by Ellen Wood
“Good-bye, Sir Geoffry,” he repeated.
“Good-bye, my child.”
Sir Geoffry lay back in an easy-chair in front of the fire in his library. The end was near at hand now, but he was bearing up quite well to the last. Lady Chavasse, worn almost to a shadow with grief and uncertainty — for there were times yet when she actually entertained a sort of hope — sat away in the shade; her eyes watching every change in his countenance, her heart feeling ever its bitter repentance and despair.
Repentance? Yes, and plenty of it. For she saw too surely what might have been and what was — and knew that it was herself, herself only, who had worked out this state of things. Her self-reproach was terrible; her days and nights were one long dream of agony. Lady Rachel was not with them very much. She lay down more than ever in her own room; and Lady Chavasse had begun to learn that this almost continuous lying was not caused by inert idleness, but of necessity. The Grange was a sad homestead now.
The blaze from the fire flickered on Sir Geoffry’s wasted face. Hers was kept in the shadow, or it might have betrayed the bitterness of her aching heart. He had been speaking of things that touched her conscience.
“Yes, it was a sin, mother. But it might have been repaired; and, if it had been, I believe God would have blessed us all. As it is — well, we did not repair it, you and I; and so — and so, as I take it, there has not been much of real blessing given to us here; certainly not of heartfelt comfort. I seem to see all things clearly now — if it be not wrong to say it.”
Lady Chavasse saw them too — though perhaps not exactly in the way he meant. Never was the vision, of what might have been, more vividly before her than now as he spoke. She saw him, a hale happy man; his wife Mary, their children, a goodly flock, all at the Grange, and herself first amongst them, reigning paramount, rejoicing in her good and dutiful daughter-in-law. Oh, what a contrast between that vision and reality! A repressed groan escaped her lips; she coughed to smother it.
“Mother!”
“Well, Geoffry?”
“You need not have suppressed my last letter to Mary — the letter of explanation I wrote when I quitted her and the Grange. You might have been sure of me — that I would be true to my word to you.”
No answer. There was a great deal that she would not suppress, besides the letter, if the time had to come over again. The log sparkled and crackled and threw its jets of flame upwards; but no other noise disturbed the room’s stillness.
“Mother!”
“Well, Geoffry?”
“I should like the child, little Arthur, to have my watch and its appendages. Have you any objection?”
“None.”
“It will be looked upon, you know, as a token of remembrance to the little fellow who had so sharp an illness through my horse.”
“Yes.”
“And — I have two desks, you know. The old one of common stained wood I wish sent to Miss Layne, locked as it is. The key I will enclose in a note. Let them be sent to her when I am dead.”
“It shall be done, Geoffry.”
“There’s not much in the desk. Just a few odds and ends of papers; mementoes of the short period when I was happy — though I ought not to have been. Nothing of value; except a ring that I bought for her at Worcester at the time, and which she would not take.”
“I promise it, Geoffry. I will do all you wish.”
“Thank you. You have ever been my loving friend, mother.”
“Ever, Geoffry?”
“Well — you did for the best there, mother; though it was a mistake. You acted for what you thought my welfare.”
“Would you not like to see her, Geoffry?”
“I have seen her and bidden her farewell. It was the afternoon I went to Duffham’s and you said that I stayed out too late. And now I think I’ll lie down on the sofa, and get, if I can, a bit of sleep; I feel tired. To-morrow I will talk about you and Rachel — and what will be best for you both. I wish to my heart, for your sake and hers, that Rachel had borne a son; I am thinking of you both daily, and of what you will do when I am gone.”
“I shall never know pleasure in life again, Geoffry,” she cried, with a heartbroken sob. “Life for me will be, henceforth, one of mortification and misery.”
“But it will not last for ever. Oh, mother! how merciful God is! — to give us the blessed hope of an eternal life of perfect happiness, after all the mistakes and tribulations and disappointments of this! My darling mother! we shall all be there in sweet companionship for ever.”
