Kitabı oku: «The Elect Lady», sayfa 11

CHAPTER XXVII. THE WATCH

George stayed with the laird a good while, and held a long, broken talk with him. When he went Alexa came. She thought her father seemed happier. George had put the cup away for him. Alexa sat with him that night. She knew nothing of such a precious thing being in the house—in the room with them.

In the middle of the night, as she was arranging his pillows, the laird drew from under the bed-clothes, and held up to her, flashing in the light of the one candle, the jeweled watch. She stared. The old man was pleased at her surprise and evident admiration. She held out her hand for it. He gave it her.

“That watch,” he said, “is believed to have belonged to Ninon de l’Enclos. It may, but I doubt it myself. It is well known she never took presents from her admirers, and she was too poor to have bought such a thing. Mme. de Maintenon, however, or some one of her lady-friends, might have given it her. It will be yours one day—that is, if you marry the man I should like you to marry.”

“Dear father, do not talk of marrying. I have enough with you,” cried Alexa, and felt as if she hated George.

“Unfortunately, you can not have me always,” returned her father. “I will say nothing more now, but I desire you to consider what I have said.”

Alexa put the watch in his hand.

“I trust you do not suppose,” she said, “that a house full of things like that would make any difference.”

He looked up at her sharply. A house full—what did she know? It silenced him, and he lay thinking. Surely the delight of lovely things must be in every woman’s heart. Was not the passion, developed or undeveloped, universal? Could a child of his not care for such things?

“Ah,” he said to himself, “she takes after her mother.”

A wall seemed to rise between him and his daughter. Alas! alas! the things he loved and must one day yield would not be cherished by her. No tender regard would hover around them when he was gone. She would be no protecting divinity to them. God in heaven! she might—she would—he was sure she would sell them.

It seems the sole possible comfort of avarice, as it passes empty and hungry into the empty regions—that the things it can no more see with eyes or handle with hands will yet be together somewhere. Hence the rich leave to the rich, avoiding the man who most needs, or would best use their money. Is there a lurking notion in the man of much goods, I wonder, that, in the still watches of the night, when men sleep, he will return to look on what he leaves behind him? Does he forget the torture of seeing it at the command, in the enjoyment of another—his will concerning this thing or that but a mockery? Does he know that he who then holds them will not be able to conceive of their having been or ever being another’s as now they are his?

As Alexa sat in the dim light by her brooding father she loathed the shining thing he had again drawn under the bed-clothes—shrunk from it as from a manacle the devil had tried to slip on her wrist. The judicial assumption of society suddenly appeared in the emptiness of its arrogance. Marriage for the sake of things. Was she not a live soul, made for better than that She was ashamed of the innocent pleasure the glittering toy had given her.

The laird cast now and then a glance at her face, and sighed. He gathered from it the conviction that she would be a cruel step-mother to his children, her mercy that of a loveless non-collector. It should not be. He would do better for them than that. He loved his daughter, but needed not therefore sacrifice his last hopes where the sacrifice would meet with no acceptance. House and land should be hers, but not his jewels; not the contents of his closet.

CHAPTER XXVIII. THE WILL

George came again to see him the next day, and had again a long conference with him. The laird told him that he had fully resolved to leave everything to his daughter, personal as well as real, on the one condition that she should marry her cousin; if she would not, then the contents of his closet, with his library, and certain articles specified, should pass to Crawford.

“And you must take care,” he said, “if my death should come suddenly, that anything valuable in this room be carried into the closet before it is sealed up.”

Shrinking as he did from the idea of death, the old man was yet able, in the interest of his possessions, to talk of it! It was as if he thought the sole consolation that, in the loss of their owner, his things could have, was the continuance of their intercourse with each other in the heaven of his Mammon-besotted imagination.

George responded heartily, showing a gratitude more genuine than fine: every virtue partakes of the ground in which it is grown. He assured the laird that, valuable as was in itself his contingent gift, which no man could appreciate more than he, it would be far more valuable to him if it sealed his adoption as his son-in-law. He would rather owe the possession of the wonderful collection to the daughter than to the father! In either case the precious property would be held as for him, each thing as carefully tended as by the laird’s own eye and hand!

