CHAPTER XXXIV.MISS MEWLSTONE HAS AN INTERRUPTION.
“Herbert Dancy Cheyne!”
As he pronounced the name slowly and with marked emphasis, a low cry of uncontrollable astonishment broke from Phillis: it was so unexpected. She began to shiver a little from the sudden shock.
“There! I have startled you,—and no wonder; and yet how could I help it? Yes,” he repeated, calmly, “I am that unfortunate Herbert Cheyne whom his own wife believes to be dead.”249
“Whom every one believes to be dead,” corrected Phillis, in a panting breath.
“Is it any wonder?” he returned, vehemently; and his eyes darkened, and his whole features worked, as though with the recollection of some unbearable pain. “Have I not been snatched from the very jaws of death? Has not mine been a living death, a hideous grave, for these four years?” And then, hurriedly and almost disconnectedly, as though the mere recalling the past was torture to him, he poured into the girl’s shrinking ears fragments of a story so stern in its reality, so terrible in its details, that, regardless of the children that played on the margin of the water, Phillis hid her face in her hands and wept for sheer pity.
Wounded, bereft of all his friends, and left apparently dying in the hands of a hostile tribe, Herbert Cheyne had owed his life to the mercy of a woman, a poor, degraded ill-used creature, half-witted and ugly, but who had not lost all the instincts of her womanhood, and who fed and nursed the white stranger as tenderly as though he were her own son.
While the old negress lived, Herbert Cheyne had been left in peace to languish back to life, through days and nights of intolerable suffering, until he had regained a portion of his old strength; then a fever carried off his protectress, and he became virtually a slave.
Out of pity for the tender-hearted girl who listened to him, Mr. Cheyne hurried over this part of his sorrowful past. He spoke briefly of indignities, abuse, and at last of positive ill treatment. Again and again his life had been in danger from brute violence; again and again he had striven to escape, and had been recaptured with blows.
Phillis pointed mutely to his scarred wrists, and the tears flowed down her cheeks.
“Yes, yes; these are the marks of my slavery,” he replied, bitterly. “They were a set of hideous brutes; and the fetish they worshipped was cruelty. I carry about me other marks that must go with me to my grave; but there is no need to dwell on these horrors. He sent His angel to deliver me,” he continued, reverently; “and again my benefactor was a woman.”
And then he went on to tell Phillis that one of the wives of the chief in whose service he was took pity on him, and aided him to escape on the very night before some great festival, when it had been determined to kill him. This time he had succeeded; and, after a series of hair-breadth adventures, he had fallen in with some Dutch traders who had come far into the interior in search of ivory tusks. He was so burnt by the sun and disfigured by paint that he had great difficulty in proving his identity as an Englishman. But at last they had suffered him to join them, and after some more months of wandering he had worked his way to the coast.250
There misfortune bad again overtaken him, in the form of a long and tedious illness. Fatigue, disaster, anguish of mind, and a slight sunstroke had taken dire effect upon him; but this time he had fallen into the hands of good Samaritans. The widowed sister of the consul, a very Dorcas of good works, had received the miserable stranger into her house; and she and her son, like Elijah’s widow of Zarephath, had shared with him their scanty all.
“They were very poor, but they pinched themselves for the sake of the stricken wretch that was thrown on their mercy. It was a woman again who succored me the third time,” continued Mr. Cheyne: “you may judge how sacred women are in my eyes now! Dear motherly Mrs. Van Hollick! when she at last suffered me to depart, she kissed and blessed me as though I were her own son. Never to my dying day shall I forget her goodness. My one thought, after seeing Magdalene, will be how I am to repay her goodness,—how I can make prosperity flow in on the little household, that the cruse and cake may never fail!”
“But,” interrupted Phillis at this point, “did you not write, or your friends write for you, to England?”
Mr. Cheyne smiled bitterly:
“It seems as though some strange fatality were over me. Yes, I wrote. I wrote to Magdalene, to my lawyer, and to another friend who had known me all my life, but the ship that carried these letters was burnt at sea. I only heard that when I at last worked my way to Portsmouth as a common sailor and in that guise presented myself at my lawyer’s chambers. Poor man! I thought he would have fainted when he saw me. He owned afterwards he was a believer in ghosts at that moment.”
“How long ago was that?” asked Phillis, gently.
“Two months; not longer. It was then I heard of my children’s death, of my wife’s long illness and her strange state. I was ill myself, and not fit to battle through any more scenes. Mr. Standish took me home until I had rested and recovered myself a little; and then I put on this disguise—not that much of that is necessary, for few people would recognize me, I believe—and came down here and took possession of Mrs. Williams’s lodgings.”
Phillis looked at him with mute questioning in her eyes. She did not venture to put it into words, but he understood her:
“Why have I waited so long, do you ask? and why am I living here within sight of my own house, a spy on my own threshold and wife? My dear Miss Challoner, there is a bitter reason for that!
“Four years ago I parted from my wife in anger. There were words said that day that few women could forgive. Has she forgiven them? That is what I am trying to find out.251Will the husband who has been dead to her all these years be welcome to her living?” His voice dropped into low vehemence, and a pallor came over his face as he spoke.
Phillis laid her hand on his own. She looked strangely eager:
“This is why you want my help. Ah! I see now! Oh, it is all right—all that you can wish! It is she who is tormenting herself, who has no rest day or night! When the thunder came that evening—you remember—we sat beside the children’s empty beds, and she told me some of her thoughts. When the lighting flashed, her nerves gave way, and she cried out, in her pain, ‘Did he forgive?’ That was her one thought. Her husband,—who was up in heaven with the children,—did he think mercifully of her, and know how she loved him? It was your name that was on her lips when that good woman, Miss Mewlstone, hushed her in her arms like a child. Oh, be comforted!” faltered Phillis, “for she loves you, and mourns for you as though she were the most desolate creature living!” But here she paused, for something that sounded like a sob came to her ear, and looking round, she saw the bowed figure of her companion shaking with uncontrollable emotion,—those hard tearless sobs that are only wrung from a man’s strong agony.
