A Sheaf of Corn Part 27

"I know." He looked out on the wintry landscape with gloomy eyes, and a resolutely held underlip. "That is what my mother says. I do not believe it; but if it is so, it does not alter what is the right and only course to take."

"What else does your mother say?"

He moved his shoulders impatiently. "That the wedding must go on; that it is too late to draw back." He turned swiftly upon me. "Could you have believed that _my mother_, of all people, could take such a view as that?"

"I can see how she feels about it. To break it off now is too hideously painful----"

"And what will it be for Daphne if it goes on? Don't you suppose her life with a brute like that would be hideously painful?" He held the back of his hand to his forehead for a moment and shut his eyes tightly as if in painful thought. "My poor little sister!" he said. "Poor Dapple!"

I sat down and stared stupidly before me, too overcome by the situation to be able even to think.

"Your mother says the wedding is to go on; you say it is to be stopped----"

He pounced upon me. "I am master here," he said.

He had always seemed a boy to me, and I had never known him to exert his authority before. His mother and young sister had taken their own way in affairs, and had never been hampered by the consideration that "Hughie" was a person of importance. Yet, there was no doubt about his position. Looking at, and listening to him now, I saw that he meant to have his way; and my conscience told me that his way was the right one.

A word or two more he said to me of incidents in Jack Marston's history; showed me how it had happened that these were only recently revealed to him; how, to the Mavors' circle he had been entirely a stranger; how the few friends of Hugh's who had had any acquaintance with the man had wondered at the sister's engagement, but thought it no business of their own.

"Have you made your mother understand you are determined in the matter?"

"I have told her I will shoot the man before he shall marry my sister."

"And what is she doing? Your mother?"

"She is raving like a madwoman in her bedroom."

The stupendousness of the situation, to which at moments I felt insensible, kept coming over me in waves of comprehension.

"Well, I don't wonder!" I said.

Long pauses fell between our fragments of speech. He stood before the square centre table, black-browed, staring at its glittering burden.

The footman appeared at the door. "If you please, sir, Hamley wishes to know if the dog-cart as well as the brougham and omnibus is to meet the 5.15 this evening?"

His master looked at the man with knit brows, as if making a painful effort to understand what was said. He pulled out his watch, and for a minute studied it.

"Tell Hamley," then he said, "not to meet the 5.15 at all. No one will come by that train. In ten minutes I shall want to send some telegrams."

The man, staring at the strange order, withdrew.

"You are going to stop the rest of the guests?" I asked.

"Of course. They were coming to the wedding. There will be no wedding."

"And Jack Marston? You can't _telegraph_ this horrible thing to him!"

"Can't I? I shall."

"And Daphne? She is sitting in her room counting the minutes till he comes to her."

"Hannah, I want you to go and tell her."

"I, Hugh! Why should I be picked out to do such a horrible thing?"

"My mother will not. Daphne has always known you. You have sense----"

"I will not. So that is the finish, Hugh. I haven't got a stone for a heart. I would cut out my tongue rather than do it."

"Then, I must," he said, turned on his heels and made for the door.

Having reached it and flung it open, he looked back at me with his distressed, scowling face. "This is how one's friends fail one in an emergency!" he said.

His scorn, at the moment, was nothing to me, but I was beside myself with sorrow and dismay. Daphne, with her sweet, small face lying among her cushions, her dark eyes filled with visions of the lover who was speeding to her, of the joyful life just opening before her--and Tragedy, pitiless, relentless, awaiting her! Her messenger, oh so much more cruel than the messenger of Death, crossing corridors, mounting stairs, hurrying with the inevitableness of Fate upon her! Was there nothing to be done? Was there no hand to save?

Hugh was right. Boy as he was, he was acting as a man should act. His mother, who, to save her ears from the despairing cries of her child, to avoid the painful explanation to invited guests, the perplexity of interrupted plans, was willing that the marriage should continue, was weak, wicked even, perhaps. But I found it in my heart to wish that she might have her way, that the suffering, since there must be suffering, should be, at any rate, postponed.

The engagement had been a short one, and circ.u.mstances had of late limited my intercourse with the family; the bridegroom and I had met but once. Yet now his handsome face rose before me--a face whose only fault was that it was, perhaps, too handsome. I thought of the tales Daphne's mother had told me of his extraordinary pa.s.sion for the girl with whom he had fallen in love at first sight. Women love love. No woman is too old to thrill at the story of a lover's ardour. The man was a sinner, no doubt; to Hugh he seemed a scoundrel; but--

I caught up with Hugh as he was going--very slowly going, poor boy--round the last turning to his sister's room.

"Hughie," I gasped, breathless with my haste. "You are right--but don't be brutal. Don't _kill_ the child. Listen. Instead of writing to Jack Marston, let him come. Let him tell her himself. Give her a chance.

Give him one, even. It is a cruel business, anyhow. Don't let's blunder into making it worse than it is."

I suppose as he had gone to the accomplishment of his heavy task he had become more appreciative of its difficulty. He was very fond of his sister, and must have shrunk with dread from the contemplation of her pain. Anyhow, his purpose had weakened. With a few words more I got him to acquiesce in the amended plan.

"How can we be certain he tells her? He will lie to her," he objected.

"We will take measures to be sure he does not."

"He is a specious beggar; she will marry him all the same."

"Then, if he has such an ascendency over her, would she not in any case? She is of age; her own mistress."

"But not from my house," the boy said.

However, in what I proposed there was respite; and, for better or worse, I had my way.

I could not return to witness the innocent happiness of Daphne, and I spent the rest of the afternoon in trying to soothe the agitation of Daphne's mother; listening to her tirades against her suddenly masterful son, hearing her protestations of faith in the rect.i.tude of Jack Marston, alternating with her outbursts of anger and grief at his. .h.i.therto unsuspected villainy.

"Hugh will see him when he arrives, will confront him with the story,"

I told her. "I don't suppose he can utterly deny, but he can palliate.

There will be nothing told to Daphne which she can't forgive. The wedding will go on."

Calm came to her presently, even cheerfulness--so mercifully is the mature heart case-hardened to bear its burdens. It is, I am sure of it, the heart of the young only which can break. Terrible things were hanging over the house. Sin and shame in the person of Jack Marston were approaching it by the 5.15 train. Its most idolised inmate was to be killed with disappointment, or to bind herself on the morrow to a life of misery, perhaps disgrace; but in the drawing-room was already a sprinkling of guests, many more were on their way. The wolf may gnaw at the vitals, but a hostess must wear a smiling face.

The omnibus and the brougham returned duly from the station with the last expected guests, vehicles containing their luggage and their servants followed; but the dog-cart, sent specially to meet Jack Marston, came back empty.