CHAPTER XIII
THE VALLEY OF THE DARK SHADOW
There were yet three weeks—three weeks only—to the marriage. It was an exceptionally cold spring. But everybody said the warm weather would come in time for the marriage.
Gerald Eversley went back to Oxford. It was necessary that he should arrange to close his residence there and remove his effects with a view to beginning married life in London. He was sorry to leave Helmsbury, still more sorry to leave Ethel; for she had not been very well for the last two or three days, and was confined to her room with a sore throat. Still the time was short, and he could not without discourtesy to his college omit some customary ceremonial duties before quitting it for good.
He wrote to Ethel from Oxford, saying that the master of the college had expressed much interest in his marriage, and sincere regret at his leaving the university; he had also sent him a wedding present. He added that he found himself involved in so many engagements at Oxford that he doubted if it would be possible for him to return to Helmsbury (except perhaps for one night) until a day or two before the wedding. He begged her to let him know that she had got over the cold and was feeling well again.
The answer to his letter came from Harry Venniker. He said that Ethel could not write herself, as she was in bed, suffering from a slight feverish attack following on the sore throat, but the village doctor had seen her and did not take a serious view of her case; there was no reason why Gerald should make any change in his plans. If Ethel should not be so well, Harry would telegraph. Gerald was disturbed in mind; he resolved to go to Helmsbury the next day if the medical report were not entirely satisfactory.
Next morning he received the news that she was better. It was again Harry who wrote, but Ethel had added at the foot of the letter the words, ‘Don’t be anxious, Gerald dearest. I shall soon be quite well.’
A day later she was in much the same state. Gerald would wait no longer, but would go on Monday to Helmsbury.
On the evening of Saturday, March the -th, 187-, he was going into Hall—he was actually halfway up the length of the Hall—when a telegram was put into his hand. It was in these words:
‘Come at once. Harry.’
He turned and left the Hall. His heart was as lead. Nobody in the Hall knew why he turned back. One or two of the fellows of the college who were sitting at dinner noticed his disappearance; they supposed he had forgotten something, perhaps an invitation to dinner in another college. But the servant who had handed him the telegram, and had looked at him while he read it, remarked that he was afraid Mr. Eversley had got some bad news.
Gerald Eversley, after leaving the Hall, rushed to his rooms. He flung his cap and gown on the sofa. The sense of hunger was dead within him. Hastily he began putting a few clothes—he hardly knew what they were—into a small travelling-bag. Stopping himself in the act of packing, he seized his hat, ran across the grass plot to the porter’s lodge, and told the underporter to order a fly at once. Then he looked at the table of trains. There would be a train starting for London in three-quarters of an hour. Whether he could get on to Helmsbury before next morning he did not stay to ask.
The telegram left room for the worst fears; it did not say that Ethel was still alive. He would go to London and take his chance. In a few minutes his packing was finished, and he stood under the great gateway of the college, awaiting the fly.
‘Is there anything wrong, sir?’ said the underporter, impressed by his manner. ‘I hope you....’
But here he caught sight of Gerald’s face. There was that in his face which forbade words.
O the horror of that wintry night-journey! The sky was flecked with dark ominous clouds. The moon looked gibbous. It was bitterly cold. Here and there large patches of snow still lay on the ground. Gerald gazed at them now and again through the frozen window-pane. But for the most part he sat in a corner of the railway carriage, wrapped in his rug, his head bent forward and buried in his hands.
O darkness of dread fear! when the worst is not known. Nothing is so awful, so appalling as that.
It was near midnight when he reached London. The train was an hour late. No hope of proceeding to Helmsbury that night. But he drove across London. He would sleep, if sleep he could and must, as near as might be to his beloved.
The drive through London at night is always an impressive experience. The vast suspended animation of the great city of men solemnises the mind. But Gerald thought not of that. Onwards he drove until the stir of life had died away, and scarce a soul was moving in the desolate squares. It was Sunday morning!
The last night-train to Helmsbury had started an hour ago. He could go by the first train in the morning. For that he waited. Of sleep he could not think. Pacing the platform or sitting uneasily in the waiting-room, never at rest for more than a few minutes together, he spent the hours of that chill night. Once somebody spoke to him on the platform, but he knew not who it was, and he made no answer.
In the grey light of early morning he reached Helmsbury. Harry Venniker was at the station to meet him. They clasped hands.
‘Is she better?’ whispered Gerald.
Harry Venniker shook his head, and said only ‘Come.’
They took their seats in the brougham. Like a gasp came the question from Gerald, ‘She is not dead?’
Harry Venniker said, ‘No.’
They drove to the Hall. Neither of them spoke again. It was not until afterwards that Gerald heard that Ethel had become suddenly worse the day before. Sir William D—— had been summoned; he had arrived last night, and had pronounced her to be in imminent danger.
