"Here," said the doctor, and he led her through the kitchen. A man and woman rose up from the fireside as she came in. He opened the door into the little parlor.
On the floor on a mattress lay a tall figure. The head, supported on a pillow, was turned towards the door, the wide eyes were fixed on the candle on the table. The lips moved continually. The hands were picking at the blankets.
For the first moment Rachel did not know him. How could this be Hugh? How could these blank, unrecognizing eyes be Hugh's eyes, which had never until now met hers without love?
But it was he. Yes, it was he. She traced the likeness as we do in a man's son to the man himself.
She fell on her knees beside him and took the wandering hands and kissed them.
He looked at her, through her, with those bright, unseeing eyes, and the burning hands escaped from hers back to their weary work.
Dick, whose eyes had followed Rachel, turned away biting his lip, and sat down in a corner of the kitchen. The keeper and his wife had slipped away into the little scullery.
The Bishop went up to Dick and put his arm round his shoulders. Two tears of pain were standing in Dick's hawk-eyes. He had seen Rachel kiss Hugh's hands. He ground his heel against the brick floor.
The Bishop understood, and understood, too, the sudden revulsion of feeling.
"Poor chap!" said Dick, huskily. "It's frightful hard luck on him to have to go just when she was to have married him. If it had been me I could not have borne it; but then I would have taken care I was not drowned. I'd have seen to that. But it's frightful hard luck on him, all the same."
"I suppose he was taking a short cut across the ice."
"Yes," said Dick, "and he got in where any one who knew the look of ice would have known he would be sure to get in. The keeper watched him cross the ice. It was some time before they could get near him to get him out, and it seems there is some injury."
Dr. Brown came slowly out, half closing the parlor door behind him.
"I can do nothing more," he said. "If he lived he would have brain fever. But he is dying."
"Does he know her?"
"No. He may know her at the last, but it is doubtful. I can do nothing, and I am wanted elsewhere."
"I will stop," said the Bishop.
"Shall I take you back?" said Dr. Brown, looking at Dick. But Dick shook his head.
"I might be of use to her," he said, when the doctor had gone.
So the two men who loved Rachel sat in impotent compassion in the little kitchen through the interminable hours of the night. At long intervals the Bishop went quietly into the parlor, but apparently he was not wanted there. Once he went out and got a fresh candle, and put it into the tin candlestick, and set it among the china ornaments on wool-work mats.
Hugh lay quite still now with his eyes half closed. His hands lay passive in Rachel's. The restless fever of movement was passed. She almost wished it back, so far, so far was his life ebbing away from hers.
"Hughie," she whispered to him over and over again. "I love you. Do not leave me."
But he muttered continually to himself and took no heed of her.
At last she gave up the hopeless task of making him hear, and listened intently. She could make no sense of what he said. The few words she could catch were repeated a hundred times amid an unintelligible murmur. The boat, and Loftus, and her own name—and Crack. Who was Crack? She remembered the little dog which had been drowned. And the lips which were so soon to be silent talked on incoherently while Rachel's heart broke for a word.
The night was wearing very thin. The darkness before the dawn, the deathly chill before the dawn were here. Through the low uncurtained window Rachel could see the first wan light of the new day and the new year.
Perhaps he would know her with the daylight.
The new day came up out of the white east in a great peace, pale as Christ newly risen from the dead, with the splendor of God's love upon Him.
A great peace and light stole together into the little room.
Hugh stirred, and Rachel saw a change pass over his pinched, sunken face.
"It was the only way to reach her," he said, slowly and distinctly; "the only way. I shall get through, and I shall find her upon the other side, as I did before. It is very cold, but I shall get through. I am nearly through now."
He sat up, and looked directly at her. He seemed suddenly freed, released. A boyish look that she had never seen came into his face, a look which remained in Rachel's heart while she lived.
Would he know her?
The pure light was upon his face, more beautiful than she had ever seen it. He looked at her with tender love and trust shining in his eyes, and laughed softly.
"I have found you," he said, stretching out his arms towards her. "I lost you, I don't remember how, but I came to you through the water. I knew I should find you, my Rachel, my sweet wife."
He was past the place of our poor human forgiveness. He might have cared for it earlier, but he did not want it now. He had forgotten that he had any need of it, for the former things had passed away. Love only remained.
She took him in her arms. She held him to her heart.
"I knew you would," he said, smiling at her. "I knew it. We will never part again."
And with a sigh of perfect happiness he turned wholly to her, his closed eyes against her breast.
Conclusion
*
It was autumn once more. The brambles were red in the hollow below Warpington Vicarage. Abel was gathering the apples in the orchard.
Mr. and Mrs. Gresley were sitting together in the shade of the new porch, contemplating a triumphal arch which they had just erected across the road. "Long life and happiness" was the original motto inscribed thereon.
