One day it occurred to Raby he could play the misanthrope just as well at home as abroad, so he returned home.
He found old Dence dead and buried, and Patty Dence gone to Australia with her husband.
He heard Jael was in the hospital. He called at Woodbine villa, and they told him Grace was lying between life and death.
He called on Dr. Amboyne, and found him as sad as he used to be gay. The doctor told him all, and even took him to the town hall, and showed him an arm and part of the trunk of a man preserved in spirits, and a piece of tweed cloth, and a plain gold ring.
“There,” said he, “is all that remains to us of your nephew, and my friend. Genius, beauty, courage—all come to this!” He could say no more.
The tears filled Raby's eyes, and all his bitterness melted away. With respect to his sister, he said he was quite willing to be reconciled, and even to own himself in the wrong, if Dr. Amboyne, on reading the correspondence, should think so. Dr. Amboyne said he would come to Raby Hall for that purpose. He communicated this at once to Mrs. Little.
Grace had a favorable crisis, and in a few days more she was out of danger, but in a deplorable state of weakness. Dr. Amboyne ordered her to the sea-side. A carriage was prepared expressly for her, and her father took her there.
Woodbine Villa was put up to let furnished, and it was taken by—Mr. Coventry.
Jael Dence began to recover strength rapidly, but she wore at times a confused look. The very day Grace left for Eastbank she was discharged as cured, and left the hospital. This was in the morning.
In the afternoon Dr. Amboyne, being now relieved of his anxiety as to Grace, remembered he had not been to see this poor girl for some time; so he went to the hospital.
When he heard she was discharged, he felt annoyed with himself for not having paid her closer attention. And besides, Grace had repeatedly told him Jael Dence could make a revelation if she chose. And now, occupied with Grace herself, he had neglected her wishes.
“Where is she gone? do you know?”
One of the nurses said she was gone home.
Another said the patient had told her she should go down to the works first.
“And that is the very last place you should have let her go to,” said the doctor. “A fine shock the poor creature will get there. You want her back here again, I suppose!” He felt uneasy, and drove down to the works. There he made some inquiries among the women, and elicited that Jael Dence had turned faint at sight of the place, and they had shown her, at her request, where she had been picked up, and had told her about the discovery of Little's remains, and she had persuaded a little girl to go to the town hall with her.
“Oh, the tongue! the tongue!” groaned Amboyne.
He asked to see the little girl, and she came forward of her own accord, and told him she had gone to the town hall with the lass, “but” (regretfully) “that the man would not show them it without an order from the Mayor.”
“IT!”
Dr. Amboyne said he was very glad that common sense had not quite deserted the earth. “And where did you go next?”
“I came back here.”
“So I see; but the lass?”
“She said she should go home. 'My dear,' says she, 'there's nobody left me here; I'll go and die among my own folk.' That was her word.”
“Poor thing! poor thing! Why—”
He stopped short, for that moment he remembered Raby had said old Dence was dead, and Patty gone to Australia. If so, here was another blow in store for poor Jael, and she weakened by a long illness.
He instantly resolved to drive after her, and see whether she was really in a fit state to encounter so many terrible shocks. If not, he should take her back to the infirmary, or into his own house; for he had a great respect for her, and indeed for all her family.
He drove fast, but he could see nothing of her on the road. So then he went on to Cairnhope.
He stopped at the farm-house. It was sadly deteriorated in appearance. Inside he found only an old carter and his daughter. The place was in their charge.
The old man told him apathetically Jael had come home two hours ago and asked for her father and Patty, and they had told her the old farmer was dead and buried, and Patty gone to foreign parts.
“What, you blurted it out like that! You couldn't put yourself in that poor creature's place, and think what a blow it would be? How, in Heaven's name, did she take it?”
“Well, sir, she stared a bit, and looked stupid-like; and then she sat down. She sat crowded all together like in yon corner best part of an hour, and then she got up and said she must go and see his grave.”
“You hadn't the sense to make her eat, of course?”
“My girl here set meat afore her, but she couldn't taste it.”
Dr. Amboyne drove to Raby Hall and told Raby. Raby said he would have Jael up to the hall. It would be a better place for her now than the farm. He ordered a room to be got ready for her, and a large fire lighted, and at the same time ordered the best bedroom for Dr. Amboyne. “You must dine and sleep here,” said he, “and talk of old times.”
Dr. Amboyne thanked him—it was dusk by this time—and was soon seated at that hospitable table, with a huge wood fire blazing genially.
Meantime Jael Dence sat crouched upon her father's grave, stupefied with grief. When she had crouched there a long time she got up, and muttered, “Dead and gone! dead and gone!”
Then she crept up to the old church, and sat down in the porch, benumbed with grief, and still a little confused in her poor head.
She sat there for nearly two hours, and then she got up, and muttered, “Dead and gone—he is dead and gone!” and wandered on the hill desolate.
Her feet wandered, her brain wandered. She found herself at last in a place she recognized. It was Squire Raby's lawn. The moon had just risen, and shone on the turf, and on the little river that went curling round with here and there a deep pool.
She crept nearer, and saw the great bay-window, and a blaze of light behind it.
There she had sung the great Noel with her father; and now he was dead and gone.
There she had been with Henry Little, and seen him recognize his mother's picture; and now he was dead and gone. She had saved his life in vain; he was dead and gone. Every body was dead and gone.
She looked up at the glowing window. She looked down at the pool, with the moon kissing it.
She flung her arms up with a scream of agony, and sunk into the deep pool, where the moon seemed most to smile on it.
