Chapter V: ‘trop Belle Pour Moi, Voilà Mon Trépas.’

The actual machinery of life, the common details of domestic existence, underwent little change after Joshua Haggard’s second marriage, and the introduction of a fair girl-wife into the sober household. The change was in the minds of the household, not in outward things. Aunt Judith abated no jot or tittle of her authority. Her assumption of her accustomed post at the tea-table upon the evening of Cynthia’s arrival was symbolical of her maintenance of supreme authority in all domestic matters. She did not even offer to surrender the keys of those awful and impenetrable repositories in which she kept the jams and jellies, the pickles and home-made wines, and all those items which, in Jim’s opinion, gave savour and relish to life--the ornamental margin of existence’s daily needs, like the labyrinthine scroll-work and illumination which border the text in a mediæval Bible. She retained supreme authority in the kitchen; and this young wife’s coming did not benefit her stepson by so much as an extra pudding on weekdays, or a currant cake flavoured with saffron, and of that golden hue his soul loved, on Sundays.

Before Cynthia had been established in her new home for the space of a week she had discovered that her domestic duties and rights were alike usurped by another, that in yielding the teapot she had given up her place in her husband’s home. This was a disappointment; for in her happy dreams of life with Joshua she had seen herself ministering to him, providing for his comforts, working with those busy clever hands of hers for his small needs and simple luxuries, lending new graces and pleasures to his daily life, were they but the smallest things, such as a bunch of fresh flowers on his breakfast-table, or a dish of light cakes at tea-time. She had a natural taste for and love of household work--a handiness in all womanly offices which had won her the approval of her mistresses at Penmoyle; and to be shut out of these offices was a hardship she felt keenly.

Not one word of complaint was ever spoken by her, or Joshua would have promptly transferred the domestic sceptre. She was by nature submissive, and the experience of her brief life had made obedience a habit. She bowed her neck to Judith’s yoke, and resigned her simple household privileges without a murmur. Joshua thought it right, no doubt, or he would not look on approvingly. She did not know that Joshua--whose temporal and spiritual duties filled his time and thoughts to overflowing--had never thought about the matter at all. She remembered what he had said on that first evening--‘Let there be peace in the household, and no foolish fuss about trifles;’ and she accepted this speech as a command. Any opposition to aunt Judith would be rebellion against her husband.

Cynthia’s position in the family, therefore, seemed rather that of daughter than wife. She sat by her husband’s side at meals; she spent her mornings in needlework, and her afternoons in serious reading, or occasionally in a ramble on the sea-shore or in the woods with Jim. She would have been better pleased to accompany her husband on his pastoral visits to distant homesteads and cottages, but Joshua told her gently that her presence would be out of place on such occasions. She taught in Mr. Haggard’s Sunday-school, held in a roomy loft at the top of the chapel. She often went to read to the sick and aged among her husband’s flock, delighted to be of some use in this manner; but these occupations left a wide margin of her life to be filled somehow; and there were afternoon hours in which she sat with the Bible or Baxter open before her, and her thoughts wandering far from the text.

There were some sad thoughts mingled with her full contentment in an union which had seemed to her royal and triumphant as Esther’s bridal with Ahasuerus. She had been quick to perceive the consternation her appearance had occasioned on that first evening; and she was conscious that beneath Judith’s cold civility and somewhat exaggerated politeness there lurked a disapproving spirit that was not to be conciliated. Let her be never so assiduous to please her husband’s sister, Judith would never love her; and, more than this, Judith had contrived to let her know, without any apparent unkindness of intention, that Joshua’s marriage had lowered him in the esteem of his flock.

‘We can’t all be apostles and martyrs,’ said Judith; ‘but folks expected a great deal of my brother. “He that is unmarried careth for the things that belong to the Lord, how he may please the Lord,” and he that’s married doesn’t. St. Paul says that pretty plain, you see; there’s no getting away from the right meaning of his words. And people will naturally cast that up at my brother--marrying a second time, and a girl younger than his daughter. I don’t blame you, my dear. I daresay if you’d thought of these things you’d have said no, especially as your own inclination would have led you to prefer a younger man.’

‘I could never have loved or honoured any one as I love and honour my husband,’ protested Cynthia, flushing with anger at the suggestion.

‘Ah,’ sighed Judith, with a world of significance, ‘of course it was a great thing for you to come to such a home as this, and a husband as comfortably off as my brother. It isn’t many young women in service that get as well provided for.’

