East Lynne

“Will you marry me, Barbara?”

The words were spoken in the quietest, most matter-of-fact tone, just as if he had said, “Shall I give you a chair, Barbara?” But, oh! The change that passed over her countenance! The sudden light of joy! The scarlet flush of emotion and happiness. Then it all faded down to paleness and sadness.

She shook her head in the negative. “But you are very kind to ask me,” she added in words.

“What is the impediment, Barbara?”

Another rush of color as before and a deep silence. Mr. Carlyle stole his arm around her and bent his face on a level with hers.

“Whisper it to me, Barbara.”

She burst into a flood of tears.

“Is it because I once married another?”

“No, no. It is the remembrance of that night—you cannot have forgotten it, and it is stamped on my brain in letters of fire. I never thought so to betray myself. But for what passed that night you would not have asked me now.”

“Barbara!”

She glanced up at him; the tone was so painful.

“Do you know that I love you? That there is none other in the whole world whom I would care to marry but you? Nay, Barbara, when happiness is within our reach, let us not throw it away upon a chimera.”

She cried more softly, leaning upon his arm. “Happiness? Would it be happiness for you?”

“Great and deep happiness,” he whispered.

She read truth in his countenance, and a sweet smile illumined her sunny features. Mr. Carlyle read its signs.

“You love me as much as ever, Barbara!”

“Far more, far more,” was the murmured answer, and Mr. Carlyle held her closer, and drew her face fondly to his. Barbara’s heart was at length at rest, and she had been content to remain where she was forever.

And Richard? Had he got clear off? Richard was stealing along the road, plunging into the snow by the hedge because it was more sheltered there than in the beaten path, when his umbrella came in contact with another umbrella. Miss Carlyle had furnished it to him; not to protect his battered hat but to protect his face from being seen by the passers by. The umbrella he encountered was an aristocratic silk one, with an ivory handle; Dick’s was of democratic cotton, with hardly any handle at all; and the respective owners had been bearing on, heads down and umbrellas out, till they, the umbrellas, met smash, right under a gas lamp. Aside went the umbrellas, and the antagonists stared at each other.

“How dare you, fellow? Can’t you see where you are going on?”

Dick thought he should have dropped. He would have given all the money his pockets held if the friendly earth had but opened and swallowed him in; for he was now peering into the face of his own father.

Uttering an exclamation of dismay, which broke from him involuntarily, Richard sped away with the swiftness of an arrow. Did Justice Hare recognize the tones? It cannot be said. He saw a rough, strange looking man, with bushy, black whiskers, who was evidently scared at the sight of him. That was nothing; for the justice, being a justice, and a strict one, was regarded with considerable awe in the parish by those of Dick’s apparent caliber. Nevertheless, he stood still and gazed in the direction until all sound of Richard’s footsteps had died away in the distance.

Tears were streaming down the face of Mrs. Hare. It was a bright morning after the snowstorm, so bright that the sky was blue, and the sun was shining, but the snow lay deeply upon ground. Mrs. Hare sat in her chair, enjoying the brightness, and Mr. Carlyle stood near her. The tears were of joy and of grief mingled—of grief at hearing that she should at last have to part with Barbara, of joy that she was going to one so entirely worthy of her as Mr. Carlyle.

“Archibald, she has had a happy home here; you will render yours as much so?”

“To the very utmost of my power.”

“You will be ever kind to her, and cherish her?”

“With my whole strength and heart. Dear Mrs. Hare; I thought you knew me too well to doubt me.”

“Doubt you! I do not doubt you, I trust you implicitly, Archibald. Had the whole world laid themselves at Barbara’s feet, I should have prayed that she might choose you.”

A small smile flitted over Mr. Carlyle’s lips. He knew it was what Barbara would have done.

“But, Archibald, what about Cornelia?” returned Mrs. Hare. “I would not for a moment interfere in your affairs, or in the arrangements you and Barbara may agree upon, but I cannot help thinking that married people are better alone.”

“Cornelia will quit East Lynne,” said Mr. Carlyle. “I have not spoken to her yet, but I shall do so now. I have long made my mind up that if ever I did marry again, I and my wife would live alone. It is said she interfered too much with my former wife. Had I suspected it, Cornelia should not have remained in the house a day. Rest assured that Barbara shall not be an object to the chance.”

“How did you come over her?” demanded the justice, who had already given his gratified consent, and who now entered in his dressing gown and morning wig. “Others have tried it on, and Barbara would not listen to them.”

