CHAPTER XXXIV
THE BRIDE-ELECT
Tom had done well to stay behind: there was so much to make ready that none of the others knew where to begin until he showed them. At his best in most emergencies, he was resolved to strain every nerve in this one, and so perhaps show some little gratitude at last. The opportunity was unique. Tom seized it with characteristic ardour.
He began by putting Mrs. Fawcett on her mettle; invented the dinner for her, and got old Fawcett out of his wife’s way by sending him to a neighbouring nursery for the asparagus and the green peas. Peggy he set to work to make the beds, while he himself gathered flowers for the table, flowers for the ladies’ rooms, flowers for the verandah upon which the bride must tread. The new flag, bought for this day, had never been unpacked. It was soon flying bravely from the flag-staff on the lawn. And by five o’clock Tom had his table exquisitely laid. But it was nearly seven before the curricle lamps shone through the open gate, and the horses swept up to the verandah, where Tom stood in ardent readiness.
He had spent the interim in arraying himself most carefully in all his menial finery—in shaving for the second time that day—in laying out his master’s evening clothes—in gathering the books which had been left upon the shore—in reading and re-reading the poem that expressed his case—in talking to Peggy, and in thinking of Claire.
The whole situation put him sadly in mind of Claire; but he was not thinking of her as the horses trotted up—he had forgotten all about her when he heard her voice. Next moment the curricle bridged the stream of lamp-light issuing from the hall. And Tom stood among the roses he had strewn, silhouetted against the doorway, without moving hand or foot, or once lifting his unseen gaze from Claire Harding’s face.
What followed seemed to be happening to another man. Daintree cried to him, and he helped the ladies to get down—he touched her hand. Their eyes never met. Daintree jumped down and led Claire on his arm through the roses. Fawcett came up, the curricle was gone, and Tom stood alone in the drive, watching the ladies go upstairs within, followed by their maid and Daintree; and after that he stood watching the staircase until Daintree ran down it and had him by both hands.
“You dear good fellow—you have thought of everything!” he cried. “You couldn’t have done more if you’d been the happy man yourself; and I shall never forget it—especially the flowers!”
“Nor I,” cried Tom bitterly.
“Why, what’s the matter?”
“You might have told me who it was, sir! I recognised Miss Harding at once; her family used to come to our village for the shooting, and her father was my father’s enemy. It’s hard for me to meet her like this after that! I’d have run away if I’d known!”
“Precisely why I didn’t tell you,” rejoined Daintree triumphantly. “Come, come, my good fellow, I know all about the relations between the two families, and you mustn’t flatter yourself that Miss Harding will remember you. You’ve altered considerably, for one thing; and I dropped your surname on purpose to spare you any such recognition. Miss Harding won’t know you from Adam.”
“I would rather not wait upon her, all the same.”
Daintree showed his teeth.
“Not wait upon the lady who is to be my wife and your mistress? You dare to say that to my face? Let me find you at your post when I come downstairs—or take care!”
And he stood a moment at the door, with the most significant and malignant expression; after which he went upstairs to dress, leaving Tom to regret, for the first time, his impulsive confession of complicity in the Castle Sullivan outrage, and to reflect upon the many sides of the man whom Claire Harding had come out from England to marry. Memories lashed him by the score. He had seen how the tyrant could treat his servants and his dog; he had pitied the bride in the abstract; and was it to be Claire Harding, and was he to stand there and see them married?
His head was in a whirl of conflicting emotions and anxieties. Still stunned by the mere shock of seeing her whom he had never thought to see again, in that outlandish place, and all but another man’s bride, he was faced by an immediate dilemma which called for instantaneous decision. If Claire were to recognise him at dinner, then she was pretty certain to betray a secret which Daintree, on the other hand, was almost as certain to guess if his servant absented himself after what had just passed. Well, Claire knew best why she had made a secret where none was necessary; but if more trouble was to come of it, let him be there to take her part. Let him be there for ever, to watch over her in those passionate hands! And Tom found himself mechanically lighting the candles on the dinner-table, and lowering the shades to lessen the chance of his face being seen.
While he was so engaged the inner door opened, and Tom and Claire stood face to face.
Her eyes were great with horror: she shut the door behind her, and then stood close against it, shrinking from him to whom she once had clung.
“I can’t bear it,” she gasped. “I must either speak to you or go mad! Yes, yes, I know we may be caught—I can’t help that! Tell me quickly: did you know who I was before I came?”
“No, indeed!”
“Is it by accident that you are his servant?”
“No; he sought me out. So you knew me again, Claire!”
“What did you say? Never call me that again. Of course I knew you! How could I forget you, after all you have made me suffer? If I only could!”
The cruelty of this speech struck him dumb: he drew himself up and grimly challenged her with his eye. Her sufferings, indeed! What had she suffered? She was on the point of marrying a rich man; no doubt it was distressing to her to encounter him again at that juncture; his lip curled at such distress.
She read his thoughts to the letter. “You think I have not suffered!” she cried in a low voice. “You little know; but this is the last straw—the punishment I so richly deserve! Mr. Daintree saved your life. You knew that, of course? But I don’t think you know why he did it: it was because I asked him—it was for my sake!”
“You?” he said hoarsely. “I see now—I see! I might have guessed it long ago!”
“He wanted to do something for me,” she continued in a choking voice; “I let him do that. I deceived him—to save your life. I am here—because I deceived him!”
He thought he had seen everything; he had not, but he was beginning to, now. Good heavens! why was his heart beating so fast? It ought to bleed instead: here was the girl he loved, and upstairs was the man he had reason to love better still; and they were going to marry—like that. He tried to forget, to think only of what Claire had done for him.
“God bless you!” he murmured. “He has saved my life twice over, and much more than my life. And I owe it all to one brave girl who believed in me, and made him believe in me, when all the world—”
“Stop!” she cried. “I never believed in you at all.”
“What?”
“I was—sorry for you.”
“You believed me guilty—even when you tried to save my life?”
“Of manslaughter—yes!”
“Let us split no hairs! You think—I did it—still?”
“I can think nothing else.”
In the dead silence following these words the servant heard his master stamping into evening dress overhead; he felt his own crested buttons glittering in the candle-light that shone upon the table he had set so beautifully for the bride; and, as she tossed back the ringlets that he knew so well, and repeated with unflinching eyes what she had told him in so many candid words, all that had distracted him up to this moment ceased to do so any more. Her coming was nothing to him now. Her errand was nothing; she was welcome to marry the next day. But believe in his innocence she must and should: injustice from her was the last bitterness, the crowning wrong, the one intolerable misery which absorbed all that had gone before.
Something of this he showed her in his bitter, proud, inexorable look; then suddenly he retreated to the open French windows.
“You are going?” she cried. “I might have known; you were always—generous!”
“I am not now. I hear my master on the stairs.”
“You are not going altogether?”
“Certainly not at present.”
“When, when?” she cried below her breath.
“When you do me common justice.”
Daintree had gone into the wrong room. The girl ran recklessly to the window.
“Tom!”
“Miss Harding?”
“Will you swear—to me—that you are innocent?”
But Tom was gone. She heard him treading viciously in the dark verandah. A moment later Daintree found her deeply engrossed before the chart. She wanted to know what the ship meant; he told her in a tender whisper.
“What a beautiful idea!”
“Well, it wasn’t mine.”
“Whose was it?”
“My servant’s; he made her, and he moved her on each day. You would have said he was the lucky fellow himself!”