Whether it would at the moment have comforted the dying man to be assured, as George might have him, that there would be nothing left of him to grieve at the loss of his idols—nothing left of him but a memory, to last so long as George and Alexa and one or two more should remain unburied, I can not tell. It was in any case a dreary outlook for him. Hope and faith and almost love had been sucked from his life by “the hindering knot-grass” which had spread its white bloodless roots in all directions through soul and heart and mind, exhausting and choking in them everything of divinest origin. The weeds in George’s heart were of another kind, and better nor worse in themselves; the misery was that neither of them was endeavoring to root them out. The thief who is trying to be better is ages ahead of the most honorable man who is making no such effort. The one is alive; the other is dead and on the way to corruption.

They treated themselves to a gaze together on the cup and the watch; then George went to give directions to the laird’s lawyer for the drawing up of his new will.

The next day it was brought, read, signed by the laird, and his signature duly witnessed.

Dawtie being on the spot was made one of the witnesses. The laird trembled lest her fanaticism should break out in appeal to the lawyer concerning the cup; he could not understand that the cup was nothing to her; that she did not imagine herself a setter right of wrongs, but knew herself her neighbor’s keeper, one that had to deliver his soul from death! Had the cup come into her possession, she would have sent it back to the owner, but it was not worth her care that the Earl of Borland should cast his eyes when he would upon a jewel in a cabinet!

Dawtie was very white as he signed his name. Where the others saw but a legal ceremony, she feared her loved master was assigning his soul to the devil, as she had read of Dr. Faustus in the old ballad. He was gliding away into the dark, and no one to whom he had done a good turn with the Mammon of unrighteousness, was waiting to receive him into an everlasting habitation! She had and she needed no special cause to love her master, any more than to love the chickens and the calves; she loved because something that could be loved was there present to her; but he had always spoken kindly to her, and been pleased with her endeavor to serve him; and now he was going where she could do nothing for him!—except pray, as her heart and Andrew had taught her, knowing that “all live unto Him!” But alas! what were prayers where the man would not take the things prayed for! Nevertheless all things were possible with God, and she would pray for him!

It was also with white face, and it was with trembling hand that she signed her own name, for she felt as if giving him a push down the icy slope into the abyss.

But when the thing was done, the old man went quietly to sleep, and dreamed of a radiant jewel, glorious as he had never seen jewel, ever within yet ever eluding his grasp.

CHAPTER XXIX. THE SANGREAL

The next day he seemed better, and Alexa began to hope again. But in the afternoon his pulse began to sink, and when Crawford came he could welcome him only with a smile and a vain effort to put out his hand. George bent down to him. The others, at a sign from his eyes, left the room.

“I can’t find it, George!” he whispered.

“I put it away for you last night, you remember!” answered George.

“Oh, no, you didn’t! I had it in my hand a minute ago! But I fell into a doze, and it is gone! George, get it!—get it for me, or I shall go mad!” George went and brought it him.

“Thank you! thank you! Now I remember! I thought I was in hell, and they took it from me!”

“Don’t you be afraid, sir! Fall asleep when you feel inclined. I will keep my eye on the cup.”

“You will not go away?”

“No; I will stay as long as you like; there is nothing to take me away. If I had thought you would be worse, I would not have gone last night.”

“I’m not worse! What put that in your head? Don’t you hear me speaking better? I’ve thought about it, George, and am convinced the cup is a talisman! I am better all the time I hold it! It was because I let you put it away that I was worse last night—for no other reason. If it were not a talisman, how else could it have so nestled itself into my heart! I feel better, always, the moment I take it in my hand! There is something more than common about that chalice! George, what if it should be the Holy Grail!”

He said it with bated breath, and a great white awe upon his countenance. His eyes were shining; his breath came and went fast. Slowly his aged cheeks flushed with two bright spots. He looked as if the joy of his life was come.

“What if it should be the Holy Grail!” he repeated, and fell asleep with the words on his lips.

As the evening deepened into night, he woke. Crawford was sitting beside him. A change had come over him. He stared at George as if he could not make him out, closed his eyes, opened them, stared, and again closed them. He seemed to think he was there for no good.

“Would you like me to call Alexa?” said George.