“Oh, hush!” cried the girl, tenderly. “Be comforted: there is no room for doubt. There! I will leave you; you will be better by and by.” And then instinctively she turned away her face from a grief too sacred for a stranger to touch, and walked down to the water, where the children had ceased playing, and listened to the baby waves that lapped about her feet.
And by and by he joined her; and on his pale face there was a rapt, serious look, as of one who has despaired and has just listened to an angel’s tidings.
“Did I not say that you, and only you, could help me? This is what I have wanted to know: had Magdalene forgiven me? Now I need wait no longer. My wife and home are mine, and I must take possession of my treasures.”
He stopped, as though overcome by the prospect of such happiness; but Phillis timidly interposed:
“But, Mr. Cheyne, think a moment. How is it to be managed? If you are in too great a hurry, will not the shock be too much for her? She is nervous,—excitable. It would hardly be safe.”
“That is what troubles me,” he returned, anxiously. “It is too much for any woman to bear; and Magdalene—she was always excitable. Tell me, you have such good sense; and, though you are so young, one can always rely on a woman; you understand her so well—I see you do—and she is fond of you,—how shall we act that my poor darling, who has undergone so much, may not be harmed by me any more?”
“Wait one moment,” returned Phillis, earnestly. “I must consider.” And she set herself to revolve all manner of possibilities, and then rejected them one by one. “There seems no252other way,” she observed, at last, fixing her serious glance on Mr. Cheyne. “I must seek for an opportunity to speak to Miss Mewlstone. It must be broken carefully to your poor wife; I am sure of that. Miss Mewlstone will help us. She will tell us what to do, and how to do it. Oh, she is so kind, so thoughtful and tender, just as though Mrs. Cheyne were a poor wayward child, who must be guided and helped and shielded. I like her so much: we must go to her for counsel.”
“You must indeed, and at once!” he returned, rather peremptorily; and Phillis had a notion now what manner of man he had been before misfortunes had tamed and subdued him. His eyes flashed with eagerness; he grew young, alert, full of life in a moment. “Forgive me if I am too impetuous; but I have waited so long, and now my patience seems exhausted all at once during the last hour. I have been at fever-point ever since you have proved to me that my wife—my Magdalene—has been true to me. Fool that I was! why have I doubted so long? Miss Challoner, you will not desert me?—you will be my good angel a little longer? You will go to Miss Mewlstone now,—this very moment,—and ask her to prepare my wife?”
“It is time for me to be going home: mother and Nan will think I am lost,” returned Phillis, in a quiet, matter-of-fact tone. “Come Mr. Cheyne, we can talk as we go along.” For he was so wan and agitated that she felt uneasy for his sake. She took his arm gently, and guided him as though he were a child; and he obeyed her like one.
“Promise me that you will speak to her at once,” he said, as he walked beside her rather feebly; and his gait became all at once like that of an old man. But Phillis fenced this remark very discreetly.
“This afternoon or this evening, when I get the chance,” she said, very decidedly: “if I am to help you, it must be as I think best, and at my own time. Do not think me unkind, for I am doing this for your own good: it would not help you if your wife were to be brought to the brink of a nervous illness. Leave it to me. Miss Mewlstone will serve us best, and she will know.” And then she took her hand from his arm, and bade him drop behind a little, that she might not be seen in the town walking with him. “Good-bye! keep up your courage. I will help you all I can,” she said, with a kindly smile, as he reluctantly obeyed her behest. She was his good angel, but he must not walk any longer in her shadow: angels do their good deeds invisibly, as Phillis hoped to do hers. He thought of this as he watched her disappearing in the distance.
Phillis walked rapidly towards the cottage. Archie, who was letting himself in at his own door, saw the girl pass, carrying her head high, and stepping lightly as though she were treading on air. “Here comes Atalanta,” he said to himself; but, though a smile came over his tired face, he made no effort253to arrest her. The less he saw of any of them the better, he thought, just now.
Nan looked up reproachfully as the truant entered the work-room, and Mrs. Challoner wore her gravest expression; evidently she had prepared a lecture for the occasion. Phillis looked at them both with sparkling eyes.
“Listen to me, Nan and mother. Oh, I am glad Dulce is not here, she is so young and giddy; and she might talk—No, not a word from either of you, until I have had my turn.” And then she began her story.
Nan listened with rapt speechless attention, but Mrs. Challoner gave vent to little pitying moans and exclamations of dismay.
“Oh, my child!” she kept saying, “to think of your being mixed up in such an adventure! How could you be so imprudent and daring? Mrs. Williams’s lodger—a strange man! in that outlandish cloak, too! and you walked home with him that dark night! Oh, Phillis, I shall never be at peace about you again!” and so on.
Phillis bore all this patiently, for she knew she had been incautious: and when her mother’s excitement had calmed down a little, she unfolded to them her plan.
“I must see Miss Mewlstone quite alone; and that unfinished French merino will be such a good excuse, Nan. I will take the body with me this afternoon, and beg her to let me try it on; the rest must come afterwards, but this will be the best way of getting her to myself.” And, as Nan approved of this scheme, and Mrs. Challoner did not dissent, Phillis had very soon made up her parcel, and was walking rapidly towards the White House.
As she turned in at the gates she could see a shadow on the blind in Mrs. Williams’s little parlor, and waved her hand towards it. He was watching her, she knew: she longed to go back and give him a word of encouragement and exhortation to patience; but some one, Mr. Drummond perhaps, might see her, and she dare not venture.
