“It does not matter,” cried Miss Bethune. “I know this, that the marriage was in secret, and the boy was born in secret; and while she was ill and weak there came the news of some one coming that might leave her penniless; and for the sake of the money, the wretched money, this man took the child up in his arms out of her very bed, and carried it away.”
The sick woman clutched the arm of the other, who sat by her side, tragic and passionate, the words coming from her lips like sobs. “Oh, my poor lady,” she said, “if that is your story! But it was not that. My husband, Mr. Bristow, knew. He knew all about Gordon from the beginning. It was no secret to him. He did not take the child away till the mother had gone, till he had tried every way to find her, even to bring her back. He was a merciful man. I knew him too. Oh, poor woman, poor woman, my heart breaks for that other you knew. She is like me, she is worse off than me: but the one you know was not Harry’s mother—oh, no, no—Harry’s mother! If she is living it is—it is—in misery, and worse than misery.”
“He said,” uttered a hoarse voice, breathless, out of the dimness, which nobody could have recognised for Miss Bethune’s, “that you said there was no such woman.”
“I did—to comfort him, to make him believe that it was not true.”
“By a lie! And such a lie—a shameful lie, when you knew so different! And how should any one believe now a word you say?”
“Oh, don’t let her say such things to me, Miller, Miller!” cried the patient, with the cry of a sick child.
“Madam,” said the maid, “she’s very bad, as you see, and you’re making her every minute worse. You can see it yourself. It’s my duty to ask you to go away.”
Miss Bethune rose from the side of the bed like a ghost, tall and stern, and towering over the agitated, weeping woman who lay back on the white pillows, holding out supplicating hands and panting for breath. She stood for a moment looking as if she would have taken her by the throat. Then she gave herself a little shake, and turned away.
Once more the invalid clutched at her dress and drew her back. “Oh,” she cried, “have mercy upon me! Don’t go away—don’t go away! I will bear anything. Say what you like, but bring me Dora—bring me Dora—before I die.”
“Why should I bring you Dora? Me to whom nobody brings– What is it to me if you live or if you die?”
“Oh, bring me Dora—bring me Dora!” the poor woman wailed, holding fast by her visitor’s dress. She flung herself half out of the bed, drawing towards her with all her little force the unwilling, resisting figure. “Oh, for the sake of all you wish for yourself, bring me Dora—Dora—before I die!”
“What have you left me to wish for?” cried the other woman; and she drew her skirts out of the patient’s grasp.
No more different being from her who had entered an hour before by the long passages and staircases of the great hotel could have been than she who now repassed through them, looking neither to the right nor to the left—a woman like a straight line of motion and energy, as strong and stiff as iron, with expression banished from her face, and elasticity from her figure. She went back by the same streets she had come by, making her way straight through the crowd, which seemed to yield before the strength of passion and pain that was in her. There was a singing in her ears, and a buzzing in her head, and her heart was in her breast as if it had been turned to stone. Oh, she was not at her first shock of disappointment and despair. She had experienced it before; but never, she thought, in such terrible sort as now. She had so wrapped herself in this dream, which had been suggested to her by nothing but her own heart, what she thought her instinct, a sudden flash of divination, the voice of nature. She had felt sure of it the first glimpse she had of him, before he had even told her his name. She had been sure that this time it was the voice of nature, that intuition of a mother which could not be deceived. So many likenesses seemed to meet in Harry Gordon’s face, so many circumstances to combine in establishing the likelihood, at least, that this was he. South America, the very ideal place for an adventurer, and the strange fact that he had a mother living whom he did not know. A mother living! These words made a thrill of passion, of opposition, of unmoved and immovable conviction, rush through all her veins. A mother living! Who could that be but she? What would such a man care—a man who had abandoned his wife at the moment of a woman’s greatest weakness, and taken her child from her when she was helpless to resist him—for the ruin of her reputation after, for fixing upon her, among those who knew her not, the character of a profligate? He who had done the first, why should he hesitate to say the last? The one thing cost him trouble, the other none. It was easier to believe that than to give up what she concluded with certainty was her last hope.
