by Ellen Wood
“Right to keep it from her, Lady Jane! I would not for the world allow it to reach her ladyship in her present state of health; we don’t know what the consequences might be. My reputation is at stake, madam.”
Jane bowed her head, and entered her father’s room. The earl lay with his eyes closed, breathing heavily. Death was on his face: Jane saw that at a glance. The slight movement she made caused him to open them: a joyful ray of gladness flashed into his countenance, and he feebly put out his hand. Jane sank on her knees, and burst into a flood of tears as she clasped it.
“Oh, father, father!”
Who can tell how bitter was that moment to Jane Chesney? In spite of the marriage and the new wife, in spite of the estrangement and the separation, she had unconsciously cherished a secret hope, unacknowledged openly to herself, but not the less dear to her heart, that she and her father should come together again; that she should still be his dear daughter, living in the sunshine of his presence, ministering to his comfort as of old. How it was to be brought about, she never glanced at; but the hope, the prospect, had not been less indulged. And now — there he lay, only a few hours of life left to him! Had Jane’s heart not broken before, it would have broken then.
The day drags through, though storms keep out the sun,
And thus the heart will break, but brokenly live on.
Her head was bowed over him, and she allowed a few moments for the indulgence of her anguish. Her bonnet was off, and Lord Oakburn stretched over his other hand, and laid it fondly on her hair.
“Don’t fret, Jane. We must all make the port at last.”
“Oh, father, father!” she repeated in agony. “Is there no hope?”
“Not in this ship, Jane. But I’m going into a better. One not made with human hands, child; one where the pumps don’t get choked or the timbers rotten. My voyage is nearly over, Jane.”
She sobbed piteously; she scarcely knew how to bear the hour’s trial.
“Father, are we to part thus, having been estranged all this while? Oh, father, forgive me for my rebellion; forgive me for all the grief I may have caused you; but I could not endure to be nothing to you, a cipher in your home.”
“Child, what do you mean? You have not been rebellious to me; you must go to Laura for that. It did hurt you, Jane, I know, and I was vexed when I had done it; but you see, child, I wanted to have a direct heir, and now he is born. Forgive me, Jane, for the pain I caused you, but don’t you ask forgiveness of me; you, my dutiful child, who have ever been ready to place your hands under my feet. I might have set about it in a more ship-shape manner, have taken you into my counsels, and made it pleasant for all sides; and I wish I had. You see, I thought you wouldn’t like it, and I was a coward for once, and did not speak. She has been a good wife to me, Jane; and she respects you, and would love you, if you’d let her.”
Jane did not answer. An attendant opened the door to see if anything might be wanted, but was waved away again.
“So Laura would not come, Jane?”
“She could not come,” sobbed Jane. “She was at Pembury. She has been telegraphed for, and may be here by the next train.”
“Does he make her a good husband?”
“I think so; I hear nothing to the contrary. I do not go there,” added Jane, trying to subdue her aching heart, so as to speak calmly.
“And now, Jane, where’s Clarice? In this, my death-hour, she is more anxiously present to me than any of you. Has harm come to her?”
“Father, I don’t know where she is: I cannot think or imagine where. I begin to fear that harm has come to her. Sometimes I feel sure of it.”
“In what shape?” asked the earl.
“Nay, how can I tell? Then, again, I reason that she maybe abroad: but the thought of her has become to me a ceaseless care.”
“However it may be, I can do nothing,” panted the peer. “But, Jane, I leave her to you. Mind! I leave her to you! Spare no exertions to discover her; make it your object in life, until it is accomplished; keep that port always in view in your steering. And when you have found her give her my blessing, and tell her I have not been able to leave her well-off, but that I have done what I could. You will give her a home, Jane, if she will not come to her step-mother?”
“As long as I have one, father.”
“Yours is secured, such as it is. Lucy — —”
The earl’s voice had been growing weaker, and now ceased altogether. Jane opened the door, and beckoned in the attendants, whom she found waiting outside.
“Oh, missee! oh, missee!” wept poor Pompey, pressing forward. “Massa never get up no more!”