Directly after dinner Dr. Amboyne asked to see the unhappy correspondence of which he was to be the judge.
Raby went for the letters, and laid them before him. He took up the fatal letter. “Why, this is not written by Mrs. Little. I know her neat Italian hand too well. See how the letters slant and straggle.”
“Oh! but you must allow for the writer's agitation.”
“Why should I allow for it? YOU DIDN'T. Who can look at this scrawl, and not see that the poor heart-broken creature was not herself when she wrote it? This is not a letter, it is a mere scream of agony. Put yourself in her place. Imagine yourself a woman—a creature in whom the feelings overpower the judgment. Consider the shock, the wound, the frenzy; and, besides, she had no idea that you left this house to get her husband the money from your own funds.”
“She never shall know it either.”
“She does know it. I have told her. And, poor thing, she thinks she was the only one to blame. She seeks your forgiveness. She pines for it. This is the true cause of her illness; and I believe, if you could forgive her and love her, it might yet save her life.”
“Then tell her I blame myself as much as her. Tell her my house, my arms, and my heart are open to her. Amboyne, you are a true friend, and a worthy man. God bless you. How shall we get her here, poor soul? Will you go for her, or shall I?”
“Let me sleep on that,” said Dr. Amboyne.
In the course of the evening, Dr. Amboyne told Raby all the reports about Jael Dence and Henry Little.
“What does that matter now?” said Raby, with a sigh.
Whenever a servant came into the room, Amboyne asked him if Jael had arrived.
Raby shared his curiosity, but not his anxiety. “The girl knows her friends,” said he. “She will have her cry out, you may depend; but after that she will find her way here, and, when she has got over it a little, I shall be sure to learn from her whether he was her lover, and where he was when the place was blown up. A Dence never lies to a Raby.”
But when nine o'clock struck, and there were no tidings of her, Raby began to share the doctor's uneasiness, and also to be rather angry and impatient.
“Confound the girl!” said he. “Her grandfathers have stood by mine, in their danger and trouble, for two hundred years; and now, in her trouble, she slinks away from me.”
“Put yourself in her place,” said Amboyne. “Ten to one she thinks you are offended about her and Henry. She is afraid to come near you.”
“What, when I ask her?”
“Through your stupid lazy servants, who, to save themselves trouble, have very likely told somebody else to tell her; and we know what comes of that process. Ten to one the invitation has either missed her altogether, or come to her divested of all that is kind and soothing. And remember, she is not a man. She is a poor girl, full of shame and apprehension, and needs a gentle encouraging hand to draw her here. Do, for once, put yourself in a woman's place—you were born of a woman.”
“You are right,” said Raby. “I will send down a carriage for her, with a line in my own hand.”
He did so.
At eleven the servant came back with the news that Jael Dence was not at home. She had been seen wandering about the country, and was believed to be wrong in her head. George, the blacksmith, and others, were gone up to the old church after her.
“Turn out with torches, every man Jack of you, and find her,” said Raby.
As for Raby and Amboyne, they sat by the fireside and conversed together—principally about poor Mrs. Little; but the conversation was languid.
A few minutes after midnight a terrible scream was heard. It was uttered out of doors, yet it seemed to penetrate the very room where Raby and Amboyne were seated. Both men started to their feet. The scream was not repeated. They looked at each other.
“It was in my garden,” said Raby; and, with some little difficulty, he opened the window and ran out, followed by Amboyne.
They looked, but could see nothing.
But, with that death-shriek ringing in their ears, they wasted no time. Raby waved Amboyne to the left, and himself dashed off to the right, and they scoured the lawn in less than a minute.
A cry of horror from Raby! He had found the body of a woman floating in a pool of the river, head downward.
He dashed into the water directly and drew it to the bank; Dr. Amboyne helped him, and they got it out on dry land. The face was ghastly, the body still.
“Turn her face downward,” said Amboyne, “give her every chance. Carry her gently.”
One took the shoulders, the other the feet; they carried her slowly in and laid her gently down before the fire.
She lay like dripping marble.
Her clothes clinging tightly round her, revealed her marvelous form and limbs of antique mold—but all so deadly still.
Amboyne kneeled over her, searching, in vain, for some sign of life. He groaned.
“Oh!” said he, “is it possible that such a creature as this can be cut off in its prime?”
“Dead!” cried Raby, trembling all over. “Oh, God forbid! One of her ancestors saved a Raby's life in battle, another saved a Raby in a foaming flood; and I couldn't save her in a dead pool! She is the last of that loyal race, and I'm the last Raby. Farewell, Dence! Farewell, Raby!”
While he bemoaned her thus, and his tears actually dripped upon her pale face, Amboyne detected a slight quivering in the drowned woman's throat.
“Hush?” said he to Raby.
There was a pair of old-fashioned bellows by the side of the fire; Amboyne seized them, and opened Jael's mouth with more ease than he expected. “That is a good sign,” said he.
He inflated the bellows, and inserted the tube very carefully; then he discharged the air, then gently sucked it back again. When he had done this several times something like a sigh escaped from Jael's breast. The doctor removed the bellows, and felt her heart and examined her eyes. “Curious!” said he. “Give me some brandy. It is more like syncope than drowning.”
Acting on this notion, he laid her flat on her back, and applied neat brandy to her nostrils and ears.
After a while she moved her whole body like a wounded snake, and moaned feebly.
Raby uttered a loud shout of joy. “She is saved!” he cried. “She is saved!” He jumped about the room like a boy, and, anxious to do something or other, was for ringing up the female servants. But Amboyne would not hear of it. “On the contrary,” said he, “lock the door, and let only you and I see the poor girl's distress when she comes back to this bitter world. Raby, don't you shut your eyes to the truth. This was no accident.”
