A Changed Man, and Other Tales

‘And we are quite ready.’

‘I had no idea – ’

‘It has been kept rather private,’ she said calmly.

‘Where are your witnesses?’

‘They are outside in the meadow, sir. I can call them in a moment,’ said Nicholas.

‘Oh – I see it is – Mr. Nicholas Long,’ said Mr. Bealand, and turning again to Christine, ‘Does your father know of this?’

‘Is it necessary that I should answer that question, Mr. Bealand?’

‘I am afraid it is – highly necessary.’

Christine began to look concerned.

‘Where is the licence?’ the rector asked; ‘since there have been no banns.’

Nicholas produced it, Mr. Bealand read it, an operation which occupied him several minutes – or at least he made it appear so; till Christine said impatiently, ‘We are quite ready, Mr. Bealand. Will you proceed? Mr. Long has to take a journey of a great many miles to-day.’

‘And you?’

‘No. I remain.’

Mr. Bealand assumed firmness. ‘There is something wrong in this,’ he said. ‘I cannot marry you without your father’s presence.’

‘But have you a right to refuse us?’ interposed Nicholas. ‘I believe we are in a position to demand your fulfilment of our request.’

‘No, you are not! Is Miss Everard of age? I think not. I think she is months from being so. Eh, Miss Everard?’

‘Am I bound to tell that?’

‘Certainly. At any rate you are bound to write it. Meanwhile I refuse to solemnize the service. And let me entreat you two young people to do nothing so rash as this, even if by going to some strange church, you may do so without discovery. The tragedy of marriage – ’

‘Tragedy?’

‘Certainly. It is full of crises and catastrophes, and ends with the death of one of the actors. The tragedy of marriage, as I was saying, is one I shall not be a party to your beginning with such light hearts, and I shall feel bound to put your father on his guard, Miss Everard. Think better of it, I entreat you! Remember the proverb, “Marry in haste and repent at leisure.”’

Christine, spurred by opposition, almost stormed at him. Nicholas implored; but nothing would turn that obstinate rector. She sat down and reflected. By-and-by she confronted Mr. Bealand.

‘Our marriage is not to be this morning, I see,’ she said. ‘Now grant me one favour, and in return I’ll promise you to do nothing rashly. Do not tell my father a word of what has happened here.’

‘I agree – if you undertake not to elope.’

She looked at Nicholas, and he looked at her. ‘Do you wish me to elope, Nic?’ she asked.

‘No,’ he said.

So the compact was made, and they left the church singly, Nicholas remaining till the last, and closing the door. On his way home, carrying the well-packed bag which was just now to go no further, the two men who were mending water-carriers in the meadows approached the hedge, as if they had been on the alert all the time.

‘You said you mid want us for zummat, sir?’

‘All right – never mind,’ he answered through the hedge. ‘I did not require you after all.’

CHAPTER III

At a manor not far away there lived a queer and primitive couple who had lately been blessed with a son and heir. The christening took place during the week under notice, and this had been followed by a feast to the parishioners. Christine’s father, one of the same generation and kind, had been asked to drive over and assist in the entertainment, and Christine, as a matter of course, accompanied him.

When they reached Athelhall, as the house was called, they found the usually quiet nook a lively spectacle. Tables had been spread in the apartment which lent its name to the whole building – the hall proper – covered with a fine open-timbered roof, whose braces, purlins, and rafters made a brown thicket of oak overhead. Here tenantry of all ages sat with their wives and families, and the servants were assisted in their ministrations by the sons and daughters of the owner’s friends and neighbours. Christine lent a hand among the rest.

She was holding a plate in each hand towards a huge brown platter of baked rice-pudding, from which a footman was scooping a large spoonful, when a voice reached her ear over her shoulder: ‘Allow me to hold them for you.’

Christine turned, and recognized in the speaker the nephew of the entertainer, a young man from London, whom she had already met on two or three occasions.

She accepted the proffered help, and from that moment, whenever he passed her in their marchings to and fro during the remainder of the serving, he smiled acquaintance. When their work was done, he improved the few words into a conversation. He plainly had been attracted by her fairness.

Bellston was a self-assured young man, not particularly good-looking, with more colour in his skin than even Nicholas had. He had flushed a little in attracting her notice, though the flush had nothing of nervousness in it – the air with which it was accompanied making it curiously suggestive of a flush of anger; and even when he laughed it was difficult to banish that fancy.

