Part 47 (1/2)

The door handle turned. At last! She sprang up. But it was only William coming in with the evening post. Mrs. Boyce followed him. She took a quiet look at her daughter, and asked if her headache was better, and then sat down near her to some needlework. During these two days she had been unusually kind to Marcella. She had none of the little feminine arts of consolation. She was incapable of fussing, and she never caressed. But from the moment that Marcella had come home from the village that morning, a pale, hollow-eyed wreck, the mother had a.s.serted her authority. She would not hear of the girl's crossing the threshold again; she had put her on the sofa and dosed her with sal-volatile. And Marcella was too exhausted to rebel. She had only stipulated that a note should be sent to Aldous, asking him to come on to Mellor with the news as soon as the verdict of the coroner's jury should be given. The jury had been sitting all day, and the verdict was expected in the evening.

Marcella turned over her letters till she came to one from a London firm which contained a number of cloth patterns. As she touched it she threw it aside with a sudden gesture of impatience, and sat upright.

”Mamma! I have something to say to you.”

”Yes, my dear.”

”Mamma, the wedding must be put off!--it _must_!--for some weeks. I have been thinking about it while I have been lying here. How _can_ I?--you can see for yourself. That miserable woman depends on me altogether. How can I spend my time on clothing and dressmakers? I feel as if I could think of nothing else--nothing else in the world--but her and her children.” She spoke with difficulty, her voice high and strained. ”The a.s.sizes may be held that very week--who knows?--the very day we are married.”

She stopped, looking at her mother almost threateningly. Mrs. Boyce showed no sign of surprise. She put her work down.

”I had imagined you might say something of the kind,” she said after a pause. ”I don't know that, from your point of view, it is unreasonable.

But, of course, you must understand that very few people will see it from your point of view. Aldous Raeburn may--you must know best. But his people certainly won't; and your father will think it--”

”Madness,” she was going to say, but with her usual instinct for the moderate fastidious word she corrected it to ”foolish.”

Marcella's tired eyes were all wilfulness and defiance.

”I can't help it. I couldn't do it. I will tell Aldous at once. It must be put off for a month. And even that,” she added with a shudder, ”will be bad enough.”

Mrs. Boyce could not help an unperceived shrug of the shoulders, and a movement of pity towards the future husband. Then she said drily,--

”You must always consider whether it is just to Mr. Raeburn to let a matter of this kind interfere so considerably with his wishes and his plans. He must, I suppose, be in London for Parliament within six weeks.”

Marcella did not answer. She sat with her hands round her knees lost in perplexities. The wedding, as originally fixed, was now three weeks and three days off. After it, she and Aldous were to have spent a short fortnight's honeymoon at a famous house in the north, lent them for the occasion by a Duke who was a cousin of Aldous's on the mother's side, and had more houses than he knew what to do with. Then they were to go immediately up to London for the opening of Parliament. The furnis.h.i.+ng of the Mayfair house was being pressed on. In her new-born impatience with such things, Marcella had hardly of late concerned herself with it at all, and Miss Raeburn, scandalised, yet not unwilling, had been doing the whole of it, subject to conscientious worryings of the bride, whenever she could be got hold of, on the subject of papers and curtains.

As they sat silent, the unspoken idea in the mother's mind was--”Eight weeks more will carry us past the execution.” Mrs. Boyce had already possessed herself very clearly of the facts of the case, and it was her perception that Marcella was throwing herself headlong into a hopeless struggle--together with something else--a confession perhaps of a touch of greatness in the girl's temper, pa.s.sionate and violent as it was, that had led to this unwonted softness of manner, this absence of sarcasm.

Very much the same thought--only treated as a nameless horror not to be recognised or admitted--was in Marcella's mind also, joined however with another, unsuspected even by Mrs. Boyce's acuteness. ”Very likely--when I tell him--he will not want to marry me at all--and of course I shall tell him.”

But not yet--certainly not yet. She had the instinctive sense that during the next few weeks she should want all her dignity with Aldous, that she could not afford to put herself at a disadvantage with him. To be troubled about her own sins at such a moment would be like the meanness of the lazy and canting Christian, who whines about saving his soul while he ought to be rather occupied with feeding the bodies of his wife and children.

A ring at the front door. Marcella rose, leaning one hand on the end of the sofa--a long slim figure in her black dress--haggard and pathetic.

When Aldous entered, her face was one question. He went up to her and took her hand.

”In the case of Westall the verdict is one of 'Wilful Murder' against Hurd. In that of poor Charlie Dynes the court is adjourned. Enough evidence has been taken to justify burial. But there is news to-night that one of the Widrington gang has turned informer, and the police say they will have their hands on them all within the next two or three days.”

Marcella withdrew herself from him and fell back into the corner of the sofa. Shading her eyes with her hand she tried to be very composed and business-like.

”Was Hurd himself examined?”

”Yes, under the new Act. He gave the account which he gave to you and to his wife. But the Court--”

”Did not believe it?”

”No. The evidence of motive was too strong. It was clear from his own account that he was out for poaching purposes, that he was leading the Oxford gang, and that he had a gun while Westall was unarmed. He admitted too that Westall called on him to give up the bag of pheasants he held, and the gun. He refused. Then he says Westall came at him, and he fired. d.i.c.k Patton and one or two others gave evidence as to the language he has habitually used about Westall for months past.”

”Cowards--curs!” cried Marcella, clenching both her hands, a kind of sob in her throat.