Beneath the arrogance which a belief in Apostolic succession seems to induce in natures like Mr. Gresley's, as mountain air induces asthma in certain lungs, the shaft of agonized anxiety had pierced to a thin layer of humility. Hester knew that that layer was only momentarily disturbed, and that the old self would infallibly reassert itself; but the momentary glimpse drew her heart towards her brother. He was conscious of it, and love almost grew between them as they watched by Regie's bed.
At last, after an endless night, the little faltering feet came to the dividing of the ways, and hesitated. The dawn fell gray on the watchful faces of the doctor and Hester, and on the dumb suspense of the poor father. And with a sigh, as one who half knows he is making a life-long mistake, Regie settled himself against Hester's shoulder and fell asleep.
The hours passed. The light grew strong, and still Regie slept. Doctor Brown put cushions behind Hester, and gave her food. He looked anxiously at her. "Can you manage?" he whispered later, when the sun was streaming in at the nursery window. And she smiled back in scorn. Could she manage? What did he take her for?
At last Regie stretched himself and opened his eyes. The doctor took him gently from Hester, gave him food, and laid him down.
"He is all right," he said. "He will sleep all day."
Mr. Gresley, who had hardly stirred, hid his face in his hands.
"Don't try to move, Miss Hester," said Doctor Brown, gently.
Hester did not try. She could not. Her hands and face were rigid. She looked at him in terror. "I shall have to scream in another moment," she whispered.
The old doctor picked her up, and carried her swiftly to her room, where Fräulein ministered to her.
At last he came down and found Mr. Gresley waiting for him at the foot of the stair.
"You are sure he is all right?" he asked.
"Sure. Fräulein is with, him. He got the turn at dawn."
"Thank God!"
"Well, I should say thank your sister, too. She saved him. I tell you, Gresley, neither you nor I could have sat all those hours without stirring, as she did. She had cramp after the first hour. She has a will of iron in that weak body of hers."
"I had no idea she was uncomfortable," said Mr. Gresley, half incredulous.
"That is one of the reasons why I always say you ought not to be a clergyman," snapped the little doctor, and was gone.
Mr. Gresley was not offended. He was too overwhelmed with thankfulness to be piqued.
"Good old Brown," he said, indulgently. "He has been up all night, and he is so tired he does not know he is talking nonsense. As if a man who did not understand cramp was not qualified to be a priest. Ha! ha! He always likes to have a little hit at me, and he is welcome to it. I must just creep up and kiss dear Hester. I never should have thought she had it in her to care for any one as she has shown she cares for Regie. I shall tell her so, and how surprised I am, and how I love her for it. She has always seemed so insensible, so callous. But, please God! this is the beginning of a new life for her. If it is, she shall never hear one word of reproach about the past from me."
A day or two later the Bishop of Southminster had a touch of rheumatism, and Doctor Brown attended him. This momentary malady may possibly account to the reader for an incident which remained to the end of life inexplicable to Mr. Gresley.
Two days after Regie had taken the turn towards health, and on the afternoon of the very same day when Doctor Brown had interviewed the Bishop's rheumatism, the episcopal carriage might have been seen squeezing its august proportions into the narrow drive of Warpington Vicarage; at least, it was always called the drive, though the horses' noses were reflected in the glass of the front-door while the hind-wheels still jarred the gate-posts.
Out of the carriage stepped, not the Bishop, but the tall figure of Dick Vernon, who rang the bell, and then examined a crack in the portico.
He had plenty of time to do so.
"Lord, what fools!" he said, half aloud. "The crazy thing is shouting out that it is going to drop on their heads, and they put a clamp across the crack. Might as well put a respirator on a South Sea Islander. Is Mr. Gresley in? Well, then, just ask him to step this way, will you? Look here, James, if you want to be had up for manslaughter, you leave this porch as it is. No, I did not drive over from Southminster on purpose to tell you; but I mention it now I am here."
