She threw back her crape veil to kiss Maria. She had come down from Ashlydyat on purpose to tell her the news of the bones being found: there could be little doubt that they were those of the ill-fated Richard de Commins, which had been so fruitlessly searched for: and Lady Averil was full of excitement. Perhaps it was natural that she should be so, being a Godolphin.
“It is most strange that they should be found just now,” she cried; “at the very time that the Dark Plain is being done away with. You know, Maria, the tradition always ran that so long as the bones remained unfound, the Dark Plain would retain the appearance of a graveyard. Is it not a singular coincidence—that they should be discovered just at the moment that the Plain is being dug up? Were Janet here, she would say how startlingly all the old superstition is being worked out.”
“I think one thing especially strange—that they should not have been found before,” observed Maria. “Have they not been searched for often?”
“I believe so,” replied Cecil. “But they were found under the archway; immediately beneath it: and I fancy they had always been searched for in the Dark Plain. When papa had the gorse-bushes rooted up they were looked for then in all parts of the Dark Plain, but not under the archway.”
“How came Lord Averil to think of looking under the archway?” asked Maria.
“He did not think of it. They have been found unexpectedly, without being searched for. The archway is taken down, and the men were digging the foundation for the new summer-house, when they came upon them. The grounds of Ashlydyat have been like a fair all the afternoon with people coming up to see and hear,” added Cecil. “Lord Averil is going to consult Mr. Hastings about giving them Christian burial.”
“It does seem strange,” murmured Maria. “Have you written to tell Janet?”
“No, I shall write to her to-morrow. I hastened down to you. Bessy came over from the Folly, but Lady Godolphin would not come. She said she had heard enough in her life of the superstition of Ashlydyat. She never liked it, you know, Maria; never believed in it.”
“Yes, I know,” Maria answered. “It used to anger her when it was spoken of. As it angered papa.”
“As George used to pretend that it angered him. I think it was onlypretence, though. Poor Thomas, never. If he did not openly accord it belief, he never ridiculed it. How are your preparations getting on Maria?”
Maria was crossing the room with feeble steps to stir the fire into a blaze. As the light burst forth, she turned her face to Lady Averil with a sort of apology.
“I do not know what Margery is about that she does not bring in the lamp. I am receiving you very badly, Cecil.”
Cecil smiled. “I think our topic, the Ashlydyat superstition, is better discussed in such light as this, than in the full glare of lamp-light.”
But as Lady Averil spoke she was looking earnestly at Maria. The blaze had lighted up her wan face, and Cecil was struck aghast at its aspect.Wasit real?—or was it only the effect of the firelight? Lady Averil had not heard of the ominous fears that were ripening, and hoped it was the latter.
“Maria! are you looking worse this evening? Or is the light deceiving me?”
“I dare say I am looking worse. I am worse. I am very ill, Cecil.”
“You do not look fit to embark on this voyage.”
Maria simply shook her head. She was sitting now in an old-fashioned arm-chair, one white hand lying on her black dress, the other supporting her chin, while the firelight played on her wasted features.
“Would the little change to Ashlydyat benefit you, Maria? If so, if it would help to give you strength for your voyage, come to us at once. Now don’t refuse! It will give us so much pleasure. You do not know how Lord Averil loves and respects you. I think there is no one he respects as he respects you. Let me take you home with me now.”
Maria’s eyelashes were wet as she turned them on her. “Thank you, Cecil, for your kindness: and Lord Averil—will you tell him so for me—I am always thanking in my heart. I wish I could go home with you; I wish I could go with any prospect of it doing me good; but that is over. I shall soon be in a narrower home than this.”
Lady Averil’s heart stood still and then bounded on again. “No, no! Surely you are mistaken! It cannot be.”
“I have suspected it long, Cecil! but since the last day or two it has become certainty, and even Mr. Snow acknowledges it. About this time yesterday, he was sitting here in the twilight, and I bade him not conceal the truth from me. I told him that I knew it, and did not shrink from it; and therefore it was the height of folly for him to pretend ignorance to me.”
“Oh, Maria! And have you no regret at leaving us? I should think it a dreadful thing if I were going to die.”
“I have been battling with my regrets a long while,” said Maria, bending her head and speaking in low, subdued tones. “Leaving Meta is the worst. I know not who will take her, who will protect her: she cannot go with George, without—without a mother!”
“Give her to me,” feverishly broke from the lips of Lady Averil. “You don’t know how dearly I have ever loved that child Maria, sheshall never know the want of the good mother she has lost, as far as I can supply your place, if you will let her come to me. It is well that the only child of the Godolphins—and she is the only one—should be reared at Ashlydyat.”
Of all the world, Maria could best have wished Lady Averil to have Meta: and perhaps there had been moments when in her troubled imagination she had hoped it would be so. But she could not close her eyes to its improbabilities.
“You will be having children of your own, Cecil. And there’s Lord Averil to be considered!”
“Lord Averil is more than indulgent to me. I believe if I wished to adopt half a dozen children, he would only smile and tell me to prepare a nursery for them. I am quite sure he would like to have Meta.”
“Then—if he will—oh, Cecil, I should die with less regret.”
“Yes, yes, that is settled. He shall call and tell you so. But—Maria—is your own state so certain? Can nothing be done for you?—nothing be tried?”
“Nothing, as I believe. Mr. Snow cannot find out what is the matter with me. The trouble has been breaking my heart, Cecil: I know of nothing else. And since I grew alarmed about my own state, there has been the thought of Meta. Many a time have I been tempted to wish that I could have her with me in my coffin.”
“Aunt Cecil! Aunt Cecil! How many summer-houses are there to be, Aunt Cecil?”
You need not ask whose interrupting voice it was. Lady Averil lifted the child to her knee, and asked whether she would come and pay her a long, long visit at Ashlydyat. Meta replied by inquiring into the prospect of swings and dolls’ houses, and Cecil plunged into promises as munificently as George could have done.
“Should George not be with you?” she whispered, as she bent over Maria before leaving.
“Yes, I am beginning to think he ought to be now. I intend to write to him to-night; but I did not like to disturb him in his preparations. It will be a blow to him.”
“What! does he not know of it?”
“Not yet. He thinks I am getting ready to go out. IwishI could have done so!”
