by George Eliot
assurance of grateful affection and the prophecy of coming death. Her tears
rose; they turned round without speaking, and went back again along the lane.
CHAPTER XXVII.
In less than a week Mr Tryan was settled at Holly Mount, and there was not one
of his many attached hearers who did not sincerely rejoice at the event.
The autumn that year was bright and warm, and at the beginning of October Mr
Walsh, the new curate, came. The mild weather, the relaxation from excessive
work, and perhaps another benignant influence, had for a few weeks a visibly
favourable effect on Mr Tryan. At least he began to feel new hopes, which
sometimes took the guise of new strength. He thought of the cases in which
consumptive patients remain nearly stationary for years, without suffering so as
to make their life burthensome to themselves or to others; and he began to
struggle with a longing that it might be so with him. He struggled with it,
because he felt it to be an idication that earthly affection was beginning to
have too strong a hold on him, and he prayed earnestly for more perfect
submission, and for a more absorbing delight in the Divine Presence as the chief
good. He was conscious that he did not wish for prolonged life solely that he
might do God's work in reclaiming the wanderers and sustaining the feeble: he
was conscious of a new yearning for those pure human joys which he had
voluntarily and determinedly banished from his life�for a draught of that deep
affection from which he had been cut off by a dark chasm of remorse. For now,
that affection was within his reach; he saw it there, like a palmshadowed well
in the desert; he could not desire to die in sight of it.
And so the autumn rolled gently by in its "calm decay." Until November, Mr Tryan
continued to preach occasionally, to ride about visiting his flock, and to look
in at his schools; but his growing satisfaction in Mr Walsh as his successor,
saved him from too eager exertion and from worrying anxieties. Janet was with
him a great deal now, for she saw that he liked her to read to him in the
lengthening evenings, and it became the rule for her and her mother to have tea
at Holly Mount, where, with Mrs Pettifer and sometimes another friend or two,
they brought Mr Tryan the unaccustomed enjoyment of companionship by his own
fireside.
Janet did not share his new hopes, for she was not only in the habit of hearing
Mr Pratt's opinion that Mr Tryan could hardly stand out through the winter, but
she also knew that it was shared by Dr Madely of Rotherby, whom, at her request,
he had consented to call in. It was not necessary or desirable to tell Mr Tryan
what was revealed by the stethoscope, but Janet knew the worst.
She felt no rebellion under this prospect of bereavement, but rather, a quiet
submissive sorrow. Gratitude that his influence and guidance had been given her,
even if only for a little while� gratitude that she was permitted to be with
him, to take a deeper and deeper impress from daily communion with him, to be
something to him in these last months of his life, was so strong in her that it
almost silenced regret. Janet had lived through the great tragedy of woman's
life. Her keenest personal emotions had been poured forth in her early love�her
wounded affection with its years of anguish�her agony of unavailing pity over
that death-bed seven months ago. The thought of Mr Tryan was associated for her
with repose from that conflict of emotion, with trust in the unchangeable, with
the influx of a power to subdue self. To have been assured of his sympathy, his
teaching, his help, all through her life, would have been to her like a heaven
already begun�a deliverance from fear and danger; but the time was not yet come
for her to be conscious that the hold he had on her heart was any other than
that of the heaven-sent friend who had come to her like the angel in the prison,
and loosed her bonds, and led her by the hand till she could look back on the
dreadful doors that had once closed her in.
Before November was over Mr Tryan had ceased to go out. A new crisis had come
on: the cough had changed its character, and the worst symptoms developed
themselves so rapidly, that Mr Pratt began to think the end would arrive sooner
than he had expected. Janet became a constant attendant on him now, and no one
could feel that she was performing anything but a sacred office. She made Holly
Mount her home, and, with her mother and Mrs Pettifer to help her, she filled
the painful days and nights with every soothing influence that care and
tenderness could devise. There were many visitors to the sick-room, led thither
by venerating affection; and there could hardly be one who did not retain in
after years a vivid remembrance of the scene there�of the pale wasted form in
the easy-chair (for he sat up to the last), of the grey eyes so full even yet of
inquiring kindness, as the thin, almost transparent hand was held out to give
the pressure of welcome; and of the sweet woman, too, whose dark watchful eyes
detected every want, and who supplied the want with a ready hand.
There were others who would have had the heart and the skill to fill this place
by Mr Tryan's side, and who would have accepted it as an honour; but they could
not help feeling that God had given it to Janet by a train of events which were
too impressive not to shame all jealousies into silence.
That sad history, which most of us know too well, lasted more than three months.