“I am afraid not,” said Raby. “She knows the water as well as I do, and she picked out the deepest hole: poor girl! poor girl”
He then asked Amboyne in a whisper what he thought she would do when she came to her senses.
“Impossible to say. She may be violent, and if so we shall have enough to do to hold her. They tell me she threw that workman like a sack.”
At this moment Jael stretched her great arms and sighed. The movement, though gentle and feminine, had a grandeur and freedom that only goes with power.
The doctor lowered his voice to a whisper. “She is a good Christian, and most likely she will be penitent, and then she will cry her heart out. Any way, she is pretty sure to be hysterical, so mind and be firm as well as kind. There, her color is coming back. Now put yourself in her place. You and I must call this an accident. Stick to that through thick and thin. Ah, she is coming round safe. She shall see you first. You take her right hand, and look at her with all the pity and kindness I am sure you feel.”
Mr. Raby took Jael's hand in both his, and fixed his eyes on her with pity and anxiety.
She came to her senses, and stared at him a long time.
Then she looked down at her wet clothes. Then she snatched her hand away, and covered her face with both hands, and began to rock and moan, and finally turned round and hid her face against the very floor as if she would grovel and burrow into it.
“Are you better, my dear?” said the doctor, quietly.
No reply. And the face still crushed against the floor.
“The next time you faint away, don't let it be on the banks of a river. You have been going too long without food; and you fainted away and fell into the river. Luckily it was not very deep or it might have been serious. You have given us a fine fright, I can tell you.”
While these words were being uttered, Jael, who did not miss a syllable, began to look very, very slowly round with scared and troubled eyes, and to defend herself. “I remember naught,” said she, doggedly. “Who took me out?”
“Mr. Raby.”
She looked timidly at him, and saw his wet clothes.
“Oh, squire, why did you spoil your clothes for me?” and she laid her head on his knee and began to cry.
“My clothes!” said Raby. “The girl wants to break my heart.”
“Eh, dear! and I've spoiled the beautiful carpet,” said Jael, piteously.
“D—n the carpet!” said Raby, nearly blubbering.
All this time Amboyne was putting himself in Jael's Dence's place.
“Is there a good fire in her room?” asked he, with a significant look.
Raby took the hint, and said he would go and see.
As soon as he was out of the room, the transmigrator began to talk very fast to Jael. “Now look here, Jael, that poor man is alone in the world now, and very sad; he wants you to keep his house for him. He has been sending messages all day after you, and your room has been ready ever so long.”
“My room in this house?”
“Yes. But we could not find you. However, here you are. Now you must not go back to the farm. The poor squire won't be quite so sad if he sees you about him. You know he was always fond of you Dences. You should have seen him cry over you just now when he thought you were dead.”
“I am more cared for than I thought,” said Jael, softly.
“Yes, but not more than you deserve, my dear.” He dipped a sponge-cake in wine. “Oblige me by eating that.”
She took it submissively.
“Now another.”
She ate another, and a third.
“It's a very wicked lass you are so good to,” said she, softly, and some gentle tears began to flow.
“Stuff and nonsense!” said the doctor. “What do you know about wickedness? I'm a better judge of that than you, and I say you are the best girl and the most unselfish girl in the world; and the proof is that, instead of sitting down and nursing your own griefs, you are going to pluck up courage, and be a comfort to poor Mr. Raby in his lonely condition.”
These words appeared to sink into Jael's mind: she put her hands to her head, and pondered them. Perhaps she might have replied to them, but Raby came down, and ordered her to her apartment.
She took a step or two in that direction, but presently drew back and would not move. “The women-folk! They'll see me on the stair, this figure.”
“Not they. They are all in bed.”
“Are they so? Then please let me go to the kitchen for a dry cloth or two.”
“What to do?”
“To dry the rug a bit. Just look—what a mess I've made!”
“I'll say it was the dog.”
“Will you, though? Oh, but you are a good friend to me this night. Then I'll go. Let me wring my gown a bit, not to mess the stairs as well.”
“No, no; I'll take all the blame. Will you go, or must the doctor and I carry you?”
“Nay, nay, there's no need. Your will is my pleasure, sir.”
So Mr. Raby showed Jael to her room, and opened a great wardrobe, and took out several armfuls of antique female habiliments, and flung them on the floor; rich velvets, more or less faded, old brocades, lace scarves, chemises with lace borders; in short, an accumulation of centuries. He soon erected a mound of these things in the middle of the floor, and told her to wear what she liked, but to be sure and air the things well first; “for,” said he, “it is a hundred years or so since they went on any woman's back. Now, say your prayers like a good girl, and go to bed.”
“Ay,” said Jael, solemnly, “I shall say my prayers, you may be sure.”
As he left the room she said, in a sort of patient way, “Good squire, I am willing to live, since you are so lonely.”
Early next morning Mr. Raby was disturbed by female voices in a high key. He opened his window quietly, intending to throw in his bass with startling effect, when, to his surprise, he found the disputants were his dairymaid and Jael Dence.
“And who are you that interferes with me in my work? Where do you come from? Did ye get in over the wall? for ye never came in at no door. Who are you?”
“I am one who won't see the good squire wronged. Aren't ye ashamed? What, eat his bread, and take his wage, and then steal his butter!”
