By the side of William Carlyle’s dying bed knelt the Lady Isabel. The time was at hand, and the boy was quite reconciled to his fate. Merciful, indeed, is God to dying children! It is astonishing how very readily, when the right means are taken, they may be brought to look with pleasure, rather than fear, upon their unknown journey.
The brilliant hectic, type of the disease, had gone from his cheeks, his features were white and wasted, and his eyes large and bright. His silky brown hair was pushed off his temples, and his little hot hands were thrown outside the bed.
“It won’t be very long to wait, you know, will it, Madame Vine?”
“For what, darling?”
“Before they all come. Papa and mamma, and Lucy, and all of them.”
A jealous feeling shot across her wearied heart. Was she nothing to him? “Do you not care that I should come to you, William?”
“Yes, I hope you will. But do you think we shall know everybody in Heaven? Or will it be only our own relations?”
“Oh, child! I think there will be no relations, as you call it, up there. We can trust all that to God, however it may be.”
William lay looking upward at the sky, apparently in thought, a dark blue, serene sky, from which shone the hot July sun. His bed had been moved toward the window, for he liked to sit in it, and look at the landscape. The window was open now, and the butterflies and bees sported in the summer air.
“I wonder how it will be?” pondered he, aloud. “There will be the beautiful city, its gates of pearl, and its shining precious stones, and its streets of gold; and there will be the clear river, and the trees with their fruits and their healing leaves, and the lovely flowers; and there will be the harps, and music, and singing. And what else will there be?”
“Everything that is desirable and beautiful, William; but, what we may not anticipate here.”
Another pause. “Madame Vine, will Jesus come for me, do you think, or will He send an angel?”
“Jesus has promised to come for His own redeemed—for those who love Him and wait for Him.”
“Yes, yes, and then I shall be happy forever. It will be so pleasant to be there, never to be tired or ill again.”
“Pleasant? Ay! Oh, William! Would that the time were come!”
She was thinking of herself—of her freedom—though the boy knew it not. She buried her face in her hands and continued speaking; William had to bend his ear to catch the faint whisper.
“‘And there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying: neither shall there be any more pain; for the former things are passed away.’”
“Madame Vine, do you think mamma will be there?” he presently asked. “I mean mamma that was.”
“Ay, ere long.”
“But how shall I know her? You see, I have nearly forgotten what she was like.”
She leaned over him, laying her forehead upon his wasted arm, and burst into a flood of impassioned tears. “You will know her, never fear, William; she has not forgotten you.”
“But how can we be sure that she will be there?” debated William, after a pause of thought. “You know”—sinking his voice, and speaking with hesitation—“she was not quite good; she was not good enough to papa or to us. Sometimes I think, suppose she did not grow good, and did not ask God to forgive her!”
“Oh, William!” sobbed the unhappy lady, “her whole life, after she left you, was one long scene of repentance, of seeking forgiveness. Her repentance, her sorrow, was greater than she could bear, and——”
“And what?” asked William, for there was a pause.
“Her heart broke in it—yearning after you and your father.”
“What makes you think it?”
“Child, I know it!”
William considered. Then, had he been strong enough, he would have started up with energy. “Madame Vine, you could only know that by mamma’s telling you! Did you ever see her? Did you know her abroad?”
Lady Isabel’s thoughts were far away—up in the clouds perhaps. She reflected not on the possible consequences of her answer, or she had never given it.
“Yes, I knew her abroad.”
“Oh!” said the boy. “Why did you never tell us? What did she say? What was she like?”
“She said”—sobbing wildly—“that she was parted from her children here; but she should meet them in Heaven, and be with them forever. William, darling! all the awful pain, and sadness, and guilt of this world will be washed out, and God will wipe your tears away.”
“What was her face like?” he questioned softly.
“Like yours. Very much like Lucy’s.”
“Was she pretty?”
A momentary pause. “Yes.”
“Oh, dear, I am ill. Hold me!” cried out William, as his head sank to one side, and great drops, as large as peas, broke forth upon his clammy face. It appeared to be one of the temporary faint attacks that overpowered him at times lately, and Lady Isabel rang the bell hastily.
Wilson came in, in answer. Joyce was the usual attendant upon the sick room; but Mrs. Carlyle, with her infant, was passing the day at the Grove; unconscious of the critical state of William, and she had taken Joyce with her. It was the day following the trial. Mr. Justice Hare had been brought to West Lynne in his second attack, and Barbara had gone to see him, to console her mother, and to welcome Richard to his home again. If one carriage drove, that day, to the Grove, with cards and inquiries, fifty did, not to speak of the foot callers. “It is all meant by way of attention to you, Richard,” said gentle Mrs. Hare, smiling through her loving tears at her restored son. Lucy and Archie were dining at Miss Carlyle’s, and Sarah attended little Arthur, leaving Wilson free. She came in, in answer to Madame Vine’s ring.
“Is he off in another faint?” unceremoniously cried she, hastening to the bed.
“I think so. Help to raise him.”
William did not faint. No; the attack was quite different from those he was subject to. Instead of losing consciousness and power, as was customary, he shook as if he had the ague, and laid hold both of Madame Vine and Wilson, grasping them convulsively.
“Don’t let me fall! Don’t let me fall!” he gasped.
“My dear, you cannot fall,” responded Madame Vine. “You forget that you are on the bed.”
He clasped them yet, and trembled still, as from fear. “Don’t let me fall! Don’t let me fall” the incessant burden of his cry.
The paroxysm passed. They wiped his brow, and stood looking at him; Wilson with a pursed up mouth, and a peculiar expression of face. She put a spoonful of restorative jelly between his lips, and he swallowed it, but shook his head when she would have given him another. Turning his face to the pillow, in a few minutes he was in a doze.
“What could it have been?” exclaimed Lady Isabel, in an undertone, to Wilson.
“I know,” was the oracular answer. “I saw this same sort of an attack once before, madame.”
“And what caused it?”
“Twasn’t in a child though,” went on Wilson—”’twas in a grown person. But that’s nothing, it comes for the same thing in all. I think he was taken for death.”
“Who?” uttered Lady Isabel, startled.
Wilson made no reply in words, but she pointed with her finger to the bed.
“Oh, Wilson, he is not so ill as that. Mr. Wainwright said this morning, that he might last a week or two.”
Wilson composedly sat herself down in the easiest chair. She was not wont to put herself out of the way for the governess; and that governess was too much afraid of her, in one sense, to let her know her place. “As to Wainwright, he’s nobody,” quoth she. “And if he saw the child’s breath going out before his face, and knew that the next moment would be his last, he’d vow to us all that he was good for twelve hours to come. You don’t know Wainwright as I do, madame. He was our doctor at mother’s; and he has attended in all the places I have lived in since I went out to service. Five years I was maid at Mrs. Hare’s. I came here when Miss Lucy was a baby, and in all my places has he attended, like one’s shadow. My Lady Isabel thought great guns of old Wainwright, I remember. It was more than I did.”
My Lady Isabel made no response to this. She took a seat and watched William through her glasses. His breathing was more labored than usual.
“That idiot, Sarah, says to me today, says she, ‘Which of his two grandpapas will they bury him by, old Mr. Carlyle or Lord Mount Severn?’ ‘Don’t be a calf!’ I answered her. ‘D’ye think they’ll stick him out in the corner with my lord?—he’ll be put into the Carlyle vault, of course,’ It would have been different, you see, Madame Vine, if my lady had died at home, all proper—Mr. Carlyle’s wife. They’d have buried her, no doubt, by her father, and the boy would have been laid with her. But she did not.”
No reply was made by Madame Vine, and a silence ensued; nothing to be heard but that fleeting breath.
“I wonder how that beauty feels?” suddenly broke forth Wilson again, her tone one of scornful irony.
Lady Isabel, her eyes and her thoughts absorbed by William, positively thought Wilson’s words must relate to him. She turned to her in surprise.
“That bright gem in the prison at Lynneborough,” exclaimed Wilson. “I hope he may have found himself pretty well since yesterday! I wonder how many trainfuls from West Lynne will go to his hanging?”
Isabel’s face turned crimson, her heart sick. She had not dared to inquire how the trial terminated. The subject altogether was too dreadful, and nobody had happened to mention it in her hearing.
“Is he condemned?” she breathed, in a low tone.
“He is condemned, and good luck to him! And Mr. Otway Bethel’s let loose again, and good luck to him. A nice pair they are! Nobody went from this house to hear the trial—it might not have been pleasant, you know, to Mr. Carlyle; but people came in last night and told us all about it. Young Richard Hare chiefly convicted him. He is back again, and so nice-looking, they say—ten times more so than he was when quite a young man. You should have heard, they say, the cheering and shouts that greeted Mr. Richard when his innocence came out; it pretty near rose off the roof of the court, and the judge didn’t stop it.”
Wilson paused, but there was no answering comment. On she went again.
“When Mr. Carlyle brought the news home last evening, and broke it to his wife, telling her how Mr. Richard had been received with acclamations, she nearly fainted, for she’s not strong yet. Mr. Carlyle called out to me to bring some water—I was in the next room with the baby—and there she was, the tears raining from her eyes, and he holding her to him. I always said there was a whole world of love between those two; though he did go and marry another. Mr. Carlyle ordered me to put the water down, and sent me away again. But I don’t fancy he told her of old Hare’s attack until this morning.”
Lady Isabel lifted her aching forehead. “What attack?”
“Why, madame, don’t you know. I declare you box yourself up in the house, keeping from everybody, and you hear nothing. You might as well be living at the bottom of a coal-pit. Old Hare had another stroke in the court at Lynneborough, and that’s why my mistress is gone to the Grove today.”
“Who says Richard Hare’s come home, Wilson?”
The question—the weak, scarcely audible question—had come from the dying boy. Wilson threw up her hands, and made a bound to the bed. “The like of that!” she uttered, aside to Mrs. Vine. “One never knows when to take these sick ones. Master William, you hold your tongue and drop to sleep again. Your papa will be home soon from Lynneborough; and if you talk and get tired, he’ll say it’s my fault. Come shut your eyes. Will you have a bit more jelly?”
William, making no reply to the offer of jelly, buried his face again on the pillow. But he was grievously restless; the nearly worn-out spirit was ebbing and flowing.
Mr. Carlyle was at Lynneborough. He always had much business there at assize time and the Nisi Prius Court; but the previous day he had not gone himself, Mr. Dill had been dispatched to represent him.
Between seven and eight he returned home, and came into William’s chamber. The boy brightened up at the well-known presence.
“Papa!”
Mr. Carlyle sat down on the bed and kissed him. The passing beams of the sun, slanting from the horizon, shone into the room, and Mr. Carlyle could view well the dying face. The gray hue of death was certainly on it.
“Is he worse?” he exclaimed hastily, to Madame Vine, who was jacketed, and capped, and spectacled, and tied up round the throat, and otherwise disguised, in her universal fashion.
“He appears worse this evening, sir—more weak.”
“Papa,” panted William, “is the trial over?”
“What trial, my boy?”
“Sir Francis Levison’s.”
“It was over yesterday. Never trouble your head about him, my brave boy, he is not worth it.”
“But I want to know. Will they hang him?”
“He is sentenced to it.”
“Did he kill Hallijohn?”
“Yes. Who has been talking to him upon the subject?” Mr. Carlyle continued to Madame Vine, with marked displeasure in his tone.
“Wilson mentioned it, sir,” was the low answer.
“Oh, papa! What will he do? Will Jesus forgive him?”
“We must hope it.”
“Do you hope it, papa?”
