John Halifax, Gentleman Part 101

"Yes. I'll tell you presently--if there's time."

While he was speaking some violent pain--physical or mental, or both--seemed to seize him. I had my hand on the door to call Ursula, but he held me fast with a kind of terror.

"Call no one. I am used to it. Water!"

He drank a gla.s.sful, which stood by, breathed once or twice heavily, and gradually recovered himself. The colour had scarcely come back into his face when he heard Maud run laughing through the hall.

"Father, where are you? We are waiting for you."

"I will come in two minutes, my child."

Having said this, in his own natural voice, he closed the door again, and spoke to me rapidly.

"Phineas, I want you to stay away from church; make some excuse, or I will for you. Write a letter for me to this address in Paris.

Say--Guy Halifax's father will be there, without fail, within a week, to answer all demands."

"All demands!" I echoed, bewildered.

He repeated the sentence word for word. "Can you remember it?

Literally, mind! And post it at once, before we return from church."

Here the mother's call was heard. "John, are you coming?"

"In a moment, love," for her hand was on the door outside; but her husband held the other handle fast. He then went on, breathlessly, "You understand, Phineas? And you will be careful, very careful? SHE MUST NOT KNOW--not till tonight."

"One word. Guy is alive and well?"

"Yes--yes."

"Thank G.o.d!"

But Guy's father was gone while I spoke. Heavy as the news might be--this ill news which had struck me with apprehension the moment I saw Lord Ravenel--it was still endurable. I could not conjure up any grief so bitter as the boy's dying.

Therefore, with a quietness that came naturally under the compulsion of such a necessity as the present, I rejoined the rest, made my excuses, and answered all objections. I watched the marriage-party leave the house. A simple procession--the mother first, leaning on Edwin; then Maud, Walter, and Lord Ravenel; John walked last, with Louise upon his arm. Thus I saw them move up the garden, and through the beech-wood, to the little church on the hill.

I then wrote the letter and sent it off. That done, I went back into the study. Knowing nothing--able to guess nothing--a dull patience came over me, the patience with which we often wait for unknown, inevitable misfortunes. Sometimes I almost forgot Guy in my startled remembrance of his father's look as he called me away, and sat down--or rather dropped down--into his chair. Was it illness? yet he had not complained; he hardly ever complained, and scarcely had a day's sickness from year to year. And as I watched him and Louise up the garden, I had noticed his free, firm gait, without the least sign of unsteadiness or weakness. Besides, he was not one to keep any but a necessary secret from those who loved him. He could not be seriously ill, or we should have known it.

Thus I pondered, until I heard the church bells ring out merrily. The marriage was over.

I was just in time to meet them at the front gates, which they entered--our Edwin and his wife--through a living line of smiling faces, treading upon a carpet of strewn flowers. Enderley would not be defrauded of its welcome--all the village escorted the young couple in triumph home. I have a misty recollection of how happy everybody looked, how the sun was shining, and the bells ringing, and the people cheering--a mingled phantasmagoria of sights and sounds, in which I only saw one person distinctly,--John.

He waited while the young folk pa.s.sed in--stood on the hall-steps--in a few words thanked his people, and bade them to the general rejoicing.

They, uproarious, answered in loud hurrahs, and one energetic voice cried out:

"One cheer more for Master Guy!"

Guy's mother turned delighted--her eyes shining with proud tears.

"John--thank them; tell them that Guy will thank them himself to-morrow."

The master thanked them, but either he did not explain--or the honest rude voices drowned all mention of the latter fact--that Guy would be home to-morrow.

All this while, and at the marriage-breakfast likewise, Mr. Halifax kept the same calm demeanour. Once only, when the rest were all gathered round the bride and bridegroom, he said to me:

"Phineas, is it done?"

"What is done?" asked Ursula, suddenly pa.s.sing.

"A letter I asked him to write for me this morning."

Now I had all my life been proud of John's face--that it was a safe face to trust in--that it could not, or if it could, it would not, boast that stony calm under which some men are so proud of disguising themselves and their emotions from those nearest and dearest to them.

If he were sad, we knew it; if he were happy, we knew it too. It was his principle, that nothing but the strongest motive should make a man stoop to even the smallest hypocrisy.

Therefore, hearing him thus speak to his wife, I was struck with great alarm. Mrs. Halifax herself seemed uneasy.

"A business letter, I suppose?"

"Partly on business. I will tell you all about it this evening."

She looked re-a.s.sured. "Just as you like; you know I am not curious."

But pa.s.sing on, she turned back. "John, if it was anything important to be done--anything that I ought to know at once, you would not keep me in ignorance?"

"No--my dearest! No!"

Then what had happened must be something in which no help availed; something altogether past and irremediable; something which he rightly wished to keep concealed, for a few hours at least, from his other children, so as not to mar the happiness of this day, of which there could be no second, this crowning day of their lives--this wedding-day of Edwin and Louise.

So, he sat at the marriage-table; he drank the marriage-health; he gave them both a marriage-blessing. Finally, he sent them away, smiling and sorrowful--as is the bounden duty of young married couples to depart--Edwin pausing even on the carriage-step to embrace his mother with especial tenderness, and whisper her to "give his love to Guy."

"It reminds one of Guy's leaving," said the mother, hastily brushing back the tears that would spring and roll down her smiling face. She had never, until this moment, reverted to that miserable day. "John, do you think it possible the boy can be at home to-night?"

John answered emphatically, but very softly, "No."

"Why not? My letter would reach him in full time. Lord Ravenel has been to Paris and back since then. But--" turning full upon the young n.o.bleman--"I think you said you had not seen Guy?"

"No."

"Did you hear anything of him?"

"I--Mrs. Halifax--"

Exceedingly distressed, almost beyond his power of self-restraint, the young man looked appealingly to John, who replied for him:

"Lord Ravenel brought me a letter from Guy this morning."

"A letter from Guy--and you never told me. How very strange!"

Still, she seemed only to think it "strange." Some difficulty or folly perhaps--you could see by the sudden flushing of her cheek, and her quick, distrustful glance at Lord Ravenel, what she imagined it was--that the boy had confessed to his father. With an instinct of concealment--the mother's instinct--for the moment she asked no questions.