Chapter VI: "Happy is the bride the sun shines on!"

Laline had heard the words somewhere, and remembered them as she woke very early on the thirtieth of August and saw the rain pouring in a steady flood upon the sun-dried earth.

She stood looking out on the mean little back street of St. Denis, commanded by her bedroom window. What outlook would there be from the windows of her new home? she wondered. Old Mr. Wallace's house was vast and dreary, situated over his banking-establishment in the Strand, London; from his nephew's brief description it was a paradise of luxury and comfort. Laline was all agog with excitement. She did not want to marry Wallace Armstrong; she was fascinated by and yet afraid of him. But she had become so convinced of his disinterested goodness to her, and she was so troubled by her father's debts and difficulties, that it seemed wicked to refuse his offer. And yet she had not said "Yes;" her "Yes" had been taken for granted, her father had effusively blessed her as the means of delivering him from his embarrassments, and Bénoîte and her few acquaintances could hardly shower enough congratulations upon her for her unique good fortune, which clearly astonished them.

"So rich a man, so handsome, so distinguished-looking, the heir to a millionaire, and nothing would content him but marrying _la p'tite Gart_! It was certainly very wonderful, although she had greatly improved in appearance since she had taken to long frocks and put her hair up."

Such were among the neighbours' comments; and every one seemed to envy Laline's good fortune. And yet this little beggar-maid could not subdue a secret fear of her King Cophetua; and as she stood now, looking very fair and saint-like in her long, white gown, with her bright hair floating about her shoulders, and the wistful look of her hazel eyes, a little quiver of dread passed over her as she thought of that unknown future to which the flying minutes were leading her.

Her wedding-dress, which was also to be her travelling-costume, lay on the bed, a plain blue serge of perfect fit and cut, in which she looked very tall and slim, a neat little blue straw hat, and a tweed travelling-cape. Laline had very little more real notion of love or of the responsibilities of a wife than the little Bertins next door; but her heart beat fast as she finished dressing and heard her future husband's voice as he entered the hall below.

"Don't I look grown-up?" she asked, as she ran down-stairs to greet him.

Wallace was in a bad temper that morning, having sat up until four o'clock losing money at cards. He kissed Laline's cheek without much effusion.

"I hope you are going to do your hair up," he observed. "You look about twelve with all that about your shoulders!"

"I haven't finished dressing it. It's all got to be coiled and twisted and pinned away. But I thought you would like to see me in my new gown."

"Well, don't waste time dressing! We have to be at the Consul's at ten; and the boat leaves at ten minutes past two o'clock. It's a beastly morning; I've got wet through coming over from the hotel!"

An hour later the three set forth in a closed _fiacre_, accompanied by an elderly sporting friend of Captain Garth, to whom the latter owed a good deal of money, and who went ostensibly as a witness, but in reality to make sure that Miss Garth's marriage with Alexander Wallace's nephew was not a creation of his friend and debtor's facile brain.

It was by no means a festive party. The bridegroom was morose and sullen, and did not once glance at the poor little bride, who sat in silence facing him, with a startled look in her eyes. Captain Garth was restless and voluble, striving, by his forced cheerfulness, to impart something like suitable brightness to the occasion; his friend Mr. Mitcham endeavoured to pay compliments to Laline, who received his well-meant efforts with a dreamy wonder that was not encouraging; the cab splashed through the muddy streets, the rain beat upon the windows, and at every yard traversed Laline's spirits sank to a low ebb, and her mind became more and more overshadowed by dismal forebodings of the future in store for her.

The Consul, a grey-haired fussy man, with a preoccupied manner, made short work of the ceremony; and to Laline, whose ideas of weddings were chiefly gained from those she had witnessed in the village church in Westmoreland, there was something bald and unmeaning in the total absence of any religious ceremony, something that savoured of a bargain made across a counter, and not of a holy sacrament to be honoured throughout a lifetime.

A few words spoken by an elderly gentleman in ordinary attire in the presence of his secretary, his clerk, Garth, Armstrong, Mitcham, and Laline, in a bare-looking office, a few statements made by a man and a woman, a few signatures and the payment of certain fees, and Laline Garth had become Laline Armstrong, wife of the tall, frowning young man who stood facing her with an aching head which had not yet recovered from the gambling and brandy-drinking of the preceding evening.

It was all startling, shocking, and painful to Laline. To the last they had not told her that hers was to be solely a civil marriage; to the last she had hoped that a clergyman might bless her in a holier name before she started on her new life. She was half a child still, but woman enough to feel deeply the inadequacy of such a ceremony as had just taken place to satisfy the requirements of her mind.

Almost as soon as the little party left the Consular residence the bridegroom announced his intention of going to his hotel, "to put his things together," a proposition which his father-in-law urgently combated.