No, not until the unhappy fact was placed beyond all doubt, would Maria disturb her husband. And she did it gently at last. “I have been unwilling to alarm you, George, and I would not do so now, but that I believe it is all too certain. Will you come down and see what you think of me? Even Mr. Snow fears there is no hope for me now. Oh, if I could but have gone with you! have gone with you to be your ever-loving wife still in that new land!”
Lord Averil came in while she was addressing the letter. Greatly shocked, greatly grieved at what his wife told him, he rose from his dinner-table and walked down. Her husband excepted, there was no one whom Maria would have been so pleased to see as Lord Averil. He had not come so much to tell her that he heartily concurred in his wife’s offer with regard to the child, though he did say it—say that she should be done by entirely as though she were his own, and his honesthonourable nature shone out of his eyes as he spoke it—as to see whether nothing could be done for herself, to entreat her to have further advice called in.
“Dr. Beale has been here twice,” was her answer. “He says there is no hope.”
Lord Averil held her hand in his, as he had taken it in greeting; his grave eyes of sympathy were bent with deep concern on her face.
“Cecil thinks the trouble has been too much for you,” he whispered. “Is it so?”
A streak of hectic came into her cheek. “Yes, I suppose it is that. Turn to which side I would, there was no comfort, no hope. Throughout it all, I never had a friend, save you, Lord Averil: and you know, and God knows, what you did for us. I have not recompensed you: I don’t see how I could have recompensed you had I lived: but when I am gone, you will be happy in knowing that you took the greatest weight from one who was stricken by the world.”
“You have been writing to George?” he observed, seeing the letter on the table. “But it will not go to-night: it is too late.”
“It can go up by to-morrow’s day mail, and he will receive it in the evening. Perhaps you will post it for me as you walk home: it will save Margery’s going out.”
Lord Averil put the letter into his pocket. He stood looking at her as she lay a little back in her easy-chair, his arm resting on the mantelpiece, curious thoughts passing through his mind. Could he do nothing for her?—to avert the fate that was threatening her? He, rich in wealth, happy now in the world’s favour; she, going to the grave in sorrow, it might be in privation—whatcould he do to help her?
There are moments when we speak out of our true heart, when the conventionality that surrounds the best of us is thrown aside, all deceit, all form forgotten. Lord Averil was a good and true man, but never better, never truer than now, when he took a step forward and bent to Maria.
“Let me have the satisfaction of doing something for you; let me try to save you!” he implored in low earnest tones. “If that may not be, let me help to lighten your remaining hours. How can I best do it?”
She held out her hand to him: she looked up at him, the gratitude she could not speak shining from her sweet eyes. “Indeed there is nothing now, Lord Averil. I wish I could thank you as you deserve for the past.”
He held her hand for some time, but she seemed weak, exhausted, and he said good night. Margery attended him to the outer gate, in spite of his desire that she should not do so, for the night air was cold and seemed to threaten snow.
“Your mistress is very ill, Margery,” he gravely said. “She seems to be in danger.”
“I’m afraid she is, my lord. Up to the last day or two I thought she might take a turn and get over it; but since then she has grown worse with every hour. Some folks can battle out things, and some folks can’t; she’s one of the last sort, and she has been tried in all ways.”
Lord Averil dropped the letter into the post-office, looking mechanically at its superscription, George Godolphin, Esquire. But that he was preoccupied with his own thoughts, he might have seen by the very writing how weak she was, for it was scarcely recognizable as hers. Very, very ill she looked, as if the end were growing ominously near; and Lord Averil did not altogether like the tardy summons which the letter would convey. A night and a day yet before George could receive it. A moment’s communing with himself, and then he took the path to the telegraph office, and sent off a message:
“Viscount Averil to George Godolphin, Esquire.“Your wife is very ill. Come down by first train.”
“Viscount Averil to George Godolphin, Esquire.“Your wife is very ill. Come down by first train.”
The snow came early. It was nothing like Christmas yet, and here was the ground covered with it. The skies had seemed to threaten it the previous night, but people were not prepared to find everything wearing a white aspect when they rose in the morning.
The Reverend Mr. Hastings was ill. A neglected cold was telling so greatly upon him that his daughter Rose had at length sent for Mr. Snow. Mrs. Hastings was away for a day or two, on a visit to some friends at a distance.
Mr. Hastings sat over the fire, dreamily watching David Jekyl, awaiting the visit of Mr. Snow, and thinking his own thoughts. David was busy in the garden. He had a bit of crape on his old felt hat for his recently-interred father. The crape led the Rector’s thoughts to the old man, and thence to the deprivation brought to the old man’s years, the loss to the sons, through George Godolphin. How many more, besides poor old Jekyl, had George Godolphin ruined! himself, that reverend divine, amongst the rest!
“A good thing when the country shall be rid of him!” spoke the Rector in his bitterness. “I would give all the comfort left in my life that Maria, for her own sake, had not linked her fate with his! But that can’t be remedied now. I hope he will make her happier there, in her new home, than he has made her here!”
By which words you will gather that Mr. Hastings had no suspicion of the change in his daughter’s state. It was so. Lord and Lady Averil were not alone in learning the tidings suddenly; at, as it may be said, the eleventh hour. Maria had not sent word to the Rectory that she was worse. She knew that her mother was absent, that her father was ill, that Rose was occupied; and that the change from bad to worse had come upon herself so imperceptibly, that she saw not its real danger—as was proved by her not writing to her husband. The Rector, as he sits there, has his mind full of Maria’s voyage, and its discomfort: of her changed life in India: and he is saying to himself that he shall get out in the afternoon and call to see her.
The room faced the side of the house, but as Mr. Hastings sat he could catch a glimpse of the garden gate, and presently saw the well-known gig stop at it, and the surgeon descend.
“Well, and who’s ill now?” cried Mr. Snow, as he let himself in at the hall-door, and thence to the room, where he took a seat in front of the Rector, examined his ailment, and gossiped at the same time, as was his wont; gossiped and grumbled.
“Ah, yes; just so: feel worse than you have felt for twenty years. You caught this cold at Thomas Godolphin’s funeral, and you have not chosen to pay attention to it.”
“I think I did. I felt it coming on the next day. I could not read the service in my hat, Snow, overhim, and you know that rain was falling. Ah! There was a sufferer! But had it not been for the calamity that fell upon him, he might not have gone to the grave quite so soon.”
