Kitabı oku: «Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, December 1878», sayfa 7

"Say 'Yes,' Percival. It is mine. Why not? why not?"

He spoke through his clasped hands: "One moment more."

"I shall never ask you anything again," she whispered. "Oh, Percival, be good to me!"

He raised his head and looked earnestly at her. He must be true, happen what might.

"Sissy, God knows I thank you for your goodness. I sha'n't forget it, living or dying. If only you might be spared—"

"No, no. Say 'Yes,' Percival."

"I will say 'Yes' if, when I have done, you wish it still. But it must be 'Yes' for some one besides myself. Dear, don't give it to me to make amends in any way. You have not wronged me, Sissy. Don't give it to me, dear, unless you give it to Judith Lisle."

As he spoke he looked into her eyes. Their sweet entreaty gave place to a flash of pained reproach, as if they said "So soon?" Then the light in them wavered and went out. Percival sprang up. "Help! she has fainted!"

Sarah hurried from her post by the window, and the sound of quick footsteps brought back Mrs. Middleton. The young man stood aside, dismayed. "She isn't dead?" he said in a low voice.

Aunt Harriet did not heed him. A horrible moment passed, during which he felt himself a murderer. Then Sissy moaned and turned her face a little to the wall.

"Go now: she cannot speak to you," said Mrs. Middleton.

"I can't. Only one more word!"

"What do you mean? What have you done? You may wait outside, and I will call you. She cannot bear any more now: do you want to kill her outright?"

He went. There was a wide window-seat in the passage, and he dropped down upon it, utterly worn out and wretched. "What have I done?" he asked himself. "What made me do it? She loved me, and I have been a brute to her. If I had been a devil, could I have tortured her more?"

Presently Mrs. Middleton came to him: "She cannot see you now, but she is better."

He looked up at her as he sat: "Aunt Harriet, I meant it for the best. Say what you like: I was a brute, I suppose, but I thought I was doing right."

"What do you mean?" Her tone was gentler: she detected the misery in his.

Percival took her hand and laid it on his forehead. "You can't think I meant to be cruel to our Sissy," he said. "You will let me speak to her?"

She softly pushed back his hair. After all, he was the man Sissy loved. "What was it?" she asked: "what did you do?"

He looked down. "I'm going to marry Miss Lisle," he said.

She started away from him: "You told her that? God forgive you, Percival!"

"I should have been a liar if I hadn't."

"Couldn't you let her die in peace? It is such a little while! Couldn't you have waited till she was in her grave?"

"Will she see me? Just one word, Aunt Harriet." And yet while he pleaded he did not know what the one word was that he would say. Only he felt that he must see her once more.

"Not now," said Mrs. Middleton. "My poor darling shall not be tortured any more. Later, if she wishes it, but not now. She could not bear it."

"But you will ask her to see me later?" he entreated. "I must see her."

"What is she to you? She is all the world to me, and she shall be left in peace. It is all that I can do for her now. You have been cruel to her always—always. She has been breaking her heart for you: she lived through last night with the hope of your coming. Oh, Percival, God knows I wish we had never called you away from Miss Lisle!"

"Don't say that."

"Go back to her," said Aunt Harriet, "and leave my darling to me. We were happy at Brackenhill till you came there."

He sprang to his feet: "Aunt Harriet! have some mercy! You know I would die if it could make Sissy any happier."

"And Miss Lisle?" she said.

He turned away with a groan, and, leaning against the wall, put his hand over his eyes. Mrs. Middleton hesitated a moment, but her haste to return to Sissy triumphed over any relenting feelings, and she left him, pausing only at the door to make sure of her calmness.

Noon came and passed. Sissy had spoken once to bid them take the needlework away. "I've done with it," she said. Otherwise she was silent, and only looked at them with gentle, apathetic eyes when they spoke to her. Dr. Grey came and went again. On his way out he noticed Percival, looked keenly at him, but said nothing.

