M. E. Braddon

“ CHAPTER X. ‘ALAS! I HAVE NOR HOPE NOR HEALTH.’
Bella Scratchell, tripping to the Park one frosty morning, and entering Mrs. Piper’s sitting-room, all beaming with smiles, like a small edition of Aurora, found the invalid in tears, and sniffing feebly at a bottle of aromatic vinegar.
‘Dear Mrs. Piper, have you had one of your bad headaches?’
‘No, my dear, it is not my bodily health, but my spiritual condition that affects me. I feel as if I had been holding on by an anchor, and somebody had taken the anchor away and left me tossing on a stormy sea. I had such faith in him. ”

“ A dreadful blankness and emptiness had descended upon the house, so quiet, so changeless heretofore, but now pervaded with the one idea of death.
Beatrix shivered as she passed the door of the room where her dead father was lying. Mrs. Dulcimer perceived that shuddering recoil, and again suggested that her sweet Beatrix should come to the Vicarage. But again Beatrix was firm.
‘Do you think I am frightened at the thought of death?’ she asked bitterly. ‘My father’s life was a living death—to me. ”

“ That stricken face of Beatrix’s, those wild startled eyes—as he had seen them in the candle-lit room at the Water House—haunted him like an evil dream. He saw guilt and remorse in those troubled looks—the fear of God and man. Had he been a man who lived for himself alone, who had no higher aim in life than his own happiness, Cyril Culverhouse might have stifled the voice of doubt, and listened only to love’s pleading. ”

“ If she could only be made to think that Cyril was fond of you, Bella, without actual falsehood,’ concluded Mrs. Dulcimer, with a strong emphasis upon the qualifying adjective, as much as to say that in so good a cause she would not mind sailing rather near the wind.
‘I’m sure I don’t know how it is to be done,’ said Bella, with a meditative air. ‘Beatrix is so self-opinionated. It is not as if she were a weak-minded pliable girl. She is as hard as rock.’
‘But you are so clever, Bella. You could manage anything. ”

“ CHAPTER XVIII. ‘SICK, SICK TO THE HEART OF LIFE AM I.’
‘Have you thought of the danger to yourself?’ asked the doctor, startled by Cyril’s proposition.
‘I do not care about the danger—if there be any.’
‘There may be danger. You have been working night and day. You are by no means a patient I should consider able to lose several ounces of blood with impunity. You had better abandon the idea, Mr. Culverhouse. Your life is more valuable than that poor fellow’s yonder.’
‘I beg your pardon,’ said Cyril. ‘That young man is all the world to his widowed mother. ”

“ Slowly and gradually health and strength came back to Beatrix Harefield. The family life at the Vicarage was a new thing to her. It was a new thing to live in a house where everybody was cheerful, and where people seemed fond of her. The library was her favourite room, and Mr. Dulcimer her chosen companion. Whether he was silently absorbed in his book, or laid it down, as he did very often, to talk to her, Beatrix found his society all-sufficient. ”

“ It was not his suspicion, but the evil thoughts of others, that parted us.’
‘Then he is a coward,’ cried Kenrick, honestly angry. ‘A man’s choice of his wife is a question of life or death for himself. He is both craven and fool if he allows other people to be the arbiters of his fate.’
‘But you do not understand,’ urged Beatrix, pleading for the man who had broken her heart. ‘It is his office——’
‘His office be——’
He might have said something very shocking if Mrs. Dulcimer had not come in at this moment. She found Beatrix in tears, and Kenrick pacing up and down the room with a distracted air. ”

“ Beatrix sank into her father’s chair, very pale, and trembling in every limb. She could think of nothing—she could suggest nothing. For the moment the very power of thought seemed suspended, but this state of mental collapse did not last long. Bella leant over her and murmured something indistinctly soothing. Beatrix rose and went quickly to the door.
‘Let us look in every room in the house,’ she said. ‘In my mother’s rooms first of all. He may be there.’
‘Oh, Miss Beatrix!’ cried Peacock, ‘why, you know those rooms are never opened.’
‘Yes, sometimes by him. He keeps the key. ”

“ So one afternoon in windy March, Beatrix was put into the old-fashioned carriage in which her mother had driven during her brief wedded life, and was conveyed to the Vicarage, there to remain till she should be strong enough to travel. She felt a sensation nearer akin to happiness than she had known for a long time when she found herself seated in the Vicar’s firelit library, with a little old-fashioned tea-table by her side, and Rebecca waiting upon her with a cup of strong tea. ”

“ Her new sense of liberty brought her no happiness—no desire to taste the sweets of freedom, or to exchange the gloom and solitude of the Water House for brighter scenes. If her independence did not bring Cyril to her side it brought nothing. Wealth, power, liberty, were valueless without him.
The slow days went by, and she waited for her lover to make some sign. At first she was inclined to impute his conduct to a restraining delicacy, but as time went on a horrible fear began to take hold of her aching heart. He was purposely avoiding her. She had spent her Sunday evenings at the Vicarage. ”

