Chapter III: ‘she Is Fast My Wife.’

September was nearly ended. Harvest homes were over, and in Combhaven there was a general impression that winter was a season in the immediate future, and that linsey and merino would be soon the only wear. Household fires began to have a cheery look in the dusk, and ruddy light flickered on the walls and ceilings of cosy parlours at tea-time,--in that dim hour when the busiest housewife might lay aside her daily task of making or mending, and fold her hands for a brief span, with a virtuous sense of having earned the luxury of repose, while she discussed the character or prospects of her neighbours, or talked of that last dreadful murder chronicled in the county papers, or the latest scandal about England’s crownless queen.

Joshua had gone on another journey in this tranquil autumn weather. He had not told his family much about the object or design of this last excursion, but had contented himself with stating that it was a matter of business which called him away, and that he should be absent at most a week.

Judith was not a little offended at this reticence.

‘I don’t know what’s come over your father that he’s taken to gadding,’ she said to Naomi. ‘He’s never been the same man since he went to open young Wild’s chapel. One would think it had turned his head. And yet it was no great honour for him to be asked to do it--an out-of-the-way place like that, where the people are as ignorant as negro slaves, I daresay.’

‘I can see no change in father,’ replied Naomi. ‘He is as good as he has always been, and as thoughtful for others. If there is any change, it is that he seems kinder than ever.’

‘Ah!’ exclaimed Judith, with vexation; ‘what’s the use of talking to girls in love? It’s throwing away good words. You’ve no eyes nor ears for any one but your lover. If you were in the business you’d see the change in your father fast enough. Half his time his wits are wool-gathering.’

‘Perhaps he’s thinking of his sermons, aunt.’

‘He never used to think of ’em when he was behind his counter.’

Naomi had no further explanation to offer. It had indeed seemed to her of late that her father was kinder and more sympathetic than she had ever known him to be since the days of her childhood, when she had been his prattling companion in many a rustic walk. He had entered into her feelings about Oswald, he had talked to her of her future; and to Oswald himself he had been all kindness and indulgence. Never had her home been pleasanter to her, or her life happier, than during the last three months. Perhaps this is why she had found it so difficult to imagine herself transferred to any other home, the scene of her life shifted from the homely house in the High-street to the gloomy dignity of the Grange.

Joshua had been absent more than ten days, a breach of faith upon which aunt Judith enlarged with some bitterness.

‘A stranger in the pulpit, and our last butter-cask nearly empty. If that isn’t a change in your father I don’t know the meaning of the word. But some people can twist words any way; one ’ud need a new dictionary to understand ’em,’ exclaimed the anxious housewife, as she and Naomi sat together at tea in the glow of an afternoon fire.

Jim had gone to Barnstaple to order goods. He was gradually emerging from the chrysalis of boyhood, and showing an aptitude for business which his aunt lauded as the crowning ornament of manhood. He was sharp and energetic, intensely matter of fact, and more eager for gain than his father cared to see him, but a good boy withal, soft-hearted and kindly.

‘Perhaps father may be home to-night,’ said Naomi soothingly.

‘Ah, that’s what you said last night, and the night before last. If he isn’t home to-night or to-morrow there’ll be no service on Sunday, for Mr. Scrupel only promised for the one Sabbath. And there’d be a pass for things to come to! How could your father hold his head up in Combhaven after that?’

‘I am sure my father won’t neglect his duty.’

‘Won’t he? How about our next cask of butter? Where’s that to come from, I should like to know, before we’ve been out of Irish ever so long? It was more than I would take upon myself to write to Ireland for it.’

‘You might have ordered another cask, aunt.’

‘I wouldn’t be so venturesome. A deal of thanks I should get for my pains if the butter turned out rancid. No, Naomi; if your father neglects his business be must bear the brunt of his own conduct; and if there’s no service on the Sabbath--’

‘There will be service,’ cried Naomi, starting from her chair at the sound of a vehicle drawing up in front of the gate. ‘That’s father!’

‘Why, there’s no coach to bring him at this time, child. The Barnstaple mail won’t be in for a good hour. Why, bless us and save us, if it isn’t a post-shay, with a trunk on the roof too!’ exclaimed aunt Judith, looking out of the window. ‘Your father took nothing with him but a bag, and unless he was gone clean out of his mind he wouldn’t come home in a shay.’

‘He may be ill,’ cried Naomi, alarmed; for this apparition of a post-chaise was one of those startling appearances which must mean something out of the common--possibly evil.