“Yes. I wish that all the world may be forgiven, William, whatever may have been their sins. My child, how restless you seem!”
“I can’t keep in one place; the bed gets wrong. Pull me up on the pillow, will you Madame Vine?”
Mr. Carlyle gently lifted the boy himself.
“Madame Vine is an untiring nurse to you, William,” he observed, gratefully casting a glance toward her in the distance, where she had retreated, and was shaded by the window curtain.
William made no reply; he seemed to be trying to recall something. “I forget! I forget!”
“Forget what?” asked Mr. Carlyle.
“It was something I wanted to ask you, or to tell you. Isn’t Lucy come home?”
“I suppose not.”
“Papa, I want Joyce.”
“I will send her home to you. I am going for your mamma after dinner.”
“For mamma?—oh, I remember now. Papa, how shall I know mamma in Heaven? Not this mamma.”
Mr. Carlyle did not immediately reply. The question may have puzzled him. William continued hastily; possibly mistaking the motive of the silence.
“She will be in Heaven, you know.”
“Yes, yes, child,” speaking hurriedly.
“Madame Vine knows she will. She saw her abroad; and mamma told her that—what was it, madame?”
Madame Vine grew sick with alarm. Mr. Carlyle turned his eyes upon her scarlet face—as much as he could get to see of it. She would have escaped from the room if she could.
“Mamma was more sorry than she could bear,” went on William, finding he was not helped. “She wanted you, papa, and she wanted us, and her heart broke, and she died.”
A flush rose to Mr. Carlyle’s brow. He turned inquiringly to Madame Vine.
“Oh, I beg your pardon, sir,” she murmured, with desperate energy. “I ought not to have spoken; I ought not to have interfered in your family affairs. I spoke only as I thought it must be, sir. The boy seemed troubled about his mother.”
Mr. Carlyle was at sea. “Did you meet his mother abroad? I scarcely understand.”
She lifted her hand and covered her glowing face. “No, sir.” Surely the recording angel blotted out the words! If ever a prayer for forgiveness went up from an aching heart, it must have gone up then, for the equivocation over her child’s death-bed!
Mr. Carlyle went toward her. “Do you perceive the change in his countenance?” he whispered.
“Yes, sir. He has looked like this since a strange fit of trembling that came on in the afternoon. Wilson thought he might be taken for death. I fear that some four and twenty hours will end it.”
Mr. Carlyle rested his elbow on the window frame, and his hand upon his brow, his drooping eyelids falling over his eyes. “It is hard to lose him.”
“Oh, sir, he will be better off!” she wailed, choking down the sobs and the emotion that arose threateningly. “We can bear death; it is not the worst parting that the earth knows. He will be quit of this cruel world, sheltered in Heaven. I wish we were all there!”
A servant came to say that Mr. Carlyle’s dinner was served, and he proceeded to it with what appetite he had. When he returned to the sick room the daylight had faded, and a solitary candle was placed where its rays could not fall upon the child’s face. Mr. Carlyle took the light in his hand to scan that face again. He was lying sideways on the pillow, his hollow breath echoing through the room. The light caused him to open his eyes.
“Don’t, papa, please. I like it dark.”
“Only for a moment, my precious boy.” And not for more than a moment did Mr. Carlyle hold it. The blue, pinched, ghastly look was there yet. Death was certainly coming on quick.
At that moment Lucy and Archibald came in, on their return from their visit to Miss Carlyle. The dying boy looked up eagerly.
“Good-bye, Lucy,” he said, putting out his cold, damp hand.
“I am not going out,” replied Lucy. “We have but just come home.”
“Good-bye, Lucy,” repeated he.
She laid hold of the little hand then, leaned over, and kissed him. “Good-bye, William; but indeed I am not going out anywhere.”
“I am,” said he. “I am going to Heaven. Where’s Archie?”
Mr. Carlyle lifted Archie on to the bed. Lucy looked frightened, Archie surprised.
“Archie, good-bye; good-bye, dear, I am going to Heaven; to that bright, blue sky, you know. I shall see mamma there, and I’ll tell her that you and Lucy are coming soon.”
Lucy, a sensitive child, broke into a loud storm of sobs, enough to disturb the equanimity of any sober sick room. Wilson hastened in at the sound, and Mr. Carlyle sent the two children away, with soothing promises that they should see William in the morning, if he continued well enough.
Down on her knees, her face buried in the counterpane, a corner of it stuffed into her mouth that it might help to stifle her agony, knelt Lady Isabel. The moment’s excitement was well nigh beyond her strength of endurance. Her own child—his child—they alone around its death-bed, and she might not ask or receive a word of comfort, of consolation!
Mr. Carlyle glanced at her as he caught her choking sobs just as he would have glanced at any other attentive governess—feeling her sympathy, doubtless, but nothing more; she was not heart and part with him and his departing boy. Lower and lower bent he over that boy; for his eyes were wet. “Don’t cry, papa,” whispered William, raising his feeble hand caressingly to his father’s cheek, “I am not afraid to go. Jesus is coming for me.”
“Afraid to go! Indeed I hope not, my gentle boy. You are going to God—to happiness. A few years—we know not how few—and we shall all come to you.”
“Yes, you will be sure to come; I know that. I shall tell mamma so. I dare say she is looking out for me now. Perhaps she’s standing on the banks of the river, watching the boats.”
He had evidently got that picture of Martin’s in his mind, “The Plains of Heaven.” Mr. Carlyle turned to the table. He saw some strawberry juice, pressed from the fresh fruit, and moistened with it the boy’s fevered lips.
“Papa, I can’t think how Jesus can be in all the boats! Perhaps they don’t go quite at the same time. He must be, you know, because He comes to fetch us.”
“He will be yours, darling,” was the whispered, fervent answer.
“Oh, yes. He will take me all the way up to God, and say, ‘Here’s a poor little boy come, you must please to forgive him and let him go into Heaven, because I died for him!’ Papa did you know that mamma’s heart broke?”
“William, I think it likely that your poor mamma’s heart did break, ere death came. But let us talk of you, not of her. Are you in pain?”
“I can’t breathe; I can’t swallow. I wish Joyce was here.”
“She will not be long now.”
The boy nestled himself in his father’s arms, and in a few minutes appeared to be asleep. Mr. Carlyle, after a while, gently laid him on his pillow, and watched him, and then turned to depart.
“Oh, papa! Papa!” he cried out, in a tone of painful entreaty, opening wide his yearning eyes, “say good-bye to me!”
Mr. Carlyle’s tears fell upon the little upturned face, as he once more caught it to his breast.
“My darling, your papa will soon be back. He is going to bring mamma to see you.”
“And pretty little baby Anna?”
“And baby Anna, if you would like her to come in. I will not leave my darling boy for long; he need not fear. I shall not leave you again to-night, William, when once I am back.”
“Then put me down, and go, papa.”
A lingering embrace—a fond, lingering, tearful embrace—Mr. Carlyle holding him to his beating heart, then he laid him comfortably on his pillow, gave him a teaspoonful of strawberry juice, and hastened away.
“Good-bye, papa!” came forth the little feeble cry.
It was not heard. Mr. Carlyle was gone, gone from his living child—forever. Up rose Lady Isabel, and flung her arms aloft in a storm of sobs!
“Oh, William, darling! in this dying moment let me be to you as your mother!”
Again he unclosed his wearied eyelids. It is probable that he only partially understood.
“Papa’s gone for her.”
“Not her! I—I——” Lady Isabel checked herself, and fell sobbing on the bed. No; not even at the last hour when the world was closing on him, dared she say, I am your mother.
Wilson reentered. “He looks as if he were dropping off to sleep,” quoth she.
“Yes,” said Lady Isabel. “You need not wait, Wilson. I will ring if he requires anything.”
Wilson though withal not a bad-hearted woman, was not one to remain for pleasure in a sick-room, if told she might leave it. She, Lady Isabel, remained alone. She fell on her knees again, this time in prayer for the departing spirit, on its wing, and that God would mercifully vouchsafe herself a resting-place with it in heaven.
A review of the past then rose up before her, from the time of her first entering that house, the bride of Mr. Carlyle, to her present sojourn in it. The old scenes passed through her mind like the changing picture in a phantasmagoria.
Why should they have come, there and then? She knew not.
William slept on silently; she thought of the past. The dreadful reflection, “If I had not done as I did, how different would it have been now!” had been sounding its knell in her heart so often that she had almost ceased to shudder at it. The very nails of her hands had, before now, entered the palms, with the sharp pain it brought. Stealing over her more especially this night, there, as she knelt, her head lying on the counterpane, came the recollection of that first illness of hers. How she had lain, and, in that unfounded jealousy, imagined Barbara the house’s mistress. She dead! Barbara exalted to her place. Mr. Carlyle’s wife, her child’s stepmother! She recalled the day when, her mind excited by a certain gossip of Wilson’s—it was previously in a state of fever bordering on delirium—she had prayed her husband, in terror and anguish, not to marry Barbara. “How could he marry her?” he had replied, in his soothing pity. “She, Isabel, was his wife. Who was Barbara? Nothing to them?” But it had all come to pass. She had brought it forth. Not Mr. Carlyle; not Barbara; she alone. Oh, the dreadful misery of the retrospect!
Lost in thought, in anguish past and present, in self-condemning repentance, the time passed on. Nearly an hour must have elapsed since Mr. Carlyle’s departure, and William had not disturbed her. But who was this, coming into the room? Joyce.
She hastily rose up, as Joyce, advancing with a quiet step drew aside the clothes to look at William. “Master says he has been wanting me,” she observed. “Why—oh!”
It was a sharp, momentary cry, subdued as soon as uttered. Madame Vine sprang forward to Joyce’s side, looking also. The pale young face lay calm in its utter stillness; the busy little heart had ceased to beat. Jesus Christ had indeed come and taken the fleeting spirit.
Then she lost all self-control. She believed that she had reconciled herself to the child’s death, that she could part with him without too great emotion. But she had not anticipated it would be quite so soon; she had deemed that some hours more would at least be given him, and now the storm overwhelmed her. Crying, sobbing, calling, she flung herself upon him; she clasped him to her; she dashed off her disguising glasses; she laid her face upon his, beseeching him to come back to her, that she might say farewell—to her, his mother; her darling child, her lost William!
Joyce was terrified—terrified for consequences. With her full strength she pulled her from the boy, praying her to consider—to be still. “Do not, do not, for the love of Heaven! My lady! My lady!”
It was the old familiar title that struck upon her fears and induced calmness. She stared at Joyce, and retreated backward, after the manner of one receding from some hideous vision. Then, as recollection came to her, she snatched her glasses up and hurried them on.
“My lady, let me take you into your room. Mr. Carlyle is come; he is just bringing up his wife. Only think if you should give way before him! Pray come away!”
“How did you know me?” she asked in a hollow voice.
“My lady, it was that night when there was an alarm of fire. I went close up to you to take Master Archibald from your arms; and, as sure as I am now standing here, I believe that for the moment my senses left me. I thought I saw a spectre—the spectre of my dead lady. I forgot the present; I forgot that all were standing round me; that you, Madame Vine, were alive before me. Your face was not disguised then; the moonlight shone full upon it, and I knew it, after the first few moments of terror, to be, in dreadful truth, the living one of Lady Isabel. My lady, come away! We shall have Mr. Carlyle here.”
Poor thing! She sank upon her knees, in her humility, her dread. “Oh, Joyce, have pity upon me! don’t betray me! I will leave the house; indeed I will. Don’t betray me while I am in it!”
