Breathe softly, tread gently, for it is the chamber of the dying! The spirit is indeed on its wing, hovering on the very isthmus which separates time from eternity.
A small shaded lamp throws its subdued light upon the room, blending with the ruddier hue cast by the fire. The white, wan face of Maria Godolphin lies quietly on the not whiter pillow; her breath comes in short gasps, and may be heard at a distance; otherwise she is calm and still; the sweet soft eyes are open yet, and the world and its interests, so far as cognizance goes, has not closed. Meta, in her black frock, dressed as she had been in the day, is lying on the bed by her mother’s side: one weak arm is thrown round the child, as if she could not part with her greatest earthly treasure; and George is sitting in a chair on the other side the bed, his elbow on the pillow, his face turned to catch every shade that may appear on that fading one, so soon to be lost to him for ever.
The silence was interrupted by the striking of the house-clock: twelve: and its strokes came through the doors of the room with preternatural loudness in the hushed stillness of midnight. Margery glided in. Margery and Jean were keeping watch over the fire in the next room, the sitting-room, ready for any services required of them: and they knew that services for the dead as well as for the living might be wanted that night.
The doctors had paid a last visit, superfluous as they knew it to be. Dr. Beale had come with the departure of his dinner guests; Mr. Snow earlier in the evening: she was dying, they said, calmly and peacefully: and those friends who had wished to take their farewell had taken it ere they left the house, leaving her, as she wished, alone with her husband.
Margery came in with a noiseless step. If Margery had come in once upon the same errand which brought her now, she had come in ten times. Maria turned her eyes towards her.
“She would be a sight better in bed. It has gone midnight. It can’t do any good, her lying there.”
Meta partly stirred her golden curls as she moved nearer to her mother, and Maria’s feeble hand tightened its clasp on the little one. George nodded; and Margery went back rather in dudgeon, and gave the fire in the next room a fierce poke.
“It’s notwellto let her see a mortal die. Just you hold your tongue, Jean, about mother and child! Don’t I know it’s parting them as well as you?—but the partingmustcome, and before another hour is over; and I say it would be better to bring her away now. Master has no more sense than a calf, or he’d send her. Not he! He just gave me one of his looks, as much as to say, ‘You be off again; she isn’t coming.’”
“How does she seem now?” asked Jean, a tall woman, with a thin, straight figure, and an old-fashioned, large white cap.
“I saw no change. There won’t be any till the minute comes.”
On the table was a tray of cups and saucers. Margery went up to them and drew two from the rest. “We may as well have a drop o’ tea now,” she said, taking up a small black tea-pot that was standing on the hob—for the grate was old-fashioned. “Shall I cut you a bit of bread and butter, Jean?”
“No, thank you. I couldn’t eat it.”
They sat on either side the table, the tea-cups between them. Margery put the tea-pot back on the hob. Jean stirred her tea noiselessly.
“I have known those, as far gone as she, rally for hours,” Jean remarked, in a half-whisper.
Margery shook her head. “Shewon’t rally. It will be only the working out of my dream. I dreamt last night——”
“Don’t get talking of dreams now, Margery,” interrupted Jean, with a shiver. “I never like to bring dreams up when the dead are about.”
Margery cast a resentful glance at her. “Jean, woman, if you have laughed at my dreams once you have laughed at them a hundred times when we lived together at Ashlydyat, ridiculing and saying you never could believe in such things. You know you have.”
“No more I don’t believe in ’em,” said Jane, taking little sips of her hot tea. “But it’s not a pleasant subject for to-night. The child is to come to the old home, they say, to be brought up by my lady.”
Margery grunted.
“Shall we have you at Ashlydyat again, Margery?”
“Now don’t you bother your head about me, Jean, woman. Is it a time to cast one’s thoughts about and lay out plans? Let the future take care of itself.”
Jean remained silent after this rebuff and attended to her tea, which she could not get sufficiently cool to drink comfortably. She had been an inferior servant to Margery at Ashlydyat, in a measure under her control; and she still deferred to her in manner. Presently she began again.
“It’s a curious complaint that your mistress has died of, Margery. Leastways it has a curious name. I made bold to ask Dr. Beale to-night what it was, when I went to open the gate for him, and he called it—what was it?—atrophy. Atrophy: that was it. They could not at all class the disease of which Mrs. George Godolphin had died, he said, and were content to call it atrophy for want of a better name. I took leave to say that I didn’t understand the word, and he explained that it meant a gradual wasting away of the system without apparent cause.”
Margery did not reply for the moment: she was swelling with displeasure.
“Margery, whatisatrophy, for I don’t understand it a bit?”
“It’s rubbish,” flashed Margery—“as applied to my poor dear mistress. She has died of the trouble—that she couldn’t speak of—that has eaten into her heart and cankered there—and broke it at the last. Atrophy! but those doctors must put a name to everything. Jean, woman, I have been with her all through it, and I tell you that it’s thetroublethat has killed her. She has had it on all sides, has felt it in more ways than the world gives her credit for. She never opened her lips to me about a thing—and perhaps it had been better if she had—but I have my eyes in my head, and I could see what it was doing for her. As I lay down in my clothes on this very sofa last night, for it wasn’t up to my bed I went, with her so ill, I couldn’t help thinking to myself, that if she could but have broken the ice and talked of her sorrows they might have worn off in time. It is burying the grief within people’s own breasts that kills them.”
