Chapter XXIII Hymeneal
Upon the morning of his wedding-day, Archibald Samphire went into the church of King’s Charteris and prayed before the altar. While he was praying, Jim Corrance pushed aside the heavy curtain of the west door and peered in. A whim had seized him. He, the freethinker, the agnostic, had said to himself that he would like to spend a few minutes alone in the church where he had been baptised and confirmed. Rank sentiment! But Jim at heart was a man of sentiment, although he took particular pains to prove to the world that he was nothing of the sort.
When Jim saw Archibald’s fine figure he frowned, thrusting forward his square chin, and the short hair on the top of his head bristled with exasperation. Upon each side of the kneeling man were ferns and palms, whose fronds touched overhead. The priests’ stalls were ablaze with daffodils and primroses picked by the school-children in the water meadows and woods near Pitt Hall. Through the east window a May sun streamed in full flood of prismatic colour. The pure rays of the sun passing through the gorgeous glass absorbed its tints and flung them lavishly here and there, staining with crimson, or blue, or yellow, the white lilies which stood upon the altar. Jim smiled derisively. The fancy struck him that Archie’s prayers would absorb, so to speak, the colours of his mind. The words of the General Thanksgiving occurred to Jim.
“And we beseech Thee, give us that due sense of all Thy mercies, that our hearts may be unfeignedly thankful, and that we shew forth Thy praise, not only with our lips, but in our lives; by giving up ourselves to Thy service, and by walking before Thee in holiness and righteousness all our days.”
Surely this set—so Jim reflected—forth Archibald Samphire’s pious ambition. Doubtless he did aspire to give himself to God’s service, particularly that form of it which is held in cathedrals; and he intended, honestly enough, to walk before Him (and before the world) in holiness and righteousness all his days (which he had reason to believe would be long and fruitful).
Archibald rose and walked down the aisle. Jim hid himself behind the tall font, but he stared curiously at his old school-fellow. Archibald’s face had lost its normal expression of a satisfaction too smug to please such a critical gentleman as Mr. James Corrance. His massive features were troubled. He looked humble! Why? Surely the crimson carpet beneath his feet, bordered with flowers, over-shadowed by exquisite ferns and rare shrubs, indicated the procession of a successful life: a majestic march through the hallowed places of Earth to the Heaven of All Saints beyond!
Had Jim been able to peer within that mighty body, he might have seen a self-confidence strangely deflated, a conscience quickened by pangs. The colossus, whose physical prowess had become a glorious tradition at Harrow and Cambridge, knew himself to be a moral coward, inasmuch as he had withheld a vital truth from the woman he loved. Fear of losing, first, her good opinion of him, then the greater fear of losing the woman altogether, had withered again and again the impulse to say frankly: “Mark wrote the two sermons which have made me what I am.” Unable to say this, realising that the many opportunities for speech had passed, he had just vowed solemnly that his transgression should be expiated by hard work in his new parish. Truly—as Lady Randolph had said—was Archibald Samphire an unconscious humourist! And before we leave him to return to Jim, let it be added that the big fellow did not know (and being the man he was could not possibly have known) that he had wooed Betty with Mark’s words, that he would have wooed in vain with his own. Not unreasonably, he was absolutely convinced that the qualities which had won success in everything undertaken by him had assured this also, the greatest prize of all, a tender, loving wife.
Jim waited till five minutes had passed, then he strolled back to his mother’s house, telling himself that he was a brute, a dog in the manger, because he had misjudged a God-fearing fellow-creature, immeasurably his superior, who had won in fair competition a prize beyond his (Jim’s) deserts.
When he returned to his mother’s house a trim parlourmaid handed him a note. She told him at the same time that Mrs. Corrance was taking breakfast in her own room. Jim nodded, and broke the seal: a lilac wafer with Betty Kirtling’s initials entwined in a cypher.
“Dear old Jim” (Betty wrote): “please come up after breakfast and take me for a walk.
“Your affectionate Betty.”
Betty was installed in The Whim for her wedding; and the Randolphs and Harry Kirtling—not to mention other relations—were keeping her company. Since her engagement had been announced, Jim had scarcely seen her. He had taken the news hard. His clerks, and the jobbers with whom he dealt found him difficult to please, argumentative, contemptuous, and a glutton for work throughout that Lenten season.
As Jim approached The Whim, Betty joined him on the drive. He saw that she was very pale.
“How good of you to come,” she exclaimed.
“Good!” growled Jim. “As if I wouldn’t cross the Atlantic or the Styx to walk with you. Where shall we go?”
Betty took a path which led to the lane running at right angles to the Westchester road. High hedges bordered this lane, with ancient yew trees at uncertain intervals. To the right lay the best arable land in King’s Charteris, rich alluvial soil, now green with spring wheat; to the left, the ground ascended in undulating slopes of pasture till it melted in the downs beyond.
“Sun is going to shine on you,” said Jim.