“My lady, you have nothing to fear from me. I have kept the secret buried within my breast since then. Last April! It has nearly been too much for me. By night and by day I have had no peace, dreading what might come out. Think of the awful confusion, the consequences, should it come to the knowledge of Mr. and Mrs. Carlyle. Indeed, my lady, you never ought to have come.”
“Joyce,” she said, hollowly, lifting her haggard face, “I could not keep away from my unhappy children. Is it no punishment to me, think you, the being here?” she added, vehemently. “To see him—my husband—the husband of another! It is killing me.”
“Oh, my lady, come away! I hear him; I hear him!”
Partly coaxing, partly dragging her, Joyce took her into her own room, and left her there. Mr. Carlyle was at that moment at the door of the sick one. Joyce sprang forward. Her face, in her emotion and fear, was of one livid whiteness, and she shook as William had shaken, poor child, in the afternoon. It was only too apparent in the well-lighted corridor.
“Joyce,” he exclaimed, in amazement, “what ails you?”
“Sir! master!” she panted; “be prepared. Master William—Master William——”
“Joyce! Not dead!”
“Alas, yes, sir!”
Mr. Carlyle strode into the chamber. But ere he was well across it, he turned back to slip the bolt of the door. On the pillow lay the white, thin face, at rest now.
“My boy! my boy! Oh, my God!” he murmured, in bowed reverence, “mayest Thou have received this child to rest in Jesus, even as, I trust, Thou hadst already received his unhappy mother!”
To the burial of William Carlyle came Lord Mount Severn and his son. Wilson had been right in her surmises as to the resting-place. The Carlyle vault was opened for him, and an order went forth to the sculptor for an inscription to be added to their marble tablet in the church: “William Vane Carlyle, eldest son of Archibald Carlyle, of East Lynne.” Amongst those who attended the funeral as mourners went one more notable in the eyes of the gazers than the rest—Richard Hare the younger.
Lady Isabel was ill. Ill in mind, and ominously ill in body. She kept her room, and Joyce attended on her. The household set down madame’s illness to the fatigue of having attended upon Master William; it was not thought of seriously by any one, especially as she declined to see a doctor. All her thoughts now were directed to the getting away from East Lynne, for it would never do to remain there to die; and she knew that death was on his way to her, and that no human power or skill—not all the faculty combined—could turn him back again. The excessive dread of detection was not upon her as it had been formerly. I mean she did not dread the consequences so much, if detection came. In nearing the grave, all fears and hopes, of whatever nature, relating to this world, lose their force, and fears or hopes regarding the next world take their place. Our petty feelings here are lost in the greater.
In returning to East Lynne, Lady Isabel had entered upon a daring act, and she found, in the working, that neither strength nor spirit was equal to it. Human passions and tempers were brought with us into this world, and they can only quit us when we bid it farewell, to enter upon immortality in the next.
When Lady Isabel was Mr. Carlyle’s wife, she had never wholly loved him. The very utmost homage that esteem, admiration, affection could give was his, but that mysterious passion called by the name of love, and which, as I truly and heartily believe, cannot, in its refined etherealism, be known to many of us, had not been given to him. It was now. From the very night she came back to East Lynne, her love for Mr. Carlyle had burst forth with an intensity never before felt. It had been smoldering almost ever since she quitted him. “Reprehensible!” groans a moralist. Very. Everybody knows that, as Afy would say. But her heart, you see, had not done with human passions, and they work ill, and contrariness, let the word stand, critic, if you please, and precisely everything they should not.
I shall get in for it, I fear, if I attempt to defend her. But it was not exactly the same thing, as though she suffered herself to fall in love with somebody else’s husband. Nobody would defend that. We have not turned Mormons yet, and the world does not walk upon its head. But this was a peculiar case. She, poor thing, almost regarded Mr. Carlyle as her husband. The bent of her thoughts was only too much inclined to this. The evil human heart again. Many and many a time did she wake up from a reverie, and strive to drive this mistaken view of things away from her, taking shame to herself. Ten minutes afterward, she would catch her brain reveling in the same rebellious vision. Mr. Carlyle’s love was not hers now, it was Barbara’s. Mr. Carlyle did not belong to her, he belonged to his wife. It was not only that he was not hers—he was another’s. You may, therefore, if you have the pleasure of being experienced in this sort of thing, guess a little of what her inward life was. Had there been no Barbara in the case, she might have lived and borne it; as it was, it had killed her before her time, that and the remorse together.
There had been other things, too. The reappearance of Francis Levison at West Lynne, in fresh contact, as may be said, with herself, had struck terror to her heart, and the dark charge brought against him augmented awfully her remorse. Then, the sharp lances perpetually thrust upon her memory—the Lady Isabel’s memory—from all sides, were full of cruel stings, unintentionally though they were hurled. And there was the hourly chance of discovery, and the never ceasing battle with her conscience, for being at East Lynne at all. No wonder that the chords of life were snapping; the wonder would have been had they remained whole.
“She brought it upon herself—she ought not to have come back to East Lynne!” groans our moralist again.
Didn’t I say so? Of course she ought not. Neither ought she to have suffered her thoughts to stray, in the manner they did, towards Mr. Carlyle. She ought not, but she did. If we all did just what we “ought,” this lower proverb touching fruit defendu would go out as a dead letter.
She was nearer to death than she imagined. She knew, judging by her declining strength and her inner feelings, that it could not be far off; but she did not deem it was coming so very soon. Her mother had died in a similar way. Some said of consumption—Dr. Martin did, you may remember; some said of “waste;” the earl, her husband, said a broken heart—you heard him say so to Mr. Carlyle in the first chapter of this history. The earl was the one who might be supposed to know best. Whatever may have been Lady Mount Severn’s malady, she—to give you the phrase that was in people’s mouth’s at the time—“went out like the snuff of a candle.” It was now the turn of Lady Isabel. She had no more decided disorder than the countess had had, yet death had marked her. She felt that it had, and in its approach she dreaded not, as she once had done, the consequences that must ensue, did discovery come. Which brings us back to the point whence ensued this long digression. I dare say you are chafing at it, but it is not often I trouble you with one.
But she would not willingly let discovery come, neither had she the least intention of remaining at East Lynne to die. Where she should take refuge was quite a secondary consideration, only let her get smoothly and plausibly away. Joyce, in her dread, was forever urging it. Of course, the preliminary step was to arrange matters with Mrs. Carlyle, and in the afternoon of the day following the funeral, Lady Isabel proceeded to her dressing-room, and craved an interview.
Mr. Carlyle quitted the room as she entered it. Barbara, fatigued with a recent drive, was lying on the sofa. She would scarcely take the notice.
“We shall be so sorry to lose you, Madame Vine. You are all we could wish for Lucy, and Mr. Carlyle feels truly grateful for your love and attention to his poor boy.”
“To leave you will give me pain also,” Madame Vine answered, in a subdued tone. Pain? Ay. Mrs. Carlyle little guessed at its extent. All she cared for on earth she should leave behind her at East Lynne.
“Indeed you must not leave,” resumed Barbara. “It would be unjust to allow you to do so. You have made yourself ill, waiting upon poor William, and you must stay here and take a holiday until you are cured. You will soon get well, if you will only suffer yourself to be properly waited on and taken care of.”
“You are very considerate. Pray do not think me insensible if I decline. I believe my strength is beyond getting up—that I shall never be able to teach again.”
“Oh, nonsense,” said Barbara, in her quick way. “We are all given to fancy the worst when we are ill. I was feeling terribly weak, only a few minutes ago, and said something of the same sort to Archibald. He talked and soothed me out of it. I wish you had your dear husband living, Madame Vine, to support you and love you, as I have him.”
A tinge of scarlet streaked Madame Vine’s pale face, and she laid her hand upon her beating heart.
“How could you think of leaving? We should be glad to help reestablish your health, in any case, but it is only fair to do it now. I felt sure, by the news brought to me when I was ill, that your attention upon William was overtasking your strength.”
“It is not the attendance upon William that has brought me into this state,” was the quick answer. “I must leave; I have well considered it over.”
“Would you like to go to the seaside?” exclaimed Barbara with sudden energy. “I am going there on Monday next. Mr. Carlyle insists upon it that I try a little change. I had intended only to take my baby, but we can make different arrangements, and take you and Lucy. It might do you good, Madame Vine.”
She shook her head. “No; it would make me worse. All that I want is perfect quiet. I must beg you to understand that I shall leave. And I should be glad if you could allow the customary notice to be dispensed with, so that I may be at liberty to depart within a few days.”
“Look here, then,” said Barbara, after a pause of consideration, “you remain at East Lynne until my return, which will be in a fortnight. Mr. Carlyle cannot stay with me, so I know I shall be tired in less time than that. I do not want you to remain to teach, you know, Madame Vine; I do not wish you to do a single thing. Lucy shall have a holiday, and Mr. Kane can come up for her music. Only I could not be content to leave her, unless under your surveillance; she is getting of an age now not to be consigned to servants, not to Joyce. Upon my return, if you still wish to leave, you shall then be at liberty to do so. What do you say?”
Madame Vine said “Yes.” Said it eagerly. To have another fortnight with her children, Lucy and Archibald, was very like a reprieve, and she embraced it. Although she knew, as I have said, that grim Death was on his way, she did not think he had drawn so near the end of his journey. Her thoughts went back to the time when she had been ordered to the seaside after an illness. It had been a marvel if they had not. She remembered how he, her husband, had urged the change upon her; how he had taken her, traveling carefully; how tenderly anxious he had been in the arrangements for her comfort, when settling her in the lodgings; how, when he came again to see her, he had met her with his passionate fondness, thanking God for the visible improvement in her looks. That one injunction which she had called him back to give him, as he was departing for the boat, was bitterly present to her now: “Do not get making love to Barbara Hare.” All this care, and love, and tenderness belonged now of right to Barbara, and were given to her.
But now Barbara, although she pressed Madame Vine to remain at East Lynne, and indeed would have been glad that she should do so, did not take her refusal at heart. Barbara could not fail to perceive that she was a thoroughly refined gentlewoman, far superior to the generality of governesses. That she was truly fond of Lucy, and most anxious for her welfare in every way, Barbara also saw. For Lucy’s sake, therefore, she would be grieved to part with Madame Vine, and would raise her salary to anything in reason, if she would but stay. But, on her own score, Barbara had as soon Madame Vine went as not; for, in her heart of hearts, she had never liked her. She could not have told why. Was it instinct? Very probably. The birds of the air, the beasts of the field, the fishes of the sea, have their instincts, and so does man have his. Perhaps it was the unaccountable resemblance that Madame Vine bore to Lady Isabel. A strange likeness! Barbara often thought, but whether it lay in the face, the voice, or the manner, she could not decide. A suspicion of the truth did not cross her mind. How should it? And she never spoke of it; had the resemblance been to any one but Lady Isabel she would have talked of it freely. Or, it may have been that there was now and then a tone in Madame Vine’s voice that grated on her ear; a wrung, impatient tone, wanting in respect, savoring of hauteur, which Barbara did not understand, and did not like. However it may have been, certain it is that Mrs. Carlyle would not shed tears after the governess. Only for Lucy’s sake did she regret parting with her.
These different resemblances and reflections were separately passing through the minds of the two ladies when their conference was over. Madame Vine at length rose from her chair to depart.
“Would you mind holding my baby for one minute?” cried Barbara.
Madame Vine quite started.
“The baby there!” she uttered.
Barbara laughed.
“It is lying by my side, under the shawl, quiet little sleeping thing.”
