THE news of Sir William Markham’s death made a great sensation in the neighbourhood. It was as if a great house had fallen to the ground, a great tree been riven up by the roots. There are some people whom no one expects ever to die, and he was one of them. There seemed so much for him to do in the world. He was so full of occupation, so well qualified to do it, so precise and orderly in all his ways, every moment of his time filled up, he did not seem to have leisure for all the troublesome preliminaries of dying. But as it happened, he had found the time for them, as we all do, and everybody was astonished. It was whispered in the county that there had been “a very strange scene at the deathbed,” and everybody concluded that this was somehow connected with the heir, it being well known that Paul had only appeared the day before his father’s death. Some vague rumours on this score flew about in the days which elapsed before the funeral, but nobody could tell the rights of the story, and it had already begun to fade before the great pomp and ceremonial of the funeral day. This was to be a very great day at Markham Royal. In the Markham Arms all the stables were getting cleared out, in preparation for the horses of the gentry who would collect from far and near to pay honour to the last scene in which the member for the county would ever play any part; and all the village was roused in expectation. No doubt it was a very solemn and sad ceremonial, and Markham Royal knew that it had lost its best friend; but, notwithstanding, any kind of excitement is pleasant in the country, and they liked this well enough in default of better. The little gentleman too, who was living at the Markham Arms, was a great diversion to the village. He gave himself the air of superintending everything that was done at the Markham burying place. He went about it solemnly—as if it could by any possibility be his business—and he put on all the semblance of one who has lost a near relation. He put away his light clothes, and appeared in black, with a hat-band which almost covered his tall hat. The village people felt it very natural that the little gentleman should be proud of his relationship to the Markhams, and should take such a good opportunity of showing it; but those who knew about such matters laughed a little at the size of his hat-band. “If he had been a son it could not have been larger. Sir Paul himself could not do more,” Mr. Remnant, the draper, said.
It happened that Dolly Stainforth was early astir on the funeral morning. She thought it right to get all her parish work over at an early hour, for the village would be full of “company,” and indeed Dolly was aware that even in the rectory itself there would be a great many people to luncheon, and that her father’s stables would be as full of horses as those of the Markham Arms. She was full of excitement and grief herself, partly for Sir William whom she had known all her life, but still more for Alice and Lady Markham, for whom the girl grieved as if their grief had been her own. She had put on a black frock to be so far in sympathy with her friends, and before the dew was off the flowers, had gathered all she could find in the rectory garden, and made them into wreaths and crosses. This is an occupation which soothes the sympathetic mourner. She stood under the shadow of a little bosquet on the slope of the rectory garden which looked towards the churchyard, and worked silently at this labour of love, a tear now and then falling upon the roses still wet with morning dew. From where she stood she could see the preparations in the great Markham burying place; the sexton superintending the place prepared in which Sir William was to lie with his father, the lychgate under which the procession would pause as they entered, and the path by which they would sweep round to the church. That which was about to happen so soon seemed already to be happening before her eyes. The tears streamed down Dolly’s fresh morning cheeks. To die, to be put away under the cold turf, to leave the warm precincts of the cheerful day, seems terrible indeed to a creature so young as she was, so full of life, and on a summer morning all brimming over with melody and beauty. When she shook the tears off her eyelashes she saw a solitary figure coming through the churchyard, pausing for a moment to look at the grave, then turning towards the gate which led into the rectory garden. Dolly put the wreath she was making on her arm, and hastened to meet him. Her heart beat; it was full of sorrow and pity, and yet of excitement too. She went to him with the tears once more streaming from her pretty eyes. “Oh Paul!” she said, putting her hand into his, and able to say no more. Of late she had begun to call him Mr. Markham, feeling shy of her old playfellow and of herself, but she could not stand upon her dignity now. She would have liked to throw her arms round his neck, to console him, to have called him dear Paul. In his trouble it seemed impossible to do too much for him. And Paul on his side took the little hand in both his, and held it fast. The tears rose to his eyes too. He was very grown up, very tall and solemn, and his mind was full of many a serious thought—but when he had little Dolly by the hand the softest influence of which he was susceptible came over him. “Thank you, Dolly,” he said, with quivering lips.
