Doctor Phillips did not meet Margaret and her husband until luncheon time and then they were full of an encounter which they had had during their morning walk.
“Only fancy, Doctor!” exclaimed Margaret, with more animation than she had displayed of late, “Arthur and I have been shopping in Regent Street, and whom do you think we met?”
“I give it up, my dear,” replied the doctor, helping himself to cold beef. “I am not good at guessing riddles.”
“Ralph and Elinor! They had just come from some exhibition of pictures in New Bond Street, and I never saw them so pleased with each other before. Ralph was looking actually ‘spooney’, and Elinor was positively radiant.”
“Souvent femme varie,” quoted Doctor Phillips, shrugging his shoulders.
“Oh! but, Doctor, it made Arthur and me so glad to see them. Elinor is very fond of Ralph, you know, although she has shewn it so little. And so I have no doubt is he of her, and there would never have been any unpleasantness between them, if it had not been for that horrid girl, Harriet Brandt.”
“It is not like you, my dear Margaret, to condemn anyone without a hearing. Perhaps you have not heard the true case of Miss Harriet Brandt. Although I am glad that Ralph has disentangled himself from her, I still believe that he behaved very badly to both the young ladies, and whilst I am glad to hear that Miss Leyton smiles upon him again, I think it is more than he deserves!”
“And I agree with you, Doctor,” interposed Colonel Pullen, “I have never seen this Miss Brandt, but I know what a fool my brother is with women, and can quite understand that he may have raised her hopes just to gratify his own vanity. I have no patience with him.”
“Well! for Miss Leyton’s sake let us hope that this will be his last experience of dallying with forbidden pleasures. But what will you say when I tell you that one of my visitors this morning has been the young lady in question—Miss Brandt!”
“Harriet Brandt!” exclaimed Margaret, “but why—is she ill?”
“Oh! no! Her trouble is mental—not physical.”
“She is not still hankering after Ralph, I hope.”
“You are afraid he might not be able to resist the bait! So should I be. But she did not mention Captain Pullen. Her distress was all about herself!”
“Oh! do tell me about it, Doctor, if it is not a secret! You know I have a kind of interest in Harriet Brandt!”
“When she does not interfere with the prospects of your family,” observed the doctor, drily, “exactly so! Well, then, the poor girl is in great trouble, and I had very little consolation to give her! She has left Madame Gobelli’s house. It seems that the old woman insulted her terribly and almost turned her out.”
“Oh! that awful Baroness!” cried Margaret; “it is only what might have been expected! We heard dreadful stories about her at Heyst. She has an uncontrollable temper and, when offended, a most vituperative tongue. Her ill-breeding is apparent at all times, but it must be overwhelming when she is angry. But how did she insult Miss Brandt?”
“You remember what I told you of the girl’s antecedents! It appears that the Baroness must have got hold of the same story, for she cast it in her teeth, accusing her moreover of having caused the death of her son.”
“Madame Gobelli’s son? What! Bobby—Oh! you do not mean to say that Bobby—is dead?”
“Yes! There was but one son, I think! He died yesterday, as I understood Miss Brandt. And the mother in her rage and grief turned upon the poor girl and told her such bitter truths, that she rushed from the house at once. Her visit to me this morning was paid in order to ascertain if such things were true, as the Baroness, very unjustifiably I think, had referred her to me for confirmation.”
“And what did you tell her?”
“What could I tell her? At first I declined to give an opinion, but she put such pertinent questions to me, that unless I had lied, I saw no way of getting out of it. I glossed over matters as well as I could, but even so, they were bad enough. But I impressed it upon her that she must not think of marrying. I thought it the best way to put all idea of catching Captain Pullen out of her mind. Let him once get safely married, and she can decide for herself with regard to the next. But at all hazards, we must keep Ralph out of her way, for between you and me and the post, she is a young woman whom most men would find it difficult to resist.”