"It isn't half-past ten yet!" growled Armstrong. "That Consul-fellow fixed the ceremony so infernally early! What in the world can one do with oneself in the Rue Planché on a pouring wet day like this?"

"There are plenty of little things to talk over," said Garth, slipping his arm through that of his son-in-law. "We have to drink success to your married life too," he added, insinuatingly.

"In that filthy brandy of yours? There's one good thing about going back to England, one can get something fit to drink there!"

With such bad grace Armstrong agreed to accompany his bride and her father home. Captain Garth was fully determined to keep Wallace securely under his eye until he saw the newly-married pair safely on board the boat bound for England. He had had some experience of the young man's moods, and knew that he was quite capable of getting extremely intoxicated in the town out of mere bravado, and in that condition presenting himself at the boat, or even, at the worst, of forgetting that appointment altogether.

"Poor little girl! She's caught a Tartar!" was Mitcham's mental comment, as he took leave of the bridal party, who, in another _fiacre_, splashed their way back to the High Town.

Here the little bride was dismissed to her room, to complete her packing. But, most unluckily for the plans of Messrs. Armstrong and Garth, it so chanced that almost as soon as Laline arrived up-stairs, and before she had even removed her hat, she remembered that she had left her keys in the _salle-à-manger_ below, and forthwith she descended in search of them.

Nell the cat and her kitten were playing on the floor of the _salle_, and the little bride slipped on her knees beside them to bid them an affectionate and tearful farewell. Nell's kitten had an untidy habit of dragging any plaything it could find from one room to another about the house; as she caressed it, Laline remembered that her three keys on a little piece of string were among the kitten's favourite toys, which might account for the fact that they were at this present moment nowhere to be found.

On consulting Bénoîte, the latter declared that she had seen the "_le p'tit chat_" amusing itself with some keys on the floor of the _salon_ that morning; but, as she never meddled with anything of Monsieur's, she had not rescued them. Clearly the _salon_ was the place to search for the missing keys, and with that idea Laline turned the handle of her father's den.

The two men were sitting by Garth's desk with their heads bent over a paper; close at hand stood the cognac, a syphon, and two well-filled glasses. They seemed absorbed in the contents of the paper before them, and did not hear Laline's timid turning of the handle of the door. Before, however, she had opened it sufficiently wide to enable her to enter, some words, loudly spoken in her bridegroom's voice, arrested her attention, and made her suddenly stop as though turned to stone.

"You've only got to alter the date of the certificate from the thirtieth of August to the thirtieth of July, and the thing is done. I wrote to my uncle that I was married and that my wife was starving just twenty-four days ago. I didn't say how long I'd been married; and, as I landed at Marseilles in the middle of July on my way to Paris, I should have had plenty of time to get on here and through the ceremony by the thirtieth. Of course, Laline doesn't look as if she were starving, though I think you've kept her pretty short in the matter of food. But, if she's only sea-sick, she may look woebegone enough for the character!"

"Your difficulty will be," said Garth, "to persuade her to back you up in those few little necessary lies. For one thing, I have stated her age as seventeen; for another, she must be made to understand that she's been married a month, and has been starving in Boulogne for some days. But your toughest job will be to induce her to state that she's the orphan daughter of a clergyman, and that she met you coming home from Australia. It's almost a pity to have left all these very important details to the last moment."

"It's all the fault of that humbugging training of hers," growled Armstrong. "But I'm not going to let any whimpering school-girl spoil my prospects. Laline's my wife, and she's got to obey me. I shall impress upon her that my uncle, who is very particular, would never forgive me for marrying the daughter of such a man as you, ex-keeper of a gambling-club, where I got fleeced and ruined five years ago,--a man who daren't show his face in England; and I shall assure her that I invented this story of a dead parson-father in order to spare her natural feelings."

"Stop a bit!" exclaimed Garth, whose flesh-tints had deepened from crimson to purple while Armstrong was speaking. "I draw the line at that. It's bad enough to be deprived of my daughter's companionship; but I won't have her mind poisoned against me; understand that! You can tell her that I am connected with the turf, as I suggested before, and that your uncle has a Puritanical horror of horse-racing. But I won't have my memory blackened in the mind of the only kith-and-kin I have in the world!"

"I shall arrange it as I said!" said Armstrong obstinately, while he helped himself to more brandy. "You've sold me your daughter for a hundred a year, to be afterwards raised on two separate occasions. You wanted money, and so did I. Both of us were stone-broke. I wrote to my uncle, pretending I had a starving wife; he took me at my word, and promised to forgive me and provide for me if I would produce her. It was necessary to find a wife immediately, and desirable that she should be too young or too silly to ask questions. I settled on your daughter. The bargain was struck, and she passed from your keeping to mine, having filled her very proper mission of providing us both with money. But, now that she is mine, and I have saddled myself with a lanky, half-fledged school-girl, you have no more part in her, and I shall speak to her of you or of anybody else in just what terms I choose!"