“He felt it too keenly,” remarked Mr. Snow. “And your daughter—there’s another sad victim. Ah me! Sometimes I wish I had never been a doctor, when I find all that I can do in the way of treatment comes to nothing.”
“If she can only get well through the fatigues of the voyage, she may be better in India. Don’t you think so? The very change from this place will put new life into her.”
Mr. Snow paused in surprise, and the truth flashed into his mind—that Mr. Hastings was as yet in ignorance of Maria’s danger: flashed with pain. Of course it was his duty to enlighten him, and he would rather have been spared the task. “When did you see her last?” he inquired.
“The day Mrs. Hastings left. I have not been well enough to go out much since. And I dare say Maria has been busy.”
“I am sorry then to have to tell you that she has not been busy; that she has not been well enough to be busy. She is much worse.”
There was a significance in the tone that spoke to the father more effectually than any words could have done. He was silent for a full minute, and then he rose from his chair and walked once up and down the room before he turned to Mr. Snow.
“The full truth, Snow? Tell it me.”
“Well—the truth is, that hope is over. That she will not very long be here. I had no suspicion that you knew it not.”
“I knew nothing of it. When I and her mother were with her last: it was, I tell you, the day Mrs. Hastings left: Maria was talking of going back to London with her husband the next time he came down to Prior’s Ash. I thought her looking better that morning; she had quite a colour; was in good spirits. When did you see her?”
“Now. I went up there before I came down to you. She grows worse and worse every hour. Lord Averil telegraphed for George Godolphin last night.”
“And I have not been informed of this!” burst forth the Rector. “My daughter dying—for I infer no less—and I to be left in ignorance of the truth!”
“Understand one thing, Mr. Hastings—that until this morning we saw no fear ofimmediatedanger. Lord Averil says he suspected it last night; I did not see her yesterday in the after-part of the day. I have known some few cases precisely similar to Mrs. George Godolphin’s; where danger and death seem to have come on suddenly together.”
“And what is her disease?”
The surgeon threw up his arms. “Idon’t know—unless the trouble has fretted her into her grave. Were I not a doctor, I might say she had died of a broken heart, but the faculty don’t recognize such a thing.”
Half an hour afterwards, the Reverend Mr. Hastings was bending over his daughter’s dying bed. A dying bed, it too surely looked; and if Mr. Hastings had indulged a gleam of hope, the first glance at Maria’s countenance dispelled it. She lay wrapped in a shawl, the lace border of her nightcap shading her delicate face and its smooth brown hair, her eyes larger and softer and sweeter than of yore.
They were alone together. He held her hand in his, he gently laid his other hand on her white and wasted brow. “Child! child! why did you not send to me?”
“I did not know I was so ill, papa,” she panted. “I seem to have grown so much worse this last night. But I am better than I was an hour ago.”
“Maria,” he gravely said, “are you aware that you are in a state of danger?—that death may come to you.”
“Yes, papa, I know it. I have seen it coming a long while: only I was not quite sure.”
“And my dear child, are you——” Mr. Hastings paused. He paused and bit his lips, gathering firmness to suppress the emotion that was rising. His calling made him familiar with death-bed scenes; but Maria was his own child, and nature will assert her supremacy. A minute or two and he was himself again: not a man living was more given to reticence in the matter of his own feelings than the Rector of All Souls’: he could notbearto betray emotion in the sight of his fellow-men.
“Are you prepared for death, Maria? Can you look upon it without terror?”
“I think I am,” she murmured. “I feel that I am going to God. Oh, papa, forgive, forgive me!” she exclaimed, bursting into tears of emotion, as she raised her hands to him in the moment’s excitement. “The trouble has been too much for me; I could not shake it off. All the sorrow that has been brought upon you through us, I think of it always: my heart aches with thinking of it. Oh, papa, forgive me before I die! It was not my fault; indeed, I did not know of it. Papa”—and the sobs became painfully hysterical, and Mr. Hastings strove in vain to check them—“I would have sacrificed my life to bring good to you and my dear mamma: I would havesoldmyself, to keep this ill from you!”
“Child, hush! There has been nothing to forgive toyou. In the first moment of the smart, if I cast an unkind thought to you, it did not last; it was gone almost as soon as it came. My dear child, you have ever been my loving and dutiful daughter. Maria, shall I tell it you?—I know not why, but I have loved you better than any of my other children.”
She had raised herself from the pillow, and was clasping his hand to her bosom, sobbing over it. Few daughters have loved a father as Maria had loved and venerated hers. The Rector’s face was preternaturally pale and calm, the effect of his powerfully suppressed emotion.
“It has been too much for me, papa. I have thought of your trouble, of the discomforts of your home, of the blighted prospects of my brothers, feeling that it was our work. I thought of it always, more perhaps than of other things: and I could not battle with thepain it brought, and it has killed me. But, papa, I am resigned to go: I know that I shall be better off. Before these troubles came, I had not learned to think of God, and I should have been afraid to die.”
“It is through tribulation that we must enter the Kingdom,” interrupted the calm, earnest voice of the clergyman. “It must come to us here in some shape or other, my child; and I do not see that it matters how, or when, or through whom it does come, if it takes us to a better world. You have had your share of it: but God is a just and merciful Judge, and if He has given you a full share of sorrow, He will deal out to you His full recompense.”
“Yes,” she gently said, “I am going to God. Will you pray for me, papa?—that He will pardon me and take me for Christ’s sake. Oh, papa! it seems—it seems when we get near death as if the other world were so very near to this! It seems such a little span of time that I shall have to wait for you all before you come to me. Will you give my dear love to mamma if I should not live to see her, and say how I have loved her: say that I have only gone on first; that I shall be there ready for her. Papa, I dare say God will let me be ever waiting and looking for you.”
Mr. Hastings turned to search for a Book of Common Prayer. He saw Maria’s on her dressing-table—one which he had given her on her marriage, and written her name in—and he opened it at the “Visitation of the Sick.” He looked searchingly at her face as he returned: surely the signs of death were already gathering there!
“The last Sacrament, Maria?” he whispered. “When shall I come?”
“This evening,” she answered. “George will be here then.”
