Chapter XVII: A Turn From the East

"I said, 'These painful shoes, I cannot see
Why any longer they should cumber me.'
So left I them behind, and for a while
The change seemed pleasant, and did me beguile."
ROSE'S DIARY.

SHE sat huddled up in a shawl over the dying embers of her fire. It was past midnight, but Honor did not attempt to go to bed. For over two hours she had been revolving things in her mind, and she was unsettled and doubtful still. All the instincts of her early training warned her against taking this sudden and precipitate step. She was a deeply religious girl at heart, and through all her troubles and difficulties had had an unswerving trust in God. But life had been becoming more difficult to her of late. She never could get over the bitterness of her short time at home, when she realised how quickly her place had been filled up. Even her father seemed too delighted and engrossed with the new organist to take much notice of his eldest daughter. His farewell words still rang in her ears:

"Well, good-bye, my dear. It is wonderful how well everything has turned out, hasn't it? The money you send home is a real help; and now we have Mr. Danby, I really feel as if I have a curate. He is so willing and capable in all parish matters, and his music is actually bringing strangers to the church. He manages the choir so well; and, of course, a man has a great advantage over a woman for that kind of thing."

"Yes," said Honor bravely; "I don't think you have missed me at all."

"Oh, well, we did at first, when Miss Paton was new to everything; but now she is my wife's right hand, and the children are getting accustomed to her. Write and tell us how you are getting on. It is a matter of thankfulness to me that you are in such comfortable surroundings."

"They don't want me back," she thought; "no one wants me or cares about me. Mrs. Montmorency could get fifty girls to do for her as well and better than I do. And now my chance seems to have come, and I know if I miss it, I shall not have another. I shall be a paid companion to the end of my days, and every day will be greyer and more miserable than the one before it. I am not the kind of girl that men would like to marry. And this makes it all the more wonderful that Mr. Selkirk should want me. He does, or he would have gone away and said nothing. And I should love to have a home of my own and feel I had people depending on me for comfort and help. Fay is simply a darling! I would go anywhere—to the other end of the world—for her sake alone! And if I had a home, I could have the children by turn to stay with me. Emily would be delighted, I know; and how they would love it! It is a great temptation. I like him, too, quite as much as I have ever liked any man; and it is wonderful that he should like me."

Then Honor's conscience began to speak.

"The real reason against it is the way he wants to do it. It is underhand, as if we were ashamed of doing it; it wouldn't be acting rightly towards Mrs. Montmorency to leave her so suddenly in the lurch. Then what will father say? And I'm very much afraid that Mr. Selkirk does not care for religious things. He told me he did not often go to church, and I know—the Bible tells me—that it is wrong to be joined to an unbeliever. Yet he isn't that. He must talk to Fay about good things, as she knows such a lot about them, and he told me his first wife was deeply religious. More than once he has spoken of woman's influence, and what a lot it can do for a man. And if I could help him in that way, how splendid it would be! I partly understand how he shrinks from the publicity of the usual wedding. I should hate it myself. It is so much more simple and real to walk quietly into a little empty church, and with ourselves only be married in the sight of God.

"How I wish I knew what to do! I have to decide so quickly. If I had Pauline here, I would get her to advise me. But as it is, I can consult no one. I feel it is my one chance of being married; I know I shall never get another. It is the secrecy of it and the quickness of it that makes it seem wrong."

She got up from her chair and paced the room. She felt it was a crisis in her life. Yet when she knelt to pray, no words would come. Until at last she cried out:

"O God, I want to do it! I want to do it! Make it right for me to do
it!"

And that was all the prayer she made before going to bed.

Through her half-waking hours, the words rang in her ears:

"How can two walk together, except they be agreed?"

And when she arose the next morning, her heart was still in a troubled turmoil. She thought of her Eastern outlook through life, for her mind perpetually dwelt upon Mrs. Daventry's quaint fancy, and she seemed to see before her more sunshine than she had ever experienced in her life, and a cessation of the bitter cutting blasts which had been her portion for so long.

Perhaps that day, if Mrs. Montmorency had been in one of her cheerful, good-tempered moods, the course of Honor's life would have been changed. But she was unusually irritable and exacting, and Honor's absence of mind in one or two small matters drew from her scathing reproof.

