With a feeling of relief, Hanbury walked rapidly away. The last words of Leigh had stirred within him once more the trouble which had made him shirk meeting his mother that morning. The burning down of Leigh's place and the destruction of the wonderful clock, and the meeting with the unfortunate clockmaker, would afford a story to be told when he got home, and he might interpose that history between the first words of meeting and the ultimate announcement that the engagement between Dora and himself was at an end.
Family considerations or desires had nothing to do with the understanding which had existed between Dora and him; but to his mother, from whom he had no secret, except that of the quarrel on Thursday night, he must explain, and explain fully too. There was no good in putting off the inevitable meeting any longer. He knew his mother had great respect and liking for Dora, but she had had nothing whatever to do with bringing about the understanding between the two of them. They had been quite as free in their choice of one another as though they had been the heroine and hero of a pastoral. He had never been a fool about Dora and she had never been a fool about him. In his life he meant to be no cypher among men; it would never do for him to be a cypher in his own home. Dora and he had acted with great reasonableness throughout their whole acquaintance, and with supreme reasonableness when they agreed to separate. If he had been an ordinary man, a man with no great public career before him, he might have been disposed to yield more to Dora's opinion or judgment; but as matters stood, any man with the smallest trace of common sense must commend Dora's decision of terminating the engagement, and his acceptance of her decision.
When he got back to Chester Square he heard, with great relief, that Mrs. and Miss Grace were at luncheon in the dining-room with Mrs. Hanbury. The presence of the two visitors and the general nature of the conversation necessary to their presence and the meal, would serve as an admirable softener of the story he had for his mother's private ear.
"You see, John, I have succeeded," said Mrs. Hanbury, after greetings were over. "I went the moment breakfast was finished and carried Mrs. and Miss Grace away from that awful Grimsby Street. We have had a good long chat, and, although I have done my best with Mrs. Grace, I cannot induce her to promise not to go back to that murderous street again. I must now ask you to join with me in forbidding her to leave us."
Hanbury spoke in favour of his mother's proposal and urged many arguments; but the old woman was quite firm. Back they must and would go. Why, if no other consideration would be allowed to weigh, there was the fact that her grand-daughter had not yet received her luggage from Eltham House.
This reference brought in Leigh's name, and then Hanbury told of the fire, the destruction of the clock, his meeting that morning with the dwarf, and the conviction of the latter that he would not long survive the destruction of his incomparable machine. He noticed as he went on that Miss Grace first flushed and then paled.
The girl had hardly spoken up to this. She sat silent and timid. She did not seem to hear quickly or to apprehend accurately. She had hesitated in her answers like one afraid. The table was small, and laid for four people. Hanbury sat opposite his mother, Edith opposite her grandmother. The heat was intense.
There was a buzzing and beating in the girl's ears. She heard as through a sound of plashing water. The talk of Leigh had carried her mind back to the country, back to Millway and Eltham House, and to the unexpected and unwelcome and disquieting apparition of the dwarf at the door of the house when she arrived there.
Through this strange noise of splashing water she heard in a low far-away voice the story of her fear and loneliness and desolation on that Wednesday, separated from her old home and the familiar streets, and the sustaining companionship of her old grandmother, who had been all the world to her. She heard this story chanted, intoned in this low, monotonous voice, and she had a dim feeling that all was changed, and that she was now environed by securities through which she could not be assailed by the attentions of that strange, ill-featured dwarf.
But her sight was very dim, and she could not see anything clearly or recollect exactly where she was. Gradually her sight cleared a little, and she was under trees heavy with leaves, alone on a lonely road by night. The rain fell unseen through the mute warm air. A thick perfume of roses made the air heavy with richness. She felt her breath come short, as though she had walked fast or run. The air was too rich to freshen life to cool the fevered blood.
Now she became dimly conscious of some sound other than the plashing of water. It was not the voice, for the voice had ceased. The sound was loud and distinct, and emphatic and tumultuous.