Gilchrist, who had seen her coming, rushed downstairs to open the door for her. But Gilchrist, at this moment, was an enemy, the last person in the world in whom her mistress would confide; Gilchrist, who had never believed in it, had refused to see the likeness, or to encourage any delusion. She was blind to the woman’s imploring looks, her breathless “Oh, mem!” which was more than any question, and brushed past her with the same iron rigidity of pose, which had taken all softness from her natural angularity. She walked straight into her bedroom, where she took off her bonnet before the glass, without awaiting Gilchrist’s ministrations, nay, putting them aside with a quick impatient gesture. Then she went to her sitting-room, and drew her chair into her favourite position near the window, and took up the paper and began to read it with every appearance of intense interest. She had read it through every word, as is the practice of lonely ladies, before she went out: and she was profoundly conscious now of Gilchrist following her about, hovering behind her, and more anxious than words can say. Miss Bethune was an hour or more occupied about that newspaper, of which she did not see a single word, and then she rose suddenly to her feet.
“I cannot do it—I cannot do it!” she cried. “The woman has no claim on me. Most likely she’s nothing but a fool, that has spoilt everything for herself, and more. Maybe it will not be good for Dora. But I cannot do it—I cannot do it. It’s too strong for me. Whatever comes of it, she must see her child—she must see her child before she passes away and is no more seen. And oh, I wish—I wish that it was not her, but me!”
CHAPTER XVI
Dora passed the long evening of that day in her father’s room. It was one of those days in which the sun seems to refuse to set, the daylight to depart. It rolled out in afternoon sunshine, prolonged as it seemed for half a year’s time, showing no inclination to wane. When the sun at last went down, there ensued a long interval of day without it, and slowly, slowly, the shades of twilight came on. Mr. Mannering had been very quiet all the afternoon. He had sat brooding, unwilling to speak. The big book came back with Mr. Fiddler’s compliments, and was replaced upon his table, where he sat sometimes turning over the pages, not reading, doing nothing. There are few things more terrible to a looker-on than this silence, this self-absorption, taking no notice of anything outside of him, of a convalescent. The attitude of despondency, the bowed head, the curved shoulders, are bad enough in themselves: but nothing is so dreadful as the silence, the preoccupation with nothing, the eyes fixed on a page which is not read, or a horizon in which nothing is visible. Dora sat by him with a book, too, in which she was interested, which is perhaps the easiest way of bearing this; but the book ended before the afternoon did, and then she had nothing to do but to watch him and wonder what he was thinking of—whether his mind was roving over lands unknown to her, whether it was about the Museum he was thinking, or the doctor’s orders, or the bills, two or three of which had by misadventure fallen into his hands. What was it? He remained in the same attitude, quite still and steady, not moving a finger. Sometimes she hoped he might have fallen asleep; sometimes she addressed to him a faltering question, to which he answered Yes or No. He was not impatient when she spoke to him. He replied to her in monosyllables, which are almost worse than silence. And Dora durst not protest, could not upbraid him with that dreadful silence, as an older person might have done. “Oh, father, talk to me a little!” she once cried in her despair; but he said gently that he had nothing to talk about, and silenced the girl. He had taken the various meals and refreshments that were ordered for him, when they came, with something that was half a smile and half a look of disgust; and this was the final exasperation to Dora.
“Oh, father! when you know that you must take it—that it is the only way of getting well again.”
“I am taking it,” he said, with that twist of the lip at every spoonful which betrayed how distasteful it was.
This is hard to bear for the most experienced of nurses, and what should it be for a girl of sixteen? She clasped her hands together in her impatience to keep herself down. And then there came a knock at the door, and Gilchrist appeared, begging that Miss Dora would put on her hat and go out for a walk with Miss Bethune.
“I’ll come and sit with my work in a corner, and be there if he wants anything.”
Mr. Mannering did not seem to take any notice, but he heard the whisper at the door.
“There is no occasion for any one sitting with me. I am quite able to ring if I want anything.”
“But, father, I don’t want to go out,” said Dora.
“I want you to go out,” he said peremptorily. “It is not proper that you should be shut up here all day.”
“Let me light the candles, then, father?”
“I don’t want any candles. I am not doing anything. There is plenty of light for what I want.”
Oh, what despair it was to have to do with a man who would not be shaken, who would take his own way and no other! If he would but have read a novel, as Dora did—if he would but return to the study of his big book, which was the custom of his life. Dora felt that it was almost wicked to leave him: but what could she do, while he sat there absorbed in his thoughts, which she could not even divine what they were about?
