the young green of March, and hoped Tom Hollings and little Polly would be happy. In his parish the Rector was something of a matchmaker. He had an obscure conviction that one had only to put two people together and they would hit it off somehow; in fact he had always taken a rosy view of marriage—until the marriage of his own daughter. He thought of that now, and, suddenly sighing, came away from the window.
He was really worried about Horatia, in spite of the fact that she looked distinctly better since her return three months ago. But she seemed sometimes as if she would never recover from her sadness. She had lost her habit of teasing him; she was, for her, rather too sweetly reasonable. And yet he could not help her. Poor darling! he could not bear to think that she knew so much of evil, and had grown so much older in such a short time. In some ways the thing that he most resented in the whole unhappy affair was the smirching of her innocence. While he was in Paris he had been really shocked at the Duchesse’s broad views when, with her accustomed frankness, she had laid before him the reason for his grandson’s premature arrival, emphasising the fact that she was annoyed not with Armand’s conduct in itself, but with his carelessness. And though he was half unwilling to listen to Martha, there were things which she insisted on telling him, prefacing them with “And I think you ought to know, Sir.”
But because Armand was dead he thought of him now as “that poor young man,” and, to his mind, his tragic removal somehow whitewashed his conduct and made it “better not to think of it.” At the same time he did not fail, in his inmost heart, to feel that removal a direct work of Providence, and was deeply ashamed of this feeling, especially when he considered Maurice’s fatherless condition. Often, indeed, watching him with his mother, was Mr. Grenville struck with the pathos of the situation. He loved to see them together, especially when Horatia did not know that he was looking at them; she seemed to him so beautifully maternal, and he could hardly believe that there had been a time when she did not care for the child.
Mr. Grenville began to pace up and down, his hands behind his back, and not for the first time did he wonder whether the comfort which he was powerless to give Horatia might not, after all, come from another quarter. He had, for his part, a distinct objection to second marriages, and had acted on it in his own case, but he would be easier to Horatia than he had been to himself. Horatia was still so young, the fatherless Maurice so tiny, her married life—her unhappy married life—had been so short... eighteen months! Then the presence of Tristram, still unmarried and, as far as he knew, unchanged in his feelings towards Horatia, seemed to him almost providential. Tristram Hungerford indeed was steadfastness incarnate; he could not conceive of his changing. But, of course, he did not know what Tristram thought of second marriages. In any case, however, his present attitude was very proper, not intruding upon Horatia’s grief. Besides, he was probably waiting till he had a living. Yet, second marriages...
Mr. Grenville stopped in his promenade, and with a look on his face as of one about to drink medicine, took down Jeremy Taylor from a shelf and turned over the pages till he came to that divine’s remarks on the widowed state. Tightening his lips, he shut up the book after a moment with something like a bang, and replaced it. Yes, second marriages... But, after all, he was going on rather fast.
(2)
When the Rector returned, late that afternoon, from visiting his parishioners, he was rather surprised to find Horatia sitting on a stool in front of his study fire, which had only just been lit. As soon as he had sat down beside her she put her head on his knee, and said, with the directness of a child,
“Papa, dear, I want to talk to you. I am so unhappy! I must talk to someone.”
The Rector put his hand on her hair, half alarmed, half pleased that she had come to him. “What is it, my love?” he said tenderly. “Only this morning I was thinking of you and wishing I could comfort you.”
“O Papa, I can’t say it to you. I am so wicked!” And she began to cry.
“My dearest child,” said the Rector, astonished, “what do you mean? How can you have been wicked? Come, then, tell me all about it. There is nothing you cannot say to me. I can understand how you loved him in spite—in spite of many things.”
“But that is just it,” answered Horatia, sobbing. “I did not really love him.” Then she went on in an outburst, “You think now that I’m grieving for him because I loved him. It isn’t true. I’m grieving just because I didn’t love him. I want to say to people, Don’t be sorry for me, don’t look at my black dress! I am a wicked woman, I did not love my husband. I did not even do my duty.”
Mr. Grenville put an arm round his daughter’s shoulders and bent over her. “My child, you mustn’t talk like this. We know that poor Armand was not all that he might have been to you, and I daresay I know more than you think. You married him for better or for worse, and in some ways... for although he is dead we must face facts... I have little doubt it was for worse. It was a shock to your innocence to find out much that you ought never to have known. I ought to have warned you more, to have told you more. My darling child, your old father has been greatly to blame. If only your dear mother had been alive!”
“Papa, you did warn me,” she said, drying her eyes. “I was very wilful; I thought I knew best. But it seemed then as if Armand came and opened a new world to me, and I thought it was love... but it could not have been... and then I began to hear things... and before Maurice was born...”
“I know, my dear,” said the Rector, smoothing her hair.
“And Maurice, the darling, I was so wicked I would not look at him... and as for Armand, I believe I almost hated him... and I told him he was dead to me... and now he is dead really... and how can I say I loved him!”
The Rector reflected a little before replying.
“I would not think too much, Horatia, of whether you loved him or did not love him. I understand that you are trying to be honest with yourself, but now you have told me do not fret about that part of it. You made mistakes, and it is all very sad, but try to remember that we are in the hands of a merciful Creator. ‘He knoweth whereof we are made; He remembereth that we are but dust.”
“If only I could be like you, Papa, and could have your trust! It frightens me to think about him.”
“Tell me, my dear.”
“O, he did not want to die. He was so young, and he loved life. He said one thing that I shall never forget: ‘If they tell you that I was resigned, do not believe them.’”
“Poor boy, poor boy!” murmured the Rector huskily.
“And the way he died was so dreadful! I had never seen anyone die before, and I did not know how awful it could be. O, I have been so frightened!” said Horatia, now almost incoherent. “I see him always with the blood spreading through the linen, and I hear him always calling in that terrible voice, ‘Laurence, Laurence!...”
“Ah!” said the Rector, compressing his lips. He made an effort to control himself. “Don’t go on, Horatia; don’t distress yourself! I know all about it. We must try not to judge the dead—and may God have mercy on us all!”
There was a pause, during which Mr. Grenville blew his nose violently.
“Dear, dear,” he resumed at length, “you ought never to have suffered this—and to think of your being alone at such a time! I have been much to blame, much to blame!... There, there, my child, you will stay with me, now, and you are young, and in time you will forget——”
“Never, never!” exclaimed Horatia, raising her head.
“No; well, perhaps, I should not say that, but the old know that we must forget even if we do not want to, and as I said, you are young, and there is Maurice. He can help you more than anyone else.—You will stay with me, Horatia?”
She flung her arms tightly round his neck. “Oh, yes. Papa, if you will keep me. Two or three months every year I must go back to France, but for the rest there is no reason why I should not stay with you if you will have me.” She sat still for a moment, leaning against her father’s knee, and when she was a little calmer, went on, “You remember that I wrote and told you about the will, that Armand wished Maurice to go to an English school. He was very fond of him, Papa.”
“Yes, my dear.”
A pause.
“The more I think of it, Horatia,” began Mr. Grenville solemnly, “the more I believe that you ought to find your comfort in this provision of your husband’s will. It seems to me to prove that, far from doubting your affection, he felt that he owed something to you, and that this was the way he tried to make up to you. Poor young man, there was much good in him! Try to think of this, my love, and say your prayers and do your duty—and now, dear me, it is nearly dinner-time!”