Henry Hardwicke's desire to be useful had prompted him to station himself on the road a short distance from the farm, at the turning from the village. There he stopped people coming to inquire, and gave the latest intelligence. It was weary work, lounging there by the wayside, but he hoped he was serving Sissy Langton to the last. He could not even have a cigar to help to pass the time, for he had an idea that Mrs. Middleton disliked the smell of smoke. He stared at the trees and the sky, drew letters in the dust with the end of a stick, stirred up a small ants' nest, examined the structure of a dog-rose or two and some buttercups, and compared the flavors of different kinds of leaves. He came forward as Dr. Grey went by. The doctor stopped to tell him that Miss Langton was certainly weaker. "But she may linger some hours yet," he added; and he was going on his way when a thought seemed to strike him. "Are you staying at the farm?" he asked.

"No: they've enough without me. I'm at the little public-house close by."

"Going there for some luncheon?"

Hardwicke supposed so.

"Can't you get young Thorne to go with you? He looks utterly exhausted."

Hardwicke went off on his mission, but he could not persuade him to stir. "All right!" he said at last: "then I shall bring you something to eat here." Percival agreed to that compromise, and owned afterward that he felt better for the food he had taken.

The slow hours of the afternoon went wearily by. The rector of Fordborough came; Dr. Grey came again; Mrs. Latimer passed two or three times. The sky began to grow red toward the west once more, and the cawing rooks flew homeward, past the window where Percival sat waiting vainly for the summons which did not come.

Hardwicke, released from his self-imposed duty, came to see if Percival would go with him for half an hour or so to the Latimer Arms. "I've got a kind of tea-dinner," he said—"chops and that sort of thing. You'd better have some." But it was of no use. So when he came back to the house the good-natured fellow brought some more provisions, and begged Lucy Greenwell to make some tea, which he carried up.

"Where are you going to spend the night?" asked Harry, coming up again when he had taken away the cup and plate.

"Here," said Percival. He sat with his hands clasped behind his head and one leg drawn up on the seat. His face was sharply defined against the square of sunset sky.

Hardwicke stood with his hands in his pockets, looking down at him. "But you can't sleep here," he said.

"That doesn't matter much. Sleeping or waking, here I stay."

A sudden hope flashed in his eyes, for the door of Sissy's room opened, and, closing it behind her, Mrs. Middleton came out and looked up and down the passage. But she called "Harry" in a low voice, and Percival leant back again.

Harry went. Mrs. Middleton had moved a little farther away, and stood with her back toward Percival and one hand pressed against the wall to steady herself. Her first question was an unexpected one: "Isn't the wind getting up?" Her eyes were frightened and her voice betrayed her anxiety.

"I don't know—not much, I think." He was taken by surprise, and hesitated a little.

"It is: tell me the truth."

"I am—I will," he stammered. "I haven't thought about it. There is a pleasant little breeze, such as often comes in the evening. I don't really think there's any more."

"It isn't rising, then?"

"Wait a minute," said Hardwicke, and hurried off. He did not in the least understand his errand, but it was enough for him that Mrs. Middleton wanted to know. If she had asked him the depth of water in the well or the number of trees on the Priory farm, he would have rushed away with the same eagerness to satisfy her. His voice was heard in the porch, alternating with deeper and less carefully restrained tones. Then there was a sound of steps on the gravel-path. Presently he came back. Mrs. Middleton's attitude was unchanged, except that she had drawn a little closer to the wall. But though she had never looked over her shoulder, she was uneasily conscious of the young man half sitting, half lying in the window-seat behind her.

"Greenwell says it won't be anything," Hardwicke announced. "The glass has been slowly going up all day yesterday and to-day, and it is rising still. He believes we have got a real change in the weather, and that it will keep fine for some time."

"Thank God!" said Mrs. Middleton. "Do you think I'm very mad?"

"Not I," Harry answered in a "theirs-not-to-reason-why" manner.

"A week or two ago," she said, "my poor darling was talking about dying, as you young folks will talk, and she said she hoped she should not die in the night, when the wind was howling round the house. A bitter winter night would be worst of all, she said. It won't be that but I fancied the wind was getting up, and it frightened me to think how one would hear it moaning in this old place. It is only a fancy, of course, but she might have thought of it again lying there."

Hardwicke could not have put it into words, but the fancy came to him too of Sissy's soul flying out into the windy waste of air.

