PRESENTLY the light came back to Mr. Sandford’s eyes. He was lying upon the dry heather on the side of the moor, the brown seed-pods nestling against his cheek, the yellow glow in the west, to which his eyes instinctively turned, having scarcely faded at all since he had looked at it from the carriage. A confused sound of noises, loud speaking, and moans of pain reached him where he lay, but scarcely moved him to curiosity. His first sensation was one of curious ease and security. He did not attempt to budge, but lay quite peacefully smiling at the sunset, like a child. His head was confused, but there was in it a vague sense of danger escaped, and of some kind of puzzled deliverance from he knew not what, which gave the strangest feeling of soothing and rest. He felt no temptation to jump up hastily, to go to the help of the people who were moaning, or to inquire into the accident, as in another case he would have done. He lay still, quite at his ease, hearing these voices as if he heard them not, and smiling with a confused pleasure at the glow of orange light in the sky.
He did not know how long it was till some one knelt down and spoke to him anxiously. “Sandford, are you badly hurt? Sandford, my dear fellow, do you know me? Can you speak to me?”
He burst into a laugh at this address.
“Speak to you? Know you? What nonsense! I am not hurt at all. I am quite comfortable.”
“Thank God!” said the other. “Duncan, I fear, has a broken leg, and the coachman is—— It was his fault, the unfortunate wretch. Give me your hand, and I’ll help you to get up.”
To get up? That was quite a different matter. He did not feel the least desire to try. He felt, before trying and without any sense of alarm, that he could not get up; then said to himself that this was nonsense too, and that to lie there, however comfortably, when he might be helping the others, was not to be thought of. He gave his hand accordingly to his friend, and made an effort to rise. But it would have been as easy (he said to himself) for a log of wood to attempt to rise. He felt rather like that, as if his legs had turned to wood—not stone, for that would have been cold and uncomfortable. “I don’t know how it is,” he said, still smiling, “but I can’t budge. There’s nothing the matter with me, I’m quite easy and comfortable, but I can’t move a limb. I’ll be all right in a few minutes. Look after the others. Never mind me.” He thought the face of the man who was bending over him looked strangely scared, but nothing more was said. A rug was put over him and one of the cushions of the carriage under his head, and there he lay, vaguely hearing the groans of the man whose leg was broken as (apparently) they moved him, and all the exclamations and questions and directions given by one and another. What was more wonderful was the dying out of that wild orange light in the sky. It paled gradually, as if it had been glowing metal, and the cold night air breathing on it had paled and dwindled that ineffectual fire. A hundred lessening tints and tones of colour—yellows and faint greens, with shades of purple and creamy whiteness breaking the edges—melted and shimmered in the distance. It was like an exhibition got up for him alone, relieved by that black underground, now traversed by gigantic ebony figures of a horse and man, moving irregularly across the moor. A star came out with a keen blue sparkle, like some power of heaven triumphant over that illumination of earth. What a spectacle it was! And all for him alone!
The next thing he was conscious of was two or three figures about him—one the doctor, whose professional touch he soon discovered on his pulse and his limbs. “We are going to lift you. Don’t take any trouble; it will give you no pain,” some one said. And before he could protest, which he was about to do good-humouredly, that there was no occasion, he found himself softly raised upon some flat and even surface, more comfortable, after all, than the lumps of the heather. Then there was a curious interval of motion along the road, no doubt, though all he saw was the sky with the stars coming gradually out; neither the road nor his bearers, except now and then a dark outline coming within the line of his vision; but always the deep blue of the mid sky shining above. The world seemed to have concentrated in that, and it was not this world, but another world.
He remembered little more, except by snatches; an unknown face—probably the doctor’s—looking exceedingly grave, bending over him; then Daniells’ usually jovial countenance with all the lines drooping and the colour blanched out of it, and a sound of low voices talking something over, of which he could only make out the words “Telegraph at once;” then, “Too late! It must not be too late. She must come at once.” He wondered vaguely who this was, and why there should be such a hurry. And then, all at once, it seemed to him that it was daylight and his wife was standing by his bedside. He had just woke up from what seemed a very long, confused, and feverish night—how long he never knew. But when he woke everything was clear to him. Unless, by the grace of God, something were to happen—— Something was about to happen, by the grace of God.