“Oh! yes! she and Ralph must not meet again,” said Margaret, dreamingly. Her thoughts had wandered back to Bobby and Heyst, and all the trouble she had encountered whilst there. What despair had attacked her when she lost her only child, and now Madame Gobelli—the woman she so much disliked—had lost her only child also.
“Poor Madame Gobelli!” she ejaculated, “I cannot help thinking of her! Fancy Bobby being—dead! And she used to make him so unhappy, and humiliate him before strangers! How she must be suffering for it now! How it must all come back upon her! Poor Bobby! Elinor will be sorry to hear that he is gone! She used to pity him so, and often gave him fruit and cakes. Fancy his being dead! I cannot believe it.”
“It is true, nevertheless! But it is the common lot, Margaret! Perhaps, as his mother used to treat him so roughly, the poor lad is better off where he is.”
“Oh! of course, I have no doubt of that! But he was all she had—like me!” said Margaret, with her eyes over-brimming. Her husband put his arms round her, and let her have her cry out on his shoulder.
Then, as he wiped her tears away she whispered,
“Arthur, I should like to go and see her—the Baroness, I mean! I can sympathise so truly with her, I might be able to say a few words of comfort!”
“Do as you like, my darling,” replied Colonel Pullen, “that is, if you are sure that the woman won’t insult you, as she did Miss Brandt!”
“Oh! no! no! I am not in the least afraid! Why should she? I shall only tell her how much I feel for her own our common loss——”
She could not proceed, and the doctor whispered to the Colonel.
“Let her do as she wishes! The best salve for our own wounds is to try and heal those of others.”
Margaret rose and prepared to leave the room.
“I shall go at once,” she said, “I suppose there is no chance of my meeting Harriet Brandt there!”
“I think not! She told me she had left the Red House for good and all, but she did not say where she was staying! Though, after all, I think she is in most want of comfort of the two.”
“Oh! no!” replied Margaret, faintly, “there is no grief like that of—of—” She did not finish her sentence, but left the room hastily in order to assume her walking things.
“Will she ever get over the loss of her child?” demanded Colonel Pullen, gloomily. The doctor regarded him with a half-amused surprise.
“My dear fellow, though it is useless to preach the doctrine to a bereaved mother, the loss of an innocent baby is perhaps the least trying in the category of human ills. To rear the child, as thousands do, to be unloving, or unsympathetic, or ungrateful, is a thousand times worse. But it is too soon for your dear wife to acknowledge it. Let her go to this other mother and let them cry together. It will do her all the good in the world!”
And the doctor, having finished his luncheon, put on his top-coat and prepared to make a round of professional calls.
Margaret came back ready for her visit.
“I shall not offer to go with you, darling,” said the Colonel, “because my presence would only be inconvenient. But mind you keep the cab waiting, or you may find some difficulty in getting another in that district. What address shall I give the driver?”
“First to our florist in Regent Street that I may get some white flowers.”
In another minute she was off, and in about an hour afterwards, she found herself outside the Red House, which looked gloomier than ever, with all the blinds drawn down. Margaret rang the front door bell, which was answered by Miss Wynward.
“Can I see Madame Gobelli?” commenced Margaret, “I have just heard the sad news, and came to condole with her!”
Miss Wynward let her into the hall and ushered her into a side room.
“You will excuse my asking if you are a friend of her ladyship’s,” she said.
“I can hardly call myself a friend,” replied Margaret, “but I stayed with her in the same hotel at Heyst last summer, and I knew the dear boy who is dead. I was most grieved to hear of his death, and naturally anxious to enquire after the Baroness. But if she is too upset to see me, of course I would not think of forcing my presence upon her!”
“I don’t think her ladyship would object to receiving any friend, but I am not sure if she would recognise you!”
“Not recognise me? It is not three months since we parted.”
“You do not understand me! Our dear boy’s death was so sudden—I have been with him since he was five years old, so you will forgive my mentioning him in such a fashion—that it has had a terrible effect upon his poor mother. In fact she is paralysed! The medical men think the paralysis is confined to the lower limbs, but at present they are unable to decide definitely, as the Baroness has not opened her lips since the event occurred.”