“Call Dawtie; call Dawtie!” he replied.

George rose to go and call her.

“Beware of her!” said the laird, with glazy eyes, “Beware of Dawtie!”

“How?” asked George.

“Beware of her,” he repeated. “If she can get the cup, she will! She would take it from me now, if she dared! She will steal it yet! Call Dawtie; call Dawtie!”

Alexa was in the drawing-room, on the other side of the hall. George went and told her that her father wanted Dawtie.

“I will find her,” she said, and rose, but turned and asked:

“How does he seem now?”

“Rather worse,” George answered.

“Are you going to be with him through the night?”

“I am; he insists on my staying with him,” replied George, almost apologetically.

“Then,” she returned, “you must have some supper. We will go down, and send up Dawtie.”

He followed her to the kitchen. Dawtie was not there, but her mistress found her.

When she entered her master’s room, he lay motionless, “and white with the whiteness of what is dead.”

She got brandy, and made him swallow some. As soon as he recovered a little, he began to talk wildly.

“Oh, Agnes!” he cried, “do not leave me. I’m not a bad man! I’m not what Dawtie calls me. I believe in the atonement; I put no trust in myself; my righteousness is as filthy rags. Take me with you. I will go with you. There! Slip that under your white robe—washed in the blood of the Lamb. That will hide it—with the rest of my sins! The unbelieving husband is sanctified by the believing wife. Take it; take it; I should be lost in heaven without it! I can’t see what I’ve got on, but it must be the robe of His righteousness, for I have none of my own! What should I be without it! It’s all I’ve got! I couldn’t bring away a single thing besides—and it’s so cold to have but one thing on—I mean one thing in your hands! Do you say they will make me sell it? That would be worse than coming without it!”

He was talking to his wife!—persuading her to smuggle the cup into heaven! Dawtie went on her knees behind the curtain, and began to pray for him all she could. But something seemed stopping her, and making her prayer come only from her lips.

“Ah,” said the voice of her master, “I thought so! How could I go up, and you praying against me like that! Cup or no cup, the thing was impossible!”

Dawtie opened her eyes—and there he was, holding back the curtain and looking round the edge of it with a face of eagerness, effort, and hate, as of one struggling to go, and unable to break away.

She rose to her feet.

“You are a fiend!” he cried. “I will go with Agnes!” He gave a cry, and ceased, and all was still. They heard the cry in the kitchen, and came running up.

They found Dawtie bending over her master, with a scared face. He seemed to have struck her, for one cheek was marked with red streaks across its whiteness.

“The Grail! the Holy Grail!” he cried. “I found it! I was bringing it home! She took it from me! She wants it to—”

His jaw fell, and he was dead. Alexa threw herself beside the body. George would have raised her, but she resisted, and lay motionless. He stood then behind her, watching an opportunity to get the cup from under the bed-clothes, that he might put it in the closet.

He ordered Dawtie to fetch water for her mistress; but Alexa told her she did not want any. Once and again George tried to raise her, and get his hand under the bed-clothes to feel for the cup.

“He is not dead!” cried Alexa; “he moved!”

“Get some brandy,” said George.

She rose, and went to the table for the brandy. George, with the pretense of feeling the dead man’s heart, threw back the clothes. He could find no cup. It had got further down! He would wait!

Alexa lifted her father’s head on her arm, but it was plain that brandy could not help. She went and sat on a chair away from the bed, hopeless and exhausted.

George lifted the clothes from the foot of the bed, then from the further side, and then from the nearer, without attracting her attention. The cup was nowhere to be seen! He put his hand under the body, but the cup was not there! He had to leave the room that Dawtie and Meg might prepare it for burial. Alexa went to her chamber.

A moment after, George returned, called Meg to the door, and said:

“There must be a brass cup in the bed somewhere! I brought it to amuse him. He was fond of odd things, you know! If you should find it—”

“I will take care of it,” answered Meg, and turned from him curtly.

George felt he had not a friend in the house, and that he must leave things as they were! The door of the closet was locked, and he could not go again to the death-chamber to take the laird’s keys from the head of the bed! He knew that the two women would not let him. It had been an oversight not to secure them! He was glad the watch was safe: that he had put in the closet before!—but it mattered little when the cup was missing! He went to the stable, got out his horse, and rode home in the still gray of a midsummer night.

