CHAPTER XI.

SCHEMING.

The light of the hot and garish day had almost faded from the world, leaving on it the cool air, the grateful hues of twilight. Inexpressibly grateful was that twilight to Frank Raynor and the pretty girl by his side, as they paced unrestrainedly, arm-in-arm, the paths of that wilderness, the garden at The Mount. The period of half-breathed vows and tender hints had passed: each knew the other's love, and they spoke together confidentially of the future.

After the unpleasant truth--that Frank was not heir to Eagles' Nest--had so unexpectedly dawned on Mrs. St. Clare, she informed her daughter Margaret that the absurd intimacy with Mr. Raynor must be put aside. Margaret, feeling stunned for a minute or two, plucked up courage to ask why. Because, answered Mrs. St. Clare, it had turned out that he was not the heir to Eagles' Nest. And Margaret, whose courage increased with exercise, gently said that that was no good reason: she liked Mr. Raynor for himself, not for any prospects he might or might not possess, and that she could not give him up. A stormy interview ensued. At least it was stormy on the mother's part: Margaret was only quiet, and inwardly firm. And the upshot was, that Mrs. St. Clare, who hated contention, as most indolent women do, finally flew into a passion, and told Margaret that if she chose to marry Mr. Raynor she must do so; but that she, her mother, and The Mount, and the St. Clare family generally, would wash their hands of her for ever after.

When once Mrs. Clare said a thing, she held to it. Margaret knew that; and she knew that from henceforth there was no probability, one might almost write possibility, of inducing her mother to consent to her marriage with Frank Raynor. Margaret was mistress of her own actions in one sense of the word: when Colonel St. Clare died he left no restrictions on his daughters. All his money; it was not much; was bequeathed to his wife, and was at her own absolute disposal; but not a word was said in his will touching the free actions of his children. Mrs. St. Clare knew this; Daisy knew it; and that, in the argument, gave the one an advantage over the other.

But Mrs. St. Clare, in the dispute, committed a fatal error. When people are angry, they often say injudicious things. Had she said to Margaret, I forbid you to marry Mr. Raynor, Margaret would never have thought of disobeying the injunction: but when Mrs. St. Clare said, "If you choose to marry him, do so, but I shall wash my hands of you," it put the idea into Margaret's head. Mrs. St. Clare had used the words because they came uppermost in her anger, never supposing that any advantage could be taken of them. To her daughter they wore a different aspect. Right or wrong--though of course it was wrong, not right--she looked upon it as a half-tacit permission: and from that moment the idea of marrying Frank with no one's approval but her own, took possession of her. To lose him seemed terrible in Margaret's eyes; she would almost as soon have lost life itself: and instinct whispered a warning that in a short time Mrs. St. Clare would contrive to separate them, and they might never meet again.

It was of this terrible prospect of separation, or rather of avoiding the prospect, that Mr. Raynor and Margaret were conversing in the twilight of the summer's evening. For once they had met and could linger together without restraint. Mrs. St. Clare and Lydia had gone to a dinner-party ten miles away: Margaret had not been invited; the card said Mrs. and Miss St. Clare; and so they could not take her. Mrs. St. Clare, divining perhaps that her absence might be thus made use of, had proposed to Lydia that Margaret should be the one to go; but Lydia, selfish as usual, preferred to go herself. Mr. Raynor was no longer a visitor at The Mount. Mrs. St. Clare, after the rupture with Margaret, wrote a request to Dr. Raynor that for the future he would attend himself; but she gave no reason. So that the lovers had not had many meetings lately.

All the more enjoyable was the one this evening. Frank had gone over on speculation. Happening to hear Dr. Raynor say that Miss St. Clare was going out to dinner with her mother, he walked over on the chance of seeing Margaret. And there they were, absorbed in each other amidst the sighing trees and the scented flowers.

Frank, open-natured, single-minded, had told her every particular of his visit to Spring Lawn: what he had gone for, what the result had been, and that his uncle the major had assured him of the large sum he might confidently reckon upon inheriting under Mrs. Atkinson's will. To this hour Frank knew not the full truth of Mrs. St. Clare's altered manner; for Margaret, in her delicacy, did not give him a hint as to Eagles' Nest. "Mamma thinks that you--that you are not rich enough to marry," poor Margaret had said, stammering somewhat in the brief explanation. But, as he was now pointing out to Margaret with all his eloquence, the time could not be very far off when he should be quite rich enough.

