Vera Nevill Part 50

For it had come to this now, that when Vera thought about marrying, it was upon Denis Wilde that she also pondered.

To be at Sutton, and not to come face to face with Maurice, was of course an impossibility. Carefully as Vera confined herself to the house and garden for the next three days, she could not avoid going to church when Sunday came. And at church were Captain and Mrs. Kynaston. During the service she only saw his back, erect and broad-shouldered, in the seat in front of her, for the pews had been cleared away, and open sittings had been subst.i.tuted all through the church. Maurice looked neither to the right nor to the left; he stood, or sat, or knelt, and scarcely turned his head an inch, but Helen's b.u.t.terfly bonnet was twisted in every direction throughout the service. It is certain that she very soon knew who it was who had come into the vicarage seat behind her.

When Vera came out of church, having purposely lingered as long as she could inside, until the rest of the congregation had all gone out, she found the bride and bridegroom waiting for her in the churchyard.

Helen stood with her hand twined with easy familiarity round her husband's arm; possibly she had studied the att.i.tude with a view to impressing Vera with the perfection of her conjugal happiness. She turned quite delightedly to greet her.

"Oh, here you are at last, Miss Nevill. We have been waiting for you, have we not, Maurice dear? We both felt how pleased we should be to see you. I am very glad you have come back; it will make it much more pleasant for me at Kynaston; you will come up to see me, won't you?

I should like you to see my boudoir, it is lovely!"

"You forget that Miss Nevill has seen it all long ago," said Maurice, gravely; their hands had just met, but he had not looked at her.

"Oh, yes, to be sure; how stupid I am! Of course, I remember now, it was all done up for _you_ by poor dear old John. Doesn't it seem funny that I should be going to live in the house? Ah, how d'ye do, Mr. Daintree?"

as Eustace came out of the vestry door; "here we are, chattering to your sister. What a delightful sermon, dear Mr. Daintree, and what a treat to be in a Christian church--I mean a Protestant church--again after those dreadful Sundays on the Continent."

Vera had turned to Maurice.

"Have you any news of Sir John yet?"

"No; we cannot expect to hear of his arrival till next month. I dare say you will like to hear about him. I will let you know as soon as he writes."

"Thank you; I should like to know about him very much."

Helen, in the middle of Eustace's polite acknowledgment of her compliment to his sermon, was casting furtive glances at her husband; even the two or three grave words he had exchanged with Vera were sufficient to make her uneasy. She desired to torture Vera with envy and with jealousy; she had forgotten to take into account how very easily her own suspicious jealousy could be aroused. She interrupted the vicar in the very middle of his speech.

"Now, really, we must run away. Come, Maurice, darling, we shall be late for lunch; you and Miss Nevill must finish your confidences another day.

You will come up soon, won't you? Any day at five I am in--good-bye."

She shook hands with them, and hurried her husband away.

"What an odd thing it is that you and that girl never can meet without having all sorts of private things to say to each other," she said, angrily, as soon as they were out of earshot.

"Private things! what can you possibly mean, Helen? Miss Nevill was asking me if I had heard of John's arrival."

"I wonder she has the face to mention John's name!"

"Why, pray?"

"After her disgraceful conduct to him."

"I think you know very little about Miss Nevill's conduct, Helen."

"No, I dare say not. And _you_ have always known a great deal more about it than anybody else. That I have always understood, Maurice."

Maurice looked very black, but he was silent.

"I am very glad I told her about the boudoir," continued Helen, spitefully. "How mortified she must feel to think that it has all slipped through her fingers and into mine. I do hope she will come up to the house. I shall show her all over it; she will wish she had not been such a fool!"

Maurice was looking at his wife with a singular expression.

"I begin to think you have a very bad heart, Helen," he said, with a contempt in his voice that was very near akin to disgust.

She looked up, a little startled, and put her hand back, caressingly, under his arm.

"Oh, don't look at me like that, Maurice; I don't want to vex you. You know very well how much I love you--and--and"--looking up with a little smile into his face that was meant as a peace offering--"I suppose I am jealous!"

"Suppose you wait to be jealous until I give you cause to be so,"

answered her husband, gravely and coldly, but not altogether unkindly, for he meant to do his duty to her, G.o.d helping him, as far as he knew how.

But all the way home he walked silently by her side, and wondered whether the sacrifice he had made of his love to his duty had been, indeed, worth it.

It had been hard for him, this first meeting with Vera. He had felt it more than he had believed possible. Instinctively he had realized what she must have suffered; and that her sufferings were utterly beyond his power to console. It began to come into his mind that, meaning to deal rightly by Helen, he had dealt cruelly and badly by Vera. He had sacrificed the woman he loved to the woman he did not love.