All at once she remembered what that sound was. She hastily put one hand to her left side, and the other to her forehead and rose, swaying softly to and fro.
"I--I----" she whispered, but could say no more.
Hanbury caught her, or she would have fallen. The two ladies got up.
"She is not well," said the old woman excitedly. "She has eaten nothing for days!"
The girl reclined, cold and pale as marble, in the young man's arms. Her eyes were half closed, her lips half open.
He half led her half lifted her to a couch. Restoratives such as stood at hand were applied, but she did not quite recover. She was not exactly unconscious. This was no ordinary faint.
The women were terrified. Mrs. Grace had never seen her in any such state before. To her knowledge the girl had never fainted.
The ladies were terrified, and Hanbury ran off for a doctor. When he came back, the girl had been got upstairs. She was still in the same state, not quite conscious, and not quite insensible.
The doctor made a long examination, and heard all that was to be told. When he came down to the dining-room, where Hanbury was excitedly walking up and down, he said the case was serious, but not exactly dangerous, that is, the patient's life was in no imminent peril. She had simply been overwrought and weakened by want of food, and jarred by suppressed and contending emotions. There was no organic disease, but the heart had been functionally affected by the vicissitudes of the past few days acting on an organism of exquisite sensibility. Quiet was the best medicine, and after quiet, careful strengthening, and then the drugs mentioned in this prescription. But above all, quiet.
Could she be moved? Mrs. Grace asked.
By no means. Moving might not bring about a fatal termination, but it would most assuredly enhance her danger, and most certainly retard her recovery.
Would she recover?
There was no reason to fear she would not. All was sound, but much was weak. Her anxiety of mind, and the excitement of going to that uncongenial home, and the long walk the morning she left, and the lack of food had weakened her much, but nothing had given way or was in immediate peril of giving way, and with care and quiet all would be well.
And when this was passed would she be quite well again?
Yes. In all possible likelihood under Heaven, quite well again.
It would leave no blemish in her life? No weak place? She would be as well as ever?
Well, that was asking a doctor to say a great deal, but it was probable, highly probable, she would be quite as well as if this had never happened. The key to her recovery lay in the one word, Quiet. After quiet came careful nurture and, a long way from the second of these, drugs. But recollect, Quiet.
Hanbury took up the prescription and hastened off with it.
The poor girl so sensitive and fragile! It was a mercy this illness came upon her here. How would it have fared with her down in that lonely Eltham House to which she had taken such a dislike? Why, it would have killed her.
What an exquisite creature she was, and so soft and gentle in her ways. It was fortunate this illness had not overtaken her in Eltham House, or in Grimsby Street, for that matter, because the street was detestable, and to be ill in lodgings must be much worse than to be ill in a public hospital, for in hospital there was every appliance and attendance, and in lodgings only noise, and bustle, and grumbling. It was dreadful to think of being sick in lodgings. And now Mrs. Grace and her grand-daughter were poor.
How horrible it would be to think of this girl lying stricken in that other house, and requiring first of all quiet, and then cherishing, and being able to get neither! It was dreadful to picture such things. And fancy, if these poor ladies had not enough money for a good doctor and what the poor weak child wanted! Fancy if they could not pay their rent and were obliged to leave. Oh! how fortunate it was he had come across them so soon, and how strange to think that Leigh had been the means of first bringing them together. He owed that good turn to Leigh.
On his way back from the druggist he reverted to the past of Leigh:
"Yes, I owed the introduction to him. I freely forgive him now. Indeed, I don't know what I have to forgive him of. He did not send or write that paragraph to the papers. He did not even write it, as far as I know, and although he was rough and rude, and levied a kind of blackmail on me, the price he asked me was not disgraceful from his point of view. If I had met him under happy circumstances, I might have brought him to a Thursday at Curzon Street. He was interesting, with his alchemy and clock and omniscience and insolence and intellectual swagger. Of course, I did not at the time know he was in treaty with a fence. According to his own account he never committed himself in that quarter, and as he had no need to tell me of that transaction at all, I daresay he kept pretty near the truth. How strange that when he lost his clock, he must straightway get a confidant! I wonder is there any truth in his own prophecy about his health?