“I suppose I must have cast a spell upon her,” answered Mr. Carlyle, breaking into a smile.

“Here she is. Barbara,” carried on the unceremonious justice, “what is it that you see in Carlyle more than anybody else?”

Barbara’s scarlet cheeks answered for her. “Papa,” she said, “Otway Bethel is at the door asking to speak to you. Jasper says he won’t come in.”

“Then I’m sure I’m not going out to him in the cold. Here, Mr. Otway, what are you afraid of?” he called out. “Come in.”

Otway Bethel made his appearance in his usual sporting costume. But he did not seem altogether at his ease in the presence of Mrs. Hare and Barbara.

“The colonel wished to see you, justice, and ask you if you had any objection to the meeting’s being put off from one o’clock till two,” cried he, after nodding to Mr. Carlyle. “He has got a friend coming to see him unexpectedly who will leave again by the two o’clock train.”

“I don’t care which it is,” answered Mr. Hare. “Two o’clock will do as well as one, for me.”

“That’s all right, then; and I’ll drop in upon Herbert and Pinner and acquaint them.”

Miss Carlyle’s cold was better that evening, in fact she seemed quite herself again, and Mr. Carlyle introduced the subject of his marriage. It was after dinner that he began upon it.

“Cornelia, when I married Lady Isabel Vane, you reproached me severely with having kept you in the dark—”

“If you had not kept me in the dark, but consulted me, as any other Christian would, the course of events would have been wholly changed, and the wretchedness and disgrace that fell on this house been spared to it,” fiercely interrupted Miss Carlyle.

“We will leave the past,” he said, “and consider the future. I was about to remark, that I do not intend to fall under your displeasure again for the like offense. I believe you have never wholly forgiven it.”

“And never shall,” cried she, impetuously. “I did not deserve the slight.”

“Therefore, almost as soon as I know it myself, I acquaint you. I am about to marry a second time, Cornelia.”

Miss Carlyle started up. Her spectacles dropped off her nose, and a knitting-box which she happened to have on her knees, clattered to the floor.

“What did you say?” she uttered, aghast.

“I’m about to marry.”

“You!”

“I. Is there anything so very astonishing in it?”

“For the love of common sense, don’t go and make such a fool of yourself. You have done it once; was not that enough for you, but you must run your head into the noose again?”

“Now, Cornelia, can you wonder that I do not speak of things when you meet them in this way? You treat me just as you did when I was a child. It is very foolish.”

“When folk act childishly, they must be treated as children. I always thought you were mad when you married before, but I shall think you doubly mad now.”

“Because you have preferred to remain single and solitary yourself, is it any reason why you should condemn me to do the same? You are happy alone; I should be happier with a wife.”

“That she may go and disgrace you, as the last one did!” intemperately spoke Miss Carlyle, caring not a rush what she said in her storm of anger.

Mr. Carlyle’s brow flushed, but he controlled his temper.

“No,” he calmly replied. “I am not afraid of that in the one I have now chosen.”

Miss Corny gathered her knitting together, he had picked up her box. Her hands trembled, and the lines of her face were working. It was a blow to her as keen as the other had been.

“Pray who is it that you have chosen?” she jerked forth. “The whole neighborhood has been after you.”

“Let it be who it will, Cornelia, you will be sure to grumble. Were I to say that it was a royal princess, or a peasant’s daughter, you would equally see grounds for finding fault.”

“Of course I should. I know who it is—that stuck-up Louisa Dobede.”

“No, it is not. I never had the slightest intention of choosing Louisa Dobede, nor she of choosing me. I am marrying to please myself, and, for a wife, Louisa Dobede would not please me.”

“As you did before,” sarcastically put in Miss Corny.

“Yes; as I did before.”

“Well, can’t you open your mouth and say who it is?” was the exasperated rejoinder.

“It is Barbara Hare.”

“Who?” shrieked Miss Carlyle.

“You are not deaf, Cornelia.”

“Well, you are an idiot!” she exclaimed, lifting up her hands and eyes.

“Thank you,” he said, but without any signs of irritation.

“And so you are; you are, Archibald. To suffer that girl, who has been angling after you so long, to catch you at last.”

“She has not angled after me; had she done so, she would probably never have been Mrs. Carlyle. Whatever passing fancy she may have entertained for me in earlier days, she has shown no symptoms of it of late years; and I am quite certain that she had no more thought or idea that I should choose her for my second wife, than you had I should choose you. Others have angled after me too palpably, but Barbara has not.”