“If ye call me a thief, I'll law ye. Thief yourself! you don't belong to the house; whose gown have you got on your back? Here, James! Tom! here's a strange woman making off with the squire's lady's clothes, and two pounds of butter to boot.”
Jael was taken aback for a moment by this audacious attack, and surveyed her borrowed habiliments with a blush of confusion. Several servants came about at the noise, and her situation bade fair to be a very unpleasant one: but Mr. Raby put in his word; “Hold your tongues, all of ye. Now, Jael Dence, what is the matter?”
Instantly all eyes were turned up to the window with a start, and Jael told her tale: “Sir,” said she, “I did see this young woman take out something from under her apron and give it to a little girl. I thought there was something amiss, and I stopped the girl at the gate, and questioned her what she was carrying off so sly. She gives a squeak and drops it directly, and takes to her heels. I took it up and brought it in, and here it is, two beautiful pounds of butter, fresh churned; look else!”—here she undid a linen wrap, and displayed the butter—“so I challenged the dairymaid here. She says I'm a thief—and that I leave to you, Squire; you know whether I come of thieves or honest folk; but what I want to know from her is, why her lass dropped the butter and took to her heels at a word?”
“Now, my good Jael,” said the Squire, “if you are going to interfere every time you catch my servants pilfering, you will have a hard time of it. However, zeal is too rare a thing for me to discourage it. I must make an example. Hy, you young woman: I dare say you are no worse than the rest, but you are the one that is found out; so you must pack up your clothes and begone.”
“Not without a month's warning, or a month's wage, sir, it you please,” said the dairymaid, pertly.
“If I catch you in the house when I come down, I'll send you to prison on my own warrant, with the butter tied round your neck.”
At this direful threat the offender began to blubber, and speedily disappeared to pack her box.
Mr. Raby then told the other servants that Jael Dence was the new housekeeper, and that a person of her character was evidently required in the house; they must all treat her with respect, or leave his service. Thereupon two gave warning, and Mr. Raby, who never kept a servant a day after that servant had given him warning, had them up to his room, and paid them a month's wages. “And now,” said he, “for the honor of the house, don't leave us fasting, but eat a good breakfast, and then go to the devil.”
At his own breakfast he related the incident to Dr. Amboyne, with a characteristic comment: “And the fools say there is nothing in race. So likely, that of all animals man alone should be exempt from the law of nature! Take a drowning watch-dog out of the water and put him in a strange house, he is scarcely dry before he sets to work to protect it. Take a drowning Dence into your house, and she is up with the lark to look after your interests. That girl connive and let the man be robbed whose roof shelters her? She COULDN'T; it is not in her blood. I'm afraid there's to be a crusade against petty larceny in this house, and more row about it than it is worth. No matter; I shall support the crusader, on principle. It is not for me to check honest impulses, nor to fight against nature in almost the only thing where she commands my respect.”
“Very well,” said the doctor, “that is settled: so now let us talk of something more important. How are we to get your sister, in her delicate state, from Wales to this place?”
“Why, I will go for her myself, to be sure.”
“Raby, your heart is in the right place, after all. But when she is here, how are we to conceal her unhappy son's fate from her? It will be more difficult than ever, now Jael Dence is in the house.”
“Why so? We must take the girl into our confidence—that is all.”
“The sooner the better then. Let us have her in here.”
Jael was sent for, and Mr. Raby requested her to take a seat, and give all her attention to something Dr. Amboyne had to say.
Dr. Amboyne then told her, with quiet earnestness, that Mrs. Little was at present so ill and weak he felt sure the news of Henry's death would kill her.
“Ay, poor soul!” said Jael, and began to cry bitterly.
The doctor held his peace, and cast a disconsolate look on Raby, as much as to say, “We shall get no efficient aid in this quarter.”
After a little while Jael dried her eyes, and said, “Go on, sir. I must needs cry before you now and then: 'tisn't to say I shall ever cry before HER.”
“Well, then, if we CAN get her safe to this place, and keep her in the dark for a few months, I think we may save her life. Every thing else will be in her favor here: her native air, cherished memories, her brother's love—and, after all, it was fretting about her quarrel with him that first undermined her health and spirits. Well, we shall remove the cause, and then perhaps the effect may go. But how are we to keep the sad truth from her?”
“Let me think,” said Jael Dence. “My head is a deal clearer since last night.”
She leaned her chin upon her hand, and her face and brow showed signs of intellectual power no one had ever observed in them before.
“Who is to go for her?” said she at last.
“I am going myself.”
“That is a mistake at starting, begging your worship's pardon. Why, the very sight of you might startle her into her grave. Nay, you'll give me the money—for mine is all in the savings bank—and I shall go for her myself. I shall tell her squire is longing for her, and that I'm to be here for fear she might feel strange. She always liked me, poor soul. I shall get her safe here, you needn't fear for that. But when she is here”—the chin rested on the hand again—“well, the doctor must forbid visitors. Miss Grace must be told not to write. Every newspaper must be read before she is allowed to see it. And, squire, you will be very kind to her when you are in her company; but we must manage, somehow or other, so that you can keep out of her way.”
“What for, in heaven's name?”
“Sir, we shall have to lie from morn to night; and you will be a bungler at that, saving your presence. If there's a servant left in the house who knows, I'd give that servant a present, and part with her before Mrs. Little sets her foot in the house.”
“This sounds very sensible,” said Raby. “I am a novice at lying. But I shall cultivate the art for poor Edith's sake. I'm not a fanatic: there is justifiable homicide, so why not justifiable facticide?”