“How are they?” said the little girl, coming very close to his side, and looking up at him with her wet eyes.
“Oh, how can they be?” said Paul; “my mother is worn out, she cannot feel it yet: and Alice is with her night and day.”
“Will they come?” said Dolly, with a sob in her voice.
“I fear so; it is too much for them. But I am afraid they will come, whatever I may say.”
“Oh, don’t you think it is best? Then they will feel that they have not left him, not for a moment, nor failed him, as long as there was anything to do.”
“But that makes it all the worse when there is nothing to do. I fear for my mother.”
“She has got you, Paul—and the children.”
“Yes, me; and I did not come till the last. Did you hear that, Dolly?—that I wasted all the time when he was dying, and was only here the last day?”
“Dear Paul,” said Dolly, giving him her hand again, “you did not mean it. Do you think he does not know now? Oh, you may be sure he understands!” she cried, with that confidence in the advancement of the dead above all petty frailties which is so touching and so universal.
“I hope so,” Paul said, with quivering lips; and as he stood here, with this soft hand clasping his, and this familiar, almost childish, voice consoling him, Paul felt as if he had awakened out of a dream. This was the place he belonged to, not the squalid dream to which he had given himself. Standing under those beautiful trees, with this soft, fair innocent creature comprehending and consoling him, there suddenly flashed before his eyes a vision of a narrow street, the lamp-post, the children shouting and fighting, and another creature, who did not at all understand him, standing close by him, pressing her advice upon him, looking up at him with eager eyes. A sudden horror seized him even while he felt the softness of Dolly’s consoling touch and voice. It quickened the beating of his heart and brought a faintness of terror like a film over his eyes.
“Come and sit down,” said Dolly, alarmed. “You are so pale. Oh, Paul, sit down, and I will run and bring you something. You have been shutting yourself up too much; you have been making yourself ill. Oh, Paul! you must not reproach yourself. You must remember how much there is to do.”
“Do not leave me, Dolly. I am going to speak to the rector. I am not ill—it was only a sudden recollection that came over me. I have not been so good a son as I ought to have been.”
“Oh, Paul! he sees now—he sees that you never meant it,” Dolly said. “Do you think they are like us, thinking only of the outside? And you have your mother to think of now.”
“And so I will,” he said, with a softening rush of tears to his eyes. “Come in with me, Dolly.”
Dolly was used to comforting people who were in trouble. She did not take away her hand, but went in with him very quietly, like a child, leading the young man who was so deeply moved. Her own heart was in a great flutter and commotion, but she kept very still, and led him to her father’s study and opened the door for him. “Here is Paul, papa,” she said, as if Paul had been a boy again, coming with an exercise, or to be scolded for some folly he had done. But afterwards Dolly went back to her wreaths with her heart beating very wildly. She was ashamed and angry with herself that it should be so on such a day—the morning of the funeral. But then it is so in nature, let us chide as we will. One day ends weeping, and the next thrusts its recollection away with sunshine. Already the new springs of life were beginning to burst forth from the very edges of the grave.