The carriage drew up at the Hall door. A lamp was burning faintly on the great staircase. By its light Gerald saw Lord Venniker standing there. His face looked haggard; he was shedding tears. He embraced Gerald with passionate sorrow, crying, ‘My poor boy, you are too late. She died half an hour ago.’
There was a heavy thud upon the floor. Gerald had fallen. Lord Venniker and Harry raised him from the ground and laid him on a sofa. The shock of his fall had restored consciousness. He asked where he was.
The sore throat from which Ethel Venniker had been suffering when Gerald left Helmsbury had, it seemed, been the premonitor of dire disease. Unhappily the local doctor had not understood its early symptoms. When Sir William D—— arrived, he pronounced it to be acute diphtheria. The breathing was already difficult. The end was at hand. No human skill could have saved her.
It was thought afterwards that she had contracted the disease in visiting one of the cottages where the drainage was bad. Her act of charity had been fatal to her. O God!
The days that follow are a blank. Lady Venniker was so ill that grave anxiety was felt for her life. The doctors never left her.
Gerald sat in the chamber of death until he was led away lovingly by Harry. On the fourth day was the funeral. Gerald was the chief mourner. He seemed dazed. Next to him walked Lord Venniker and Harry.
The bishop of the diocese, who was to have performed the marriage, came at his own desire to officiate at the funeral.
The orange-flower was exchanged for the cypress leaf.
The church was crowded with the villagers all dressed in mourning. At the words ‘Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust,’ the bishop’s voice broke down, and it was as though a sob arose from all that multitude.
When the mourners of the family had withdrawn, many lingered around the grave, weeping. It was growing dark before the last mourner went home. The coffin was covered with wreaths and crosses. At the lych-gate two women, farmers’ wives, who had a long-standing quarrel, chanced to meet, and, hardly realising what they were doing, one of them clasped the other’s hand, saying fervently amidst her tears, ‘She loved us all.’
Lord Venniker and Harry sobbed like children, standing by the grave. Gerald alone remained unmoved, as if insensible.
On his return to the Hall he went to his bedroom and locked the door. A packet of letters was waiting for him on the table. He looked at the envelopes and put them down, all except one. It was in the handwriting of Mr. Selby.
Just as he was about to open it there came a gentle knock at the door, and the voice of the old family butler was heard inquiring if he could do anything for him. Gerald answered, ‘Nothing.’ He heard the butler’s steps returning along the passage, and it seemed that the butler stopped once not far from the door and listened.
Gerald opened Mr. Selby’s letter and read it. It was written on black-edged paper. At one place the paper was blistered a little, as if a tear had fallen upon it; but that might be fancy. Mr. Selby wrote that, being away from home, he had only just heard of Gerald’s bereavement. It was so terrible, so personal, that he feared to intrude upon it, even by a word of sympathy. But Gerald would forgive him for writing. He could never forgive himself if he did not write. And there was something (he said) which seemed to give him perhaps a title to write such a letter; something beyond the privilege of friendship, something which he had never told to anyone at St. Anselm’s. Nobody knew it, nobody guessed it. (Perhaps that was not quite so, Mr. Selby.) ‘Many years ago,’ he went on, ‘it was my own blessed privilege to know and love one so much higher than myself in life and character, that now, after all those years, I can only wonder how it was ever permitted me to win her love. We were going to be married soon. She died. O my dear Eversley, may not my affliction minister to yours? The world has not been the same to me since then; it can never be. There is not a day of my life when I do not dwell upon her memory, and in the thought and hope of seeing her again death has lost for me its sting.’ It was idle, Mr. Selby’s letter proceeded to say, to seek to minimise such sorrows; it was only the base or the shallow who could forget the past, or live as if it had not been; but God, who is all-merciful, did send with human grief the grace to bear it, and at last the consciousness of a blessing underlying it. ‘And what inspiration of good,’ said Mr. Selby, ‘can be so potent as the memory of a saintly life now veiled in heaven?’
Gerald folded the letter again. It had done for him what the funeral service had not done. It had touched the fountain-springs of his heart. He wept.
An hour—two hours—three hours passed away, and then the butler knocked again, bringing him some food. He opened the door and took it in. ‘Mr. Henry thought you would like it best here, sir,’ said the butler. Gerald placed it on the table. He tasted it, but could not eat it.
A little later, perhaps in consequence of something that the butler had said, Harry himself entered the room. He made the excuse of bringing him some verses which had been found lying in his sister’s room with the inscription, ‘For dear Gerald on Good Friday.’ Gerald remembered that they had been talking, when he was last at Helmsbury, about the Divine Passion to which that day is sacred. Whether the verses were her own or another’s did not appear; probably another’s, but it has not proved possible to trace them.
Gethsemane, Gethsemane,
My spirit yearneth to be free
From sin and shame at thought of thee.