“Oh! poor Madame Gobelli!” cried Margaret, tearfully, “I felt sure she loved him under all her apparent roughness and indifference!”
“Yes! I have been with them so long, that I know her manner amounted at times to cruelty, but she did not mean it to be so! She thought to make him hardy and independent, instead of which it had just the opposite effect! But she is paying bitterly for it now! I really think his death will kill her, though the doctors laugh at my fears!”
“I—I—too have lost my only child, my precious little baby,” replied Margaret, encouraged by the sympathetic tenderness in the other woman’s eyes, “and I thought also at first that I must die—that I could not live without her—but God is so good, and there is such comfort in the thought that whatever we may suffer, our darlings have missed all the bitterness and sin and disappointments of this world, that at last—that is, sometimes—one feels almost thankful that they are safe with Him!”
“Ah! Madame Gobelli has not your hope and trust, Madam!” said Miss Wynward, “if she had, she would be a better and happier woman. But I must tell you that she is in the same room as Bobby! She will not be moved from there, but lies on the couch where we placed her when she fell, stricken with the paralysis, gazing at the corpse!”
“Poor dear woman!” exclaimed Margaret.
“Perhaps you would hardly care to go into that room!”
“Oh! I should like it! I want to see the dear boy again! I have brought some flowers to put over him!”
“Then, what name shall I tell her ladyship?”
“Mrs. Pullen, say Margaret Pullen whose little baby died at Heyst—then I think she will remember!”
“Will you take a seat, Mrs. Pullen, whilst I go upstairs and see if I can persuade her to receive you?”
Margaret sat down, and Miss Wynward went up to the chamber which had once been Bobby’s. On the bed was stretched the body of the dead boy, whilst opposite to it lay on a couch a woman with dry eyes, but palsied limbs, staring, staring without intermission at the silent figure which had once contained the spirit of her son. She did not turn her head as Miss Wynward entered the room.
“My lady,” she said, going up to her, “Mrs. Pullen is downstairs and would like to see you! She told me to say that she is Margaret Pullen whose baby died in Heyst last summer, and she knew Bobby and has brought some flowers to strew over his bed. May she came up?”
But she received no answer. Madame Gobelli’s features were working, but that was the only sign of life which she gave.
“Mrs. Pullen is so very sorry for your loss,” Miss Wynward went on, “she cried when she spoke of it, and as she has suffered the same, I am sure she will sympathise with you. May I say that you will see her?”
Still there was no response, and Miss Wynward went down again to Margaret.
“I think you had better come up without waiting for her consent,” she said, “if seeing you roused her, even to anger, it would do her good. Do you mind making the attempt?”
“No,” replied Margaret, “but if the Baroness gets very angry, you must let me run away again. I am quite unequal to standing anything like a scene!”
“You will have but to quit the room. Whatever her ladyship may say she cannot move from her couch. She attacked poor Miss Brandt most unwarrantably last evening, but that was in the first frenzy of her grief. She is quite different now!”
“Poor woman!” again ejaculated Margaret, as she followed Miss Wynward, not without some inward qualms, to the presence of Madame Gobelli. But when she caught sight of the immovable figure on the couch, all her fear and resentment left her, overcome by a mighty compassion. She went straight up to the Baroness and bending down tenderly kissed her twitching face.
“Dear Madame,” she said, “I am—we all are—so truly sorry for your grievous loss. It reminds me of the bitter time, not so long ago, you may remember, when I lost my darling little Ethel, and thought for the while that my life was over! It is so hard, so unnatural, to us poor mothers, to see our children go before ourselves! I can weep with you tear for tear! But do remember—try to remember—that he is safe—that though you remain here with empty arms for a while, death can no more take your boy from you, than a veil over your face can take God’s light from you. He is there, dear Madame Gobelli—just in the next room with the door closed between you, and though I know full well how bitter it is to see the door closed, think of the time when it will open again—when you and I will spring through it and find, not only our dear Bobby and Ethel, but Christ our Lord, ready to give them back into our arms again!”
