Lady Elton went back sadly to her children. She found Aglaia curled up on the cushions at Grace's feet, reading the New Testament to her, and Trixy sitting beside them with swollen eyes.
With an unuttered prayer Lady Elton sat down and listened. It was one of the beautiful, mystical chapters of St. John. The child read it through, in her sweet tremulous voice, and then stopped.
'Grace is asleep,' she whispered.
They sat silent, watching her. Her face was almost transparent. The blue-veined eyelids, fringed with long silken lashes, lay against her cheeks. The breathing was soft and regular, like a child's. But she was not asleep, and presently she opened her eyes, and looked round on them.
'How good everyone is to me!' she murmured. 'What have I done that you should love me so?' Then in a lower tone, 'Mother, love is real.'
Her mother trembled, for she knew that the vision of the night before was with her.
'Love is real; love will conquer,' said Trixy.
Grace turned to her, and for a moment there seemed to be on the dying face some faint reflection of the fire and enthusiasm that shone from that of the living. 'Thank you, Trixy,' she murmured, 'say that again. It does me good.'
'But it is true—it is true—how could anything else be?' cried the young girl. 'Love is real—it is strong—it is the strongest—it conquers everything—we know it—we who have felt.' And then sudden tears dimmed the lustre of her eyes, and she bent her head. 'Grace, dearest,' she whispered. 'Our love is calling you. Won't you—won't you—stay?' For an instant the large grey eyes, that were fixed on Trixy's face, seemed to lose their steadfastness.
'Life is very sweet,' murmured Grace, 'to go on—to know—to love—to see the world opening out——'
'Life is beautiful,' said Trixy. 'Life is divine. You shall not die. It would be cruel.'
'Hush! Hush!' said Lady Elton. 'Do you see?'
A faint colour had tinged the white face on the pillow, and the large eyes had filled with tears. Trixy turned away with a sob in her throat.
A little later they brought her food. She tried her hardest to eat, but she could not. Presently her mother saw her lips moving and bent over her. 'I have been thinking about it,' she said faintly. 'I am afraid my heart and brain are weak. I can't bear things as others do. If I stayed I should be a trouble to you. Tell Trixy,' and then again, in a still lower voice, 'somewhere else I may understand better.'
They noticed that, throughout that day, she watched Aglaia with a curious wistful expression in her eyes. Once when Tom, who was coming in and going out helplessly all day long, sat down beside her bed, she drew the child towards her, and put her little hand in his. But she said very little, and none of them spoke to her much. All but Trixy were abandoning hope; she hoped on still.
In the evening Grace seemed better and stronger; she asked for fruit, and they brought her the richest and rarest that could be procured. There were baskets of fragrant white flowers in the room. She asked for one to be placed on her bed, and, for a few minutes, her thin pale fingers strayed lovingly over the cool petals. One little white rose she pressed to her lips.
'It is such a pleasant sensation to touch them,' she said; 'they are so pure, so sweet.'
Late in the evening the doctor paid her a visit, gave her an anodyne and spoke with doubtful cheerfulness. Kit, and Mrs. Lyster, and Mrs. Durant, and baby Dick and his mother, and poor little Lucy came in, one by one, to bid her good-night. They had been sternly drilled by Trixy, and none of them wept or sighed. Trixy herself and Aglaia, who had begged hard not to be sent away, sat with her until ten o'clock; then Lady Elton insisted that they should rest, and they went into the inner room where they slept together.
Tom had by this time crept in. By one of the marble lattices there was a deep recess, shut off from the rest of the room by a screen. In this recess he took up his station. The early hours of the night passed quickly by. Grace seemed to be asleep. There was no movement, not the least sound of life in all the palace. Even the chattering of the chowkedars was silent, in obedience to the orders he had sent out by Hoosanee. That faithful servant was keeping his watch in the hall of the zenana; but he did not so much as move. Outside Tom could hear a soft wind stirring in the heavy foliage of the trees, and silver arrows of light, shot earthwards from shining worlds, myriads of miles away, stole in through the lattice. Years afterwards he remembered, with a throb of pain, how wide and how desolate the universe seemed to him that night. Tired as he was when he began his watch, he did not feel the least disposition to sleep; his mind was too busy, too poignantly alive, his heart was too full. As the night wore on, dark and terrible thoughts assailed him. Once he could have cried out like a hurt child. The cruelty of life smote him, the piteous waste of force—hearts large with love, souls aching with passionate pity, and able to do nothing!
Down the sheltered river the little boat might be brought, furthered tenderly by guardian hands. Upon the sea, wide, fathomless, undiscovered, the awful sea of eternity, it must launch out alone. This was the mystery that oppressed him. Later he might think of himself, his own sorrow and loss and disappointment. Now all his heart and mind were with the sweet soul that was going out from them into the invisible.
A sense of defeat and powerlessness, almost intolerable in its anguish, came over him. He got up and struck his forehead against the marble lattice, and the sharp pain of the blow seemed to bring him back to himself.
Now and then he would rise from his seat behind the screen and look back into the room. By the light of the shaded lamp he could see the mother's bent form as she turned over the pages of her book, and the white, white face upon the pillow, as still now as if death had frozen it into the everlasting silence. Twice he saw Lady Elton rise swiftly and lean over her, and then his heart beat so tumultuously that he thought she must have heard it. But she returned to her seat, and he knew that there was still breath.