There did the Saviour’s blood-sweat rain
In agony of mortal pain
Upon thy soil—oh! not in vain.
Friendship’s default, the lying kiss,
The serried spite of enemies,
This was His soul’s experience, this.
Gethsemane, Gethsemane,
Oh! that thou wouldst reveal to me
That which thine olives once did see!
And what in that fierce strife with hell
He suffered none may dare to tell,
But the Lord God remembereth well.
For in that solemn hour He bore
The sins of all that sinned before
Or shall sin till sin be no more.
Gethsemane, Gethsemane,
From thy deep shades of silence He
Passed to His death upon the tree.
He died—and all the angelic eyes
Looked in adoring strong surprise
On that eternal sacrifice;
And He who sits upon the throne
Declared the deed divinely done,
And God and man for ever one.
Gerald read the lines mechanically. The two friends sat side by side. Never had Harry’s character shown itself so tender and beautiful as now. He forgot himself in his sorrow for his friend. He said not a word of his own loss; he spoke of Gerald’s. He said his mother was very ill, dangerously ill, but it was her deep desire to see Gerald, if only for a minute, to-morrow. With a true instinct of sympathy he poured out his reminiscences of Ethel’s life, telling how she used to write to him every week when he was at St. Anselm’s, and used often to mention his great friend Gerald Eversley, and ask after him; how the people of Helmsbury loved her, and would do anything for her sake, and could never speak of her since her death without weeping; how she had been delicate even from childhood, and could not bear unkindness or roughness; how fond she had been of all living creatures, and would never hurt any one of them, but treated them (like St. Francis of old, though Harry did not say so) as brothers and sisters, and would not let them be deprived of their native liberty. Poor Harry! he reproached himself bitterly if he had ever acted against her wish. Death makes little disagreements or disobediences seem terrible. Then he went on to tell how she had spoken to him of her love for Gerald, saying with womanly self-forgetfulness that she was unworthy of him—he was so clever, so far above herself—but she would try to make him happy when she was his wife, and to sympathise with his interests and pursuits, and to live for him alone.
So Harry Venniker ran on, making talk a duty, not without tears. It may be that no better comforter could have been found—so artless as he was and generous and sympathetic. Yet the comfort was vain. It is thought that Nature contains in herself a remedy for every physical ill to which humanity is heir, though the remedies so often lie hid; but there are spiritual ills for which no remedy exists.
Harry Venniker did not quit Gerald’s bedroom until he had persuaded him to lie down and rest. He lay like one in a swoon. He moved not at all. Hour succeeded hour. The great clock in the courtyard told the hours. The shadows had long since stolen across the room in which he lay. It was night. Who can enter into the pathos of his thoughts? He had been lonely in his life and misunderstood. He had yearned for sympathy and had not found it. He had gone down into that dark spiritual valley into which all deep human souls descend and from which they do not all emerge. He had looked upon the earth, and had found no consoler there. He had lifted his eyes to heaven and had seen no God. Life had been terrible in his eyes, and it had been his all. In the anguish of his soul he had cried for help—for any help, however faint—in heaven or earth, and no help had come to him—none! Then from this misery, of which no man may fathom the depth, he had been delivered by a passion so intense, so delightful, that it absorbed and enthralled his whole being. He had contemplated an ideal goodness. He had been permitted to call it his own. The measure of his misery had been the measure of his deliverance. Having won back faith in a human soul, he had won it in God. Once more the heaven above him had become bright. Beautiful with a sacred beauty had life seemed to him. He was as a man restored from the grave. And now she who had brought this change in him—the idol of his soul—lay dead; in a moment, without a word of farewell, without a loving glance, she had been cut off from him. He was alone again. Was there then a God in heaven? Did He live only to mock and cajole the children of men? What right had He, if He were good and gracious, to hold the cup of blessing to human lips, thirsting for His love, and then to tear it ruthlessly away? Gerald Eversley cursed God in his heart.
The clock in the courtyard struck midnight. He heard what seemed to him like a howling far off in the dark.
Another hour he waited—more. Sleep was not for him that night. He rose from his bed. The embers were still aglow in his fireplace. He sat down and leaned his head upon the writing-table. There stood a Bible upon it, but he threw the Bible away.
He took a sheet of notepaper out of one of the drawers. His hand shook palsiedly as he wrote on it these words: ‘I can bear it no more. Life is hateful to me. I follow her to death. My body will be found by the willow at the south end of the lake. Tell my father. When you read this, I shall be a corpse. Forgive me, Harry. Beg your mother’s forgiveness. Ask her to pray for me. If there is a God, he will hear her prayer. Gerald.’
He put the paper in an envelope, addressed it ‘For Harry,’ and placed it in the centre of the writing-table.