"I added the portico myself when I came here," said Mr. Gresley, stiffly, who had not forgotten or forgiven the enormity of Dick's behavior at the temperance meeting.
"So I should have thought," said Dick, warming to the subject, and mounting on a small garden-chair. "And some escaped lunatic has put a clamp on the stucco."
"I placed the clamp myself," replied Mr. Gresley. "There really is no necessity for you to waste your time and mine here. I understand the portico perfectly. The crack is merely superficial."
"Is it?" said Dick. "Then why does it run round those two consumptive little pillars? I tell you it's tired of standing up. It's going to sit down. Look here"—Dick tore at the stucco with his knife, and caught the clamp as it fell—"that clamp was only put in the stucco. It never reached the stone or the wood, whichever the little kennel is made of. You ought to be thankful it did not drop on one of the children, or on your own head. It would have knocked all the texts out of it for some time to come."
Mr. Gresley did not look very grateful as he led the way to his study.
"I was lunching with the Bishop to-day," said Dick, "and Dr. Brown was there. He told us about the trouble here. He said the little chap Regie was going on like a house on fire. The Bishop told me to ask after him particularly."
"He is wonderfully better every day," said Mr. Gresley, softening. "How kind of the Bishop to send you to inquire. Not having children himself, I should never have thought—"
"No," said Dick, "you wouldn't. Do you remember when we were at Cheam, and Ogilvy's marked sovereign was found in the pocket of my flannel trousers. You were the only one of the boys, you and that sneak Field, who was not sure I might not have taken it. You said it looked awfully bad, and so it did."
"No one was gladder than I was when it was cleared up," said Mr. Gresley.
"No," said Dick; "but we don't care much what any one thinks when it's cleared up. It's before that matters. Is Hester in? I've two notes for her. One from Brown, and one from the Bishop, and my orders are to take her back with me. That is why the Bishop sent the carriage."
"I am afraid Hester will hardly care to leave us at present," said Mr. Gresley. "My wife is on her sofa, and Regie is still very weak. He has taken one of those unaccountable fancies of children for her, and can hardly bear her out of his sight."
"The Bishop has taken another of those unaccountable fancies for her," said Dick, looking full at Mr. Gresley in an unpleasant manner. "I'm not one that holds that parsons should have their own way in everything. I've seen too much of missionaries. I just shove out curates and vicars and all that small fry if they get in my way. But when they break out in buttons and gaiters, by Jove! I knock under to them—at least, I do to men like the Bishop. He knows a thing or two. He has told me not to come back without Hester, and I'm not going to. Ah! there she is in the garden." Dick's large back had been turned towards the window, but he had seen the reflection of a passing figure in the glass of a framed testimonial which occupied a prominent place on the study wall, and he at once marched out into the garden and presented the letters to Hester.
Hester was bewildered at the thought of leaving Warpington, into which she seemed to have grown like a Buddhist into his tree. She was reluctant, would think it over, etc. But Dick, after one glance at her strained face, was obdurate. He would hear no reason. He would not go away. She and Fräulein nervously cast a few clothes into a box, Fräulein so excited by the apparition of a young man, and a possible love affair, that she could hardly fold Hester's tea-gowns.
When Hester came down with her hat on she found Dick untiring Mr. Gresley's bicycle in the most
friendly manner, while the outraged owner stood by remonstrating.
"I assure you, Dick, I don't wish it to be touched. I know my own machine. If it were a common puncture I could mend it myself, but I don't want the whole thing ruined by an ignorant person. I shall take it in to Southminster on the first opportunity."