“Raby,” said the doctor, “this young woman has said enough to show me that she is more fit to conduct this delicate undertaking than either you or I. Let us profit by the discovery, put our vanity in our pocket, and give her the command. My dear, you see the importance, you see the difficulty; now will you undertake it?”
“I will, sir,” said Jael, firmly; “and I look to succeed, God willing. I shall be in Wales this afternoon.”
“Well, but would you not be the better yourself for one day's rest?”
“No, sir. I've learned, with a sad heart, what one day may bring forth. After that, I'm sworn never to throw away a day. And, as for sitting down and thinking, 'tis the worst thing I can do. I do thank God that in this, my own heavy trouble, I'm not tied to my sad thoughts, but can get about, and do a little of good for Raby House. Do what I will, 'tis but giving them back one pig out of their own farrow; for we owe all we have to them.”
With this she retired to prepare for her journey, leaving both the gentlemen lost in admiration of her simple virtues, and the clear intelligence she had shown them in few words.
She traveled into Wales that very day, and many a burst of bitter grief she had all by herself in the train.
At six P.M. she stood before Mrs. Little with a smiling countenance. Mrs. Little welcomed her with some little pleasure and much surprise.
“Good news, madam,” said Jael. “Squire Raby has sent me to bring you to Raby Hall. He wanted to come himself, but I would not let him.”
“That is good news,” said Mrs. Little languidly. “Now I shall die at peace with my brother—at peace with all mankind, I hope.”
“You'll die when your time comes,” said Jael. “But you have got a shorter journey before you at present, and that is to Raby Hall.”
“Raby Hall! I shall never see it again. I have no strength to move. I am worn out with the battle of life. Stay with me here, and close my eyes.”
“Of course I shall stay with you,” said Jael, and began to gossip with every appearance of carelessness.
Next morning, with infinite difficulty, she persuaded the poor jaundiced lady to show her Aberystwith. She took the tickets herself, and got her patient half-way to Hillsborough; next day, with less difficulty, to Raby Hall. All had been settled before. Edith little was shown into her old bedroom, adorned with pyramids of flowers in her honor; and there she found a loving line from Guy, begging her pardon for his past harshness, and telling her she was to send for him as soon as she felt strong enough to meet.
That evening brother and sister were clasped in each other's arms, and wept tears of affection and regret over each other.
Jael Dence slept on a camp-bed in Mrs. Little's room, which was very spacious, and watched her, and was always about her. Under private advice from Dr. Amboyne, she superintended her patient's diet, and, by soft, indomitable perseverance, compelled her to walk every day, and fight against her fatal lassitude.
Heaven rewarded her by giving her a warm and tender affection for her poor patient that did something to fill her own yearning and desolate heart.
Here I must leave them both for the present, and show how these events affected the main characters of my story.
Just outside the little sea-side town of Eastbank is a house which, being very old, contrasts agreeably with the pretentious villas fashion has raised. It is gloomy inside, yet outside it looks like a cottage: low, rambling, gabled, and picturesque. It stands on a slope just above the sea, and its front garden runs down almost to the sea-shore. The aspect is southerly. The placid sea looks like a beautiful lake; for, about two miles out, a great tongue of land runs across and keeps the tempests out.
The cottage itself was now closed deep with green creepers, and its veranda with jessamine; and the low white walls of the garden were beautiful with vine-leaves and huge fig-leaves, that ran up them and about them, and waved over them in tropical luxuriance. In short, the house was a very bower, and looked the abode of bliss; and this time last year a young couple had spent their honeymoon there, and left it with a sigh. But one place sees many minds; and now this sweet place was the bed on which dropped the broken lily of this tale, Grace Carden.
She lay in the warm air of the veranda, and turned her hollow eyes upon the sea; and every day life crept slowly back to her young body, but not to her desolate heart.
A brain fever either kills or blunts, and Grace's agony was blunted. Her mind was in a strange state. She was beginning to look two things in the face: that the man she loved was dead; that the man she loved, and had nearly died for, had loved another as well as herself: and this last grief, strange to say, was the saving of her. She forgave him with all her heart, for he was dead; she made excuses for him, for she loved him; but since his whole heart had not been hers, her pride and modesty rebelled against dying for him, and she resolved to live; she fought hard to live and get well. Finally, being a very woman, though a noble one, she hated Jael Dence.
She was not alone in the world. Her danger, her illness, and her misery had shown her the treasure of a father's love. He had found this sweet bower for her; and here he sat for hours by her side, and his hand in hers, gazing on her with touching anxiety and affection. Business compelled him to run into Hillsborough now and then, but he dispatched it with feverish haste, and came back to her: it drove him to London; but he telegraphed to her twice a day, and was miserable till he got back. She saw the man of business turned into a man of love for her, and she felt it. “Ah, papa,” she said one day, “I little thought you loved your poor Grace so much. You don't love any other child but me, do you, papa?” and with this question she clung weeping round his neck.
“My darling child, there's nothing on earth I love but you. When shall I see you smile again?”
“In a few hours, years. God knows.”
One evening—he had been in Hillsborough that day—he said, “My dear, I have seen an old friend of yours to-day, Mr. Coventry. He asked very kindly after you.”
Grace made no reply.
“He is almost as pale as you are. He has been very ill, he tells me. And, really, I believe it was your illness upset him.”
“Poor Mr. Coventry!” said Grace, but with a leaden air of indifference.
“I hope I didn't do wrong, but when he asked after you so anxiously, I said, 'Come, and see for yourself.' Oh, you need not look frightened; he is not coming. He says you are offended with him.”
“Not I. What is Mr. Coventry to me?”