Then he read over the verses which Harry had given him, kissed them, and put them in his pocket. They seemed to make him hesitate for a moment.
Then he opened the door stealthily and listened. Not a sound in the house. He stole down the stairs. The key of the garden door was in the lock. He turned it and went out. The night was dark. The wind was sighing in the trees. A bitter rain blew in his teeth. There were still a few patches of snow upon the ground.
Silently, looking back at times to see if he were followed, he made his way to the lake. It is nearly half a mile from the Hall. At the south end of it a large willow hangs down to the water’s edge. There beneath it Gerald stood for a few minutes, gazing at the cold surface of the water. Then he took off his coat, wrapped it round a large stone, and flung it into the lake. It sank, and the wavelets caused by its falling came rippling to the margin.
He sat down until the last wavelet had spent itself. The wind drove them fast to the shore. Then he rose, clasped his hands, peered down into the deep black water, and——
A hand was laid sharply on his shoulder. He stood transfixed.
Harry Venniker, pale as a ghost, stood at his side.
For nearly a minute they remained by the water’s edge, the one turning half round with his face towards the lake, the other holding him back.
At last Harry Venniker whispered hoarsely, ‘Come away.’
‘How did you come here?’ was the reply, spoken also in a whisper.
‘I could not sleep,’ said Harry, rapidly. ‘I was sitting up. I heard you get up and open the door and go downstairs. As you did not come back, I went to your room. I found this lying on the table. It told me where you would be. I ran after you. You did not hear my steps; the wind was so loud. I came up just as you threw your coat into the water. I waited and watched. Come away.’
Not a word passed between them as they returned to the Hall.
Gerald flung himself again upon his bed. He hid his face in his hands, sobbing convulsively.
Harry Venniker sat by his side until morning broke. He was calmer then.
Fearing that his presence in the room might excite observation, Harry bent over his unhappy friend and said, ‘I think I must go now. But, Gerald, you must give me your word that you will not do this dreadful thing.’
Gerald said faintly, ‘I promise.’ Then he fell back upon the bed.
Just as Harry Venniker was leaving the room Gerald called ‘Harry.’
Harry Venniker returned to the bedside.
‘Harry,’ he said, ‘you remember promising to be my friend for ever, whatever happened.’
‘Yes,’ replied Harry solemnly, ‘but I never thought of this.’
The only answer was, ‘You have saved me to-night.’
‘Yes,’ said Harry, ‘thank God.’
Harry Venniker went out.
He has never told to man or woman the incident of the night following his sister’s funeral.
Next morning it was noticed by the servants that neither Harry Venniker nor Gerald Eversley appeared to have slept in his bed.
Gerald Eversley was to leave Helmsbury that day. Before he left, Lady Venniker sent word that she would see him for a minute. He was taken into her bedroom. She was lying in bed, pale and anguished, as one who is not far from the portals of death. Her eyes were suffused with tears, but she held out her delicate hand to him, and he raised it to his lips.
‘My poor dear Gerald,’ she whispered; then after a pause, ‘she was too good for this world. His will be done.’ But even as she said the words, her voice was choked with weeping. Recovering herself by a strong effort she proceeded, ‘When she knew she was dying, she said, “Give Gerald this.”’ It was an ivory crucifix which had hung over her bed, the memorial of the Sorrow that is the solace of all sorrows.
It was evident that Lady Venniker’s strength was failing. ‘Kiss me,’ she said, ‘dear Gerald.’ He kissed her with such reverence as he might have kissed the brow of an angel. Then he went out.
An hour later a carriage rolled away from the gates of Helmsbury Hall. Two figures clad in deepest mourning were seated in it. They parted at the station. One journeyed alone to London. The other went back to the Hall.
Gerald Eversley never stayed again at Helmsbury. As soon as summer came the doctors decided that the only hope of saving Lady Venniker’s life lay in moving her before the cold months came to a southern clime. She died at Mentone in the autumn. Lord Venniker seemed unable to settle anywhere after her death. He travelled from place to place with his younger son. Harry was ordered with his regiment to India.
Helmsbury Hall was shut up. Lord Venniker could not live in it, and would not let it; he could not bear that the voice of strangers should be heard in the home of his joy and his bereavement.
Lady Venniker’s grave is beside her daughter’s in the little churchyard at Helmsbury. The villagers still lay fresh flowers upon them. Upon the headstone common to both are graven the words hallowed by so many sacred and pathetic memories:
‘They were lovely and pleasant in their lives, and in their death they were not divided.’
Every year, at some time in Passion Week, a lovely garland of choicest flowers was laid upon each grave. No one in Helmsbury knew whose were the hands that laid them. But it was told in the village that once a labourer, returning home from the next town long after midnight, saw in the distance what looked like the figure of a man dressed all in black kneeling by the graves, and in the morning the garlands were there.