Chapter XVIII
Reading edition
A short chapter makes fitting close to a short story.
In mid May, on a morning which set forth the perfection either of sunny spring warmth or of breezy summer freshness, Arthur Tresham and Lucy Charlmont took each other for better for worse, till death should them part. Mr. Gawkins Drum gave away the bride; Miss Drum appeared auspicious as a rainbow; Catherine glowed and expanded with unselfish happiness; Mrs. Gawkins Drum pronounced the bride graceful, elegant, but old-looking; Mr. Durham contributed a costly wedding present, accompanied by a speech both ostentatious and affectionate; Jane displayed herself a little disdainful, a little cross, and supremely handsome; Alan and Stella—there was a young Alan now, a comical little fright, more like mother than father—Alan and Stella seemed to enjoy their friend’s wedding as light-heartedly as they had enjoyed their own. No tears were shed, no stereotyped hypocrisies uttered, no shoes flung; this time a true man and a true woman who loved and honoured each other, and whom no man should put asunder, were joined together; and thus the case did not lend itself to any tribute of lies, miscalled white.
Four months after their marriage Mr.Tresham was hard at work again in London among his East-end poor; while Lucy, taking a day’s holiday at Brompton-on Sea, sat in the old familiar drawing-room, Catherine’s exclusively now. She had returned from the East blooming, vigorous, full of gentle fun and kindly happiness: so happy, that she would not have exchanged her present lot for aught except her own future; so happy, that it saddened her to believe Catherine less happy than herself.
The two sisters sat at the open window, alike yet unlike: the elder handsome, resolute, composed; the younger with the old wistful expression in her tender beautiful eyes. They had talked of Jane, who, though not dissatisfied with her lot, too obviously despised her husband; once lately, she had written of him as the ‘habitation-tax’ paid for Orpingham Place: of Jane, who was too worldly either to keep right in the spirit, or go wrong in the letter. They had talked, and they had fallen silent; for Catherine, who loved no one on earth as she loved her frivolous sister, could best bear in silence the sting of shame and grief for her sake.
Full in view of the drawing-room windows spread the sea, beautiful, strong, resistless, murmuring; the sea which had cast a burden on Catherine’s life, and from which she now never meant to absent herself; the sea from which Lucy had fled in the paroxysm of her nervous misery.
At last Lucy spoke again very earnestly,—‘Oh, Catherine, I cannot bear to be so happy when I think of you! If only you, too, had a future.’
Catherine leaned over her happy sister and gave her one kiss, a rare sign with her of affectionate emotion. Then she turned to face the open sky and sea.—‘My dear,’ she answered, whilst her eyes gazed beyond clouds and waves, and rested on one narrow streak of sunlight which glowed at the horizon,—‘My dear, my future seems further off than yours; but I certainly have a future, and I can wait.’