“ Piper’s monument was to be the glory of the village churchyard. Mr. Dulcimer was too indulgent and easy to insist upon a rigid æstheticism in the memorials which the living erected in honour of the dead. There was a good deal of bad taste in God’s Acre at Little Yafford, but Mr. Piper was destined to put the cap on the edifice by the gaudiest and most expensive mausoleum that ever the chief stonemason of Great Yafford had devised or executed.
It was to be a sarcophagus of the jewel casket shape, with four twisted columns, like candlesticks, at the corners, and a tall urn surmounting the lid. ”

“ Cyril stayed for more than an hour, comforting both the sick man and his mother by his presence. He said very little to Emmanuel, for the sufferer was in no state to talk or to be talked to. It was one of those cases in which a death-bed repentance—a calm survey of past errors and sins—a deliberate act of allegiance to God—was not to be expected. The sinking soul might clutch at the cross held aloft before those dim eyes, as a drowning man catches at the rope flung out to him at his last extremity ”

“ Bella walked briskly through the Park, reflecting on the foolishness of human nature. Here was Mrs. Piper, to whom had been given such great prosperity, and who had made so little use of her advantages, frittering away life upon trivial anxieties, and missing the chance of happiness. She looked along the fine old avenue, and thought how much grandeur and importance a sensible young woman like herself might have derived from such surroundings. ”

“ Miss Coyle was quite angry with the coroner for not having looked deeper into things. She spoke of him contemptuously as a hireling and a time-server.
Cyril Culverhouse knew what people thought about the woman he loved—for he loved her none the less because he held himself aloof from her. His [114] love was deathless. Innocent or guilty he must love her to the end. He knew what people thought of his beloved; he knew that even kindly Mrs. Dulcimer shook her head, and shrank from familiar contact with her husband’s ward. ”

“ Culverhouse?’
‘My dear, he has left us. He has gone to Bridford—a horrible place in Lancashire, where they have small-pox every year. You might have knocked me down with a feather when Ebenezer came in and told me about it.’
Bella sat pale and speechless. Was it for this that she had schemed? She had slandered her familiar friend, sold herself to Satan, in the hope of winning this man; and behold! he was gone, and there was no more chance of winning him than there had been before she perilled her soul by this sin. For Bella knew that she had sinned. ”

“ Dulcimer,’ answered Bella, inwardly lamenting that it had pleased God to call her to that station of life in which her friends always felt themselves justified in asking her to work for them.
A young woman of fortune like Miss Harefield might be as idle or as selfish as she pleased. Nobody ever thought of asking for payment in kind for any favour they showed her; but everybody who did any kindness to penniless Bella Scratchell wanted to extort recompense for his or her civility in needlework or some sort of drudgery. ”

“ I have never tired of them.’
Cyril left with a heavy heart, promising to call in the evening, at the hour when he would be likely to meet the doctor. That anguish-wrung countenance of the widow’s haunted him all day long. In the places where he went there was little else but sorrow, but there seemed to him to be no burthen like unto this burthen of hers—a grief and a desolation beyond speech. ”

“ Bella was reflecting that if Beatrix were happily married to Sir Kenrick Culverhouse, her sin about the sealed letter would weigh less heavily on her conscience—or, indeed, need not weigh at all. What can any one ask more than happiness? And, in the eye of the world, Kenrick was a much more suitable husband for a young woman of fortune than Cyril could possibly be. ”

“ Cyril turned upon the speaker with eyes that flashed angrily across a cloud of gray smoke.
‘Kenrick, can you believe for one moment that I took that office as a means of living, or that the gain of wealth or happiness would tempt me to surrender it? I should think myself a new Judas if I could turn my back upon my Master to marry the woman I love.’
‘Keep your office, then, and marry her all the same. Live down this slander. Stand up bravely before the world with your wife by your side, and let [125] men say the worst they can of you. ”

“ And then, if he is half an infidel, if religion exercises no restraining influence over his acts, he will make up his mind, suddenly, perhaps, to end his existence. He has no love of his fellow-men to anchor him to earth, no hope of anything bright or good waiting for him in the coming years. He has a very faint belief—possibly none at all—in a tribunal beyond this world where he will have to answer for his deeds. It is very clear to me that for the last ten years Christian Harefield’s life has been burdened by some incurable sorrow. ”

“ Of fortune or advancement in life he had no hope. The Church is a profession few men would choose, desiring [233] either fortune or advancement. He had nothing to live for but his duty, and it would be sweeter to him to die for that than to go on living for it.
Every thought of Beatrix Harefield was pain; most painful of all was the thought that she would think him mean and cowardly for his defection. If she was innocent she must scorn him for his doubt of her. If she was guilty she must deem him a coward for refusing her remorse the shelter of his love. ”

“ Beatrix found Madame Leonard a much more pleasant companion than Miss Scales. She was well read in her own language, and opened the wide world of classic and modern French literature to her pupil. They read together for hours, each taking her turn at reading aloud, and occupying herself in the interval with those delicate fancy works which women love. ”

“ She began to think that, after all, wealth was not an unqualified blessing. Here was the heiress to one of the finest estates in Yorkshire, with innumerable acres in Lincolnshire to boot, leading an existence so joyless and monotonous [6] that even one week of it was too much for Miss Scratchell. And yonder at the Park the wife of a millionaire was hastening her descent to the grave by vain cares and needless economies. The rich people did not seem, according to Bella’s small experience, to get value for their money. ”