CHAPTER LXI
After throwing George Caresfoot into the bramble-bush, Arthur walkedsteadily back to the inn, where he arrived, quite composed in manner,at about half-past seven. Old Sam, the ostler, was in the yard,washing a trap. He went up to him, and asked when the next trainstarted for London.
"There is one as leaves Roxham at nine o'clock, sir, and an uncommonfast one, I'm told. But you bean't a-going yet, be you, sir?"
"Yes, have the gig ready in time to catch the train."
"Very good, sir. Been to the fire, I suppose sir?" he went on, dimlyperceiving that Arthur's clothes were torn. "It were a fine place, itwore, and it did blaze right beautiful."
"No; what fire?"
"Bless me, sir, didn't you see it last night?--why, Isleworth Hall, tobe sure. It wore burnt right out, and all as was in it."
"Oh! How did it come to get burnt?"
"Can't say, sir, but I did hear say how as Lady Bellamy was a-diningthere last night along with the squire; the squire he went outsomewhere, my lady she goes home, and the footman he goes to put outthe lamp and finds the drawing-room a roaring fiery furnace, like asparson tells us on. But I don't know how that can be, for I heard howas the squire was a-dying, so 'taint likely that he was a-going out.But, lord, sir, folk in these parts do lie that uncommon, 'taint as itbe when I was a boy. As like as no, he's no more dying than you are.Anyhow, sir, it all burned like tinder, and the only thing, so I'mtold, as was saved was a naked stone statty of a girl with a chainround her wrists, as Jim Blakes, our constable, being in liquor,brought out in his arms, thinking how as it was alive, and tried torewive it with cold water."
At that moment Sam's story was interrupted by the arrival of afarmer's cart.
"How be you, Sam?"
"Well, I thank yer, for seventy-two, that is, not particular ill."
"Have you a gentleman of the name of Heigham staying here?"
"I am he," said Arthur, "do you want me?"
"No, sir, only the station-master at Roxham asked me to drop this hereas it was marked immediate," and he handed Arthur a box.
Arthur thanked him, and, taking it, went up to his room, leaving oldSam delighted to find a new listener to his story of the fire.
It was from the florist, and contained the bouquet he had meant togive Angela on her wedding-day. It had cost him a good deal of thoughtthat bouquet, to say nothing of five guineas of the coin of the realm,and he felt a certain curiosity to look at it, though to do so gavehim something of the same sensation that we experience in reading aletter written by some loved hand which we know grew cold before thelines it traced could reach us. He took the box to his room and openedit. The bouquet was a lovely thing, and did credit even to CoventGarden, and the masses of stephanois and orange-bloom, relieved hereand there by rising sprays of lilies-of-the-valley, filled the wholeroom with fragrance.
He drew it from the zinc-well in which it was packed in moss andcotton-wool, and wondered what he should do with it. He could notleave such a thing about, nor would he take it away. Suddenly an ideastruck him, and he repacked it in its case as carefully as he could inthe original moss and cotton-wool, and then looked about for the sheetof tissue-paper that should complete the covering. He had destroyedit, and had to search for a substitute. In so doing his eye fell upona long envelope on his dressing-table and he smiled. It contained hismarriage licence, and he bethought him that it was a very fairsubstitute for tissue-paper, and quite as worthless. He extracted it,and, placing it over the flowers, closed up the box. Then he carefullydirected it to "Mrs. George Caresfoot, Abbey House," and, ringing thebell, desired the boots to find a messenger to take it over.
When he had done all this, he sat down and wondered what could havecome to him that he could take pleasure in doing a cruel action onlyworthy of a jealous woman.