To go out into the cool evening was a relief to her poor little exasperated temper and troubled mind. The air was sweet and fresh, even in Bloomsbury; the trees waved and rustled softly against the blue sky; there was a young moon somewhere, a white speck in the blue, though the light of day was not yet gone; the voices were softened and almost musical in the evening air, and it was so good to be out of doors, to be removed from the close controlling atmosphere of unaccustomed trouble. “Out of sight, out of mind,” people say. It was very far from being that; on the contrary, it was but the natural impatience, the mere contrariety, that had made the girl ready to cry with a sense of the intolerable which now was softened and subdued, allowing love and pity to come back. She could talk of nothing but her father as she went along the street.
“Do you think he looks any better, Miss Bethune? Do you think he will soon be able to get out? Do you think the doctor will let him return soon to the Museum? He loves the Museum better than anything. He would have more chance to get well if he might go back.”
“All that must be decided by time, Dora—time and the doctor, who, though we scoff at him sometimes, knows better, after all, than you or me. But I want you to think a little of the poor lady you are going to see.”
“What am I going to see? Oh, that lady? I don’t know if father will wish me to see her. Oh, I did not know what it was you wanted of me. I cannot go against father, Miss Bethune, when he is ill and does not know.”
“You will just trust to another than your father for once in your life, Dora. If you think I am not a friend to your father, and one that would consider him in all things–”
The girl walked on silently, reluctantly, for some time without speaking, with sometimes a half pause, as if she would have turned back. Then she answered in a low voice, still not very willingly: “I know you are a friend".
“You do not put much heart in it,” said Miss Bethune, with a laugh. The most magnanimous person, when conscious of having been very helpful and a truly good friend at his or her personal expense to another, may be pardoned a sense of humour, partially bitter, in the grudging acknowledgment of ignorance. Then she added more gravely: “When your father knows—and he shall know in time—where I am taking you, he will approve; whatever his feelings may be, he will tell you it was right and your duty: of that I am as sure as that I am living, Dora.”
“Because she is my aunt? An aunt is not such a very tender relation, Miss Bethune. In books they are often very cold comforters, not kind to girls that are poor. I suppose,” said Dora, after a little pause, “that I would be called poor?”
“You are just nothing, you foolish little thing! You have no character of your own; you are your father’s daughter, and no more.”
“I don’t wish to be anything more,” cried Dora, with her foolish young head held high.
“And this poor woman,” said Miss Bethune, exasperated, “will not live long enough to be a friend to any one—so you need not be afraid either of her being too tender or unkind. She has come back, poor thing, after long years spent out of her own country, to die.”
“To die?” the girl echoed in a horrified tone.
“Just that, and nothing less or more.”
Dora walked on by Miss Bethune’s side for some time in silence. There was a long, very long walk through the streets before they reached the coolness and freshness of the Park. She said nothing for a long time, until they had arrived at the Serpentine, which—veiled in shadows and mists of night, with the stars reflected in it, and the big buildings in the distance standing up solemnly, half seen, yet with gleams of lamps and light all over them, beyond, and apparently among the trees—has a sort of splendour and reality, like a great natural river flowing between its banks. She paused there for a moment, and asked, with a quick drawing of her breath: “Is it some one—who is dying—that you are taking me to see?”
“Yes, Dora; and next to your father, your nearest relation in the world.”
“I thought at one time that he was going to die, Miss Bethune.”
“So did we all, Dora.”
“And I was very much afraid—oh, not only heartbroken, but afraid. I thought he would suffer so, in himself,” she said very low, “and to leave me.”
“They do not,” said Miss Bethune with great solemnity, as if not of any individual, but of a mysterious class of people. “They are delivered; anxious though they may have been, they are anxious no more; though their hearts would have broken to part with you a little while before, it is no longer so; they are delivered. It’s a very solemn thing,” she went on, with something like a sob in her voice; “but it’s comforting, at least to the like of me. Their spirits are changed, they are separated; there are other things before them greater than what they leave behind.”
“Oh,” cried the girl, “I should not like to think of that: if father had ceased to think of me even before–”
“It is comforting to me,” said Miss Bethune, “because I am of those that are going, and you, Dora, are of those that are staying. I’m glad to think that the silver chain will be loosed and the golden bowl broken—all the links that bind us to the earth, and all the cares about what is to happen after.”
“Have you cares about what is to happen after?” cried Dora, “Father has, for he has me; but you, Miss Bethune?”
Dora never forgot, or thought she would never forget, the look that was cast upon her. “And I,” said Miss Bethune, “have not even you, have nobody belonging to me. Well,” she said, going on with a heavy long-drawn breath, “it looks as if it were true.”