Jean was silent. Margery began turning the grounds in her empty tea-cup round and round, staring dreamily at the forms they assumed.
“Hark!” cried Jean.
A sound was heard in the next room. Margery started from her chair and softly opened the door. But it was only her master, who had gone round the bed and was leaning over Meta. Margery closed the door again.
George had come to the conclusion that the child would be best in bed. Meta was lying perfectly still, looking earnestly at her mamma’s face, so soon, so soon to be lost to her. He drew the hair from her brow as he spoke.
“You will be very tired, Meta. I think you must go to bed.”
For answer Meta broke into a passionate storm of sobs. They roused Maria from her passive silence.
“Meta—darling,” came forth the isolated words in the difficulty of her laboured breath—“I am going away, but you will come to me. You will be sure to come to me, for God has promised. I seem to have had the promise given to me, to hold it, now, and I shall carry it away with me. I am going to heaven. When the blind was drawn up yesterday morning and I saw the snow, it made me shiver, but I said there will be no snow in heaven. Meta, there will be only spring there; no sultry heat of summer, no keen winter’s cold. Oh, my child! try to come to me, try always! I shall keep a place for you.”
The minutes went on: the spirit fleeting, George watching with his aching heart. Soon she spoke again.
“Has it struck twelve?”
“Ten minutes ago.”
“Then it is my birthday. I am twenty-eight to-day. It is young to die!”
Young to die! Yes, it was young to die: but there are some who can count time by sorrow, not by years.
“Don’t grieve, George. It will pass so very soon, and you will come to me. Clad in our white robes, we shall rise at the Last Day to eternal life, and be together for ever and for ever.”
The tears were dropping from his eyes. The grief of the present, the anguish of the parting, the remorse for the irrevocable past, in which he might have cherished her more tenderly had he foreseen this, and did not, were all too present to him. He laid his face on hers with a bitter cry.
“Forgive me before you go! Oh, my darling, forgive me all!”
There was no answering response, nothing but the feeble pressure of her hand as it held him there, and he started up to look at her. Ahno: there could never more be any response from those fading lips, never more, never more.
Had the hour come? George Godolphin’s heart beat quicker, and he wildly kissed her with passionate kisses—as if that would keep within her the life that was ebbing. The loving eyes gazed at him still—it was he who had the last lingering look, not Meta.
But she was not to die just then: life was longer in finally departing. George—greedily watching her every breath, praying (who knows?) wild and unavailing prayers to Heaven that even yet a miracle might be wrought and she spared to him—supported her head on his arm. And the minutes went on and on.
Meta was very still. Her sobs had first subsided into a sudden catching of the breath now and then, but that was no longer heard. Maria moved uneasily, or strove to move, and looked up at George in distress; dying though she was, almost past feeling, the weight of the child’s head had grown heavy on her side. He understood and went round to move Meta.
She had fallen asleep. Weary with the hour, the excitement, the still watching, the sobs, sleep had stolen unconsciously upon her: her wet eyelashes were closed, her breathing was regular, her hot cheeks were crimson. “Shall I take her to Margery?” he whispered.
Maria seemed to look approval, but her eyes followed the child as George raised her in his arms. It was impossible to mistake their yearning wish.
He carried the child round, he gently held her sleeping face to that of his wife, and the dying mother pressed her last feeble kiss upon the unanswering and unconscious lips. Then he took her and gave her to Margery.
The tears were in Maria’s eyes when he returned to her, and he bent his face to catch the words that were evidently striving to be spoken.
“Love her always, George.”
“Oh, my darling, there is no need to tell it me!”
The answer seemed to have burst from him in anguish. There is no doubt that those few last hours had been of the bitterest anguish to George Godolphin: he had never gone through such before—he never would go through such again. It is well, it is well that these moments can come but once in a lifetime.
He hung over her, suppressing his emotion as he best could for her sake; he wiped the death-dews from her brow, fast gathering there. Her eyes never moved from him, her fingers to the last sought to entwine themselves with his. But soon the loving expression of those eyes faded into unconsciousness: they were open still, looking, as it may be, afar off: the recognition of him, her husband, the recollection of earthly things had passed away.
Suddenly there was a movement of the lips, a renewal in a faint degree of strength and energy; and George strove to catch the words. Her voice was dreamy; her eyes looked dreamily at him whom she would never more recognize until they should both have put on immortality.
“And the city has no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to shine in it: for the glory of God lightens it, and the Lamb is the light——”
Even as she was speaking, the last words of her voice dropped, and was still. There was no sigh, there was no struggle; had Meta been looking on, the child’s pulses would not have been stirred. Very, very gently had the spirit taken its flight.
George Godolphin let his head fall upon the pillow beside her. In his overwhelming grief for her? or in repentant prayer for himself? He alone knew. Let us leave it with him!
Once more, once more—I cannot help it, if you blame me for relating these things—the death-knell of All Souls’ boomed out over Prior’s Ash. People were rising in the morning when it struck upon their ear, and they held their breath to listen: three timestwo, and then the quick sharp strokes rang for the recently departed. Then it was for her who was known the previous night to be at the point of death! and they went out of their houses in the bleak winter’s morning, and said to each other, as they took down their shutters, that poor Mrs. George Godolphin had really gone at last.