So on for hours that seemed like a lifetime. At last the darkness began to lift. Through the lattice by which he was standing he saw the stars grow high and pale, and the grey light of early morning stealing over the earth. The air came in with the chill of the morning in it, and he drew the screen further round the lattice lest it should touch the white face on the pillow.
Ah! what was that? A cry! In an instant he was by the bedside; Grace was sitting up. Her eyes were wide open, her arms were extended, her voice was clear and strong. 'Keep me awake, Kit,' she cried, 'keep me awake!' Then in a voice lower, but thrilled through and through with ecstasy, 'Tom! Tom!'
A mist was before his eyes. He did not see Lady Elton, who was chafing the poor little feet that were deadly cold. The room, the bed, the flowers, the rich and costly things that were scattered about her, had vanished away. He was in the hermit's hut once more, and his darling, torn from the jaws of death, was at his feet. With an inarticulate cry, he threw himself on his knees and held out his arms. She sank into them like a tired child, a smile of ineffable peace on her lips. But the touch of her cold cheek recalled him to the present. 'She is worse,' he said, looking at her with eyes full of anguish. 'Mother, for God's sake, can nothing be done?'
Sorrowfully the poor mother shook her head. She had looked on death too often not to know it.
At that moment there was another voice—a cry stifled but full of pain. It was Trixy. With white gown and bare feet, her hair flying wildly about her shoulders, she stood in the doorway between the two rooms. In an instant she had taken it all in, and was rushing madly across the room. 'You are dreaming, all of you,' she cried. 'She is in a swoon; I know it is nothing else. Where is that cordial? She was nearly off yesterday, and I brought her back with it. And the doctor. Aglaia, fly for him! Tell him Grace is in a faint. Tom, give her this; she must take it, she must. Heavens! how helpless men are! let me try! Grace, sweetest, it is Trixy, your sister. For her sake! see love!'—her tears were raining over the white hands—'Grace, I shall never be happy again if you leave us! Try this once, and no one shall torture you again as long as you live. One little drop if you love me!' The spoon was between her lips, but it was in vain, she could not swallow. Yet the sister's passionate agony had done what the lover's voice could not. For an instant the heavy eyelids were lifted. Ah! what a look! dumb pain! speechless entreaty! To the day of her death it will haunt the sister's heart; she will see it in her dreams. The rest was like a trance, a vision. She seemed to hear a voice whispering to her to be still, and then a great chill struck her, and she smiled to think that she was going away with Grace, and there was a confusion of many hands and voices about her, and she thought with a vague pity of Bertie; and the next thing she knew she was starting out of what seemed like a deep sleep and seeing her mother sitting beside her; but when she tried to get up, and said that she would go to Grace, her mother laid her hand upon her. 'Grace died last night,' she said.
'Last night!' echoed Trixy, falling back.
'And you have slept all day, my poor little one,' said Lady Elton, stooping to kiss her.
Trixy lay like one bewildered.
'And Tom?' she said presently.
'I have not seen him since. I hope he has been sleeping too.'
'Poor Tom!' said Trixy, her eyes filling with tears. 'His trouble is greater than ours.'
'Yes; and think of all he has done for us. I shall thank God to the day of my death that we had this quiet happy time together,' said poor Lady Elton, with a little stifled sob.
'You are better than I am, mother. I can't feel anything but angry yet. But not with Tom. Oh! not with Tom! He is a hero,' cried poor little Trixy.
Of the days that followed immediately I have neither space nor inclination to write many words. It was a time of deep anxiety in Gumilcund, where it soon became evident that the young rajah, who had battled so stoutly with hardship, difficulty, danger, and disappointment, was seriously ill. His spirit was high, but his bodily powers were not equal to the task of sustaining it. Though he kept about and did, to the best of his ability, the tasks that fell in his way, those in the palace, and indeed many beyond it, saw that his strength was failing daily. At last, and, as some of them said later, providentially, the crisis came. A chill caught in a night ride through the city brought on fever. For several days he lay hovering between life and death. Lady Elton used to say that this illness of Tom's saved both her and him from madness. He was compelled to obey the voice of nature, and keep quiet for a time. She, having to put her own poignant grief aside and to assume a cheerfulness which she was far from feeling, found life, with its homely joys and sorrows, take hold of her once more. Grace had gone away into the invisible, but these others remained; Tom, who had to be wooed back with the tenderest care to the paths of the living; Trixy, who had to be persuaded—poor, impulsive child!—that it was not wicked to be happy; Kit and Aglaia, who watched her to and fro with the most pitiful, beseeching eyes; Lucy, 'a very Niobe for tears'; and her dear old General, who sent urgent messages that she would take care of herself, and not add to his sorrow and remorse by leaving them when they wanted her the most.
Her first really joyful moment after Grace's death was when, with finger on lip but eyes dancing with pleasure, she looked in, after a long absence, on the little melancholy party in the pillared hall of the zenana and whispered, 'The rajah is better; he is sleeping naturally; the doctor gives hope.'