She sent her message by Jeffreys, and Miss Mewlstone soon came trotting into the room; but she wore a slightly-disturbed expression on her good-natured face.
She had been reading the third volume of a very interesting novel, and had most unwillingly laid down her book at the young dressmaker’s unseasonable request. Like many other stout people, Miss Mewlstone was more addicted to passivity than activity after her luncheon; and, being a creature of habit, this departure from her usual rules flurried her.
“Dear, dear! to think of your wanting to try on that French merino again!” she observed; “and the other dress fitted so beautifully, and no trouble at all. And there has Miss Middleton being calling just now, and saying they are expecting her brother Hammond home from India in November; and it is254getting towards the end of September now. I was finishing my book, but I could not help listening to her,—she has such a sweet voice. Ah, just so—just so. But aren’t you going to open your parcel, my dear?”
“Never mind the dress,” returned Phillis, quickly. “Dear Miss Mewlstone, I was sorry to disturb you; but it could not be helped. Don’t look at the parcel: that is only an excuse. My business is far more important. I want you to put on your bonnet, and come with me just a little way across the road. There is some one’s identity that you must prove.”
Phillis was commencing her task in a somewhat lame fashion; but Miss Mewlstone was still too much engrossed with her novel to notice her visitor’s singular agitation.
“Ah, just so—just so,” she responded; “that is exactly what the last few chapters have been about. The real heir has turned up, and is trying to prove his own identity; only he is so changed that no one believes him. It is capitally worked out. A very clever author, my dear––”
But Phillis interrupted her a little eagerly:
“Is that your tale, dear Miss Mewlstone? How often people say truth is stranger than fiction! Do you know, I have heard a story in real life far more wonderful than that? Some one was telling me about it just now. There was a man whom every one, even his own wife, believed to be dead; but after four years of incredible dangers and hardships—oh, such hardships!—he arrived safely in England, and took up his abode just within sight of his old house, where he could see his wife and find out all about her without being seen himself. He put on some sort of disguise, I think, so that people could not find him out.”
“That must be a make-up story, I think,” returned Miss Mewlstone, a little provokingly; but her head was still full of her book. Poor woman! she wanted to get back to it. She looked at Phillis and the parcel a little plaintively. “Ah, just so,—a very pretty story, but improbable,—very improbable, my dear.”
“Nevertheless, it is true!” returned Phillis, so vehemently that Miss Mewlstone’s little blue eyes opened more widely. “Never mind your book. I tell you I have business so important that nothing is of consequence beside it. Where is Mrs. Cheyne? She must not know we are going out.”
“Going out!” repeated Miss Mewlstone, helplessly. “My dear, I never go out after luncheon, as Magdalene knows.”
“But you are going out with me,” replied Phillis, promptly. “Dear Miss Mewlstone, I know I am perplexing and worrying you; but what can I do? Think over what I have just said,—about—about that improbable story, as you called it; and then, you will not be so dreadfully startled. You must come with me now to Mrs. Williams’s cottage: I want you to see her lodger.”255
“Her lodger!” Miss Mewlstone was fully roused now; and, indeed, Phillis’s pale face and suppressed eager tones were not without their due effect. Had the girl taken leave of her senses? Why, the ladies at the White House led the lives of recluses. Why should she be asked to call upon any stranger, but especially a gentleman,—Mrs. Williams’s lodger? “My dear,” she faltered, “you are very strange this afternoon.—Magdalene and I seldom call on any one, and certainly not on gentlemen.”
“You must come with me,” replied Phillis, half crying with excitement. She found her task so difficult. Miss Mewlstone was as yielding as a feather bed in appearance, and yet it was impossible to move her. “He calls himself Mr. Dancy; but now he says that is not all his name: let me whisper it in your ear, if it will not startle you too much. Think of Mrs. Cheyne, and try and command yourself. Mrs. Williams’s lodger says that he is Herbert Cheyne,—poor Mrs. Cheyne’s husband!”
XXXV.“BARBY, DON’T YOU RECOLLECT ME?”
“I do not believe it!—stuff and nonsense! You are crazy, child, to come to me with this trumped-up story! The man is an impostor. I will have the police to him. For heaven’s sake don’t let Magdalene hear this nonsense!”
Phillis recoiled a few steps, speechless with amazement. Miss Mewlstone’s face was crimson; her small eyes were sparkling with angry excitement: all her softness and gentle inanity had vanished.
“Give me a bonnet,—shawl,—anything, and I will put this matter straight in a moment. Where is Jeffreys? Ring the bell, please, Miss Challoner! I must speak to her.”
Phillis obeyed without a word.
“Ah, just so. Jeffreys,” resuming her old purring manner as the maid appeared, “this young lady has a friend in trouble, and wants me to go down to the cottage with her. Keep it from your mistress if you can, for she hates hearing of anything sad; say we are busy,—I shall be in to tea,—anything. I know you will be discreet, Jeffreys.”
“Yes, ma’am,” returned Jeffreys, adjusting the shawl over Miss Mewlstone’s shoulders; “but this is your garden-shawl, surely?”
“Oh, it does not matter; it will do very well. Now Miss Challoner, I am ready.” And so noiseless and rapid were her movements that Phillis had much to do to keep up with her.256
“Won’t you listen to me?” she pleaded. “Dear Miss Mewlstone, it is no made-up story; it is all true;” but to her astonishment, Miss Mewlstone faced round upon her in a most indignant manner:
“Be silent, child! I cannot, and will not, hear any more. How should you know anything about it? Have you ever seen Herbert Cheyne? You are the tool of some impostor. But I will guard Magdalene; she shall not be driven mad. No, no, poor dear! she shall not, as long as she has old Bathsheba to watch over her.” And Phillis, in despair, very wisely held her peace. After all she was a stranger: had she any proof but Mr. Dancy’s word?
