Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon

by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

  In vain Hubert Arundel talked to him; in vain did he himself pray for faith and comfort in this dark hour of trial. He could not bear to leave his child alone in the world. In the foolishness of his love, he would have trusted in the strength of his own arm to shield her in the battle; yet he could not trust her hopefully to the arm of God. He prayed for her night and day during the last week of his illness; while she was praying passionately, almost madly, that he might be spared to her, or that she might die with him. Better for her, according to all mortal reasoning, if she had. Happier for her, a thousand times, if she could have died as she wished to die, clinging to her father’s breast.

  The blow fell at last upon those two loving hearts. These were the awful shadows of death that shut his child’s face from John Marchmont’s fading sight. His feeble arms groped here and there for her in that dim and awful obscurity.

  Yes, this was death. The narrow tract of yellow sand had little by little grown narrower and narrower. The dark and cruel waters were closing in; the feeble boat went down into the darkness: and Mary stood alone, with her dead father’s hand clasped in hers,––the last feeble link which bound her to the Past,––looking blankly forward to an unknown Future.

  CHAPTER XI. THE DAY OF DESOLATION.

  Yes; the terrible day had come. Mary Marchmont roamed hither and thither in the big gaunt rooms, up and down the long dreary corridors, white and ghostlike in her mute anguish, while the undertaker’s men were busy in her father’s chamber, and while John’s widow sat in the study below, writing business letters, and making all necessary arrangements for the funeral.

  In those early days no one attempted to comfort the orphan. There was something more terrible than the loudest grief in the awful quiet of the girl’s anguish. The wan eyes, looking wearily out of a white haggard face, that seemed drawn and contracted as if by some hideous physical torture, were tearless. Except the one long wail of despair which had burst from her lips in the awful moment of her father’s death agony, no cry of sorrow, no utterance of pain, had given relief to Mary Marchmont’s suffering.

  She suffered, and was still. She shrank away from all human companionship; she seemed specially to avoid the society of her stepmother. She locked the door of her room upon all who would have intruded on her, and flung herself upon the bed, to lie there in a dull stupor for hour after hour. But when the twilight was grey in the desolate corridors, the wretched girl wandered out into the gallery on which her father’s room opened, and hovered near that solemn death–chamber; fearful to go in, fearful to encounter the watchers of the dead, lest they should torture her by their hackneyed expressions of sympathy, lest they should agonise her by their commonplace talk of the lost.

  Once during that brief interval, while the coffin still held terrible tenancy of the death–chamber, the girl wandered in the dead of the night, when all but the hired watchers were asleep, to the broad landing of the oaken staircase, and into a deep recess formed by an embayed window that opened over the great stone porch which sheltered the principal entrance to Marchmont Towers.

  The window had been left open; for even in the bleak autumn weather the atmosphere of the great house seemed hot and oppressive to its living inmates, whose spirits were weighed down by a vague sense of the Awful Presence in that Lincolnshire mansion. Mary had wandered to this open window, scarcely knowing whither she went, after remaining for a long time on her knees by the threshold of her father’s room, with her head resting against the oaken panel of the door,––not praying; why should she pray now, unless her prayers could have restored the dead? She had come out upon the wide staircase, and past the ghostly pictured faces, that looked grimly down upon her from the oaken wainscot against which they hung; she had wandered here in the dim grey light––there was light somewhere in the sky, but only a shadowy and uncertain glimmer of fading starlight or coming dawn––and she stood now with her head resting against one of the angles of the massive stonework, looking out of the open window.

  The morning which was already glimmering dimly in the eastern sky behind Marchmont Towers was to witness poor John’s funeral. For nearly six days Mary Marchmont had avoided all human companionship: for nearly six days she had shunned all human sympathy and comfort. During all that time she had never eaten, except when forced to do so by her stepmother; who had visited her from time to time, and had insisted upon sitting by her bedside while she took the food that had been brought to her. Heaven knows how often the girl had slept during those six dreary days; but her feverish slumbers had brought her very little rest or refreshment. They had brought her nothing but cruel dreams, in which her father was still alive; in which she felt his thin arms clasped round her neck, his faint and fitful breath warm upon her cheek.

