CHAPTER VIII.

MARRIED IN A DAY.

All was utterly in vain, as futile as Lady Bell’s dressing herself in her dowdiest clothes with her shabbiest, least “setting” top-knots. If Lady Bell had only known in her youthful inexperience, there was something irresistibly piquant and provocative in her pouts and flouts, her sulks and _déshabillés_, to most men who had her in their power. The mere circumstance that her resistance, sincere to anguish as it was, in its openness, was weak as her age, would have been enough to all, save a generous man, in the conduct of such an attack, while to a man like Squire Trevor, any opposition, however feeble, served but as tinder to flame.

Lady Bell’s next move was made in the utmost alarm on the arrival of a pair of valuable buckles set with diamonds, and a necklace with an emerald “bob,” for which Squire Trevor had sent a messenger expressly, and which were put by his direction, and with the connivance of others, in their cases with the lids open, on the little table before the mirror in Lady Bell’s closet.

She ventured to seek her uncle when he was alone in the dining-room, and to tell him plainly, “Uncle Godwin, I am sorry to plague you, but I will not marry Squire Trevor.”

For his answer, Mr. Godwin raised his eyebrows, and having nearly demolished Lady Bell by this simple operation, and its supercilious reception of her declaration of war, he proceeded further to annihilate her.

“My Lady Bell, let me ask you, and forgive me for the indelicacy of the question, have you any means of subsistence except what I grant you?”

“No, sir,” answered Lady Bell, faint and low at the home-thrust; and she was not able to tell her uncle, because in the annals of her rank she had not yet heard of such an enterprise, and was ignorant how to set about it, that she would no longer be indebted to his bounty—she would go forth and earn her own bread, or perish without it, but she would not barter herself, for the sake of his making a better bargain in the sale of an unentailed fragment of his estate, or that he might be permanently rid of the burden of her maintenance.

It would not have mattered although Lady Bell had done so, for Squire Godwin would only have mocked her merrily and reminded her, that as she was an old lady of not more than fifteen, he was her lawful guardian, and could raise the country in pursuit of her, could drag her into a public court in order to have her shamed, rebuked, and restored to his natural keeping.

But all that Lady Bell said was, “No, sir,” with bitter humiliation.

“Then I have the honour to tell you, madam,” Squire Godwin continued with the utmost calmness, “that I am a ruined man, and can no longer afford to support you. On that and every other account I hasten to accept so unexceptionable an establishment for you as a marriage with Squire Trevor will secure. Therefore, my niece, I beg to hear no more idle objections, unless you are prepared to show a better right to make them.”

The Squire turned on his heel and drummed with his fingers on the chimney-piece. Lady Bell turned also, and ran tottering from the room.

She felt her confidence ebbing away; her sense of right and wrong grew hopelessly confused; her perplexity, despondency, and despair of escape became more than she could bear. At last an accident and Lady Bell’s own lively impulse put an end to the struggle.

One of the executions of which Mrs. Die had spoken to Lady Bell on her first day at St. Bevis’s, was put into the house. Bailiffs with writs turning up unexpectedly one morning, and not doing their spiriting gently, did not compose Lady Bell’s shaken nerves, though it must be owned that Mr. Godwin and Mrs. Die took the visitation with great equanimity, and did not even disturb themselves on account of the presence of Mr. Trevor, but left it to his swagger to be exceedingly aggrieved by the disagreeable interruption to his wooing.

Within twelve hours the rough men walking about the house at their pleasure, in muddy shoes, with hats on their heads, and smelling of beer and gin, stripped from St. Bevis’s, as bailiffs had done more than once already, every article that would lift. They even put profane hands on some of Lady Bell’s fragile performances of fan-handles and card-boxes. The men included in their sweep, as they had not included on former occasions, the very wearing apparel of the heads of the family.

Furniture and clothing were piled and stuffed into waggons brought round for the purpose under the portico, to be driven off and have their contents sold in the market-place of Cleveburgh.