Just towards the last, Miss Mewlstone’s pace slackened; and her hand shook so, as she tried to unlatch the little gate, that Phillis was obliged to come to her assistance. The cottage door stood open as usual, but there was no tall figure lurking in the background,—no shadow on the blind.
“We had better go in there,” whispered Phillis, pointing to the closed door of the parlor; and Miss Mewlstone, without knocking, at once turned the handle and went in, while Phillis followed trembling.
“Well, sir,” said Miss Mewlstone, sternly, “I have come to know what you mean by imposing your story on this child.”
Mr. Dancy, who was standing with his back to them, leaning for support against the little mantle-shelf, did not answer for a moment; and then he turned slowly round, and looked at her.
“Oh, Barby!” he said; “don’t you recollect me?” And then he held out his thin hands to her imploringly, and added “Dear old Barby! but you are not a bit changed.”
“Herbert—why, good heavens! Ah, just so—just so,” gasped the poor lady, rather feebly, as she sat down, feeling her limbs were deserting her, and every scrap of color left her face. Indeed, she looked so flabby and lifeless that Phillis was alarmed and flew to her assistance; only Mr. Cheyne waved her aside rather impatiently.
“Let her be; she is all right. She knows me, you see: so I cannot be so much altered. Barby,” he went on, in a coaxing voice, as he knelt beside her and chafed her hands, “you thought I was an impostor, and were coming to threaten me: were you not? But now you see Miss Challoner was in the right. Have you not got a word for me? Won’t you talk to me about Magdalene? We have got to prepare her, you know.”
Then, as he spoke his wife’s name, and she remembered her sacred charge, the faithful creature suddenly fell on his neck in piteous weeping.
“Oh, the bonnie face,” she wept, “that has grown so old, with the sorrow and the gray hair! My dear, this will just kill her with joy, after all her years of bitter widowhood.”257And then she cried again, and stroked his face as though he were a child, and then wrung her hands for pity at the changes she saw. “It is the same face, and yet not the same,” she said, by and by. “I knew the look of your eyes, my bonnie man, for all they were so piercing with sadness. But what have they done to you, Herbert?—for it might be your own ghost,—so thin; and yet you are brown, too; and your hair!” And she touched the gray locks over the temples with tender fluttering fingers.
“Magdalene never liked gray hairs,” he responded, with a sigh. “She is as beautiful as ever, I hear; but I have not caught a glimpse of her. Tell me, Barby,—for I have grown timorous with sorrow,—will she hate the sight of such a miserable scarecrow?”
“My dear! hate the sight of her own husband, who is given back to her from the dead? Ay, I have much to hear. Why did you never write to us, Herbert? But there! you have all that to explain to her by and by.”
“Yes; and you must tell me about the children,—my little Janie,” he returned, in a choked voice.
“Ah, the dear angels! But, Herbert, you must be careful. Nobody speaks of them to Magdalene, unless she does herself. You are impetuous, my dear; and Magdalene—well, she has not been herself since you left her. It is pining, grief, and the dead weight of loss that has ailed her being childless and widowed at once. There, there! just so. We must be tender of her, poor dear! and things will soon come right.”
“You need not fear me, Barby. I have learned my lesson at last. If I only get my wife back, you shall see—you shall see how I will make up to her for all I have ever made her suffer! My poor girl! my poor girl!” And then he shaded his face, and was silent.
Phillis had stolen out in the garden, and sat down on a little bench outside, where passers-by could not discern her from the road, and where only the sound of their voices reached her faintly. Now and then, chance words fell on her ear,—“Magdalene” over and over again; and “Janie” and “Bertie,”—always in the voice she had so admired. By and by she heard her own name, and rose at once, and found them looking for her.
“Here is my good angel, Barby,” observed Mr. Cheyne, as she came up smiling. “Not one girl in a thousand would have acted as bravely and simply as she has done. We are friends for life, Miss Challoner, are we not?” And he stretched out his hand to her, and Phillis laid her own in it.
“I was a bit harsh with you, dearie, was I not?” returned Miss Mewlstone, apologetically: “but there! you were such a child that I thought you had been deceived. But I ought to have known better, craving your pardon, my dear. Now we will just go back to Magdalene; and you must help my stupid258old head, for I am fairly crazy at the thought of telling her. Go back into the parlor and lie down, Herbert, for you are terribly exhausted. You must have patience, my man, a wee bit longer, for we must be cautious,—cautious, you see.”
“Yes, I must have patience,” he responded, rather bitterly. But he went back into the room and watched them until they disappeared into the gates of his own rightful paradise.
Miss Mewlstone was leaning on Phillis’s arm. Her gait was still rather feeble, but the girl was talking energetically to her.
“What a spirit she has! just like Magdalene at her age,” he thought, “only Magdalene never possessed her even temper. My poor girl! From what Barby says, she has grown hard and bitter with trouble. But it shall be my aim in life to comfort her for all she has been through!” And then, as he thought of his dead children, and of the empty nursery, he groaned, and threw himself face downward upon the couch. But a few minutes afterwards he had started up again, unable to rest, and began to pace the room; and then, as though the narrow space confined him, he continued his restless walk into the garden, and then into the shrubberies of the White House.
“My dear, I am not as young as I was. I feel as if all this were too much for me,” sighed Miss Mewlstone, as she pressed her companion’s arm. “One needs so much vitality to bear such scenes. I am terrified for Magdalene, she has so little self-control! and to have him given back to her from the dead! I thank God! but I am afraid, for all that.” And a few more quiet tears stole over her cheeks.
“Thinking of it only makes it worse,” returned Phillis, feverishly. She, too, dreaded the ordeal before them; but she was young, and not easily daunted. All the way through the shrubbery she talked on breathlessly, trying to rally her own courage. It was she who entered the drawing-room first, for poor Miss Mewlstone had to efface the signs of her agitation.