“Mary!” he cried, with a flush of joy. “You here!”
“Of course, my dearest,” she said, with a cheerful look, “as soon as I heard there had been an accident.”
He took her hand between his and drew her to him. “This was all I wanted,” he said. “God is very good; He gives me everything.”
“Oh, Edward!” This pitiful protest, remonstrance, appeal to heaven and earth—for all these were in her cry—came from her unawares.
“Yes,” he said, “my dear, everything has happened as I desired. I understand it all now. I thought I was not hurt; now I see. I am not hurt, I am killed, like the boy—don’t you remember?—in Browning’s ballad. Don’t be shocked, dear. Why shouldn’t I be cheerful? I am not—sorry.”
“Oh, Edward!” she cried again, the passion of her trouble exasperated by his composure; “not to leave—us all?”
He held her hand between his, smiling at her. “It was what I wanted,” he said—“not to leave you; but don’t you believe, my darling, there must be something about that leaving which is not so dreadful, which is made easy to the man who goes away? Certainly, I don’t want to leave you; but it’s so much for your good—for the children’s good——”
“Oh, never, Edward, never!”
“Yes; it’s new to you, but I’ve been thinking about it a long time—so much that I once thought it would almost have been worth the while, but for the insurances, to have——”
“Edward!” She looked at him with an agonised cry.
“No, dear—nothing of the kind. I never would, I never could have done it. It would have been contrary to nature. The accident—was without any will or action of mine. By the grace of God——”
“Edward, Edward! Oh, don’t say that; by His hand, heavy, heavy upon us!”
“It is you that should not say that, Mary. If you only knew, my dear. I want you to understand so long as I am here to tell you——”
“He must not talk so much,” said the voice of the doctor behind; “his strength must be husbanded. Mrs. Sandford, you must not allow him to exhaust himself.”
“Doctor,” said Mr. Sandford, “I take it for granted you’re a man of sense. What can you do for me? Spin out my life by a few more feeble hours. Which would you rather have yourself? That, or the power of saying everything to the person you love best in the world?”
“Let him talk,” said the doctor, turning away; “I have no answer to make. Give him a little of this if he turns faint. And send for me if you want me, Mrs. Sandford.”
“Thanks, doctor. That is a man of sense, Mary. I feel quite well, quite able to tell you everything.”
“Oh, Edward, when that is the case, things cannot be so bad! If you will only take care, only try to save your strength, to keep up. Oh, my dear! The will to get well does so much! Try! try! Edward, for the love of God.”
“My own Mary: always believing that everything’s to be done by an effort, as all women do. I am glad it is out of my power. If I were in any pain there might be some hope for you, but I’m in no pain. There’s nothing the matter with me but dying. And I have long felt that was the only way.”
“Dying?—not when you were with us at the sea?”
“Most of all then,” he said, with a smile.
“Oh, Edward, Edward! and I full of amusements, of pleasure, leaving you alone.”
“It was better so. I am glad of every hour’s respite you have had. And now you’ll be able easily to break up the house, which would have been a hard thing and a bitter downfall in my lifetime. It will be quite natural now. They will give you a pension, and there will be the insurance money.”
“I cannot bear it,” she cried wildly. “I cannot have you speak like this.”
“Not when it is the utmost ease to my mind—the utmost comfort——”
She clasped her hands firmly together. “Say anything you wish, Edward.”
“Yes, my poor dear.” He was very, very sorry for his wife. It burst upon her without preparation, without a word of warning. Oh, he was sorry for her! But for himself it was a supreme consolation to pour it all forth, to tell her everything. “If I were going to be left behind,” he said, soothingly, “my heart would be broken: but it is softened somehow to those that are going away. I can’t tell you how. It is, though; it is all so vague and soft. I know I’ll lose you, Mary, as you will lose me, but I don’t feel it. My dearest, I had not a commission, not one. And there are three pictures of mine unsold in Daniells’ inner shop. He’ll tell you if you ask him. The three last. That one of the little Queen and her little Maries, that our little Mary sat for, that you liked so much, you remember? It’s standing in Daniells’ room; three of them. I think I see them against the wall.”
“Edward!”