"Shall you not consider it so, Daisy? When I have joined some noted man in London, to be paid well for my present services, with the certainty of being his partner at no distant date? We should have a charming house; I would take care of that; and every comfort within it. Not a carriage; not luxuries; I could not attempt that at first; but we could afford, in our happiness, to wait for them."

"Oh yes," murmured Daisy, thinking that it would be Paradise.

"If I fully explain all this to your mother----"

"It would be of no use; she would not listen," interrupted Daisy. "I--I have not told you all she said, Frank; I have not liked to tell you. One thing we may rest assured of--she will never, never give her consent."

"But she must give it, Daisy. Does she suppose we could give each other up? You and I are not children, to be played with; to be separated without rhyme or reason."

"In a short time--I do not know how short--mamma intends to shut up The Mount and take me and Lydia to Switzerland and Italy. It may be _years_ before we come back again, Frank; years and years. I dare say I should never see you again."

"I'm sure you speak very calmly about it, Daisy! Almost as if you liked it!"

Looking down at her he met her reproachful eyes and the sudden tears the words had called up in them.

"My darling, what is to be done? You cannot go abroad with them: you must remain in England."

"As if that would be possible!" breathed Daisy. "I have no one to stay with; no relatives, or anything. And if I had, mamma would not leave me."

"I wish I could marry you off-hand!" cried thoughtless Frank, speaking more in the impulse of the moment than with any real meaning in what he said.

Daisy sighed: and put her cheek against his arm. And what with one word and another, they both began to think it might be. Love is blind, and love's arguments, though specious, are sadly delusive. In a few minutes they had grown to think that an immediate marriage, as private as might be, was the only way to save them from perdition. That is, to preserve them one to another: and that it would be the very best mode of proceeding under their untoward lot.

"The sooner it is done, the better, Daisy," cried Frank, going in for it now with all his characteristic eagerness. "I'd say to-morrow, if I had the license, but I must get that first. I hope and trust your mother will not be very angry!"

Daisy had not lifted her face. His arm was pressed all the closer. Frank filled up an interlude by taking a kiss from the sweet lips.

"Mamma said that if I did marry you, she should wash her hands of me," whispered Daisy.

"Said that! Did she! Why, then, Daisy, she must have seen herself that it was our best and only resource. I look upon it almost in the light of a permission."

"Do you think so?"

"Of course I do. And so do you, don't you? How good of her to say it!"

With the blushes that the subject called up lighting her face, they renewed their promenade amidst the trees, under the grey evening sky, talking earnestly. The matter itself settled, ways and means had to be discussed. Frank's arm was round her; her hand was again clasped in his.

"Our own church at Trennach will be safest, Daisy; safest, and best: and the one most readily got to. You can come down at an early hour: eight o'clock, say. No one will be much astir here at home, and I don't think you will meet any one en route. The road is lonely enough, you know, whether you take the highway or the Bare Plain."

Daisy did not answer. Her clear eyes had a far-off look in them, gazing at the grey sky.

"Fortune itself seems to aid us," went on Frank, briskly. "At almost any time but this we might not have been able to accomplish it so easily. Had I gone to Mr. Pine and said, I want you to marry me and say nothing about it, he might have demurred; thought it necessary to consult Dr. Raynor first, or invented some such scruple; but with Pine away and this new man here the matter is very simple. And so, Daisy, my best love, if you will be early at the church the day after to-morrow, I shall be there waiting for you."

"What do you call early?"

"Eight o'clock, I said. Better not make it later. We'll get married, and not a soul will be any the wiser."

"Of course I don't mean it to be a real wedding," said Daisy, blushing violently, "with a tour, and a breakfast, and all that, Frank. We can just go into the church, and go through the ceremony, and come out again at different doors; and I shall walk home here, and you will go back to Dr. Raynor's. Don't you see?"

"All right," said Frank.

"And if it were not," added Daisy, bursting into a sudden flood of tears, "that it seems to be the only way to prevent our separation, and that mamma must have had some idea we should take it when she said she would wash her hands of me, I wouldn't do such a dreadful thing for the world."

Frank Raynor set himself to soothe her, kissing the tears away. A few more minutes given to the details of the plan, an urgent charge on Daisy to keep her courage up, and to be at the church in time, and then they separated.

Daisy stood at the gate and watched him down the slight incline from The Mount, until he disappeared. She remained where she was, dwelling upon the momentous step she had decided to take; now shrinking from it instinctively, now telling herself that it was her sole chance of happiness in this world, and now blushing and trembling at the thought of being his wife, though only in name, ere the setting of the day-after-to-morrow's sun. When she at length turned with slow steps indoors, the lady's-maid, Tabitha, was in the drawing-room.