The stillness and the night seemed thinking to each other. George had little imagination, but what he had woke in him now as he rode slowly along. Step by step the old man seemed following him, on silent church-yard feet, through the eerie whiteness of the night. There was neither cloud nor moon, only stars above and around, and a great cold crack in the north-east. He was crying after him, in a voice he could not make him hear! Was he not straggling to warn him not to come into like condemnation? The voice seemed trying to say, “I know! I know now! I would not believe, but I know now! Give back the cup; give it back!”

George did not allow to himself that there was “anything” there. It was but a vague movement in that commonplace, unmysterious region, his mind! He heard nothing, positively nothing, with his ears—therefore there was nothing! It was indeed somehow as if one were saying the words, but in reality they came only as a thought rising, continually rising, in his mind! It was but a thought-sound, and no speech: “I know now! I know now! Give it back; give the cup back!” He did not ask himself how the thought came; he cast it away as only that insignificant thing, a thought—cast it away none the less that he found himself answering it—“I can’t give it back; I can’t find it! Where did you put it? You must have taken it with you!”

“What rubbish!” he said to himself ten times, waking up; “of course Dawtie took it! Didn’t the poor old fellow warn me to beware of her! Nobody but her was in the room when we ran in, and found him at the point of death! Where did you put it? I can’t find it! I can’t give it back!”

He went over in his mind all that had taken place. The laird had the cup when he left him to call Dawtie; and when they came, it was nowhere! He was convinced the girl had secured it—in obedience, doubtless, to the instruction of her director, ambitious to do justice, and curry favor by restoring it! But he could do nothing till the will was read! Was it possible Lexy had put it away? No; she had not had the opportunity!

CHAPTER XXX. GEORGE AND THE GOLDEN GOBLET

With slow-pacing shadows, the hot hours crept athwart the heath, and the house, and the dead, and carried the living with them in their invisible current. There is no tide in time; it is a steady current, not returning. Happy they whom it bears inward to the center of things! Alas, for those whom it carries outward to “the flaming walls of creation!” The poor old laird who, with all his refinement, all his education, all his interest in philology, prosody, history, and reliquial humanity, had become the slave of a goblet, had left it behind him, had faced the empty universe empty-handed, and vanished with a shadow-goblet in his heart; the eyes that gloated over the gems had gone to help the grass to grow. But the will of the dead remained to trouble for a time the living, for it put his daughter in a painful predicament: until Crawford’s property was removed from the house, it would give him constant opportunity of prosecuting the suit which Aleza had reason to think he intended to resume, and the thought of which had become to her insupportable.

Great was her astonishment when she learned to what the door in the study led, and what a multitude of curious and valuable things were there of whose presence in the house she had never dreamed. She would gladly have had them for herself; and it pained her to the heart to think of the disappointment of the poor ghost when he saw, if he could see, his treasured hoard emptied out of its hidden and safe abode. For, even if George should magnanimously protest that he did not care for the things enough to claim them, and beg that they might remain where they were, she could not grant his request, for it would be to accept them from him. Had her father left them to her, she would have kept them as carefully as even he could desire—with this difference only, that she would not have shut them up from giving pleasure to others.

She was growing to care more about the truth—gradually coming to see that much she had taken for a more liberal creed, was but the same falsehoods in weaker forms, less repulsive only to a mind indifferent to the paramount claims of God on His child. She saw something of the falseness and folly of attempting to recommend religion as not so difficult, so exclusive, so full of prohibition as our ancestors believed it. She saw that, although Andrew might regard some things as freely given which others thought God forbade, yet he insisted on what was infinitely higher and more than the abandonment of everything pleasant—the abnegation, namely, of the very self, and the reception of God instead. She had hitherto been, with all her supposed progress, only a recipient of the traditions of the elders! There must be a deeper something—the real religion! She did not yet see that the will of God lay in another direction altogether than the heartiest reception of dogma!—that God was too great and too generous to care about anything except righteousness, and only wanted us to be good children!—that even honesty was but the path toward righteousness, a condition so pure that honesty itself would never more be an object of thought!