Mrs. Cheyne looked up, surprised to see her alone.
“Jeffreys told me you and Miss Mewlstone had gone out together on a little business. What have you done with poor old Barby?” And, as Phillis answered as composedly and demurely as she could, Mrs. Cheyne arched her eyebrows in her old satirical way:
“She is in her room, is she? Never mind answering, if you prefer your own counsel. Your little mysteries are no business of mine. I should have thought the world would have come to an end, though, before Barby had thrown down the third volume of a novel for anything short of a fire. But you and she know best.” And, as Phillis flushed and looked confused under her scrutiny, she gave a short laugh and turned away.
It was a relief when Miss Mewlstone came trotting into the room with her cap-strings awry.
“Dear, dear! have we kept you waiting for your tea, Magdalene?”259she exclaimed, in a flurried tone, as she bustled up to the table. “Miss Challoner had a little business, and she thought I might help her. Yes; just so! I have brought her in, for she is tired, poor thing! and I knew she would be welcome.”
“It seems to me that you are both tired. You are as hot as though you had walked for miles, Barby. Oh, you have your secrets too. But it is not for me to meddle with mysteries.” And then she laughed again, and threw herself back on her couch, with a full understanding of the discomfort of the two people before her.
Phillis saw directly she was in a hard, cynical mood.
“You shall know our business by and by,” she said, very quietly. “Dear Miss Mewlstone, I am so thirsty, I must ask you for another cup of tea.” But, as Miss Mewlstone took the cup from her, the poor lady’s hand shook so with suppressed agitation that the saucer slipped from her grasp, and the next moment the costly china lay in fragments at her feet.
“Dear! dear!—how dreadfully careless of me!” fumed Miss Mewlstone.
But Mrs. Cheyne made no observation. She only rang the bell, and ordered another cup. But, when the servant had withdrawn, she said, coldly,—
“Your hand is not as steady as usual this evening, Barby;” and somehow the sharp incisive tone cut so keenly that, to Phillis’s alarm, Miss Mewlstone became very pale, and then suddenly burst into tears.
“This is too much!” observed Mrs. Cheyne, rising in serious displeasure. She had almost a masculine abhorrence to tears of late years; the very sight of them excited her strangely.
“Miss Challoner may keep her mysteries to herself if she likes, but I insist on knowing what has upset you like this.”
“Oh dear! oh, dear!” sobbed the simple woman, wringing her hands helplessly. “This is just too much for me! Poor soul, how am I to tell her?” And then she looked at Phillis in affright at her own words, which revealed so much and so little.
Mrs. Cheyne turned exceedingly pale, and a shadow passed over her face.
“‘Poor soul!’ does she mean me? Is it of me you are speaking, Barby? Is there something for me to know, that you dread to tell me? Poor soul, indeed!” And then her features contracted and grew pinched. “But you need not be afraid. Is it not the Psalmist who says, ‘All thy waves and thy billows have gone over me’? Drowned people have nothing to fear: there is no fresh trouble for them.” And her eyes took an awful stony look that terrified Phillis.
“Oh, it is no fresh trouble!” stammered the girl. “People are not tormented like that: they have not to suffer more than they can bear.”260
But Mrs. Cheyne turned upon her fiercely:
“You are wrong, altogether wrong. I could not bear it, and it drove me mad,—at least as nearly mad as a sane woman could be. I felt my reason shaken; my brain was all aflame, and I cried out to heaven for mercy; and a blank answered me. Barby, if there be fresh trouble, tell me instantly, and at once. What do I care? What is left to me, but a body that will not die, and a brain that will not cease to think? If I could only stop the thoughts! if I could only go down into silence and nothingness! but then I should not find Herbert and the children. Where are they? I forget!” She stopped, pressed her hands to her brow with a strange bewildered expression; but Miss Mewlstone crept up to her, and touched her timidly.
“My bonnie Magdalene!” she exclaimed; “don’t let the ill thoughts come; drive them away, my poor dear. Look at me. Did old Barby ever deceive you? There is no fresh trouble, my pretty. In his own good time the All-Merciful has had mercy!”
Mrs. Cheyne’s hand dropped down to her sides, but her brilliant eyes showed no comprehension of her words.
“Why did you frighten me like that?” she repeated, rocking herself to and fro; and her voice had a high, strained tone in it. “There is no trouble, but your face is pale, and there are tears in your eyes; and look how your hand shakes! Miss Challoner—Phillis, what does she mean? Barby, you are a foolish old woman; your wits are gone.”
“If they are gone, it is with joy!” she sobbed. “Yes, my precious one! for sheer joy!” but then she broke down utterly. It was Phillis who came to the rescue.
“Dear Mrs. Cheyne, I think I could tell you best,” she began, in her sweet sensible voice, which somehow stilled Mrs. Cheyne’s frightful agitation. “There has been some news,—a letter that has been lost, which ought to have arrived months ago. We have heard about it this afternoon.” She stopped, for there seemed to be a faint sound of footsteps in the hall below. Could he have followed them? What would be the result of such imprudence? But, as she faltered and hesitated, Mrs. Cheyne gripped her arm with an iron force:
“A letter from Herbert! Did he write to me? oh, my darling! did he write to me before he died? Only one word—one word of forgiveness, and I will say heaven indeed is merciful! Give it to me, Barby! Why do you keep me waiting? Oh, this is blessed, blessed news!” But Miss Mewlstone only clasped her gently in her arms.
“One moment, my dearie! There is more than that. It is not a message from heaven. There is still one living on earth that loves you! Try and follow my meaning,” for the perplexed stare had returned again. “Say to yourself, ‘Perhaps, after all, Herbert is not dead. Nobody saw him die. He may be alive; he may have written to me––” She stopped, for Mrs.261Cheyne had suddenly flung up her arms over her head with a hoarse cry, that rang through the house:
“Herbert! Herbert! Herbert!”