“She is a conceited minx, as vain as she is high.”

“What else have you to urge against her?”

“I would have married a girl without a slur, if I must have married,” aggravatingly returned Miss Corny.

“Slur?”

“Slur, yes. Dear me, is it an honor—the possessing a brother such as Richard?”

Miss Corny sniffed. “Pigs may fly; but I never saw them try at it.”

“The next consideration, Cornelia, is about your residence. You will go back, I presume, to your own home.”

Miss Corny did not believe her own ears. “Go back to my own home!” she exclaimed. “I shall do nothing of the sort. I shall stop at East Lynne. What’s to hinder me?”

Mr. Carlyle shook his head. “It cannot be,” he said, in a low, decisive tone.

“Who says so?” she sharply asked.

“I do. Have you forgotten that night—when she went away—the words spoken by Joyce? Cornelia, whether they were true or false, I will not subject another to the chance.”

She did not answer. Her lips parted and closed again. Somehow, Miss Carlyle could not bear to be reminded of that revelation of Joyce’s; it subdued even her.

“I cast no reflection upon you,” hastily continued Mr. Carlyle. “You have been a mistress of a house for many years, and you naturally look to be so; it is right you should. But two mistresses in a house do not answer, Cornelia; they never did, and they never will.”

“Why did you not give me so much of your sentiments when I first came to East Lynne?” she burst forth. “I hate hypocrisy.”

“They were not my sentiments then; I possessed none. I was ignorant upon the subject as I was upon many others. Experience has come to me since.”

“You will not find a better mistress of a house than I have made you,” she resentfully spoke.

“I do not look for it. The tenants leave your house in March, do they not?”

“Yes, they do,” snapped Miss Corny. “But as we are on the subject of details of ways and means, allow me to tell you that if you did what is right, you would move into that house of mine, and I will go to a smaller—as you seem to think I shall poison Barbara if I remain with her. East Lynne is a vast deal too fine and too grand for you.”

“I do not consider it so. I shall not quit East Lynne.”

“Are you aware that, in leaving your house, I take my income with me, Archibald?”

“Most certainly. Your income is yours, and you will require it for your own purposes. I have neither a right to, nor wish for it.”

“It will make a pretty good hole in your income, the withdrawing of it, I can tell you that. Take care that you and East Lynne don’t go bankrupt together.”

At this moment the summons of a visitor was heard. Even that excited the ire of Miss Carlyle. “I wonder who’s come bothering to-night?” she uttered.

Peter entered. “It is Major Thorn, sir. I have shown him into the drawing-room.”

Mr. Carlyle was surprised. He had not thought Major Thorn within many a mile of West Lynne. He proceeded to the drawing-room.

“Such a journey!” said Major Thorn to Mr. Carlyle. “It is my general luck to get ill-weather when I travel. Rain and hail, thunder and heat; nothing bad comes amiss when I am out. The snow lay on the rails, I don’t know how thick; at one station we were detained two hours.”

“Are you proposing to make any stay at West Lynne?”

“Off again to-morrow. My leave, this time, is to be spent at my mother’s. I may bestow a week of it or so on West Lynne, but am not sure. I must be back in Ireland in a month. Such a horrid boghole we are quartered in just now!”

“To go from one subject to another,” observed Mr. Carlyle; “there is a question I have long thought to put to you, Thorn, did we ever meet again. Which year was it that you were staying at Swainson?”

Major Thorn mentioned it. It was the year of Hallijohn’s murder.

“As I thought—in fact, know,” said Mr. Carlyle. “Did you, while you were stopping there, ever come across a namesake of yours—one Thorn?”

“I believe I did. But I don’t know the man, of my knowledge, and I saw him but once only. I don’t think he was living at Swainson. I never observed him in the town.”

“Where did you meet with him?”

“At a roadside beer-shop, about two miles from Swainson. I was riding one day, when a fearful storm came on, and I took shelter there. Scarcely had I entered, when another horsemen rode up, and he likewise took shelter—a tall, dandified man, aristocratic and exclusive. When he departed—for he quitted first, the storm being over—I asked the people who he was. They said they did not know, though they had often seen him ride by; but a man who was there, drinking, said he was a Captain Thorn. The same man, by the way, volunteered the information that he came from a distance; somewhere near West Lynne; I remember that.”