"He, too, was the means of breaking off the Curzon Street affair. I must write there at once. I have behaved badly in not doing so before. I'll write the moment I get home. Yes, I must write when I get back, and then I'll put the affair out of my mind altogether, for good and ever."
Upon getting to the house, he went to the library and read over Dora Ashton's letter once more, slowly. He gathered no new impression from this second reading. Her resolution to put an end to the engagement seemed to him more strong than at first. That was the only change he noticed in the effect of the letter upon him. It was as cool and business-like and complete as could be. He was too much of a gentleman to give expression in his mind to any fault-finding with the woman to whom he had been engaged, and whom he had behaved so badly towards the other evening, but it seemed quite certain to him now that Dora Ashton was a girl of great cleverness and good sense and beauty--but no heart.
He did not at all like the task before him, but it must be done. When the letter was finished, it ran:
"My Dear Miss Ashton,
"I got your letter. It was very good of you to write to me in so kind and unreproaching a spirit, and I thank you with all my heart for your merciful forbearance. My conduct, my violence on Thursday evening, must always be a sorrow and a mystery to me. I only indistinctly recollect what I said, but I feel and know my words were perfectly monstrous and cruelly unjust. I feel most bitterly that no apology of mine can obliterate the impression my insanity must have made on you. To say I am profoundly sorry is only to say that I am once more in my right mind. I must in the most complete and abject manner beg your pardon for my shameful violence on Thursday evening. I must not even try to explain that violence away. I ask your pardon as an expression of my own horror of my conduct and of my remorse. But I do not hope for your forgiveness, I do not deserve it, I will not accept it. I shall bear with me in expiation of my offence the consciousness of my unpardonable conduct, and the knowledge that it remains unpardoned. Even lenity could ask no more indulgent treatment of my monstrous behaviour.
"As to terminating the engagement between us I have nothing to do but accept your decision, and since you ask it as a favour, the only favour you ever asked of me, I must receive your decision as irrevocable. I will not make any unpleasantness here by even referring to the difference of the ending I had in the hope of my mind. As you very justly say, the least said now the better. I shall say not a word to anyone about the immediate subject of this letter except to my mother. On that you may rely. I must tell her. You, I suppose, will inform Mrs. and Mr. Ashton (if they do not know of it); nobody else need hear of the abandonment of our designs. Let us by all means meet as you suggest, as though we never had been more than the best of friends, and were (as I hope we shall be) the best of friends still. I also quite agree with you about the notes, &c. Burn and destroy them. I will most scrupulously burn your letters, of which I have a few. This letter will I suppose be the last of the series.
"In a little time I trust we may meet again, but not just now for both our sakes.
"Yours ever most sincerely,
"John Hanbury."
When he had finished the letter he closed it without reading it over. "When one reads over a letter like this," he thought, "one grows nice about phrases and tries to alter, and finally tears up. I am satisfied that if I tried all day long I should do no better than this. I shall post it myself when I go out. That letter is a great weight off my mind, and now I am much less disinclined to break the matter to my mother. When that is over I shall feel that I am free."
He found his mother alone in her own room. Mrs. Grace was with Edith in a room which had been hastily prepared for her.
"She is just the same way," said Mrs. Hanbury. The young man had heard from a servant downstairs that there was no change. "We are not to expect much change for a while. She has quite recovered consciousness, but is very weak, and the doctor says she is not to be allowed to stir even a hand more than is necessary. There is no anxiety. With time and care all will be well."
"I am glad I found you alone, mother. I think you must have seen that I have been a good deal excited during the past few days."
"Yes, and very naturally too. That letter must have disturbed you a good deal."
The son paused in his walk and stared at her. "How did you know about that letter? Who told you? Have you seen Dora? But that is absurd. She would not speak of it."