“I am here,—Magdalene! Magdalene!” A tall figure that had crept unperceived through the open hall door, and had lurked unseen in the shadow of the portiere, suddenly dashed into the room, and took his wife’s rigid form into his arms. “Magdalene!—love—wife! It is Herbert! Look up, my darling!—I am here! I am holding you!” But there was no response. Magdalene’s face was like the face of the dead.
They took her from him almost by force, for he refused to give her up. Over and over again they prayed him to leave her to their care, but he seemed like a deaf man that did not hear.
“She is dead! I have killed her; but there is no reason why I should give her up,” he had said, with terrible calm in his voice.
“She is not dead!” returned Miss Mewlstone, almost angrily. “She has been like this before; but Jeffreys and I know what to do. Ay, you were always wilful, Herbert; but when it comes to killing your own wife––” And after this he consented to lay her down on her couch.
He watched them with wistful eyes as they tried the usual remedies; but it was long before even the flicker of an eyelid spoke to them of life. At the first sign of returning animation Herbert crept just behind his wife’s pillow, where he could see the first unclosing of the drooping lids. When Magdalene opened her eyes at last, they fell full on her husband’s face.
Phillis, who was beside her, marvelled at the strange beauty of that rapt look, as she lay and gazed at him.
“Herbert’s face!” they heard her whisper, in an awe-struck voice. “Then I have died at last, and am in heaven. Oh, how merciful! but I have not deserved it,—a sinner such as I.”
“Magdalene, my darling, you are in our own home! It is I who was lost, and have come back to you. Look at me. It is only the children that are in heaven. You and I are spared to each other on earth.” But for a long time her scattered faculties failed to grasp the truth.
Phillis went home at last, and left them. There was nothing she could do, and she was utterly spent; but Miss Mewlstone kept watch beside her charge until late into the night.
Little by little the truth dawned slowly on the numbed brain; slowly and by degrees the meaning of her husband’s tears and kisses sank into the clouded mind. Now and again she wandered, but Herbert’s voice always recalled her.
“Then I am not dead?” she asked him, again and again. “They do not cry in heaven, and Barby was crying just now. Barby, am I dreaming! Who is this beside me? is it Herbert’s ghost? only his hands are warm, and mine are so terribly cold.262Why you are crying too, love; but I am to tired to understand.” And then she crept wearily closer and closer into his arms, like a tired-out child who has reached home.
And when Herbert stooped over her gently, he saw that the long lashes lay on her cheek. Magdalene had fallen asleep.
CHAPTER XXXVI.MOTES IN THE SUNSHINE.
That sleep was, humanly speaking, Magdalene’s salvation.
At the greatest crisis of her life, when reason hung in the balance,—when the sudden influx of joy might have paralyzed the overwrought heart and brain,—at that moment physical exhaustion saved her by that merciful, overpowering sleep.
When she woke, it was to the resurrection of her life and love. Months afterwards she spoke of that waking to Phillis, when she lay in her bed weak as a new born babe, and the early morning light streamed full on the face of her slumbering husband.
They were alone; for Miss Mewlstone had just crept softly from the room. Her movement had roused Magdalene. Herbert, who was utterly worn out by his long watching, had just dropped asleep, with his head resting against the wood-work. He was still sitting in the arm-chair beside her, and only the thin profile was visible.
The previous night had been passed by Magdalene in a semi-conscious state: delirious imaginations had blended with realities. There were flashes and intervals of comparative consciousness, when the truth rushed into her mind; but she had been too weak to retain it long. That she was dreaming or dead was her fixed idea: that this was her husband’s greeting to her in paradise seemed to be her one thought. “Strange that the children do not kiss me too,” they heard her say once.
But now, as she opened her eyes, there was no blue misty haze through which she ever feebly sought to pierce. She was lying in her own room, where she had passed so many despairing days and nights. The window was open; the sweet crisp morning air fanned her temples; the birds were singing in the garden below; and there beside her was the face so like, yet so unlike, the face from which she had parted four years ago.
For a little while she lay and watched it in a sort of trance; and then in the stillness full realization came to her, and she knew that she was not mad or dreaming. This was no imagination: it was reality.
With incredible effort, for she felt strangely weak, she263raised herself on her elbow to study that dear face more closely, for the change in it baffled her. Could this be her Herbert? How bronzed and thin he had grown! Those lines that furrowed his forehead, those hollows in the temples and under the eyes, were new to her. And, oh, the pity of those gray hairs in the place of the brown wavy locks she remembered! But it was when she laid her lips against the scarred wrist that Herbert woke, and met the full look of recognition in his wife’s eyes, for which he had waited so long.
Now he could fall upon his knees beside her, and crave that forgiveness for words and acts that had seared his conscience all these years like red-hot iron. But at the first word she stopped him, and drew his head to her breast:
“Oh, Herbert, hush! What! ask forgiveness of me, when I have sinned against you doubly,—trebly,—when I was no true wife, as you know? Oh, do not let us ask it of each other, but of God, whom we have so deeply offended! He has punished us; but He has been merciful too. He has taken our children because we did not deserve them. Oh, Herbert! what will you do without them?—for you loved Janie so!” And then for a little while the childless parents could only hold each other’s hands and weep, for to Herbert Cheyne the grief was new, and at the sight of her husband’s sorrow Magdalene’s old wounds seemed to open and bleed afresh; only now—now she did not weep alone.
When Miss Mewlstone entered the room, shortly afterwards, she found Magdalene lying spent and weary, holding her husband’s hand.