PoorMrs. George Godolphin! Ay, they could speak of her considerately, kindly, regretfully now, but did they remember how they had once spoken of her? She had gone to the grave with her pain and sorrow—she had gone with the remembrance of their severe judgment, their harsh words, which had eaten into her too-sensitive heart; she had gone away from them, to be judged by One who would be more merciful than they had been.
Oh, if we could but be less harsh in judging our fellow-pilgrims! I have told you no idle tale, no false story conjured up by a plausible imagination. Prior’s Ash lamented her in a startled sort of manner: their consciences pricked them sorely; and they would have given something to recall her back to life, now it was too late.
They stared at each other, shutters in hand, stunned as it were, with blank faces and repentant hearts. Somehow they had never believed she would really die, even the day before, when it had been talked of as all too probable, they had not fully believed it: she was young and beautiful, and it is not common for such to go. They recalled her in the several stages of her life: their Rector’s daughter, the pretty child who had been born and reared among them, the graceful girl who had given her love to George Godolphin, the most attractive man in Prior’s Ash; the faithful, modest wife, against whose fair fame never a breath of scandal had dared to come. It was all over now: she and her broken heart, her wrongs and her sorrows had been taken from their tender mercies to a land where neither wrongs nor sorrows can penetrate—where the hearts broken here by unkindness are made whole.
When Meta woke in the morning it was considerably beyond her usual hour, the result probably of her late vigil. Jean was in the room, not Margery. A moment’s surprised stare, and then recollection flashed over her. She darted out of bed, her flushed cheeks and her bright eyes raised to Jean.
“I want mamma.”
“Yes, dear,” said Jean evasively. “I’ll dress you, and then you shall go down.”
“Where’s Margery?”
“She has just stepped out on an errand.”
“Is mamma in her room? Is she in her bed?”
“We’ll go and see presently, dear,” repeated Jean with the same evasion.
The worst way that any one can take is to attempt to deceive a thoughtful, sensitive child, whose fears may be already awakened: it is certain to defeat its own ends. Meta knew as well as Jean did that she was being purposely deceived, that there was something to tell which was not being told. She had no very defined idea of death, but a dread came over Meta that her mamma was in some manner gone out of the house, that she should never see her again: she backed from Jean’s hand, dashed the door open, and flew down the stairs. Jean flew after her, crying and calling.
The noise surprised George Godolphin. He was in the parlour at the breakfast-table; sitting at the meal but not touching it. The consternation of Prior’s Ash was great, but that was as nothing in comparison with his. George Godolphin was as a man bewildered. He could not realize the fact. Only four and twenty hours since he had received intimation of the danger, and now she was—there. He could not realize it. Though all yesterday afternoon, since his arrival, he had known there was no hope—though he had seen her die—though he had passed the hours since, lamenting her as much as he could do so in his first stunned state, yet he could not realize it. He was not casting much blame to himself: he was thinking how circumstances had worked against him and against Maria. His mind was yet in a chaos, and it was from this confused state that the noise outside disturbed him. Opening the door, the sight came full upon his view. The child flying down in her white night-dress, her naked feet scarcely touching the stairs, her eyes wild, her hot cheeks flaming, her golden hair entangled as she had slept.
“I want mamma,” she cried, literally springing into his arms, as if for refuge. “Papa, I want mamma.”
She burst into a storm of sobs distressing to hear; she clung to him, her little arms, her whole frame trembling. George, half unmanned, sat down before the fire, and pressed her to him in his strong arms.
“Bring a shawl,” he said to Jean.
A warm grey shawl of chenille which Maria had often lately worn upon her shoulders was found by Jean, and George wrapped it round Meta as she lay in his arms, and he kept her there. Had Margery been present, she would probably have taken the young lady away by force, and dressed her, with a reprimand: but there was only Jean: and George had it all his own way.
He tried to comfort the grieved spirit; the little sobbing bosom that beat against his; but his efforts seemed useless, and the child’s cry never ceased.
“I want mamma; I want to see mamma.”
“Hush, Meta! Mamma”—George had to pause, himself—“mamma’s gone. She——”
The words confirmed all her fears, and she strove to get off his lap in her excitement, interrupting his words. “Let me go and see her,papa! Is she in the grave with Uncle Thomas? Oh, let me go and see it! Grandpapa will show it to me.”
How long it took to soothe her even to comparative calmness, George scarcely knew. He learnt more of Meta’s true nature in that one interview than he had learnt in all her life before: and he saw that he must, in that solemn hour, speak to her as he would to a girl of twice her years.
“Mamma’s gone to heaven, child; she is gone to be an angel with the great God. She would have stayed with us if she could, Meta, but death came and took her. She kissed you; she kissed you, Meta, with her last breath. You were fast asleep: you fell asleep by her side, and I held you to mamma for her last kiss, and soon after that she died.”
Meta had kept still, listening: but now the sobs broke out again.
“Why didn’t they wake me and let me see her? why did they take her away first? Oh, papa, though she is dead, I want to see her; I want to see mamma.”
He felt inclined to take her into the room. Maria was looking very much like herself; far more so than she had looked in the last days of life: there was nothing ghastly, nothing repulsive, as is too often the case with the dead; the sweet face of life looked scarcely less sweet now.