The sun was blazing in a sky limpid after a week’s heavy rain. Beneath its warm beams the soaked landscape seemed to be smiling with satisfaction. A peculiar odour of fertility, pungent and potent, assailed the nostrils, the odour of spring, the odour of earth renascent, rejuvenated, once more a bride.
“I wish it were June instead of May, Jim.”
“That’s the most absurd superstition.”
“Jim, I want to ask a question. Have you seen or heard of Mark?”
Jim looked cross.
“He’s in Sutherland.”
“Go on, please.”
“He doesn’t answer my letters,” said Jim, after a pause.
“He writes to nobody.”
“Did you expect him to write?”
“Yes, I did,” said Betty vehemently. “If it had been an ordinary man, but Mark—Heavens! Why should I beat about the bush with you, Jim? Once I wanted to marry Mark! You know that. But he didn’t want—me.”
She paused, blushing, her eyes, pools of brown light, opened wide with their strange look: entreating, interrogating.
“Which was a woman’s reason, I suppose, for engaging yourself to somebody who did.”
The words slipped from him. Caring for Mark, how could she have accepted Archibald? That cried to Heaven for explanation. He stared at her, seeing no reproach in her eyes, only a soft shadow of wonder—or was it regret—or something subtler than either.
“Oh, Jim, feeling as you do about religion, you can’t understand. I was looking down, down into the depths. Archie taught me to look up.”
“To him?”
“To God.”
“You say that Archibald Samphire revealed God to you?”
“In that sermon at Windsor—yes. If you had heard it——”
“I heard of it. You will be the wife of a bishop some day.”
He tried to give the conversation a lighter turn, fearing that she would speak again of Mark, understanding at last that Mark, standing under sentence of death, had deliberately hidden his heart from her. What else could such a man have done? And if Betty realised this, even now, at the eleventh hour, she might refuse to marry the silver-tongued brother. And because the temptation to tell her the truth was so poignant, he resisted it. It lay on his tongue’s tip to exclaim: “Good Lord! Is it possible that you, with your intuitions and sympathies, have failed to divine Mark’s love for you? Can’t you understand that his love keeps him in Sutherland, that he dares not write for fear that he should reveal it?” At the same time, he knew that marriage between any young woman and a man suffering from an almost incurable malady was unthinkable. And if Betty could not marry Mark, was it not better from every point of view that she should marry his brother? Would not he (Jim) be taking upon himself a terrible responsibility if he broke the silence which Mark’s self-sacrifice had made sacred? These, and a thousand other thoughts, jostled each other in his brain.
“That sermon touched me at first, because I thought it was Mark speaking. Not till then had I realised that Archie possessed the wonderful power of making life easier, happier, ampler; but why does Mark, if he cares nothing for me, stand aloof, why—why?”
“It is strange,” he admitted slowly.
“Ah,” she cried, “you say that reservedly. You, too, have guessed or at least suspected——”
“What?”
“That Mark is—jealous—of—Archie.” The words dropped from her lips as if she loathed them, as if she loathed herself for speaking them. She continued quickly: “At Westchester, he was alone with me. I was thrilling with surprise and admiration. We had underrated Archie; you know that, Jim. And he had vindicated himself so gloriously. Well, Mark said nothing, not a word of praise. Oh, it was ungenerous—abominable! But I did not think so then. But now, what other interpretation can I put upon his silence?”
When she paused, Jim burst into a vehement defence of Mark. He spoke as he spoke to his clerks, clenching his fists, thrusting out his chin, repeating his phrases: “What? You say that? You use such words as abominable, ungenerous? You, Betty Kirtling? Abominable? Ungenerous? Well, if he be jealous, is it surprising, is it not most natural? Abominable? Great Scott! He looks at the man, the brother, who has everything, everything which he lacks—the physical strength, the persuasive voice, the luck—the devil’s own luck—I don’t pick my words, Betty Kirtling! Why—if he were not jealous, if envy at times did not tear him, he would not be Mark at all, but some impeccable, immaculate humbug! Abominable! From—you!”
Betty turned her back, and walked down the lane; Jim hesitated, and pursued.
“Betty, forgive me! I’m a brute, and this, this is your wedding-day. Here, give me your hand, both hands! That’s better. Tell me I’m a beast. I deserve kicking. I’ll lie down and let you wipe your boots on me. Your wedding-day—and I’ve treated you to this.”
The feeling in his face went straight to her heart.
“It’s all right, Jim,” she whispered, half crying, half laughing. “And I take back—abominable.” She sighed, gazing towards the downs where she and Mark had played truant. Then, with quivering lips and wet eyes, she murmured, “Poor Mark—poor Mark!” disengaged her hands, and ran down the lane and out of sight.