Joy had indeed returned to the White House, but for a long time it was joy that was strangely tempered with sorrow. Upstairs no sound greeted Herbert from the empty nurseries; there were no little feet pattering to meet the returned wanderer, no little voices to cry a joyous “Father!” And for years the desolate mother had borne this sorrow alone.
As the days passed on, Magdalene regained her strength slowly, but neither wife nor husband could hide from each other the fact that their health was broken by all they had gone through. Herbert’s constitution was sadly impaired for the remainder of his life: he knew well that he must carry with him the consequences of those years of suffering. Often he had to endure intense neuralgic agony in his limbs and head; an unhealed wound for a long time troubled him sorely. Magdalene strove hard to regain strength, that she might devote herself to nurse him, but, though her constitution was superb, she had much to bear from her disordered nerves. At times the old irritability was hard to vanquish; there were still dark moods of restlessness when her companionship was trying; but it was now that Herbert proved the nobleness and reality of his repentance.
For he was ever gentle with her, however much she might264try him. Some talk he had had with her doctor had convinced him that she was not to blame for these morbid moods; that the nerves had become disorganized by those years of solitary misery. “We must bear all our troubles together,” as he often told her; and so he bore this, as he did the trial of his children’s loss, with grave fortitude, and a patience that surprised all who knew him.
And he was not without his reward, for, the dark fit over, Magdalene’s smile would greet him like sunshine after a storm, and she would thank him with tears and caresses for his forbearance.
“I can’t think what makes me still so horrid, when I am so happy,” she said once to him, when the first year of their reunion had passed. “I do my best to fight against these moods, but they seem stronger than myself and overcome me. Do not be so good to me next time, Herbert; scold me and be angry with me, as you used in the old days.”
“I cannot,” he answered, smiling. “I never loved you in the old days as I do now. I would not change my wife, in spite of all the trouble she gives me, for any other woman upon earth. You believe this, love, do you not?” looking at her beautiful face anxiously, for it had clouded a little at his last words.
“Yes, but I do not like to trouble you: it is that that frets me. I wanted to be a comfort to you, and never to give you a moment’s uneasiness; but I cannot help myself, somehow. I love you, I don’t believe you know yet how I love you, Herbert; but it seems as if I must grieve you sometimes.”
“Never mind; I will hear your trouble and my own too,” he answered, cheerily; and in this way he always comforted her. But to Magdalene her own self ever remained a mystery; the forces of her own nature were too strong for her, and yet she was not a weak woman. She had expected that in her case love and happiness would have worked a miracle, as though miracles were ever effected by mere human agencies,—that she would rise like a Phœnix from the ashes of her past, reborn, rejuvenated, with an inexhaustible fund of moral strength.
Now she had Herbert, all would go smoothly; she would no longer mourn for her little ones. Since her husband was there to comfort her, with his constant presence to sustain her, all must be well; never again would she be nervous, irritable, or sarcastic. Poor Magdalene! she was creating heaven for herself upon earth; she was borrowing angels’ plumes before the time; she had forgotten the conditions of humanity, “the body of the flesh,” which weighed down greater souls than hers.
There are Gethsemanes of the spirit to the weary ones of earth, hours of conflict that must be lived through and endured. Nature that groaneth and travaileth cannot find its abiding place of rest here. To the end of time it seems to be written in enduring characters that no human lot shall be free from suffering:265sooner or later, more or less,—that is all! Magdalene had still to learn this lesson painfully: that she was slow in learning it, proved the strength and obduracy of her will. True, she was rarely sarcastic,—never in her husband’s presence, for a word or a look from him checked her, and she grew humble and meek at once. It was her unruly nerves that baffled her; she was shocked to find that irritable words still rose to her lips; that the spirit of restlessness was not quelled forever; that thunder still affrighted her; and that now and then her mind seemed clouded with fancied gloom.
She once spoke of this to Miss Middleton, with tears in her eyes.
“It is so strange,” she said. “Herbert is different, but I am still so unchanged.”
“The conditions of your health are unchanged, you mean,” answered Elizabeth, with that quiet sympathy that always rested people. “This is the mistake that folk make: they do not distinguish between an unhealthy mind and a diseased soul: the one is due to physical disorganization, the other to moral causes. In your case, dear Mrs. Cheyne, one may safely lay the blame on the first cause.”
“Oh, do you think so?” she asked, earnestly. “I dare not cheat my conscience in that way: it is my bad temper, my undisciplined nature, that ought to bear the blame.”
“No; believe me,” answered Elizabeth, for they had grown great friends of late, “I have watched you narrowly, and I know how you try to conquer this irritability; there is no black spot of anger in your heart, whatever words come to your lips. You are like a fretful child sometimes, I grant you that, who is ailing and unconscious of its ailment. When you would be calm, you are strangely disturbed; you speak sharply, hoping to relieve something that oppresses you.”
“Oh, yes!” sighed Magdalene; “and yet Herbert never speaks crossly to me.”
“He never will, for he knows what you suffer. Well, dear friend, what of this? This is a cross that you must carry perhaps all your life. You are not the only one who has to bear the torment of disordered nerves: it must be borne with resignation, as we bear other troubles. Once you felt you could not love God; you ceased to pray to Him; now you love Him a little. Go on loving; thank him for your husband’s patience, and pray that you may have patience with yourself. One is weary of always living with one’s self, I know that well,” finished Elizabeth, with a charming smile.
Mr. Drummond would have verified Miss Middleton’s opinion that Magdalene was not so unchanged as she believed herself to be.
At his first interview with her after Herbert Cheyne’s return, he could almost have sworn that she was a different woman.266
Phillis, who spent all her spare time at the White House,—for they both made much of Herbert’s “good angel,” as he still called her jestingly,—was sitting alone with Mrs. Cheyne when Archie was announced.
His old enemy greeted him with a frank smile.