"I really never saw anyone so stupid, Miss Broughton! I ought to have the patience of Job to live with you! I am not feeling well to-day, and you seem to do your utmost to try my nerves! I wish sometimes that I had never engaged you. You are a most depressing companion, and so awkward and clumsy in your movements."

She had often been as angry and unjust before, but Honor knew her captious moods never lasted. To-day, however, her words seemed to burn and sting with unusual force.

"I never shall please her; she will be glad to get rid of me." And Honor moved about with compressed lips and flashing eyes.

When she reminded Mrs. Montmorency of Fay's invitation to tea, she said:

"I am thankful they are leaving to-morrow. I believe half the cause of your inattention to your duties has arisen through your infatuation for that tiresome child. And as for her father, he is a thorough ne'er-do-weel, and ought to be ashamed of himself to shake off his responsibilities and wander round the world in the fashion he does! It is ruination to the child!"

Not a word did Honor say. Every speech that Mrs. Montmorency made seemed to strengthen her resolve. She steadily shut her eyes to all the unadvisabilities of the step she proposed to take.

When Fay flung her arms round her neck in her impulsive, childish fashion, Honor felt she could not live without her. She chatted to her brightly, but Fay seemed ill at ease. Every now and then she stopped in the midst of her play and heaved a deep sigh. At last, Honor asked her if she was not feeling well.

"I've got somefin' heavy on my chest," the child replied, "and I want it to go."

"Is it a pain?"

"No. I'm not to tell you till it's time to go. There! Now you know! What a stupid I am! It's a secret, and I can't keep secrets; and I promised daddy I would. It's dreffully heavy on me."

"We won't talk about it," said Honor, a little flush coming to her cheeks as she guessed what that secret might be.

And then an hour later, Fay crept into her arms, and with her soft little cheek laid against hers and her lips against her ear she whispered:

"Madam Pilgrim is coming across the sea with daddy and me, and I knewed she would, and I'm so happy. And that's why I calls her Madam Pilgrim, 'cause daddy is the big pilgrim and I'm the little one, and you come atween us!"

And a rush of tears came to Honor's eyes as she whispered back:

"Yes, I'm coming darling; I can't stay here when you're gone. And I'm going to give you a little note to give to your father."

So Fay went away and put into her father's hand the words he wanted, though he frowned a little at the way they were written:

"DEAR MR. SELKIRK,

"I will come if you let me know your arrangements. I seem as if I cannot help myself, and I feel as if I'm sinning against my conscience to agree to what you propose. But having given my word, I will not go back from it. If my own mother had lived, I would not have acted so. But no one seems to want me, and you say you do. I hope neither you nor I will live to regret the step we have taken in such a hurry.

"Yours truly,

"HONOR BROUGHTON."

It was a strange note for any girl to write to the man she was about to marry.

But there was no mention of the word "love" in their intercourse.

And that night, Honor sobbed herself to sleep.

"I shall be disgraced in everybody's eyes by what I am going to do, and yet I can't go back!"

It was a grey still morning. The promise of spring seemed in the air, though on that bleak Scotch upland the black bare trees and hedges showed no signs of awakening from their winter sleep. But the air brought a subtle scent of life and freshness; lambs bleated in the distance, and yellow catkins were bursting into feathery foliage in the sheltered ditches that bordered the moor. Honor walked steadily and firmly across the moor in the early hours of that March morning. Though, she was unaware of it at the time, everything she passed was being photographed on her brain to the very smallest minutiæ. Years afterwards, she saw again the fain yellow streaks across the horizon, she felt the keen moor breeze play upon her hair and face, and heard the crisp crackle of the dead bracken and heather under her feet.

As she faced the sunrising, she said to herself:

"Surely this ought to augur well. My path to this church is due east. Oh, I wonder, I wonder, if Pauline were to see me now, whether she would try to draw me back?"

She had arranged everything with methodical simplicity, even to packing her trunk and labelling it for the Liverpool docks. She had left a note for Mrs. Montmorency on her dressing-table, and she had written a letter to her father.