They buried Sir Geoffry Chavasse by the side of his father — and any one who likes to go there may see his tomb against the graveyard wall of Church Dykely. My Lady Chavasse arranged the funeral. The Earl of Derreston and a Major Chavasse were chief mourners, with other grand people. Duffham’s diary gives the particulars, but there is no space here to record them. Duffham was bidden to it; and brought Arthur Layne in his hand to the Grange, in obedience to a private word of my lady’s — for she knew the dead, if he could look out of his coffin, would like to see Arthur following. So the procession started, a long line; the village gazing in admiration as it passed; and Dobbs the blacksmith felt as proud as ever was the Grange peacock, when he saw Colonel Layne’s little son in a coach, amidst the gentlefolks. ‘Twere out of respect to the colonel’s bravery, you might be sure, he told a select audience: and p’r’aps a bit because o’ that back accident to the child hisself. And so, amidst pomps, and coaches, and comments, Geoffry Chavasse was left in his last home.
[Final matters extracted from Duffham’s Diary.]
It is eighteen months now since Sir Geoffry died; and strange changes have taken place. The world is always witnessing such: you go up, and I go down.
Admiral Chavasse came home and took possession of the Grange. My lady had previously quitted it. She did not quit Church Dykely. It seemed indifferent to her where she settled down; and Lady Rachel Chavasse had become used to my attendance, and wished to stay. There was a small white villa to let on this side of the Grange, and they took it. Lady Rachel lies down more than ever; when she goes out it is in a Bath-chair. Old John Noah draws it. The spinal complaint is confirmed. I can do her no good; but I go in once or twice a week, and have a gossip. She is very fractious: and what with one thing and another, my Lady Chavasse has a trying life of it. They keep three servants only; no carriage — except the Bath-chair. What a change! what a change!
If ever there was a disappointed woman in this world, one who feels the humiliation of her changed position keenly, whose whole life is a long living repentance, it is Lady Chavasse. The picture of what might have been is ever in her mind; the reality of what is, lies around her. To judge by human fallibility, she has a long existence before her: not quite fifty yet, and her health rude: but in spirit she is a bowed, broken-down woman.
The Grange is let. Sir Parker Chavasse could not reconcile himself to living in a rural district, and went back to his ship. At first he shut the Grange up; now he has let it for a term to Mr. and Mrs. McAlpin, formerly of Calcutta. They live there with their children; in as good a style as ever the Chavasses did. Allan McAlpin has given up business, and spends his large fortune like the gentleman he is. She is Mary Layne’s sister: a dainty and rather haughty woman. My lady looks out surreptitiously from the corner of her window as Mrs. McAlpin’s carriage bowls along the road beyond the field. Colonel Layne’s wife is also here just now, on a visit at the Grange; her husband, Sir Richard Layne, K.C.B., has returned to his duties in India. The whole county calls upon them and seems proud to do it, forgetting perhaps that they were only the daughters of my predecessor, Layne the apothecary. Yes! there are strange ups and downs in this world: and Mary Layne, so despised once, might not now be thought, even by my lady, so very unequal to Sir Geoffry Chavasse.
She does not go in for grandeur. But the village would like to lay its hands under her feet. Never was there so good, so unselfish, so sweet and humble-minded a woman as Mary. In a temporary ind
isposition that attacked her a few weeks ago, Mr. Dobbs, struck with consternation, gave, it as his opinion that Church Dykely “could afford to lose the whole biling of ‘em, better than her.” Lady Chavasse has seen her merit at last; and Mary’s frequent presence in their house seems to bring light to the two lonely women. Arthur goes there too; my lady loves him, curious though the fact may sound. An incident occurred the other evening.
Miss Layne and Arthur were at tea there, when I happened to go in with some medicine. Mary had her work out, and sat talking in a low voice to Lady Rachel on her sofa; Lady Chavasse was watching Arthur, playing on the grass-plat. My lady rose up with a sudden cry:
“Take care of the wasp, Sir Arthur! Sir Arthur!”
I saw what painful reverie she had been lost in — the vision of that which might have been. It is apt to steal on her at sunset. Becoming conscious of the slip, she flushed slightly, and turned it off. Lady Rachel laughed; she thought it a good joke. Mary was more silent than usual that night, as I walked home by her and Arthur’s side.
Here ends the history. Mary Layne lives on in her home, training Arthur, helping the sick and suffering, keeping her face steadily turned to another world. Never a one is there amidst us so respected as that good, grave lady, who blighted her life in early womanhood, and who carries its trace on her sad, sweet countenance, and its never-ceasing shame on her sorrowing heart.