When Paul went away after this last bit of melancholy business (he had come to tell the rector what the hymn was which his mother wished to be sung) he did not see Dolly again. She was putting all her flowers ready with which to cover the darkness of the coffin—a tender expedient which has everywhere suggested itself to humanity. He went away through the early sunshine, walking with a subdued and measured tread as a man enters a church not to disturb the worshippers. In Paul’s own mind there was a feeling like that of convalescence—the sense of something painful behind yet hopeful before—the faintness and weakness, yet renewal of life, which comes after an illness. There was no anguish in his grief, nor had there been after the first agony of self-reproach which he had experienced, when he perceived the cruelty of his lingering and reluctance to obey his mother’s call. But that was over. He had at least done his duty at the last, and now the feeling in Paul’s mind was more that of respectful compassion for his father now withdrawn out of all the happiness of his life, than of any sorer, more personal sentiment. The loss of him was not a thing against which his son’s whole soul cried out as darkening heaven and earth to himself. The loss of a child has this effect upon a parent, but that of a parent seldom so affects a child; yet he was sorry, with almost a compunctious sense of the happiness of living, for his father who had lost that—who had been obliged to give up wife and children, and his happy domestic life, and his property and influence, and the beautiful world and the daylight. At this thought his heart bled for Sir William; yet for himself beat softly with a sense of unbounded opening and expansion and new possibility. As he walked softly home, his step instinctively so sobered and gentle, his demeanour so subdued, the thoughts that possessed him were such as he had never experienced before. They possessed him indeed; they were not voluntary, not originated by any will of his, but swept through him as on the wings of the wind, or gently floated into him, filling every nook and corner. He was no longer the same being; the moody, viewy, rebellious young man who was about to emigrate with Spears, to join a little rude community of colonists and work with his hands for his daily bread and sacrifice all his better knowledge, all the culture of a higher social caste, to rough equality and primitive justice—had died with Sir William. All that seemed to be years behind him. Sometimes his late associates appeared to him as if in a dream, as the discomforts of a past journey or the perils that we have overcome, flash upon us in sudden pictures. He saw Spears and Fraser and the rest for a moment gleaming out of the darkness, as he might have seen a precipice in the Alps on the edge of which for a moment he had hung. It was not that he had given them up; it was that in a moment they had become impossible. He walked on, subdued, in his strange convalescence, with a kind of content and resignation and sense of submission. A man newly out of a fever, submits sweetly to all the immediate restraints that suit his weakness. He does not insist upon exercises or indulgences of which he feels incapable, but recognises with a grateful sense of trouble over, the duty of submitting. This was how Paul felt. He was not glad, but there was in his veins a curious elation, expansion, a rising tide of new life. He had to cross the village street on his way home, and there all the people he met took off their hats or made their curtseys with a reverential respect that arose half out of respect for his new dignities, and half out of sympathy for the son who had lost his father. Just when his mind was soft and tender with the sight of this universal homage, there came up to him a strange little figure, all in solemn black.
“You are going home,” said this unknown being. “I will walk with you and talk it over; and let us try if we cannot arrive at an understanding——”
Paul put up his hand with sudden impatience. “I can’t speak to you to-day,” he said hastily.
“Not to-day? the day of our father’s funeral; that ought to be the most suitable day of all—and indeed it must be,” the little gentleman said.
“Mr. Gaveston,” said Paul, “if that is your name——”
“No, it is not my name,” said Mr. Gus.
“I suppose you lay claim to ours, then? You have no right. But Mr. Markham Gaveston, or whatever you call yourself, you ought to see that this is not the moment. I will not refuse to examine your claims at a more appropriate time,” said Paul with lofty distance.
A slight redness came over Gus’s brown face. He laughed angrily. “Yes, you will have to consider my claims,” he said. And then after a little hesitation, he went away. This disturbed the current of Paul’s languid, yet intense, consciousness. He felt a horror of the man who had thus, he thought, intruded the recollection of his father’s early errors to cloud the perfect honour and regret with which he was to be carried to his grave. The interruption hurt and wounded him. Of course the fellow would have to be silenced—bought off at almost any price—rather than communicate to the world this stigma upon the dead. By and by, however, as he went on, the harshness of this jarring note floated away in the intense calm and peace of the sweet atmosphere of the morning which surrounded him. The country was more hushed than usual, as if in sympathy with what was to happen to-day. The very birds stirred softly among the trees, giving place, it might have been supposed, to that plaintive coo of the wood pigeon “moaning for its mate” which is the very voice of the woods. A soft awe seemed over all the earth—an awe that to the young man seemed to concern as much his own life which was, as the other which was ending. The same awe crept into his own heart as he went towards his home, that temple of grief and mourning, from which all the sunshine was shut out. There seemed to rise up within him a sudden sense of the responsibilities of the future, a sudden warmth of resolution which brought the tears to his eyes.
