The Bishop did not speak. He dared not.
"If I had a child," Hester continued, in the exhausted voice with which he was becoming familiar, "and it died, I might have ten more, beautiful and clever and affectionate, but they would not replace the one I had lost. Only if it were a child," a little tremor broke the dead level of the passionless voice, "I should meet it again in heaven. There is the resurrection of the body for the children of the body, but there is no resurrection that I ever heard of for the children of the brain."
Hester held her thin right hand with its disfigured first finger to the fire.
"A great writer who had married and had children, whom she worshipped, once told me that the pang of motherhood is that even your children don't seem your very own. They are often more like some one else than their parents, perhaps the spinster sister-in-law, whom every one dislikes, or some entire alien. Look at Regie. He is just like me, which must be a great trial to Minna. And they grow up bewildering their parents at every turn by characteristics they don't understand. But she said the spiritual children, the books, are really ours.
"If you were other than you are," said Hester, after a long pause, "you would reprove me for worshipping my own work. I suppose love is worship. I loved it for itself, not for anything it was to bring me. That is what people like Dr. Brown don't understand. It was part of myself. But it was the better part. The side of me which loves success, and which he is always appealing to, had no hand in it. My one prayer was that I might be worthy to write it, that it might not suffer by contact with me. I spent myself upon it." Hester's voice sank. "I knew what I was doing. I joyfully spent my health, my eyesight, my very life upon it. I was impelled to do it by what you perhaps will call a blind instinct, what I, poor simpleton and dupe, believed at the time to be nothing less than the will of God."
"You will think so again," said the Bishop, "when you realize that the book has left its mark and influence upon your character. It has taught you a great deal. The mere fact of writing it has strengthened you. The outward and visible form is dead, but its spirit lives on in you. You will realize this presently."
"Shall I? On the contrary, the only thing I realize is that it is not God who is mocked, but His foolish children who try to do His bidding. It seems He is not above putting a lying spirit in the mouth of his prophets. Do you think I still blame poor James for his bonfire, or his jealous little wife who wanted to get rid of me? Why should I? They acted up to their lights as your beloved Jock did when he squeezed the life out of that rabbit in Westhope Park. In all those days when I did not say anything, it was because I felt I had been deceived. I had done my part. God had not done His. He should have seen to it that the book was not destroyed. You prayed by me once when you thought I was unconscious. I heard all right. I should have laughed if I could, but it was too much trouble."
"These thoughts will pass away with your illness," said the Bishop. "You are like a man who has had a blow, who staggers about giddy and dazed, and sees the pavement rising up to strike him. The pavement is firm under his feet all the time."
"Half of me knows in a dim blind way that God is the same always," said Hester, "while the other half says, 'Curse God and die.'"
"That is the giddiness, the vertigo after the shock."
"Is it? I dare say you are right. But I don't care either way."
"Why trouble your mind about it, or about anything?"
"Because I have a feeling, indeed, it would be extraordinary if I had not, for Dr. Brown is always rubbing it in, that I ought to meet my trouble bravely, and not sink down under it, as he thinks I am doing now. He says others have suffered more than I have. I know that, for I have been with them. It seems," said Hester, with the ghost of a smile, "that there is an etiquette about these things, just as the blinds are drawn up after a funeral. The moment has come for me, but I have not drawn up my blinds."
"You will draw them up presently."
"I would draw them up now," said Hester, looking at him steadily, "if I could. I owe it to you and Rachel to try, and I have tried, but I can't."
The Bishop's cheek paled a little.
"Take your own time," he said, but his heart sank.
He saw a little boat with torn sail and broken rudder, drifting on to a lee shore.
"I seem to have been living at a great strain for the last year," said Hester. "I don't know one word from another now, but I think I mean concentration. That means holding your mind to one place, doesn't it? Well, now, something seems to have broken, and I can't fix it to anything any more. I can talk to you and Rachel for a few minutes if I hold my mind tight, but I can't really attend, and directly I am alone, or you leave off speaking, my mind gets loose from my body and wanders away to an immense distance, to long, dreary, desert places. And then if you come in I make a great effort to bring it back, and to open my eyes, because if I don't you think I'm ill. You don't mind if I shut them now, do you?—because I've explained about them, and holding them open does tire me so. I wish they could be propped open. And—my mind gets farther and further away every day. I hope you and Rachel won't think I am giving way if—sometime—I really can't bring it back any longer."
"Dear Hester, no."
"I will not talk any more then. If you and Rachel understand, that is all that matters. I used to think so many things mattered, but I don't now. And don't think I'm grieving about the book while I'm lying still. I have grieved, but it is over. I'm too tired to be glad or sorry about anything any more."
Hester lay back spent and gray among her pillows.
The Bishop roused her to take the stimulant put ready near at hand, and then sat a long time watching her. She seemed unconscious of his presence. At last the nurse came in, and he went out silently, and returned to his study. Rachel was waiting there to hear the result of the interview.
"I can do nothing," he said. "I have no power to help her. After forty years ministry I have not a word to say to her. She is beyond human aid—at least, she is beyond mine."