“That Captain Thorn did?”

“No—that he, himself did. He appeared to know nothing of Captain Thorn, beyond the name.”

It seemed to be ever so! Scraps of information, but nothing tangible. Nothing to lay hold of, or to know the man by. Would it be thus always?

“Should you recognize him again were you to see him?” resumed Mr. Carlyle awakening from his reverie.

“I think I should. There was something peculiar in his countenance, and I remember it well yet.”

“Were you by chance to meet him, and discover his real name—for I have reason to believe that Thorn, the one he went by then, was an assumed one—will you oblige me by letting me know it?”

“With all the pleasure in life,” replied the major. “The chances are against it though, confined as I am to that confounded sister country. Other regiments get the luck of being quartered in the metropolis, or near it; ours doesn’t.”

When Major Thorn departed, and Mr. Carlyle was about to return to the room where he left his sister, he was interrupted by Joyce.

“Sir,” she began. “Miss Carlyle tells me that there is going to be a change at East Lynne.”

The words took Mr. Carlyle by surprise.

“Miss Carlyle has been in a hurry to tell you,” he remarked—a certain haughty displeasure in his tone.

“She did not speak for the sake of telling me, sir, it is not likely; but I fancy she was thinking about her own plans. She inquired whether I would go with her when she left, or whether I meant to remain at East Lynne. I would not answer her, sir, until I had spoken to you.”

“Well?” said Mr. Carlyle.

“I gave a promise sir, to—to—my late lady—that I would remain with her children as long as I was permitted. She asked it of me when she was ill—when she thought she was going to die. What I would inquire of you, sir, is, whether the change will make any difference to my staying?”

“No,” he decisively replied. “I also, Joyce, wish you to remain with the children.”

“It is well, sir,” Joyce answered, and her face looked bright as she quitted the room.

CHAPTER XXXI

MR. DILL IN AN EMBROIDERED SHIRT-FRONT

It was a lovely morning in June, and all West Lynne was astir. West Lynne generally was astir in the morning, but not in the bustling manner that might be observed now. People were abroad in numbers, passing down to St. Jude’s Church, for it was the day of Mr. Carlyle’s marriage to Barbara Hare.

Miss Carlyle made herself into a sort of martyr. She would not go near it; fine weddings in fine churches did not suit her, she proclaimed; they could tie themselves up together fast enough without her presence. She had invited the little Carlyles and their governess and Joyce to spend the day with her; and she persisted in regarding the children as martyrs too, in being obliged to submit to the advent of a second mother. She was back in her old house again, next door to the office, settled there for life now with her servants. Peter had mortally offended her in electing to remain at East Lynne.

Mr. Dill committed himself terribly on the wedding morning. About ten o’clock he made his appearance at Miss Carlyle’s; he was a man of the old stage, possessing old-fashioned notions, and he had deemed that to step in to congratulate her on the auspicious day would be only good manners.

Miss Carlyle was seated in her dining-room, her hands folded before her. It was rare indeed that she was caught doing nothing. She turned her eyes on Mr. Dill as he entered.

“Why, what on earth has taken you?” began she, before he could speak. “You are decked out like a young duck!”

“I am going to the wedding, Miss Cornelia. Did you know it? Mrs. Hare was so kind as to invite me to the breakfast, and Mr. Archibald insists upon my going to church. I am not too fine, am I?”

Poor old Dill’s “finery” consisted of a white waistcoat with gold buttons, and an embroidered shirt-front. Miss Corny was pleased to regard it with sarcastic wrath.

“Fine!” echoed she. “I don’t know what you call it. I would not make myself such a spectacle for untold gold. You’ll have all the ragamuffins in the street forming a tail after you, thinking you are the bridegroom. A man of your years to deck yourself out in a worked shirt! I would have had some rosettes on my coat-tails, while I was about it.”

“My coat’s quite plain, Miss Cornelia,” he meekly remonstrated.

“Plain! What would you have it?” snapped Miss Cornelia. “Perhaps you covet a wreath of embroidery round it, gold leaves and scarlet flowers, with a swansdown collar? It would only be in keeping with that shirt and waistcoat. I might as well have gone and ordered a white tarletan dress, looped up with peas, and streamed through the town in that guise. It would be just as consistent.”

“People like to dress a little out of common at a wedding, Miss Cornelia; it’s only respectful, when they are invited guests.”