After the wedding there was an old-fashioned breakfast at The Whim, with toasts, speeches, cutting of cake, and so forth. Slowshire came in force, ate largely, drank deeply, and made merry in the solid, stodgy, Slowshire way. None the less, to Lady Randolph and other less acute observers, the function was somewhat depressing. The Whim, where so many cheery gatherings had taken place, had been sold. The furniture was to be moved into the Samphires’ London house, while the bride and groom were on their honeymoon. The Squire’s wife, in purple satin slashed with heliotrope silk, supplied every guest who belonged to the county families with details.
“The dear couple will be so comfortable. No—there is no rectory. They will live in Cadogan Place. Lord Minstead was glad to sell the lease. They say, you know, that he—pst—pst—pst——” The speaker’s prominent blue eyes seemed positively to bulge from her plump, pink cheeks, as she whispered Minstead’s unsavoury story into attentive ears. “But, as I was saying, our dear couple—really the handsomest couple I ever saw in my life—will be très bien installés. I am to find them a cook—fifty-five pounds a year—do you know of one? She must be a cordon bleu. Yes, a kitchen and a scullery-maid. They are very well off, very well off indeed. It is expected that they will entertain——”
The Squire, meantime, exchanged a few words with his old friend Lady Randolph. His face was flushed and his eyes congested and very puffy below the lids. Lips and chin, too, had a faint purplish tinge, always seen on the faces of those afflicted by a certain form of heart disease. He was certainly failing, Lady Randolph reflected. Still, he had lived his life, enjoyed the cakes and ale—too much of them!—and might reckon himself amongst the lucky ones. Pomméry had loosened his tongue.
“They will have—this between ourselves, my dear lady—nearly five thousand a year. Archie has done well. I am very proud of Archie—a fine fellow—hay? You may call him that—a fine fellow—a very fine fellow indeed! Sound”—the Squire thumped his own broad chest—“sound as I am, sound as a bell, and likely to make old bones.”
Lady Randolph, with eyes half closed, nodded, wondering if this pitiful assumption of high health were genuine or assumed. Surely the Squire must know himself to be no sounder than a big pippin rotten at the core. He stood beside her, tall, portly, scrupulously dressed as a country gentleman of the old school; and the purple flush deepened and spread as he talked.
“Archibald will be a bishop. Do you know that his portrait is coming out in Vanity Fair? The Chrysostom of Sloane Street they call him. His Advent sermons have been widely discussed. And he will have no land to bother him. These are hard times for us landowners. Is Randolph pinched? Of course, he has his town property; but it’s different with me; it’s the very deuce with me. I’m worried to death about it.”
What was fermenting in his mind had come, as it generally does with such men, to the surface. Lady Randolph looked unaffectedly sorry, and expressed her sympathy. The Squire plunged into the interminable subject of falling prices, rates, impoverished soil, the difficulty of finding good tenant farmers, and so forth. Not till the bride entered did he cease from his jeremiads.
“Here is Betty,” said Lady Randolph.
She wore a travelling dress of pale grey cloth edged and lined with lavender silk. Betty had refused to adorn herself in bright colours, which happened to suit her admirably. A parson’s wife, she observed, should dress soberly, and she quoted the Vicar of Wakefield, to Lady Randolph’s great amusement. A controversy had arisen over this particular frock. Betty, however, seconded by the dressmaker, had her own way about it. Now Lady Randolph was certain that her protests had been justifiable. The dress, lovely though it was in texture and fit, had a faded appearance; it suggested autumn instead of spring, dun October, not merry May.
Betty tripped here and there, bidding her friends and neighbours good-bye, while Archie stood smiling at the door. He looked very large and imposing in a rough grey serge suit, which fused happily the clerical garb with that of a bridegroom. Calm and dignified, he received the congratulations of the men. Once or twice he drew a gold watch from his pocket—a present from the Dean and Chapter—opened it, glanced at it, and closed it with a loud click. He had never missed a train, but the possibility of doing so now impended.
Mrs. Samphire held her handkerchief to her face. Mrs. Corrance’s handkerchief was in her pocket, but her kind eyes were wet. The young men from the barracks were laughing loudly, cracking jokes with the bridesmaids, “whooping things up a bit.” The elderly guests smiled blandly, thinking possibly of their own weddings. The children alone really enjoyed themselves. Jim Corrance waited till the bride had passed him; then he rushed into the dining-room, where he found two generals and an Indian judge solemnly employed in finishing the Admiral’s famous Waterloo brandy.
“Wonderful stuff,” said the judge, as he passed the decanter to Jim; “it puts everything right—eh?”
Jim nodded. Through the open doors, leading into the hall, he could see Betty run down the stairs, followed by Archibald.
The Squire called after her: “God bless you, my dear! God bless you!”
She was gone.
Jim went out of the dining-room, which was situated, it will be remembered, at the top of The Whim. Most of the guests had followed the bride and groom downstairs. Upon the Persian carpet lay a small spray of lilies of the valley, fallen from Betty’s bouquet. Jim glanced to right and left. Nobody was looking at him. Furtively, scarlet in the face, he stalked and bagged the spray of lilies. He placed it carefully in his pocket-book.
“That’s the last of our Betty,” he said.