"Of course it is nothing—it is nonsense," said Mrs. Middleton. "But if it might be, as she said, when it is warm and light!—if it might be!" She stopped with a catching in her voice.

Harry, in his matter-of-fact way, offered consolation: "Dear Mrs. Middleton, the sun will rise by four, and Greenwell says there won't be any wind."

"Yes, yes! And she may not remember."

"I hope you have been taking some rest," he ventured to say after a brief silence.

"Yes. I was lying down this afternoon, and Sarah will take part of the night." She paused, and spoke again in a still lower tone: "Couldn't you persuade him to go away?"

"Mr. Thorne?"

She nodded: "I will not have her troubled. I asked her if she would see him again, and she said, 'No.' I wish he would go. What is the use of his waiting there?"

Hardwicke shrugged his shoulders: "It is useless for me to try and persuade him. He won't stir for me."

"I would send for him if she wanted him. But she won't."

"I'll speak to him again if you like," said Harry, "though it won't do any good."

Nor did it when a few minutes later the promised attempt was made. "I shall stay here," said Percival in a tone which conveyed unconquerable decision, and Hardwicke was silenced. The Greenwells came later, regretting that they had not a room to offer Mr. Thorne, but suggesting the sofa in the parlor or a mattress on the floor somewhere. Percival, however, declined everything with such courteous resolution that at last he was left alone.

Again the night came on, with its shadows and its stillness, and the light burning steadily in the one room. To all outward seeming it was the same as it had been twenty-four hours earlier, but Mrs. Middleton, watching by the bedside, was conscious of a difference. Life was at a lower ebb: there was less eagerness and unrest, less of hope and fear, more of a drowsy acquiescence. And Percival, who had been longed for so wearily the night before, seemed to be altogether forgotten.

Meanwhile, he kept his weary watch outside. He said to himself that he had darkened Sissy's last day: he cursed his cruelty, and yet could he have done otherwise? He was haunted through the long hours of the night by the words which had been ever on his lips when he won her—

 
If she love me, this believe,
I will die ere she shall grieve;
 

and he vowed that never was man so forsworn as he. Yet his one desire had been to be true. Had he not worshipped Truth? And this was the end of all.

His cruelty, too, had been worse than useless. He had lost this chance of an independence, as he had lost Brackenhill. He hated himself for thinking of money then, yet he could not help thinking of it—could not help being aware that Sissy's entreaty to him to take her fortune was worth nothing unless a will were made, and that there had been no mention of such a thing since she spoke to him that morning. And he was so miserably poor! Of whom should he borrow the money to take him back to his drudgery at Brenthill? Well, since Sissy no longer cared for his future, it was well that he had spoken. Better poverty than treachery. Let the money go; but, oh, to see her once again and ask her to forgive him!

As the night crept onward he grew drowsy and slept by snatches, lightly and uneasily, waking with sudden starts to a consciousness of the window at his side—a loophole into a ghostly sky where shreds of white cloud were driven swiftly before the breeze. The wan crescent of the moon gleamed through them from time to time, showing how thin and phantom-like they were, and how they hurried on their way across the heavens. After a time the clouds and moon and midnight sky were mingled with Percival's dreams, and toward morning he fell fast asleep.

Again Aunt Harriet saw the first gray gleam of dawn. Slowly it stole in, widening and increasing, till the candle-flame, which had been like a golden star shining out into the June night, was but a smoky yellow smear on the saffron morning. She rose and put it out. Turning, she encountered Sissy's eyes. They looked from her to a window at the foot of the bed. "Open," said Sissy.

Mrs. Middleton obeyed. The sound of unfastening the casement awoke Sarah, who was resting in an easy-chair. She sat up and looked round.

The breeze had died away, as Harry had foretold it would, and that day had dawned as gloriously as the two that had preceded it. A lark was soaring and singing—a mere point in the dome of blue.

Sissy lay and looked a while. Then she said, "Brackenhill?"

Aunt Harriet considered for a moment before she replied: "A little to the right, my darling."