Madame Vine advanced and took the sleeping baby. How could she refuse? She had never had it in her arms before; she had, in fact, scarcely seen it. One visit of ceremony she had paid Mrs. Carlyle, as in politeness bound, a day or two after the young lady’s arrival, and had been shown a little face, nearly covered with lace, in a cradle.
“Thank you. I can get up now. I might have half smothered it, had I attempted before,” continued Barbara, still laughing. “I have been here long enough, and am quite rested. Talking about smothering children, what accounts have we in the registrar-general’s weekly returns of health! So many children ‘overlaid in bed,’ so many children ‘suffocated in bed.’ One week there were nearly twenty; and often there are as many as eight or ten. Mr. Carlyle says he knows they are smothered on purpose.”
“Oh, Mrs. Carlyle!”
“I exclaimed, just as you do, when he said it, and laid my hand over his lips. He laughed, and told me I did not know half the wickedness of the world. Thank you,” again repeated Mrs. Carlyle, taking her child from Lady Isabel. “Is she not a pretty baby? Do you like the name—Anne?”
“It is a simple name,” replied Lady Isabel; “and simple names are always the most attractive.”
“That is just what Archibald thinks. But he wanted this child’s to be Barbara. I would not have had it Barbara for the world. I remember his once saying, a long, long while ago that he did not like elaborate names; they were mouthfuls; and he instanced mine and his sister’s, and his own. I recalled his words to him, and he said he may not have liked the name of Barbara then, but he loved it now. So we entered into a compromise; Miss Baby was named Anne Barbara, with an understanding that the first name is to be for use, and the last for the registers.”
“It is not christened?” said Lady Isabel.
“Only baptized. We should have had it christened before now, but for William’s death. Not that we give christening dinners; but I waited for the trial at Lynneborough to be over, that my dear brother Richard might stand to the child.”
“Mr. Carlyle does not like christenings made into festivals,” Lady Isabel dreamily observed, her thoughts buried in the past.
“How do you know that?” exclaimed Barbara, opening her eyes.
And poor Madame Vine, her pale face flushing, had to stammer forth some confused words that she had “heard so somewhere.”
“It is quite true,” said Barbara. “He has never given a christening-dinner for any of his children, and gets out of attending if invited to one. He cannot understand the analogy between a solemn religious rite and the meeting together afterward to eat and drink and make merry, according to the fashion of this world.”
As Lady Isabel quitted the room, young Vane was careering through the corridor, throwing his head in all directions, and calling out,—
“Lucy! I want Lucy!”
“What do you want with her?” asked Madame Vine.
“Il m’est impossible de vous le dire madame,” responded he. Being, for an Eton boy, wonderfully up in French, he was rather given to show it off when he got the chance. He did not owe thanks for it to Eton. Lady Mount Severn had taken better care than that. Better care? What could she want? There was one whole, real, live French tutor—and he an Englishman!—for the eight hundred boys. Very unreasonable of her ladyship to disparage that ample provision.
“Lucy cannot come to you just now. She is practicing.”
“Mais, il le faut. J’ai le droit de demander apres elle. Elle m’appartient, vous comprenez, madame, cette demoiselle la.”
Madame could not forbear a smile. “I wish you would speak English sense, instead of French nonsense.”
“Then the English sense is that I want Lucy and I must have her. I am going to take her for a drive in the pony carriage, if you must know. She said she’d come, and John’s getting it ready.”
“I could not possibly allow it,” said Madame Vine. “You’d be sure to upset her.”
“The idea!” he returned, indignantly. “As if I should upset Lucy! Why, I’m one of the great whips at Eton. I care for Lucy too much not to drive steadily. She is to be my wife, you know, ma bonne dame.”
At this juncture two heads were pushed out from the library, close by; those of the earl and Mr. Carlyle. Barbara, also, attracted by the talking, appeared at the door of her dressing-room.
“What’s that about a wife?” asked my lord of his son.
The blood mantled in the young gentleman’s cheek as he turned round and saw who had spoken, but he possessed all the fearlessness of an Eton boy.
“I intend Lucy Carlyle to be my wife, papa. I mean in earnest—when we shall both be grown up—if you will approve, and Mr. Carlyle will give her to me.”
The earl looked somewhat impassable, Mr. Carlyle amused. “Suppose,” said the latter, “we adjourn the discussion to this day ten years?”
“But that Lucy is so very young a child, I should reprove you seriously, sir,” said the earl. “You have no right to bring Lucy’s name into any such absurdity.”
“I mean it, papa; you’ll all see. And I intend to keep out of scrapes—that is, of nasty, dishonorable scrapes—on purpose that Mr. Carlyle shall find no excuse against me. I have made up my mind to be what he is—a man of honor. I am right glad you know about it, sir, and I shall let mamma know it before long.”
The last sentence tickled the earl’s fancy, and a grim smile passed over his lips. “It will be war to the knife, if you do.”
“I know that,” laughed the viscount. “But I am getting a better match for mamma in our battles than I used to be.”
Nobody saw fit to prolong the discussion. Barbara put her veto upon the drive in the pony carriage unless John sat behind to look after the driver, which Lord Vane still resented as an insult. Madame Vine, when the corridor became empty again, laid her hand upon the boy’s arm as he was moving away, and drew him to the window.
“In speaking as you do of Lucy Carlyle, do you forget the disgrace reflected on her by the conduct of her mother?”
“Her mother is not Lucy.”
“It may prove an impediment, that, with Lord and Lady Mount Severn.”
“Not with his lordship. And I must do—as you heard me say—battle with my mother. Conciliatory battle, you understand, madame; bringing the enemy to reason.”
Madame Vine was agitated. She held her handkerchief to her mouth, and the boy noticed how her hands trembled.
“I have learnt to love Lucy. It has appeared to me in these few months’ sojourn with her, that I have stood to her in light of a mother. William Vane,” she solemnly added, keeping her hold upon him, “I shall soon be where earthly distinctions are no more; where sin and sorrow are no more. Should Lucy Carlyle indeed become your wife, in after years, never, never cast upon her, by so much as the slightest word of reproach, the sin of Lady Isabel.”
Lord Vane threw back his head, his honest eyes flashing in their indignant earnestness.
“What do you take me for?”
“It would be a cruel wrong upon Lucy. She does not deserve it. That unhappy lady’s sin was all her own; let it die with her. Never speak to Lucy of her mother.”
The lad dashed his hand across his eyes for they were filling.
“I shall. I shall speak to her often of her mother—that is, you know, after she’s my wife. I shall tell her how I loved Lady Isabel—that there’s nobody I ever loved so much in the world, but Lucy herself. I cast a reproach to Lucy on the score of her mother!” he hotly added. “It is through her mother that I love her. You don’t understand, madame.”
“Cherish and love her forever, should she become yours,” said Lady Isabel, wringing his hand. “I ask it you as one who is dying.”
“I will—I promise it. But I say, madame,” he continued, dropping his fervent tone, “what do you allude to? Are you worse?”
Madame Vine did not answer. She glided away without speaking.
Later, when she was sitting by twilight in the gray parlor, cold and shivering, and wrapped up in a shawl, though it was hot summer weather, somebody knocked at the door.
“Come in,” cried she, apathetically.
It was Mr. Carlyle who entered. She rose up, her pulses quickening, her heart thumping against her side. In her wild confusion she was drawing forward a chair for him. He laid his hand upon it, and motioned her to her own.
“Mrs. Carlyle tells me that you have been speaking to her of leaving—that you find yourself too much out of health to continue with us.”
“Yes, sir,” she faintly replied, having a most imperfect notion of what she did say.
“What is it that you find to be the matter with you?”
“I—think—it is chiefly—weakness,” she stammered.
Her face had grown as gray as the walls. A dusky, livid sort of hue, not unlike William’s had worn the night of his death, and her voice sounded strangely hollow. It, the voice, struck Mr. Carlyle and awoke his fears.
“You cannot—you never can have caught William’s complaint, in your close attendance upon him?” he exclaimed, speaking in the impulse of the moment, as the idea flashed across him. “I have heard of such things.”
“Caught it from him?” she rejoined, carried away also by impulse. “It is more likely that he——”
She stopped herself just in time. “Inherited it from me,“ had been the destined conclusion. In her alarm, she went off volubly, something to the effect that “it was no wonder she was ill: illness was natural to her family.”
“At any rate, you have become ill at East Lynne, in attendance on my children,” rejoined Mr. Carlyle, decisively, when her voice died away. “You must therefore allow me to insist that you allow East Lynne to do what it can toward renovating you. What is your objection to see a doctor?”
“A doctor could do me no good,” she faintly answered.
“Certainly not, so long as you will not consult one.”
“Indeed, sir, doctors could not cure me, nor, as I believe prolong my life.”
Mr. Carlyle paused.
“Are you believing yourself to be in danger?”
“Not in immediate danger, sir; only in so far as that I know I shall not live.”
“And yet you will not see a doctor. Madame Vine, you must be aware that I could not permit such a thing to go on in my house. Dangerous illness and no advice!”
She could not say to him, “My malady is on the mind; it is a breaking heart, and therefore no doctor of physic could serve me.” That would never do. She had sat with her hand across her face, between her spectacles and her wrapped-up chin. Had Mr. Carlyle possessed the eyes of Argus, backed by Sam Weller’s patent magnifying microscopes of double hextra power, he could not have made anything of her features in the broad light of day. But she did not feel so sure of it. There was always an undefined terror of discovery when in his presence, and she wished the interview at an end.
“I will see Mr. Wainwright, if it will be any satisfaction to you, sir.”
“Madame Vine, I have intruded upon you here to say that you must see him, and, should he deem it necessary, Dr. Martin also.”
“Oh, sir,” she rejoined with a curious smile, “Mr. Wainwright will be quite sufficient. There will be no need of another. I will write a note to him tomorrow.”
“Spare yourself the trouble. I am going into West Lynne, and will send him up. You will permit me to urge that you spare no pains or care, that you suffer my servants to spare no pains or care, to reestablish your health. Mrs. Carlyle tells me that the question of your leaving remains in abeyance until her return.”
“Pardon me, sir. The understanding with Mrs. Carlyle was that I should remain here until her return, and should then be at liberty at once to leave.”
“Exactly. That is what Mrs. Carlyle said. But I must express a hope that by that time you may be feeling so much better as to reconsider your decision and continue with us. For my daughter’s sake, Madame Vine, I trust it will be so.”
He rose as he spoke, and held out his hand. What could she do but rise also, drop hers from her face, and give it him in answer? He retained it, clasping it warmly.
“How should I repay you—how thank you for your love to my poor, lost boy?”
His earnest, tender eyes were on her blue double spectacles; a sad smile mingled with the sweet expression of his lips as he bent toward her—lips that had once been hers! A faint exclamation of despair, a vivid glow of hot crimson, and she caught up her new black silk apron so deeply bordered with crape, in her disengaged hand, and flung it up to her face. He mistook the sound—mistook the action.
“Do not grieve for him. He is at rest. Thank you—thank you greatly for your sympathy.”
Another wring of her hand, and Mr. Carlyle had quitted the room. She laid her head upon the table, and thought how merciful would be death when he should come.
Mr. Jiffin was in his glory. Mr. Jiffin’s house was the same. Both were in apple-pie order to receive Miss Afy Hallijohn, who was, in a very short period, indeed, to be converted into Mrs. Jiffin.