  A great clock in the stables struck five while Mary Marchmont stood looking out of the Tudor window. The broad grey flat before the house stretched far away, melting into the shadowy horizon. The pale stars grew paler as Mary looked at them; the black–water pools began to glimmer faintly under the widening patch of light in the eastern sky. The girl’s senses were bewildered by her suffering, and her head was light and dizzy.

  Her father’s death had made so sudden and terrible a break in her existence, that she could scarcely believe the world had not come to an end, with all the joys and sorrows of its inhabitants. Would there be anything more after to–morrow? she thought; would the blank days and nights go monotonously on when the story that had given them a meaning and a purpose had come to its dismal end? Surely not; surely, after those gaunt iron gates, far away across the swampy waste that was called a park, had closed upon her father’s funeral train, the world would come to an end, and there would be no more time or space. I think she really believed this in the semi–delirium into which she had fallen within the last hour. She believed that all would be over; and that she and her despair would melt away into the emptiness that was to engulf the universe after her father’s funeral.

  Then suddenly the full reality of her grief flashed upon her with horrible force. She clasped her hands upon her forehead, and a low faint cry broke from her white lips.

  It was not all over. Time and space would not be annihilated. The weary, monotonous, workaday world would still go on upon its course. Nothing would be changed. The great gaunt stone mansion would still stand, and the dull machinery of its interior would still go on: the same hours; the same customs; the same inflexible routine. John Marchmont would be carried out of the house that had owned him master, to lie in the dismal vault under Kemberling Church; and the world in which he had made so little stir would go on without him. The easy–chair in which he had been wont to sit would be wheeled away from its corner by the fireplace in the western drawing–room. The papers in his study would be sorted and put away, or taken possession of by strange hands. Cromwells and Napoleons die, and the earth reels for a moment, only to be “alive and bold” again in the next instant, to the astonishment of poets, and the calm satisfaction of philosophers; and ordinary people eat their breakfasts while the telegram lies beside them upon the table, and while the ink in which Mr. Reuter’s message is recorded is still wet from the machine in Printing–house Square.

  Anguish and despair more terrible than any of the tortures she had felt yet took possession of Mary Marchmont’s breast. For the first time she looked out at her own future. Until now she had thought only of her father’s death. She had despaired because he was gone; but she had never contemplated the horror of her future life,––a life in which she was to exist without him. A sudden agony, that was near akin to madness, seized upon this girl, in whose sensitive nature affection had always had a morbid intensity. She shuddered with a wild dread at the prospect of that blank future; and as she looked out at the wide stone steps below the window from which she was leaning, for the first time in her young life the idea of self–destruction flashed across her mind.

  She uttered a cry, a shrill, almost unearthly cry, that was notwithstanding low and feeble, and clambere
d suddenly upon the broad stone sill of the Tudor casement. She wanted to fling herself down and dash her brains out upon the stone steps below; but in the utter prostration of her state she was too feeble to do this, and she fell backwards and dropped in a heap upon the polished oaken flooring of the recess, striking her forehead as she fell. She lay there unconscious until nearly seven o’clock, when one of the women–servants found her, and carried her off to her own room, where she suffered herself to be undressed and put to bed.

  Mary Marchmont did not speak until the good–hearted Lincolnshire housemaid had laid her in her bed, and was going away to tell Olivia of the state in which she had found the orphan girl.

  “Don’t tell my stepmother anything about me, Susan,” she said; “I think I was mad last night.”

  This speech frightened the housemaid, and she went straight to the widow’s room. Mrs. Marchmont, always an early riser, had been up and dressed for some time, and went at once to look at her stepdaughter.