‘I hope you don’t think--’ cried Cynthia eagerly.

‘I trust I’m too much of a Christian to think evil of any one,’ replied aunt Judith, with dignity. ‘I’m thinking what _other_ people will say. You can’t stop their tongues. If they choose to say that my brother Joshua was led away from his own principles and the First of Corinthians by a pretty face, and that you married him for the sake of a home, there’s no law in the land to hinder ’em from having their say.’

Thus for the first time in her life Cynthia heard of that invisible and irresponsible tribunal which is always sitting outside our doors; and was taught to feel that it was not to her Creator and her own conscience alone she had to answer, but that she ought also to shape her acts to meet the views of other people; other people would measure her conduct by their standard, sound the depths of her heart with their plummet; and unheard, undefended, ignorant alike of her indictment and her sentence, she would be convicted and condemned.

This was a chilling revelation to one as innocent of life’s complexities as Miranda or Perdita. One of the few lessons in the world’s bitter school which Cynthia had thoroughly learned was to endure undeserved affliction patiently. She bore aunt Judith’s sharp stings and quiet stabs as meekly as she had borne ill-usage from the tyrants of her childhood. But she felt her punishment none the less keenly; and already, ere she had been married a month, began to ask herself if Joshua had verily done wisely in marrying her, and whether it would not have been better for her to have gone on worshipping him at a distance all her life, spending her tranquil industrious days in the little kitchen at Penmoyle, doing her duty, and being praised for faithful service, among people who were in no wise scandalised by her existence. It had been a very monotonous life, containing little for memory to dwell on, offering still less for hope to build upon; and the river of life, which youth would fain sail upon, is a bright and swiftly flowing current--not a tideless canal. But it had been a life full of peace, and already in this new life there had come a feeling which was not peace. Unhappily Judith’s Christianlike and candid remarks upon popular feeling at Combhaven were sustained by a foundation of truth. The minister’s congregation did not contemplate his second marriage with entire approval. They were not prepared to take his youthful flaxen-haired wife to their hearths and bosoms with any warmth of affection. She would be invited out to tea, of course, and best teapots would be taken out of their chamois-leather enfoldings, and amber-hued cakes would be baked for her regalement; but there would be little heartiness in her reception--it would be ceremonial and civic only, like the welcome of a foreign princess when the nation feels their prince has made a foolish or insignificant choice.

There were so many things to be said against this marriage of Joshua Haggard’s. In the first place, why marry at all? In the second, if he must needs marry, why not choose one of his own flock--a comfortable widow, for instance--and there were several comfortable widows among the Bethelites--whose antecedents would be patent to everybody at Combhaven, whose life from the cradle upwards would be as well known to the community as the pattern of her parlour carpet, or the furniture in her best bedroom? Such a marriage, though unspiritual, and, in somewise, depoetising the ideal pastor, would at least have recommended itself to the more practical members of the congregation as prudent and suitable.

Whatever disappointment such a marriage might have caused in those loftier minds which had elevated the preacher and teacher into the Saint and Apostle--minds to be found chiefly among the spinsters of Joshua’s flock--it could hardly have occasioned scandal; but this unannounced, unexplained union with an unknown young woman from the far West of Cornwall--a girl who had worked in the mines, perhaps, and worn unholy attire, and toiled shoulder-to-shoulder with rough barbarians, speaking a strange tongue--this was enough to inspire unpleasant doubts in the minds of Joshua’s congregation, to call all their prejudices to arms against the fair intruder.

Who was she--supposing that she had not worked in the mines? Who was she? whence came she? to whom belonged she?--questions to which no one could supply any categorical or satisfactory answer, though speculative answers and suggestions were to be had in abundance. Whence came this wandering rumour, traceable to no particular source, yet in everybody’s mouth, that Joshua had found his young wife by the wayside, a beggar, with bare feet, houseless, friendless, not even knowing the name of her kindred, or the place of her birth, nor on what parish she might fasten her helplessness; the merest waif upon the stream of life? This notion could hardly have arisen from any imprudent communicativeness upon the part of aunt Judith, for, when sounded by solicitous friends upon the subject of her brother’s marriage, that lady had refrained from all expression of opinion save such dumb, inscrutable movements as shoulder-shrugs, elevation of the eyebrows, lips tightly drawn, and head shaken with a solemn significance. Whatever this dumbshow meant, Combhaven felt assured that it meant a great deal, and meant no good.