Mrs. Hanbury looked at him in amazement and alarm. "What do you mean, John? You make me very uneasy. What has Dora Ashton to do with it? Miss Grace may, but not Dora. Surely you do not suppose I did not read your father's letter?"
"Oh!" he cried, "I did not mean my father's letter. I was referring to another letter. Upon reflection I quite agree with you and my father in attaching little or no importance to that discovery. I was thinking of a letter I had from Dora."
"Yes," said Mrs. Hanbury with a sigh of relief. For a moment she thought her son's head had been turned by the disclosure of his pedigree. "What does she say?"
He was walking up and down rapidly now. "Well, the fact is, mother, the thing is off."
"Off?"
"Yes."
"What do you mean?"
"Well, the thing is over between us, the engagement, you know. The fact is we had a scene on Thursday evening. I lost command of myself completely, and used very violent language----"
"To Dora!" cried the mother in bewilderment.
"Yes, to Dora. I don't know what came over me, but I was carried quite beyond myself and said things no gentleman, no man, ought to say to any girl----"
"John, I don't believe you--you are under some strange and miserable hallucination. You said something to Dora Ashton that no man ought to say to any girl! Impossible! Thank God, I know my son better than to believe anything of the kind," said Mrs. Hanbury, beginning in a manner of incredulity and ending in firm conviction.
"Unfortunately mother it is only too true. I need not repeat what passed, but the dispute----"
"Dispute--dispute with Dora! Why she would not dispute with you! How could she dispute with you? Dispute with you! It is nonsense. Why the girl _loves_ you, John, the girl _loves_ you. It is lunacy to say it!"
"I may have used an unhappy word----"
"A completely meaningless word, I assure you."
"At all events, we differed in opinion, and I completely lost my temper and told her in the end that in certain cases of importance she might betray me."
"Oh, this is too bad! I will not sit and listen to this raving. You never said such a childishly cruel thing to Dora Ashton? She is the noblest girl I know. The noblest girl I ever met."
"I was mad, mother."
"Most wickedly mad."
"Well you do not know how sorry I am I allowed myself to be carried away. But that cannot be helped now. I must abide the consequence of my folly and madness. She has broken off the engagement, for we were engaged, and I have written saying I cannot disapprove of her decision. We have agreed that as no one has known anything of the engagement no one is to hear of its being broken off. Are you angry with me, mother?"
"Angry--no; but greatly disappointed. I was as happy in thinking of Dora as your wife as if she were my own daughter, but I suppose I must become reconciled. If you and she have agreed to part no one has any right to say more than that it is a pity, and I think it is a pity, and I am very sorry."
That was the end of the interview of which the young man had stood in such dread, and now that it was over and he was going to post his last letter to Dora he felt relieved. The news had doubtless greatly surprised and shocked his mother, but this meeting had not been nearly so distressing as he had anticipated.
When he came to the post pillar into which he had dropped most of the letters he had written to Curzon Street, he felt an ugly twinge as this one slid from his fingers and he turned away--free.
Dr. Shaw, at whose house door Hanbury had left Oscar Leigh, was a fresh-coloured, light haired, baldheaded, energetic man of about fifty-five. He was always in a state of astonishment, and the spectacles he wore over his green grey eyes seemed ever on the point of being thrust forward out of their position by the large round prominent dancing eyes of their wearer. He was a bachelor and had a poor practice, but one which he preferred to hold in undisputed ownership, rather than increase at the sacrifice of liberty in taking a wife.
He had just come back from his round of morning visits and was sitting down to his simple early dinner, as Leigh knocked. When he heard who the visitor was he rose instantly and went into the small bare surgery, the front ground-floor room.
"Bless my soul, Mr. Leigh, what's the matter?"
Leigh was sitting in a wooden elbow chair breathing heavily, noisily, irregularly. "I have come," he said in gasps and snatches, "I have come to die."