"You think she will die?"
"I do not see what is going to happen to prevent it, but I am certain it might be prevented."
"You could not rouse her?"
"No, she discounted anything I could have said, by asking me not to say it. That is the worst of Hester. The partition between her mind and that of other people is so thin that she sees what they are thinking about. Thank God, Rachel, that you are not cursed with the artistic temperament! That is why she has never married. She sees too much. I am not a match-maker, but if I had had to take the responsibility, I should have married her at seventeen to Lord Newhaven."
"You know he asked her?"
"No, I did not know it."
"It was a long time ago, when first she came out. Lady Susan was anxious for it, and pressed her. I sometimes think if she had been given time, and if her aunt had let her alone—but he married within the year. But what are we to do about Hester? Dr. Brown says something must be done, or she will sink in a decline. I would give my life for her, but I can do nothing. I have tried."
"So have I," said the Bishop. "But it has come to this. We have got to trust the one person whom we always show we tacitly distrust by trying to take matters out of His hands. We must trust God. So far we have strained ourselves to keep Hester alive, but she is past our help now. She is in none the worse case for that. We are her two best friends save one. We must leave her to the best Friend of all. God has her in His hand. For the moment the greater love holds her away from the less, like the mother who takes her sick child into her arms, apart from the other children who are playing round her. Hester is in God's keeping, and that is enough for us. And now take a turn in the garden, Rachel. You are too much in-doors. I am going out on business."
When Rachel had left him the Bishop opened his despatch-box and took out a letter.
It was directed to Lady Newhaven.
"I promised to give it into her own hand a month after his death, whenever that might happen to be," he s
aid to himself. "There was some trouble between them. I hope she won't confide it to me. Anyhow, I must go and get it over. I wish I did not dislike her so much. I shall advise her not to read it till I am gone."
Chapter XLIX
*
The mouse fell from the ceiling, and the cat cried, "Allah!"
—Syrian Proverb.
That help should come through such a recognized channel as a Bishop could surprise no one, least of all Lady Newhaven, who had had the greatest faith in the clergy all her life, but, nevertheless, so overwhelmed was she by despair and its physical sensations, that she very nearly refused to see the Bishop when he called. Her faith even in lawn sleeves momentarily tottered. Who would show her any good? Poor Lady Newhaven was crushed into a state of prostration so frightful that we must not blame her if she felt that even an Archbishop would have been powerless to help her.
She had thought, after the engagement was announced, of rushing up to London and insisting on seeing Hugh; but always, after she had looked out the trains, her courage had shrunk back at the last moment. There had been a look on Hugh's face during that last momentary meeting which she could not nerve herself to see again. She had been to London already once to see him, without success.
She knew Rachel was at the Palace at Southminster nursing Hester, and twice she had ordered the carriage to drive over to see her, and make a desperate appeal to her to give up Hugh. But she knew that she should fail. And Rachel would triumph over her. Women always did over a defeated rival. Lady Newhaven had not gone. The frightful injustice of it all wrung Lady Newhaven's heart to the point of agony. To see her own property deliberately stolen from her in the light of day, as it were, in the very market-place, before everybody, without being able to raise a finger to regain him! It was intolerable. For she loved Hugh as far as she was capable of loving anything. And her mind had grown round the idea that he was hers as entirely as a tree will grow round a nail fastened into it.
And now he was to marry Rachel, and soon. Let no one think they know pain until they know jealousy.
But when the Bishop sent up a second time, asking to see her on business, she consented.
It was too soon to see callers, of course. But a Bishop was different. And how could she refuse to admit him when she had admitted that odious Captain Pratt only four days before. She hoped no one would become aware of that fact. It was as well for her that she could not hear the remarks of Selina and Ada Pratt, as they skated on the frozen meadows with half, not the better-half, of Middleshire.
"Poor Vi Newhaven. Yes, she won't see a creature. She saw Algy for a few minutes last week, but then he is an old friend, and does not count. He said she was quite heart-broken. He was quite upset himself. He was so fond of Ted Newhaven."
The Bishop would not even sit down. He said he was on the way to a confirmation, and added that he had been entrusted with a letter for her, and held it towards her.
"It is my husband's handwriting," she said, drawing back, with instinctive fear.
"It is from your husband," said the Bishop, gently, softening somewhat at the sight of the ravages which despair had made in the lovely face since he had last seen it. "He asked me to give it into your own hand a month after his death."
"Then he told you that—"
"He told me nothing, and I wish to hear nothing."
"I should like to confess all to you, to feel myself absolved," said Lady Newhaven in a low voice, the letter in her trembling hand.
He looked at her, and he saw that she would not say all. She would arrange details to suit herself, and would omit the main point altogether, whatever it might be, if, as it was more than probable, it told against herself. He would at least save her from the hypocrisy of a half-confession.