Perhaps of all the bitter cups which are held to our lips in this sadworld there is none more bitter than that which it was his lot todrink of now. To begin with, the blow fell in youth, when we love orhate, or act, with an ardour and an entire devotion that we give tonothing in after-life. It is then that the heart puts forth its mosttender and yet its most lusty shoots, and if they are crushed thewhole plant suffers, and sometimes bleeds to death. Arthur had, to anextent quite unrealized by himself until he lost her, centred all hislife in this woman, and it was no exaggeration to say, as he had saidto her, that she had murdered his heart, and withered up all that wasbest in it. She had done more, she had inflicted the most cruel injuryupon him that a woman can inflict upon a man. She had shaken hisbelief in her sex at large.
He felt, sitting there in his desolation, that now he had lost Angelahe could never be the same man he would otherwise have been. Her crueldesertion had shattered the tinted glass through which youth looks atthe world, and he now, before his day, saw it as it is, grim and hard,and full of coarse realities, and did not yet know that time wouldagain soften down the sharpest of the rough outlines, and throw agarment of its own over the nakedness of life. He was a generous-hearted man and not a vain one, and had he thought that Angela hadceased to care for him and loved this other man, he could have foundit in his heart to forgive her, and even to sympathize with her; buthe could not think this. Something told him that it was not so. Shehad contracted herself into a shameful, loveless marriage, and, togain ends quite foreign to all love, had raised a barrier between themwhich had no right to exist, and yet one that in this world could, hethought, never be removed.
Misfortunes rain upon us from every quarter of the sky, but so long asthey come from the sky we can bear them, for they are beyond thecontrol of our own volition, and must be accepted, as we accept thegale or the lightning. It is the troubles which spring from our ownfolly and weakness, or from that of those with whom our lives areintertwined, which really crush us. Now Arthur knew enough of theworld to be aware that there is no folly to equal that of a woman who,of her own free will, truly loving one man whom she can marry if shewill sit, deliberately gives herself to another. It is not only afolly, it is a crime, and, like most crimes, for this life, anirretrievable mistake.
Long before he got back to London, the first unwholesome exaltation ofmind that always follows a great misfortune, and which may perhaps becompared with the excitement that for awhile covers the shameful senseof defeat in an army, had evaporated, and he began to realize thecrushing awfulness of the blow which had fallen on him, and to fearlest it should drive him mad. He looked round his little horizon forsome straw of comfort at which to catch, and could find none; nothingbut dreadful thoughts and sickening visions.
And then suddenly, just as he was sinking into the dulness of despair,there came, like the fist gleam of light in chaotic darkness, thememory of Mildred Carr. Truly she had spoken prophetically. His idolhad been utterly cast down and crushed to powder by a hand strongerthan his own. He would go to her in his suffering; perhaps she couldfind means to comfort him.
When he reached town he took a hansom and went to look for some rooms;he would not return to those he had left on the previous afternoon,for the sympathetic landlord had helped him to pack up the weddingclothes and had admired the wedding gift. Arthur felt that he couldnot face him again. He found some to suit him in Duke Street, St.James, and left his things there. Thence he drove to Fenchurch Streetand took a passage to Madeira. The clerk, the same one who had givenhim his ticket about a year before, remembered him perfectly, andasked him how he got on with Mrs. Carr. But when his passage was takenhe was disgusted to find that the mail did not sail for another fivedays. He looked at his watch, it was only half-past one o'clock. Hecould scarcely believe what had happened had only occurred thatmorning, only seven hours ago. It seemed to him that he had stood faceto face with Angela, not that morning, but years ago, and miles away,on some desolate shore which lay on the other side of a dead ocean ofpain. And yet it was only seven hours! If the hours went with suchheavy wings, how would the days pass, and the months, and the years?
What shoul
d he do with himself? In his condition perpetual activitywas as necessary to him as air, he must do something to dull the sharpedge of his suffering, or the sword of madness which hung over him bysuch a slender thread would fall. Suddenly he bethought him of a manwhom he had known slightly up at Cambridge, a man of wealth and evilreputation. This man would, he felt, be able to put him in a way ofgetting through his time. He knew his address and thither he drove.