‘It must be a mistake,’ said aunt Judith, following Naomi into the passage. ‘No, there’s Joshua getting out, and no more the matter with him than there is with me,’ she added, in a tone of disgust.

Yes, there was Joshua confronting them in the twilight, with a curious look on his dark face, a kind of shy triumph, as of one half ashamed of a great happiness. He drew Naomi to him, and kissed her with more warmth of feeling than he had ever shown after so short a severance.

‘How is my dear daughter?’ he asked gently.

‘Very well, father, and very glad to have you back again.’

‘We’re all but out of Irish butter,’ said Judith accusingly from the obscurity of the passage.

‘Ah, Judith, is that you? Never mind the butter. We’ll soon set things right,’ replied the minister, going back to the chaise.

‘You won’t get another cask till the end of next week, with all your cleverness. I thought you’d broken a leg at the least, or you’d never have come home in a shay,’ added Judith.

‘I came in a chaise because I had some one to bring with me, my dear,’ replied Joshua calmly.

He handed out a girl--a slim girlish figure, a lily face under a gipsy bonnet tied with a broad white ribbon. Naomi saw tender blue eyes looking up at her beseechingly in the twilight, and rosebud lips that were faintly tremulous. She had never before beheld such flower-like beauty, loveliness so delicate in form or colouring.

Joshua put the stranger’s hand under his arm and led her into the house, and into the fire-lit parlour; Judith falling back against the passage wall as they went by, as if she had made way for a spectre; Naomi following her father full of wonder.

‘I have brought you a companion and friend, Naomi,’ said Joshua, when they were all in the parlour, aunt Judith having followed automatically like Hamlet after the Ghost. ‘I have brought you some one whom you must love and cherish for my sake.’

‘If you’ve brought this young woman to help in the business, you may give her the drapery department altogether. I wash my hands of it from this moment!’ exclaimed Judith, awful in her indignation.

‘I have brought her to occupy the first place in my household, as she holds the first place in my heart,’ answered Joshua. ‘This is Cynthia Haggard, my wife.’

Sister and daughter stared at the minister with wonder-stricken countenances, pallid with horror. This calm announcement of his went so far beyond their ideas of the possible--this fact of a second marriage was an event so wide of their wildest dreams--that both aunt and niece were dumb. To both it seemed that Joshua must have gone out of his mind; that he must be talking distractedly under the spell of demoniac possession, rather than that this thing could be true--this slender flower-girl the grave preacher’s second wife.

Joshua Haggard looked at the two women, surprised at the consternation his words had caused. Having once made up his mind that Cynthia was his fittest helpmate, created for him by his God, as Eve for Adam, it had not occurred to him that other people could have any occasion to wonder at his choice. Her youth, her beauty, were blessings which Heaven had bestowed upon him with the free gift of her love. She loved him, she had chosen him; gladly, willingly she had nestled in his arms, and yielded him a love which was almost worship. She had spanned the gulf of years that yawned between them; she had flown to him as a bird to its nest. By her free choice she had justified his boldness in loving her. Had any one else the right to count his years, or see unfitness in this union of youth and maturity, if she had not done so?

He was angry at his daughter’s blank look of surprise. From Judith he had expected rebellion, and he took no heed of her mute horror.

‘You do not give my wife a very warm welcome, Naomi,’ he said, with suppressed indignation. ‘I had expected more from your sense of duty, if not from your affection.’

‘Forgive me, father,’ said Naomi, with a look of unspeakable pain. Those deliberate words of Joshua’s had shown her that this thing was very real. ‘I was so surprised, I could not speak.’ And then, going up to Cynthia, she put out her hand and said gently, ‘I am very glad to see you.’

Cynthia took the proffered hand, which was cold as ice, bent her graceful head, and kissed the cold fingers tearfully.

‘I am sorry you should have been so surprised,’ she said. ‘I asked Mr. Haggard to tell you before we were married, but he thought it was better not.’

‘I fancied my marriage would have been a pleasant surprise for my daughter. I thought she might be glad to know that when she leaves me I shall still have some one to care for me--’

Aunt Judith’s overcharged breast relieved itself by a groan.

‘Some one young and bright and pleasant for my companion.’

Judith groaned rather louder than before.