The late autumn sunlight streamed in through the window panes upon the heads and shoulders of the venerable patriarchs of the hamlet, and upon the middle-aged, and upon the young; upon men and women who had played out, or were to play, tragedies or tragi-comedies in that nook of civilization not less great, essentially, than those which, enacted on more central arenas, fix the attention of the world. One of the party was a cousin of Nicholas Long’s, who sat with her husband and children.

To make himself as locally harmonious as possible, Mr. Bellston remarked to his companion on the scene – ‘It does one’s heart good,’ he said, ‘to see these simple peasants enjoying themselves.’

‘O Mr. Bellston!’ exclaimed Christine; ‘don’t be too sure about that word “simple”! You little think what they see and meditate! Their reasonings and emotions are as complicated as ours.’

She spoke with a vehemence which would have been hardly present in her words but for her own relation to Nicholas. The sense of that produced in her a nameless depression thenceforward. The young man, however, still followed her up.

‘I am glad to hear you say it,’ he returned warmly. ‘I was merely attuning myself to your mood, as I thought. The real truth is that I know more of the Parthians, and Medes, and dwellers in Mesopotamia – almost of any people, indeed – than of the English rustics. Travel and exploration are my profession, not the study of the British peasantry.’

Travel. There was sufficient coincidence between his declaration and the course she had urged upon her lover, to lend Bellston’s account of himself a certain interest in Christine’s ears. He might perhaps be able to tell her something that would be useful to Nicholas, if their dream were carried out. A door opened from the hall into the garden, and she somehow found herself outside, chatting with Mr. Bellston on this topic, till she thought that upon the whole she liked the young man. The garden being his uncle’s, he took her round it with an air of proprietorship; and they went on amongst the Michaelmas daisies and chrysanthemums, and through a door to the fruit-garden. A green-house was open, and he went in and cut her a bunch of grapes.

‘How daring of you! They are your uncle’s.’

‘O, he don’t mind – I do anything here. A rough old buffer, isn’t he?’

She was thinking of her Nic, and felt that, by comparison with her present acquaintance, the farmer more than held his own as a fine and intelligent fellow; but the harmony with her own existence in little things, which she found here, imparted an alien tinge to Nicholas just now. The latter, idealized by moonlight, or a thousand miles of distance, was altogether a more romantic object for a woman’s dream than this smart new-lacquered man; but in the sun of afternoon, and amid a surrounding company, Mr. Bellston was a very tolerable companion.

When they re-entered the hall, Bellston entreated her to come with him up a spiral stair in the thickness of the wall, leading to a passage and gallery whence they could look down upon the scene below. The people had finished their feast, the newly-christened baby had been exhibited, and a few words having been spoken to them they began, amid a racketing of forms, to make for the greensward without, Nicholas’s cousin and cousin’s wife and cousin’s children among the rest. While they were filing out, a voice was heard calling – ‘Hullo! – here, Jim; where are you?’ said Bellston’s uncle. The young man descended, Christine following at leisure.

‘Now will ye be a good fellow,’ the Squire continued, ‘and set them going outside in some dance or other that they know? I’m dog-tired, and I want to have a yew words with Mr. Everard before we join ’em – hey, Everard? They are shy till somebody starts ’em; afterwards they’ll keep gwine brisk enough.’

‘Ay, that they wool,’ said Squire Everard.

They followed to the lawn; and here it proved that James Bellston was as shy, or rather as averse, as any of the tenantry themselves, to acting the part of fugleman. Only the parish people had been at the feast, but outlying neighbours had now strolled in for a dance.

‘They want “Speed the Plough,”’ said Bellston, coming up breathless. ‘It must be a country dance, I suppose? Now, Miss Everard, do have pity upon me. I am supposed to lead off; but really I know no more about speeding the plough than a child just born! Would you take one of the villagers? – just to start them, my uncle says. Suppose you take that handsome young farmer over there – I don’t know his name, but I dare say you do – and I’ll come on with one of the dairyman’s daughters as a second couple.’

Christine turned in the direction signified, and changed colour – though in the shade nobody noticed it, ‘Oh, yes – I know him,’ she said coolly. ‘He is from near our own place – Mr. Nicholas Long.’