Read Ebook: Oliver's Bride; A true Story by Oliphant Mrs Margaret

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Ebook has 289 lines and 28561 words, and 6 pages

'It will come quite soon enough, Oliver. We have not even begun to look for the house yet, and there is all the furnishing and everything to do. Don't you think you had better run up to town and begin operations? We may not be able, you know, just at once, to light upon the house.'

'Don't you think you had better come with me, Grace?'

'I? Oh! Why should I go with you? Surely,' she said, with a laugh and a blush, 'you will be able to do that by yourself.'

'How could I do it by myself? I am no longer myself. I am only half of myself. Come and I shall go; but I am not going to leave myself behind me, and stultify myself. I shall not even be one-half but only a fifth or sixth of myself: for there is you, who is the best part of me, and then my heart, which is next best, and my thoughts, which, along with my heart and you, really make up myself--all the best part.'

'Please, sir, Mrs. Ford's man has come to say as they don't know if it is anythink of importance; but 'as brought it seeing as immediate's on it, in case it should be business, sir; and here, sir, is a telegram as has come too.'

The butler gave a demure glance at his mistress, who was still blushing a good deal, as she had done when she pushed away the chair.

'Thank you, Jenkins!' said Oliver.

'What is it, Oliver?' said Grace. 'Haven't you opened it? Oh, but you must open it when it is marked Immediate. It must be business, of course.'

'I should think it's a hoax,' he said slowly, 'a circular, or something of that sort' and crushed it in his hand. Then as she made a little outcry--'Well, I'll open it to please you. All women, I perceive, believe in letters,' he said, with a smile.

The joke was but a small one at the best--it seemed smaller and smaller as he opened the envelope and read what was written within. Grace had gone away to re-arrange some flowers on the table, to leave him at liberty. She bent over them, taking out some that were beginning to fade, pulling them about a little till the moment should be over. It seemed to run into two or three minutes, and Oliver did not say anything or even move. He would generally say, 'Oh, it is So-and-so!'--some friend who sent his congratulations. That was the chief subject of all their letters at the present time. They were letters which were handed from one to another with little notes of admiration. 'Poor fellow, he is as pleased as possible.' 'What a nice letter, Oliver! I am sure he must be fond of you,' and so forth, and so forth. But he said nothing about this. To be sure, it was business.

She turned round at last, not knowing what to do; wondering, when your bridegroom does not tell you of a thing, what is your duty in the circumstances. To ask, or to hold your tongue? Grace was not jealous, or ready to take offence. And she was very anxious to do her duty. What ought she to do?

He folded up the letter, as he heard her move, and turned towards her, but without raising his eyes. His face was clouded and dark. He put it into his pocket, and they sat down and began to talk, but not as before, though of the same subject.

At last he said, abruptly, 'I think I will go up to town, Grace. You suggested it, you know,' as if he had altogether forgotten all that he had said, which she had chidden him for, and loved him for, all that pleasant nonsense about himself.

She was startled for a moment; then replied quietly, 'Yes, Oliver, I do think it will be the best way--'

He continued hesitating--faltering. 'It is not for that only, my darling. This letter--I am afraid I shall have to go: a--a friend of mine has got into trouble. I--can't exactly tell what it is; but wants me to go.'

'Oh, how sorry I am!' said Grace. 'Dear Oliver, it is natural people should turn to you when they are in trouble. Who is he? Do I know him? Has he written to you about--'

'I don't suppose--he--knows anything about it. It is a friend I haven't heard of for a long time. Not one for you to know, but in great trouble. Dying, the letter says.'

'Oh, Oliver, go--go at once. Not for the world would I keep you from a dying man. Don't tell me any more than you wish, dear. But can I do anything--can I send anything? Is he--oh, Oliver, forgive me--is he poor?'

'Forgive you?' he said. He held her close to him with a strain which was almost violent, as if he could not let her go. Then he said, 'No, my darling, you can do nothing. I may have helped to make things worse, and I am at the height of happiness, while this poor creature--this poor--'

'Oh, Oliver, go and comfort him,' she said, 'Don't lose a train; don't come back to any good-bye. Go--go!' Then while he hold her in his arms she said, smiling, 'It need not be a very long parting, I suppose?'

'Any parting is long that takes me from you, Grace.'

'But it is for love's sake. Good-bye. I'll do all I can do, Oliver. I'll pray for you--and him.'

'God bless you, my dear love--not good-bye--till we meet again.'

And then the door closed, and he was gone.