It was delightful to see the sad faces relax, and to hear the fervent congratulations. Up to this Lady Elton had allowed no one to take her place. She and Hoosanee, whose devotion was unlimited, took the severer part of the nursing between them. But now, when all crowded round her, entreating to be allowed to take their share, she chose out Mrs. Lyster to join her. She knew, by the instincts of her own sad heart, that the service would be a comfort and relief to her who had suffered more than any of them, and, indeed, the clever, resourceful little Irishwoman, with her bright ways, her ready smiles, and her unconquerable and delicious sense of humour, proved a most valuable assistant.
Never was man or woman more tenderly nursed than our young rajah. Later he used to tell his friends that they forced him back to life. It would have been the basest ingratitude on his part not to try to get better when they were all so anxious and careful for him. The vigorous constitution which he had inherited, and which no excess had ever spoiled, stood him in even better stead than the nursing. Life in him was far too strong to be fatally worsted in this first serious encounter with its foes. But it was a changed life. This, when he came amongst them again, they all recognised. It was a graver man—one not so prone to the exhibition of feeling—who rose from that bed of sickness. The boy, with his raptures, his poetic transports, and his passionate enthusiasms, had gone. The man, quiet, reserved, courteous, but withal stern and decided, had taken his place. The people, to whom he presented himself as soon as his doctor would permit the exertion, said that his resemblance to his predecessor, Byrajee Pirtha Raj, was more striking than ever.
Grace died in December. Before January had run its course the little party of ladies in the zenana had begun to break up. Travelling being once more possible, their relatives felt that it was not fair to tax the hospitality of the Rajah of Gumilcund any further.
Little Dick and his mother were the first to go; a haven in the hills had been provided for them until the spring, when they were to return to England.
Then came the turn of Mrs. Durant and the gallant Kit. Colonel Durant had been able to provide an escort for his wife and son to Calcutta, whence he wished them to proceed directly to England. He wrote to Tom as to an Eastern prince, thanking him earnestly for his protection and help, and asking if he could be of any use to him with the Government. Tom wrote that the consciousness of having been of service to English people was a more than sufficient reward for all he had done. If, however, he might be allowed not to lose sight of Kit, who was a charming little fellow, and his particular friend, he would take it as a kindness.
Kit was exceedingly reluctant to go. He did not see, he said, why they could not stay with the rajah. Gumilcund, he was sure, was quite as good as London, and Bâl Narîn taught him all he wanted to know. But Kit had to leave, his protest notwithstanding.
The Nepaulese shikari, who had continued to be Kit's devoted attendant, left Gumilcund at the same time as hischota Sahib, with whom he meant to travel as far as Calcutta. Bâl Narîn, so far as means were concerned, was now a gentleman at large, Tom having settled upon him a sufficient income to enable him to live in comfort and without toil for the rest of his days. It was his intention now to see the world. Besides Lady Elton, whom the General was urging to return to Meerut, preparatorily to a start for England, which he meditated shortly, there were now in the palace only Lucy, Mrs. Lyster, and Aglaia.
Lucy's husband, who was on active service, could easily have made arrangements for her to go to the hills; but she begged to remain at Gumilcund, and, as there was no particular reason why she should move, Captain Robertson accepted with gratitude the rajah's proposal that she should make her home in his city until his own active service was over. Being Bertie Liston's comrade, he knew more about the Rajah of Gumilcund than Colonel Durant.
Mrs. Lyster, whose husband and baby were gone, had no ties in India. The dear ones at home were drawing her; but they were provided for, and there was no need for hurry. When plans were talked over, she agreed gladly to remain in Gumilcund, looking after the little Aglaia until they could both be sent home. Of Aglaia's present departure there was no question. Her mother and father had gone. Her friends in England believed doubtless that she had died with them. In time to come, Tom promised himself to look them up; but, for the moment, she belonged to her deliverer.
As for Lady Elton, she simply declined to leave Gumilcund until Tom could be said to be in his usual health. She owed this, she wrote to his mother, to himself, to Grace. The General might come to her and Trixy. They could not go to him.
The wild work in the neighbourhood of Meerut, which had earned theKhakee Ressalahtheir laurels, was by this time over. The courts were open; the country was comparatively quiet; the robber-tribes having taken warning by one or two notable executions, had taken what was left of them elsewhere, and the peasants were coming back slowly to rebuild their little villages of mud huts, and to cultivate their fields. The General, who had nothing to do in this work of organisation, finding for the second time his occupation gone, gathered a few volunteers round him and set off for Gumilcund, which he reached, without the least difficulty, one evening in February.
The young rajah was convalescent, but not off the invalid list. The visitor, recognised at once as an Englishman of distinction, was shown into the ante-room of Tom's sleeping apartment, where, having been left by his kind nurses for the night, he was reclining in a nest of cushions. He sprang up, and held out both his hands.
'General!' he cried. 'You!'
'Yes, my boy,' said the old man brokenly. 'I have come to look you up, you see, as I couldn't persuade you to come to Meerut. Sit down! Sit down! You have been ill?'
'Nothing to speak of; though my dear nurse, Lady Elton, insists on coddling me still. Shall I send for her?'
'Presently. I should like to have a little talk with you first, if it won't be too much for you.'
'My dear sir, I am well, perfectly well.'
Very strange and sad was the conversation that followed. When Tom, who knew the high soul, the resolute nature, and the grand audacity of his old friend, found him stammering and faltering, pouring out thanks and blessings, and stopping in the midst of broken words to reproach himself bitterly for the blind and credulous folly which had precipitated them all into danger, he was too much moved to answer.