"Is it not rather late for you to be out, Miss Margaret? The damp is rising. I've been in here twice before to see if you wouldn't like a cup of tea."

"It is as dry as it can be--a warm, lovely evening," returned Margaret. "Tea? Oh, I don't mind whether I take any or not. Bring it, if you like, Tabitha."

With this semi-permission, the woman withdrew for the tea. Margaret looked after her and knitted her brow.

"She has been watching me and Frank--I _think_. I am sure old Tabitha's sly--and fond of interfering in other people's business. I hope she won't go and tell mamma he was here--or Lydia."

This woman, Tabitha Float, had only lived with them since they had come to The Mount: their former maid, at the last moment, declining to quit Bath. Mrs. St. Clare had made inquiries for one when she reached The Mount, and Tabitha Float presented herself. She had recently left a family in the neighbourhood, and was staying at Trennach with her relatives, making her home at the druggist's. Mrs. St. Clare engaged her, and here she was. She proved to be a very respectable and superior servant, but somewhat fond of gossip; and in the latter propensity was encouraged by Lydia. Amidst the ennui which pervaded the days of Miss St. Clare, and of which she unceasingly complained, even the tattle of an elderly serving-maid seemed an agreeable interlude.

Not a word said Frank Raynor of the project in hand. Serious, nay solemn, though the step he contemplated was, he was entering upon it in the lightest and most careless manner--relatively speaking--and with no more thought than he might have given to the contemplation of a journey.

He had remarked to Margaret--who, in point of prudence, was not, in this case, one whit better than himself--that fortune itself seemed to be aiding them. In so far as that circumstances were just now, through the absence of the Rector of Trennach, more favourable to the accomplishment of the ceremony than they could have been at another time, that was true. The Reverend Mr. Pine had at length found himself obliged to follow the advice of Dr. Raynor, and had gone away with his wife for three months' rest. A young clergyman named Backup was taking the duty for the time; he had only just arrived, and was a stranger to the place. With him, Frank could of course deal more readily in the affair than he would have been able to do with Mr. Pine.

Morning came. Not the morning of the wedding, but the one following the decisive interview between Frank and Margaret. In the afternoon, Frank made some plea at home for visiting a certain town, which we will here call Tello, in search of the ring and the marriage license. It happened that the Raynors had acquaintances there; and Edina unsuspiciously bade Frank call and see them. Frank went by rail, and was back again before dusk.

Taking his tea at home, and reporting to Edina that their friends at Tello were well and flourishing, Frank went out later to call at the Rectory. It was a gloomy sort of dwelling, the windows looking out upon the graves in the churchyard. Mr. Backup was seated at his early and frugal supper when Frank entered. He was a very shy and nervous young man; and he blushed at being caught eating, as he started up to receive Frank.

"Pray don't let me disturb you," said Frank, shaking hands, and then sitting down in his cordial way. "No, I won't take anything, thank you"--as the clergyman hospitably asked him to join him. "I haven't long had tea. I have come to ask you to do me a little service," continued Frank, plunging headlong into the communication he had to make.

"I'm sure I shall be very happy to--to--do anything," murmured Mr. Backup.

"There's a wedding to be celebrated at the church tomorrow morning. The parties wish it to be got over early--at eight o'clock. It won't be inconvenient to you, will it, to be ready for them at that hour?"

"No--I--not at all," stammered the young divine, relapsing into a state of inward tumult and misgiving. Not as to any doubt of the orthodoxy of the wedding itself, but as to whether he should be able to get over his part of it satisfactorily. He had never married but one couple in his life: and then he had made the happy pair kneel down at the wrong places, and contrived to let the bridegroom put the ring on the bride's right-hand finger.

"Not at all too early," repeated he, striving to appear at his ease, lest this ready-mannered, dashing young man should suspect his nervousness on the score of his sense of deficiency. "Is it two of the miners' people?"

"You will see to-morrow morning," replied Frank, laughing, and passing over the question with the most natural ease in the world. "At eight o'clock, then, please to be in the church. You will be sure not to keep them waiting?"

"I will be there before eight," said Mr. Backup, rising as Frank rose.

"Thank you. I suppose it is nothing new to you," lightly added Frank, as a passing remark. "You have married many a couple, I dare say."