  She found Mary very calm and reasonable. There was no trace of bewilderment or delirium now in her manner; and when the principal doctor of Swampington came a couple of hours afterwards to look at the young heiress, he declared that there was no cause for any alarm. The young lady was sensitive, morbidly sensitive, he said, and must be kept very quiet for a few days, and watched by some one whose presence would not annoy her. If there was any girl of her own age whom she had ever shown a predilection for, that girl would be the fittest companion for her just now. After a few days, it would be advisable that she should have change of air and change of scene. She must not be allowed to brood continuously on her father’s death. The doctor repeated this last injunction more than once. It was most important that she should not give way too perpetually to her grief.

  So Mary Marchmont lay in her darkened room while her father’s funeral train was moving slowly away from the western entrance. It happened that the orphan girl’s apartments looked out into the quadrangle; so she heard none of the subdued sounds which attended the departure of that solemn procession. In her weakness she had grown submissive to the will of others. She thought this feebleness and exhaustion gave warning of approaching death. Her prayers would be granted, after all. This anguish and despair would be but of brief duration, and she would ere long be carried to the vault under Kemberling Church, to lie beside her father in the black stillness of that solemn place.

  Mrs. Marchmont strictly obeyed the doctor’s injunctions. A girl of seventeen, the daughter of a small tenant farmer near the Towers, had been a special favourite with Mary, who was not apt to make friends amongst strangers. This girl, Hester Pollard, was sent for, and came willingly and gladly to watch her young patroness. She brought her needlework with her, and sat near the window busily employed, while Mary lay shrouded by the curtains of the bed. All active services necessary for the comfort of the invalid were performed by Olivia or her own special attendant––an old servant who had lived with the Rector ever since his daughter’s birth, and had only left him to follow that daughter to Marchmont Towers after her marriage. So Hester Pollard had nothing to do but to keep very quiet, and patiently await the time when Mary might be disposed to talk to her. The farmer’s daughter was a gentle, unobtrusive creature, very well fitted for the duty imposed upon her.

  CHAPTER XII. PAUL.

  Olivia Marchmont sat in her late husband’s study while John’s funeral train was moving slowly along under the misty October sky. A long stream of carriages followed the stately hearse, with its four black horses, and its voluminous draperies of rich velvet, and nodding plumes that were damp and heavy with the autumn atmosphere. The unassuming master of Marchmont Towers had won for himself a quiet popularity amongst the simple country gentry, and the best families in Lincolnshire had sent their chiefs to do honour to his burial, or at the least their empty carriages to represent them at that mournful ceremonial. Olivia sat in her dead husband’s favourite chamber. Her head lay back upon the cushion of the roomy morocco–covered arm–chair in which he had so often sat. She had been working hard that morning, and indeed every morning since John Marchmont’s death, sorting and arranging papers, with the aid of Richard Paulette, the Lincoln’s Inn solicitor, and James Gormby, the land–steward. She knew that she had been left sole guardian of her stepdaughter, and executrix to her husband’s will; and she had lost no time in making herself acquainted with the business details of the estate, and the full nature of the responsibilities intrusted to her.

  She was resting now. She had done all that could be done until after the reading of the will. She had attended to her stepdaughter. She had stood in one of the windows of the western drawing–room, watching the departure of the funeral cortège; and now she abandoned herself for a brief space to that idleness which was so unusual to her.

  A fire burned in the low grate at her feet, and a rough cur––half shepherd’s dog, half Scotch deer–hound, who had been fond of John, but was not fond of Olivia––lay at the further extremity of the hearth–rug, watching her suspiciously.

  Mrs. Marchmont’s personal appearance had not altered during the two years of her married life. Her face was thin and haggard; but it had been thin and haggard before her marriage. And yet no one could deny that the face was handsome, and the features beautifully chiselled. But the grey eyes were hard and cold, the line of the faultless eyebrows gave a stern expression to the countenance; the thin lips were rigid and compressed. The face wanted both light and colour. A sculptor copying it line by line would have produced a beautiful head. A painter must have lent his own glowing tints if he wished to represent Olivia Marchmont as a lovely woman.