“Mammathat wasis there still, Meta,” he said, indicating the next room. “The spirit is gone to heaven; you know that: the body, that which you used to call mamma, will be here yet a little while, and then it will be laid by Uncle Thomas, to wait for the resurrection of the Last Day. Meta, if I should live to come home from India; that is, if I am in my native land when my time comes to die, they will lay me beside her—”
He stopped abruptly. Meta had lifted her head and was looking at him with a wild, questioning expression; as if she could not at first understand or believe his words. “Mamma is there?”
“Yes. But she is dead now, Meta; she is not living.”
“Oh, take me to her! Papa, take me to her!”
“Listen, Meta. Mamma is changed, she looks cold and white, and her eyes are shut, and she does not stir. I would take you in: but I fear—I don’t know whether you would like to look at her.”
But there might be no denial now that the hope had been given; the child would have broken her heart over it. George Godolphin rose; he pressed the little head upon his shoulder, and carried her to the door, the shawl well wound round her body, her warm feet hanging down. Once in the room, he laid his hand upon the golden curls, to insure that the face was not raised until he saw fit that it should be, and bore her straight to the head of the bed. Then, holding her in his arms very tightly that she might feel sensibly his protection, he suffered her to look full upon the white face lying there.
One glance, and Meta turned and buried her head upon him; he could feel her trembling; and he began to question his own wisdom in bringing her in. Another minute, and she looked back and took a longer gaze.
“That’s not mamma,” she said, bursting into tears.
George sat down on a chair close by, and laid her wet cheek againsthis, and hid his eyes amidst her curls. His emotion had spent itself in the long night, and he thought he could control it now.
“That is mamma, Meta; your mother and my dear wife. It is all that is left of her. Oh, Meta! if we had only known earlier that she was going to die!”
“It does not look like mamma.”
“The moment death comes, the change begins. It has begun in mamma. Do you understand me, Meta? In a few days I shall hear read over her by your grandpapa——” George stopped: it suddenly occurred to him that the Reverend Mr. Hastings would not officiate this time; and he amended his sentence. “I shall hear read over her the words she has I know often read to you; how the corruptible body must die, and be buried in the earth as a grain of wheat is, ere it can be changed and put on immortality.”
“Will she never come again?” sobbed Meta.
“Never here, never again. We shall go to her.”
Meta sobbed on. “I want mamma! I want mamma, who talked to me and nursed me. Mamma loved us.”
“Yes, she loved us,” he said, his heart wrung with the recollection of the past: “we shall never find any one else to love us as she loved. Meta, child, listen! Mamma lives still; she is looking down from heaven now, and sees and hears us; she loves us, and will love us for ever. And when our turn shall come to die, I hope—I hope—we shall have learnt all that she has learnt, so that God may take us to her.”
It was of no use prolonging the scene: George still questioned his judgment in allowing Meta to enter upon it. But as he rose to carry her away, the child turned her head with a sharp eager motion to take a last look. A last look at the still form, the dead face of her who yesterday only had been as they were.
Margery had that instant come in, and was standing in her bonnet in the sitting-room. To describe her face of surprised consternation when she saw Meta carried out of the chamber, would take time and trouble. “You can dress her, Margery,” George said, giving the child into her arms.
But for his subdued tones, and the evident emotion which lay upon him all too palpably in spite of his efforts to suppress it, Margery might have given her private opinion of the existing state of things. As it was, she confined her anger to dumb-show. Jerking Meta to her, with a half fond, half fierce gesture, she lifted her hand in dismay at sight of the naked feet, turned her own gown up, and flung it over them.
Again another funeral in All Souls’ Church, another opening of the vault of the Godolphins! But it was not All Souls’ Rector to officiate this time; he stood at the grave with George. Isaac Hastings had come down from London, Harry had come from his tutorship; Lord Averil was again there, and Mr. Crosse had asked to attend. Prior’s Ash looked out on the funeral with regretful eyes, saying one to another, what a sad thing it was for her, only twenty-eight, to die.
George Godolphin, contriving to maintain an outward calmness, turned away when it was over. Not yet to the mourning-coach that waited for him, but through the little gate leading to the Rectory. He was about to leave Prior’s Ash for good that night, and common courtesy demanded that he should say a word of farewell to Mrs. Hastings.
In the darkened drawing-room with Grace and Rose, in their new mourning attire, sat Mrs. Hastings: George Godolphin half started back as they rose to greet him. He did not stay to sit: he stood by the fireplace, his hat in his hand, its flowing crape almost touching the ground.
“I will say good-bye to you, now, Mrs. Hastings.”
“You really leave to-night?”
“By the seven o’clock train. Will you permit me to express my hope that a brighter time may yet dawn for you; to assure you that no effort on my part shall be spared to conduce to it?”
He spoke in a low, quiet, meaning tone, and he held her hand between his. Mrs. Hastings could not misunderstand him—that he was hinting at a hope of reimbursing somewhat of their pecuniary loss.
“Thank you for your good wishes,” she said, keeping down the tears. “You will allow me—you will speak to Lady Averil to allow me to have the child here for a day sometimes?”
“Need you ask it?” he answered, a generous warmth in his tone. “Cecil, I am quite sure, recognizes your right in the child at least in an equal degree with her own, and is glad to recognize it. Fare you well; fare you well, dear Mrs. Hastings.”
He went out, shaking hands with Grace and Rose as he passed, thinking how much he had always liked Mrs. Hastings, with her courteous manners and gentle voice, so like those of his lost wife. The Rector met him in the passage, and George held out his hand.