The Baroness said nothing, but two tears gathered in her eyes and rolled down her flabby cheeks. Margaret turned from her for a minute and walking up to the bed, knelt down beside it in prayer.
“Dear Christ!” she said, “Thou Who knowest what our mothers’ hearts are called upon to bear, have pity on us and give us Thy Peace! And open our eyes that we may gather strength to realise what our dear children have escaped by being taken home to Thee—the sin, the trouble, the anxiety, the disappointment—and make us thankful to bear them in their stead, and give us grace to look forward to our happy meeting and reunion in the Better Land.”
Then she rose and bent over the dead boy.
“Dear Bobby!” she murmured, as she kissed the cold brow, and placed the white blossoms in his hands and round his head. “Good-bye! I know how happy you must be now, in company with the spirits of all those whom we have loved and who have gone home before us—how grateful you must feel to the dear Redeemer Who has called you so early—but don’t forget your poor mother upon earth! Pray for her, Bobby,—never cease to ask our dear Lord to send her comfort and peace and joy in believing. For His own dear sake. Amen!”
When she turned again, the Baroness’s cheeks were wet with tears and she was stretching forth her arms towards her.
“Oh!” she gasped, as Margaret reached her side, “I am a godless woman—I am a godless woman!”
“No! no! my dear friend, we are none of us godless,” replied Margaret, “we may think we are, but God knows better! We may forsake Him, but He never forsakes us! We should never be saved if we waited till we wanted to be so. It is He Who wants us—that is our great safeguard! He wanted our two dear children—not to spite us, but to draw us after them. Try to look at it in that light, and then Bobby’s death will prove your greatest gain.”
“I am a godless woman,” repeated the Baroness, “and this is my punishment!” pointing to the bed. “I loved him best of all! My ’eart is broken!”
“So much the better, if it was a hard heart,” rejoined Margaret, smiling. “Who was it that said, ‘If your heart is broken, give the pieces to Christ and He will mend it again’? Never think of Bobby, dear Madame Gobelli, except as with Christ—walking with Him, talking with Him, learning of Him and growing in grace and the love of God daily! Never disassociate the two memories, and in a little while you would hate yourself if you could separate them again. God bless you! I must go back to my husband now!”
“You will come again?” said the Baroness.
“I am afraid I shall have no time! We sail for India on Saturday, but I shall not forget you. Good-bye, Bobby,” she repeated, with a last look at the corpse, “remember your mother and me in your prayers.”
As Miss Wynward let her out of the Red House, she remarked,
“I could never have believed that anyone could have had so much influence over her ladyship as you have, Mrs. Pullen. I hope you will come again.”
“I shall not be able to do so. But Madame Gobelli will have you to talk to her! You live here altogether, do you not?”
“I have lived here for many years, but I am on the point of leaving. Bobby was my only tie to the Red House, or I should have gone long ago.”
“But now that the Baroness is so helpless surely you will delay your departure until she no longer needs you.”
“I shall not leave her until she has secured a better woman in my stead. But to tell you the truth, I am going to be married, Mrs. Pullen, and I consider my first duty is towards my future husband and his parents who are very old!”
“Oh! doubtless! May I ask his name?”
“Captain Hill! He lives in the next house to this—Stevenage! You are surprised, perhaps, that a man who has been in the army should marry a poor governess like myself. That is his goodness. I know that I am worn and faded and no longer young—thirty-three on my last birthday—but he is good enough to care for me all the more for the troubles I have passed through. Mine has been a chequered life, Mrs. Pullen, but I have told Captain Hill everything, and he still wishes to make me his wife! I ought to be a happy woman for the future, ought I not?”
“Indeed yes,” said Margaret, heartily, “and I sincerely hope that you may be so! But I can’t help thinking of poor Madame Gobelli! Is the Baron good to her?”