“Well, he thinks so. He says he was betrayed into speaking ill to you of some one who, he thought, was living; and now that weighs upon his conscience.”
“I can't understand that. I am miserable, but let me try and be just. Papa, Mr. Coventry was trying to comfort me, in his clumsy way; and what he said he did not invent—he heard it; and so many people say so that I—I—oh, papa! papa!”
Mr. Carden dropped the whole subject directly.
However, she returned to it herself, and said, listlessly, that Mr. Coventry, in her opinion, had shown more generosity than most people would in his case. She had no feeling against him; he was of no more importance in her eyes than that stool, and he might visit her if he pleased, but on one condition—that he should forget all the past, and never presume to speak to her of love. “Love! Men are all incapable of it.” She was thinking of Henry, even while she was speaking of his rival.
The permission, thus limited, was conveyed to Mr. Coventry by his friend Carden; but he showed no hurry to take advantage of it; and, as for Grace, she forgot she had given it.
But this coolness of Coventry's was merely apparent. He was only awaiting the arrival of Patrick Lally from Ireland. This Lally was an old and confidential servant, who had served him formerly in many intrigues, and with whom he had parted reluctantly some months ago, and allowed him a small pension for past services. He dared not leave the villa in charge of any person less devoted to him than this Lally.
The man arrived at last, received minute instructions, and then Mr. Coventry went to Eastbank.
He found what seemed the ghost of Grace Carden lying on the sofa, looking on the sea.
At the sight of her he started back in dismay.
“What have I done?”
Those strange words fell from him before he knew what he was saying.
Grace heard them, but did not take the trouble to inquire into their meaning. She said, doggedly, “I am alive, you see. Nothing kills. It is wonderful: we die of a fall, of a blow, of swallowing a pin; yet I am alive. But never mind me; you look unwell yourself. What is the matter?”
“Can you ask me?”
At this, which implied that her illness was the cause of his, she turned her head away from him with weariness and disgust, and looked at the sea, and thought of the dead.
Coventry sat speechless, and eyed her silent figure with miserable devotion. He was by her side once more, and no rival near. He set himself to study all her moods, and began by being inoffensive to her; in time he might be something more.
He spent four days in Eastbank, and never uttered a word of love; but his soft soothing voice was ever in her ear, and won her attention now and then; not often.
When he left her, she did not ask him to come again.
Her father did, though, and told him to be patient; better days were in store. “Give her time,” said he, “and, a month or two hence, if you have the same feeling for her you used to have—”
“I love her more than ever. I worship her—”
“Then you will have me on your side, stronger than ever. But you must give her time.”
And now Coventry had an ally far more powerful than himself—an ally at once zealous and judicious. Mr. Carden contented himself at first with praising him in general terms; next he affected to laugh at him for renting the villa, merely to be in the place which Grace had occupied. Then Grace defended him. “Don't laugh at an honest love. Pity it. It is all we can do, and the least we can do.”
But when he advanced further, and began to remind his daughter she had once given this gentleman hopes, and all but engaged herself to him, she drew back with fear and repugnance, and said, “If he can not forget that, pray let him never come near me again.”
“Oh,” said Mr. Carden, “I believe he has no hopes of the kind; it is of you I am thinking, not of him. It has got about that poor Little had a connection with some girl in humble life, and that he was in love with her, and you in love with him. That wounds a father's pride, and makes me grateful to Coventry for his unshaken devotion, whilst others are sneering at my poor child for her innocent love.”
Grace writhed, and the tears ran down her cheeks at this. “Oh, spare the dead!” she faltered.
Then her father kissed her, and begged her to forgive him; he would avoid all these topics in future: and so he did, for some time; but what he had said rankled.
A few days after this Coventry came again, and did nothing but soothe Grace with words; only he managed so that Grace should detect him looking very sad when he was not actually employed in cheering her.
She began to pity him a little, and wonder at his devotion.
He had not been gone many hours when another visitor arrived quite unexpectedly—Mr. Raby. He came to tell her his own news, and warn her of the difficult game they were now playing at Raby Hall, that she might not thwart it inadvertently.
Grace was much agitated, and shed tears of sympathy. She promised, with a sigh, to hold no communication with Mrs. Little. She thought it very hard, but she promised.
In the course of his narrative Mr. Raby spoke very highly of Jael Dence, and of her conduct in the matter.
To this Grace did not respond. She waited her opportunity, and said, keenly and coldly, “How did she come to be in your house?”
“Well, that is a secret.”
“Can you not trust me with a secret?”
“Oh yes,” said Raby, “provided you will promise faithfully to tell no one.”
Grace promised, and he then told her that Jael Dence, in a moment of desperation, had thrown herself into the river at the back of his house. “Poor girl!” said he, “her brain was not right at the time. Heaven keep us all from those moments of despair. She has got over it now, and nurses and watches my poor sister more like a mother watching her child than a young woman taking care of an old one. She is the mainspring of the house.”
At all this Grace turned from pale to white, but said nothing; and Raby ran on in praise of Jael, little dreaming what pain his words inflicted.
When he left her, she rose and walked down to the sea; for her tortured spirit gave her body energy. Hitherto she found she had only suspected; now she was sure. Hitherto she had feared Henry Little had loved Jael Dence a little; now she was sure he had loved her best. Jael Dence would not have attempted self-destruction for any man unless he loved her. The very act proved her claim to him more eloquently than words could do. Now she believed all—the anonymous letter—Mr. Coventry's report—the woman's words who worked in the same factory, and could not be deceived. And her godfather accepted Jael Dence and her claim to sympathy: she was taken into his house, and set to nurse Henry Little's mother: poor Grace was slighted on all sides; she must not even write to Mrs. Little, nor take part in the pious falsehood they were concocting together, Raby and his Jael Dence, whom everybody loved best—everybody except this poor faithful ill-used wretch, Frederick Coventry; and him she hated for loving her better than the man she loved had loved her.