That’s all at last. You must be glad of it. Old Duffham shall not lead me blindfold into one of his spun-out histories again. The trouble I’ve had to cut it down! What with the diaries and letters, it was twice as long.
And he called it a tale of sin. I, Johnny Ludlow, think it is more like a tale of suffering.
X.
A DAY OF PLEASURE.
We all liked Captain Sanker; a post-captain in the navy, ages since on half-pay; who came into Worcestershire, and brought a letter of introduction to the Squire. He was about a seventeenth cousin of the Sankers of Wales, and a twenty-seventh of Mrs. Todhetley. The captain and his wife and family, six children, had lived in Ireland and the Channel Islands, and other cheap localities, making both ends of their income meet as well as they could — and nobody need be told how poor is the half-pay of naval officers, and what a fight and a struggle it is to rub along. At last, through the death of a relative of Mrs. Sanker, they dropped into quite a fortune, and came over to settle at Worcester.
A Dr. Teal, who had also recently come to Worcester, and was an old friend of Captain Sanker, proposed it to them. He wrote a flaming account of the pretty place that Worcester was, of the loveliness of the surrounding country; and of the great advantage the college school would be to the young Sankers, in giving them a free education if they could be got into it. The prospect of a free education for his boys took with the captain, and he lost no time in removing to Worcester, the Welsh Sankers giving him an introduction to us. We grew pretty intimate: calling on them when we went to Worcester for a day, and having them over to spend days with us.
All the young Sankers were got into the college school by degrees, and became four of the forty king’s scholars. At that time — it is long past now — the school was not thought much of, for the boys were taught little but the classics, so entrance was easy: Latin, Greek, bad writing, and the first rule in arithmetic: there it ended. Captain Sanker thought the education first-rate, and had them all enrolled: Frederick, Daniel, King, and Toby. As to Toby, I fancy his real name was Alfred, but I never heard him called by it.
They had been in Worcester between one and two years, when Tod and I went over to them on a visit. The captain had come to spend a summer’s day at Crabb Cot, and in his jolly, open-hearted fashion insisted on taking us two back with him. He was a short, stout man, with grey hair, and merry bright blue eyes all alight with smiles. The college school would be breaking up for its long holidays in a week or so, and it would have been better for us to have gone then; but the captain always did things on impulse, and had no more forethought than young Toby. The holidays were taken late that year, and would be very long, because the college hall, which was the schoolroom, would be wanted for the music-meeting in September.
The Sankers’ was a funny household, and we pitched down amongst them without ceremony on either side. The house was at the corner of an open road, not very far from the cathedral. It was a commodious house as to size; but all the rooms were in an everlasting litter, so that you could never find a chair to sit down on. The captain was good-humoured always, going in and out a hundred times a day. There seemed to be no fixed hour for meals, and sometimes no meals to eat: Mrs. Sanker would forget to order them. She was a little lady, who went about as if she were dreaming, in a white petticoat and loose buff jacket; or else she’d be sitting aloft in the turret, darning stockings and saying poetry. She was the least excitable person I ever knew; all events, good and bad, she took as a matter of course: had the house caught fire she would have looked on quietly — as Nero did when Rome was burning. Why they called the room the turret did not appear. It had a great high beam running through it on the floor: and Mrs. Sanker would sit on that, reading poetry to us or telling her dreams, her light hair all down.
At seven o’clock the boys had to be in school. Being summer weather, that was no hardship. At nine they came in again with a rush, wild for breakfast. If Mrs. Sanker was not down to give it them, the four boys would begin and eat up the piles of bread-and-butter; upon which Hetta Sanker would call them tigers, and go to the kitchen to tell the maids to cut more. Which was the cook of the two servants and which the housemaid, they did not themselves seem to know: both did the work indiscriminately. Breakfast over, the boys went out again, Tod and I with them. At ten they must be in school. At one they came home to dinner; it might be ready, or it might not: if not, they’d go in and polish off anything cold that might be in the larder. It didn’t seem to spoil their dinners. Afternoon school again until four o’clock; and then at liberty for good. Tea was at any time; a scrambling sort of meal that stayed on the table for hours, and was taken just as we chanced to go in for it. Jam and boiled eggs would be on the table, with the loaf and butter ad libitum. Sometimes toast and dripping, and there used to be a scuffle for that. As to dinner, when Mrs. Sanker forgot it, the servants would bring in a big dish of poached eggs, and we made it up with bread-and-cheese. Or Dan or Toby would be sent tearing off to High Street for a lot of penny pork-pies and apple-tarts. At night we had prayers, which the captain read.