Mr. Jiffin had not seen Afy for some days—had never been able to come across her since the trial at Lynneborough. Every evening had he danced attendance at her lodgings, but could not get admitted. “Not at home—not at home,” was the invariable answer, though Afy might be sunning herself at the window in his very sight. Mr. Jiffin, throwing off as best he could the temporary disappointment, was in an ecstasy of admiration, for he set it all down to Afy’s retiring modesty on the approach of the nuptial day. “And they could try to calumniate her!” he indignantly replied.
But now, one afternoon, when Mr. Jiffin and his shopman, and his shop, and his wares, were all set out to the best advantage—and very tempting they looked, as a whole, especially the spiced bacon—Mr. Jiffin happening to cast his eyes to the opposite side of the street, beheld his beloved sailing by. She was got up in the fashion. A mauve silk dress with eighteen flounces, and about eighteen hundred steel buttons that glittered your sight away; a “zouave” jacket worked with gold; a black turban perched on the top of her skull, garnished in front with what court milliners are pleased to term a “plume de coq,” but which, by its size and height, might have been taken for a “coq” himself, while a white ostrich feather was carried round and did duty behind, and a spangled hair net hung down to her waist. Gloriously grand was Afy that day and if I had but a photographing machine at hand—or whatever may be the scientific name of the thing—you should certainly have been regaled with the sight of her. Joyce would have gone down in a fit had she encountered her by an unhappy chance. Mr. Jiffin, dashing his apron anywhere, tore across.
“Oh, it is you!” said Afy, freezingly, when compelled to acknowledge him, but his offered hand she utterly repudiated. “Really, Mr. Jiffin, I should feel obliged if you would not come out to me in this offensive and public manner.”
Mr. Jiffin grew cold. “Offensive! Not come out?” gasped he. “I do trust I have not been so unfortunate as to offend you, Miss Afy!”
“Well—you see,” said Afy, calling up all her impudence to say what she had made up her mind to say, “I have been considering it well over, Jiffin, and I find that to carry out the marriage will not be for my—for our happiness. I intended to write to inform you of this; but I shall be spared the trouble—as you have come out to me.”
The perspiration, cold as ice, began to pour off Mr. Jiffin in his agony and horror. You might have wrung every thread he had on. “You—don’t mean—to—imply—that—you—give—me—up—Miss—Afy?” he jerked out, unevenly.
“Well, yes, I do,” replied Afy. “It’s as good to be plain, and then there can be no misapprehension. I’ll shake hands now with you, Jiffin, for the last time; and I am very sorry that we both made such a mistake.”
Poor Jiffin looked at her. His gaze would have melted a heart of stone. “Miss Afy, you can’t mean it! You’d never, sure, crush a fellow in this manner, whose whole soul is yours; who trusted you entirely? There’s not an earthly thing I would not do to please you. You have been the light of my existence.”
“Of course,” returned Afy, with a lofty and indifferent air, as if to be “the light of his existence” was only her due. “But it’s all done and over. It is not at all a settlement that will suit me, you see, Jiffin. A butter and bacon factor is so very—so very—what I have not been accustomed to! And then, those aprons! I never could get reconciled to them.”
“I’ll discard the aprons altogether,” cried he, in a fever. “I’ll get a second shopman, and buy a little gig, and do nothing but drive you out. I’ll do anything if you will but have me still, Miss Afy. I have bought the ring, you know.”
“Your intentions are very kind,” was the distant answer, “but it’s a thing impossible; my mind is fully made up. So farewell for good, Jiffin; and I wish you better luck in your next venture.”
Afy, lifting her capacious dress, for the streets had just been watered, minced off. And Mr. Joe Jiffin, wiping his wet face as he gazed after her, instantly wished that he could be nailed up in one of his pickled pork barrels, and so be out of his misery.
“That’s done with, thank goodness,” soliloquized Afy. “Have him, indeed. After what Richard let out on the trial. As if I should look after anybody less than Dick Hare! I shall get him, too. I always knew Dick Hare loved me above everything on earth; and he does still, or he’d never had said what he did in open court. ‘It’s better to be born lucky than rich.’ Won’t West Lynne envy me! Mrs. Richard Hare of the Grove. Old Hare is on his last legs, and then Dick comes into his own. Mrs. Hare must have her jointure house elsewhere, for we shall want the Grove for ourselves. I wonder if Madame Barbara will condescend to recognize me. And that blessed Corny? I shall be a sort of cousin of Corny’s then. I wonder how much Dick comes into—three or four thousand a year? And to think that I had nearly escaped this by tying myself to that ape of a Jiffin! What sharks do get in our unsuspecting paths in this world!”
On went Afy, through West Lynne, till she arrived close to Mr. Justice Hare’s. Then she paced slowly. It had been a frequent walk of hers since the trial. Luck favored her today. As she was passing the gate, young Richard Hare came up from the direction of East Lynne. It was the first time Afy had obtained speech of him.
“Good day, Richard. Why! you were never going to pass an old friend?”
“I have so many friends,” said Richard, “I can scarcely spare time for them individually.”
“But you might for me. Have you forgotten old days?” continued she, bridling and flirting, and altogether showing herself off to advantage.
“No, I have not,” replied Richard. “And I am not likely to do so,” he pointedly added.
“Ah, I felt sure of that. My heart told me so. When you went off, that dreadful night, leaving me to anguish and suspense, I thought I should have died. I never have had, so to say, a happy moment until this, when I meet you again.”
“Don’t be a fool, Afy!” was Richard’s gallant rejoinder, borrowing the favorite reproach of Miss Carlyle. “I was young and green once; you don’t suppose I have remained so. We will drop the past, if you please. How is Mr. Jiffin?”
“Oh, the wretch!” shrieked Afy. “Is it possible that you can have fallen into the popular scandal that I have anything to say to him? You know I’d never demean myself to it. That’s West Lynne all over! Nothing but inventions in it from week’s end to week’s end. A man who sells cheese! Who cuts up bacon! Well, I am surprised at you, Mr. Richard!”
“I have been thinking what luck you were in to get him,” said Richard, with composure. “But it is your business not mine.”
“Could you bear to see me stooping to him?” returned Afy, dropping her voice to the most insinuating whisper.
“Look you, Afy. What ridiculous folly you are nursing in your head I don’t trouble myself to guess, but, the sooner you get it out again the better. I was an idiot once, I don’t deny it; but you cured me of that, and cured me with a vengeance. You must pardon me for intimating that from henceforth we are strangers; in the street as elsewhere. I have resumed my own standing again, which I periled when I ran after you.”
Afy turned faint. “How can you speak those cruel words?” gasped she.
“You have called them forth. I was told yesterday that Afy Hallijohn, dressed up to a caricature, was looking after me again. It won’t do, Afy.”
“Oh-o-o-oh!” sobbed Afy, growing hysterical, “and is this to be all my recompense for the years I have spent pining after you, keeping single for your sake!”
“Recompense! Oh, if you want that, I’ll get my mother to give Jiffin her custom.” And with a ringing laugh, which, though it had nothing of malice in it, showed Afy that he took her reproach for what it was worth, Richard turned in at his own gate.
It was a deathblow to Afy’s vanity. The worst it had ever received; and she took a few minutes to compose herself, and smooth her ruffled feathers. Then she turned and sailed back toward Mr. Jiffin’s, her turban up in the skies and the plume de coq tossing to the admiration of all beholders, especially of Miss Carlyle, who had the gratification of surveying her from her window. Arrived at Mr. Jiffin’s, she was taken ill exactly opposite his door, and staggered into the shop in a most exhausted state.
Round the counter flew Mr. Jiffin, leaving the shopman staring behind it. What was the matter? What could he do for her?
“Faint—heat of the sun—walked too fast—allowed to sit down for five minutes!” gasped Afy, in disjointed sentences.
Mr. Jiffin tenderly conducted her through the shop to his parlor. Afy cast half an eye round, saw how comfortable were its arrangements, and her symptoms of faintness increased. Gasps and hysterical sobs came forth together. Mr. Jiffin was as one upon spikes.
“She’d recover better there than in the public shop—if she’d only excuse his bringing her in, and consent to stop for a few minutes. No harm could come to her, and West Lynne could never say it. He’d stand at the far end of the room, right away from her; he’d prop open the two doors and the windows; he’d call in the maid—anything she thought right. Should he get her a glass of wine?”
Afy declined the wine by a gesture, and sat fanning herself. Mr. Jiffin looking on from a respectful distance. Gradually she grew composed—grew herself again. As she gained courage, Mr. Jiffin lost it, and he ventured upon some faint words of reproach, of him.
Afy burst into a laugh. “Did I not do it well?” she exclaimed. “I thought I’d play off a joke upon you, so I came out this afternoon and did it.”
Mr. Jiffin clasped his hands. “Was it a joke” he returned, trembling with agitation, uncertain whether he was in paradise or not. “Are you still ready to let me call you mine?”
“Of course it was a joke,” said Afy. “What a soft you must have been, Mr. Jiffin, not to see through it! When young ladies engage themselves to be married, you can’t suppose they run back from it, close upon the wedding-day?”
“Oh, Miss Afy!” And the poor little man actually burst into delicious tears, as he caught hold of Afy’s hand and kissed it.
“A great green donkey!” thought Afy to herself, bending on him, however the sweetest smile.
Rather. But Mr. Jiffin is not the only great donkey in the world.
Richard Hare, meanwhile, had entered his mother’s presence. She was sitting at the open window, the justice opposite to her, in an invalid chair, basking in the air and the sun. This last attack of the justice’s had affected the mind more than the body. He was brought down to the sitting-room that day for the first time; but, of his mind, there was little hope. It was in a state of half imbecility; the most wonderful characteristic being, that all its self-will, its surliness had gone. Almost as a little child in tractability, was Justice Hare.
Richard came up to his mother, and kissed her. He had been to East Lynne. Mrs. Hare took his hand and fondly held it. The change in her was wonderful; she was a young and happy woman again.
“Barbara has decided to go to the seaside, mother. Mr. Carlyle takes her on Monday.”
“I am glad, my dear, it will be sure to go her good. Richard”—bending over to her husband, but still retaining her son’s hand—“Barbara has agreed to go to the seaside, I will set her up.”
“Ay, ay,” nodded the justice, “set her up. Seaside? Can’t we go?”
“Certainly, dear, if you wish it; when you shall be a little stronger.”
“Ay, ay,” nodded the justice again. It was his usual answer now. “Stronger. Where’s Barbara?”
“She goes on Monday, sir,” said Richard, likewise bending his head. “Only for a fortnight. But they talk of going again later in the autumn.”
“Can’t I go, too?” repeated the justice, looking pleadingly in Richard’s face.
“You shall, dear father. Who knows but a month or two’s bracing would bring you quite round again? We might go all together, ourselves and the Carlyles. Anne comes to stay with us next week, you know, and we might go when her visit is over.”
“Aye, all go together. Anne’s coming?”
“Have you forgotten, dear Richard? She comes to stay a month with us, and Mr. Clitheroe and the children. I am so pleased she will find you better,” added Mrs. Hare, her gentle eyes filling. “Mr. Wainwright says you may go out for a drive tomorrow.”
“And I’ll be coachman,” laughed Richard. “It will be the old times come round again. Do you remember, father, my breaking the pole, one moonlight night, and your not letting me drive for six months afterwards?”
The poor justice laughed in answer to Richard, laughed till the tears ran down his face, probably not knowing in the least what he was laughing at.
“Richard,” said Mrs. Hare to her son, almost in an apprehensive tone, her hand pressing his nervously, “was not that Afy Hallijohn I saw you speaking with at the gate?”