“Pretty well!” answered Miss Wynward, “but he is very stolid and unsympathetic! It is strange to think that her heart must have been bound up in that boy, and yet at times she was positively cruel to him!”
“It has all been permitted for some good purpose,” said Margaret, as she bade her farewell, “perhaps her remorse and self-accusation are the only things which would have brought her down upon her knees.”
She returned home considerably saddened by what she had seen, but in three days she was to accompany her husband to India, and in the bustle of preparation, and the joy of knowing that she was not to be separated from him again, her heart was comforted and at peace. Never once during that time did she give one thought to Harriet Brandt. Miss Wynward had hardly mentioned her name, and no one seemed to know where she had gone. The girl had passed out of their lives altogether.
Margaret only regretted one thing in leaving England—that she had not seen Anthony Pennell again. Colonel Pullen had called twice at his chambers, but had each time found him from home. Margaret wanted to put in a good word for the Baroness with him. She thought perhaps that he might see her, after a while, and speak a few words of comfort to her. But she was obliged to be content with writing her wishes in a farewell letter. She little knew how hardened Anthony Pennell felt, at that moment, against anyone who had treated the woman he loved in so harsh a manner.
Harriet Brandt spent the time, after her lover had left her to think over and decide upon their mutual fate, in walking up and down the room. She was like a restless animal; she could not stay two moments in the same place. Even when night fell, and the inhabitants of the Langham Hotel had retired to rest, she still kept pacing up and down the room, without thinking of undressing herself or seeking repose, whilst her conscience wrestled in warfare with her inclinations. Her thoughts took her far, far back to the earliest remembrance of which her mind was capable. She thought of her hard, unfeeling, indifferent father—of her gross, flabby, sensual mother—and shuddered at the remembrance! What had she done?—she said to herself—wherein had she sinned, that she should have been cursed with such progenitors? How had they dared to bring her into the world, an innocent yet hapless child of sin—the inheritor of their evil propensities—of their lust, their cruelty, their sensuality, their gluttony—and worst of all, the fatal heritage that made her a terror and a curse to her fellow-creatures? How dared they? How dared they? Why had God’s vengeance not fallen upon them before they had completed their cruel work, or having accomplished it, why did He not let her perish with them—so that the awful power with which they had imbued her, might have been prevented from harming others?
Harriet thought of little Caroline; of her two nurses; of Sister Theodosia—of Mrs. Pullen’s baby; of Bobby Bates; until she felt as though she should go mad. No! no! she would never bring that curse upon her Beloved; he must go far away, he must never see her again, or else she would destroy herself in order that he might escape!
But if she persuaded Anthony to consent to her wishes—if she insisted upon a total separation between them, what would become of her? What should she do? She had no friends in England; Madame Gobelli had turned against her—she was all alone! She would live and die alone. How should she ever get to know people, or to obtain an entrance to Society. She would be a pariah to the end of her life! And if she did surmount all these obstacles, what would be the result, except a repetition of what had gone before? Strangers would come to know her—to like her—would grow more intimate, and she would respond to their kindness—with the same result. They would droop and fail, die perhaps, like Bobby and the baby—find out that she was the cause, and shun her ever after.
“Oh! God!” cried Harriet in her perplexity and anguish, “I am accursed! My parents have made me not fit to live!”
She passed that night through the agonies of Death—not the death that overtakes the believer in a God and a Future—but the darkness and uncertainty that enwraps the man who knows he is full of sin and yet has no knowledge that His Lord has paid his debt to the uttermost farthing—the doubt and anxiety that beset the unbeliever when he is called upon to enter the dark Valley. The poor child saw her destiny entangling her as in a net—she longed to break through it, but saw no means of escape—and she rebelled against the cruel lot that heredity had marked out for her.
“Why am I to suffer?” she exclaimed aloud; “I have youth and health and good looks, and money—everything, the world would say, calculated to make my life a pleasant one, and yet, I am tortured by this awful thought—that I must keep aloof from everybody, that I am a social leper, full of contagion and death! Doctor Phillips said that the more I loved a person, the more I must keep away from him! It is incredible! unheard-of! Could he have had any motive in saying such a thing?”