Mrs. Gresley, in an alarming new hat, sank back exhausted in her garden-chair.
"The Pratts are having six arches, all done with electric-light designs of hearts with their crest on the top," she said. "They are to be lit up at nine o'clock. Mr. Pratt said he did not mind any expense on such an occasion. He said it made an epoch in the life of the county."
"Well," said Mr. Gresley, "I lead too busy a life to be always poking my nose into other people's affairs, but I certainly never did expect that Lady Newhaven would have married Algy Pratt."
"Ada and Selina say Algy and she have been attached for years: that is why the wedding is so soon—only nine months—and she is to keep her title, and they are going to live at Westhope. I told Ada and Selina I hoped they did not expect too much from the marriage, for sometimes people who did were disappointed, but they only laughed and said Vi had promised Algy to take them out next season."
"We seem to live in an atmosphere of weddings," said Mr. Gresley. "First, Dr. Brown and Fräulein, and now Algy Pratt and Lady Newhaven."
"I was so dreadfully afraid that Fräulein might think our arch was put up for her, and presume upon it," said Mrs. Gresley, "that I thought it better to send her a little note, just to welcome her cordially, and tell her how busy we were about the Pratt festivities, and what a coincidence it was her arriving on the same day. I told her I would send down the children to spend the morning with her to-morrow. I knew that would please her, and it is Miss Baker's day in Southminster with her aunt, and I shall really be too busy to see after them. In some ways I don't like Miss Baker as much as Fräulein. She is paid just the same, but she does much less, and she is really quite short sometimes if I ask her to do any little thing for me, like copying out that church music."
"Hester used to do it," said Mr. Gresley.
"Miss Brown told me she had heard from Hester, and that she and Miss West are still in India. And they mean to go to Australia and New Zealand, and come home next spring."
"Was Hester well?"
"Quite well. You know, James, I always told you that hers was not a genuine illness. That was why they would not let us see her. It was only hysteria, which girls get when they are disappointed at not marrying, and are not
so young as they were. Directly poor Mr. Scarlett died, Hester left her room, and devoted herself to Miss West, and Dr. Brown said it was the saving of her. But for my part I always thought Hester took in Dr. Brown and the Bishop about that illness."
"I should not wonder if Hester married Dick Vernon," said Mr. Gresley. "It is rather marked, their going to Australia when he went back there only a few months ago. If she had consulted me I should have advised her not to follow him up."
A burst of cheering, echoed by piercing howls from Boulou locked up in the empty nursery.
"I hope Miss Baker has put the children in a good place. She is sure to be in a good one herself," said Mrs. Gresley, as she and her husband took up their position by the gate.
More cheering! A sudden flourish of trumpets and a trombone from the volunteer band at the corner, of which Mr. Pratt was colonel.
A clatter of four white horses and an open carriage. A fleeting vision of Captain Pratt, white waistcoat, smile, teeth, eye-glass, hat waved in lavender-kid hand! A fleeting vision of a lovely woman in white, with a wonderful white-feathered hat, and a large diamond heart, possibly a love token from Captain Pratt, hanging on a long diamond chain, bowing and smiling beside her elaborate bridegroom.
In a moment they were passed, and a report of cannon and field-artillery showed that the east lodge of Warpington Towers had been reached, and the solemn joy of the Pratts was finding adequate expression.
"She looked rather frightened," said Mrs. Gresley.
"Such a magnificent reception is alarming to a gentle, retiring nature," said Mr. Gresley.
More cheering! this time much more enthusiastic than the last—louder, deafening.
Dr. Brown's dog-cart came slowly in sight, accompanied by a crowd.
"They have taken out the horse and are dragging them up," said Mrs. Gresley, in astonishment. "Look at Dr. Brown waving his hat, and Fräulein bowing in that silly way. Well, I only hope her head won't be turned by the arches and everything. She will find my note directly she gets in. Really, James! two brides and bridegrooms in one day! It is like the end of a novel."
Postscript
*
We turn the pages of the Book of Life with impatient hands. And if we shut up the book at a sad page we say, hastily, "Life is sad." But it is not so. There are other pages waiting to be turned. I, who have copied out one little chapter of the lives of Rachel and Hester, cannot see plainly, but I catch glimpses of those other pages. I seem to see Rachel with children round her, and Dick not far off, and the old light rekindled in Hester's eyes. For Hope and Love and Enthusiasm never die. We think in youth that we bury them in the graveyards of our hearts, but the grass never yet grew over them. How, then, can life be sad, when they walk beside us always in the growing light towards the Perfect Day.
* * *
Endnotes
*
[1] A card, headed by the above text, was seen by the writer in August, 1898, in the porch of a country church.
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