The Reverend Mr Hastings bent his eyebrows with a frown, as if he thought—— But no matter. “At eight o’clock, then,” he said to Maria, as he laid the book upon the bed and knelt down before it. Maria lay back on her pillow, and clasping her hands upon the shawl which covered her bosom, closed her eyes to listen.
It was strange that even then, as he was in the very act of kneeling, certain words which he had spoken to Maria years ago, should flash vividly into the Rector’s mind—words which had referred to the death of Ethel Grame.
“The time may come, Maria—we none of us know what is before us—when some of you young ones who are left, may wish you had died as she has. Many a one, battling for very existence with the world’s carking cares, wails out a vain wish that he had been taken from the evil to come.”
Had the gift of prevision been on the Rector of All Souls’ when he spoke those words to Maria Hastings? Poor child! lying there now on her early death-bed; with her broken heart! The world’s carking cares had surely done their work on Maria Godolphin!
If it were not for mismanagement, how smoothly things might go on! That telegraphic despatch which Lord Averil had deemed it well to send, and which had not been sent any too soon, did not reach George Godolphin for hours and hours, through mismanagement at his lodgings.
It was afternoon when he reached Prior’s Ash. The first person he saw at the station was Lord Averil. That nobleman, wondering at George’s non-appearance, believing that Maria was getting nearer to death with every hour, had come to the conclusion that by some mischance his message had miscarried; and he had now gone to the station to send another. Lord Averil linked his arm within George’s, and they walked rapidly away through the snow that lay on the path.
Yes, he linked his arm within George Godolphin’s who had so very nearly been held up to the virtuous British public as a candidate for a free passage to Australia. Somehow, George had slipped through that danger, and was a gentleman still: moreover, he was Lord Averil’s brother-in-law, and it was the earnest wish of that nobleman that society should forget the little mistake in George’s life as heartily as he did. He explained as he walked along: Maria had got rapidly worse all at once: it was only within a few hours that immediate danger had shown itself.
George could not understand it. He had left his wife, ill certainly, but not, as he believed, seriously so; he had supposed her to be busy in preparations for the voyage: and now to be told that she was dying! If this was so, why had Maria not sent for him before?
Lord Averil explained. No one seemed to have known of the danger.
“Snow must have known it,” remonstrated George.
“I think not. I was talking to him to-day, and he expressed his surprise at the disorder having suddenly increased in this rapid manner.”
“Whatisthe disorder?” asked George. “My wife had no disorder—except weakness.”
“I suppose that is it—weakness.”
“But weakness does not kill!”
“Yes, it does, sometimes.”
Margery was standing at the door when they reached the gate, possibly looking out for her master, for she knew the hours of the arrival of the trains. The windows of the sitting-room faced that way, and George’s eyes naturally turned to them. But there was no sign of busy life, of every-day occupation: the curtains hung in their undisturbed folds, the blinds were partially down.
“I will just ask how your wife is now, and whether Cecil is here,” said Lord Averil, following George up the path.
No, Lady Averil and Miss Bessy Godolphin had left about ten minutes before, Margery said. My Lady Godolphin, who had driven up in her carriage and come in for a quarter of an hour, had left; and Miss Rose Hastings, who had been there the best part of the morning, had also left. Mrs. George Godolphin seemed a trifle better; inclined to sleep, tired out, as it were; and she, Margery, didn’t wonder at it with such a heap of visitors: she had given them a broad hint herself that her mistress might be all the better for an hour’s quiet.
Lord Averil departed. George flung his railway wrapper on to a chair and hung his hat up in the little hall: he turned his face, one of severity then, on Margery.
“Is your mistress so very ill? Why was I not sent for earlier? Is she so very ill?” he continued in an impassioned tone.
“Well, sir, I don’t know,” answered Margery, willing perhaps to soften the truth to him. “She is certainly better than she was in the morning. She is sitting up.”
George Godolphin was of a hopeful nature. Even those few words seemed to speak to his heart with a certainty. “Not there, sir,” interposed Margery, as he opened the door of the sitting-room. “But it don’t matter,” she added: “you can go in that way.”
He walked through the room and opened the door of the bedchamber. Would the scene ever leave his memory? The room was lighted more by the blaze of the fire than by the daylight, for curtains partly covered the windows and the winter’s dreary afternoon was already merging into twilight. The bed was at the far end of the room, the dressing-table near it. The fire was on his right as he entered, and on a white-covered sofa, drawn before it, sat Maria. She was partly dressed and wrapped in a light cashmere shawl; her cap was untied, and her face, shaded though it was by its smooth brown hair, was all too visible in the reflection cast by the firelight.
Which was the more colourless—that face, or the white cover of the sofa? George Godolphin’s heart stood still as he looked upon it and then bounded on with a rush. Every shadow of hope had gone from him.
Maria had not heard him, did not see him; he went in gently. By her side on the sofa lay Miss Meta, curled up into a ball and fast asleep, her hands and her golden curls on her mamma’s knee. With George’s first step forward, Maria turned her sad sweet eyes towards him, and a faint cry of emotion escaped her lips.
Before she could stir or speak, George was with her, his protecting arms thrown round her, her face gathered to his breast. What a contrast it was! she so wan and fragile, so near the grave, he in all his manly strength, his fresh beauty. Miss Meta woke up, recognized her papa with a cry and much commotion, but Margery came in and carried her off, shutting the door behind her.
Her fair young face—too fair and young to die—was laid against her husband’s; her feeble hand lay carelessly in his. The shock to George was very great; it almost seemed that he had already lost her; and the scalding tears, so rarely wrung from man, coursed down his cheeks, and fell on her face.
“Don’t grieve,” she whispered, the tears raining from her own eyes.
“Oh, George, my husband, it is a bitter thing to part, but we shall meet again in heaven, and be together for ever. It has been so weary here; the troubles have been so great!”
He steadied his voice to speak. “The troubles have not killed you, have they, Maria?”
“Yes, I suppose it has been so. I did try and struggle against them, but—I don’t know—— Oh, George!” she broke out in a wailing tone of pain, “if I could have but got over them and lived!—if I could only have gone with you to your new home!”
George sat down on the sofa where Meta had been, and held her to him in silence. She could hear his heart beating; could feel it bounding against her side.