"No need to do that," said Dick, cheerfully. "Might as well go to a doctor to have your nails cut. Do it at home. You don't believe in the water test? Oh! that's rot. You'll believe in it when you see it. You're learning it now. There! Now I've got it in the pail; see all these blooming little bubbles jostling up in a row. There's a leak at the valve. No, there isn't. It's only unscrewed. Good Lord, James! it's only unscrewed; and you thought the whole machine was out of order. There, now, I've screwed it up. Devil a bubble! What's that you're saying about swearing in your presence? Oh! don't apologize! You can't help being a clergyman. Look for yourself. You will never learn if you look the other way just when a good-natured chap is showing you. I would have put the tire on again, but as you say you can do it better yourself, I won't. Sorry to keep you waiting, Hester. And look here, James, you ought to bicycle more. Strengthen your legs for playing the harmonium on Sundays. Well, I could not tell you had an organ in that little one-horse church. Good-bye, Fräulein; good-bye, James. Home, Coleman. And look here," said Dick, putting his mischievous face out of the window as the carriage turned, "if you are getting up steam for another temperance meeting, I'm your man."
"Good-bye, dear James," interrupted Hester, hastily, and the carriage drove away.
"He looks pasty," said Dick, after an interval. "A chap like James has no power in his arms and legs. He can kneel down in church, and put his arm round Mrs. Gresley's waist, but that's about all he's up to. He doesn't take enough exercise."
"He is not well. I don't think I ought to have left them."
"You had no choice. Brown said, unless you could be got away at once you would be laid up. I was at luncheon at the Palace when he said it. The Bishop's sister was too busy with her good works to come herself, so I came instead. I said I should not come back alive without you. They seemed to think I should all the same, but, of course, that was absurd. I wanted the Bishop to bet upon it, but he wouldn't."
"Do you always get what you want?" said Hester.
"Generally, if it depends on myself. But sometimes things depend on others besides me. Then I may be beaten."
They were passing Westhope Abbey, wrapped in a glory of sunset and mist.
"Did you know Miss West was there?" Dick said, suddenly.
"No," said Hester, surprised. "I thought she was in London."
"She came down last night to be with Lady Newhaven who is not well. Miss West is a great friend of yours, isn't she?"
"Yes."
"Well, she has one fault, and it is one I can't put up with. She won't look at me."
"Don't put up with it," said Hester, softly. "We women all have our faults, dear Dick. But if men point them out to us in a nice way we can sometimes cure them."
Chapter XXXV
*
When the sun sets, who doth not look for night?
SHAKESPEARE.
Two nights had passed since Lord Newhaven had left the Abbey. And now the second day, the first day of December, was waning to its close. How Rachel had lived through them she knew not. The twenty-ninth had been the appointed day. Both women had endured till then, feeling that that day would make an end. Neither had contemplated the possibility of hearing nothing for two days more. Long afterwards, in quiet years, Rachel tried to recall those two days and nights. But memory only gave lurid glimpses, as of lightning across darkness. In one of those glimpses she recalled that Lady Newhaven had become ill, that the doctor had been sent for, that she had been stupefied with narcotics. In another she was walking in the desolate frost-nipped gardens, and the two boys were running towards her across the grass.
As the sun sank on the afternoon of the second day it peered in at her sitting alone by her window. Lady Newhaven, after making the whole day frightful, was mercifully asleep. Rachel sat looking out into the distance beyond the narrow confines of her agony. Has not every man and woman who has suffered sat thus by the window, looking out, seeing nothing, but still gazing blindly out hour after hour?
Perhaps the quiet mother earth watches us, and whispers to our deaf ears:
Warte nur, balde
Ruhest du auch.
Little pulse of life writhing in your shirt of fire, the shirt is but of clay of your mother's weaving, and she will take it from you presently when you lay back your head on her breast.
There had been wind all day, a high, dreadful wind, which had accompanied all the nightmare of the day as a wail accompanies pain. But now it had dropped with the sun, who was setting with little pageant across the level land. The whole sky, from north to south, from east to west, was covered with a wind-threshed floor of thin wan clouds, and shreds of clouds, through which, as through a veil, the steadfast face of the heaven beyond looked down.