The earl appeared to have sunk into a stupor; but they could scarcely tell whether it was stupor or sleep. When the medical men paid their next visit, they said he might go off in it, or might rally for a time. Jane sat in the room; she could not leave him. And thus the day passed on.
Passed on without bringing Laura. Jane wondered much. Would she not come — as the earl had fancied? She listened intently, her ear alive to every sound.
The medical men came in and out, but the dying man still lay as he was, and gave no token. Once more Jane urged upon them the claims of the countess — that she ought to be apprized of the danger; but they positively refused to listen to her. It grew dark, and the nurse brought in the night-lamp. Jane was watching her arrange it, watching her mechanically, when a voice was heard from the bed.
“Jane.”
It was her father’s; he had roused up to consciousness; it almost seemed to strength, for the voice was firm, and the sight and sense seemed clear. Jane put a spoonful of jelly within his lips.
“Jane, I think I have seen the country on the other side. It’s better than Canaan was, and the rivers are like crystal, and the flowers on the banks are bright. I am nearly there, Jane; just one narrow strait to work through first, which looks dark; but the darkness is nothing, for I can see the light beyond.”
Jane’s tears fell. She could not trust her voice to answer: and the earl was silent for a time.
“Such a great big ship, Jane,” he began again; “big enough to hold all the people in the world; and those who get into her are at rest for ever. No more cold watches to keep on dark nights: no more shifting sails; no more tacking and wearing; no more struggles with storm and hurricane; the Great Commander does it all for us. You’ll come to me there, Jane? I am only going on a little while first.”
“Yes,” Jane softly whispered through her sobs, “to be together for ever and ever.”
“Where’s Clarice?” he suddenly exclaimed. “Has she not come!”
Jane had little doubt that he meant Laura. “We did not expect Clarice,” she said. “And Laura is not here yet.”
“Jane, perhaps Clarice has gone into the beautiful ship before me. I may find her there.”
“I don’t know,” Jane faintly answered, feeling how worse than unsatisfactory was the uncertainty respecting Clarice in that dying hour. “Father, if — if Laura cannot be here in time, you will leave her your forgiveness?”
“It is left to her. You may give it to her again; my love and my full forgiveness. But she might have come for it. Perhaps he would not let her come, Jane.”
“You forget,” she murmured; “Laura was not at home, and Mr. Carlton could not prevent her. Why should he wish to do so? I do not think he would.”
“Tell Laura I forgive him, too; and I hope he may get into the ship with the rest of us. But, Jane, I cannot like him; I never did like him. When Laura finds herself upon the quicksands, do you shelter her; she’ll have no one else to do it.”
Was that sentence spoken with the strange prevision that sometimes attends the dying? Perhaps so!
A slight sound upon the muffled knocker. Jane’s quick ear caught it. She hoped it was Laura, but it was only Dr. James. He came into the earl’s room, and then went down to pay a visit to the countess.
After his departure Lord Oakburn again sank into what seemed a stupor, and lay so for an hour or t
wo. As ten o’clock struck he started from it.
“Eliza, what’s the time?”
Jane glanced at his watch, which was hanging up, for she had not noticed the striking of the house clock.
“Five minutes past ten.”
“Oh, it’s you, Jane,” he said, with a sort of gladness that it was her, which found its echo in Jane’s heart; and he feebly put out his hand in search of hers. “My own Jane! with me at the last! She doesn’t know how I have missed her.”
The last sentence appeared to be spoken as if he were oblivious of her presence, in that absence of memory which frequently accompanies the dying: and there was a second glad echo within her heart.
“I am not in there yet, Jane, and the passage seems long. But there the ship is — what a sight! with her spars and her white sails. They are silvered over; and the spars are as glass, and the ship herself is gold. But it seems long to wait! How’s the tide?”
His voice had grown so indistinct that Jane had to bend down to listen, but the last question was spoken in a clear, anxious tone. She gave some soothing answer, not supposing that he meant the actual tide — the matter-of-fact “high water at London Bridge of the living, moving earth.
“The tide, Jane, the tide?” he continued, pointing with his finger to his own nautical almanac, which lay on his dressing-table. Jane rose and reached the book, “The tide is coming in, father,” she said, after finding the place. “It will be high-water at eleven o’clock.”