Now I dare say that to people accustomed to a domestic life like clock-work, this would have been unbearable. I thought it delightful; as did Tod. It was like a perpetual picnic. But it was from one of these dinnerless episodes we found out that Captain Sanker had a temper. Generally speaking, he took disasters with equanimity.
It was on a Thursday. We were to have had four ducks for dinner, which the captain had bought at market the day before. Fine ducks that he was proud of: he carried them home himself, and brought them into the parlour to show us. On this day, Thursday, Tod and I had been into the Town Hall in the morning, listening to a trial before the magistrates — some fellow who had stolen his neighbour’s clothes-props and cut them up for firewood. We reached home just as the boys and their books did, as hungry as they were. There was no cloth laid, and Fred shouted out for Biddy, asking whether we were to dine to-day or to-morrow. Biddy heard, and came rushing in with the cloth and knife-tray.
“What’s for dinner besides the four ducks?” asked Dan. “Any pudding? Have you put plenty of stuffing?”
“Indeed then, and I don’t think there’s much for dinner,” replied Biddy. “I’ve been in the turret with the missis all the morning, helping to stuff a pillow.”
She laid the cloth, and Mrs. Sanker came mooning down in the short white petticoat and buff jacket, darning a sock of Dan’s. The dreadful truth came out — busy over beds and pillows, nobody had thought of dinner, and the ducks were hanging in the larder, uncooked. Before speechless tongues could find words, Captain S
anker came in, bringing his friend Dr. Teal to taste the ducks. All the Teals were as intimate at the house as we were. Years before, when the captain was a middy, Dr. Teal had been assistant-surgeon on the same ship.
“They’ve a cold dinner at Teal’s to-day,” said the captain to his wife, as she was shaking hands with the doctor, “so he has come to share ours. Fine ducks they are, Teal!”
Then the news had to be told. The ducks were not cooked: dinner altogether had been forgotten.
I saw Captain Sanker’s face turn white — quite white; but he did not say a word. Dr. Teal — a scientific Scotchman, who walked with his nose in the air and his spectacles turned to the skies, as if always looking for a lunar rainbow — made the best of it. Laughing, he said he would come in another day, and went out.
Then it began. Captain Sanker gave vent to passion in a way that startled me, and made Tod stare. I don’t believe he knew for a few moments what he was doing or saying. Nora, the other servant — both girls had come with them from Ireland, and were as thoughtless as their mistress — came in with a dish of some hastily concocted pudding: a sort of batter. The captain, who still had his stick in his hand, lifted it and spattered the pudding all about the cloth. Then he stamped out of the house with a bang.
“Sit down, dears,” said Mrs. Sanker, not at all moved, as she began to collect the pudding with a spoon. “Bring in the cheese, Nora, and do some eggs. Here’s a corner seat for you, Johnny; can you squeeze in? The captain will have his dinner with the Teals, no doubt. He has been tasting the doctor’s port wine, I think; or he wouldn’t have been so put up.”
And somehow we gathered, then or later, that the captain was easy as an old glove at all times and over all crosses, unless he was a little “put up” by artificial help. He told us himself one day (not, of course, alluding to anything of this sort) that he had had naturally an awful temper, would go into passions of absolute madness for a minute or two, when he was younger; but that he had by much self-restraint chiefly if not quite subdued it. It was true; and the temper never need be feared now unless he took anything to excite him. Dan had the same temper; but without the good-nature. And they said Hetta had; but we saw nothing of it in her. Hetta was eighteen, a nice-looking girl, who was governess to little Ruth, or pretended to be; but Ruth would manage to escape her lessons five days in the week. It was all the same to Mrs. Sanker whether she did them or whether she didn’t.