“It will be a better home in heaven,” she resumed, laying her poor pale face upon his shoulder. “You will come to me there, George; I shall only go on first a little while; all the pains and the cares, the heart-burnings of earth will be forgotten, and we shall be together in happiness for ever and ever.”
He dropped his face upon her neck, he sobbed aloud in his anguish. Whatever may have been his gracelessness and his faults, he had loved his wife; and now that he was losing her, that love was greater than it had ever been: some pricks of conscience may have been mingled with it, too! Who knows?
“Don’t forget me quite when I am gone, George. Think of me sometimes as your poor wife who loved you to the last; who would have stayed with you if God had let her. When first I began to see that it must be, that I should leave you and Meta, my heart nearly broke; but the pain has grown less, and I think God has been reconciling me to it.”
“What shall I do?—what will the child do without you?” broke from his quivering lips.
Perhaps the thought crossed Maria that he had done very well without her in the last few months, for his sojourn with her might be counted by hours instead of by days: but she was too generous to allude to it; and the heart-aching had passed. “Cecil and Lord Averil will take Meta,” she said. “Let her stay with them, George! It would not be well for her to go to India alone with you.”
The words surprised him. He did not speak.
“Cecil proposed it yesterday. They will begladto have her. I dare say Lord Averil will speak to you about it later. It was the one great weight left upon my mind, George—our poor child, and what could be done with her: Cecil’s generous proposal removed it.”
“Yes,” said George hesitatingly. “For a little while; perhaps it will be the best thing. Until I shall get settled in India. But she must come to me then; I cannot part with her for good.”
“For good? No. But, George, you may—it is possible—” she seemed to stammer and hesitate—“you may be forming new ties. In that case you would care less for the loss of Meta——”
“Don’t talk so!” he passionately interrupted. “How can you glance at such things, Maria, in these our last moments?”
She was silent for a few minutes, weeping softly. “Had this parting come upon me as suddenly as it has upon you, I might have startedfrom the very thought with horror; but, George, I have had nothing else in my own mind for weeks but the parting, and it has made me look at the future as I could not else have looked at it. Do not blame me for saying this. I must allude to it, if I am to speak of Meta. I can understand how full of aversion the thought is to you now: but, George, itmaycome to pass.”
“I think not,” he said, and his voice and manner had changed to grave deliberation. “If I know anything of myself, Maria, I shall never marry again.”
“It is not impossible.”
“No,” he assented; “it is not impossible.”
Her heart beat a shade quicker, and she hid her face upon him so that he could not see it. When she spoke again, it was with difficulty he could catch the whispered words.
“I know how foolish and wrong it is for a dying wife to extract any promise of this nature from her husband: were I to say to you, Do not marry again, it would be little else than a wicked request; and it would prove how my thoughts and passions must still cling to earth. Bear with me while I speak of this, George,Iam not going to be so wicked; but—but——”
Agitation stopped her voice. Her bosom heaved, her breath almost left her. He saw that this was mental emotion, not bodily weakness; and he waited until it should pass, stroking the hair from her brow with his gentle hand.
“My darling, what is it?”
“But there is one promise that I do wish to beg of you,” she resumed, mastering her emotion sufficiently to speak. “If—if you should marry, and your choice falls uponone—uponher—then, in that case, do not seek to have Meta home; let her remain always with Cecil.”
A pause, broken by George. “Of whom do you speak, Maria?”
The same laboured breathing; the same cruel agitation; and they had to be fought with before she could bring out the words.
“Of Charlotte Pain.”
“Charlotte Pain!” echoed George, shouting out the name in surprise.
“I could not bear it,” she shivered. “George, George! do not make her the second mother of my child! I could not bear it; it seems to me that I could not even in my grave bear it! Should you marry her, promise me that Meta shall not be removed from Ashlydyat.”
“Maria,” he quietly said, “I shall never marry Charlotte Pain.”
“You don’t know. You may think now you will not, but you cannot answer for yourself. George! she has helped to kill me. She must not be Meta’s second mother.”
He raised her face so that he could see it, his dark blue eyes met hers searchingly, and he took her hand in his as he gravely spoke.
“She will never be Meta’s second mother: nay, if it will be more satisfactory, I will say she never shall be. By the heaven that perhaps even I may some day attain to, I say it! Charlotte Pain will never be Meta’s second mother, or my wife.”
She did not answer in words. She only nestled a little nearer to him in gratitude; half in repentance perhaps for having doubted him. George resumed, in the same grave tone:
“And now, Maria, tell me what you mean by saying that Charlotte Pain has helped to kill you.”
A vivid flush came over her wan face, and she contrived to turn it from him again, so that her eyes were hidden. But she did not speak quite at first.
“It all came upon me together, George,” she murmured at length, her tone one of loving-tenderness, in token that she was not angry now; that the past, whatever may have been its sins against her, any or none, was forgiven. “At that cruel time when the blow fell, when I had nowhere to turn to for comfort, then I also learnt what Prior’s Ash had been saying, about—about Charlotte Pain. George, it seemed to wither my very heart; to take the life out of it. I had so loved you; I had so trusted you: and to find—to find—that you loved her, not me——”
“Hush!” thundered George, in his emotion. “I neverlovedany one but you, Maria. I swear it!”
“Well—well. It seems that I do not understand. I—I could not get over it,” she continued, passing her hand across her brow where the old aching pain had come momentarily again, “and I fear it has helped to kill me. It was so cruel, to have suffered me to know her all the while.”
George Godolphin compressed his lips. He never spoke.
“But, George, it is over; it is buried in the past; and I did not intend to mention it. I should not have mentioned it but for speaking of Meta. Oh, let it go, let it pass, it need not disturb our last hour together.”
“It appears to have disturbed you a great deal more than it need have done,” he said, a shade of anger in his tone.
“Yes, looking back, I see it did. When we come to the closing scenes of life, as I have come, this world closing to our view, the next opening, then we see how foolish in many things we have been; how worse than vain our poor earthly passions. So to have fretted ourselves over this little space of existence with its passing follies, its temporary interests, when we might have been living and looking for that great one that shall last for ever! To gaze back on my life it seems but a span; a passing hour compared with the eternity that I am entering upon. Oh, George, we have all need of God’s loving forgiveness! I, as well as you. I did not mean to reproach you: but Icouldnot bear—had you made her your second wife—that she should have had the training of Meta.”