And suddenly, from east to west, from north to south, as far as the trees and wolds in the dim, forgotten east, the exhausted livid clouds blushed wave on wave, league on league, red as the heart of a rose. The wind-whipped earth was still. The trees held their breath. Very black against the glow the carved cross on the adjoining gable stood out. And in another moment the mighty tide of color went as it had come, swiftly ebbing across its infinite shores of sky. And the waiting night came down suddenly.
"Oh, my God!" said Rachel, stretching out her hands to ward off the darkness. "Not another night. I cannot bear another night."
A slow step came along the gravel; it passed below the window and stopped at the door. Some one knocked. Rachel tore open the throat of her gown. She was suffocating. Her long-drawn breathing seemed to deaden all other sounds. Nevertheless she heard it—the faint footfall of some one in the hall, a distant opening and shutting of doors. A vague, indescribable tremor seemed to run through the house.
She stole out of her room and down the passage. At Lady Newhaven's door her French maid was hesitating, her hand on the handle.
Below, on the stairs, stood a clergyman and the butler.
"I am the bearer of sad tidings," said the clergyman. Rachel recognized him as the Archdeacon at whom Lord Newhaven had so often laughed. "Perhaps you would prepare Lady Newhaven before I break them to her."
The door was suddenly opened, and Lady Newhaven stood in the doorway. One small clinched hand held together the long white dressing-gown, which she had hastily flung round her, while the other was outstretched against the door-post. She swayed as she stood. Morphia and terror burned in her glassy eyes fixed in agony upon the clergyman. The light in the hall below struck upward at her colorless face. In later days this was the picture which Lady Newhaven recalled to mind as the most striking of the whole series.
"Tell her," said Rachel, sharply.
The Archdeacon advanced.
"Prepare yourself, dear Lady Newhaven," he said, sonorously. "Our dear friend, Lord Newhaven, has met with a serious accident. Er—the Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord."
"Is he dead?" whispered Lady Newhaven.
The Archdeacon bowed his head.
Every one except the children heard the scream which rang through the house.
Rachel put her arms round the tottering, distraught figure, drew it gently back into the room, and closed the door behind her.
Chapter XXXVI
*
And Nicanor lay dead in his harness.
—1 MACABEES, xv. 28.
Rachel laid down the papers which were full of Lord Newhaven's death.
"He has managed it well," she said to herself. "No one could suspect that it was not an accident. He has played his losing game to the bitter end, weighing each move. None of the papers even hint that his death was not an accident. He has provided against that."
The butler received a note from Lord Newhaven
the morning after his death, mentioning the train by which he should return to Westhope that day, and ordering a carriage to meet him. A great doctor made public the fact that Lord Newhaven had consulted him the day before about the attacks of vertigo from which it appeared he had suffered of late. A similar attack seemed to have seized upon him while waiting at Clapham Junction when the down express thundered past. The few who saw him said that, as he was pacing the empty platform, he staggered suddenly as the train was sweeping up behind him, put his hand to his head, and stumbled over the edge on to the line. Death was instantaneous. Only his wife and one other woman knew that it was premeditated.
"The only thing I cannot understand about it," said Rachel to herself, "is why a man, who from first to last could act with such caution, and with such deliberate determination, should have been two days late. The twenty-ninth of November was the last day of the five months, and he died on the afternoon of December the first. Why did he wait two days after he left Westhope? I should have thought he would have been the last man in the world to overstep the allotted time by so much as an hour. Yet, nevertheless, he waited two whole days. I don't understand it."
After an interminable interval Lord Newhaven's luggage returned, the familiar portmanteau and dressing-bag, and even the novel which he was reading when he left Westhope, with the mark still in it. All came back. And a coffin came back, too, and was laid before the little altar in the disused chapel.
"I will go and pray for him in the chapel as soon as the lid is fastened down," said Lady Newhaven to Rachel, "but I dare not before. I can't believe he is really dead. And they say somebody ought to look, just to verify. I know it is always done. Dear Rachel, would you mind?"
Red Pottage Page 22