"Eh! Bless my soul, what are you saying?" cried the doctor approaching the clockmaker so as to get the light upon his own back.
"I have come to die, I tell you."
"But that is an opinion, and it is I that am to give the opinion--not you. You are to state the facts, I am to lay down the law. What's the matter?"
"In this case, I am judge and jury. The facts and the law are all against me. I have had another seizure a few minutes ago," he laid his hand on his chest. "In the excitement I kept up, but I know 'tis all over. You will remember your promise about the quicklime. I never let anyone pry into the machinery of my clock, and I won't have any foolish young jackanapes prying into the works of this old carcase. You will fill up the box with quicklime?"
"Not yet anyway. What happened. Where do you feel queer?"
Leigh pointed to his chest a little at the left of the middle line.
"Shock?"
"Yes."
"What?"
"My clock, the work of seven years, has been burned, destroyed."
"Burned! That was hard. I'm very sorry to hear it. We'll have your coat off. Yes, I'll lock the door. You need not be afraid. No one comes at this time. Yes, I'll pull the blind down too. Stand up.... That will do. Put on your coat. Let me help you. Drink this. Sit down now and rest yourself."
"Rest myself? Rest myself! After standing for that half a minute?"
"Yes."
"Did I not tell you facts and law were against me?"
"You are not well."
"I am dying."
"You are very ill."
"I had better go to bed?"
"You would be more rested there."
"Would it be safe for me to go to Millway, about sixty miles?"
"No."
"How long do you think I shall last?"
"It is quite impossible to say."
"Hours?"
"Oh, yes."
"Days?"
"Yes."
"Weeks?"
"With care."
"Months?"
"The best thing you can do now is to go to bed. I'll see the room got ready. You feel very weak, weaker even than when you came in here."
"I feel I cannot walk."
"The excitement has kept you up so far. You are now suffering from reaction. After you have rested a while you will be better."
"Very good. Shaw, will you send for your solicitor, I want to make my will."
The doctor left the surgery for a few minutes to give the necessary orders about the room for Leigh and to send for the solicitor. Half an hour ago he had felt very hungry, and when the clockmaker knocked he had been thinking of nothing but his dinner. His dinner still lay untasted. He had forgotten all about it. He was the most kind-hearted of men, and the sight of Leigh in his present condition, and the fatal story he had heard through the stethoscope had filled him with pity and solicitude.
"The room will be ready in a few minutes," he said, in a cheerful voice and with an encouraging smile, when he again came into the surgery. "We shall try to make you as comfortable as ever we can. I am sorry for your sake I haven't a wife to look after you."
"If you had a wife I shouldn't be here."
"What! You! Why, that is the only ungallant thing I ever heard you say in all my life."
"I should envy you and be jealous of you."
"Then, my dear fellow, I am very glad we are by ourselves. I suppose your mother would not like to come up to nurse you?"
"She cannot move about now, except in her wheeled chair."
"Is there anyone you would wish to come to see you? This house you will, of course, consider as your own."
"Thank you, there is no one. I do not know anyone in the world, except my mother, so long as I know you. The only friend likely to call I saw to-day. There is no need for me to send for him to-day, is there?"
"Need, no. You will be much better when you have rested a while. You know cheerful company is always very useful to us doctors, and we like to have all the help we can. But I daresay we shall get on famously as we are." He would like to have heard all about the fire and the destruction of the clock, but he refrained from asking because he feared the excitement for his patient.
It happened that Dr. Shaw's solicitor lived near, and was at home, so that he came back with the boy before the room was ready. Shaw withdrew from the surgery, and for half-an-hour the lawyer and the clockmaker were alone. Then Leigh was carried upstairs and went to bed, and felt, as Shaw said he would, better and easier for lying down.
"I have no trouble on my mind now, Shaw, and my body cannot be a trouble to me or anybody else long. I never say thanks or make pretty speeches, but I am not ungrateful all the same. I don't think we have ever shaken hands yet, Shaw. Will you shake hands now?"