“I shall not see you again, sir. I leave to-night.”
The Rector took the hand. “I wish you a safe voyage!” he said. “I hope things will be more prosperous with you in India than they have been latterly here!”
“We have all need to wish that,” was George’s answer. “Mr. Hastings, promises from me might be regarded as valueless, but thismuch I wish to say ere we part: that I carry the weight of my debt to you about me, and I will lessen it should it be in my power. You will”—dropping his voice—“you will see that the inscription is properly placed on the tombstone?”
“I will. Have you given orders for it?”
“Oh yes. Farewell, sir. Farewell, Harry,” he added, as the two sons came in. “Isaac, I shall see you in London.”
He passed swiftly out to the mourning-coach, and was driven home. Above everything on earth, George hated this leave-taking: but there were two or three to whom it had to be spoken.
Not until dusk did he go up to Ashlydyat. He called in at Lady Godolphin’s Folly as he passed it: she was his father’s widow, and Bessy was there. My lady was very cool. My lady told him that it was his place to give the refusal of Meta to her: and she should never forgive the slight. From the very moment she heard that Maria’s life was in danger, she made up her mind to break through her rules of keeping children at a distance, and to take the child. She should have reared her in every luxury as Miss Godolphin of Ashlydyat, and have left her a handsome fortune: as it was, she washed her hands of her. George thanked her for her good intention as a matter of course; but his heart leaped within him at the thought that Meta was safe and secure with Cecil: he would have taken her and Margery out to make acquaintance with the elephants, rather than have left Meta to Lady Godolphin.
“She’ll get over the smart, George,” whispered Bessy, as she came out to bid him God-speed. “I shall be having the child here sometimes, you know. My lady’s all talk: she never cherishes resentment long.”
He entered the old home, Ashlydyat, and was left alone with Meta at his own request. She was in the deepest black: crape tucks on her short frock; not a bit of white to be seen about her, except her socks and the tips of her drawers; and Cecil had bought her a jet necklace of round beads, with a little black cross hanging from it on her neck. George sat down and took her on his knee. What with the drawn blinds and the growing twilight, the room was almost dark, and he had to look closely at the little face turned to him. She was very quiet, rather pale, as if she had grieved a good deal in the last few days.
“Meta,” he began, and then he stopped to clear his husky voice—“Meta, I am going away.”
She made no answer. She buried her face upon him and began to cry softly. It was no news to her, for Cecil had talked to her the previous night. But she clasped her arms tightly round him as if she could not let him go, and began to tremble.
“Meta!—my child!”
“I want mamma!” burst from the little full heart. “I want mamma to be with me again. Is she gone away for ever? Is she put down in the grave with Uncle Thomas? Oh, papa! I want to see her!”
A moment’s struggle with himself, and then George Godolphin gave way to the emotion which he had so successfully restrained in the churchyard. They sobbed together, the father and child: her faceagainst his, the sobs bursting freely from his bosom. He let them come; loud, passionate, bitter sobs; unchecked, unsubdued. Do not despise him for it! they are not the worst men who can thus give way to the vehemence of our common nature.
It spent itself after a time; such emotion must spend itself; but it could not wholly pass yet. Meta was the first to speak: the same vain wish breaking from her, the sane cry.
“I want mamma! Why did she go away for ever?”
“Not for ever, Meta. Only for a time. Oh, child, we shall go to her: we shall go to her in a little while. Mamma’s gone to be an angel; to keep a place for us in heaven.”
“How long will it be?”
“Not a moment of our lives but it will draw nearer and nearer. Meta, it may be well for us that those we love should go on first, or we might never care to go thither ourselves.”
She lay more quietly. George laid his hand upon her head, unconsciously playing with her golden hair, his tears dropping on it.
“You must think of mamma always, Meta. Think that she is looking down at you, on all you do, and try and please her. She was very good: and you must be good, making ready to go to her.”
A renewed burst of sobs came from the child. George waited, and then resumed.
“When I come back—if I live to come back; or when you come to me in India; at any rate when I see you again, Meta, you will probably be grown up; no longer a child, but a young lady. If I shall only find you like mamma was in all things, I shall be happy. Do you understand, darling?”
“Yes,” she sobbed.
“Good, and gentle, and kind, and lady-like,—and remembering always that there’s another world, and that mamma has gone on to it. I should like to have kept you with me, Meta, but it cannot be: I must go out alone. You will not quite forget me, will you?”
She put up her hand and her face to his, and moaned in her pain. George laid his aching brow on hers. He knew that it might be the last time they should meet on earth.
“I shall write to you by every mail, Meta, and you must write to me. You can put great capital letters together now, and that will do to begin with. And,” his voice faltered, “when you walk by mamma’s grave on Sundays—and see her name there—you will remember her—and me. You will think how we are separated: mamma in heaven; I, in a far-off land; you here: but you know the separation will not be for ever, and each week will bring us nearer to its close—its close in some way. If—if we never meet again on earth, Meta——”
“Oh don’t, papa! I want you to come back to me.”
He choked down his emotion. He took the little face in his hands and kissed it fervently: in that moment, in his wrung feelings, he almost wished he had no beloved child to abandon.
“You must be called by your own name now. I should wish it. Meta was all very well,” he continued, half to himself, “whenshewas here; that the names should not interfere with each other. Be a goodchild, my darling. Be very obedient to Aunt Cecil, as you used to be to mamma.”