This was the girl’s first discovery of what youth is generally so long in finding out, that in her heedlessness and unconscious conviction that what related to herself was the most important in the world, and what befel an elderly neighbour of so much less consequence, she had done, or at least said, a cruel thing. But she did not know how to mend matters, and so went on by her friend’s side dumb, confusedly trying to enter into, now that it was too late, the sombre complications of another’s thought. Nothing more was said till they were close to the great hotel, which shone out with its many windows luminous upon the soft background of the night. Then Miss Bethune put her hand almost harshly upon Dora’s arm.
“You will remember, Dora,” she said, “that the person we are going to see is a dying person, and in all the world it is agreed that where a dying person is he or she is the chief person, and to be considered above all. It is, maybe, a superstition, but it is so allowed. Their wants and their wishes go before all; and the queen herself, if she were coming into that chamber, would bow to it like all the rest: and so must you. It is, perhaps, not quite sincere, for why should a woman be more thought of because she is going to die? That is not a quality, you will say: but yet it’s a superstition, and approved of by all the civilised world.”
“Oh, Miss Bethune,” cried Dora, “I know that I deserve that you should say this to me: but yet–”
Her companion made no reply, but led the way up the great stairs.
The room was not so dark as before, though it was night; a number of candles were shining in the farther corner near the bed, and the pale face on the pillow, the nostrils dark and widely opened with the panting breath, was in full light, turned towards the door. A nurse in her white apron and cap was near the bed, beside a maid whose anxious face was strangely contrasted with the calm of the professional person. These accessories Dora’s quick glance took in at once, while yet her attention was absorbed in the central figure, which she needed no further explanation to perceive had at once become the first object, the chief interest, to all near her. Dying! It was more than mere reigning, more than being great. To think that where she lay there she was going fast away into the most august presence, to the deepest wonders! Dora held her breath with awe. She never, save when her father was swimming for his life, and her thoughts were concentrated on the struggle with all the force of personal passion, as if it were she herself who was fighting against death, had seen any such sight before.
“Is it Dora?” cried the patient. “Dora! Oh, my child, my child, have you come at last?”
And then Dora found arms round her clutching her close, and felt with a strange awe, not unmingled with terror, the wild beating of a feverish heart, and the panting of a laborious breath. The wan face was pressed against hers. She felt herself held for a moment with extraordinary force, and kisses, tears, and always the beat of that troubled breathing, upon her cheek. Then the grasp relaxed reluctantly, because the sufferer could do no more.
“Oh, gently, gently; do not wear yourself out. She is not going away. She has come to stay with you,” a soothing voice said.
“That’s all I want—all I want in this world—what I came for,” gave forth the panting lips.
Dora’s impulse was to cry, “No, no!” to rise up from her knees, upon which she had fallen unconsciously by the sick bed, to withdraw from it, and if possible get away altogether, terrified of that close vicinity: but partly what Miss Bethune had said, and partly natural feeling, the instinct of humanity, kept her in spite of herself where she was. The poor lady lay with her face intent upon Dora, stroking her hair and her forehead with those hot thin hands, beaming upon her with that ineffable smile which is the prerogative of the dying.
“Oh, my little girl,” she said,—“my only one, my only one! Twelve years it is—twelve long years—and all the time thinking of this! When I’ve been ill,—and I’ve been very ill, Miller will tell you,—I’ve kept up, I’ve forced myself to be better for this—for this!”
“You will wear yourself out, ma’am,” said the nurse. “You must not talk, you must be quiet, or I shall have to send the young lady away.”
“No, no!” cried the dying woman, again clutching Dora with fevered arms. “For what must I be quiet?—to live a little longer? I only want to live while she’s here. I only want it as long as I can see her—Dora, you’ll stay with me, you’ll stay with your poor—poor –”
“She shall stay as long as you want her: but for God’s sake think of something else, woman—think of where you’re going!” cried Miss Bethune harshly over Dora’s head.
They disposed of her at their ease, talking over her head, bandying her about—she who was mistress of her own actions, who had never been made to stay where she did not wish to stay, or to go where she did not care to go. But Dora was silent even in the rebellion of her spirit. There was a something more strong than herself, which kept her there on her knees in the middle of the circle—all, as Miss Bethune had said, attending on the one who was dying, the one who was of the first interest, to whom even the queen would bow and defer if she were to come in here. Dora did not know what to say to a person in such a position. She approved, yet was angry that Miss Bethune should bid the poor lady think where she was going. She was frightened and excited, not knowing what dreadful change might take place, what alteration, before her very eyes. Her heart began to beat wildly against her breast; pity was in it, but fear too, which is masterful and obliterates other emotions: yet even that was kept in check by the overwhelming influence, the fascination of the chamber of death.