The day had grown dark, surely, all at once. It was a day in early spring, and very cloudy. A mass of dark vapour had blown up over the sweet sky; and what a change it was all in a moment, from that pretty fooling about himself and his other self to this sudden parting! But, then, it was an errand of mercy on which he was going. God be with him! And it could not be for long. Nothing, neither trouble nor suffering, nor death of friends, nor any created thing could separate them long.

Trix was not so quickly satisfied as Grace had been. 'Going away!' she cried; 'going to leave Grace! I thought you could not bear to have her out of your sight.'

'I hope I was not such an ass as to say so, but I cannot help myself--it is an old friend--'

'Who is he? Do I know him?' she said, as Grace had said. 'You men are so ridiculous about your friends. Probably somebody that did you nothing but harm, and whom you would be thankful never to hear of again.'

'You speak like an oracle. Trix; but I must go all the same.'

'And why don't you say who he is? Ah, it was a great deal better for you, Oliver, when you had no friends that your sister didn't know of. Tell me who he is--at least, tell me his name.'

'You would not be a bit the wiser. You know nothing whatever about--him. Trix, take great care of her while I am away.'

'Suspicion seems always possible,' he said, harshly, putting her away from him. Was it the natural indignation of one unjustly blamed? 'If that is all you think of me, what can it matter what I say?'

'Oh,' cried Trix, who was very impulsive, 'I beg your pardon, Noll. It was only that I--it was because I am so anxious, oh, so anxious! that everything should go well. You won't be long--not any longer than you can help?'

'Not a moment,' he said. 'If I can return to-morrow, I will. I hope so with all I my heart. Going at all is no pleasure. Take care of her while I am away.'

It seemed to Trix that he was gone before she had known that he was going. It was very sudden. He had not intended to go at all till after his marriage. He had said so only that morning: and why this change all in an hour? A friend! It must be a very intimate friend, she concluded, or he would not have thrown up all his plans to go and visit him. To be sure, when a man is dying he is not likely to wait the convenience of another who is about to be married. She told her husband when he came in in the evening, and he, a good man, who was not wont to trouble himself about hidden meanings, received the news with great placidity.

'Is it anyone we know?' was his first question. 'I hope it may be the sort of friend who will leave him something--a legacy couldn't come at a better moment.' This was a wonderful sedative to her alarms, and turned her thoughts into quite a different channel. It would be indeed a most suitable moment to have a legacy left him. Every time is suitable for that, but when a man is about to be married, nothing could be more appropriate. Mrs. Ford went across in the evening, after dinner, to see Grace. They lived quite near each other, and the Fords for that evening had no engagement. She found her future sister-in-law sitting over a little, bright fire, reading a novel, with papers beside her on the table, lists from the furniture shops, and some made out in her own handwriting of things that would be required in the new home. Miss Goodheart received Mrs. Ford very cordially. 'It feels so odd to be quite alone again,' she said, with a little laugh, which was slightly nervous, 'and when one didn't expect it. So I was glad to find a new book. Poor Oliver! he will not have pleasant journey. I hope he will find his friend better. Is he a friend of yours, too?'

'He was in such a hurry he had not time to tell me, nor I to ask him,' said Trix, which was not, as the reader knows, quite true.

There was a little pause after this, as if they each would have liked to ask questions of the other; and then, no questions being possible, as neither knew, they plunged into furniture, which is a very enthralling subject. Trix, having experience, was able to give many hints, and to suggest a number of things Grace had left out--kitchen things, for instance. How can anyone know about pots and pans, and how many are necessary, without practical knowledge supplied by recent experience?

They both subdued a little dull pain they had about the region of their hearts by a good long talk on this subject, and parted quite cheerfully when Mr. Ford--who never had any pains in that region except those which are produced by a digestion out of order--came to fetch his wife.

'Oliver will take the opportunity to do several things on his own hook, now that he has managed to tear himself away,' that gentleman said. 'The great difficulty was to tear himself away. And I only hope his friend will leave him something.'

This, though it was so prosaic, gave a real comfort to the two women. It brought his mission quite out from the mystery that hung about it to the range of commonplace affairs.

