Hester: A Story of Contemporary Life - Volume 3 by Mrs. Oliphant - HTML preview

CHAPTER XV.
THE END.

It was early in November when the time came for Catherine to leave the Grange. She had made a selection of a very few things to go with her, and all the others had been valued for the sale. She spoke quite cheerfully about the sale. She had gathered a great many valuable things about her, and it was thought they would sell very well. She had some pictures which had been in the house for generations, and some things which her great-uncle had picked up when he made the grand tour. And there was a great deal of valuable china and quantities of old silver, the accumulations of a family that had not been disturbed for generations. She showed no feeling about it, people said; and indeed Catherine felt that neither about this nor any other external thing was she capable of showing much feeling. She cared nothing about leaving the Grange. Had she been actually brought down as far as the almshouse, in all likelihood she would have taken it with the proudest placidity. What was there in that to move a soul? One room was very much like another if you went to general principles, though it might be larger or smaller. Were these matters to make one's self unhappy about? So she said, fully meaning it, and with a smile. She was at the office every day. It seemed a matter almost of economy to keep for the present the brougham with its one horse which took her there; but of everything else she divested herself with the frankest good will. To the outer world she kept her good looks, though she was thinner, and her complexion paled; but those who watched her more closely found that there were many changes in Catherine. "I'm killed, sire," old Captain Morgan still said. He himself had given them a great alarm; he had had "a stroke" in the beginning of the winter, but it had passed away, though he still said everything was too far for him, and found his evening hobble to the Grange too much. He went as often as he could, sometimes to bring Hester home, who was always there to receive Catherine at her return, sometimes only to sit and talk for an hour in the evening. With other people when they came, Catherine employed the same plan which she had first set on foot with Harry. She made Hester her representative in the conversation. She said it did her good, while she rested, to hear the voices and to take into her mind now and then a scrap of the conversation. But it seemed to Hester that she paid less and less attention to what people said. She was very cheerful in her time of business, but when she lay back in her chair in the evenings, she was so still sometimes that but for her hand now and then stealing to her eyes, her anxious companion would scarcely have known that she lived. She thought nothing of her health for her own part, and constantly said that she was quite well and that her work agreed with her. There had been a little excitement in her appearance when she came home in the evening of the last day she was to spend at the Grange. Hester thought it was the coming change that occasioned this, though Catherine declared her indifference to it. She talked with a little haste and excitement during dinner, and when they were alone afterwards did not flag as was her wont, but continued the talk. "It is a great pity," she said, "a girl like you, that instead of teaching or doing needlework, you should not go to Vernon's, as you have a right to do, and work there."

"I wish I could," Hester said, with eager eyes.

"They tell me you wanted to do something like what I had done. Ah! you did not know it was all to be done over again. This life is full of repetitions. People think the same thing does not happen to you twice over, but it does in my experience. You would soon learn. A few years' work, and you would be an excellent man of business; but it can't be."

"Why cannot it be? You did it. I should not be afraid——"

"I was old. I was past my youth. All that sort of thing was over for me. It could be in one way—if you could make up your mind to marry Harry——"

"I could not—I could not! I will never marry."

"It is a great pity you cannot—I think it is a mistake. I have done him a great deal of injustice in my time; but one finds out sooner or later that brains are not everything. There is another man, and he has brains, who would marry you if you would have him, Hester—Roland Ashton. Take him—it is better in the end."

"Oh, do not ask me! I will never marry," Hester cried.

Then Catherine suddenly sat upright in her chair, and clasped her hands together with almost wild emphasis. "I would marry," she cried, "if I were you! I would wipe out every recollection. Did they tell you the pitiful story of a meeting in the train, a marriage suddenly made up—and who it was that went away into the darkness in what was to have been your place?"

"Yes, they have told me," said Hester, in a low voice.

"Lord in Heaven!" cried Catherine, "what a world, what a world this is!—all mockery and delusion, all farce except when it is tragic. And after that you will not marry—for the sake of——"

"How can I help it?" cried the girl, with wistful eyes. "You do the same yourself."

"Myself? that is different. Your heart will not be empty for ever, Hester. It cannot close itself up for ever. With me that was the last;—this is one thing that makes a mother like no one else. Hold the last fast, they say. It was everything one had to look to. I am very cheerful, and I shall live for years—many people do. But I have got my death blow," Catherine said. Then the silence dropped again between them. It was before a cheerful fire, with a lamp burning—altogether a more cheerful scene than in those sad summer days.

"There are some people who would not take much interest in it," Catherine continued, "but you do. I think you are like me, Hester. We were kept apart by circumstances; perhaps it is possible we might have been kept apart on purpose. "He"—Catherine made a pause before and after, and said the word with a sob—"never understood me. They say he was—afraid of me, never could trust me with what he really wished. Alas, alas! It must have been my fault——"

"Oh no, no!"

"Ah, yes, yes. I had rather think that; and there is a great deal that is base in me. I could not but laugh even at that story of Emma—even now. Human nature is so strange—it is a farce. I am not angry though, not at all: all things seem floating off from me. I could think we were floating away altogether, you and I——"

"You are not well. You are doing too much. I should like to send for the doctor."

"I believe in no doctors. No, no; I am quite well, only tired with the day's work and ready for rest."

And the silence resumed its sway. She laid herself back as before—her pale head against the dark curtains stood out like ivory. Some time afterwards she sighed two or three times heavily, then there was no sound at all. The fire burned cheerfully, the lamp shed its steady glow upon Hester's book, to which after this talk she did not, as may be supposed, pay very much attention. But Catherine did not like a vacant watcher, and the book was a kind of safeguard, protecting her from the sense of an eye upon her. Perhaps an hour passed so. A chill crept into the room like nothing Hester had ever felt before, though all was still, serenely warm and bright to outward appearance. She rose softly at last and touched Catherine's hands, that were folded in her lap, to wake her. It was from them the cold had come that had crept to her heart.

There was, then, no need that Catherine Vernon should ever live in cramped rooms, in another house from that in which she had been born. When they carried her out from it a week after, the whole population came out to meet the procession, and followed her weeping, lining the path, filling the streets. Her misfortunes, and the noble courage with which she had stood up against them at the end, brought back all the fulness of the love and honour with which she had been regarded when she first became supreme in the place, and all bounty flowed from her. There was not any one connected with her, high or low, not only the poor Vernons who had snarled and scoffed while they accepted her favours, but the very men of money who had of late taken upon themselves the air of patronising Catherine, but was proud to be able to repeat now, on the day of her burying, what she had said to them, and how they had come in contact with her. The doctors were not clear as to how she died. She had never been suspected of heart disease, or any other disease. But it was her heart somehow, with or without a medical reason for it, that had failed her. The last touch, those who loved her thought, had been too much. Derision such as she had delighted in in other circumstances, had overtaken the last tragic occurrence of her life. Catherine had not been able to bear the grim mockery, the light of a farce upon that tragedy of her own.

And as for Hester, all that can be said for her is that there are two men whom she may choose between, and marry either if she pleases—good men both, who will never wring her heart. Old Mrs. Morgan desires one match, Mrs. John another. What can a young woman desire more than to have such a possibility of choice?

FINIS.