Then there was a pause; and Dora, still on her knees by the side of the bed, met as best she could the light which dazzled her, which enveloped her in a kind of pale flame, from the eyes preternaturally bright that were fixed upon her face, and listened, as to a kind of strange lullaby, to the broken words of fondness, a murmur of fond names, of half sentences, and monosyllables, in the silence of the hushed room. This seemed to last for a long time. She was conscious of people passing with hushed steps behind her, looking over her head, a man’s low voice, the whisper of the nurses, a movement of the lights; but always that transfigured face, all made of whiteness, luminous, the hot breath coming and going, the hands about her face, the murmur of words. The girl was cramped with her attitude for a time, and then the cramp went away, and her body became numb, keeping its position like a mechanical thing, while her mind too was lulled into a curious sense of torpor, yet spectatorship. This lasted she did not know how long. She ceased to be aware of what was being said to her. Her own name, “Dora,” over and over again repeated, and strange words, that came back to her afterwards, went on in a faltering stream. Hours might have passed for anything she knew, when at last she was raised, scarcely capable of feeling anything, and put into a chair by the bedside. She became dimly conscious that the brilliant eyes that had been gazing at her so long were being veiled as with sleep, but they opened again suddenly as she was removed, and were fixed upon her with an anguish of entreaty. “Dora, my child,—my child! Don’t take her away!”
“She is going to sit by you here,” said a voice, which could only be a doctor’s voice, “here by your bedside. It is easier for her. She is not going away.”
Then the ineffable smile came back. The two thin hands enveloped Dora’s wrist, holding her hand close between them; and again there came a wonderful interval—the dark room, the little stars of lights, the soft movements of the attendants gradually fixing themselves like a picture on Dora’s mind. Miss Bethune was behind in the dark, sitting bolt upright against the wall, and never moving. Shadowed by the curtains at the foot of the bed was some one with a white and anxious face, whom Dora had only seen in the cheerful light, and could scarcely identify as Harry Gordon. A doctor and the white-capped nurse were in front, the maid crying behind. It seemed to go on again and last for hours this strange scene—until there suddenly arose a little commotion and movement about the bed, Dora could not tell why. Her hand was liberated; the other figures came between her and the wan face on the pillow, and she found herself suddenly, swiftly swept away. She neither made any resistance nor yet moved of her own will, and scarcely knew what was happening until she felt the fresh night air on her face, and found herself in a carriage, with Harry Gordon’s face, very grave and white, at the window.
“You will come to me in the morning and let me know the arrangements,” Miss Bethune said, in a low voice.
“Yes, I will come; and thank you, thank you a thousand times for bringing her,” he said.
They all talked of Dora as if she were a thing, as if she had nothing to do with herself. Her mind was roused by the motion, by the air blowing in her face. “What has happened? What has happened?” she asked as they drove away.
“Will she be up yonder already, beyond that shining sky? Will she know as she is known? Will she be satisfied with His likeness, and be like Him, seeing Him as He is?” said Miss Bethune, looking up at the stars, with her eyes full of big tears.
“Oh, tell me,” cried Dora, “what has happened?” with a sob of excitement; for whether she was sorry, or only awe-stricken, she did not know.
“Just everything has happened that can happen to a woman here. She has got safe away out of it all; and there are few, few at my time of life, that would not be thankful to be like her—out of it all: though it may be a great thought to go.”
“Do you mean that the lady is dead?” Dora asked in a voice of awe.
“She is dead, as we say; and content, having had her heart’s desire.”
“Was that me?” cried Dora, humbled by a great wonder. “Me? Why should she have wanted me so much as that, and not to let me go?”
“Oh, child, I know no more than you, and yet I know well, well! Because she was your mother, and you were all she had in the world.”
“My mother’s sister,” said Dora, with childish sternness; “and,” she added after a moment, “not my father’s friend.”
“Oh, hard life and hard judgment!” cried Miss Bethune. “Your mother’s own self, a poor martyr: except that at the last she has had, what not every woman has, for a little moment, her heart’s desire!”