But, meanwhile, the rumour of the arrival had spread in the palace, and Lady Elton, yearning to see her dear old General, and fearful of the exciting effects of his conversation upon her patient, wrapped herself in her veil, and went hastily through the corridors that separated their apartments from those of the rajah.
When the emotion of the two men was at its highest point, she stood between them, a hand on both. 'It is enough, Wilfrid,' she said. 'He is our son; you must not thank him too much.'
'Thank you,' murmured Tom.
As for the General, he took up his gentle wife in his arms and asked her, with a plaintiveness that came strangely from him, if she meant to desert him and the girls for ever. Tom smiled and left them together.
Of course the General was irresistible. When Lady Elton met Tom the following day, she told him that she must leave him. 'I really believe you have turned the corner, dear,' she said, 'and they are so devoted to you; besides, there is Mrs. Lyster. She promises faithfully not to go until you are quite well. My dear old General doesn't seem to be able to get on without me. It is very foolish——'
'Dearest Lady Elton, I would not keep you for the world. It has been too good and kind of you to stay so long,' said Tom.
'Hush! Hush!' said Lady Elton reproachfully. 'Is that the way sons speak to their mothers? But, seriously, the General says that if things go on as they are doing now, he will take us home in April or May. You ought to come with us.'
'And leave Gumilcund?'
'Oh! not for always of course. Spend the summer at home, and go back in the winter. The change will do you good, both in your body and mind.'
'I don't think I care much to go to England now,' said Tom. He was gazing out at the garden, the azure-blue lake, and the purple outline of the hills behind them, and thinking sorrowfully of his old dreams.
'But that is just it,' pleaded Lady Elton. 'You should make yourself care. I know how people slip into not-caring, dear. It is the worst of complaints. It takes all the hope and heart out of you. Think of us—of your mother—of England——'
'Yes: I will think,' he answered gently, and that was all she could persuade him to say then.
General Elton spoke to him more strongly. He had not seen him since his visit to Meerut, in the bright and joyous days that preceded the mutiny, and he was shocked by the change in his appearance. 'My dear boy,' he said, 'if you value your health—if you value your reason—if you wish to continue the useful career which you have begun so nobly, you must give yourself rest and change. Tell me frankly, is there anything to prevent your taking a holiday?'
'I don't think so,' answered Tom. 'The crisis is over, and things have been set going. They will work very well without me. It is not a question of being spared.'
'No; it is want of will. Now, my dear fellow, in your mother's name, as well as in that of others, I must scold you.'
'Poor mother!' he murmured.
'She has been eating her heart out with anxiety this dreadful year; you may be sure of it. You owe her a little comfort—a little consideration.'
'I owe her everything,' said Tom impulsively. 'Don't urge me too much, General. You would be the first to tell me to consider my duty.'
'Of course I should. But your duty, it seems to me, is as plain as a pikestaff. You have to look to the re-establishment of your health. If you think that is to come about in a summer in the plains—over a hundred in the shade and other things to follow suit—why, all I can say is that you are hugely mistaken.'
Having delivered himself thus, the old General stalked off, for he believed that his words would take more effect if he did not bolster them up with too many arguments. Tom consulted Chunder Singh. He said plainly that he belonged to Gumilcund. Since the recent events which had endeared to him unspeakably both the city and those who dwelt in it, he had felt that no other place in the world could ever be his home. It was not his intention, however, to give up his English citizenship altogether. Chunder Singh, who was a wise man, knew very well that the maintenance of those cordial relations—that sympathy—with the Paramount Power which had enabled them to steer, not only safely but triumphantly, through the late dangerous crisis, was a matter of importance to Gumilcund. These, he believed, would be strengthened by personal intercourse with England, which he had always proposed to visit from time to time. His friends wished him to go over that summer. The question was, would the people and the elders of the State consider the time suitable? Would there be any fear—any panic?
Taken by surprise, Chunder Singh asked for a few hours' delay to consider and consult his colleagues. The consideration proved favourable to General Elton's scheme. The people of Gumilcund thought that there could be no better time than the present for their rajah's visit to England. The country in the immediate neighbourhood of the city was quiet. The rebellion, though not completely quenched, had received its death-blow in the defeat of Tantia Topee outside Cawnpore. The mutineers still on foot had far too much to do battling with the strong forces set in array against them to think of attacking Gumilcund. The business of the State itself was moving with the regularity of clockwork. Moreover, it was well-known that in the council chambers of the English Parliament momentous questions regarding the future government of India were being mooted. Under such circumstances, it would be advisable that their rajah, whose influence these good people naturally overrated, should be at hand. Let him then depart; let him think for them and scheme for them in England as he had done here; and when the fiery summer had run its course, let him return to the city, as to a home!
So said Chunder Singh, as the mouthpiece of Gumilcund.
When the General and his wife, and brave little Trixy departed, they took with them a promise, that if nothing came about in the meantime to prevent him, Tom would start with them for England in the month of April.
Let us take a leap in time and space! Leaving behind us the crowded cities, the dusky tribes, the deep skies and burning plains of India, let us cross the Black Water, and return to the little island of the West, whence the hands that have subdued these strange regions and the minds—many of the greatest of them, alas! gone forth from earth and her concerns for ever—that have governed them, took their origin. We are in England once more, and the month is the sweetest month of all the year—leaf-clad, rose-embowered June.