Tender, but very proud, this sensitive creature saw herself dethroned from her love. Jael Dence had eclipsed her in every way; had saved his life with her strong arm, had almost perished with him; and had tried to kill herself when he was dead. SHE was far behind this rival in every thing. She had only loved, and suffered, and nearly died. “No, no,” she said to herself, “she could not love him better than I did: but HE loved HER best; and she knew it, and that made her arm strong to fight, and her heart strong to die for him. I am nobody—nothing.” Then the scalding tears ran down her cheeks. But soon her pride got the upper hand, and dried her cheeks, and nearly maddened her.
She began to blush for her love, to blush for her illness. She rose into that state of exasperation in which persons of her sex do things they look back upon with wonder, and, strange to say, all this without one unkind thought of him whose faults she saw, but excused—he was dead.
She now began to struggle visibly, and violently, against her deadly sorrow. She forced herself to take walks and rides, and to talk, with nothing to say. She even tried to laugh now and then. She made violent efforts to be gracious and pitiful to Mr. Coventry, and the next minute made him suffer for it by treating him like a troublesome hound.
He loved her madly, yet sometimes he felt tempted to kill her, and end both her torture and his own.
Such was the inner life of Grace Carden for many days; devoid of striking incident, yet well worthy of study by those who care to pierce below the surface, and see what passes in the hearts of the unhappy, and to learn how things come gradually about that sound incredible when not so traced, yet are natural and almost inevitable results of certain conflicting passions in a virgin heart.
One day Mr. Carden telegraphed from London to Mr. Coventry at Hillsborough that he was coming down to Eastbank by the midday express, and would be glad to meet him there at four o'clock. He also telegraphed to Grace, and said, “Dinner at five.”
Both gentlemen arrived about the same time, a little before dinner.
Soon after dinner was over, Grace observed a restlessness in her father's manner, which convinced her he had something private to say to Mr. Coventry. Her suspicions were aroused: she fancied he was going to encourage Mr. Coventry to court her. Instantly the whole woman was in arms, and her love for the deceased came rushing back tenfold. She rose, soon after dinner, and retired to the drawing-room; but, as soon as she got there, she slipped quietly into the veranda, and lay softly down upon her couch. The dining-room window was open, and with her quick ears, she could hear nearly every word.
She soon found that all her bitterness and her preparation for hostilities were wasted. Her father was telling Mr. Coventry the story of Richard Martin; only he carried it a step further than I have done.
“Well, sir,” said he, “the money had not been paid more than a month, when an insurance office down at Liverpool communicated with us. The same game had been played with them; but, somehow, their suspicions were excited. We compared notes with them, and set detectives to work. They traced Martin's confederates, and found one of them was in prison awaiting his trial for some minor offense. They worked on him to tell the truth (I am afraid they compounded), and he let out the whole truth. Every one of those villains could swim like ducks, and Richard Martin like a fish. Drowned? not he: he had floated down to Greenwich or somewhere—the blackguard! and hid himself. And what do you think the miscreants did next? Bought a dead marine; and took him down in a box to some low public-house by the water-side. They had a supper, and dressed their marine in Richard Martin's clothes, and shaved its whiskers, and broke its tooth, and set it up in a chair, with a table before it, and a pot of ale, and fastened a pipe in its mouth; and they kept toasting this ghastly corpse as the thing that was to make all their fortunes.” At this grotesque and horrible picture, a sigh of horror was uttered in the veranda. Mr. Carden, occupied with his narrative, did not hear it, but Coventry did. “Then, when it was pitch dark, they staggered down to the water with it, and planted it in the weeds. And, mark the cunning! when they had gone through their farce of recognizing it publicly for Richard Martin, they bribed a churchwarden and buried it under our very noses: it was all done in a way to take in the very devil. There's no Richard Martin; there never was a Richard Martin; there never will be: all this was contrived and executed by a swindler well known to the police, only they can't catch him; he is here, and there and everywhere; they call him 'Shifty Dick.' He and his myrmidons have bled the 'Gosshawk' to the tune of nine hundred pounds.”
He drew his breath and proceeded more calmly. “However, a lesson of this kind is never thrown away upon a public man, and it has given me some very curious ideas about another matter. You know what I mean.”
Coventry stared, and looked quite taken aback by this sudden turn.
However he stammered out, “I suppose you mean—but, really, I can't imagine what similarity—” he paused, and, inadvertently, his eye glanced uneasily toward the veranda.
“Oh,” said Mr. Carden, “these diabolical frauds are not done upon one pattern, or, of course, there would soon be an end of their success. But come now, what proof have we got that what they found in the river at Hillsborough was the remains of Henry Little?”
“I don't know, I am sure. But nobody seems to doubt it. The situation, the clothes, the ring—so many coincidences.”
“That is all very well, if there were no rogues in the world. But there are; and I know it, to my cost. The 'Gosshawk' has just lost nine hundred pounds by not suspecting. It shall not lose five thousand by the same weakness; I'll take care of that.”