“Ay, ay. That’s what I’m waiting for. I couldn’t go against the tide, Jane; it must turn. I shall go out with the tide.”
Jane put back the book, and resumed her post beside him.
“Give my love to my wife, Jane, and tell her I wish I could have seen her; but the doctors wouldn’t let it be so. And, Jane, you’ll love my little son?”
“Oh yes,” she answered, with a sobbing sigh.
“And you’ll come here sometimes when I’m gone? You’ll come to see Lucy.” —
“Oh, father!” uttered Jane, in a tone of startled pain, “you surely have not left her away from me?”
The earl half opened his eyes. “What?”
“You have not left the guardianship of Lucy to any one but me?” breathlessly continued Jane. “Father, I have brought her up from her cradle; I have been to her as a second mother; you could not leave her away from me?”
He was evidently troubled, insensible as he had nearly become to earthly things.
“I did not think of it, Jane; when I made my will, I did not think —— —” his voice sank and Jane could not catch it. Silence fell upon the room, broken only by a convulsive sound that arose now and then: the sobs of Jane.
“It’s getting dark,” he resumed, later; “come closer to me, Jane. Don’t you see the ship? She’s lying at anchor while she waits. Look at her, Jane; how bright she is; never mind it’s being dark here. The banks are green, and the flowers brilliant, and the clouds are rose colour. And there’s the Captain! He is there! Oh, Jane, shut your eyes, you cannot look upon His brightness. He is beckoning — beckoning to me!” reiterated the earl, his earnest voice so full of strange, loving triumph, that to Jane’s mind it was impossible to connect what he said with a mere worldly vision. “I told you He would not reject a poor weather-beaten sailor. He will guide the ship to God — right into the blessed port of heaven. Yes, yes, I am coming; never mind the darkness; we shall soon be in the light.”
He said no more, but lay quietly. The tide turned at eleven o’clock, and the spirit of Francis, thirteenth Earl of Oakburn, went out with it.
One of the servants left the room to make known the event to the household, and in the same moment Lady Laura Carlton, so anxiously looked for, arrived. It turned out that when the despatch reached Colonel Marden’s, she and the family had just departed on a day’s excursion to some distant ruins. It was given to her when she returned home, but that was not until five in the evening. She had lost no time in coming then.
Laura was of an impetuous nature, and the instant the door was opened to her she ran upstairs, trusting to instinct to find her father’s bedroom. In the corridor of the first floor, close to the countess’s chamber, she encountered the servant who had just left the room above. “How is the earl?” she then inquired.
The servant stared at her. Perhaps the woman did not know that another daughter was expected. She made no answer for a moment, and Laura stamped her foot impatiently.
“I ask you how Lord Oakburn is! Don’t you know me? I am Lady Laura Carlton.”
“The earl is dead, my lady,” replied the woman in a low voice. “The breath has just left his body.”
“Dead!” shrieked Laura, in tones that might be heard in every part of the house. “My father dead! Oh, Jane, is it true?” she wailed, catching sight of Jane Chesney on the landing above. “Jane, Jane, is papa dead?”
Out came the nurse from Lady Oakburn’s room, her face white as a sheet and as sour as vinegar, praying for caution and silence. Laura went on, and Jane took her into the death-chamber.
She flung herself down by the side of the bed, crying frantically, almost raving. Why had she not been sent for earlier? why had they allowed him to die without her seeing him? Jane, in her quiet, but far deeper grief, strove to soothe her; she whispered of his peaceful frame of mind, of his loving message of forgiveness; but Laura sobbed on hysterically, and would not be comforted.
A sight startled them both. A tall figure, robed in a flannel dressing-gown, with an ashen face, came gliding in and stood gazing at the corpse. Laura had never seen her before, and the sight hushed her to silence; Jane knew her for Lady Oakburn. The nurse followed behind, wringing her hands, and audibly lamenting what it appeared she had no power to prevent. Laura’s cry in the corridor had penetrated to the chamber, and Lady Oakburn rose from her bed.