Just two years have gone by since the day when Thomas Gregory, the widow's son, received the news which was destined to change the whole current of his life, and was visited by a dream stranger than any of those he had encountered in his nightly excursions through the many visions of his poet friends. Yes; and we are in the very same spot where then we saw him receive the letter—the garden of the little cottage in which his early years were spent.
It has changed very little. The same green summer-house looks down upon the river, which murmurs eternally the same sweet song; the same willows brush it with feathery, golden-green branches; the same flowers, once so dear to Grace and Tom—azure-blue speedwell and dainty forget-me-not, and starry celandine—mantle now, as they did then, the low, sloping bank with beauty; the same soft mossy lawn sweeps down to the river bank; the same weeping-ash lifts its green tent from the green carpet; above the lawn are the same carefully-trimmed fruit and flower gardens. The cottage which, from where we stand, we can see peeping through a delicious network of foliage and blossoming trees, looks newer than of old, and there are certainly more boats upon the river; but these are the only changes.
No one lives in the cottage now. It is looked after by a gardener and his wife. Mrs. Gregory, who owns it still, has had it, at her son's request, rebuilt and kept in perfect order, but she lives herself in the fine house, built, as all the neighbourhood knows, after her son's design, on the high ground above the river. Folks say that she likes the cottage better than the mansion. Often, in the evening, when the weather is soft and mild, she comes down to the little place to see if her orders are being carried out. Last summer, during the dreadful days of suspense and anguish when no one knew what a day might bring forth, she haunted the cottage and garden like an unquiet ghost. Mrs. Stevens, the good old wife of her faithful gardener, could, if she liked, tell sad tales of the frenzy which would now and then seize upon the unhappy lady, as she stole round the little garden, in which she had spent so many tranquil days, or sat wringing her hands and weeping in the room that had been her son's.
But Mrs. Gregory is happier and more hopeful now, for the peril is over, and her son has promised her a visit. She is in the garden this evening. Dressed richly, in costly black lace and silk, with a Spanish mantilla thrown over her head, she is walking backwards and forwards slowly on the lawn above the river. She has changed in these two years. Her hair is perfectly white now, her figure, not nearly so full as of old, has a tendency to droop, and her face, whose comely outlines and healthy colour made her once the admiration and envy of her middle-aged friends, has lost its roundness. Neither have her eyes the brightness which they possessed then. If we look at her closely, we shall remark a curious pallor and tremulousness about them; while in all her movements there is a restlessness—a nervous timidity, pitiful in one of her age and condition.
She is joined presently by a neat-looking, elderly woman, in black gown, white apron and mob cap.
'Tea is ready, ma'am,' she says. 'Shall I bring it out to the lawn, or will you take it in the parlour?'
'Tea!' echoes Mrs. Gregory. 'Why, to be sure! I told you to get tea for me, didn't I? I had forgotten.' And she turns with a sigh to walk up the garden.
'Mayn't I take your parcel, ma'am?' said the gardener's wife pleasantly. 'It's too heavy for you.'
Mrs. Gregory looks down with a start. In her right hand is a bulky packet, which she is holding with a curious tension pressed tightly against her side.
'This!' she exclaims. 'Oh no, thank you! It is not in the least heavy. I have promised, besides, to give it into no hands but my son's.'
'Bless me, ma'am, do you really mean to say so?' cries Mrs. Stevens, who is astonished to find her offer treated so seriously. 'But I only meant carrying it to the house. You look hard put to it to carry yourself to-night, if I may make so bold. My William and me was just saying this very evening as it might be, "If so be as Mr. Thomas don't come soon, there won't be much left of the missis for him to see." But it won't be long now, as the saying is.'
'No, it won't be long now. I was just trying, when you came out, to reckon the time by his last letter. It seems to me that he ought to have been here before this.'
At this very moment—they had reached the upper lawn and flower-garden—Mrs. Stevens, who was a little in front of her mistress, saw a hackney carriage pull up at the gate. She turned round. 'Ma'am! ma'am!' she cried, 'there's some one come. Don't faint, like a dear! William, I say, William, run to the gate! I'll go through the house and open the hall-door.'
There followed a few moments of agonising suspense, and then, how it came about Mrs. Gregory never knew, she found herself lying in her son's arms, helpless as a child, with his warm kisses raining upon her cheeks and lips and brow.
Her first thought, strange as it may seem, was not of him, but of the packet which she had been carrying, and which Mrs. Stevens had picked up from the ground when in that intoxicating moment her senses had deserted her. Drawing herself away from her son, she made a rapid sign that it should be given to her, and when Mrs. Stevens obeyed she hid it in her mantilla. This manœuvre was unnoticed by Tom, all whose thoughts were of her.
'So I have frightened you, little mother!' he said. 'And yet I sent a message. Didn't you receive it? It should have arrived early in the day.'
'I was out very likely. I took lunch with Lady Winter, and then I came on here. But I am not sorry. I wanted to see you first here, dear; here, where we have been so happy. I thought you would be more likely to forgive me and think kindly of me.'