‘For the rest, I had no one’s leave or license to ask for my marriage. And now, Judith, perhaps you’ll be good enough to get us some tea, while I go out and settle with the postboy. We’ve had a long drive from Barnstaple. Naomi, you can show Cynthia the way up-stairs, and help her to take off her cloak and bonnet. My room is ready, I suppose?’

‘It’s ready for _you_,’ replied Judith; ‘I don’t know whether it’s good enough for Mrs. Haggard’--throwing a spiteful intensity into the mere utterance of the name which showed great power of expression. ‘She may be used to something better; though I might have known what was going to happen when you ordered new chintz for the bedstead and windows.’

‘What is good enough for me will be good enough for my wife,’ said Joshua, looking fondly after his bride as she left the room with Naomi. ‘And now bestir yourself, Judith, like a kind soul, and give us a comfortable tea--a dish of ham and eggs, or something substantial. Cynthia ate hardly any dinner.’

‘Cynthia!’ ejaculated Judith, as if suddenly awakened from a state of semi-consciousness; ‘why, that’s the name of the young woman you found on the common.’

‘It is.’

‘And you’ve married that young woman--a tramp, a servant-girl!’

‘I have married a lovely and innocent girl, whom Providence designed to be the blessing of my later years,’ replied Joshua. ‘God gave her to me for my own that day on the common. She has loved me from that day, and I am not sure that my love for her was not born in me then. My thoughts have followed her and cared for her all the time, though I only knew last midsummer how dear she had become to me. You look at me as if I was talking a strange tongue, Judith.’

‘It might as well be Hebrew for my understanding of it,’ answered Judith. ‘However, you’ve made your bed and you can lie upon it. You don’t want my leave or license, as you say; no man wants leave or license to play the fool. That’s an act of free will with most folks.’

‘Come, Judith,’ cried the minister sternly, ‘if you think that I am going to submit to insolence or insult in a matter that touches me so nearly as this you are mistaken. A man’s worst foes are those of his own household. I will have no enemy to share my daily bread and my daily prayer. If you and I are to live together, you must love my wife as you love me. She is a part of me--the brighter, better part. An insult to her is twice an insult to me, and I shall resent it twice as keenly. And now, Judith, shake hands upon this, and take it into your heart; or else find some other shelter than this roof before you lie down to-night. No one shall live in my house that is an enemy to my wife.’

‘That’s short notice,’ said Judith grimly. ‘Well, there’s my hand. You’ve been a good brother to me, and I’ve not been a bad sister to you. We won’t quarrel about a--pretty face. May you be happy!’

They shook hands--heartily upon Joshua’s side, with a shade of reservation on Judith’s. The minister felt that he had conquered; but these household victories sometimes leave behind them the seed of future warfare.

Judith bustled out to prepare a meal for the travellers; and soon there was a cheerful hissing sound--an odour of fried ham from the kitchen, where Judith stood over the frying-pan with a moody brow, while Sally obeyed her orders in fear and wonder.

‘Get out the best tea-things and the plated candlesticks, and get a pair of wax-candles from the shop,’ said Judith; at which command Sally stood open-mouthed and speechless. There had been no such preparations since the last tea-party.

‘Your master has got married, Sally. We must show him how pleased we are.’

‘Married!’ cried Sally. ‘Is it Mrs. Trimly?’

Mrs. Trimly was a corpulent widow, with a very respectable fortune that had been made in a tan-pit. She occupied a large red-brick house--her own--at the upper end of Combhaven; she wore silk gowns every afternoon, gold spectacles, and the smartest caps in the town, and was a devoted disciple of Joshua’s, wheezing through the service every Sunday morning, and sometimes guilty of nasal breathings of an unmistakable character on a Sunday afternoon.

To Sally it seemed the most natural thing in the world that Joshua should espouse the tanner’s widow, although she was fifteen years his senior, and a sufferer from high feeding and chronic asthma. Sally had made up her mind ever so long ago, on the occasion of a state tea-drinking, that Mrs. Trimly looked with peculiar favour on the minister, and that the comfortably-furnished brick house, with its twenty acres of orchard and meadow, as well as a fortune in the Funds, might be Joshua’s for the asking.

‘No,’ said Judith; ‘it isn’t Mrs. Trimly. That would have been a sensible marriage, if you like. But when men of my brother’s age marry they don’t think of pleasing sensible people. They marry to please their eye, Sally. Your new mistress has got flaxen hair and blue eyes, Sally. That’s enough for my brother. I hope you’ll like her, and that you’ll take the same pains with polishing the furniture that you have taken in my time.’

