THE grey morning looked in chill and damp from the windows, the bough of jessamine fluttered upon the glass, the rain pattered on the leaves. It was the hour of night and day which is coldest, keenest, most ungenial, and we stood together, but apart—as pale, as chill, as heavy as the morning—quieted, yet still trembling with the agitation of the night.
“There is a messenger below from Cambridge. I sent on word of our arrival last night,” he said; “your father is not well, and wishes to see you. I have ordered the carriage to be ready, and have been watching here till you awoke. It is very early, but I know you will not care for the discomfort—your father has expressed a strong desire to see you immediately, and he is very weak, they say.”
“Do you mean he is dying?” I asked firmly, though I could not raise my voice above a whisper.
“I mean he is very ill. Yes, Hester! it does not become me to deceive you any more.”
I turned abruptly from him, and went to put on my bonnet. He lingered, waiting for me—when I was ready, he took some of the wrappers I had worn on the journey over his arm, and went down stairs before me. The servants were astir already, and I saw breakfast prepared in the room which I had been in last night—he held the door open for me, and involuntarily I entered—I did not say anything. Indeed, what with the dreadful bewilderment and uncertainty of my own position, and the pang of foreboding that I was only called there when my father was in extremity, I had little power to say a word—I sat down passively on the chair he set for me by the fire, while he ordered the carriage to come round. I accepted without a word the coffee he brought me, and tried to drink it—I did not feel as if I had any will at all; but did everything mechanically, as though it was imposed upon me by a stronger will, which I could not resist. No longer the agitated youth of yesterday—the self-reproachful and unforgiven lover, whose happiness hung on my breath, and to whom I was ruthless, obdurate, and without pity, he was so different this morning that I could scarcely think him the same person. This was a man who had the sole right to think for me, to guard me, perhaps to control me, whether I would or no—I was not strong enough, at this moment, to resist his tacit and unexpressed authority. I only wondered at it vaguely in the languor and weariness which was upon me—I was worn out by last night’s excitement, I had a dull terror of expostulation in my mind; but I had not heart enough to be impatient. My faculties were all benumbed and torpid. At another time, these few moments of waiting would have been agony to me—but they were not so now.
Then I heard the wheels at the door, and rose to go; he followed me closely—assisted me in, wrapped me round with the shawls he carried, and then took his place by my side. I made no remonstrance, I said nothing—I submitted to all he did with a dull acquiescence, and we drove off at a great pace. I think it did strike me for a moment how bitterly everything was changed since I stepped from that carriage on the previous night. Once more I leaned back and did not look at the noble old elms in the avenue; the shadow of their branches over us, made my heart sick, and I closed my eyes till we were once more dashing along the free unshadowed monotonous road. A dreary and sad monotony was on those fresh, broad plains this morning. The sky was nothing but one vast cloud—the fitful, chill breeze, brought dashes of rain against the windows—the country looked like an uninhabited desert. Distance, flight, an endless race, away, away, away, towards the skies; but it was not fleeing from my fate. My fate was here beside me, the companion of my journey—we could not escape from each other. I was his evil fortune, and he was mine.
We did not say a word all the time, though we were nearly three hours on the way. Then came the familiar Cambridge streets—then he rose and whispered something to the coachman on the box; we subdued our pace immediately, and quietly drew up at the well-known door. Our younger servant, Mary, was looking from it eagerly—when she saw us, she left it open and ran in—I suppose to say I had come. He helped me to alight, and I went in. I went slowly though I was so near. I wanted to see some one else first—some one else before I saw my father.
At the foot of the stairs, Alice met me; she came up to me, joy struggling with her gravity to kiss and bless me, as she had been used to do. I turned away from her with a harsh and forbidding gesture, and would not let her touch me. Her eyes filled with tears—her cheeks reddened and grew pale again. She muttered something in a confused and troubled undertone, of which I only heard the word “pardon!” and then she said in a voice which a great effort made steady and articulate—“Your father waits you, Miss Hester; will you come?”
I followed her in silence. I did not know what I was to say, or how to behave to my father. My heart swelled as though it would break, when I went along the familiar passages, where I had come and gone so lately in the gladness of my youth. I had a dull, heavy, throbbing pain in my forehead, over my eyes; but I followed her firmly, without a word. My father’s bed-chamber looked only upon the ivy-covered wall of the close, and upon some gardens beyond it. The sun never came in there, and it was dim at all times; how much dimmer on this dreary morning, when there was no sunshine even on the open plains. There was a fire in the grate, but it burned dull like everything else. Before I looked at my father, I had taken in all the little accessories around him in one glance. The bottles upon the table, the drinks they were giving him, even the gleam of the wet ivy upon the top of the wall. My father himself lay, supported by pillows, breathing hard and painfully, and was very pale, but with a hectic spot burning on his cheek. He put out his thin white hand to me as I approached him. The diamond, a strange token of his former self, still shone upon his finger; it caught my eye in the strange torpor and dulness of my thoughts—and in this hour of extremity I remember wondering why he still chose to wear this favorite ring.