Anguish and reproach struggled in her countenance; anguish at her husband’s death, reproach at those who had kept his state from her; but she had powerful command over her feelings, and retained almost unnatural calmness. Seeing Jane, she turned and confronted her.
“Was this well done, Lady Jane?”
“I do not know precisely to what you allude,” was Jane’s answer.
“I am a stranger in the house, holding no authority in it, and whether things are ill or well done, it is not I who am responsible. I would have saved my father’s life with my own, had it been possible so to save it.”
“You have been here with him?”
“Since this afternoon.” —
“And yet you have excluded me!” returned Lady Oakburn, her voice trembling with suppressed emotion. “You think it right to exclude a wife from her husband’s death-bed?”
“I think it very wrong,” said Lady Jane. “I think nothing can justify it, except peril to her own life. The first caution I had breathed into my ear upon entering this house was, that the truth of my father’s state, his danger, must be kept from you. I ventured to remonstrate; yes, I did: once to Dr. James alone, again to the medical men in concert. I was told that it was essential you should be kept in ignorance; that the tidings, if imparted, might have the worst effect upon you. I should have been the first to tell you, had I dared.”
Lady Oakburn turned her condemning eyes to the nurse. “It was Dr. James,” spoke up the woman. “He gave his orders throughout the household, and we could but obey him. He was afraid of such a thing as this, that has now happened: and who’s to know, my lady, that you may not die for it?”
“I beg your pardon,” murmured the countess to Jane. “Oh, Lady Jane, let us be friends in this awful moment!” she implored, an irresistible impulse prompting her to speak. “He was your father; my husband; and he is lying dead before us; he has entered into a world where strife must cease; forgive me for the injury you think I did you, for the estrangement that I unhappily caused you. Let us at least be friends in the present hour, though the future should bring coolness again!”
Jane Chesney put her hand into her st
ep-mother’s. “It was not my fault that you were not with him; had it rested with me, you should have been here. He charged me to give you his love, and to say how he wished he could have seen you, but that the doctors forbade it. His death has been very peaceful; full of hope of a better world; a little while, he said, and we should all join him there.”
Lady Oakburn, Jane’s hand still in hers, had laid her face upon the pillow by the dead, when a storm of suffocating sobs was heard behind them. Lucy, likewise aroused by Laura’s cry on the stairs, had stolen in, in her night-dress.
“You kept it from me too, Lucy!” exclaimed Lady Oakburn in a tone of sad reproach. “And I trusted to you!”
“It was kept from her,” spoke up the nurse. “We were afraid of the child’s knowing it, my lady, because she would have carried the news to you.”
“Oh, Jane,” sobbed the little girl, “why has your love gone from us? You knew he was dying, and you never told me! you need not have begrudged a kiss to me from him for the last time.”
“I have no longer authority in the house, Lucy,” repeated Jane, “and can only do as I am told. I am a stranger in it.”
Her tone, broken by suffering, by sorrow, by a sound of injury, struck upon all, even amidst their own grief.
Laura had been kneeling in shadow since Lady Oakburn’s entrance; had neither spoken to her, nor been seen by Lucy. Jane turned to her now.
“And he left you his forgiveness, Laura; his full and free forgiveness, and his blessing,” she said, as her silent tears fell. “He died leaving his forgiveness to Mr. Carlton; his good wishes for him. Oh, but that I know my father has gone to peace, to heavenly happiness, this trial would be greater than I could bear!”
The last words appeared to escape her in her excess of anguish. It was indeed a night of bitter trial for all; but for none perhaps as it was for Jane.
Still, in spite of her grief, she was obliged to forego a great part of her prejudice against Lady Oakburn. It was certainly not a time to retain ill-feeling; and Jane could not close her eyes to the fact that Lady Oakburn had been a good woman in her new home. If Jane could only forgive the marriage, the countess’s conduct in all her new duties had been admirable. And as she sobbed that night by Jane’s side, and reiterated over and over again her grief, her remorse for the estrangement between the earl and his daughter, her humble prayer that Lady Jane would at least try to learn to look upon her as not an enemy, Jane’s heart insensibly warmed, and she unconsciously began to like the countess better than ever she had liked her as Miss Lethwait.