‘You are not going away, are you, mum?’ gasped Sally, with a vision of a paradisiacal life opening before her almost too dazzling for the mental eye.

‘No, Sally, I am not going away; but I’m going to be a cipher,’ replied Judith severely.

Sarah’s spirits sank. She did not know the meaning of that substantive cipher, though she had a distant acquaintance with the same word as a verb. But she felt that so long as Miss Judith remained upon the scene her toil would know no relaxation.

Meanwhile the two girls--wife and daughter--were up-stairs in Joshua’s bedroom, stealing shy glances at each other by the dim light of a candle which Naomi held while Cynthia stood before the dressing-table taking off her bonnet.

There were tears in the young wife’s eyes, and a sad look about the sweet rosy mouth, as she smoothed her bright hair with Joshua’s hard black brush, looking in the glass at a misty reflection of that half-sorrowful, half-frightened face. Inexperienced as she was in the varieties of humanity, instinct was keen enough to teach her that her husband’s marriage was distasteful to his kindred, that there was no loving welcome for her in this strange home.

She looked at Naomi with unspeakable awe. Was this the affectionate daughter, the tender companion and friend Joshua had promised her? That tall erect figure, that nobly-chiselled face, with its crown of raven hair bound in a thick coil round a high comb on the summit of the head, inspired admiration, but held love at a distance. Cynthia felt that she could never be familiar with this handsome stepdaughter; and yet the face was like Joshua’s, and for that reason must needs seem dear to her.

‘I am so sorry your father did not tell you sooner,’ she began falteringly. ‘I’m afraid his marrying me has made you unhappy--’

‘It has surprised me very much,’ Naomi answered gravely. ‘I have never thought of my father marrying--the idea never came into my head. If any one had suggested it, I should have been angry. And you are so young--so much fitter to be his daughter than his wife.’

‘No wife could love and honour him more than I do,’ said Cynthia, the tears streaming down her cheeks.

‘No one could know him and not honour him,’ replied the daughter proudly. ‘Don’t cry; I am not blaming you. I have no right to blame him. I don’t want to speak unkindly to you, still less to speak undutifully of my father; but his marriage is a great surprise.’

Here Naomi broke down, and the two young women performed a sobbing duet. Naomi was the first to recover.

‘I am very wicked,’ she said remorsefully. ‘As if my dear father had not the right to be happy in his own way. I am jealous, unreasonable, abominable. Poor little thing’--drawing Cynthia to her with protecting tenderness--‘don’t cry. I am not so cruel or so ungrateful as I must have seemed just now. But I love my father so dearly, and I thought I should have him always all my own; and the idea that he could love any one else more than me was too bitter, just at first. I was selfish, cruel, undutiful. Dry your tears, dear; we must be fond of each other for my father’s sake.’

Cynthia’s sobs ceased. She clung lovingly to the tall figure, hanging on it like ivy on an oak.

‘O, if you will love me a little I shall be so happy,’ said the girl-wife. ‘He ought to have told you. I know I must seem an intruder. But if you could know how I love him; how from the first--when he took me under his care, a poor runaway creature, without a friend, used to hard usage and hard words--from the first I worshipped him! He was so true, so strong, a rock of defence. I feared no one when he had taken me under his care.’

‘Yes, he told me how he found you,’ said Naomi thoughtfully. ‘Poor child!’

This was the waif of whom her father had spoken--the girl in whose story she had felt a tender pitying interest, never dreaming that this nameless wanderer was to rob her of her father’s heart.

‘Did he tell you that I was a heathen then,’ asked Cynthia solemnly, ‘knowing nothing, believing nothing, without one hope beyond my daily life--and that was altogether hopeless? I had known no father on earth, I knew of no Father in heaven. I thought death was the end of all things, and I sometimes longed to die.’

‘Poor child!’ repeated Naomi, with grave pity.

‘Poor then,’ said Cynthia, ‘the poorest of the poor. But from that blessed day rich beyond measure. “Henceforward there is laid up for me a crown of glory.”’

There was no touch of sanctimoniousness or cant in her utterance of these words, only a childlike and implicit faith.

‘Yes,’ answered Naomi, with deepest gravity, ‘if you win the race.’

Her more serious nature was not so easily assured. These triumphant party cries and watchwords of evangelism sometimes awakened doubts and anxieties in her reflective mind. For St. Paul such a glad burst of triumph was but the natural expression of a victorious soul; but for these followers of St. Paul, who had endured nothing, accomplished nothing--who had fought no battle, won no victory--from them this bold assurance of felicity seemed arrogant to the verge of blasphemy.