“Did you? What a spectacle she had made of herself! I wonder she is not ashamed to go through the streets in such a guise! Indeed, I wonder she shows herself at all.”
“Richard, you—you—will not be drawn in again?” were the next whispered words.
“Mother!” There was a sternness in his mild blue eyes as he cast them upon his mother. Those beautiful eyes—the very counterpart of Barbara’s, both his and hers the counterpart of Mrs. Hare’s. The look had been sufficient refutation without words.
“Mother mine, I am going to belong to you in the future, and to nobody else. West Lynne is already busy for me, I understand, pleasantly carving out my destiny. One marvels whether I shall lose myself with Miss Afy; another, that I shall set on offhand, and court Louisa Dobede. They are all wrong; my place will be with my darling mother,—at least, for several years to come.”
She clasped his hand to her bosom in her glad delight.
“We want happiness together, mother, to enable us to forget the past; for upon none did the blow fall, as upon you and upon me. And the happiness we shall find, in our own home, living for each other, and striving to amuse my poor father.”
“Aye, aye,” complacently put in Justice Hare.
So it would be. Richard had returned to his home, had become, to all intent and purposes, its master; for the justice would never be in a state to hold sway again. He had resumed his position; and regained the favor of West Lynne, which, always in extremes, was now wanting to kill him with kindness. A happy, happy home from henceforth; and Mrs. Hare lifted up her full heart in thankfulness to God. Perhaps Richard’s went up also.
One word touching that wretched prisoner in the condemned cell at Lynneborough. As you must have anticipated, the extreme sentence was not carried out. And, little favorite as Sir Francis is with you and with me, we can but admit that justice did not demand that it should be. That he had willfully killed Hallijohn, was certain; but the act was committed in a moment of wild rage; it had not been premeditated. The sentence was commuted to transportation. A far more disgraceful one in the estimation of Sir Francis; a far more unwelcome one in the eyes of his wife. It is no use to mince the truth, one little grain of comfort had penetrated to Lady Levison; the anticipation of the time when she and her ill-fated child should be alone, and could hide themselves in some hidden nook of the wide world; he, and his crime, and his end gone; forgotten. But it seems he was not to go and be forgotten; she and the boy must be tied to him still; and she was lost in horror and rebellion.
He envied the dead Hallijohn, did that man, as he looked forth on the future. A cheering prospect truly! The gay Sir Francis Levison working in chains with his gang! Where would his diamonds and his perfumed handkerchiefs and his white hands be then? After a time he might get a ticket-of-leave. He groaned in agony as the turnkey suggested it to him. A ticket-of-leave for him! Oh, why did they not hang him? he wailed forth as he closed his eyes to the dim light. The light of the cell, you understand; he could not close them to the light of the future. No; never again; it shone out all too plainly, dazzling his brain as with a flame of living fire.
Barbara was at the seaside, and Lady Isabel was in her bed, dying. You remember the old French saying, L’homme propose, et Dieu dispose. An exemplification of it was here.
She, Lady Isabel, had consented to remain at East Lynne during Mrs. Carlyle’s absence, on purpose that she might be with her children. But the object was frustrated, for Lucy and Archibald had been removed to Miss Carlyle’s. It was Mr. Carlyle’s arrangement. He thought the governess ought to have entire respite from all charge; and that poor governess dared not say, let them stay with me. Lady Isabel had also purposed to be safely away from East Lynne before the time came for her to die; but that time had advanced with giant strides, and the period for removal was past. She was going out as her mother had done, rapidly unexpectedly, “like the snuff of a candle.” Wilson was in attendance on her mistress; Joyce remained at home.
Barbara had chosen a watering-place near, not thirty miles off, so that Mr. Carlyle went there most evenings, returning to his office in the mornings. Thus he saw little of East Lynne, paying one or two flying visits only. From the Saturday to the Wednesday in the second week, he did not come home at all, and it was in those few days that Lady Isabel had changed for the worse. On the Wednesday he was expected home to dinner and to sleep.
Joyce was in a state of frenzy—or next door to it. Lady Isabel was dying, and what would become of the ominous secret? A conviction, born of her fears, was on the girl’s mind that, with death, the whole must become known; and who was to foresee what blame might not be cast upon her, by her master and mistress, for not having disclosed it? She might be accused of having been an abettor in the plot from the first! Fifty times it was in Joyce’s mind to send for Miss Carlyle and tell her all.
The afternoon was fast waning, and the spirit of Lady Isabel seemed to be waning with it. Joyce was in the room in attendance upon her. She had been in a fainting state all day, but felt better now. She was partially raised in bed by pillows, a white Cashmere shawl over her shoulders, her nightcap off, to allow as much air as possible to come to her, and the windows stood open.
Footsteps sounded on the gravel in the quiet stillness of the summer air. They penetrated even to her ear, for all her faculties were keen yet. Beloved footsteps; and a tinge of hectic rose to her cheeks. Joyce, who stood at the window, glanced out. It was Mr. Carlyle.
“Joyce!” came forth a cry from the bed, sharp and eager.
Joyce turned round. “My lady?”
“I should die happily if I might see him.”
“See him!” uttered Joyce, doubting her own ears. “My lady! See him! Mr. Carlyle!”
“What can it signify? I am already as one dead. Should I ask it or wish it, think you, in rude life? The yearning has been upon me for days Joyce; it is keeping death away.”
“It could not be, my lady,” was the decisive answer. “It must not be. It is as a thing impossible.”
Lady Isabel burst into tears. “I can’t die for the trouble,” she wailed. “You keep my children from me. They must not come, you say, lest I should betray myself. Now you would keep my husband. Joyce, Joyce, let me see him!”
Her husband! Poor thing! Joyce was in a maze of distress, though not the less firm. Her eyes were wet with tears; but she believed she should be infringing her allegiance to her mistress did she bring Mr. Carlyle to the presence of his former wife; altogether it might be productive of nothing but confusion.
A knock at the chamber door. Joyce called out, “Come in.” The two maids, Hannah and Sarah, were alone in the habit of coming to the room, and neither of them had ever known Madame Vine as Lady Isabel. Sarah put in her head.
“Master wants you, Miss Joyce.”
“I’ll come.”
“He is in the dining-room. I have just taken down Master Arthur to him.”
Mr. Carlyle had got “Master Arthur” on his shoulder when Joyce entered. Master Arthur was decidedly given to noise and rebellion, and was already, as Wilson expressed it, “sturdy upon his pins.”
“How is Madame Vine, Joyce?”
Joyce scarcely knew how to answer. But she did not dare to equivocate as to her precarious state. And where the use, when a few hours would probably see the end of it?
“She is very ill, indeed, sir.”
“Worse?”
“Sir, I fear she is dying.”
Mr. Carlyle, in his consternation, put down Arthur. “Dying!”
“I hardly think she will last till morning, sir!”
“Why, what has killed her?” he uttered in amazement.
Joyce did not answer. She looked pale and confused.
“Have you had Dr. Martin?”
“Oh, no, sir. It would be of no use.”
“No use!” repeated Mr. Carlyle, in a sharp accent. “Is that the way to treat dying people? Assume it is of no use to send for advice, and so quietly let them die! If Madame Vine is as ill as you say, a telegraphic message must be sent off at once. I had better see her,” he cried, moving to the door.
Joyce, in her perplexity, dared to place her back against it, preventing his egress. “Oh, master! I beg your pardon, but—it would not be right. Please, sir, do not think of going into her room!”
Mr. Carlyle thought Joyce was taken with a fit of prudery. “Why can’t I go in?” he asked.
“Mrs. Carlyle would not like it, sir,” stammered Joyce, her cheeks scarlet now.
Mr. Carlyle stared at her. “Some of you take up odd ideas,” he cried. “In Mrs. Carlyle’s absence, it is necessary that some one should see her! Let a lady die in my house, and never see after her! You are out of your senses, Joyce. I shall go in after dinner; so prepare Madame Vine.”
The dinner was being brought in then. Joyce, feeling like one in a nervous attack, picked up Arthur and carried him to Sarah in the nursery. What on earth was she to do?
Scarcely had Mr. Carlyle begun his dinner, when his sister entered. Some grievance had arisen between her and the tenants of certain houses of hers, and she was bringing the dispute to him. Before he would hear it, he begged her to go up to Madame Vine, telling her what Joyce had said of her state.
“Dying!” exclaimed Miss Corny, in disbelieving derision. “That Joyce has been more like a simpleton lately than like herself. I can’t think what has come to the woman.”
She took off her bonnet and mantle, and laid them on a chair, gave a twitch or two to her cap, as she surveyed it in the pier-glass, and went upstairs. Joyce answered her knock at the invalid’s door; and Joyce, when she saw who it was, turned as white as any sheet.
“Oh, ma’am, you must not come in!” she blundered out, in her confusion and fear, as she put herself right in the doorway.
“Who is to keep me out?” demanded Miss Carlyle, after a pause of surprise, her tone of quiet power. “Move away, girl. Joyce, I think your brain must be softening. What will you try at next?”
Joyce was powerless, both in right and strength, and she knew it. She knew there was no help—that Miss Carlyle would and must enter. She stood aside, shivering, and passed out of the room as soon as Miss Carlyle was within it.
Ah! there could no longer be concealment now! There she was, her pale face lying against the pillow, free from its disguising trappings. The band of gray velvet, the spectacles, the wraps for the throat and chin, the huge cap, all were gone. It was the face of Lady Isabel; changed, certainly, very, very much; but still hers. The silvered hair fell on either side of her face, like the silky curls had once fallen; the sweet, sad eyes were the eyes of yore.
“Mercy be good to us!” uttered Miss Carlyle.
They remained gazing at each other, both panting with emotion; yes, even Miss Carlyle. Though a wild suspicion had once crossed her brain that Madame Vine might be Lady Isabel, it had died away again, from the sheer improbability of the thing, as much as from the convincing proofs offered by Lord Mount Severn. Not but what Miss Carlyle had borne in mind the suspicion, and had been fond of tracing the likeness in Madame Vine’s face.
“How could you dare come back here!” she abruptly asked, her tone of sad, soft wailing, not one of reproach.
Lady Isabel humbly crossed her attenuated hands upon her chest. “My children,” she whispered. “How could I stay away from them? Have pity, Miss Carlyle! Don’t reproach me. I am on my way to God, to answer for all my sins and sorrows.”
“I do not reproach you,” said Miss Carlyle.
“I am so glad to go,” she continued to murmur, her eyes full of tears. “Jesus did not come, you know, to save the good like you; He came for the sake of us poor sinners. I tried to take up my cross, as He bade us, and bear it bravely for His sake; but its weight has killed me.”
The good like you! Humbly, meekly, deferentially was it expressed, in all good faith and trust, as though Miss Corny was a sort of upper angel. Somehow the words grated on Miss Corny’s ear: grated fiercely on her conscience. It came into her mind, then, as she stood there, that the harsh religion that she had through life professed, was not the religion that would best bring peace to her dying bed.
“Child,” said she, drawing near to and leaning over Lady Isabel, “had I anything to do with sending you from East Lynne?”
Lady Isabel shook her head and cast down her gaze, as she whispered: “You did not send me; you did not help to send me. I was not very happy with you, but that was not the cause—of my going away. Forgive me, Miss Carlyle, forgive me!”
“Thank God!” inwardly breathed Miss Carlyle. “Forgive me,” she said, aloud and in agitation, touching her hand. “I could have made your home happier, and I wish I had done it. I have wished it ever since you left it.”
