page break

Chapter XX.

‘She should have died hereafter.’

Macbeth.

‘A gem that glitters while it lives,
And no forewarning gives;
But at the touch of wrong, without a strife,
Slips in a moment out of life.’

Wordsworth.

While Mrs. Sherlock's guests rejoiced themselves with games, with music, and with song, the stranger lady sat alone in her room. She had the companionship of her little boy till it was nearly eight o'clock, when Rosa, who had constituted herself his nurse, came to put him to bed. Rosa, like her mother, was much interested in the new lodger. She had an opportunity now to look closely at her face, when it was unshaded by bonnet or veil, and was surprised at its remarkable and uncommon beauty. The lady was very dark, and when the flush returned to her cheek, as it would for a moment, her complexion was brilliant in its colouring. But the large dark eyes were seldom lifted from the floor, and the lips might have forgotten to smile, so firmly were they pressed together. If she had never seen any one so beautiful before, Rosa page 275 thought, neither had she seen any one who looked so sad.

When the boy was sound asleep she went into the room again. She found the lady still in the same listless attitude in which she had already passed more than two hours—leaning her head on her hand, and with a vacancy of expression in her eyes which denoted a mind too well occupied with its own workings to take interest in aught besides. She started violently, even at the quiet tone in which Rosa asked if there was anything more she could do.

‘No; I do not want you again to-night,’ was the answer.

Rosa hesitated, and as she did not go, the lady looked up and seemed to repent of her answer as being almost unkind.

‘People who are ill and tired are often cross,’ she said; ‘but you who have lived in a lodging-house so long will know that. You are a good, kind girl, and have done enough for me already.’

She turned her face away again, and Rosa went out, leaving her alone.

The instant the door was closed she repented having sent the girl away. To have been able to glance at her pleasant face now and then, or even to know that she was sitting quietly in the room, would have relieved her from the sense of utter loneliness which pressed upon her sorely. Sounds of merriment reached her from the room in which Mrs. page 276 Sherlock's friends were enjoying themselves. She heard the din of voices whose very tones seemed full of joy, and sometimes a clear ringing laugh—the laughter of light-hearted girls. ‘And once I could laugh like that,’ she thought. ‘Once I went about singing. I wonder if any one sat apart as I am sitting now, and listened to me, and felt that my happiness taunted her grief. I never thought of others then. I hated to be troubled with people who were gloomy and sorrowful. I thought it must be their own fault somehow. I kept away from them. It is my turn now to be left to myself. If some one—I would not care who—were sitting beside me! now I had only a friendly face to look at! fancied I could do without friendship; but oh! when illness and trouble have come, when thoughts that will not be put aside, and fears that would be dismissed with a smile by a person who was in health, crowd into the mind—then it is not well to be alone.’

She knew she was very ill. She had known it ever since her short stay in Melbourne, where her suddenly failing health had compelled her to consult a doctor. He had talked to her very gravely and kindly, without holding out flattering hopes which could only have given her a false and dangerous security. There was to be no getting well for her. It might be months; possibly it might be years; perhaps it was very near at hand: he could not tell when the day which was to have no morrow would page 277 come; but its shadow already rested on her life. She was not to dream of restored health and strength—neither would be hers any more.

It is hard to be told this at twenty-three. She had assured herself frequently that her life had been a most unhappy one, and like many another woman she had in some sort hugged her unhappiness to her and made a luxury of sorrow. How often had she said bitterly that life was not worth having? Had she not in a moment of anguish cried out that, had it been hers to choose, and had the scroll of her days been spread before her like an open book, she would have refused the gift of life? It has been said that all who are born into this world have, at one time or another, that thought in their hearts. The man of old, who in the depth of his afflictions opened his mouth and cursed his day, was not the first who had been brought to loathe life and length of days. In the beginning it was so, and to the end it will be so with those who see no way out of their misery.

The Heaven against which such reproaches are levelled knows their insincerity. Life is sweet, even when, like children fretting over their broken toys, we thrust it from us because we cannot mould it as we please. Some do not know how sweet it is until they have come near losing it. And the lady of whom we write was unwilling to lay it down now. At the last hour she found that there was yet much to live for; much to do; much also to page 278 undo. Ah, why would the sands run out so quickly?

She was restless that evening, and the consciousness of an unperformed duty urged her to a task she disliked. She had sat with writing materials before her for nearly half an hour, without tracing a single letter. Then she wrote the date and address, and in an unsteady hand beneath, ‘My dear husband.’ It was a long time before anything more was added to this. A few short sentences were written at last; but when she read them over the sense seemed so obscure and so likely to be misunderstood that she tore up the letter and began afresh. A confusion of ideas that was unusual to her prevented her from doing better in the next essay. And the poor aching head was so heavy, the hands would tremble, and a dimness come before the eyes: she could not write that night. ‘But to-morrow—to-morrow I will finish it,’ she said. ‘To-morrow I shall feel better.’ And yet she had been told to trust in no to-morrow.

Soundly slumbered every one in the house at last. Blinds down, and lights extinguished, and in the streets only the faint brightness of a waning moon. It shone into the lady's room through the thin white curtains, and the ghostly shadows of waving trees moved across the window. How terrible these shadows seemed to Harry, who had suddenly awakened. Some were like giants stretching out their long arms; some were like monstrous shapes of birds or beasts. But, as he opened his eyes page 279 wider, they did not look so dreadful. Besides, there could not be anything dangerous near, for he had heard his mother call him. At least he thought he had heard his name, and he listened again; but she did not repeat it. Had he dreamed it? In after life he always felt that it had been no dream.

As she had called he must go to her. He never thought of disobeying, though it frightened him that he must get out of his little bed, where he always felt safe, and go across the room in that dusky light, which, with its gleams of moonshine and its moving shadows, excited his active imagination into peopling it with many dread presences. But he pattered across the floor with his bare feet, and came safely to the large armchair that stood by his mother's bed. When he clambered into this he was just on a level with her pillow. ‘Mamma,’ he whispered—for he was afraid to speak loud, and he knew she would wake even to a whisper from her little child—‘Mamma, I'm here, and it is so cold.’

Why did she not speak? He put his hand on her cheek; it was warm; but oh, how cold the hand that lay outside the coverlid! To his dying day he was never to forget the icy coldness of that hand.

‘Mamma is very fast asleep,’ he thought to himself. He saw that she must have partly thrown the coverings away from her neck and arms, and he gently drew them over her again, thinking of that cold hand. Once again he spoke to her; but no page 280 answer came. Child as he was, a great dread fell on him of something fearfully sad and strange that was here. He dared not go back to his own bed. There was a thick shawl lying on the chair; he wrapped it round him, also folding one end over that cold hand, and leaning against his mother's pillow fell asleep while waiting for her to wake and speak to him.

And whiter and whiter paled the still face on the pillow—as to marble whiteness amidst its tresses of black hair. The soft breathing of the child sounded loud in that chamber of silence. No other breath was drawn there. The covering he had wrapped around him gently rose and fell; he moved once or twice in his sleep. But on that white couch, in the glare of the moon, there was noi movement, not the tremor of a breath. A sound sleep had fallen on the one who lay there. In its majestic presence life's care intrudes no more; the throbbing of the passionate heart is stilled; the weary soul is folded in the arms of rest.

Yes, she slept. The moon shone on her white face for hours; then came the morning light, the sunrising, the cheerful bustle in the streets, and all the noise of day; but still she did not wake.