Did George Godolphin doubt whether the fear was wholly erased from her heart? Perhaps so: or he might not have spoken to her as he was about to speak.
“Let me set your mind further at rest, Maria. Had I ever so great an inclination to marry Mrs. Pain, it is impossible that I could do so. Mrs. Pain has a husband already.”
Maria raised her face, a flashing light, as of joy, illuminating it. George saw it: and a sad, dreamy look of self-condemnation settled on his own.Hadit so stabbed her? “Has she married again?—since she left Prior’s Ash?”
“She has never been a widow, Maria,” he answered. “Rodolf Pain, her husband, did not die.”
“He did not die?”
“As it appears. He is now back again in England.”
“And did you know of this?”
“Only since his return. I supposed her to be a widow, as every one else supposed it. One night last summer, in quitting Ashlydyat, I came upon them both in the grounds, Mr. and Mrs. Pain; and I then learned to my great surprise that he, whom his wife had passed off as dead, had in point of fact been hiding abroad. There is some unpleasant mystery attached to it, the details of which I have not concerned myself to inquire into: he fell into trouble, I expect, and feared his own country was too hot for him. However it may have been, he is home again, and with her. I suppose the danger is removed, for I met them together in Piccadilly last week walking openly, and they told me they were looking out for a house.”
She breathed a sobbing sigh of relief, as one hears sometimes from a little child.
“But were Mrs. Pain the widow she assumed to be, she would never have been made my wife. Child!” he added, in momentary irritation, “don’t you understand things better?Shemy wife!—the second mother, the trainer of Meta! What could you be thinking of? Men do not marry women such as Charlotte Pain.”
“Then you do not care for her so very much?”
“I care for her so much, Maria, that were I never to see her or hear of her again it would not give me one moment’s thought,” he impulsively cried. “I would give a great deal now not to have kept up our acquaintance with the woman—if that had saved you one single iota of pain.”
When these earthly scenes are closing—when the grave is about to set its seal on one to whom we could have saved pain, and did not,—when heaven’s solemn approach is to be seen, and heaven’s purity has become all too clear to our own sight, what wouldwegive to change inflicted wrongs—to blot out the hideous past! George Godolphin sat by the side of his dying wife, his best-beloved in life as she would be in death, and bit his lips in his crowd of memories, his unavailing repentance. Ah, my friends! these moments of reprisal, prolonged as they may seem, must come to us in the end. It is convenient no doubt to ignore them in our hot-blooded carelessness, but the time will come when they must find us out.
He, George Godolphin, had leisure to hug them to himself, and make the best and the worst of them. Maria, exhausted with excitement, as much as by her own weakness, closed her eyes as she lay upon his breast and dropped into a sleep, and he sat watching her face, holding her to him, not daring to move, lest he should disturb her, not daring even to lift a finger and wipe off his own bitter and unavailing tears.
Yes, there could be no doubt of the fact—that the troubles of one kind and another had been too much for her; that she was dying of them; and he felt the truth to his heart’s core. He felt that she, that delicate, refined, sensitive woman had been the very last who should have been treated rudely. You may remember it was observed at the beginning of her history that she was one unfitted to battle with the world’s sharp storms—it had now proved so. Charlotte Pain wouldhave braved them, whatever their nature, have weathered them jauntily on a prancing saddle-horse; Maria had shrunk down, crushed by their weight.Il y a—let me once more repeat it—il y a des femmes et des femmes.
There came one with hurried steps up the path; with hurried steps and a distressed, anxious countenance. Passing Margery in the passage, she bore on as if no power on earth should stop her, and entered the sick-chamber.
It was Grace: Mrs. Akeman. This sudden change in the illness of Maria had certainly come at an inopportune moment: Mrs. Hastings was at a distance, Grace had gone for the day with her husband some miles into the country. A messenger was sent to her, and it brought her home.
It brought her home with a self-condemning conscience. Maria dying!—when Grace had only thought of her as flaunting off to India; when she had that very day remarked to her husband, as they drove along the snowy road in his four-wheeled chaise, crammed with architectural plans, that some people had all the luck of it in this world, and that Mr. and Mrs. George Godolphin, she supposed, would soon be swaying it in the Bengal presidency, as they had swayed it in Prior’s Ash. Maria dying! dying of the trouble, the sorrow, the disgrace, the humiliation, the neglect! dying of a broken heart! It came flashing into Grace Akeman’s mind that shemighthave taken a different view of her conduct: have believed in the wrongs of wives, who are bound to their husbands for worse as well as for better; it came into her mind that she might have accorded her a little sisterly sympathy instead of reproach.
She came in now, brimming over with repentance: she came in with a sort of belief that things could not have gone so very far; that there must be some remedy still, some hope; and that if she, Grace, exerted her energies to rouse Maria, health and life would come again. Maria had awakened out of her temporary slumber then, and George was standing with his arm on the mantel-piece. A half-frown crossed his brow when he saw Grace enter. He had never liked her; he was conscious that she had not been kind to Maria, and he deemed her severe manner and sharp voice scarcely suited to that dying chamber. But she was his wife’s sister, and he advanced to welcome her.
Grace did not see his welcome; would not see it. Perhaps in truth she was wholly absorbed by the sight which met her view in Maria. Remedy still?—hope yet? Ah no! death was there, was upon her, and Grace burst into tears. Maria held out her hand, a smile lighting up her wan countenance.
“I thought you were not coming to see me, Grace.”
“I was out; I went to Hamlet’s Wood this morning with Mr. Akeman,” sobbed Grace. “Whatever is the reason that you have suddenly grown so ill as this?”
“I have been growing ill a long time,” was Maria’s answer.
“But there must be hope!” said Grace in her quick way. “Mr. George Godolphin”—turning to him and dashing away the tears on her cheeks, as if she would not betray them tohim—“surely there must be hope! What do the medical men say?”
“There is no hope, Grace,” interposed Maria in her feeble voice. “The medical men know there is not. Dr. Beale came with Mr. Snow at midday; but their coming at all is a mere form now.”
Grace untied her bonnet and sat down. “I thought,” said she, “you were getting well.”