'Dearest mother, you are dreaming. Forgive! What have I to forgive? Are you tormenting yourself because you could not make up your mind to tell me by word of mouth what you told me by letter? But that is the most natural thing in the world to me. And as to the days that have gone, we are to have better ones, little mother, much—much better. Let me look at you. Do you know that you have changed?'
'Yes, dear, I have changed. I couldn't help it,' with a plaintive little smile, and clinging to him like a child. 'If I could have been certain, quite certain, of this beautiful moment, I would have kept myself as I was. Do you remember how you used to call me your pretty, rosy, little mother?'
'You will be my pretty, rosy, little mother again,' said Tom. 'Ah, there is the colour coming! A good beginning!'
'And you, Tom, you! You have changed, too, my son. But I expected that. Your face is sterner; there are some sad lines. Your eyes. Ah! how they carry me back to the past! How foolish, how foolish I have been!'
'In what way, mother?'
'In dreaming that I could keep you. You are his.'
'I am yours, too, little mother. It was his wish, his thought. But we shall have plenty of time to talk seriously. This evening I want to enjoy.' He looked round him. 'How good it is to find you here in this dear old garden!' he said. 'Give me your hand, and let us make one round as we used to, you know, and then you must come back with me to your fine house on the hill, where I have left our travellers. I suppose, by the bye, that that stylish-looking housekeeper of yours can be trusted to look after them for a few minutes?'
'Oh, yes. She is perfect. Lady Winter trained her. And everything has been ready for you for days. But I ought to be there myself to welcome them. Did the dear child bear the journey well?'
'I think it did her good. She has had a more natural life than at Gumilcund. Such a number of children, many of them orphans, came home with us, and Aglaia was like a little mother amongst them. Mrs. Lyster, I am afraid, will only stop with us to-night. She is impatient naturally to see her own little ones, who are at school in Ireland. If you don't mind, I want you to ask her to bring them all to us for the summer holidays.'
'Certainly, dear; it will be a pleasure to me. And the General, and my dear, dear Lady Elton, and the girls—what have they done?'
'I left them in London. A house has been taken for them there for a few months. I suppose you know that we left Trixy behind us?'
'Yes; Lady Elton wrote. Dear little Trixy! I hope she will be happy.'
'I think she has every chance of it,' said Tom, smiling. 'Bertie Liston is one of the best fellows I know.'
'And the others, when shall I see them?' said Mrs. Gregory.
'We must bring them down,' said Tom. 'What should you think of persuading them to make the cottage their country home during the summer? Lady Elton won't be able to bear much racketing about; the quiet of this place and your society would be the best medicine for her, and pottering about the garden would just suit the dear old General.'
'It would be delightful,' said Mrs. Gregory. 'We must see what we can do.'
They were close to the river bank. It was a serene and lovely evening, and the water was gay with boat-loads of holiday-makers. As the mother and son stood, for a moment, looking down the stream, a skiff full of young people floated past them. The girls wore light dresses; they were laughing and talking gaily. It went on, and another followed, then another. With wet eyes and a painful contraction of heart the young man turned away. 'Mother!' he said. 'Do you remember?'
'Two years ago,' she murmured. 'Yes; I remember very well; how beautiful they were!'
'Shewas beautiful to the last,' said Tom in a whisper.
'You must tell me of her, dear. It will do you good, and I, yes; it will do me good too. I loved her so. I built so many hopes upon her.'
'So dreams pass!' said Tom.
'No, no,' said his mother, grasping at his arm; 'not pass—nothing that is good goes quite away. They come back again, brighter and purer and more beautiful. My son, believe me! I am simple, I know, far too simple to be the wife and mother of great men; but,' smiling sweetly through her tears, 'the simple sometimes see further than the wise. And now let us come back to the house and welcome my new daughter and your dear friend.'
The meeting between Mrs. Gregory and her guests was very pleasant and touching. The traces of sadness which gave a new dignity to her charming face, her gentle motherliness, and her ardent anxiety to be sure that they were comfortable and at their ease, won Mrs. Lyster's warm heart at once. Aglaia, in whom Mrs. Gregory at once recognised a sensitiveness like her own, did not respond to her advances so readily; but she was careful not to alarm the child by being too demonstrative all at once, and in a very short time her gentle reverence told. Before that evening was over, Aglaia was talking in the little quaint fashion which was so peculiarly her own, answering with pretty childlike sedateness all the questions put to her, and looking up at Daddy Tom's mother with unmistakable admiration and confidence.
To Mrs. Gregory the evening that followed was almost dream-like in its charm. The delight of having her son with her, of waiting upon him, of seeing him take possession of the things which she had spent so many happy hours preparing for him, the pleasure of entertaining these dear guests, who had escaped, by her son's hand, from peril so awful that the memory of it made her shudder—the joy, after her long famine of home affections, in uniting them round her table; in looking from face to face; in listening to tales which were all of the valour of her boy, and the beauty and dignity of his city in the far East; whose wonderful arrangements, Mrs. Lyster would insist, were due to no one but himself—all this it would take a more graphic pen than mine to describe. I doubt, in fact, if words could do justice to it. But for a little pricking sense of discomfort, an ever-recurrent consciousness of something painful to be done before she could rest, Mrs. Gregory would have been perfectly happy that evening.