‘And you will try to love me a little?’ said Cynthia pleadingly.

‘I shall love you very much, for my father’s sake, if you make his life happy.’

‘I shall honour and obey him, and wait upon him like his servant if he will let me,’ answered Cynthia. ‘And may I call you Naomi?’

‘Yes, Cynthia.’

And from that moment they spoke to each other as Cynthia and Naomi. There was no question of the word mother; but in Naomi’s manner to her stepmother there was from the first a touch of motherliness, a protecting kindness, which was in a manner the reversal of their positions.

The wife’s weaker nature, clinging, dependent, childlike in its exquisite womanliness, leaned on the firmer and more masculine character of the daughter.

* * * * *

‘I thought you were never coming,’ said Joshua, when they went down to the parlour, where the tea-table had assumed a positively splendid appearance, lighted by wax-candles, such as were supplied at three-and-sixpence a pound to Mr. Haggard’s most aristocratic customers.

Judith sat bolt upright, with her hands folded, watching the candles burning, as a larger soul might have watched the blazing pyre which consumed the fortunes of an imperial house. There was a depth of desolation in this sacrifice of the wax-candles, a bitter irony in the setting up of these waxen tapers to do honour to that wandering beggar-girl whom Joshua had chosen for his wife.

‘What have you two girls been talking about all this time?’ asked Joshua, with an attempt at cheeriness; ‘making friends, I hope?’

‘Yes, father,’ Naomi answered, with a look that was full of duty and affection; ‘we have made friends. Cynthia and I are going to be sisters. It would sound foolish for me to call her mother, for she is two years younger than I am, and looks younger than she is.’

‘Very well, my dear. You shall be sisters, then. I care not what name you give the bond, so that you love each other. And now, Judith, the tea.’

Miss Haggard had placed herself at a corner of the table remote from her accustomed seat in front of the tea-tray. There she sat rigid, impenetrable. She did not frown; no sour expression of visage betrayed her discontent. She had composed her features to a sublime self-abnegation--a resignation of all active share in the life passing around her. She looked what she had called herself in her late discourse with Sally--a cipher.

‘O, dear no,’ she exclaimed; ‘I couldn’t think of such a thing. I have done with the teapot. Mrs. Haggard will pour out the tea of course; it’s her place.’

‘O, please don’t make any difference on my account,’ cried Cynthia, with a timidly beseeching glance at that stony countenance. ‘I have never been accustomed to pour out the tea. I should feel quite awkward, unless Joshua wished it,’ with a little look at her husband, which plainly said, His lightest wish is my law.

‘I desire nothing that can cause discomfort or ill-will in this household,’ answered Joshua. ‘All I wish is that we may live happily together, in perfect peace and union. Pour out the tea, Judith, and let there be no senseless fuss about trifles.’

‘I’m not one to make a fuss about nothing,’ replied Judith, with dignity. ‘But it’s just as well to put things on a proper footing at once. It saves misunderstanding afterwards.’

And with this protest she assumed her accustomed position, which she never afterwards offered to resign.

Cynthia took the chair nearest her husband, nestling to his side, and looking up at him with bright glances of admiration and regard as he talked about home affairs with his daughter.

Jim came home by and by, full of importance, and was presented to his father’s wife. The surprise was startling for him as well as for the rest, but he received the blow much more coolly than his aunt and sister. His brain, sharpened by a course of wholesale and retail grocery, took in the material aspects of this change in his family circumstances, rather than that spiritual side of things which had troubled Naomi. He did not think regretfully of his father’s second marriage as a foolish and undignified act in a grave career; but he began to wonder what effect this union might exercise upon his own prospects.

‘As long as father gives me the business, I’m content,’ he told himself. ‘And my stepmother looks a pretty foolish thing, that wouldn’t be likely to make one’s life unpleasant. I hope she’ll take the reins out of aunt Judith’s hands, and let us have puddens every day.’

It was not till after prayers that Naomi left off expecting Oswald, who rarely let an evening pass without coming in, were it but for half an hour. But on this particular evening the Squire had taken it into his head to be prosy, and kept his son at home, talking politics by the wood fire in the dining-room, while the autumn wind sighed and moaned in the wide old chimney.

‘I wonder what Oswald will think of father’s marriage?’ was Naomi’s chief thought that evening.