“Aunt Cecil is not mamma,” said Meta, her little heart swelling.
“No, my darling, but she will be to you as mamma, and she and Lord Averil will love you very much. I wish—I wish I could have kept you with me, Meta!”
She wished it also. If ever a child knew what an aching heart was, she knew it then.
“And now I must go,” he added—for indeed he did not care to prolong the pain. “I shall write to you from London, Meta, and I shall write you quite a packet when I am on board ship. You must get on well with your writing, so as to be able soon to read my letters yourself. Farewell, farewell, my darling child!”
How long she clung to him; how long he kept her clinging, he gave no heed. When the emotion on both sides was spent, he took her by the right hand and led her to the next room. Lady Averil came forward.
“Cecil,” he said, his voice quiet and subdued, “she must be called Maria now—in remembrance of her mother.”
“Yes,” said Cecil eagerly. “We should all like it. Sit down, George. Lord Averil has stepped out somewhere, but he will not be long.”
“I cannot stay. I shall see him outside, I dare say. If not, he will come to the station. Will you say to him——”
A low burst of tears from the child interrupted the sentence. George, in speaking to Cecil, had loosed her hand, and she laid her head down on a sofa to cry. He took her up in his arms, and she clung to him tightly: it was only the old scene over again, and George felt that they were not alone now. He imprinted a last kiss upon her face, and gave her to his sister.
“She had better be taken away, Cecil.”
Lady Averil, with many loving words, carried her outside the door, sobbing as she was, and called to her maid. “Be very kind to her,” she whispered. “It is a sad parting. And—Harriet—henceforth she is to be called by her proper name—Maria.”
“She will get over it in a day or two, George,” said Lady Averil, returning.
“Yes, I know that,” he answered, his face turned from Cecil. “Cherish the remembrance of her mother within her as much as you possibly can, Cecil: I should wish her to grow up like Maria.”
“If you would only stay a last hour with us!”
“I can’t; I can’t: it is best that I should go. I do not know what the future may bring forth,” he lingered to say, “Whether I shall come home—or live to come home, or she, when she is older, come out to me: it is all uncertain.”
“Were I you, George, I would not indulge the thought of the latter. She will be better here—as it seems to me.”
“Yes—there’s no doubt of it. But the separation is a cruel one. However—the future must be left. God bless you, Cecil! and thank you ever for your kindness.”
The tears rolled down her cheeks as he bent to kiss her. “George,” she whispered timidly—“if I might only ask you one question.”
“Ask me anything.”
“Is—have you any intention—shall you be likely to think of—of replacing Maria by Charlotte Pain—of making her your wife?”
“ReplacingMaria by her!” he echoed, his face flushing. “Heaven forgive you for thinking it!”
The question cured George’s present emotion more effectually than anything else could have done. But his haughty anger against Cecil was unreasonable, and he felt that it was so.
“Forgive me, my dear: but it sounded so like an insult to my dear wife. Be easy:shewill never replace Maria.”
In the porch, as George went out, he met Lord Averil hastening in. Lord Averil would have put his arm within George’s to walk with him through the grounds, but George drew back.
“No, not to-night: let me go alone. I am not fit for companionship. Good-night. Good-bye,” he added, his voice hoarse. “I thought to say a word of gratitude to you, for the past, for the present, but I cannot. If I live——”
“Don’t say ‘if,’ George: go away with a good heart, and take my best wishes with you. A new land and a new life! you may yet live down the past.”
Their hands lingered together in a firm pressure, and George turned away from Ashlydyat for the last time. Ashlydyat that might have been his.
Was it ever your fate or fortune to be on board an Indian vessel when it was just about to start? If so, there’s no doubt you retain a more vivid than agreeable reminiscence of the reigning confusion. Passengers coming on at the last moment and going frantic over their luggage or the discovered inconveniences of their cabins; cords and ropes creaking and coiling; sailors shouting, officers commanding; boxes shooting up from the boats to the deck, and to your feet, only in turn to be shot down again to the hold!—it is Bedlam gone frantic, and nothing less.
On a fine ship, anchored off Gravesend, this scene was taking place on a crisp day early in January. A bright, inspiriting, sunny day, giving earnest—if there’s anything in the popular belief—of a bright voyage. One gentleman stood aloof from the generalmêlée. He had been on board half an hour or more; had seen to his cabin, his berth, his baggage—as much of the latter as he could see to; and now stood alone watching the turmoil. Others, passengers, had come on board in groups, surrounded by hosts of friends; he came alone: a tall and very distinguished-looking man, attired in the deepest mourning, with a grey plaid crossed on his shoulder.
As if jealous that the ship should have all the confusion to itself, theshore was getting up a little on its own account. Amidst the drays, the trucks, the carts: amidst the cases and packages, which were heaped on the bank, not all, it was to be hoped, for that ship, or she would never get off to-day; amidst the numerous crowds of living beings, idlers and workers, that such a scene brings together, there came something into the very throng of them, scattering everything that could be scattered right and left.