  Her pale face looked paler, and her dead black hair blacker, against the blank whiteness of her widow’s cap. Her mourning dress clung closely to her tall, slender figure. She was little more than twenty–five, but she looked a woman of thirty. It had been her misfortune to look older than she was from a very early period in her life.

  She had not loved her husband when she married him, nor had she ever felt for him that love which in most womanly natures grows out of custom and duty. It was not in her nature to love. Her passionate idolatry of her boyish cousin had been the one solitary affection that had ever held a place in her cold heart. All the fire of her nature had been concentrated in this one folly, this one passion, against which only heroic endurance had been able to prevail.

  Mrs. Marchmont felt no grief, therefore, at her husband’s loss. She had felt the shock of his death, and the painful oppression of his dead presence in the house. She had faithfully nursed him through many illnesses; she had patiently tended him until the very last; she had done her duty. And now, for the first time, she had leisure to contemplate the past, and look forward to the future.

  So far this woman had fulfilled the task which she had taken upon herself; she had been true and loyal to the vow she had made before God’s altar, in the church of Swampington. And now she was free. No, not quite free; for she had a heavy burden yet upon her hands; the solemn charge of her stepdaughter during the girl’s minority. But as regarded marriage–vows and marriage–ties she was free.

  She was free to love Edward Arundel again.

  The thought came upon her with a rush and an impetus, wild and strong as the sudden uprising of a whirlwind, or the loosing of a mountain–torrent that had long been bound. She was a wife no longer. It was no longer a sin to think of the bright–haired soldier, fighting far away. She was free. When Edward returned to England by–and–by, he would find her free once more; a young widow,––young, handsome, and rich enough to be no bad prize for a younger son. He would come back and find her thus; and then––and then––!

  She flung one of her clenched hands up into the air, and struck it on her forehead in a sudden paroxysm of rage. What then? Would he love her any better then than he had loved her two years ago? No; he would treat her with the same cruel indifference, the same commonplace cousinly friendliness, with which he had mocked and tortured her before. Oh, s
hame! Oh, misery! Was there no pride in women, that there could be one among them fallen so low as her; ready to grovel at the feet of a fair–haired boy, and to cry aloud, “Love me, love me! or be pitiful, and strike me dead!”

  Better that John Marchmont should have lived for ever, better that Edward Arundel should die far away upon some Eastern battle–field, before some Affghan fortress, than that he should return to inflict upon her the same tortures she had writhed under two years before.

  “God grant that he may never come back!” she thought. “God grant that he may marry out yonder, and live and die there! God keep him from me for ever and for ever in this weary world!”

  And yet in the next moment, with the inconsistency which is the chief attribute of that madness we call love, her thoughts wandered away dreamily into visions of the future; and she pictured Edward Arundel back again at Swampington, at Marchmont Towers. Her soul burst its bonds and expanded, and drank in the sunlight of gladness: and she dared to think that it might be so––there might be happiness yet for her. He had been a boy when he went back to India––careless, indifferent. He would return a man,––graver, wiser, altogether changed: changed so much as to love her perhaps.

  She knew that, at least, no rival had shut her cousin’s heart against her, when she and he had been together two years before. He had been indifferent to her; but he had been indifferent to others also. There was comfort in that recollection. She had questioned him very sharply as to his life in India and at Dangerfield, and she had discovered no trace of any tender memory of the past, no hint of a cherished dream of the future. His heart had been empty: a boyish, unawakened heart: a temple in which the niches were untenanted, the shrine unhallowed by the presence of a goddess.

  Olivia Marchmont thought of these things. For a few moments, if only for a few moments, she abandoned herself to such thoughts as these. She let herself go. She released the stern hold which it was her habit to keep upon her own mind; and in those bright moments of delicious abandonment the glorious sunshine streamed in upon her narrow life, and visions of a possible future expanded before her like a fairy panorama, stretching away into realms of vague light and splendour. It was possible; it was at least possible.