Maria made a slight motion of dissent. “I have not thought it myself; not really thought it. I hoped it might be so, and the hope prevented my speaking: but there was always an undercurrent of conviction to the contrary in my heart.”
George looked at her, half-reproachfully. She understood the look, and answered it.
“I wish now I had told you, George: but I was not sure. And if I had spoken you would only have laughed at me then in disbelief.”
“You speak very calmly, Maria,” said Grace with passionate earnestness. “Have you no regret at leaving us?”
A faint hectic shone suddenly in Maria’s cheek. “Regret!” she repeated with emotion; “my days have been one long regret; one long, wearying pain. Don’t you see it is the pain that has killed me, Grace?”
Grace’s temper was sharp: her sense of right and wrong cynically keen: the Rector had had the same sharp temper in his youth, but he had learned to control it; Grace had not. She turned her flashing eyes, her flaming cheeks, on George Godolphin.
“Do you hear?—the pain has killed her. Who brought that pain upon her? Mr. George Godolphin, I wish you joy of your conscience! I almost seemed to foresee it—I almost seemed to foresee this,” she passionately cried, “ere ever my sister married you.”
“Don’t, Grace!” wailed Maria, a faint cry of fear escaping her; a sudden terror taking possession of her raised face. “George, George!” She held out her hands yearningly to him, as if she would shield him, or as if she wanted him to shield her from the sharp words. George crossed over to her with his protecting presence, and bent to catch her whisper, praying him for peace.
“You forget your sister’s state when you thus speak, Mrs. Akeman,” he gravely said. “Say anything you please to me later; you shall have the opportunity if you desire it; but in my wife’s presence there must be peace.”
Grace flung off the shawl which she had worn, and stood beating the toe of her foot upon the fender, her throat swelling with the effort to subdue her emotion. What with her anger in the past, her grief in the present, she had well-nigh burst into sobs.
“I think I could drink some tea,” said Maria. “Could we not have it together; here; for the last time? You will make it, Grace?”
Poor, weak, timid heart! Perhaps she only so spoke as an incentive to keep that “peace” for which she tremblingly yearned; which was essential to her, as to all, in her dying hour. George rang the bell and Margery came in.
It was done as she seemed to wish. The small round table was drawn to the fire, and Grace sat at it, making the tea. Maria turned her face and asked for Meta: Margery answered that she was coming in by-and-by. Very little was said. George drew a chair near Mariaand leaned upon the arm of the sofa. The tea, so far as she went, was a mockery: George put a teaspoonful into her mouth, but she with difficulty swallowed it, and shook her head when he would have given her more. It did not seem to be much else than a mockery for the others: Grace’s tears dropped into hers, and George suffered his to grow cold and then swallowed it at a draught, as if it was a relief to get rid of it. Margery was called again to take the things away, and Maria, who was leaning back on the sofa with closed eyes, asked again for Meta to come in.
Then Margery had to confess that Miss Meta was not at home to come in. She had gone out visiting. The facts of the case were these. Lord Averil, after quitting the house, had returned to it to say a word to George which he had forgotten: but finding George had gone into his wife’s room, he would not have him disturbed. It was just at the moment that Margery had carried out Meta, and the young lady was rather restive at the proceedings, crying loudly. His lordship proposed to carry her off to Ashlydyat. Margery seized upon the offer. She took down a woollen shawl and the child’s garden-hat that were hanging on the pegs, and enveloped her in them without ceremony. “They’ll do as well as getting out her best things, my lord, if you won’t mind them: and it will be almost dusk by the time you get to Ashlydyat.”
It was quite the same to Lord Averil, whether the young lady was bundled up as she was now, or decked out in a lace frock and crinoline. He led her down the path, talking pleasantly; but Meta’s breath was caught up incessantly with sobbing sighs. Her heart was full, imperfect as her idea of the calamity overshadowing her necessarily was.
Thus it happened that Miss Meta was not at hand when Maria asked for her. Whether it was from this, or from causes wholly unconnected with it, in a short time Maria grew restless: restless, as it seemed, both in body and mind, and it was deemed advisable that she should not sit up longer.
“Go for Meta while they get me into bed, George,” she said to him. “I want her to be near me.”
He went out at once. But he did not immediately turn to Ashlydyat: with hasty steps he took the road to Mr. Snow’s. There had been a yearning on George Godolphin’s mind, ever since he first saw his wife in the afternoon, to put the anxious question to one or both of the medical men: “Can nothing be done to prolong her life, even for the shortest space of time?”
Mr. Snow was out: the surgery boy did not know where: “Paying visits,” he supposed, and George turned his steps to Dr. Beale’s, who lived now in Prior’s Ash, though he used not to live in it. Dr. Beale’s house was ablaze with light, and Dr. Beale was at home, the servant said, but he had a dinner-party.
How the words seemed to grate on his ear! A dinner-party!—gaiety, lights, noise, mirth, eating and drinking, when his wife was dying! But the next moment reflection came to him: the approaching death of a patient is not wont to cast its influence on a physician’s private life.
He demanded to see Dr. Beale in spite of the dinner-party. GeorgeGodolphin forgot recent occurrences, exacting still the deference paid to him all his life, when Prior’s Ash had bowed down to the Godolphins. He was shown into a room, and Dr. Beale came out to him.
But the doctor, though he would willingly have smoothed matters to him, could not give him hope. George asked for the truth, and he had it—that his wife’s life now might be counted by hours. He went out and proceeded towards Ashlydyat, taking the near way down Crosse Street, by the Bank—the Bank that once was: it would lead him through the dull Ash-tree Walk with its ghostly story; but what cared George Godolphin?
Did a remembrance of the past come over him as he glanced up at the Bank’s well-known windows?—a remembrance that pricked him with its sharp sting? He need never have left that house; but for his own recklessness, folly, wickedness—call it what you will—he might have been in it still, one of the honoured Godolphins, heir to Ashlydyat, his wife well and happy by his side. Now!—he went striding on with wide steps, and he took off his hat and raised his burning brow to the keen night air. You may leave the house behind you, George Godolphin, and so put it out of your sight, but you cannot blot out your memory.
Grace had remained with Maria. She was in bed now, but the restlessness seemed to continue. “I want Meta; bring Meta.”
“Dear Maria, your husband has but just gone for her,” breathed Grace. “She will soon be here.”