"My daughter is my daughter until she leaves my roof, at least!" cried Garth his patience suddenly deserting him. "I'm sick of your bullying, blustering, hectoring ways! The settlement as to my future income is all signed and sealed and witnessed, and what is to prevent me from informing Laline of your true character before she leaves this house? What authority would you exercise over her if I told her your record? A gambler, a drunkard, a bully, and a forger, who has only escaped a felon's cell by the leniency of an uncle, who shipped him off to Australia in order to get rid of him!"

Captain Garth rose while he spoke, and made as though he were approaching the door, when, suddenly, Armstrong sprang from his seat with a smothered oath, and caught him roughly by the shoulder. Just for one moment Laline, gazing with distended eyes through the crack of the door, saw them, the faces of both excited and angry--Garth's with a red rage of indignation, and Armstrong's with a white cruelty which was infinitely more dangerous. Then, as the two men struggled, the sound of scuffling commenced, drowning Laline's flying footsteps, and enabling her to gain the staircase and her own apartment unseen and unheard.

One only idea filled her mind--to escape at that instant from both these men; and the strange lucidity of thought which comes to some emotional natures at moments of high tension seemed suddenly to make clear to her ways and means.

It was only a few minutes past eleven; she had heard the church-clocks chime the hour while she listened at the _salon_ door. The Folkestone boat did not leave until ten minutes past two; if Armstrong and her father had their luncheon served to them at twelve, they would not think of her until past one. She would tell Bénoîte that she was going to call upon some friends before leaving Boulogne, and that she would be back in time for the boat; she would lock her bedroom-door and throw away the key in order to still further delay pursuit. But then--where was she to go?

All her thoughts and wishes pointed to England. And yet where in her native country was she to make her home until she could find means to earn her own living, as she had so long desired to?

Her uncle, the clergyman in Sussex, had held no communication with his sister since her marriage with Randolph Garth, and only as a last resource could Laline entertain the idea of seeking shelter under his roof. But there was a much-loved school-friend of the late Mrs. Garth, a widow named Melville, whose constant and affectionate letters had been much looked forward to by the little household in the Westmoreland village. Her messages to her old friend's little daughter had been of the kindest description. She kept a girls'-school in Norwood, and Laline remembered her address; but since her arrival in Boulogne she had had no communication with Mrs. Melville, who, Laline realised, would be shocked by the Bohemian mode of life in the Rue Planché.

Laline had not seen this lady since she was a very little child; but she remembered her as kind, and believed that, for her dead mother's sake, Mrs. Melville might be induced to help her, and to Mrs. Melville's protection Laline resolved to fly.

There was no time to be lost indeed. The girl could hear men's voices in angry discussion below. England must be reached as speedily as possible; and yet to travel by the Folkestone boat was clearly out of the question. The Calais route was shorter, if Laline could only get to Calais; and by that journey she would arrive in London more than hour before her pursuers, should they even guess that she had escaped thither.

Providentially, she recalled the fact that the train from Paris to Calais stopped at Boulogne for a few minutes before proceeding on its journey at a quarter to twelve o'clock. Laline's mind was at once made up; and in less time than it takes to tell it she had seized her cloak and gloves, locked her bedroom-door, slipped the key in her pocket, and astonished Bénoîte by darting into the kitchen and whispering a hurried message in her ear before leaving the house by the way into the Rue St. Denis.

Her entire worldly wealth consisted of one franc and fifty centimes; but her father's chronic impecuniosity had taught Laline the method by which the poor and improvident raise money, and, with a beating heart and a hot flush on her cheek, Laline stopped on her way to the station to change the two rings which Armstrong had given her, the turquoise and diamond engagement-ring, the hated wedding-ring, together with her much-loved mother's watch and chain, for money wherewith to buy her freedom.

For it seemed to Laline that she would be free of the horrible, loveless bargain which her marriage had been could she but tear from her finger the gold circlet which Wallace Armstrong had an hour ago placed there, could she but put the sea between herself and him, and, losing herself in the vastness of London, change her name and live out her life away from him and his evil influence.

Her heart was full of the most passionate indignation against both him and her father; of the latter, indeed, she hardly dared to think, so deeply did she resent his treatment of her; but of Armstrong she thought with a growing fear and horror, which dwelt upon the brutality of his speeches and the cruelty of his expression, until he seemed to her to be scarcely human. Rather death than a return to the care of either of those men! Terror lent wings to her feet, until, breathless, panting, but with a great sigh of relief, she jumped into the already moving train for Calais.

Fortune favoured the runaway. The passage was smooth enough under a gray, lowering sky, and Laline's heart leaped within her at sight of the white cliffs of her native land in the afternoon. Before six o'clock on that eventful day the Dover train steamed into Charing-Cross Station, and Laline Armstrong stepped out upon the platform, a slim, girlish figure, alone and friendless in the great city of London.