"With the greatest pleasure, my dear fellow," said Shaw, grasping the hand of the little man, and displaying his greatest pleasure by allowing his large dancing green-grey eyes to fill up with tears behind his unemotional spectacles.
"That clock would have made my fame. I don't know how the fire arose. I had the clock wound up last night by a mechanical contrivance, and before leaving for Millway I lit the faintest glimmer of gas. Some accident must have happened. Some accident which can now never be explained. I left the window open for the first time last night. I had put up a curtain for the first time last night. If any boy had thrown a stone, and the stone got through the curtain, there is no knowing what it might not do among the machinery; the works were so close and complicated, it might have brought something inflammable within reach of the flame of the gas, for the gas would not be quite out. At all events, the clock is gone. It was getting too much for me. Often of late, when I was away from it, the movements became reversed, and all the works went backwards, and I often thought that kind of thing would injure my brain."
"It was a sure sign injury was beginning, and I think it is a good thing for you the clock is burned," said Shaw soothingly.
"But the shock! The shock you will say, by-and-by, killed me. How, then, do you count the loss of the clock good?"
"I mean if you had told me there was no way of stopping this involuntary reversal of the movement I should have advised you to smash the clock rather than risk the brain."
"And I should have declined to take your advice."
Shaw laughed. "You would not be singular in that. I can get ten people to take my medicines for one who will take my advice."
"What an awful mortality there would be, Shaw, if people took both!"
"There now," said Shaw, with another laugh, "you will do now. You are your old self again. I must run away. I shall see you in an hour or two, and have my tea up here with you. If you want anything, ring."
So Leigh was left alone.
"The clothes," he thought, "of the figure must have in some way or other come in contact with the gas-jet. If they once caught fire the wax would burn--the wax of the head, and then there would be plenty of material for a blaze.
"Ah, me; the clock is gone! Even if that survived, I should not mind. I was so jealous of it. I never let anyone examine it, and the things it could do will not be credited when I am dead, for I often, very often, exaggerated, and even invented, a little.
"Ay, ay, ay, the clock is gone, and the Miracle Gold, too. I am glad I never had anything really to do with it. I am sorry I was not always of the mind I was yesterday--my last day at my bench. All the time I was burying in my own grave my own small capital of life, I was missing the real gold of existence. I sought to build up fame in my clock and in that gold. Fame is for the dead. What are the dead to us? What shall I be when they bury me to myself, who walked in the sunlight and saw the trees and the flowers, and the clouds and the sea, where there were no men to remind me of my own unshapeliness? Nothing. Why should a man care for fame among people he has never seen, among the dim myriads of faces yet to come out of the womb of time, when he could have had an abiding place in the heart's ingle among those whom he knows and whose hands he can touch? What good to us will the voices of the strange men of the hereafter be? What a fool I was to think of buying the applause of strange, unborn men out of gold rent from living men, whose friend I might have been.
"I told Hanbury I was making a dying confession to him. I suppose this is a death-bed repentance. Very well. But I sinned only in thought. In order to show other men I was better than they, I was willing to be worse. Shaw is right. I am much easier here. I feel rested. I feel quiet. I have really done nothing harmful to any man. It will be a relief to get out of this husk. I will try to sleep. My poor old mother! But we cannot be separated long. It is easier to die in a body like this than to live in it."
He was very weak, and life fluttered feebly in his veins. He closed his eyes and ceased to think. The calm that comes with the knowledge that one is near the end was upon him. He did not think, he did not sleep. He lay simply gathering quiet for the great sleep. He was learning how to rest, how to lie still, how to want not, how to wait the sliding aside of the mysterious panel that the flesh keeps shut against the eyes of the spirit while the two are partners in life.