“I will be good,” said the little princess, when she heard of the great kingdom that was coming to her; and Paul, though he was not a child to use that simple phraseology, felt the same. The follies of the past were all departed like clouds. He was the head of the family—the universal guardian. It lay with him to see that all were cared for, all kept from evil; the fortune of many was in his hands; power had come to him—real power, not visionary uncertain influence such as he had once thought the highest of possibilities. “I will be good”—this thought swelled up within him, filling his heart.
It was past mid-day when the procession set out; the whole county had come from all its corners, to do honour to Sir William, and the parish sent forth a humble audience, scattered along all the roads, half-sad, half-amused by the sight of all the carriages and the company. When they caught a glimpse of my lady in her deep crape, the women cried: but dried their tears to count the number of those who followed, and felt a vague gratification in the honour done to the family. All the men who were employed on the estate, and the farmers, and even many people from Farboro’, the markettown, swelled the procession. Such a great funeral had never been seen in the district. Lady Westland and her daughter, and Mrs. Booth, and the other ladies in the parish, assembled under the rectory trees, and watched the wonderful procession, not without much remark on the fact that Dolly had gone to the grave with the family, a thing which no one else had been asked to do. It was not the ladies on the lawn, however, who remarked the strange occurrence which surprised the lookers-on below, and which was so soon made comprehensible by what followed. When the procession left the church-door, the stranger who was living at the Markham Arms appeared all of a sudden, in the old-fashioned scarves and hat-bands of the deepest conventional woe, and placed himself behind the coffin, in a line with, or indeed a little in advance of, Paul. There was a great flutter among the professional conductors of the ceremony when this was observed. One of the attendants rushed to him, and took him by the arm, and remonstrated with anxious whispers.
“You can follow behind, my good gentleman—you can follow behind,” the undertaker said; “but this is the chief mourner’s place.”
“It is my place,” said the intruder aloud, “and I mean to keep it.”
“Oh, don’t you now, sir—don’t you now make a business,” cried the distressed official. “Keep out of Sir Paul’s way!”
The stranger shook the man off with a sardonic grin which almost sent him into a fit, so appalling was it, and contrary to all the decorum of the occasion. And what more could any one do? They kept him out of the line of the procession, but they could not prevent him from keeping up with, keeping close by Paul’s side. Indeed Mr. Gus got close to the side of the grave, and made the responses louder than any one else, as if he were indeed the chief actor in the scene. And his appearance in all those trappings of woe, which no one else wore, pointed him doubly out to public notice. Indeed the undertaker approved of him for that; it was showing a right feeling—even though it was not from himself that Mr. Gus had procured that livery of mourning. It was he that lingered the longest when the mourners dispersed. This incident was very much discussed and talked of in the parish and among the gentlemen who had attended the funeral, during the rest of the day. But the wonder which it excited was light and trivial indeed in comparison with the wonders that were soon to follow. All day long the roads were almost gay (if it had not been wrong to use such an expression in the circumstances) with the carriages returning from the funeral, and the people in the roadside cottages felt themselves at liberty to enjoy the sight of them now that all was over, and Sir William safely laid in his last bed.
“And here’s Sir Paul’s ’ealth,” was a toast that was many times repeated in the Markham Arms, and in all the little alehouses where the thirsty mourners refreshed themselves during the day; “and if he’s as good a landlord and as good a master as his father, there won’t be much to say again’ him.”
There were many, however, who, remembering all that had been said about him, the “bad company” he kept, and his long absences from home, shook their heads when they uttered their good wishes, and had no confidence in Sir Paul.