“You have come home in time, Hester,” he said faintly.
I put off my bonnet, and sat down beside him. My face and my heart were still quite dull. I do not think I expressed any emotion. I spoke only to Alice, and to her as coldly as if she had been a perfect stranger. “Will you tell me what he must have—show me the things; and if you please, leave us alone.”
Silently, as if she was not able to speak, she pointed out the medicines to me, and then went slowly away. I followed her to the door, for I saw that she beckoned me. How changed I must have been! for Alice seemed almost afraid to speak to me, whom she had been used to call her child.
“Miss Hester!” she whispered, with a faltering eager tone, and under her breath, “do not tell him—for pity’s sake do not let him know what you have found out.”
I made her no answer, but closed the door and came back to his bedside. There I sat down again in silence. I had nothing to say to him—nothing to say to him! neither of earth nor heaven!
“What have you to tell me, Hester?” said my father, at last. “I am about leaving you—are you aware of it?—do you know that this is the day which I looked forward to, when I asked you to place your fortune in my hands?”
“Yes, father!” I was stupid, sullen, dead. I could show no feeling, for indeed I felt none yet.
“I am glad that you decided as you did, Hester,” continued my father; “I have now no weight upon my conscience—no dread that I have compromised your happiness; and you have a protector and a home. You are happy, my love?”
“Did you say happy? oh, yes!” I said with almost a laugh; “happy, very happy, papa.”
Strange as it seemed to me, he appeared contented with what I said—he made no more reference to it; he lifted my hand gently up and down in his own.
“And I am going away,” he said slowly, “going away, Hester—where?”
Where? the word struck me with a strange superstitious terror. For the first tune I was roused to look eagerly and inquiringly in his face.
“Not to the family grave, Hester!” he said with a smile of awful amusement—yes, amusement, there is no other word, “that is only a stage in the journey—where am I going beyond that? Have you nothing to say?”
“Father—father!” I said wildly, with a breathless horror.
“Ay, but you cannot pilot me!” said my father; “and by-and-bye my ears will be deaf, should all the voices in the world echo my name.”
I bent over him, holding him with terror unspeakable. Little training in religion had fallen to my share; but I had the natural sentiment—the natural dread; and I forgot everything else in the deadly fear which made me cling to my father now.
“Why do you not tell me to be resigned?” said my father. “Do you know what I am setting out upon, Hester? Distance, distance, distance—vaster than anything in our moorland—a dark, solitary journey, where no one knows the way. Death! who believes in that? it is but an arbitrary word—one of the names we use for things we cannot comprehend; and no one tells me where is the end.”
“Oh, father, father, it is in the Bible!” cried I.
“Yes, it is in the Bible. Are you afraid I do not believe it, child? I believe it—but I see no clearer for my faith,” said my father. “I believe it as I believe that Columbus discovered a new world. But what is Columbus and his new world to me?”
“But, papa, the Saviour—” I said, timidly, and in an agony of terror.
“Ay, the Saviour—I believe in him, Hester, but I do not know Him!” said my father, in a hard and painful voice. “Yes—He has gone this road, they say. He might take one by the hand in this mysterious journey—but I know him not.”
“Let me send for some one, father,” I cried; “there are, surely, some who know. Let me send for a clergyman—papa, do not refuse me. He could tell us, and he could pray.”
“Telling would do me little service, Hester,” said my father, faintly, with again that strange, awful smile upon his mouth; “it is not information I want. It is—ah! breath—breath!”
A sudden spasm had seized him; he had been speaking too much, and he was worn out. I raised him up in my arms when I understood his gestures, that he might have air. How his breast heaved and panted with those terrible struggles! I supported him, but with nervous trembling arms. I feared the sight of this mortal suffering—it was dreadful to me—for I had never seen the anguish of the bodily frame before.
When he was eased, and the spasm wore off, I laid him down exhausted. He was no longer able to speak; but as I watched him, I saw his eyes, in which shone all his mind, as clear and full as ever, untouched and independent of his malady, passing with a considerate and steady gaze from one part of the room to another. I could not comprehend this mood. Not with disquietude, nor with anxiety, did he ask, “Where?” He was neither disturbed nor unhappy; he seemed to have no fear. That smile had returned to his face; he still could be amused; and no human emotions seemed to break up his deep, deep calm.
