Chapter I: Valeria and Owen Quentillian (4)

Her warm emotionalism had not been without its appeal, but he had no liking for tears at a crisis, nor indeed for a crisis at all. His mind reverted to Lucilla’s matter-of-fact fashion of dealing with the crucial instances of life at St. Gwenllian, and theoretically, he met her attitude with applause. But he also remembered that he had not found her sympathetic, upon the preceding evening.

Impartially, he acknowledged with a rueful smile, his own exactingness.

He must go, and decided that it should be to London. As for Stear, he would face it later. The thought of Stear, and the loneliness there, brought the realest sense of loss to him that he had yet experienced over the defection of Valeria.

He had thought to hear her laughter there, to see the apricot bloom on her lovely face, her children growing up there.

With a long sigh, Owen let the vision go. The warm, human things of life had come very near to him, but he had not known how to hold them. Some subtle, inner sense warned him that Valeria had done well to betake herself and the rich gifts of her ardent nature, to the simple and primitive life of the colonies, and the man who was offering that life to her.

He went away to make his preparations for leaving St. Gwenllian.

* * * * *

Valeria’s wedding, not unnaturally, provided no occasion for festivity.

The bride herself remarked in private to her sisters:

“I feel exactly as though I was one of those unfortunate girls who come to Father for him to marry them so as to ‘make honest women of them’ at the eleventh hour. You know the way that sort of wedding is hurried through, in a hole-and-corner style....”

“It’s lucky for you you’ve got a good deal of your trousseau made already,” was Lucilla’s practical reply.

“Yes, and ‘V. Q.’ embroidered on more than half of it!” cried Val hysterically.

“You can’t possibly use it,” Flora declared austerely. “Unless I can alter it for you in time.”

“Of course she can use it,” said Lucilla.

Valeria left them both. In the overstrained condition of her nerves, Lucilla’s crudely-worded common-sense and Flora’s fastidiousness were equally little to her taste. Her father’s sorrowful gravity struck her with despair, and Owen Quentillian’s magnanimous detachment puzzled her sincerely, and made her doubly remorseful.

It was only when George Cuscaden was actually with her that she knew with real certainty that she had done right at the last moment.

On the night before her wedding, Canon Morchard called Valeria, gave her his blessing and forgiveness, and handed to her some of her dead mother’s jewelry.

“God bless and help you in the way that you have chosen, and may He bring all things together for good, as He alone can do.”

“Forgive me, Father.”

“My child, I have nothing to forgive. It was not I whom you wronged, but yourself,--and one other. His pardon is yours, fully and freely, as you know well. And now, my Valeria, you owe it to your husband to put the past behind you. You will enter into your new life purified by that very sense of past error, humbled by repentance.”

The Canon’s voice was very gentle.

It was long after midnight when Valeria heard him go upstairs.

George Cuscaden and Valeria were married by Mr. Clover, immediately after Matins next day, and Canon Morchard, throughout the ceremony, knelt with his face hidden by his hand.

The sense of irrevocability that comes to most brides assailed Valeria irresistibly for a moment as she walked, alone with her husband, the short distance from the church back to St. Gwenllian.

She glanced up at him, and in the look that met hers she found all the reassurance that she was ever to need.

“A new life, and a new world, my Val. We’re going to face things together, now.”

She was no longer afraid or doubtful, but felt the strangest rush of pure exhilaration.

It was her justification for the past.

“A new life, and a new world,” she repeated. “We’re going to be very happy, in spite of everything that’s happened.”

“We _are_ very happy,” said George Cuscaden firmly, her hand held fast in his.

“I think they’ll forgive me, at home, in time. Father was very kind last night, and Flossie and Lucilla have been so good.”

“Val, my darling,” said the young man very seriously, “there’s one thing I do want to say, and you mustn’t mind. You’ve got to leave the past behind you, now. Isn’t there something or other in the Bible about forgetting thy father’s house and thine own people?”

“Something like that.”

“Well, I don’t really mean forgetting them, you know. But you’ve got your own life now, and it isn’t going to run on the old lines any more. It seems to me there’s been such a lot of talking and thinking in your life up to now, that there’s been no room for doing anything. You and I are going to change all that.”

“Yes, George,” said Valeria.

She had, mysteriously, become absolutely happy and absolutely secure. Nothing mattered any more at all except the fact that George and she had found one another in time.

And she was able to surmise, not without a smile, that she had that moment heard almost the only Scriptural quotation from her husband of which he was ever likely to deliver himself.

Quotations, collections, barren discussions, abstract ideals, all lay behind her. In future her preoccupations would concern the health and welfare of her husband and perhaps his children, food and clothing and warmth, pots and pans, and the work of her own hands.

And from the depths of her heart, Valeria was glad.