The dying eyes were turned a little to the right. Seven miles away, yet the old gray manor-house rose before Aunt Harriet's eyes, warm on its southern slope, with its shaven lawns and whispering trees and the long terrace with its old stone balustrade. Perhaps Sissy saw it too.

"Darling, it is warm and light," the old lady said at last.

Sissy smiled. Her eyes wandered from the window. "Aunt, you promised," she whispered.

"Yes, dear—yes, I promised."

There was a pause. Suddenly, Sissy spoke, more strongly and clearly than she had spoken for hours: "Tell Percival—my love to Miss Lisle."

"Fetch him," said Mrs. Middleton to Sarah, with a quick movement of her hand toward the door. As the old woman crossed the room Sissy looked after her. In less than a minute Percival came in. His dark hair was tumbled over his forehead, and his eyes, though passionately eager, were heavy with sleep. As he came forward Sissy looked up and repeated faintly, like an echo, "My love to Miss Lisle, Percival." Her glance met his and welcomed him. But even as he said "Sissy!" her eyes closed, and when, after a brief interval, they opened again, he was conscious of a change. He spoke and took her hand, but she did not heed. "She does not know me!" he said.

Her lips moved, and Aunt Harriet stooped to catch the faint sound. It was something about "Horry—coming home from school."

Hardly knowing what she said—only longing for one more look, one smile of recognition, one word—Aunt Harriet spoke in painfully distinct tones: "My darling, do you want Horace? Shall we send for Horace?"

No answer. There was a long pause, and then the indistinct murmur recommenced. It was still "Horry," and "Rover," and presently they thought she said "Langley Wood."

"Horace used to take her there for a treat," said Mrs. Middleton.—"Oh, Sissy, don't you know Aunt Harriet?"

Still, from time to time, came the vague murmur of words. It was dark—the trees—she had lost—

Percival stood in silent anguish. There was to him a bitterness worse than the bitterness of death in the sound of those faint words. Sissy was before him, yet she had passed away into the years when she did not know him. He might cry to her, but she would not hear. There was no word for him: the Sissy who had loved him and pardoned him was dead. This was the child Sissy with whom Horace had played at Brackenhill.

The long bright morning seemed an eternity of blue sky, softly rustling leaves, birds singing and golden chequers of sunlight falling on walls and floor. Dr. Grey came in and stood near. The end was at hand, and yet delayed. The sun was high before the faint whispers of "Auntie," and "Horry," ceased altogether, and even then there was an interval during which Sissy still breathed, still lingered in the borderland between living and dying. Eagerly though they watched her, they could not tell the moment when she left them.

It was late that afternoon. Hardwicke lounged with his back against the gate of the orchard and his hands in his pockets. When he lifted his eyes from the turf on which he stood he could see the white blankness of a closed window through the boughs.

He was sorely perplexed. Not ten minutes earlier Mrs. Latimer had been there, saying, "Something should be done: why does not Mr. Thorne go to her? Or could Dr. Grey say anything if he were sent for? I'm sure it isn't right that she should be left so."

Mrs. Middleton was alone with her dead in that darkened room. She was perfectly calm and tearless. She only demanded to be left to herself. Mrs. Latimer would have gone in to cry and sympathize, but she was repulsed with a decision which was almost fierce. Sarah was not to disturb her. She wanted nothing. She wanted nobody. She must be by herself. She was terrible in her lonely misery.

Hardwicke felt that it could not be his place to go. Somewhere in the priory ruins was Percival Thorne, hiding his sorrow and himself: should he find him and persuade him to make the attempt? But Harry had an undefined feeling that Mrs. Middleton did not want Percival.

He stood kicking at a daisy-root in the grass, feeling himself useless, yet unwilling to desert his post, when a hand was pressed on his shoulder and he started round. Godfrey Hammond was on the other side of the gate, looking just as cool and colorless as usual.

"Thank God you're come, Mr. Hammond!" Harry exclaimed, and began to pour out his story in such haste that it was a couple of minutes before Godfrey fully understood him. The new-comer listened attentively, asking a question or two. He brushed some imperceptible dust from his gray coat-sleeve, and sticking his glass in his eye he surveyed the farmhouse.

"I think I should like to see Mrs. Middleton at once," he said when Hardwicke had finished.