He was too feeble and suffering for the last few weeks to see any visitors, but
he still sat up through the day. The strange hallucinations of the disease which
had seemed to take a more decided hold on him just at the fatal crisis, and had
made him think he was perhaps getting better at the very time when death had
begun to hurry on with more rapid movement, had now given way, and left him
calmly conscious of the reality. One afternoon, near the end of February, Janet
was moving gently about the room, in the fire-lit dusk, arranging some things
that would be wanted in the night. There was no one else in the room, and his
eyes followed her as she moved with the firm grace natural to her, while the
bright fire every now and then lit up her face, and gave an unusual glow to its
dark beauty. Even to follow her in this way with his eyes was an exertion that
gave a painful tension to his face; while she looked like an image of life and
strength.
"Janet," he said presently, in his faint voice� he always called her Janet now.
In a moment she was close to him, bending over him. He opened his hand as he
looked up at her, and she placed hers within it.
"Janet," he said again, "you will have a long while to live after I am gone."
A sudden pang of fear shot through her. She thought he felt himself dying, and
she sank on her knees at his feet, holding his hand, while she looked up at him,
almost breathless.
"But you will not feel the need of me as you have done. ... You have a sure
trust in God ... I shall not look for you in vain at the last."
"No ... no ... I shall be there ... God will not forsake me."
Sh
e could hardly utter the words, though she was not weeping. She was waiting
with trembling eagerness for anything else he might have to say.
"Let us kiss each other before we part."
She lifted up her face to his, and the full lifebreathing lips met the wasted
dying ones in a sacred kiss of promise.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
It soon came�the blessed day of deliverance, the sad day of bereavement; and in
the second week of March they carried him to the grave. He was buried as he had
desired: there was no hearse, no mourning-coach; his coffin was borne by twelve
of his humbler hearers, who relieved each other by turns. But he was followed by
a long procession of mourning friends, women as well as men.
Slowly, amid deep silence, the dark stream passed along Orchard Street, where
eighteen months before the Evangelical curate had been saluted with hooting and
hisses. Mr. Jerome and Mr Landor were the eldest pall-bearers; and behind the
coffin, led by Mr Tryan's cousin, walked Janet, in quiet submissive sorrow. She
could not feel that he was quite gone from her; the unseen world lay so very
near her�it held all that had ever stirred the depths of anguish and joy within
her.
It was a cloudy morning, and had been raining when they left Holly Mount; but as
they walked, the sun broke out, and the clouds were rolling off in large masses
when they entered the churchyard, and Mr Walsh's voice was heard saying, "I am
the Resurrection and the Life." The faces were not hard at this funeral; the
burial-service was not a hollow form. Every heart there was filled with the
memory of a man who, through a self-sacrificing life, and in a painful death,
had been sustained by the faith which fills that form with breath and substance.
When Janet left the grave, she did not return to Holly Mount; she went to her
home in Orchard Street, where her mother was waiting to receive her. She said
quite calmly, "Let us walk round the garden, mother." And they walked round in
silence, with their hands clasped together, looking at the golden crocuses
bright in the spring sunshine. Janet felt a deep stillness within. She thirsted
for no pleasure; she craved no worldly good. She saw the years to come stretch
before her like an autumn afternoon, filled with resigned memory. Life to her
could never more have any eagerness; it was a solemn service of gratitude and
patient effort. She walked in the presence of unseen witnesses�of the Divine
love that had rescued her, of the human love that waited for its eternal repose
until it had seen her endure to the end.
Janet is living still. Her black hair is grey, and her step is no longer
buoyant; but the sweetness of her smile remains, the love is not gone from her
eyes; and strangers sometimes ask, Who is that noble-looking elderly woman, that
walks about holding a little boy by the hand? The little boy is the son of
Janet's adopted daughter, and Janet in her old age has children about her knees,
and loving young arms round her neck.
There is a simple gravestone in Milby churchyard, telling that in this spot lie
the remains of Edgar Tryan, for two years officiating curate at the Paddiford
Chapel-of-Ease, in this parish. It is a meagre memorial, and tells you simply
that the man who lies there took upon him, faithfully or unfaithfully, the
office of guide and instructor to his fellow-men.
But there is another memorial of Edgar Tryan, which bears a fuller record: it is
Janet Dempster, rescued from self-despair, strengthened with divine hopes, and
now looking back on years of purity and helpful labour. The man who has left
such a memorial behind him, must have been one whose heart beat with true
compassion, and whose lips were moved by fervent faith.
THE END.