But I had no pleasure in seeing his composure. Horror, grief, distress, overpowered me as I sat watching him. Oh, that smile, that smile! Was this journey the only one in the world which a man should take composedly, without knowing where he was bound? I had the common youthful ideas about age, and deathbeds, and death. I gave the natural awe, the natural solemnity, to the wonderful termination, transition, change—the end of our life here—the beginning of the other world. It shocked and struck me with terror, to see him lie there upon the brink of it, asking “Where?” with a smile. I remembered all the common sayings about the death of good men. I remembered Addison’s call to some one to come and see how a Christian could die. I wondered if there was ostentation in this, to set against the speculative amusement with which my father had spoken. Everything else was swept from my mind by this. I forgot the hard pressure of my own unhappiness, and it was only recalled to me for a moment when I thought of appealing to Harry, and with a shock and bitter pang recollected that I had no Harry now, but that only Edgar Southcote waited below—waited for the issue of this tragedy to take me home.
For an hour or two after my father lay dozing, taking no notice of me save when I gave him his medicine. He seemed, indeed, to sleep very often for a few minutes at a time; but if I chanced to look away, when my glance returned to him, I invariably saw those open, living eyes, full of strength and understanding, noting all they saw with a perfect intelligence which struck me strangely. His mind was not dying. I had never seen anything that gave me such a wonderful idea of life and vigor as those glances from my father’s deathbed. He looked what was approaching in the face, and quailed not at it. Change was before him, not conclusion. With his living soul he looked into a vague, vast future, and knew not what it was; but Death, as he said, was but an arbitrary term—it meant nothing to that inquiring, speculative, active soul.
After a long interval he seemed to revive and strengthen, and turned his eyes upon me again.
“And you are happy, Hester—are you happy?” he said, looking closely in my face.
I turned my eyes away—I think it was the first lie I had ever told—and I said only, “Yes!”
But he was wandering once more among his own thoughts, and heeded not my looks, nor what they meant.
“Life is a strange problem,” he said, with the sombre shadow which it used to wear, returning upon his face. “I am about to find the solution of it, Hester—all my existence centres in one event. I have suffered one act to overshadow my best years—that was my great error—what a fool I was! because I failed in one thing, I threw everything away.”
“Because the failure in that one thing poisoned all your life!” I exclaimed, “oh! do not blame yourself, father! the blame did not lie with you.”
“What was that to me if the penalty did?” said my father, in his old reasoning tone—a tone which contrasted so strangely with the feeble voice, and the great weakness in which he spoke. “One act should not poison life, Hester! not even for a woman, how much less for a man! There are greater things in this world than marrying, or giving in marriage.”
He spoke with an emphasis of scorn, which made me tremble more and more. Alas! I saw that still in his very heart rankled this poisoned sorrow; and I shuddered to think that the same doom was mine. That I would carry to my death this same bitterness—that my life was already overshadowed as his had been, and that I was ready, like him, to throw everything away.
“If it should be that I am to find out the wherefore of these dark mysteries; if that is the congenial occupation in the place whither I go;” he paused suddenly when he had said so much—though I watched him eagerly, and listened, he did not continue. He fell into immediate silence, and again he began to sleep.
The confidence with which he spoke to me was strange. I scarcely could understand—perhaps his weakness had some share in it, perhaps my absence, and it was the first time I ever had been absent from home—had inclined his heart towards his only child, and perhaps he could not help those audible wanderings of his thoughts, as strength and life failed him, and he gathered all his powers to his heart to keep his identity—to be himself. When he was awake I saw his eyes, I scarcely could believe in what was coming; but when he slept, I thought I could see moment by moment how the current ebbed and ebbed away.
During one of these intervals of sleep, the doctor came in, and with him Mr. Osborne. With that practised scientific eye, which it is so dreadful to mark for our dearest ones, the doctor looked at him, and shook his head. He was lying so solemnly with his closed eyes, and not a movement in his frame, so pale now, so feeble, so perfectly at rest, that a pang of momentary terror struck to my heart; but he was not gone. He did not wake till the doctor had gone away, and Mr. Osborne was left standing beside me. I never raised my head, nor greeted him. I did not answer his whisper of satisfaction at finding me here—even by my father’s bedside. I would not meet as a friend a man who had wilfully snared and betrayed me.
When my father opened his eyes, he saw his friend by his bedside; but his eyes were not so full nor so clear, nor so bright with life and intelligence as they had been—there was a change—he stirred nervously.
