Small time had the bride for reflection, until the dawn of the fatal day.

The rain had changed the weather. The heat was no longer great--in fact, the day was chilly and grey, with a gusty little wind which blew up the dust in sudden puffs.

The bride's toilette, of pale blue over white, was extremely pretty. As she stood in the drawing-room awaiting the fly which would drive her, her mother and Tony to the church, Mrs. Mynors thought she had never seen a more perfect picture of girlish fairness. Excitement and nervous trepidation had chased the pallor with which a sleepless night had invested her. Up to the last moment she had been at work upon this and that--rearranging her own room to accommodate the professional nurse who would be in charge of Pansy during her treatment, trying to think out and plan everything so exactly that her mother would not be able to upset it afterwards. It was not until nearly two o'clock in the morning that she finished her own packing, and lay down to the thoughts of unspeakable dread with which she now knew that she regarded her approaching marriage.

Since the day of Gaunt's visit her mother had hardly spoken to her. Her silence was not exactly hostile, but it was very wounding. It was as though she had suddenly discovered that her daughter was not the girl she took her to be; as if the poor child was abandoning her home and duties to make a rich marriage--leaving her mother to pine in the little villa, cut off from all her own set. There was nothing to take hold of, nothing that Virginia could plead against; it was just an atmosphere of coldness, of pained surprise, but it seemed to the depressed girl to be the last straw.

With her usual patience she shouldered the burden and bore it. She guessed, with her quick, sensitive sympathy, that perhaps it hurt mamma less to adopt this att.i.tude. Her daughter was sacrificing herself to her family. To admit this stunning weight of obligation must, of course, be painful. Mamma always shrank from painful things. She had discovered this pose of hers as a kind of refuge from humiliation.

Virgie accepted it meekly. Nevertheless, the tears which it wrung from her in the darkness of her last night at home were bitter, and could not be checked for a long time.

The knowledge that Gaunt was in the town, that he had arrived by the last train the previous night, and was putting up at the Ducal Arms near the station, seemed to render sleep impossible. She could not tell why. Not till five o'clock had struck was she compelled by mere exhaustion to close her eyes.

All her life Virginia had been a poor eater, and the least excitement was wont to deprive her of appet.i.te. As a result of this, she had eaten, during the past ten days, barely enough to keep her alive. There was n.o.body to notice what she ate, or whether she took a sufficient quant.i.ty. As she had been under-nourished for the last two years, with the sole exception of her fortnight with the Rosenbergs, during great part of which mental agitation had made it difficult for her to eat, she was in a state of real debility. Wholly inadequate did she feel for what lay before her--the new beginning, the effort to understand the unknown being whom she was to marry, the settling into strange surroundings. Her weakness and discouragement were so profound that, by the time she had arisen, dressed for church, and pa.s.sed through the sharp and biting agony of her parting from Pansy, she was reduced to a state of pa.s.sive endurance.

All the way to church she talked feverishly, eagerly to Tony of what they would do in the future. She would pay his pocket money out of her own allowance. He was to join the school O.T.C. at once, so that he might go into camp at the end of term....

In such plans as these lay her only anodyne.

Her mother was reduced to complete silence. Mrs. Mynors--in her own opinion--was the interesting and tragic heroine of this occasion. She, in all her beauty, all her desolation, had been pa.s.sed by in favour of her inexperienced, immature daughter. The pathos of her position--left in Laburnum Villa while Virginia went to take up a place in county society--flooded her with self-pity. Never had she felt capable of such an intensity of emotion as upon this day, when she was carried helpless to church to give her daughter away. Never had she come so near to being primally and brutally elementary as at the moment when the carriage stopped at the church door, and Gaunt came forward, greeting her with:

"Good morning, my mother-in-law!"

She drew in her breath with a sound like a moan; but in a flash she had seen that she must make no manifestation. The time for that had gone by. As she moved up the church, side by side with her daughter, she realised two things, sharply and simultaneously. One, that she could and ought to have prevented this marriage; the other, that it was now too late.

What was Gaunt's plan she could not exactly know. If it was simply to mortify her, then she could not see why he should be unkind to Virgie.

Yet she distrusted and feared him; and she had given no warning to the simple creature at her side, going like a lamb to the slaughter, blind to all life's mysterious issues, blind to the sinister motive which her mother so clearly saw behind Gaunt's eccentric marriage. For Virginia, the old truth held good, that at the actual moment one ceases to realise what is happening. The service struck her with a sense of detachment. She heard it with interest, almost for the first time. The vows were, indeed, comprehensive. One had, however, the comforting knowledge that the vowing was mutual. He promised things as well as she. There was a curious consolation in the reflection that he vowed to love, cherish, and even worship his wife. There seemed nothing detached about his own partic.i.p.ation in the rite. He grasped her fingers so strongly as to be almost painful as he vowed "to have and to hold."

And now it was done, and there was no more use in wondering whether one had been right or wrong.