She pondered much about her father, and would find herself praying for him, careless of what she had been taught. She could not blind herself to what she knew. He had not been a bad man, as men count badness, but could she in common sense think him a glorified saint, shining in white robes? The polite, kind old man! her own father!—could she, on the other hand, believe him in flames forever? If so, what a religion was that which required her to believe it, and at the same time to rejoice in the Lord always!

She longed for something positive to believe, something into accordance with which she might work her feelings. She was still on the outlook for definite intellectual formulae to hold. Her intercourse with Andrew had as yet failed to open her eyes to the fact that the faith required of us is faith in a person, and not in the truest of statements concerning anything, even concerning him; or to the fact, that faith in the living One, the very essence of it, consists in obedience to Him. A man can obey before he is sure, and except he obey the command he knows to be right, wherever it may come from, he will never be sure. To find the truth, man or woman must be true.

But she much desired another talk with Andrew.

Persuading himself that Alexa’s former feeling toward him must in her trouble reassert itself, and confident that he would find her loath to part with her father’s wonderful collection, George waited the effect of the will. After the reading of it he had gone away directly, that his presence might not add to the irritation which he concluded, not without reason, it must, even in the midst of her sorrow, cause in her; but at the end of a week he wrote, saying that he felt it his duty, if only in gratitude to his friend, to inform himself as to the attention the valuable things he had left him might require. He assured Alexa that he had done nothing to influence her father in the matter, and much regretted the awkward position in which his will had placed both her and him. At the same time it was not unnatural that he should wish such precious objects to be possessed by one who would care for them as he had himself cared for them. He hoped, therefore, that she would allow him access to her father’s rooms. He would not, she might rest assured, intrude himself upon her sorrow, though he would be compelled to ask her before long whether he might hope that her father’s wish would have any influence in reviving the favor which had once been the joy of his life.

Alexa saw that if she consented to see him he would take it as a permission to press his claim, and the idea was not to be borne. She wrote him therefore a stiff letter, telling him the house was at his service, but he must excuse herself.

The next morning brought him early to Potlurg. The cause of his haste was his uneasiness about the chalice.

Old Meg opened the door to him, and he followed her straight into the drawing-room. Alexa was there, and far from expecting him. But, annoyed at his appearance as she was, she found his manner and behavior less unpleasant than at any time since his return. He was gentle and self-restrained, assuming no familiarity beyond that of a distant relative, and gave the impression of having come against his will, and only from a sense of duty.

“Did you not have my note?” she asked.

He had hoped, he said, to save her the trouble of writing.

She handed him her father’s bunch of keys, and left the room.

George went to the laird’s closet, and having spent an hour in it, again sought Alexa. The wonderful watch was in his hand.

“I feel the more pleasure, Alexa,” he said, “in begging you to accept this trinket, that it was the last addition to your dear father’s collection. I had myself the good fortune to please him with it a few days before his death.”

“No, thank you, George,” returned Alexa. “It is a beautiful thing—my father showed it me—but I can not take it.”

“It was more of you than him I thought when I purchased it, Alexa. You know why I could not offer it you.”

“The same reason exists now.”

“I am sorry to have to force myself on your attention, but—”

“Dawtie!” cried Alexa.

Dawtie came running.

“Wait a minute, Dawtie. I will speak to you presently,” said her mistress.

George rose. He had laid the watch on the table, and seemed to have forgotten it.

“Please take the watch with you,” said Alexa.

“Certainly, if you wish it!” he answered.

“And my father’s keys, too,” she added.

“Will you not be kind enough to take charge of them?”

“I would rather not be accountable for anything under them. No; you must take the keys.”

“I can not help regretting,” said George, “that your honored father should have thought fit to lay this burden of possession upon me.”

Alexa made no answer.

“I comforted myself with the hope that you would feel them as much your own as ever!” he resumed, in a tone of disappointment and dejection.

“I did not know of their existence before I knew they were never to be mine.”

“Never, Alexa?”

“Never.”

George walked to the door, but there turned, and said:

“By the way, you know that cup your father was so fond of?”

“No.”

“Not that gold cup, set with stones?”

“I saw something in his hands once, in bed, that might have been a cup.”