"If in a month's time you wish to make a full confession to me," he said, "I will hear it. But I solemnly charge you in the meanwhile to speak to no one of this difficulty between you and your husband. Whatever it may have been, it is past. If he sinned against you, he is dead, and the least you can do is to keep silence. If you wronged him"—Lady Newhaven shook her head vehemently—"if you wronged him," repeated the Bishop, his face hardening, "be silent for the sake of the children. It is the only miserable reparation you can make him."
"You don't understand," she said, feebly.
"I know that he was a kindly, gentle-natured man, and that he died a hard and bitter one," said the Bishop. "God knows what is in that letter, but your husband said it would be of the greatest comfort and assistance to you in a difficulty which he foresaw for you. I will leave you to read it."
And he left the room.
The early December twilight was creeping over everything. Lady Newhaven took the letter to the window, and after several futile attempts succeeded in opening it.
It ran as follows:
"It is irreligious to mourn too long for the dead. 'I shall go to him, but he shall not return to me'—II. Sam. xii. 23. In the meanwhile, until you rejoin me, I trust you will remember that it is my especial wish that you should allow one who is in every way worthy of you to console you for my loss, who will make you as happy as you both deserve to be. That I died by my own hand you and your so-called friend Miss West are of course aware. That 'the one love of your life' drew the short lighter you are perhaps not aware. I waited two days to see if he would fulfil the compact, and as he did not—I never thought he would—I retired in his place. I present to you this small piece of information as a wedding-present, which, if adroitly handled, may add to the harmony of domestic life. And if by any chance he should have conceived the dastardly, the immoral idea of deserting you in favor of some mercenary marriage—of which I rather suspect him—you will find this piece of information invaluable in restoring his allegiance at once. He is yours by every sacred tie, and no treacherous female friend must wrest him from you.
"NEWHAVEN."
Lady Newhaven put the letter in her pocket, and then fainted away, with her fair head on the window-ledge.
Chapter L
*
"There cannot be a pinch in death more sharp than this is."
The Bishop's sister, Miss Keane, whose life was a perpetual orgy of mothers' meetings and G.F.S. gatherings, was holding a district visitors' working party in the drawing-room at the Palace. The ladies knitted and stitched, while one of their number heaped fuel on the flame of their enthusiasm by reading aloud the "History of the Diocese of Southminster."
Miss Keane took but little heed of the presence of Rachel and Hester in her brother's house. Those who work mechanically on fixed lines seem, as a rule, to miss the pith of life. She was kind when she remembered them, but her heart was where her treasure was—namely, in her escritoire, with her list of Bible-classes, and servants' choral unions, and the long roll of contributors to the guild of work which she herself had started.
When she had been up to Hester's room, invariably at hours when Hester could not see her, and when she had entered Rachel's sledge-hammer subscriptions in her various account-books, her attention left her visitors. She considered them superficial, and wondered how it was that her brother could find time to spend hours talking to both of them, while he had rarely a moment in which to address her chosen band in the drawing-room. She was one of those persons who find life a very prosaic affair, quite unlike the fiction she occasionally read.
She often remarked that nothing except the commonplace happened. Certainly she never observed anything else.
So Hester lay in the room above, halting feebly between two opinions, whether to live or to die, and Rachel sat in the Bishop's study beneath, waiting to make tea for him on his return from the confirmation.
If she did not make it, no one else did. Instead of ringing for it he went without it.
Rachel watched the sun set—a red ball dropping down a frosty sky. It was the last day of the year. The new year was bringing her everything.
"Good-bye, good-bye," she said, looking at the last rim of the sun as he sank. And she remembere
d other years when she had watched the sun set on the last day of December, when life had been difficult—how difficult!
"If Hester could only get better I should have nothing left to wish for," she said, and she prayed the more fervently for her friend, because she knew that even if Hester died, life would still remain beautiful; the future without her would still be flooded with happiness.
"A year ago if Hester had died I should have had nothing left to live for," she said to herself. "Now this newcomer, this man whom I have known barely six months, fills my whole life. Are other women as narrow as I am? Can they care only for one person at a time like me? Ah, Hester! forgive me, I can't help it."
Hugh was coming in presently. He had been in that morning, and the Bishop had met him, and had asked him to come in again to tea. Rachel did not know what the Bishop thought of him, but he had managed to see a good deal of Hugh.
Rachel waited as impatiently as most of us, when our happiness lingers by us, loth to depart.
At last she heard the footman bringing some one across the hall.
Would Hugh's coming ever become a common thing? Would she ever be able to greet him without this tumult of emotion, ever be able to take his hand without turning giddy on the sheer verge of bliss?
The servant announced, "Lady Newhaven."
The two women stood looking at each other. Rachel saw the marks of suffering on the white face, and her own became as white. Her eyes fell guiltily before Lady Newhaven's.
"Forgive me," she said.
"Forgive you?" said Lady Newhaven, in a hoarse voice. "It is no use asking me for forgiveness."
"You are right," said Rachel, recovering herself, and meeting Lady Newhaven's eyes fully. "But what is the use of coming here to abuse me? You might have spared yourself and me this at least. It will only exhaust you and—wound me."
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