An exceedinglyremarkable carriage, of the style that may be called “dashing,” especially if height be any criterion, its wheels red and green, its horses of high mettle, and a couple of fierce dogs barking and leaping round it. The scattered people looked up in astonishment to see a lady guiding those horses, and deemed at first that the sun, shining right into their eyes, had deceived them: pawing, snorting, prancing, fiery animals; which, far from being spent by their ten or twelve miles journey, looked as if they were eager to start upon another. The lady managed them admirably. A very handsome lady was she, of the same style as the carriage; dashing, with jet-black eyes, large and free, and a scarlet feather in her hat that might have been found nearly thirty-six inches long, had it been measured from top to tip. A quiet little gentleman, slight and fair, sat beside her, and a groom lounged grandly with folded arms in the back seat. She, on her high cushions, was almost a yard above either of them: the little gentleman in fact was completely eclipsed: and she held the reins in her white gauntleted hands and played gallantly with the whip, perfectly at ease, conscious that she was those foaming steeds’ master. Suddenly, without the least warning, she drew them back on their haunches.
“There she is! in the middle of the stream. Can’t you read it, Dolf?The Indus.How stupid of the people to tell us she was lying lower down!”
Jumping from the carriage without waiting to be assisted, she left the groom in charge and made her way to the pier, condescendingly taking the gentleman’s arm as she hastened up it, and hissing off the dogs as a hint that they were to remain behind. I am sure you cannot need an introduction to either of these people, but you shall have it for all that; Mr and Mrs. Rodolf Pain.
She, Charlotte, did all the acting, and the talking too. Her husband had always been retiring in manner, as you may remember; and he had grown far more retiring than he used to be. Charlotte bargained for a boat: and they were pulled to the ship’s side.
For a few moments they had to take their chance; they made only two more in the general confusion; but Charlotte seized upon a handsome young man with a gold band upon his cap, who was shouting out orders.
“Can you tell me whether Mr. George Godolphin has come on board yet?”
“Mr. George Godolphin,” repeated the young officer, cutting short some directions midway, and looking half bewildered in the general disorder.
“Bound for Calcutta,” explained Charlotte.
“I can inquire. Tymms,” beckoning to him one of the middies,“go and ask the steward whether a gentleman of the name of Godolphin has come down.”
But there was no need of further search. Charlotte’s restless eyes had caught sight of George—the solitary passenger in mourning whom you saw standing alone. She and Mr. Pain made the best of their way to him, over the impediments blocking up the deck.
He did not see their approach. He was leaning over the vessel on the side opposite to that facing the shore, and Charlotte gave him a smart rap on the arm with her gauntlet-glove.
“Now, Mr. George Godolphin! what do you say for your manners!”
He turned quickly, his face flushing slightly with surprise when he saw them standing there: and he shook hands with them both.
“I ask what you have to say for your manners, Mr. George? The very idea of your leaving England for good, and never calling to say good-bye to us!”
“I met Mr. Pain a day or two ago,” said George. “He——”
“Met Mr. Pain! what on earth if you did!” interrupted Charlotte. “Mr. Pain’s not me. You might have found time to dine with us. I have a great mind to quarrel with you, George Godolphin, by way of leave-taking.”
Something like a smile crossed George’s lips. “The fact is, I thought I might have seen you at the Verralls’, Mrs. Pain. I went there for half an hour yesterday. I charged Mrs. Verrall——”
“Rubbish!” retorted Charlotte. “When you must have known we had moved into a house at Shooter’s Hill, you could not suppose we were still at the Verralls’. Our catching you this morning here was a mere chance. We stayed late in town yesterday afternoon at the furniture warehouse, and, in driving back down the Strand, saw Isaac Hastings, so I pulled up to ask what had become of you, and whether you were dead or alive. He informed us you were to sail to-day from Gravesend, and I told Dolf I should drive down. But itisill-mannered of you, Mr. George.”
“You will readily understand, that since my last return from Prior’s Ash, I have not felt inclined for visiting,” he said in a low grave tone, unconsciously glancing at his black attire. “I intended you no discourtesy, Mrs. Pain: but, for one thing, I did not know where you might be met with.”
“And couldn’t find out!” retorted Charlotte. “Dolf could have given you the address, I suppose, the other day, had you asked. He’s too great a fool to think to give it of his own accord.”
George looked at “Dolf,” whom his wife seemed so completely to ignore; looked at him with a pleasant smile, as if he would atone for Charlotte’s rudeness. “We were not together a minute, were we, Mr. Pain? I was in a hurry, and you seemed in one also.”
“Don’t say any more about it, Mr. Godolphin,” spoke Dolf, as resentfully as he dared. “That’s just like her! Making a fuss over nothing! Of course you could not be expected to visit at such a time: and any one but Charlotte would have the good feeling to see it. I am pleased to be able to see you here, and wish you a pleasant voyage; but I remonstrated with her this morning, that it was scarcely the right thing to intrude upon you. But she never listens, you know.”
“Youneedn’t have come,” snapped Charlotte.
“And then you would have gone on at me about my bad manners, as you have to Mr. Godolphin! One never knows how to please you, Charlotte.”
George resumed: to break the silence possibly, more than from any other motive. “Have you settled at Shooter’s Hill?”
“Settled!” shrieked Charlotte; “settled at Shooter’s Hill! Where it’s ten miles, good, from a theatre or any other place of amusement! No, thank you. A friend of Verrall’s had this place to let for a few weeks, and Dolf was idiot enough to take it——”
“You consented first, Charlotte,” interrupted poor Dolf.