It came to an end, as all happy times must and will. Sumbaten, who, at her earnest entreaty, had been allowed to cross the Black Water with her adored Missy Sahib, had long since taken Aglaia to the pretty nursery provided for them. Family prayers had been read. Mrs. Lyster, who, while Tom went off with Hoosanee to see his new quarters, had lingered to tell one or two stories, which she could not tell before him, had risen to say good-night. Mrs. Gregory accompanied her to her room, and left her there.
The house was very still; she had a little silver lamp in her hand, with which it was her custom to go round every night and make sure that all the bolts and bars were fastened. Mrs. Lyster's room opened on to an upper gallery, which commanded the lower hall. She lingered for a moment, her heart beating, and her lips quivering nervously. The lights here were out; but the large hanging lamp below was alight still. As she stood looking down, her son came out of one of the rooms on the ground-floor and stood under it. 'Do you want the hall lamp put out?' he said. 'Hoosanee and I have been round.'
'Thank you, dear,' she answered nervously. 'Yes, put it out. I will say good-night to you in your room.'
Then she turned, ran hastily to her own room, and, having seized a packet which lay on the table, went back with it to the upper gallery.
The door of Tom's apartments stood open.
There was a little study exquisitely fitted up with everything a writer or student could require, and within it a spacious and luxurious bedroom. When Tom planned the house he had designed these rooms for his mother, and already, that evening, there had been a little amiable contest about them, which, 'possession being nine points of the law,' had ended, as it was bound to do, in Mrs. Gregory's triumph.
She went in breathless, and sat down, for she could not stand. Hoosanee, who was standing, with arms crossed, as dignified and well-dressed as usual, awaiting his master's commands, made her a deep salaam. She pointed to the inner room, whereupon he retired, closing the door of communication.
By this time Tom was outside. 'My dear mother,' he said, noticing, with regret, her pallor and agitation. 'You mustn't really fatigue yourself in this way! Come!' kissing her. 'Don't you know that I want to have my rosy little mother back as soon as possible? Let me take you to your room!'
'Presently, dear, presently,' she murmured. 'But shut the door first; I have something to say to you.'
'Won't to-morrow do?'
'No, Tom. It must be now—to-night. While I can, while I dare——'
'Mother, what do you mean? You are dreaming.'
She pressed her hand to her brow. 'God knows I think so myself,' she said. 'Often, very often, I say, "You are dreaming: there never was anything so hideous done; and for you to do it—you! It is impossible!" and then,' throwing aside her lace shawl and showing the parcel on her lap, 'I look at this, and I know that it is true.'
She stopped, Tom had turned deadly pale. 'Give it to me!' he said. She placed it in his hands. He sat down and opened it slowly, his mother watching him with oh! such pitiful eyes. There it lay before him, just as he had seen it last—the legacy of the dead, which he had so strangely, and, as he believed, so hopelessly lost.
For a few moments after his discovery he did not so much as look up. He dared not even look what he felt.
His silence and abstraction wounded his poor mother more than words, even stern words, could have done. Too pained to weep, she sat gazing out before her with stony eyes. He was noting meanwhile, with a curious pang, how the very arrangement of the papers had not changed. There were the manuscripts in Persian and Arabic and Hindi, as he had thrown them together in his boyish wrath and disappointment; and above them was the sealed roll, unopened still, that, if he had mustered courage to open it, would, as he believed, have given him a key to a hundred mysteries.
Unable to bear any longer the silence and suspense, Mrs. Gregory crept close to him. 'Tom!' she said.
He looked up. There was reproach in his eyes, but no anger, and she breathed more freely. 'Why did you do it, mother?' he said sorrowfully. 'Could you not have trusted the dead?'
'Listen to me!' she said. 'Dear, I don't want to justify myself. I have sinned and I must bear my punishment. I have borne it, God knows, through these two awful years. But I may not have been quite so guilty as you think. When I saw you go out that night, I had no thought of robbing you. You left me alone. Oh! Tom, you shouldn't have done it, you shouldn't! There was a presence in the house that night. I felt it as soon as you had gone, and I fought with it for you. You were mine; I had brought you up; I had cared for you all these years; you were everything I had; I couldn't bear that you should be taken from me even for a larger life. That was my sin, not the other. My son, I am telling you a strange thing, but I give you my word that it is true. When I left the candle burning in the passage and went to your room, I was in a trance—I must have been, for I have no remembrance of it, not the least. Often and often since, I have tried to think myself back into that few minutes, and I cannot. The first thing I remember is the cry of fire. I was not in your room then, I was on the stairs. The girls caught me and dragged me out. Then, while we stood on the lawn together, I felt that against my side.'
'You should have given it to me then, mother.'
'Do I not know it, my son? Have I not said, so to myself a thousand times? God knows I should have been saved a host of troubles if I had. But I could not. Do you see how it was? I had not taken them. They had been given to me by a mysterious agency, and it seemed to me like a sign that you were to be mine still. Then you went away, and I saw from your letter, thathislife,hisideas,hispeople were taking possession of you. At last came the letter from Lucknow, which told me only too clearly what I had seemed to know already, that you belonged to me and to England no longer. Then I made up my mind to tell you the secret of your birth, and, if it should please a merciful God to bring you home safely, to give you up the papers. Are you satisfied?'
The question was in response to a softened look in his face.