“This is kind of you, Mr. Drummond,” she said, quite warmly. “How I wish my husband were not out, that I could introduce him to you! I have told him how good you have tried to be to me, but that I was ungrateful and repulsed you.”
Archie was shaking hands with Phillis, who seemed a little disturbed at his entrance. He turned around and regarded the beautiful woman with astonishment. Was this really Mrs. Cheyne? Where was the hard, proud droop of the lip, the glance of mingled coldness andhauteur, the polished sarcasm of voice and manner? Her face looked clear and open as a child’s; her eyes were brilliant with happiness.
Magdalene was in one of her brightest moods when she was most truly herself.
“I have met him just now. He stopped and introduced himself. We had quite a long talk outside of Mrs. Williams’s cottage. I called upon him there, you know, but he had good reasons for refusing my visits. Mrs. Cheyne, you must allow me to congratulate you most earnestly. You will own now that Providence has been good to you.”
“I will own that and everything,” returned Magdalene, joyously. “I will own, if you like, that I treated you shamefully, and took a pleasure in tormenting you; and you were so patient,—oh, so patient, Mr. Drummond! I could have called you back sometimes and apologized, but I would not. In my bitter moments I felt it was such a relief to mock at people.”
“Never mind all that. Let bygones be bygones. I wish I could have served you better.” And then, as he changed the subject, and spoke feelingly about the miracle of her husband’s restoration, Mrs. Cheyne looked at him rather wistfully.
“Oh, how good you are!” she said, softly. “Do you know, the world seems full of good people to me now; and yet once it appeared too bad a place for any one to live in. We create our own atmosphere,—at least so Herbert tells me. But you are looking thin, Mr. Drummond,—thin and pale. You must be working too hard.”
“Oh, as to that, hard work never hurts any one,” he replied, carelessly; but there was something forced in his tone.
Phillis, who had been sitting apart quite silently, raised her eyes involuntarily from her work. Was it her fancy, or had some undefinable change passed over him? They had seen him so little of late. Since all this had happened at the White House he had called once or twice; and once Nan had been there, and he had spoken to her much as usual. No one would have detected any difference in his manner, except that he was a little267grave and preoccupied. Nan had not noticed anything; but then she was singularly blind in such matters. Had she not vaguely hinted that his visits were on Phillis’s account?—that mere hint conveying exquisite pain to Phillis.
Now, as she stole a glance at him, the conviction was strong within her that the arrow had gone deep. He certainly looked a little thin and care-worn, and something of a young man’s vigor and hopefulness seemed temporarily impaired. But, as it happened, that girlish scrutiny was not unperceived by Archie. In a moment he was on the alert. His eyes challenged hers boldly, and it was Phillis who flushed and looked conscious.
It was as though he said to her, “Ah! you think you know all about it. But you need not trouble yourself to be sorry for me; you do not know what a man’s strength can do. And I am determined to bear this by myself, and to myself; for in silence there is power.”
It certainly seemed as though a new strength had come to Archie. He had been a man who was prone to speak much of his feelings. Irritable and sensitive, he had demanded much sympathy from his womankind. His was a nature that craved support in his work; but now, not even to Grace, could he speak of this trouble that had befallen him.
Was it a trouble, after all, this vague shadow that lay about his path? No one but he himself knew the sweetness and graciousness of the dream that had come to him. It had only been a dream, after all; and now he was awake. The vision he had conjured up to himself had faded into unreality. She was not his second self: never by look or word had he wooed her; she was only the woman he could have loved. This was how he put it; and now he would bury this faint hope that was still-born,—that had never had breathed into it the breath of life. And if for a little while his future should be cloudy and bereft of its sunshine, was he the only one to whom “some days must be dark and dreary”?
Phillis’s unspoken sympathy drooped under this stern repression; and yet in her heart she reverenced him all the more for this moral strength,—for there is nothing a true woman abhors more than weakness in a man. After this silent rebuff, Archie took himself well in hand, and began to speak of other things: he told Mrs. Cheyne, being certain now of her interest, of his sister’s intended marriage, and how he and Mattie were going down to the wedding.
“He is a very good fellow, this intended brother-in-law of mine,—a sort of rough diamond; but hardly good enough for Isabel,” he said. “Oh, yes, he is very rich. My poor little sister will have her head turned by all her magnificence; for his parents are so generous: they quite load her with gifts.” And he smiled to himself at the notion of the little sister, just fresh from her narrow school-room life, rejoicing over her trousseau268and her handsome house, and driving away from the church in her own carriage. No wonder his father and mother were pleased. As for the bridegroom-elect, Archie spoke of him with half-contemptuous amusement: “Oh, he was a good fellow,—no one wished to deny that;” but there was a want of culture and polish that grated upon the susceptibilities of the Oxford fellow.
Phillis listened with undivided interest—especially when he mentioned Grace.
“Mattie and I are in hopes that we shall bring her back with us; but, at all events, my mother has promised to spare her at Christmas.” This time he addressed himself to Phillis.
“Oh, that will be nice for you!” she returned a little eagerly. “You have told us so much about her that I quite long to know her.”
“I should say you would suit each other perfectly,” he replied, as he rose to take his leave. “Sometimes you remind me of her, Miss Challoner; and yet you are not really alike. Good-bye, if I do not see you again before we go to Leeds.” And Phillis gave him her hand, and a cordial smile.
But when he had gone out of the room, his hostess accompanying him—for she had a word for his private ear,—Phillis sat down, and thought over those last words with a strange feeling of pleasure: “Sometimes you remind me of her, Miss Challoner.” Was it possible that he could trace any resemblance between her and this dearly-beloved sister, this Grace, whom he seemed to regard as absolute perfection?
“Oh, I hope she will come! I am sure we shall be such friends,” she said to herself: and from this time Phillis looked anxiously for Grace Drummond’s arrival.