It seemed to satisfy her. She lay still, looking upwards, her breath, or Mrs. Akeman fancied it, growing shorter. Grace, hot tears blinding her eyes, bent forward to kiss her wasted cheek.
“Maria, I was very harsh to you,” she whispered. “I feel it now. I can only pray God to forgive me. I loved you always, and when that dreadful trouble came, I felt angry for your sake. I said unkind things to you and of you, but in the depth of my heart there lay the pain and the anger because you suffered. Willyouforgive me?”
She raised her feeble hand and laid it lovingly on the cheek of Grace. “There is nothing to forgive, Grace,” she murmured. “What are our poor little offences one against the other? Think how much Heaven has to forgive us all. Oh, Grace, I am going to it! I am going away from care.”
Grace stood up to dash away her tears; but they came faster and faster. “I would ask you to let me atone to you, Maria,” she sobbed—“I would ask you to let me welcome Meta to our home. We are not rich, but we have enough for comfort, and I will try to bring her up a good woman; I will love her as my own child.”
“She goes to Cecil.” There was no attempt at thanks in words—Maria was growing beyond it; nothing but the fresh touch of the hand’s loving pressure. And that relaxed with the next moment and fell upon the bed.
Grace felt somewhat alarmed. She cleared the mist from her eyes and bent them steadily on Maria’s face. It seemed to have changed. “Do you feel worse?” she softly asked.
Maria opened her lips, but no sound came from them. She attempted to point with her finger to the door; she then threw her eyes in the same direction; but why or what she wanted it was impossible to tell.Grace, her heart beating wildly, flew across the little hall to the kitchen.
“Oh, Margery, I think she is sinking! Come you and see.”
Margery hastened in. Her mistress evidentlywassinking, and was conscious of it. The eager, anxious look upon her face and her raised hand proved that she was wanting something.
“Is it my master?—Is it the child?” cried Margery, bending over her. “They won’t be long, ma’am.”
It was Margery’s habit to soothe the dying, even if she had to do it at some little expense of veracity. She knew that her master could not go to Ashlydyat and be home just yet: she did not know of his visits to the houses of the doctors: but if she had known it she would equally have said, “They won’t be long.”
But the eager look continued on Maria’s face, and it became evident to experienced Margery that her master and Meta were not the anxious point. Maria’s lips moved, and Margery bent her ear.
“Papa! Is it time?”
“It’s the Sacrament she’s thinking of,” whispered Margery to Mrs. Akeman: “or else that she wants to take leave of him. The Rector was to come at eight o’clock; he told me so when he called in again this afternoon. What is to be done, ma’am?”
“And it is only half-past six! We must send to him at once.”
Margery seemed in some uncertainty. “Shall you be afraid to stay here alone, ma’am, if I go?”
“Why! where is Jean?”
Jean, one of the old servants of Ashlydyat, discharged with the rest when the bankruptcy had come, but now in service there again under Lord and Lady Averil, had been with Margery all day. She had now been sent out by the latter for certain errands wanted in the town.
A tremor came over Mrs. Akeman at Margery’s question, as to whether she would be afraid to stay there alone. To one not accustomed to it, it does require peculiar courage to remain with the dying. But Grace could call up a brave spirit at will, and she no longer hesitated, when she saw the continued eager look on her sister’s face.
“Make haste, Margery. I shall not mind. Mrs. James is in the house, and I can call her if I see a necessity for doing so. Margery!”—following her outside the door to whisper it—“do you see that strange look in her face? Is itdeath?”
She was trembling all over, as she spoke, in nervous trepidation. It was to be a memorable night, that, what with one emotion and another, in the memory of Grace Akeman. Margery’s answer was characteristic. “It does look like it, ma’am; but I have seen them like this, and then rally again. Anyhow, it can’t be far off. Mrs. Akeman, it seems to me that all the good ones are leaving the world. First Mr. Godolphin, and now her!”
Margery had scarcely been gone five minutes when Lord Averil came back with Meta. They had not met George. It was not likely that they had, seeing that he was going to Ashlydyat by a different route. In point of fact, at that moment George was about turning into Crosse Street, passing his old house with those enlivening reminiscences of his.Grace explained why she was alone, and Lord Averil took off his hat and great-coat to remain.
Maria asked for him. He went up to the bed and she smiled at him and moved her hand. Lord Averil took it between his, the tears gathering in his earnest eyes as he saw the change in her.
“She has been as happy as possible with us all the evening,” he gently said, alluding to the child. “We will do all we can for her always.”
“Tell Cecil—to bring—her up—for God.”
She must have revived a little or she could not have spoken the words. By-and-by, Margery was heard to enter, panting with the speed she had made, and Mr. Hastings was not far behind.
As the clergyman approached the gate, he saw a man leaning over it, in the light cast by the white snow of the winter’s night. It was David Jekyl.
“I thought I’d ask how the young missis was, sir, as I went home, but it might be disturbing of ’em to go right up to the door,” he said, drawing back to make way for the Rector. “It were said in the town, as I come along, that she was worse.”
“Yes, David, she is worse; as ill as she can be. I have just had a message.”
David twirled his grey felt hat awkwardly round on his hand, stroking its napless surface with his other arm. He did not raise his eyes as he spoke to the Rector.
“Might be, you’d just say a word to her about that money, sir, asking of her not to let it worry her mind. It is said as them thingshaveworried her more nor need be. If you could say a word for us, sir, that we don’t think of it any more, it might comfort her like.”
“The trouble for her has passed, David: to say this to her might bring her thoughts back to it. Heaven is opening to her, earth is closing. Thank you for your thoughtfulness.”
The Reverend Mr. Hastings continued his way slowly up the path, whence the snow had been swept away. Illness was upon him, and he could not walk quickly. It was a dull night, and yet there was that peculiar light in the atmosphere, often seen when the earth is covered with snow. The door was held open, awaiting him; and the minister uncovered his head, and stepped in with his solemn greeting:
“Peace be to this house and to all that dwell in it!”
There could be no waiting for George Godolphin: the spirit might be on its wing. They gathered in the room, Grace, Margery, and Viscount Averil: and, the stillness broken only by the hushed sobs of Grace, Mr. Hastings administered the last rite of our religion to his dying child.