'Yes, mother,' he said. 'I am satisfied. Love blinded you for a time; but justice and rectitude, which should be stronger even than love, have opened your eyes.'
'That is a man's view, not a woman's,' she said, looking up at him with dewy eyes. 'But good-night. I am tired. Take my advice, and keep the papers till to-morrow. There is no danger of your losing them again, and here, you see, is a fire-proof safe, where you can put them if you like.'
'Thank you, mother,' said Tom, smiling to see her look and speak like herself again. 'Good-night! You will sleep well, I am sure!'
'Well! With you in the house, and that gone! It will be like Paradise. If only you knew what I have gone through! But I mustn't talk of it, now. Good-night, my son.'
'To my son and successor a word of warning and counsel.'
'To my son and successor a word of warning and counsel.'
So ran the opening words of the sealed-up paper; and those were about all Tom was able to read that night. After the many fatigues and excitements of the day his brain was too heavy to be taxed any further. When Hoosanee, who had been waiting patiently in the inner room until the hum of conversation should cease, receiving no summons from his master, ventured to open the door between the rooms, he found him seated before the table, his arms folded over the open paper, and his head resting on his arms, fast asleep.
He awoke him, protested with him for his love of study, and persuaded him to undress and lie down. So in dreamless sleep the night passed peacefully away. Of his coming to himself the next morning I have often heard the rajah speak. He was perfectly refreshed and strengthened; but for a few moments he could not stir. As he lay, the blue of the June sky, flecked with soft shreds of snow-white vapour, peeped in through the open window. A tuneful chorus of English song-birds, linnets and larks and thrushes, filled the air with throbbing gladness; the familiar sound of the gardener's scythe, sweeping through swathes of wet grass, fell dimly upon his ear; and sweet scents of eglantine and roses and newly-mown hay saluted his nostrils. Ah! how delicious they all were—dream-like sensations that seemed to be coming to him out of the tranquil past, and making the fever of these last two years unsubstantial as a vision!
So, for a few minutes, he mused. Then Hoosanee looked in, and seeing him awake brought in tea and his bath, and, in a very short time he had cast his languor aside, and was giving himself to his papers.
Those in Persian and Hindi he laid aside for the present. They were closely written, and, with all the instruction he had given himself and the facility he had been able to acquire, they would, he knew, take him some time to decipher. The English paper he read at once. Its full text I am not at liberty to give. I know, however, that it did not contain the story, which Tom's mother had given to him, touching his birth. From first to last, there was nothing to make him believe that the tie, which, as the writer asserted, did actually bind him to the East, was anything but spiritual.
It was written for use in the event, which, as we know, came about, of the then rajah not being able personally to make the acquaintance of his son by adoption. For purposes of his own it appeared, and in order that his son's education and training should be entirely English, he had bound himself not to interfere with him in any way until he should have reached years of discretion. Then, if his life was spared, he would pay a visit to England, and instruct his adopted son with his own lips regarding the career that lay before him. For the rest, it contained instructions concerning Tom's conduct on his arrival in India, and upon taking up the government of Gumilcund, which, as the young rajah recognised with a thrill of pleasure, agreed in almost every particular with the course he had instinctively adopted. There were, besides, dim and uncertain foreshadowings of spiritual visitations, and dark forebodings of a time of trial and great terror for the country the writer loved; the country that, he hoped and believed, would be loved by his successor; with admonitions to him to be courageous, bracing his nerves to receive whatever might come to him in a manner becoming to a man into whose hands a sacred trust has been given.
An entreaty that he would be patient, and not allow himself to fall away into despair if the good to which they looked as the fruit of their labours did not come in his time; a recommendation to train up those who would come after him to regard themselves as the repositories of the great trust, any one of whom might be the Revealer predestined to give to the New World and the Old the light of the new revelation; a hope that he would gain sufficient knowledge of the Eastern languages to read the enclosed manuscripts, which contained the gist of their philosophy and the definition of their hope; with a pathetic farewell, couched in language which made Tom believe that Byrajee Pirtha Raj was a Christian at heart—brought the paper to a conclusion.
And here, on the threshold of his new life, I find, to my deep regret, that I must leave him. The life becomes too complicated; the interests too numerous; the hopes too lofty and large, to find room in what will generally be considered as a work of fiction. Besides, I am not allowed. All I may venture to say is that he is working still. A Maharajah in India—he was given this title after the mutiny—and in England a private gentleman of fortune and distinction, he passes his life between the two worlds of East and West, trying to induce that sympathy, that mutual comprehension, upon which so many of his hopes for the future depend.
Married now, and with children of his own, he does not forget his lost love; and indeed, in the face of his gentle wife, there is an expression that recalls Grace vividly. It is quite natural, Aglaia says with a smile, for Grace is often with her.
And so I bid them, and those who have followed with me the strange fortunes of the Rajah's Heir, an affectionate farewell. It is possible that we may meet again. When the clouds that still hide the elder continent lift—and some of us think that in their darkness we can discern fissures, through which the azure of the far-off heaven looks down—when the Revealer has spoken, when the long-hoped-for consummation, the meeting of the nations, has come; then, if I am still able to write, I will tell what part Gumilcund and her rulers have played in the great ever-unfolding drama of the ages, and how the present has grown out of the past.