“I don’t say people should go to a wedding in a hop sack. But there’s a medium. Pray, do you know your age?”

“I am turned sixty, Miss Corny.”

“You just are. And do you consider it decent for an old man, going on for seventy, to be decorated off as you are now? I don’t; and so I tell you my mind. Why, you’ll be the laughing-stock of the parish! Take care the boys don’t tie a tin kettle to you!”

Mr. Dill thought he would leave the subject. His own impression was, that he was not too fine, and that the parish would not regard him as being so; still, he had a great reverence for Miss Corny’s judgment, and was not altogether easy. He had had his white gloves in his hand when he entered, but he surreptitiously smuggled them into his pocket, lest they might offend. He passed to the subject which had brought him thither.

“What I came in for, was to offer you my congratulations on this auspicious day, Miss Cornelia. I hope Mr. Archibald and his wife, and you, ma’am—”

“There! You need not trouble yourself to go on,” interrupted Miss Corny, hotly arresting him. “We want condolence here to-day, rather than the other thing. I’m sure I’d nearly as soon see Archibald go to his hanging.”

“Oh, Miss Corny!”

“I would; and you need not stare at me as if you were throttled. What business has he to go and fetter himself with a wife again. One would have thought he had had enough with the other. It is as I have always said, there’s a soft place in Archibald’s brain.”

Old Dill knew there was no “soft place” in the brain of Mr. Carlyle, but he deemed it might be as well not to say so, in Miss Corny’s present humor. “Marriage is a happy state, as I have heard, ma’am, and honorable; and I am sure Mr. Archibald—”

“Very happy! Very honorable!” fiercely cried Miss Carlyle, sarcasm in her tone. “His last marriage brought him all that, did it not?”

“That’s past and done with, Miss Corny, and none of us need recall it. I hope he will find in his present wife a recompense for what’s gone; he could not have chosen a prettier or nicer young lady than Miss Barbara; and I am glad to my very heart that he has got her.”

“Couldn’t he?” jerked Miss Carlyle.

“No, ma’am, he could not. Were I young, and wanted a wife, there’s no one in all West Lynne I would so soon look out for as Miss Barbara. Not that she’d have me; and I was not speaking in that sense, Miss Corny.”

“It’s to be hoped you were not,” retorted Miss Corny. “She is an idle, insolent, vain fagot, caring for nothing but her own doll’s face and for Archibald.”

“Ah, well, ma’am never mind that; pretty young girls know they are pretty, and you can’t take their vanity from them. She’ll be a good and loving wife to him; I know she will; it is in her nature; she won’t serve him as—as—that other poor unfortunate did.”

“If I feared she was one to bring shame to him, as the other did, I’d go into the church this hour and forbid the marriage; and if that didn’t do, I’d—smother her!” shrieked Miss Carlyle. “Look at that piece of impudence!”

That last sentence was uttered in a different tone, and concerned somebody in the street. Miss Carlyle hopped off her chair and strode to the window. Mr. Dill’s eyes turned in the like direction.

In a gay and summer’s dress, fine and sparkling, with a coquettish little bonnet, trimmed with pink, shaded by one of those nondescript articles at present called veils, which article was made of white spotted net with a pink ruche round it, sailed Afy Hallijohn, conceited and foolish and good-looking as ever. Catching sight of Mr. Dill, she made him a flourishing and gracious bow. The courteous old gentleman returned it, and was pounced upon by Miss Corny’s tongue for his pains.

“Whatever possessed you to do that?”

“Well, Miss Corny, she spoke to me. You saw her.”

“I saw her? Yes, I did see her, the brazen bellwether! And she saw me, and spoke to you in her insolence. And you must answer her, in spite of my presence, instead of shaking your fist and giving her a reproving frown. You want a little sharp talking to, yourself.”

“But, Miss Corny, it’s always best to let bygones be bygones,” he pleaded. “She was flighty and foolish, and all that, was Afy; but now that it’s proved she did not go with Richard Hare, as was suspected, and is at present living creditably, why should she not be noticed?”

“If the very deuce himself stood there with his horns and tail, you would find excuses to make for him,” fired Miss Corny. “You are as bad as Archibald! Notice Afy Hallijohn, when she dresses and flirts and minces as you saw her but now! What creditable servant would flaunt abroad in such a dress and bonnet as that, with that flimsy gauze thing over her face. It’s as disreputable as your shirt-front.”