There was a general and growing conviction that Joshua had acted foolishly, if not wickedly, in marrying this strange young woman. ‘How are the mighty fallen!’ cried the Bethelites; and in their lamentations over the degradation of their pastor, they indulged in a great deal of Scriptural language to his disadvantage. Perhaps the value of our Bible never comes so fully home to us as when we quote it against our erring neighbour. It was felt that Joshua held the same position in Combhaven that David must have occupied in Jerusalem after that lamentable episode in the princely life which brought greatness to the level of the sinful herd. The preacher read disapproval in the faces of his flock on the first Sabbath after his marriage; he discovered a coldness, an alteration in the tone of those customers at the shop who were of his congregation. His Church of England patrons, on the contrary, congratulated him heartily upon his marriage, and praised his wife’s pretty face in the friendliest manner. But they had never canonised the pastor; they contemplated him solely in his aspect as a general dealer; and what more natural, what more distinctly human, than that a well-to-do grocer should beautify the autumn of his life with the charms and graces of a young wife?

Joshua saw the change in his flock, and his heart rebelled against their hardness. Pride sustained him--a manly and honest pride, and a spiritual pride, which told him that he was better than the best of those who presumed to sit in judgment upon him. Who among them had toiled for the good cause as he had done? Who, among these professing Methodists, had trodden in the footsteps of the great founder of Methodism as he had trodden, faithfully imitating that pious man’s asceticism and self-denial? And were these people, whom he had served so faithfully, for whose spiritual welfare he had laboured so hard, to turn the light that he had kindled against him, to distort the law he had taught them, in order to pass an iniquitous sentence upon their teacher? He felt these cold looks and altered greetings keenly as a deep injustice, and shut himself up in the armour of offended pride. God had given him this infinite blessing--the love of a pure and lovely woman--and was man’s malice to poison his cup of bliss? No, he told himself. He could live without the world’s regard. He had never served mankind for their own sake, and he could dispense with their affection. In his prayers and sermons at this time of estrangement he raised himself so far above the level of daily life and earthly ills, that there was no taint of personal feeling to be perceived in any of his words, no murmur against man’s injustice crept into his communion with God. Never had his teaching been clearer or more elevated; never were his prayers more fervent. Into that spiritual world of which he possessed the key neither worldly malice nor worldly misconception could follow him.

Again, at the worst, were his flock never so ungrateful, he knew of one listener whose mute enthusiasm was in itself sufficient for inspiration. If he had not been able, of his own unassisted strength, to lift up his soul to the very gates of heaven, that look of Cynthia’s, as she sat in the narrow little pew just under the square box of a pulpit, would have been the source of pure imaginings and holy thoughts. His Sabbaths were now such blessed days; for all the time he did not owe to duty he gave to his young wife. They walked together by that lovely sea which in its jewel-like colouring so often recalled the Oriental imagery of Holy Writ. They talked together of spiritual things, with a fond familiarity which is natural to those whose only poetry, whose only knowledge of the beautiful, has been drawn from Scripture. Cynthia’s greatest delight at this time was to hear her husband talk of his youthful career, his discouragements and successes, his alternate despair and triumph; those hysterical gusts of enthusiasm in the newly-converted which had promised so much, those chilling disappointments caused by backsliding in his brightest disciples, the sudden going out of the sacred fire.

Perfectly blessed in such perfect love, Joshua was able to live his own life with supreme indifference as to the opinion of the outside world; and this independence of feeling speedily revealing itself to the flock, there was a general sense of disappointment at the discovery that Mr. Haggard had not been crushed by their disapproval, and then the cold looks began to give place to friendly smiles and salutations, as of old. The pastor was complimented on his last sermon; the more select of the community were pressing in their invitations to tea-parties of a ceremonious character.

Joshua, who had felt his affections outraged, was not so easily to be won back to the pleasant path of brotherly love. He rejected all invitations to tea, responded coldly to the warmest salutations, and heard men’s praises of his eloquence unmoved. But in all pastoral duties he was faithful, as of old; ministered to the sick, taught in his school, gave three evenings a week to a class of young men belonging to the labouring community, who met in the loft over the chapel for serious reading and conversation by the light of two dip candles, and joined in a hymn before they separated. It may be supposed, therefore, that, with the exception of those tranquil Sabbath hours between the services, there was not much time left for him to devote to his young wife, and that Cynthia had plenty of leisure in which to meditate upon things spiritual and temporal.