Had it, indeed, been such a right and praiseworthy action on his part?

Maurice lost himself in speculation as to what would have happened had he broken his faith to Helen, and allowed himself to follow the dictates of his heart rather than those of his conscience.

That was what Vera had done for his sake; but what he had been unable to do for hers.

There was a certain hardness about the man, a rigid sense of honour that was almost a fault; for, if it be a virtue to cleave to truth and good faith above everything, to swear to one's neighbour and disappoint him not--even though it be to one's own hindrance--it is certainly not a fine or n.o.ble thing to mistake tenderness for a weakness only fit to be crushed out of the soul with firm hands and an iron determination.

Guilty once of one irreparable action of weakness, Maurice had set himself determinedly ever after to undo the evil that he had done.

To be true to his brother, to keep his faith with Helen, these had been the only objects he had steadily kept in view: he had succeeded in his efforts, but had scarcely realized that, in doing so, he had not only wrecked his own life, but also that of the woman whom he had so infinitely wronged.

But when he saw her once again--when he held for an instant the cold hand within his own--when he marked, with a pang, the dark circles round the averted eyes that spoke so mutely and touchingly of sleepless vigils and of many tears--when he noted how the lovely sensitive lips trembled a little as she spoke her few common-place words to him--then Maurice began to understand what he had done to her; and, for the first time, something that was almost remorse, with regard to his own conduct towards her, came into his soul.

Such meditations were not, however, safe or profitable to indulge in for long. Maurice recalled his wandering thoughts with an effort, and with something of repentance for having given them place, turned his attention resolutely to his wife's chatter during the remainder of the walk home.

Meanwhile Vera and the vicar are walking back, side by side, to the vicarage.

"Something," says Eustace, with solemn displeasure, "something must really be done, and that soon, about Ishmael Spriggs; that man will drive me into my grave before my time! Anything more fearfully and awfully out of tune than the Te Deum I never heard in the whole course of my life. I can hear his voice shouting and bellowing above the whole of the rest of the choir; he leads all the others wrong. It is not a bit of use to tell me that he is the best behaved man in the parish; it is not a matter of conduct, as I told Mr. Dale; it is a matter of voice, and if the man can't be taught to sing in tune, out of the choir he shall go; it's a positive scandal to the Service. Marion says we shall turn him into an enemy if we don't let him sing, and that he will go to the dissenting chapel, and never come to church any more. Well, I can't help that; I must give him up to the dissenters. As to keeping him in the choir, it is out of the question after that Te Deum. I shall never forget it. It will give me a nightmare to-night, I am convinced. Wasn't it dreadful, Vera?"

"Yes, very likely, Eustace," answered Vera, at random. She has not heard one single word he has said.

Eustace Daintree looks round at her sharply. He sees that she is very white, and that there are tears upon her cheeks.

"Why, Vera!" he cries, standing still, you have not listened to a word I have been saying. "What is the matter, child? Why are you crying?"

They are in the vicarage garden now; among the beds of scarlet geraniums, and the tall hollyhocks, and the glaring red gladioli; a whole bank of greenery, rhododendrons and lauristinas, conceals them from the windows of the house; a garden bench sheltered beneath a nook of the laurel bushes is close by.

With a sudden gesture of utter misery Vera sinks down upon it, and bursts into a pa.s.sion of tears.

"My dear child; my poor Vera! What is it? What has happened? What can be the reason of this?"

Mr. Daintree is infinitely distressed and puzzled; he bends over her, taking her hand between his own. There is something in this wild outburst of grief, from one habitually so calm and self-contained as Vera, that is an absolute shock to him. He had learnt to love her very dearly; he had thought he had understood all the workings of her candid maiden soul; he had fancied that the story of her broken engagement was no secret to him, that it was but the struggle of a conscientious nature after what was true and honest. It had seemed to him that there had been no mystery in her conduct, for he could appreciate all her motives. And surely, as she had done right, she must be now at peace. He had told himself that the pure instincts of a naturally stainless soul had triumphed in Vera over the carelessness and worldliness of her early training; and lo, here was the pa.s.sionate weeping of a tempest-tossed woman, whose agony he could not fathom, and whose sorrows he knew not how to divine.

"Vera, will you not tell me?" he asked her, in his distress. "Will you not make a friend of me? My dear, forget that I am a clergyman; remember only that I am your brother, and that I shall know how to feel for you--for you, my dear sister."

But she could not tell him. There are some troubles that must be kept for ever buried within our own souls; to speak of some things is only to make them worse. Only she choked back her sobs, and lifted her face, white and tear-stained; there was a look of hunted despair in her eyes, that bewildered, and even half-terrified him.