Mrs. Hanbury was greatly shocked by the news her son had given her that day about his relations with Dora. She had a conviction that it would be to John's advantage to be married. She held that, all other things being reasonably taken care of, a young man of twenty-six ought to marry and settle down to face the world in the relations and surroundings which would govern the remainder of his life. There had never been any consideration of John's sowing wild oats. He had always been studious, serious, domestic. He was the very man to marry and, in the cheerful phrase of the story book, live happy ever after.
And where could he find a wife better suited to him than in Curzon Street? Dora had every single quality a most exacting mother could desire in the wife of an only son, and Mrs. Hanbury was anything but an exacting mother. Dora's family was excellent. She was one of the most beautiful girls in London, she was extremely clever, and although she and he did not seem fully in accord in their views of some things, they agreed in the main. She was extremely clever and accomplished, and amiable, and by-and-by she should be rich. In fact, Mrs. Hanbury might have doubled this list without nearly exhausting the advantages possessed by Miss Ashton, and now it was all over between the pair. This really was too bad.
She idolized her son, and thought there were few such good young men in the world; but she was no fool about him. She had watched his growth with yearning interest from infancy to this day. She knew as well, perhaps better than anyone, that he was not perfect. She knew he was too enthusiastic, that sometimes his temper was not to be relied on. She knew he was haughty, and at rare times even scornful. She knew he had no mean estimate of his own merits, and was restive under control. But what were these faults? Surely nothing to affright any gentle and skilful woman from uniting herself with him for life. Most of his faults were those of youth and inexperience. When he was properly launched, and met other men and measured himself against them, much of his haughty self-satisfaction would disappear. Most young men who had anything in them were discontented, for they had only vague premonitions of their powers, and they felt aggrieved that the world would not take them on their own mere word at their own estimate.
What Mr. and Mrs. Ashton would say she could not fancy. Perhaps they would imitate for once the example of younger people, and say nothing at all. They could not, however, help thinking of the matter, and they would be sure to form no favourable estimate of John's conduct in the affair. The rest of the world would be certain to say that John jilted the girl, and anyone who heard the true history of the Hanbury family, just come to light, would say that John kept back in the hope of making a more ambitious marriage.
He was, every one allowed, one of the most promising young men in England, and now the glamour of a throne was around him. All the philosophy in the world would not make him ever again the plain John Hanbury he was in the eyes of people a few days ago, in the eyes of every one outside this house still. Stanislaus II. may have been everything that was weak and contemptible, and been one of the chief reasons why his unfortunate country disappeared from the political map of the world, but John Hanbury was the descendant of King Stanislaus II. of Poland, and if that monarchy had been hereditary and the kingdom still existed, her son would be the legal sovereign, in spite of all the Republicans and revilers in Europe.
She herself set no store by these remote and shadowy kingly honours, but even in her own heart she felt a swelling of pride when she thought that the child she had borne and reared was the descendant of a king. A pretender to the throne of England would be put in a padded room and treated with indulgent humanity. But on the Continent it was not so. Sometimes they put him in prison, and sometimes they put him on the throne he claimed. She knew that her son would no more think of laying stress upon his descent from the Poniatowskis than of asking to be put in that padded room. But others would think of it and set value on it. Exclusive doors might be closed against the clever speaker, plain John Hanbury, son of an English gentleman, who for whim or greed went into trade, when he was rich enough to live without trade; but few doors would be closed against the gifted orator who was straight in descent and of the elder line of the Poniatowskis of Lithuania, and whose great grandfather's grandfather was the last King of Poland.
After all, upon looking more closely at the affair, the discovery was of some value. No one now could think him over ambitious for his years if he offered himself for Parliament. Younger men than he, sons of peers, got into Parliament merely by reason of a birth not nearly so illustrious as his, and with abilities it would be unfair to them to estimate against his.
There was something in it after all.
If now he chose to marry high, whom might he not marry? Putting out of view that corrupt, that forced election to the throne of Poland, he was a Poniatowski, _the_ Poniatowski, and few English families of to-day could show such a pedigree as her son's.
There was certainly no family in England that could refuse an alliance with him on account of birth.