Squire Godwin, who was not liable to personal arrest because of the seat in Parliament which he, his father, and grandfather had held since the Long Parliament and the Charleses, and Mrs. Die, were left like one of Hogarth’s couples—only this couple were used to the extremity, and it did not discompose them—sitting desolate among a few heirlooms of old pictures, plate, and jewels.

The brother and sister and their household were without changes of clothes, without beds to lie down upon, without vessels out of which to eat such victuals as they could procure; while Mrs. Kitty, Mr. Sneyd, and Mr. Greenwood, were hurrying here and there, on foot and on horseback, exerting themselves frantically to collect fresh necessaries.

Squire Trevor pulled out a bundle of bank-notes from his pocket-book, and put them uncounted into Mrs. Kitty’s hand.

Lady Bell saw the deed from the windowrecess in which she was standing, shivering with agitation. She came out and instantly acted on it.

“Squire Trevor,” she declared, “I for one cannot consent that my friends and I shall live on your charity, while I will not marry you. I will marry you, sir, now, when you please.”

He turned briskly. “So, you’ve come to your senses, my lady,” he remarked drily; “I am glad to hear it;” and he took her at her word.

Need one say that she hated him the more for so taking her, and that she repented of her word the moment it was spoken?

Lady Bell was married within a few days, as soon as Mrs. Kitty could repair in a decent manner, by Mr. Trevor’s bounty, the destruction at St. Bevis’s.

On the morning of her marriage-day Lady Bell stood, for the last time, at the parlour window, looking out on the prospect which had claimed her on her arrival, and had since become familiar and almost home-like.

It was a soft summer rain—so soft that the rooks were cawing and the blackbirds singing through the wet, as if they knew how the corn was sprouting, and the fruit germs, from which the blossoms were falling, were setting in the genial, timely moisture.

The very fragment of the great house, which one man had begun, but no man would finish, because beams and copestones had been launched away on horses’ heels, and rattled down with throws of the dice—seemed as if it were wept upon by the patient sky’s purifying tears.

Lady Bell was no longer wrathful and wounded to the quick in her self-respect, her maidenly pride, and her noble birth. She was sick and sad, wishing that she could die in her youth, with this day, and that the rain might be falling on her grave.

“So, you are going from this evil house, Lady Bell, before its fate fall upon you,” said Mrs. Die.

It was the gentlest speech she had ever made to her niece, but it was spoken not so much in remorse, or in atonement, or in faint congratulation, as in a certain dreary sense that a presence, strange for many a day, which she had not prized while she had it, that had come and abode for a season at St. Bevis’s, was going from it for ever. It was the presence of youth, simplicity, hope, a heart ungnawed as yet with passion, which might have made the vacant, haunted place less doleful.

Mrs. Kitty hastened to interpose with a parting sneer. “Sure Lady Bell will never remember such unfortunate, stay-at-home folks as we are at St. Bevis’s, when she is a young married madam, gadding abroad with her gay bridegroom.”

These were the gibes which Lady Bell heard, instead of the flattering assurances and fond prognostications which are wont to wait on brides.

She was married in her hat and habit, as she had come to St. Bevis’s, because there was to be no marriage feast, inadmissible in the circumstances, and she had to start with Squire Trevor immediately after the ceremony.

The special licence had been procured, and Mr. Greenwood had only to don his cassock, to marry Lady Bell in Mrs. Die’s parlour.

It was the disreputable merry-andrew and scapegrace of a chaplain who held her by the hand for a moment at parting, and said seriously and from his heart, “May every happiness and prosperity attend you, Lady Bell.”

“Thank you, sir,” she answered him quietly and gravely, “and I have to thank you also for all the kindness which you have shown me since I came here, and to ask you to forgive me if I have ever offended you. Will you say the same from me to Sneyd, in case I should not get it said to him?”

She spoke it so prettily, and so like some poor young Lady Jane Grey on her way to the block, as Mr. Greenwood confided to his crony Sneyd afterwards, that the tears started to his eyes, and he was forced to retire and not see her ride away, because he could not have stood it without blubbering; and what would the squire have said to such an exhibition?