He paused a moment, and then proceeded to argue the matter:
“The very idea of an imposture has never occurred to any body; in Little's case, it did not occur to me until this business of Shifty Dick enlightened me. But, come now, just admit the idea of imposture into that honest, unsuspicious mind of yours, and you'll find the whole thing wears a very doubtful appearance directly. A common workman—he was no more at the time—insures his life, for how much? three hundred pounds? no; five thousand. Within one year after that he disappears, under cover of an explosion. Some weeks afterward—about as many as the Martin swindle—there is found in the river a fragment of humanity; an arm, and a hand, and a piece of a human trunk; but no face, mind you: arms are pretty much alike, faces differ. The fragment is clad in brown tweed, and Little wore brown tweed: that is all very well; but the marine was found dressed from head to foot in Shifty Dick's very clothes. But let us go on. There was a plain gold ring found on the hand in Hillsborough river, and my poor daughter had given Little a plain gold ring. But what was there to hinder an impostor from buying some pauper's body, and putting a plain gold ring on the hand? Why, paupers' bodies are constantly sold, and the funeral services gabbled over a coffin full of stones. If I had paper and ink here, and could put Little's case and Martin's in two columns, I should soon show you that Martin and his gang faced and overcame more and greater difficulties in the way of imposture than any that have been overcome in Little's case. The Martin gang dealt with the face; here, that is shirked. The Martin gang planted a body, not a fragment. Does it not strike you as very odd that the rest of Henry Little is not to be found? It may be all right; but, of the two, I incline to think it is a plan, and that some person, calling himself the heir or assign of Little, will soon apply to the 'Gosshawk' for five thousand pounds. Well, let him. I shall look on that person as the agent of a living man, not the heir of a dead one; and I shall tell him I don't believe in arms, and shoulders, and tweed suits, and plain gold rings—(why, wedding-rings are the very things conjurors take from the public at random to play hanky-panky with; they are so like one another). I shall demand to see the man's face; and the mother who bore him must identify that face before I will pay one shilling to his heirs or assigns. I am waiting to see who will come forward and claim. Nobody moves; and that is curious. Well, when they do, I shall be ready for them. You look pale! But no wonder: it is really no subject for an after-dinner conversation.”
Coventry was pale indeed, and his mind all in a whirl as to what he should say; for Mr. Carden's sagacity terrified him, and the worst of it was, he felt sure that Grace Carden heard every word.
At last, however, his natural cunning came to his aid, and he made a very artful speech, directed principally to his unseen hearer.
“Mr. Carden,” said he, “this seems to me very shrewd; but surely it fails in one respect: you leave the man's character out of the account. Mr. Little came between me and one I love, and inflicted great misery on me; but I will try and be just to him. I don't believe he was an impostor of that kind. He was false in love; he had been reared amongst workmen, and every body says he loved a working-girl more than he did your daughter; but as for his cheating you or any other person out of five thousand pounds, I can't believe it. They all say he was as honest a man in money matters as ever breathed.”
“You judge him by yourself. Besides, men begin by deceiving women, but they go on to—Why, Grace, my poor child—Good heavens! have you—?”
Grace was leaning against the open window, ghastly and terrible.
“Yes,” said she haughtily, “I have been guilty of the meanness of listening, and I suffer for it. It is but one pang more to a broken heart. Mr. Coventry, you are just, you are generous; and I will try and reward you for those words. No, papa, no impostor, but a man sore tried, sore tempted. If he is alive, we shall soon know.”
“How?”
“He will write—TO JAEL DENCE.”
Having uttered this strange speech, she rushed away with a wild cry of agony, and nobody saw her face again that night.
She did not come down-stairs next day. Mr. Carden went up to her. He stayed with her an hour, and came down looking much dejected; he asked Mr. Coventry to take a turn in the garden with him. When they were alone, he said, gravely, “Mr. Coventry, that unfortunate conversation of ours has quite upset my poor girl. She tells me now she will not believe he is dead until months and months have passed without his writing to Jael Dence.”
“Well, but, sir,” said Coventry, “could you not convince her?”
“How can I, when I am myself convinced he is alive, and will give us a great deal of trouble yet? for it is clear to me the poor girl loves him more than she knows. Look here, Coventry, there's no man I so desire for a son-in-law as yourself; you have shown a patience, a fidelity!—but as a just man, and a man of honor, I must now advise you to give up all thoughts of her. You are not doing yourself justice; she will never marry you while that man is alive and unmarried. I am provoked with her: she will not leave her room while you are in the house. Shall I tell you what she said? 'I respect him, I admire him, but I can't bear the sight of him now.' That is all because I let out last night that I thought Little was alive. I told her, alive or not, he was dead to her.”
“And what did she say to that?”
“Not a word. She wrung her hands, and burst out crying terribly. Ah! my friend, may you never know what it is to be a father, and see your child wring her hands, and cry her heart out, as I have seen mine.”
His own tears flowed, and his voice was choked. He faltered out, “We are two miserable creatures; forgive us, and leave us to our fate.”
Coventry rose, sick at heart, and said, “Tell her I will not intrude upon her.”
He telegraphed to Lally, and went back to Hillsborough as miserable as those he left behind; but with this difference, he deserved his misery, deserved it richly.
Ere he had been two days in Hillsborough a telegram came from him to Mr. Carden:
“Re Little. Important discovery. Pray come here at once.”
Mr. Carden had the prudence to withhold from Grace the nature of this communication. He merely told her business called him suddenly to Hillsborough. He started by the next train and found Mr. Coventry awaiting him at “Woodbine Villa” with strange news: it was not conjecture, nor a matter of deduction, but a piece of undeniable evidence; and it knocked both Mr. Carden's theory and his daughter's to atoms at one blow.