Lady Isabel drew the hand in hers. “I want to see Archibald,” she whispered, going back, in thought, to the old time and the old name. “I have prayed Joyce to bring him to me, and she will not. Only for a minute! Just to hear him say that he forgives me! What can it matter, now that I am as one lost to the world? I should die easier.”
Upon what impulse or grounds Miss Carlyle saw fit to accede to the request, cannot be told. Probably she did not choose to refuse a death-bed prayer; possibly she reasoned, as did Lady Isabel—what could it matter? She went to the door. Joyce was in the corridor, leaning against the wall, her apron up to her eyes. Miss Carlyle beckoned to her.
“How long have you known of this?”
“Since that night in the spring, when there was an alarm of fire. I saw her then, with nothing on her face, and knew her; though, at the first moment, I thought it was her ghost. Ma’am, I have just gone about since, like a ghost myself from fear.”
“Go and request your master to come up to me.”
“Oh, ma’am! Will it be well to tell him?” remonstrated Joyce. “Well that he should see her?”
“Go and request your master to come to me,” unequivocally repeated Miss Carlyle. “Are you mistress, Joyce, or am I?”
Joyce went down and brought Mr. Carlyle up from the dinner-table.
“Is Madame Vine worse, Cornelia? Will she see me?”
“She wishes to see you.”
Miss Carlyle opened the door as she spoke. He motioned her to pass in first. “No,” she said, “you had better see her alone.”
He was going in when Joyce caught his arm. “Master! Master! You ought to be prepared. Ma’am, won’t you tell him?”
He looked at them, thinking they must be moonstruck, for their conduct seemed inexplicable. Both were in evident agitation, an emotion Miss Carlyle was not given to. Her face and lips were twitching, but she kept a studied silence. Mr. Carlyle knit his brow and went into the chamber. They shut him in.
He walked gently at once to the bed, in his straightforward manner.
“I am grieved, Madame Vine——”
The words faltered on his tongue. He was a man as little given to show emotion as man can well be. Did he think, as Joyce had once done, that it was a ghost he saw? Certain it is that his face and lips turned the hue of death, and he backed a few steps from the bed. The falling hair, the sweet, mournful eyes, the hectic which his presence brought to her cheeks, told too plainly of the Lady Isabel.
“Archibald!”
She put out her trembling hand. She caught him ere he had drawn quite beyond her reach. He looked at her, he looked round the room, as does one awaking from a dream.
“I could not die without your forgiveness,” she murmured, her eyes falling before him as she thought of her past. “Do you turn from me? Bear with me a little minute! Only say you forgive me, and I shall die in peace!”
“Isabel?” he spoke, not knowing in the least what he said. “Are you—are you—were you Madame Vine?”
“Oh, forgive—forgive me! I did not die. I got well from the accident, but it changed me dreadfully. Nobody knew me, and I came here as Madame Vine. I could not stay away, Archibald, forgive me!”
His mind was in a whirl, his ideas had gone wool-gathering. The first clear thought that came thumping through his brain was, that he must be a man of two wives. She noticed his perplexed silence.
“I could not stay away from you and my children. The longing for you was killing me,” she reiterated, wildly, like one talking in a fever. “I never knew a moment’s peace after the mad act I was guilty of, in quitting you. Not an hour had I departed when my repentance set in; and even then I would have retraced and come back, but I did not know how. See what it has done for me!” tossing up her gray hair, holding out her attenuated wrists. “Oh, forgive—forgive me! My sin was great, but my punishment was greater. It has been as one long scene of mortal agony.”
“Why did you go?” asked Mr. Carlyle.
“Did you not know?”
“No. It has always been a mystery to me.”
“I went out of love for you.”
A shade of disdain crossed his lips. She was equivocating to him on her death-bed.
“Do not look in that way,” she panted. “My strength is nearly gone—you must perceive that it is—and I do not, perhaps, express myself clearly. I loved you dearly, and I grew suspicious of you. I thought you were false and deceitful to me; that your love was all given to another; and in my sore jealousy, I listened to the temptings of that bad man, who whispered to me of revenge. It was not so, was it?”
Mr. Carlyle had regained his calmness, outwardly, at any rate. He stood by the side of the bed, looking down upon her, his arms crossed upon his chest, and his noble form raised to its full height.
“Was it so?” she feverishly repeated.
“Can you ask it, knowing me as you did then, as you must have known me since? I never was false to you in thought, in word, or in deed.”
“Oh, Archibald, I was mad—I was mad! I could not have done it in anything but madness. Surely you will forget and forgive!”
“I cannot forget. I have already forgiven!”
“Try and forget the dreadful time that has passed since that night!” she continued, the tears falling on her cheeks, as she held up to him one of her poor hot hands. “Let your thoughts go back to the days when you first knew me; when I was here, Isabel Vane, a happy girl with my father. At times I have lost myself in a moment’s happiness in thinking of it. Do you remember how you grew to love me, though you thought you might not tell it to me—and how gentle you were with me, when papa died—and the hundred pound note? Do you remember coming to Castle Marling?—and my promise to be your wife—and the first kiss you left upon my lips? And, oh, Archibald! Do you remember the loving days after I was your wife—how happy we were with each other? Do you remember when Lucy was born, we thought I should have died; and your joy, your thankfulness that God restored me? Do you remember all this?”
Aye. He did remember it. He took the poor hand into his, and unconsciously played with its wasted fingers.
“Have you any reproach to cast to me?” he gently said, bending his head a little.
“Reproach to you! To you, who must be almost without reproach in the sight of Heaven! You, who were everlasting to me—ever anxious for my welfare! When I think of what you were, and are, and how I quitted you, I could sink into the earth with remorse and shame. My own sin, I have surely expiated; I cannot expiate the shame I entailed upon you, and upon our children.”
Never. He felt it as keenly now as he had felt it then.
“Think what it has been for me!” she resumed, and he was obliged to bend his ear to catch her gradually weakening tones. “To live in this house with your wife—to see your love for her—to watch the envied caresses that once were mine! I never loved you so passionately as I have done since I lost you. Think what it was to watch William’s decaying strength; to be alone with him in his dying hour, and not to be able to say he is my child as well as yours! When he lay dead, and the news went forth to the household, it was her petty grief you soothed, not mine, his mother’s. God alone knows how I have lived through it all; it as been to me as the bitterness of death.”
“Why did you come back?” was the response of Mr. Carlyle.
“I have told you. I could not live, wanting you and my children.”
“It was wrong; wrong in all ways.”
“Wickedly wrong. You cannot think worse of it than I have done. But the consequences and the punishment would be mine alone, as long as I guarded against discovery. I never thought to stop here to die; but death seems to have come on me with a leap, like it came to my mother.”
A pause of labored hard breathing. Mr. Carlyle did not interrupt it.
“All wrong, all wrong,” she resumed; “this interview with you, among the rest. And yet—I hardly know; it cannot hurt the new ties you have formed, for I am as one dead now to this world, hovering on the brink of the next. But you were my husband, Archibald; and, the last few days, I have longed for your forgiveness with a fevered longing. Oh! that the past could be blotted out! That I could wake up and find it but a hideous dream; that I were here as in old days, in health and happiness, your ever loving wife. Do you wish it, that the dark past had never had place?”
She put the question in a sharp, eager tone, gazing up to him with an anxious gaze, as though the answer must be one of life or death.
“For your sake I wish it.” Calm enough were the words spoken; and her eyes fell again, and a deep sigh came forth.
“I am going to William. But Lucy and Archibald will be left. Oh, do you never be unkind to them! I pray you, visit not their mother’s sin upon their heads! Do not in your love for your later children, lose your love for them!”
“Have you seen anything in my conduct that could give rise to fears of this?” he returned, reproach mingled in his sad tone. “The children are dear to me, as you once were.”
“As I once was. Aye, and as I might have been now.”
“Indeed you might,” he answered, with emotion. “The fault was not mine.”
“Archibald, I am on the very threshold of the next world. Will you not bless me—will you not say a word of love to me before I pass it! Let what I am, I say, be blotted for the moment from your memory; think of me, if you can, as the innocent, timid child whom you made your wife. Only a word of love. My heart is breaking for it.”
He leaned over her, he pushed aside the hair from her brow with his gentle hand, his tears dropping on her face. “You nearly broke mine, when you left me, Isabel,” he whispered.
“May God bless you, and take you to His rest in Heaven! May He so deal with me, as I now fully and freely forgive you.”
What was he about to do? Lower and lower bent his head, until his breath nearly mingled with hers. To kiss her? He best knew. But, suddenly, his face grew red with a scarlet flush, and he lifted it again. Did the form of one, then in a felon’s cell at Lynneborough, thrust itself before him, or that of his absent and unconscious wife?
“To His rest in Heaven,” she murmured, in the hollow tones of the departing. “Yes, yes I know that God had forgiven me. Oh, what a struggle it has been! Nothing but bad feelings, rebellion, and sorrow, and repining, for a long while after I came back here, but Jesus prayed for me, and helped me, and you know how merciful He is to the weary and heavy-laden. We shall meet again, Archibald, and live together forever and ever. But for that great hope I could hardly die. William said mamma would be on the banks of the river, looking out for him; but it is William who is looking for me.”
Mr. Carlyle released one of his hands; she had taken them both; and with his own white handkerchief, wiped the death-dew from her forehead.
“It is no sin to anticipate it, Archibald, for there will be no marrying or giving in marriage in Heaven: Christ said so. Though we do not know how it will be, my sin will be remembered no more there, and we shall be together with our children forever and forever. Keep a little corner in your heart for your poor lost Isabel.”
“Yes, yes,” he whispered.
“Are you leaving me?” she uttered, in a wild tone of pain.
“You are growing faint, I perceive, I must call assistance.”
“Farewell, then; farewell, until eternity,” she sighed, the tears raining from her eyes. “It is death, I think, not faintness. Oh! but it is hard to part! Farewell, farewell my once dear husband!”
She raised her head from the pillow, excitement giving her strength; she clung to his arm; she lifted her face in its sad yearning. Mr. Carlyle laid her tenderly down again, and suffered his wet cheek to rest upon hers.
“Until eternity.”
She followed him with her eyes as he retreated, and watched him from the room: then turned her face to the wall. “It is over. Only God now.”
Mr. Carlyle took an instant’s counsel with himself, stopping at the head of the stairs to do it. Joyce, in obedience to a sign from him, had already gone into the sick-chamber: his sister was standing at the door.
“Cornelia.”
She followed him down to the dining-room.
“You will remain here to-night? With her?”
“Do you suppose I shouldn’t?” crossly responded Miss Corny; “where are you off to now?”
“To the telegraph office, at present. To send for Lord Mount Severn.”
“What good can he do?”
“None. But I shall send for him.”
“Can’t one of the servants go just as well as you? You have not finished your dinner; hardly begun it.”
He turned his eyes on the dinner-table in a mechanical sort of way, his mind wholly preoccupied, made some remark in answer, which Miss Corny did not catch, and went out.
On his return his sister met him in the hall, drew him inside the nearest room, and closed the door. Lady Isabel was dead. Had been dead about ten minutes.
“She never spoke after you left her, Archibald. There was a slight struggle at the last, a fighting for breath, otherwise she went off quite peacefully. I felt sure, when I first saw her this afternoon, that she could not last till midnight.”
Lord Mount Severn, wondering greatly what the urgent summons could be for, lost no time in obeying it, and was at East Lynne the following morning early. Mr. Carlyle had his carriage at the station—his close carriage—and shut up in that he made the communication to the earl as they drove to East Lynne.