“Ha! Osborne, my good fellow!” he said, “I am just setting out—any messages, eh? any word to—to—Helen.”
After he had said the name, a momentary color came to his cheek, he lifted his hand heavily, and drew it over his brow.
“What did I say? am I raving? no, no, I know you all! stay here, Helen,” the diamond on his finger had caught his eye—it was I whom he was calling by that name, and already his faculties failed to distinguish it from mine, “here,” he repeated, trying to draw off the ring, “here—take it from me—wear it—wear it—’tis a misfortune—keep it till you die.”
I took it from him, and he seemed to sink into a stupor. I never withdrew my eyes from him. The day had come and gone while I had been watching, and now it was night. Lights were brought into the room. I felt some one come behind me, and stand there at my chair; but I did not look who it was. Oh! that silent dim death-room, with no sound in it but his breath! Mr. Osborne leaned, hiding his face upon the pillow of the bed. I heard one suppressed sob behind me, and knew it was Alice; and I knew, too, instinctively that though I did not see him, there was another in the room. But I never moved nor turned my head; not a tear came to my dry eye, my lips were parched and hot; but neither sobbing nor weeping were possible to me. I sat still by that bedside, in full possession of my mind and faculties. I never observed more keenly, more closely, more minutely in all my life—I felt no grief, I knew no emotion, I only watched and watched with intense attention and consciousness to see my father pass away.
And there lay he—his speech was gone from him—his voice was no more to be heard in mortal ears—his soul was within those dark closing eternal gates—he was almost away. Suddenly he opened his dim eyes, and looked about him wildly, and said, “Helen!” Mr. Osborne turned to me with a rapid gesture to seek the miniature on my neck. “Let him see her—let him see her, why have you left it behind?” he said, in a whisper, which had all the effort of a loud cry. How vain it would have been! my father’s eyes closed once more in a moment—opened again to look round upon us with a scared bewildered glance—then were shut closely. I thought he had fallen asleep, but there was suddenly a movement and rustle among them all, a faint stir—I could not describe it, as if something had been accomplished. I understood what it meant, it went to my heart like a knife. Yes! it was so—it was so—I was standing among those who had wronged me, and he was gone.
I did not move, though they did. Mr. Osborne came and put his hand upon my head, and bade God bless me! and said, “All is well with him—all is well with him, dear child! go with Alice, this is no place for you;” and Alice stole to my side and put her arm round me, and entreated, “Miss Hester, darling, my own child, come and rest!”
I shook them both away—they were weeping, both of them—but not a tear came to me. I was the only one quite self-possessed. I did not say a word to either; I kept my seat, and shook them from me when they attempted to remonstrate. No! I could not yield to their false kindness, I would rather be alone—alone, as I was indeed alone in the world.
Then he came to me—when I saw him approaching, I rose. “Do not say anything,” I said; “if I must leave my dear father, I will go to my own room; let no one come to me, I will not be interrupted to-night.”
He followed me as I went to the door—he followed me along the passage, perhaps he thought I needed his support, but I was firmer in my step than he was. I knew that his heart was yearning over me in my new grief—I knew it better than if he had told me—but my heart was not softened to him. I turned when I reached my door. “Why do you follow me?” said I, “is it not enough that I have lost everything?—leave me in peace to-night.”
He held out his hands to me, he caught mine. “Oh! Hester, Hester, weep, and weep with me,” he cried, “do not condemn me to this outer darkness—let me be with you in your grief.”
I drew myself away from him. “No one can be with me in my grief, I am desolate,” I said, but I waited for no answer. I closed my door, and he went away from the threshold—this threshold to which he had come for me when I was a bride.
I went in and shut to my door. I shut the door of my heart, and closed myself up alone in this dreary, solitary place. I was not without a consciousness even now that I had left them all longing, anxious, miserable about me; but I felt as though they were all enemies—all enemies, as if I had not a friend in this wretched, forsaken world. I did not think what this real blow was which had struck upon me. I only felt my dreary, hopeless solitude, and the desire I had to be left here unmolested. I thought it would please me to see no more a human face again. I was in a wilderness more desolate than any Eastern waste—there were no hearers above me, and no human fellowship around. God and the Lord were words to me. I believed, but I did not know them—I could not seek refuge there, and here there was not one—not one of those I had loved so well, but had betrayed me.
My little room, my bower, my girlish sanctuary which I had left in my bride’s dress, I had returned to now, worse than a widow. Quietly and mechanically I began to take off my dress—it was not grief but misery which filled my heart, and there is a great difference between them. My wretchedness stupified me, and when I laid down my head upon my pillow, I fell at once into a heavy, deep sleep.