The note to Mrs. Montmorency was a short one:

"DEAR MRS. MONTMORENCY,

"I fear you will be angry when I tell you that I left your house this morning to be married to Mr. Selkirk at St. Anthony's Church on the moor. Please forgive me for the inconvenience I may cause. He wished me to be married to him quietly, without anyone's knowing, or I would have told you. We are sailing for America immediately. May I trouble you to send my box to the address on the label? I have only taken a hand-bag with me.

"Yours sincerely,

"HONOR BROUGHTON.

"P.S.—I am sure you will get someone who will suit you much better than I did. Thank you for all your kindness. I am not ungrateful, but Mr. Selkirk seems to want me more than anyone else does."

Now, as she walked on to her destination, a sudden wild panic seized her, and the quiet, matter-of-fact girl stood for one moment with palpitating heart, ready to fly back in terror to the conventional groove into which she had been fitted.

And then, as if he had suddenly risen from the moor, Mr. Selkirk stood by her side and took her hand in his.

"You look quite frightened. Did you think I would fail you? We are close to the church now. This way. Take my arm."

Honor was trembling visibly, but the frightened look died out of her eyes.

"I believe I was going to run away back," she said; "I wonder if it is as much to you as it is to me?"

He soothed her.

"It is a shame of me to ask you to do anything so unconventional. But you are a plucky, unselfish girl, and you will go through with it for my sake, won't you—and for Fay's? Poor mite! She is eagerly waiting for us at the station. Mrs. Maciver has driven her there with our luggage, and has lent me a trap to take you straight away to the station directly the service is over."

Honor could not speak, but in the little stone porch, before she entered the church, she turned and confronted her future husband with tragic eyes.

"Mr. Selkirk, promise me now that this will not be the last time that you will enter a church door. You know what my faith is. Promise me that you will not try to shake it, that you will help me in all good ways and not hinder me."

"We will help each other," he said very gently. "I know you are a good woman, and I'm far from being what I ought; but you'll improve me, and I'm willing to meet you in the church way. You must remember I have led a roving life, and had no god influence since my child's mother died. You'll have your opportunities of making me a better man, I assure you."

Honor heaved a sigh, but said no more. And the quiet little service that followed, the signing in the registry book afterwards, and the drive to the station in a farmer's trap, all seemed to be so many pictures in a dream which flashed past her, but in which she herself took no part.

But when, a little later, she was comfortably established in a railway carriage with Fay in her lap and the child's clinging arms round her neck, she turned towards her husband with an apologetic, quivering smile.

"Forgive me for being so stupid. I can't realise at all what we have done."

He smiled back at her.

"You make me feel a brute; but I'll leave Fay to entertain you."

He opened out a newspaper and wisely left her to herself till she was able to talk in her usual quiet, happy way.

And so Honor tried to take a turn in her Eastern path, and for the time she felt nothing but sunshine, for her blighting wind had disappeared. Once, as the trio stood on the great American liner watching the shores of England recede and vanish from their sight, Mr. Selkirk looked at her and saw that the tears were running down her face.

Fay noticed it too.

"Look, daddy, Madam Pilgrim is crying! Quick, get your hanky and wipe it all away!"

She produced a grimy little ball out of her pocket and pushed it into her father's hand.

"You can reach her better, 'cause you're taller than me. It isn't very clean, 'cause I wiped that lovely dog's dirty paws with it over there. Don't cry, Madam Pilgrim. Why do you cry?"

Honor smiled bravely through her tears.

"It's because I've never been out of England before," she said. "I feel as if I shall be lost myself now I have lost my country. And new, strange things and places always frighten me."

"But we are not new or strange," said her husband; "and you are with us."

"And we're very happy peoples, daddy and me," said Fay, nodding wisely. "We never cries much at all—not when we're pilgriming; it's only when we stay still, and it rains, and we mustn't go out, nor touch the norny-ments on the mantelshelf, that we cries."

And then Honor put her arms round her and kissed her passionately, whilst her husband looked on, half touched and half amused.

Presently, he strolled away to smoke his pipe with other men, and the little child—not the father—was Honor's comforter.