“Oh no, my head is not going. I only think I see them. And it was the merest chance that the ‘Black Prince’ sold; and not a commission, not a commission. Think of that, Mary. It is true such a thing has happened before, but I never was sixty before. Do you forget I am an old man, and my day is over?”
“No, no, no,” she cried with passion; “it is not so.”
“Oh yes; facts are stubborn things—it is so. And what should we have done if our income had stopped in a moment, as it would have done? A precipice before our feet, and nothing, nothing beyond. Now for you, my darling, it will be far easier. You can sell the house and all that is in it. And they will give you a pension, and the children will have something to begin upon.”
“Oh, the children!” she cried, taking his hand into hers, bowing down her face upon it. “Oh, Edward, what are the children between you and me?” She cast them away in that supreme moment; the young creatures all so well, so gay, so hopeful. In her despair and passion she flung their crowding images from her—those images which had forced her husband from her heart.
He laughed a low, quiet laugh. “God bless them,” he said; “but I like to have you all to myself, you and me only, for the last moment, Mary. You have been always the best wife that ever was—nay, I won’t say have been—you are my dear, my wife. We don’t understand anything about widows, you and I. Death’s nothing, I think. It looks dreadful when you’re not going. But God manages all that so well. It is as if it were nothing to me. Mary, where are you?”
“Here, Edward, holding your hand. Oh, my dear, don’t you see me?”
“Yes, yes,” he said, with a faint laugh, as if ashamed at some mistake he had made, and put his other hand over hers with a slight groping movement. “It’s getting late,” he said; “it’s getting rather dark. What time is it? Seven o’clock? You’ll not go down to dinner, Mary? Stay with me. They can bring you something upstairs.”
“Go down? Oh, no, no. Do you think I would leave you, Edward?” She had made a little pause of terror before she spoke, for, indeed, it was broad day, the full afternoon sunshine still bright outside, and nothing to suggest the twilight. He sighed again—a soft, pleasurable sigh.
“If you don’t mind just sitting by me a little. I see your dear face in glimpses, sometimes as if you had wings and were hovering over me. My head’s swimming a little. Don’t light the candles. I like the half-light; you know I always did. So long as I can see you by it, Mary. Is that a comfortable chair? Then sit down, my love, and let me keep your hand, and I think I’ll get a little sleep.”
“It will do you good,” said the poor wife.
“Who knows?” he said, with another smile. “But don’t let them light the candles.”
Light the candles! She could see, where she sat there, the red sunshine falling in a blaze upon a ruddy heathery hill, and beating upon the dark firs which stood out like ink against that background. There is perhaps nothing that so wrings the heart of the watcher as this pathetic mistake of day for night which betrays the eyes from which all light is failing. He lay within the shadow of the curtain, always holding her hand fast, and fell asleep—a sleep which, for a time, was soft and quiet enough, but afterwards got a little disturbed. She sat quite still, not moving, scarcely breathing, that she might not disturb him; not a tear in her eye, her whole being wound up into an external calm which was so strangely unlike the tumult within. And she had forsaken him—left him to meet calamity without her support, without sympathy or aid! She had been immersed in the pleasures of the children, their expeditions, their amusements. She remembered, with a shudder, that it had been a little relief to get him away, to have their dance undisturbed. Their dance! Her heart swelled as if it would burst. She had been his faithful wife since she was little more than a child. All her life was his—she had no thought, no wish, apart from him. And yet she had left him to bear this worst of evils alone!
Mrs. Sandford dared not break the sacred calm by a sob or a sigh. She dared not even let the tears come to her eyes, lest he should wake and be troubled by the sight of them. What thoughts went through her mind as she sat there, not moving! Her past life all over, which, until that telegram came, had seemed the easy tenor of every day; and the future, so dark, so awful, so unknown—a world which she did not understand without him.
After an interval he began to speak again, but so that she saw he was either asleep still or wandering in those vague regions between consciousness and nothingness. “All against the wall—with the faces turned,” he said. “Three—all the last ones: the one my wife liked so. In the inner room: Daniells is a good fellow. He spared me the sight of them outside. Three—that’s one of the perfect numbers—that’s—I could always see them: on the road and on the moor, and at the races: then—I wonder—all the way up—on the road to heaven? no, no. One of the angels—would come and turn them round—turn them round. Nothing like that in the presence of God. It would be disrespectful—disrespectful. Turn them round—with their faces——” He paused; his eyes were closed, an ineffable smile came over his mouth. “He—will see what’s best in them,” he said.