The remembrance of her flirtation with Ralph Pullen recurred to her mind, and she seized it, as a drowning man clutches at a straw.
“Was it a plant, after all? Did the old man want to put me off the track of Captain Pullen? Margaret Pullen is staying in the house—he said so—had she asked him to get rid of me if possible? After all, am I torturing myself by believing the story of my fatal power to be true, when it was only a ruse to get rid of me? The Baroness said the same thing, but she was mad about poor Bobby and would have said anything to annoy me—and, after all, what does it amount to? The baby died in teething—heaps of babies do—and Bobby was consumptive from the first—I have heard Miss Wynward say so, and would have died anyway, as he grew to be a man and had larger demands made upon his physical strength. And for the others—what happened to them, happens to all the world. It is fortune de guerre; people drop every day like rotten sheep;—everyone might accuse himself of causing the death of his neighbour. I have been frightening myself with a chimera. Anthony said so, and he must know better than I! And I can’t give up Tony—I can’t, I can’t, I can’t! It is of no use thinking of it! Besides, he wouldn’t let me! He would never leave me alone, until I had consented to marry him, so I may as well do it at the first as at the last.”
But the tide of triumphant feeling would be succeeded by a wave of despondency, which threatened to upset all her casuistry.
“But if—if—it should be true, and Anthony should—should—Oh! God! Oh! God! I dare not think of it! I will kill myself before it shall occur.”
When the morning dawned it found her quite undecided—lamenting her unfortunate fate one instant, and declaring that she could never give up her lover the next. She tore off her clothes and took a cold bath, and re-robed herself, but she was looking utterly ill and exhausted when Pennell burst in upon her at eleven o’clock.
“Well, darling,” he exclaimed, “and have you made up your mind by this time? Which death am I to die?—suffocated in your dear embrace, or left to perish of cold and hunger outside?”
“O! Tony,” she cried, throwing herself into his arms, “I don’t know what to say! I have not closed my eyes all night, trying to decide what will be for the best. And I am as far off as ever—only I can never, never consent to do anything that shall work you harm!”
“Then I shall decide for you,” exclaimed her lover, “and that is that you make me and yourself happy, and forget all the rubbish these people have been telling you! Depend upon it, whatever they may have said was for their own gratification, and not yours, and that they would be quick enough to accept the lot that lies before you, were it in their power!”
“I have been so lonely and friendless all my life,” said Harriet, sobbing in his arms, “and I have longed for love and sympathy so much, and now that they have come to me, it is hard, Oh! so hard, to have to give them up.”
“So hard, Hally, for me, remember, as well as yourself, that we will not make the attempt. Now, I want you to place yourself in my hands, and start for Paris to-night!”
“To-night?” she cried, lifting such a flushed, startled, happy face from his breast, that he had no alternative but to kiss it again.
“Yes! to-night! What did I tell you yesterday—that I should come with the ring and the license in my pocket! I am as good as my word, and better—for I have given notice to the registrar of marriages in my district, that he is to be ready for us at twelve o’clock to-day. Am I not a good manager?”
“Tony! Tony! but I have not made up my mind!”
“I have made it up for you, and I will take no refusal! I have calculated it all to a nicety! Married at twelve—back here at one for lunch—a couple of hours to pack up, and off by the four o’clock train for Dover—sleep at the Castle Warden, and cross to-morrow to Paris! How will that do, Mrs. Pennell, eh?”
“Oh! ought I to do it, ought I to do it?” exclaimed Harriet, with a look of despair.
“If you don’t I’ll shoot myself. I swear it!”
“No! no! darling, don’t say that! It is of you alone that I am thinking! God forgive me if I am doing wrong, but I feel that I cannot refuse you! Take me and do with me as you think best.”
After which it came to pass, that Mr. and Mrs. Anthony Pennell started in very high spirits for Dover, by the four o’clock train that afternoon.