"Well--not so many. In my late curacy, the Rector liked to take the marriages himself. I chiefly did the christenings: he was awkward at holding the babies."

"By the way, I have another request to make," said Frank, pausing at the front-door, which the clergyman had come to open for him. "It is that you would kindly not mention this beforehand."

"Not mention? I don't quite understand," replied the bewildered young divine. "Not mention what?"

"That there's going to be a wedding to-morrow. The parties would not like the church to be filled with gaping miners; they wish it to be got over quite privately."

"I will certainly not mention it," readily assented Mr. Backup. "For that matter, I don't suppose I shall see any one between now and then. About the clerk----"

"Oh, I will see him: I'll make that all right," responded Frank. "Good-evening."

He went skimming over the grave-mounds to the opposite side of the churchyard, with little reverence, it must be owned, for the dead who lay beneath: but when a man's thoughts are filled with weddings, he cannot be expected to be thinking about graves. Crossing a stile, he was then close to the clerk's dwelling: a low, one-storied cottage with a slanting roof, enjoying the same agreeable view as the Rectory. The clerk's wife, a round, rosy little woman, was milking her goat in the shed, her gown pinned up round her.

"Halloa, Mrs. Trim! you are doing that rather late, are you not?" cried Frank.

"Late! I should think it is late, Master Frank," answered Mrs. Trim, in wrath. She was familiar enough with him, from the fact of going to the doctor's house occasionally to help the servant. "I goes over to Pendon this afternoon to have a dish o' dea with a friend there, never thinking but what Trim would attend to poor Nanny. But no, not a bit of it. Draat all they men!--a set o' helpless vools. I don't know whaat work Trim's good for, save to dig tha graves."

"Where is Trim?"

"Indoors, sir, smoking of his pipe."

Frank stepped in without ceremony. Trim, who was sexton as well as clerk, sat at the kitchen-window, which looked towards the field at the back. He was a man of some fifty years: short and thin, with scanty locks of iron-grey hair, just as silent as his wife was loquacious, and respectful in his manner. Rising when Frank entered, he put his pipe down in the hearth, and touched his hair.

"Trim, I want to send you on an errand," said Frank, lowering his voice against any possible eavesdroppers, and speaking hurriedly; for he had patients still to see to-night, "Can you take a little journey for me to-morrow morning?"

"Sure I can, sir," replied Trim. "Anywhere you please."

"All right. I went to Tello this afternoon, and omitted to call at the post-office for some letters that may be waiting there. You must go off betimes, by the half-past seven o'clock train; get the letters--if there are any--and bring them to me at once. You'll be back again long before the sun has reached the meridian, if you make haste. There's a sovereign to pay your expenses. Keep the change."

"And in what name are the letters lying there, sir?" asked the clerk, a thoughtful man at all times, and saluting again as he took up the gold piece.

"Name? Oh, mine: Francis Raynor. You will be sure not to fail me?"

The clerk shook his head emphatically. He never failed any one.

"That's right. Be away from here at seven, and you'll be in ample time for the train, walking gently. Don't speak of this to your wife, Trim: or to any one else."

"As good set the church-bell clapping as tell her, sir," replied the clerk, confidentially. "You need not be afraid of me, Mr. Frank. I know what women's tongues are: they don't often get any encouragement from me."

And away went Frank Raynor, over the stile and the mounds again, calling back a good-evening to Mrs. Trim; who was just then putting up her goat for the night.

Scheming begets scheming. As Frank found. Open and straightforward though he was by nature and conduct, he had to scheme now. He wanted the marriage kept absolutely secret at present from every one: excepting of course from the clergyman who must of necessity take part in it. For this reason he was sending Clerk Trim out of the way, to inquire after some imaginary letters.

Another little circumstance happened in his favour. Eight o'clock was the breakfast-hour at Dr. Raynor's. It was clear that if Frank presented himself to time at the breakfast-table, he could then not be standing before the altar rails in the church. Of course he must absent himself from breakfast, and invent some excuse for doing so. But this was done for him. Upon quitting the clerk's and hastening to his patients, he found one of them so much worse that it would be essential to see him at the earliest possible hour in the morning. And this he said later to the doctor. When his place was found vacant at breakfast, it would be concluded by his uncle and Edina that he was detained by the exigencies of the sick man.

But, if Fortune was showing herself thus kind to him in some respects, Fate was preparing to be less so. Upon how apparently accidental and even absurd a trifle great events often turn. Or, rather, to what great events, affecting life and happiness, one insignificant incident will lead! The world needs not to be told this.