It was not till Wentworth was fairly gone from the station shut up by himself in a compartment of a first-class carriage, and unapproached by any spectator, that he took out from his pocket and read over again the letter and telegram which had called him away thus hurriedly out of the happiness of his new life. The letter was on blue paper, not without a suspicion of greasiness, and very badly written in a hand which might have been that of a shopman or a schoolboy. But it was signed by a female name, and this is what it said:--

'DEAR MR. WENTWORTH,--

'Alice came home in bad health three months ago. She's been very bad ever since, and there is now no hopes of her. It's consumption and heart complaint, and what the doctor calls a complickation. For the last fortnight she's been weaker and weaker every day, and yesterday was took much worse, and hasn't but a day or two to live. She says as she can't die happy without seeing you. She calls for you all the time she's waking, both night and day. Oh, Mr. Wentworth, you always was a kind gentleman, not like some; I know as you would have nothing to say to her if she was well: but being as she's very ill and near her death, I do hope as you'll listen to me. You was the first as she ever took a fancy to, she says. But if you come, oh come at oncet, for there is not a moment to be lost.

'Yours truly,

'MATILDA.'

He unfolded the telegram afterwards and read, 'If you want to find her in life, come at once.'

Wentworth remarked with a kind of horrible calm, and even a smile, that the telegraph people had corrected the spelling. This was the summons for which he had left Grace. He had read both more than once. Now that he had obeyed the call, he asked himself was it indeed so necessary--ought he to have done it? There had been perhaps something in the force of the contrast, something in the happiness which was so much more than he deserved, in the purity and nobleness of the woman who had given him her hand, and who was making her spotless atmosphere his, that stung him with that intolerable, remorseful pity, the impulse of which is not to be resisted. Standing by the side of his bride, and on the edge of a life altogether above his deserts, he had felt that he could not resist this appeal to him. To refuse to speak a word of comfort to a dying creature--he to whom God had been so good--how was it possible? Comfort! What comfort could he give? He might bid her repent, as he had repented. But his repentance had been paid, it had been richly recompensed, it was setting open to him the doors of every happiness; whereas to this sharer of his iniquities it was to be followed only by suffering and death.

Wentworth had never been callous or hard-hearted at his worst: and now at his best, compassion and remorse overwhelmed him. That he should receive that information, that appeal, with Grace's hand in his, gave his whole nature a shock. He felt that he must take himself away out of her presence, and remove the recollections, the scenes that rushed back upon his mind, the image thus thrust before his eyes, away from her at least, even if he did not answer the appeal. He was not of the iron fibre of some men. He could not carry these two images side by side.

And then how did he dare resist such an appeal. 'You were the first.' He had said to himself that he was responsible for the ruin of no other human creature. He was not a seducer. He had used no wiles to draw anyone from the paths of virtue. Is that a defence when life and death are in the balance, and a man is arraigned before the tribunal of his own conscience? When he went back into the recesses of his memory and beheld all that was brought before him, as by a flash of lightning, and then remembered the position in which he now stood, he covered his face with his hands. He was ashamed to the bottom of his soul. The way of transgressors is hard. To anyone who had known all the facts, it would have appeared that Oliver Wentworth was the most striking example of undeserved happiness. He had no right to all the good things that had fallen into his lap. He had deserved a very different return for all that he had done; yet when he set out upon that railway journey, with the touch of Grace's hand still warm in his, the shame and misery in his mind were a not unfit representation of those tortures which to most men are more real than the fire and brimstone of the bottomless pit. How was the recollection of what was passed ever to be washed out of his memory? He might repent--he had repented--and never so bitterly as now: but how was he to forget? In the great words of mercy it is proclaimed that God forgets as well as forgives: 'Their sins and iniquities will I remember no more.' But the sinner, how is he to forget, even when he believes that he is forgiven?

Yet, what he was doing was not shameful nor sinful. It was mercy that carried him away from all he loved to give what consolation he could to a dying creature whom he had never loved, who had been but the companion of his amusements for a moment of aberration, a time which he looked back upon with astonishment and disgust. How could he have forgotten himself so far? How could he have fallen into such depths? His mind was so revolted by the recollection, such a horror and loathing filled him at the thought, that it was impossible to suppose that any softer sentiment lay concealed beneath. Had he been a less tender-hearted man, he would probably have thrown the letter into the fire, and perhaps sent a little money as the common salve for all sufferings; but his very happiness and elevation above those wretched recollections took from him the power to dismiss such an appeal in this way. And was it not a certain atonement, at least an offering of painful service such as the heart of man believes in, whatever may be its creed, to do this? The money he could have sent would have cost him nothing--this cost him what was incalculable, a price almost beyond bearing. His agitation calmed a little as he pursued these thoughts. He could not do her any good, poor creature; but if it pleased her, if it eased a little the last steps towards the grave?

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