by Ellen Wood
“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.”
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, over him, 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 of immediate danger. 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. “I don’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 b
it 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 not bear to 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 have sold myself, to keep this ill from you!”
“Child, hush! There has been nothing to forgive to you. 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 the pain 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!
CHAPTER VI. A CROWD OF MEMORIES.
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.”
“What is the 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 per
haps 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.