“Which I never should have done had I reflected on the bother of getting up to town,” said Charlotte equably. “Settled at Shooter’s Hill! I’d as soon do as you are going to do, Mr. George—bury myself alive in Calcutta. We have taken on lease a charming house in Belgravia, and shall enter on a succession of dinner-parties: one a week we think of giving during the season. We shall not get into it much before February: it takes some time to choose furniture.”
“I hate dinner-parties,” said Dolf ruefully.
“You are not obliged to appear at them,” said Charlotte with much graciousness. “I can get your place filled up at table, I dare say. Whatisthat noise and scuffling?”
“They are weighing anchor,” replied George. “We shall soon be on the move.”
“I hear that great alterations are being made at Ashlydyat,” remarked Charlotte.
“Only on the spot called the Dark Plain. The archway is taken down, and a summer-house is being built on the site. An elaborate sort of summer-house, for it is to contain three or four rooms, I believe. It will have a fine view.”
“And what of those ugly gorse-bushes?”
“They will be cleared away, and the place laid out as a garden.”
“Is my lady starring it at the Folly?”
“Scarcely: just now,” quietly answered George.
“Miss Godolphin has gone to Scotland, I hear.”
“Yes. Bessy will reside with Lady Godolphin.”
“And tart Margery? What has become of her?”
“She remains with Maria at Ashlydyat.”
Charlotte opened her eyes—Charlotte had a habit of opening them when puzzled or surprised. “Maria! Who is Maria?”
“The child. We call her by her proper name now.”
“Oh, by the way, I had nearly forgotten it,” returned Charlotte in the old good-natured tone: for it may be remarked, that during the interview her tone had been what she had just called Margery—tart. “I should like to have the child up on a visit when we get into our house, and astonish her mind with the wonders of London. I suppose Lady Averil will make no objection?”
A very perceptible flush, red and haughty, dyed the face of George Godolphin. “You are very kind to think of it, Mrs. Pain; but I fear Lady Averil would not consent. Indeed, I have desired that the child may not visit, except amidst her immediate relatives.”
“As you please,” said Charlotte resentfully. “Dolf, I think we may as well be moving. I only meant it as a kindness to the child.”
“And I thank you for it,” said George warmly. “For all the kindness you have shown her, Mrs. Pain, I thank you, sincerely and heartily. Take care!”
He interposed to prevent a rope, that was being borne along, from touching her. Charlotte began in earnest to think it was time to move, unless she would be carried down the river in the ship.
“When shall you come back?” she asked him.
He shook his head. He could net tell any more than she could. The future was all uncertain and indistinct.
“Well, you won’t forget to find us out whenever you do come?” returned Charlotte.
“Certainly not. Thank you.”
“Do you know,” cried Charlotte impulsively, “you are strangely different in manner, George Godolphin! You have grown as cold and formal as a block of ice. Hasn’t he, Dolf?”
“If he has, it’s your fault,” was the satisfactory answer of Dolf. “You keep firing off such a heap of personal questions, Charlotte. I see no difference in Mr. Godolphin; but he has had a good deal of trouble, you know.”
“Shall we ever hear of you?” continued Charlotte, pushing back Dolf with her elbow, and completely eclipsing his meek face with her sweeping scarlet feather.
“No doubt you will, Mrs. Pain, from one source or another. Not that I shall be a voluminous correspondent with England, I expect: except, perhaps, with Ashlydyat.”
“Well, fare you well, George,” she said, holding out both her gauntleted hands. “You seem rather cranky this morning, but I forgive you; itistrying to the spirits to leave one’s native place for good and all. I wish you all good luck with my best heart!”
“Thank you,” he said, taking the hands within his own and shaking them: “thank you always. Good-bye. Good-bye, Mr. Pain.”
Mr. Pain shook hands less demonstratively than his wife, and his leave-taking, if quiet, was not less sincere. George piloted them to the gangway, and saw them pulled ashore in the little boat.
They ascended to the carriage, which to all appearance had been keeping up a perpetual commotion since they left it, the fault probably of its horses and dogs; and Charlotte, taking her high seat, dashed away in style; her whip flourishing, the dogs barking, her red feather tossing and gleaming. What she will do when these feathers go out of fashion it’s hard to say: Charlotte could hardly stir out without one.
And by-and-by, the anchor up, the tug attached, the good shipInduswas fairly on her way, being towed smoothly down the river under command of her pilot. The passengers were tormenting themselves still: the sailors seemed to be perpetually hurrying hither and thither, the steward was in a tumult: but George Godolphin, wrapped in his grey plaid, remained in his place, quiet and still, gazing out over the bows of the vessel. What were his reflections, as his native land began to recede from his eyes? Did he regret it? Did he regret the position he had lost; the ruin he had wrought; the death ofhis wife? Did he, finally, regret the inevitablePast, with all its mistakes and sins?—and think that if it could only come over again, he would act differently? Possibly so. Once he lifted his hat, and pushed the golden hair further from his brow, from his handsome face, not less bright or handsome than of yore—except in its expression. In that, there was an unmistakable look of weary sadness, never before seen on the features of gay George Godolphin.
And when, hours after, the rest of the cabin passengers were summoned to dinner, he never stirred, but kept his place there, looking far into the dusky night, glancing up at the stars that came glittering out in the blue canopy of heaven.
A safe landing to him on the shores of Calcutta! A safe and sure landing on a different shore that must come after it!
And Mr. and Mrs. Pain’s dinner-parties in Belgravia are a great success.