The bare and unadorned service was quickly over. The elderly vicar read a short and plat.i.tudinous address to the newly married out of a small pastoral book. Gaunt took his wife's hand, placed it on his arm, and marched her into a stuffy, small vestry, wherein she was to write for the last time her name, Virginia Mynors.

She wrote it; and turning, fixed her troubled gaze upon her mother with an expression so bewildered, so lost, that it pierced even through the crust of egotism. Mrs. Mynors began to gasp hysterically, but, after a momentary fight for composure, managed to say, "Osbert, Osbert, I conjure you! Be good to her! Be good to my Virgie!"

"My dear mother-in-law, I promise you that Virgie shall have the treatment she deserves," was his reply. "Come, Mrs. Gaunt, we must be off, if we are to catch the London train."

Virginia was now quite numb. She took his arm because he offered it, and because there seemed nothing else to do. They were at the church door. She broke away from Gaunt to fling her arms round Tony. The boy was radiant, showing her with glowing eyes a sovereign which his new brother-in-law had just bestowed. The sight did more to encourage the bride than might be supposed. She kissed her mother next, finding it out of the question to give any parting message or direction, because the attempt to articulate would let loose a flood of feeling hardly complimentary to her husband.

Then she was in the carriage, alone with the man who was to walk through life at her side. Still the merciful numbness held her.

Gaunt, in an unconcerned way, said he thought they had better lunch at the Savoy, and she agreed, not knowing what he meant. He made one or two other trifling remarks concerning the disposal of her luggage, which awaited them at the station.

They found the train, and he put her in, walking away himself, and returning with the news that all the trunks were safe, and in the van.

He laid upon her lap a pile of magazines and one or two novels.

"I hate talking in a train," he remarked. She could have loved him for such marvellous consideration.

He had a small bag, stuffed with legal-looking doc.u.ments, which he diligently perused. Virginia, thus released momentarily from strain, lay back against the cushions. The breeze fluttered into the carriage, sweet with the breath of summer. She tried to rest, and not to think.

It was impossible not to think, however. Her thoughts were glued, as it were, to the consideration of this man to whom she was so strangely tied.

"He loved me at first sight. He guessed who I was. He got into communication with mother in order to be introduced. He suggested marriage there and then. When will he begin to woo me? What will he tell me? What shall I answer? Shall I be able to help flinching, from letting him see how abjectly afraid I am?"

He did not put her to the test. Was it possible that he divined her exhaustion, and respected it?

She was still wondering when the non-stop express ran into the terminus.

He put her into a taxi while he went and looked after their baggage.

Then he rejoined her, and directed the driver to the Savoy Hotel.

They secured a table near the window, whence could be seen the waters of the Thames, the endless movement of the traffic on the Embankment and the brilliant flowers of the public gardens.

The beauty of it revived Virgie a little. She ate some lunch, drank a gla.s.s of champagne, and began to make small, shy comments upon the scene, to which her husband listened tolerantly, but not as though interested. She reflected that she must seem to him altogether young and childish.

Her slender grace and charm drew many eyes. As Gaunt glanced about him, he was keenly conscious of this. Presently he leant back with the smile that his mother-in-law hated.

"Glad you are pleased," said he. "Make the most of it. You are going to be buried in the heart of the country from to-day onward."

She laughed lightly. "That will be no hardship," said she. "What I should not like would be to be buried in the heart of London. The walls in London seem as if they must fall down and crush you--so near together. Have you ever felt that?"

"I don't like London."

"Then that is one taste we share," said she thoughtfully, leaning back to survey him. "How strange that I should know so little of your tastes! We shall have to begin at the very beginning, shall we not?"

"The beginning of what?" asked Gaunt.

"Of acquaintanceship," she answered.

"Pardon me. I know you through and through. You have not a taste, a habit, nor an idea that I am not intimately acquainted with. Gives me an unfair advantage, does it not?"

"If it's true, it does indeed; but I don't think it is true," was her frank answer.

He gave something between a grunt and a laugh. "You are not competent to form an opinion," he replied, looking at his watch. "It is now five minutes to two," he went on, "and our train leaves St. Pancras at four.

What will you do? I am going to have a smoke. Perhaps you would like to lie down and rest a while--eh?"

It was so exactly what she craved that she thought his sympathy wonderful. That he was dismissing her to solitude on her wedding day, while he smoked, did not occur to her. She thanked him quite eagerly, a maid was summoned, and she was shown into a room with a deliciously downy bed. The maid removed her hat, took off her shoes, drew the blinds, and left, promising to call her in plenty of time.

She could not sleep, but the silence and the rec.u.mbent posture helped her. She went down to the entrance hall after her rest, feeling much more able to endure the remainder of her journey than she had dared to hope.

CHAPTER IX

IN THE TRAP

"_'Sit fast--dost fear?--The moon shines clear-- Fleet goes my barb--keep hold!

Fearst thou?'--'Oh, no!' she faintly said; 'But why so stern and cold?'_"--Scott.