After this for a time silence reigned, broken only now and then by a word sometimes unintelligible. Once his wife thought she caught something about the “four square walls in the new Jerusalem,” sometimes tender words about herself, but nothing clear. It was not till night that he woke, surprising them with an outcry as to the light, as he had previously spoken about the darkness.
“You need not,” he said, “light such an illumination for me—al giorno as the Italians say; but I like it—I like it. Daniells—has the soul of a prince.” Then he put out his hands feebly, calling “Mary! Mary!” and drew her closer to him, and whispered a long, earnest communication; but what it was the poor lady never knew. She listened intently, but she could not make out a word. What was it? What was it? Whatever it was, to have said it was an infinite satisfaction to him. He dropped back upon his pillows with an air of content indescribable, and silent pleasure. He had done everything, he had said everything. And in this mood slept again, and woke no more.
Mr. Sandford’s previsions were all justified. The house was sold to advantage, at what the agent called a fancy price, because it had been his house—with its best furniture undisturbed. Everything was miserable enough indeed, but there was no humiliation in the breaking up of the establishment, which was evidently too costly for the widow. She got her pension at once, and a satisfactory one, and retired with her younger children to a small house, which was more suited to her circumstances. And Lord Okeham, touched by the fact that Sandford’s death had taken place under the same roof, in a room next to his own (though that, to be sure, in an age of competition and personal merit was nothing), found somehow, as a Cabinet Minister no doubt can if he will, a post for Harry, in which he got on just as well as other young men, and settled down into a very good servant of the State. And Jack, being thus suddenly sobered and called back to himself, and eager to get rid of the intolerable thought that he, too, had weighed upon his father’s mind, and made his latter days more sad, took to his profession with zeal, and got on, as no doubt any determined man does when he adopts one line and holds by it. The others settled down with their mother in a humbler way of living, yet did not lose their friends, as it is common to say people do. Perhaps they were not asked any longer to the occasional “smart” parties to which the pretty daughters and well-bred sons of Sandford the famous painter, who could dispense tickets for Academy soirées and private views, were invited, more or less on sufferance. These failed them, their names falling out of the invitation books; but what did that matter, seeing they had never been but outsiders, flattered by the cards of a countess, but never really penetrating beyond the threshold?
Mrs. Sandford believed that she could not live when her husband was thus taken from her. The remembrance of that brief but dreadful time when she had abandoned him, when the children and their amusements had stolen her heart away, was heavy upon her, and though she steeled herself to carry out all his wishes, and to arrange everything as he would have had it done, yet she did all with a sense that the time was short, and that when her duty was thus accomplished she would follow him. This softened everything to her in the most wonderful way. She felt herself to be acting as his deputy through all these changes, glad that he should be saved the trouble, and that humiliation and confession of downfall which was not now involved in any alteration of life she could make, and fully confident that when all was completed she would receive her dismissal and join him where he was. But she was a very natural woman, with all the springs of life in her unimpaired. And by-and-by, with much surprise, with a pang of disappointment, and yet a rising of her heart to the new inevitable solitary life which was so different, which was not solitary at all, but full of the stir and hum of living, yet all silent in the most intimate and closest circle, Mrs. Sandford recognised that she was not to die. It was a strange thing, yet one which happens often: for we neither live nor die according to our own will and previsions—save sometimes in such a case as that of our painter, to whom, as to his beloved, God accorded sleep.
And more—the coming true of everything that he had believed. After doing his best for his own, and for all who depended upon him in his life, he did better still, as he had foreseen, by dying. Daniells sold the three pictures at prices higher than he had dreamed of, for a Sandford was now a thing with a settled value, it being sure that no new flood of them would ever come into the market. And all went well. Perhaps with some of us, too, that dying which it is a terror to look forward to, seeing that it means the destruction of a home, may prove, like the painter’s, a better thing than living even for those who love us best. But it is not to every one that it is given to die at the right moment, as Mr. Sandford had the happiness to do.