And now vicious people would say he had been guilty, of the intolerable meanness of giving up Dora Ashton either in order that he might satisfy his ambition by a more distinguished marriage, or that he might be the freer to direct his public career towards some lofty goal. She knew her son too well to fancy for a moment any such unworthy thought could find a home in his breast; but all the world did not know him as she did, and no one would believe that the breaking-off came from Dora and the cause of it arose before the discovery of Stanislaus' secret English marriage.
When the doctor made his second visit, he pronounced Edith Grace progressing favourably. She was then fully conscious, but pitifully weak. There was not, the doctor said, the least cause for uneasiness so long as the patient was kept quite free from excitement, from even noise. A rude and racking noise might induce another period of semi-insensibility. Quiet, quiet, quiet was the watchword, and so he went away.
Mrs. Grace had protested against a hired nurse. She herself should sit up at night, and in the daytime the child would need no attendance. Mrs. Grace had, however, to go back to their lodgings to fetch some things needed, and to intimate that they were not returning for the present. Mrs. Hanbury volunteered to sit in Edith's room while the old woman was away. Protests were raised against this, but the hostess carried her point. "I told you," she said, with a smile, "that I am very positive. Let this be proof and a specimen."
So the old lady hastened off, and Mrs. Hanbury sat down to watch at the bedside of the young girl. Speaking was strictly forbidden. Mrs. Hanbury took a book to beguile the time, and sat with her face to the patient, so that she could see that all was right by merely lifting her eyes.
The young girl lay perfectly still, with her long dark hair spread out upon the pillow for coolness, and her white face lying in the midst of it as white as the linen of the sheet. Her breathing was very faint, the slight heaving of her breast barely moving the light counterpane. The lips were slightly open, and the eyes closed.
Edith was too weary and too weak to think. Before she had the fainting fit or attack of weakness (she had not quite fainted), she heard the story of the dwarfs misfortunes in a confused way through that sound of plashing water. She was quite content now to lie secure here without thought, in so far as thought is the result of voluntary mental act or the subject of successive processes. But the whole time she kept saying to herself in a way that did not weary her, "How strange that Leigh should lose everything and I gain so much, and that both should be lying ill, all in so short a time!" This went on in her mind over and over again, more like the sound of a melody that does not distress one and may be listened to or not at will, than an inherent suggestion of the brain. It was the result of the last strong effort of the brain at memory blending with the first awakening to full consciousness. "How strange that Leigh should lose everything and I gain so much, and that both should be lying ill in so short a time!"
Mrs. Hanbury raised her eyes from her book and gazed at the pallid face in the sea of dark hair. "She might be asleep or dead. How exquisitely beautiful she is, and how like Dora. How very like Dora, but she is more beautiful even than Dora. Dora owes a great deal to her trace of colour and her animation. This face is the most lovely one I ever saw, I think. How gentle she looks! I wonder was Kate Grace that Poniatowski married like her. If so I do not wonder. Who could help loving so exquisite a creature as this?"
Both of the girl's hands were stretched outside the counterpane.
Mrs. Hanbury leaned forward, bent and kissed the one near her, kissed it ever so lightly.
The lids of the girl trembled slightly but did not open.
Mrs. Hanbury drew back afraid. She had perhaps awakened her.
Gradually something began to shine at the end of the long lashes, and a tear rolled down the sweet young pale face.
"Have I awakened you?"
"No. I was awake."
"Are you in pain?"
"No. Oh, no!
"You are weeping."
"That," she moved slightly the hand Mrs. Hanbury had kissed, "that made me, oh, so happy."
"Thank you, dear."
No more words were uttered, but when Mrs. Hanbury looked down upon her book her own eyes were full.
The touch of the lips upon that hand had brought more quiet into the girl's heart than all the muffling in the house or the whispered orders to the servants or the doctor's drugs.
"She believed I was asleep and she kissed my hand," thought the girl. No quiet such as this had ever entered her bosom before.