Sarah showed him the way, but he preferred to announce himself. He knocked at the door.

"Who is there?" said the voice within.

"It is I, Godfrey Hammond: I may come in?"

"Yes."

He opened the door and saw her sitting by the bedside, where something lay white and straight and still. She turned her head as he entered, then stood up and came a step or two to meet him. "Oh, Godfrey!" she said in a low voice, "she died this morning."

He put his arm about her. "I would have been here before if I could," he said.

"I knew it." She trembled so much that he drew her nearer, supporting her as tenderly as if he were her son, though his face above her was unmoved as ever.

"She died this morning," Mrs. Middleton repeated. She hid her face suddenly and burst into a passion of tears. "Oh, Godfrey! she was hurt so! she was hurt so! Oh my darling!"

"We could not wish her to linger in pain," he said softly.

"No, no. But only this morning, and I feel as if I had been alone for years!"

Still, through her weeping, she clung to him. His sympathy made a faint glimmer of light in the darkness, and her sad eyes turned to it.

CHAPTER LIII.
AFTERWARD

There is little more to write. Four years, with their varying seasons, their endless procession of events, their multitude of joys and sorrows, have passed since Sissy died. Her place in the world, which seemed so blank and strange in its first vacancy, is closed up and lost in the crowding occupations of our ordinary life. She is not forgotten, but she has passed out of the light of common day into the quiet world of years gone by, where there is neither crowd nor haste, but soft shadows and shadowy sunshine, and time for every tender memory and thought. Even Aunt Harriet's sorrow is patient and subdued, and she sees her darling's face, with other long-lost faces, softened as in a gentle dream. She looks back to the past with no pain of longing. At seventy-eight she believes that she is nearer to those she loves by going forward yet a little farther. Nor are these last days sad, for in her loneliness Godfrey Hammond persuaded her to come to him, and she is happy in her place by his fireside. He is all that is left to her, and she is wrapped up in him. Nothing is good enough for Godfrey, and he says, with a smile, that she would make the planets revolve round him if she could. It is very possible that if she had her will she might attempt some little rearrangement of that kind. Her only fear is lest she should ever be a burden to him. But that will never be. Godfrey likes her delicate, old-fashioned ways and words, and is glad to see the kind old face which smiled on him long ago when he was a lad lighted up with gentle pleasure in his presence now. When he bids her good-night he knows that she will pray before she lies down, and he feels as if his home and he were the better for those simple prayers uttered night and morning in an unbroken sequence of more than seventy years. There is a tranquil happiness in that house, like the short, golden days of a St. Martin's summer or the November blooming of a rose.

In the February after Sissy's death Godfrey went to Rookleigh for a day, to be present at a wedding in the old church where the bridegroom had once lingered idly in the hot summer-time and pictured his marriage to another bride. That summer afternoon was not forgotten. Percival, standing on the uneven pavement above the Shadwells' vault, remembered his vision of Sissy's frightened eyes even while he uttered the words that bound him to Judith Lisle. But those words were not the less true because the thought of Sissy was hidden in his heart for ever.

Since that day Percival has spent almost all his time abroad, leading such a life as he pictured long ago, only the reality is fairer than the day-dream, because Judith shares it with him. Together they travel or linger as the fancy of the moment dictates. Percival does not own a square yard of the earth's surface, and therefore he is at liberty to wander over it as he will. He is conscious of a curious loneliness about Judith and himself. They have no child, no near relations: it seems as if they were freed from all ordinary ties and responsibilities. His vague aspirations are even less definite than of old; yet, though his life follows a wandering and uncertain track, fair flowers of kindliness, tolerance and courtesy spring up by that wayside. Judith and he do not so much draw closer day by day as find ever new similarity of thought and feeling already existing between them. His heart turns to her as to a haven of peace; all his possibilities of happiness are in her hands; he rests in the full assurance that neither deed nor word of hers can ever jar upon him; in his darker moods he thinks of her as clear, still sunlight, and he has no desire apart from her. Yet when he looks back he doubts whether his life can hold another moment so supreme in love and anguish as that moment when he looked into Sissy's eyes for the last time and knew himself forgiven.