“It is a thing of great value—of pure gold, and every stone in it a gem.”

“Indeed!” returned Alexa, with marked indifference.

“Yes; it was the work of the famous Benvenuto Cellini, made for Pope Clement the Seventh, for his own communion-chalice. Your father priced it at three thousand pounds. In his last moments, when his mind was wandering, he fancied it the Holy Grail He had it in the bed with him when he died; that I know.”

“And it is missing?”

“Perhaps Dawtie could tell us what has become of it. She was with the laird at the last.”

Dawtie, who had stood aside to let him pass to the open door, looked up with a flash in her eyes, but said nothing.

“Have you seen the cup, Dawtie?” asked her mistress.

“No, ma’am.”

“Do you know it?”

“Very well, ma’am.”

“Then you don’t know what has become of it?”

“No, ma’am; I know nothing about it.”

“Take care, Dawtie,” said George. “This is a matter that will have to be searched into.”

“When did you last see it, Dawtie?” inquired Alexa.

“The very day my master died, ma’am. He was looking at it, but when he saw I saw him he took it inside the bed-clothes.”

“And you have not seen it since?”

“No, ma’am.”

“And you do not know where it is?” said George.

“No, sir. How should I?”

“You never touched it?”

“I can not say that, sir; I brought it him from his closet; he sent me for it.”

“What do you think may have become of it?”

“I don’t know, sir.”

“Would you allow me to make a thorough search in the place where it was last seen?” asked George, turning to his cousin.

“By all means. Dawtie, go and help Mr. Crawford to look.”

“Please, ma’am, it can’t be there. We’ve had the carpet up, and the floor scrubbed. There’s not a hole or a corner we haven’t been into—and that yesterday.”

“We must find it,” said George. “It must be in the house.”

“It must, sir,” said Dawtie.

But George more than doubted it

“I do believe,” he said, “the laird would rather have lost his whole collection.”

“Indeed, sir, I think he would.”

“Then you have talked to him about it?”

“Yes, I have, sir,” answered Dawtie, sorry she had brought out the question.

“And you know the worth of the thing?”

“Yes, sir; that is, I don’t know how much it was worth, but I should say pounds and pounds.”

“Then, Dawtie, I must ask you again, where is it?”

“I know nothing about it, sir. I wish I did!”

“Why do you wish you did?”

“Because—” began Dawtie, and stopped short; she shrunk from impugning the honesty of the dead man—and in the presence of his daughter.

“It looks a little fishy, don’t it, Dawtie? Why not speak straight out? Perhaps you would not mind searching Meg’s trunk for me. She may have taken it for a bit of old brass, you know.”

“I will answer for my servants, Mr. Crawford,” said Alexa. “I will not have old Meg’s box searched.”

“It is desirable to get rid of any suspicion,” replied George.

“I have none,” returned Alexa.

George was silent

“I will ask Meg, if you like, sir,” said Dawtie; “but I am sure it will be no use. A servant in this house soon learns not to go by the look of things. We don’t treat anything here as if we knew all about it.”

“When did you see the goblet first?” persisted George.

“Goblet, sir? I thought you were speaking of the gold cup.”

By goblet Dawtie understood a small iron pot.

“Goblet, or cup, or chalice—whatever you like to call it—I ask how you came to know about it.”

“I know very little about it.”

“It is plain you know more than you care to tell. If you will not answer me you will have to answer a magistrate.”

“Then I will answer a magistrate,” said Dawtie, beginning to grow angry.

“You had better answer me, Dawtie. It will be easier for you. What do you know about the cup?”

“I know it was not master’s, and is not yours—really and truly.”

“What can have put such a lie in your head?”

“If it be a lie, sir, it is told in plain print.”

“Where?”

But Dawtie judged it time to stop. She bethought herself that she would not have said so much had she not been angry.

“Sir,” she answered, “you have been asking me questions all this time, and I have been answering them; it is your turn to answer me one.”

“If I see proper.”

“Did my old master tell you the history of that cup?”

“I do not choose to answer the question.”

“Very well, sir.”

Dawtie turned to leave the room.

“Stop! stop!” cried Crawford; “I have not done with you yet, my girl. You have not told me what you meant when you said the cup did not belong to the laird.”