The earl could with difficulty believe it. Never had he been so utterly astonished. At first he really could not understand the tale.
“Did she—did she—come back to your house to die?” he blundered. “You never took her in? I don’t understand.”
Mr. Carlyle explained further; and the earl at length understood. But he did not recover his perplexed astonishment.
“What a mad act to come back here. Madame Vine! How on earth did she escape detection?”
“She did escape it,” said Mr. Carlyle. “The strange likeness Madame Vine possessed to my first wife did often strike me as being marvelous, but I never suspected the truth. It was a likeness, and not a likeness, for every part of her face and form was changed except her eyes, and those I never saw but through those disguising glasses.”
The earl wiped his hot face. The news had ruffled him no measured degree. He felt angry with Isabel, dead though she was, and thankful that Mrs. Carlyle was away.
“Will you see her?” whispered Mr. Carlyle as they entered the house.
“Yes.”
They went up to the death-chamber, Mr. Carlyle procuring the key. It was the only time that he entered it. Very peaceful she looked now, her pale features so composed under her white cap and hands. Miss Carlyle and Joyce had done all that was necessary; nobody else had been suffered to approach her. Lord Mount Severn leaned over her, tracing the former looks of Isabel; and the likeness grew upon him in a wonderful degree.
“What did she die of?” he asked.
“She said a broken heart.”
“Ah!” said the earl. “The wonder is that it did not break before. Poor thing! Poor Isabel!” he added, touching her hand, “how she marred her own happiness! Carlyle, I suppose this is your wedding ring?”
Mr. Carlyle cast his eyes upon the ring. “Very probably.”
“To think of her never having discarded it!” remarked the earl, releasing the cold hand. “Well, I can hardly believe the tale now.”
He turned and quitted the room as he spoke. Mr. Carlyle looked steadfastly at the dead face for a minute or two, his fingers touching the forehead; but what his thoughts or feelings may have been, none can tell. Then he replaced the sheet over her face, and followed the earl.
They descended in silence to the breakfast-room. Miss Carlyle was seated at the table waiting for them. “Where could all your eyes have been?” exclaimed the earl to her, after a few sentences, referring to the event just passed.
“Just where yours would have been,” replied Miss Corny, with a touch of her old temper. “You saw Madame Vine as well as we did.”
“But not continuously. Only two or three times in all. And I do not remember ever to have seen her without her bonnet and veil. That Carlyle should not have recognized her is almost beyond belief.”
“It seems so, to speak of it,” said Miss Corny; “but facts are facts. She was young and gay, active, when she left here, upright as a dart, her dark hair drawn from her open brow, and flowing on her neck, her cheeks like crimson paint, her face altogether beautiful. Madame Vine arrived here a pale, stooping woman, lame of one leg, shorter than Lady Isabel—and her figure stuffed out under those sacks of jackets. Not a bit, scarcely, of her forehead to be seen, for gray velvet and gray bands of hair; her head smothered under a close cap, large, blue, double spectacles hiding the eyes and their sides, and the throat tied up; the chin partially. The mouth was entirely altered in its character, and that upward scar, always so conspicuous, made it almost ugly. Then she had lost some of her front teeth, you know, and she lisped when she spoke. Take her for all in all,” summed up Miss Carlyle, “she looked no more like Isabel who went away from here than I look like Adam. Just get your dearest friend damaged and disguised as she was, my lord, and see if you’d recognize him.”
The observation came home to Lord Mount Severn. A gentleman whom he knew well, had been so altered by a fearful accident, that little resemblance could be traced to his former self. In fact, his own family could not recognize him: and he used an artificial disguise. It was a case in point; and—reader—I assure you it was a true one.
“It was the disguise that we ought to have suspected,” quietly observed Mr. Carlyle. “The likeness was not sufficiently striking to cause suspicion.”
“But she turned the house from that scent as soon as she came into it,” struck in Miss Corny, “telling of the ‘neuralgic pains’ that affected her head and face, rendering the guarding them from exposure necessary. Remember, Lord Mount Severn, that the Ducies had been with her in Germany, and had never suspected her. Remember also another thing, that, however great a likeness we may have detected, we could not and did not speak of it, one to another. Lady Isabel’s name is never so much as whispered among us.”
“True: all true,” nodded the earl. And they sat themselves down to breakfast.
On the Friday, the following letter was dispatched to Mrs. Carlyle.
“MY DEAREST—I find I shall not be able to get to you on Saturday afternoon, as I promised, but will leave here by the late train that night. Mind you don’t sit up for me. Lord Mount Severn is here for a few days; he sends his regards to you.
“And now, Barbara, prepare for news that will prove a shock. Madame Vine is dead. She grew rapidly worse, they tell me, after our departure, and died on Wednesday night. I am glad you were away.
“Love from the children. Lucy and Archie are still at Cornelia’s; Arthur wearing out Sarah’s legs in the nursery.
“Ever yours, my dearest,
“ARCHIBALD CARLYLE.”
Of course, as Madame Vine, the governess, died at Mr. Carlyle’s house, he could not, in courtesy, do less than follow her to the grave. So decided West Lynne, when they found which way the wind was going to blow. Lord Mount Severn followed also, to keep him company, being on a visit to him, and very polite, indeed, of his lordship to do it—condescending, also! West Lynne remembered another funeral at which those two had been the only mourners—that of the earl. By some curious coincidence the French governess was buried close to the earl’s grave. As good there as anywhere else, quoth West Lynne. There happened to be a vacant spot of ground.
The funeral took place on a Sunday morning. A plain, respectable funeral. A hearse and pair, and mourning coach and pair, with a chariot for the Rev. Mr. Little. No pall-bearers or mutes, or anything of that show-off kind; and no plumes on the horses, only on the hearse. West Lynne looked on with approbation, and conjectured that the governess had left sufficient money to bury herself; but, of course, that was Mr. Carlyle’s affair, not West Lynne’s. Quiet enough lay she in her last resting-place.
They left her in it, the earl and Mr. Carlyle, and entered the mourning-coach, to be conveyed back again to East Lynne.
“Just a little stone of white marble, two feet high by a foot and a half broad,” remarked the earl, on their road, pursuing a topic they were speaking upon. “With the initials ‘I. V.’ and the date of the year. Nothing more. What do you think?”
“I. M. V.,” corrected Mr. Carlyle.
“Yes.”
At this moment the bells of another church, not St. Jude’s, broke out in a joyous peal, and the earl inclined his ear to listen.
“What can they be ringing for?” he cried.
They were ringing for a wedding. Afy Hallijohn, by the help of two clergymen and six bridesmaids, of which you may be sure Joyce was not one, had just been converted into Mrs. Joe Jiffin. When Afy took a thing into her heard, she somehow contrived to carry it through, and to bend even clergymen and bridesmaids to her will. Mr. Jiffin was blest at last.
In the afternoon the earl left East Lynne, and somewhat later Barbara arrived at it. Wilson scarcely gave her mistress time to step into the house before her, and she very nearly left the baby in the fly. Curiously anxious was Wilson to hear all particulars as to whatever could have took off that French governess. Mr. Carlyle was much surprised at their arrival.
“How could I stay away, Archibald, even until Monday, after the news you sent me?” said Barbara. “What did she die of? It must have been awfully sudden.”
“I suppose so,” was his dreamy answer. He was debating a question with himself, one he had thought over a good deal since Wednesday night. Should he, or should he not, tell his wife? He would have preferred not to tell her; and, were the secret confined to his own breast, he would decidedly not have done so. But it was known to three others—to Miss Carlyle, to lord Mount Severn, and to Joyce. All trustworthy and of good intention; but it was impossible for Mr. Carlyle to make sure that not one of them would ever, through any chance and unpremeditated word, let the secret come to the knowledge of Mrs. Carlyle. That would not do, if she must hear it at all, she must hear it from him, and at once. He took his course.
“Are you ill, Archibald?” she asked, noting his face. It wore a pale, worn sort of look.
“I have something to tell you, Barbara,” he answered, drawing her hand into his, as they stood together. They were in her dressing-room, where she was taking off her things. “On the Wednesday evening when I got home to dinner Joyce told me that she feared Madame Vine was dying, and I thought it right to see her.”
“Certainly,” returned Barbara. “Quite right.”
“I went into her room, and I found that she was dying. But I found something else, Barbara. She was not Madame Vine.”
“Not Madame Vine!” echoed Barbara, believing in good truth that her husband could not know what he was saying.
“It was my former wife, Isabel Vane.”
Barbara’s face flushed crimson, and then grew white as marble; and she drew her hand unconsciously from Mr. Carlyles’s. He did not appear to notice the movement, but stood with his elbow on the mantelpiece while he talked, giving her a rapid summary of the interview and its details.
“She could not stay away from her children, she said, and came back as Madame Vine. What with the effects of the railroad accident in France, and those spectacles she wore, and her style of dress, and her gray hair, she felt secure in not being recognized. I am astonished now that she was not discovered. Were such a thing related to me I should give no credence to it.”
Barbara’s heart felt faint with its utter sickness, and she turned her face from the view of her husband. Her first confused thoughts were as Mr. Carlyle’s had been—that she had been living in his house with another wife. “Did you suspect her?” she breathed, in a low tone.
“Barbara! Had I suspected it, should I have allowed it to go on? She implored my forgiveness for the past, and for having returned here, and I gave it to her fully. I then went to West Lynne, to telegraph to Mount Severn, and when I came back she was dead.”
There was a pause. Mr. Carlyle began to perceive that his wife’s face was hidden from him.
“She said her heart was broken. Barbara, we cannot wonder at it.”
There was no reply. Mr. Carlyle took his arm from the mantelpiece, and moved so that he could see her countenance: a wan countenance, telling of pain.
He laid his hand upon her shoulder, and made her look at him. “My dearest, what is this?”
“Oh, Archibald!” she uttered, clasping her hands together, all her pent up feelings bursting forth, and the tears streaming from her eyes, “has this taken your love from me?”
He took both her hands in one of his, he put the other round her waist and held her there, before him, never speaking, only looking gravely into her face. Who could look at its sincere truthfulness, at the sweet expression of his lips, and doubt him? Not Barbara. She allowed the moment’s excitement to act upon her feelings, and carry her away.
“I had thought my wife possessed entire trust in me.”
“Oh, I do, I do; you know I do. Forgive me, Archibald,” she slowly whispered.
“I deemed it better to impart this to you, Barbara. Had there been wrong feeling on my part, I should have left you in ignorance. My darling, I have told you it in love.”
She was leaning on his breast, sobbing gently, her repentant face turned towards him. He held her there in his strong protection, his enduring tenderness.
“My wife! My darling! now and always.”
“It was a foolish feeling to cross my heart, Archibald. It is done with and gone.”
“Never let it come back, Barbara. Neither need her name be mentioned again between us. A barred name it has hitherto been; so let it continue.”
“Anything you will. My earnest wish is to please you; to be worthy of your esteem and love, Archibald,” she timidly added, her eye-lids drooping, and her fair cheeks blushing, as she made the confession. “There has been a feeling in my heart against your children, a sort of jealous feeling, you can understand, because they were hers; because she had once been your wife. I knew how wrong it was, and I have tried earnestly to subdue it. I have, indeed, and I think it is nearly gone,” her voice sunk. “I constantly pray to be helped to do it; to love them and care for them as if they were my own. It will come with time.”
“Every good thing will come with time that we may earnestly seek,” said Mr. Carlyle. “Oh, Barbara, never forget—never forget that the only way to ensure peace in the end is to strive always to be doing right, unselfishly under God.”
The End