Sometimes I repented my temerity in having undertaken it. I distrusted my courage. Had I not better retreat, while it was yet time? But there was shame and even difficulty in the thought. How should I appear before my father? Was it not important — had I not deliberately undertaken it — and was I not bound in conscience? Perhaps he had already taken steps in the matter which committed him. Besides, was I sure that, even were I free again, I would not once more devote myself to the trial, be it what it might? You perceive I had more spirit than courage. I think I had the mental attributes of courage; but then I was but a hysterical girl, and in so far neither more nor less than a coward.
No wonder I distrusted myself; no wonder also my will stood out against my timidity. It was a struggle, then; a proud, wild resolve against constitutional cowardice.
Those who have ever had cast upon them more than their strength seemed framed to bear — the weak, the aspiring, the adventurous and self-sacrificing in will, and the faltering in nerve — will understand the kind of agony which I sometimes endured.
But, again, consolation would come, and it seemed to me that I must be exaggerating my risk in the coming crisis; and certain at least, if my father believed it attended with real peril, he would never have wished to see me involved in it. But the silence under which I was bound was terrifying — double so when the danger was so shapeless and undivulged.
I was soon to understand it all — soon, too, to know all about my father’s impending journey, whither, with what visitor, and why guarded from me with so awful a mystery.
That day there came a lively and goodnatured letter from Lady Knollys. She was to arrive at Knowl in two or three days’ time. I thought my father would have been pleased, but he seemed apathetic and dejected.
‘One does not always feel quite equal to Monica. But for you — yes, thank God. I wish she could only stay, Maud, for a month or two; I may be going then, and would be glad — provided she talks about suitable things — very glad, Maud, to leave her with you for a week or so.’
There was something, I thought, agitating my father secretly that day. He had the strange hectic flush I had observed when he grew excited in our interview in the garden about Uncle Silas. There was something painful, perhaps even terrible, in the circumstances of the journey he was about to make, and from my heart I wished the suspense were over, the annoyance past, and he returned.
That night my father bid me goodnight early and went upstairs. After I had been in bed some little time, I heard his hand-bell ring. This was not usual. Shortly after I heard his man, Ridley, talking with Mrs. Rusk in the gallery. I could not be mistaken in their voices. I knew not why I was startled and excited, and had raised myself to listen on my elbow. But they were talking quietly, like persons giving or taking an ordinary direction, and not in the haste of an unusual emergency.
Then I heard the man bid Mrs. Rusk goodnight and walk down the gallery to the stairs, so that I concluded he was wanted no more, and all must therefore be well. So I laid myself down again, though with a throbbing at my heart, and an ominous feeling of expectation, listening and fancying footsteps.
I was going to sleep when I heard the bell ring again; and, in a few minutes, Mrs. Rusk’s energetic step passed along the gallery; and, listening intently, I heard, or fancied, my father’s voice and hers in dialogue. All this was very unusual, and again I was, with a beating heart, leaning with my elbow on my pillow.
Mrs. Rusk came along the gallery in a minute or so after, and stopping at my door, began to open it gently. I was startled, and challenged my visitor with —
‘Who’s there?’
‘It’s only Rusk, Miss. Dearie me! and are you awake still?’
‘Is papa ill?’
‘Ill! not a bit ill, thank God. Only there’s a little black book as I took for your prayer-book, and brought in here; ay, here it is, sure enough, and he wants it. And then I must go down to the study, and look out this one, “C, 15;” but I can’t read the name, noways; and I was afraid to ask him again; if you be so kind to read it, Miss — I suspeck my eyes is a-going.’
I read the name; and Mrs. Rusk was tolerably expert at finding out books, as she had often been employed in that way before. So she departed.
I suppose that this particular volume was hard to find, for she must have been a long time away, and I had actually fallen into a doze when I was roused in an instant by a dreadful crash and a piercing scream from Mrs. Rusk. Scream followed scream, wilder and more terror-stricken. I shrieked to Mary Quince, who was sleeping in the room with me:— ‘Mary, do you hear? what is it? It is something dreadful.’
The crash was so tremendous that the solid flooring even of my room trembled under it, and to me it seemed as if some heavy man had burst through the top of the window, and shook the whole house with his descent. I found myself standing at my own door, crying, ‘Help, help! murder! murder!’ and Mary Quince, frightened half out of her wits, by my side.
I could not think what was going on. It was plainly something most horrible, for Mrs. Rusk’s screams pealed one after the other unabated, though with a muffled sound, as if the door was shut upon her; and by this time the bells of my father’s room were ringing madly.
‘They are trying to murder him!’ I cried, and I ran along the gallery to his door, followed by Mary Quince, whose white face I shall never forget, though her entreaties only sounded like unmeaning noises in my ears.
‘Here! help, help, help!’ I cried, trying to force open the door.
‘Shove it, shove it, for God’s sake! he’s across it,’ cried Mrs. Rusk’s voice from within; ‘drive it in. I can’t move him.’
I strained all I could at the door, but ineffectually. We heard steps approaching. The men were running to the spot, and shouting as they did so —
‘Never mind; hold on a bit; here we are; all right;’ and the like.
We drew back, as they came up. We were in no condition to be seen. We listened, however, at my open door.
Then came the straining and bumping at the door. Mrs. Rusk’s voice subsided to a sort of wailing; the men were talking all together, and I suppose the door opened, for I heard some of the voices, on a sudden, as if in the room; and then came a strange lull, and talking in very low tones, and not much even of that.
‘What is it, Mary? what can it be?’ I ejaculated, not knowing what horror to suppose. And now, with a counterpane about my shoulders, I called loudly and imploringly, in my horror, to know what had happened.
But I heard only the subdued and eager talk of men engaged in some absorbing task, and the dull sounds of some heavy body being moved.
Mrs. Rusk came towards us looking half wild, and pale as a spectre, and putting her thin hands to my shoulders, she said— ‘Now, Miss Maud, darling, you must go back again; ’tisn’t no place for you; you’ll see all, my darling, time enough — you will. There now, there, like a dear, do get into your room.’
What was that dreadful sound? Who had entered my father’s chamber? It was the visitor whom we had so long expected, with whom he was to make the unknown journey, leaving me alone. The intruder was Death!
CHAPTER XXI
ARRIVALS
My father was dead — as suddenly as if he had been murdered. One of those fearful aneurisms that lie close to the heart, showing no outward sign of giving way in a moment, had been detected a good time since by Dr. Bryerly. My father knew what must happen, and that it could not be long deferred. He feared to tell me that he was soon to die. He hinted it only in the allegory of his journey, and left in that sad enigma some words of true consolation that remained with me ever after. Under his rugged ways was hidden a wonderful tenderness. I could not believe that he was actually dead. Most people for a minute or two, in the wild tumult of such a shock, have experienced the same skepticism. I insisted that the doctor should be instantly sent for from the village.
‘Well, Miss Maud, dear, I will send to please you, but it is all to no use. If only you saw him yourself you�
�d know that. Mary Quince, run you down and tell Thomas, Miss Maud desires he’ll go down this minute to the village for Dr. Elweys.’
Every minute of the interval seemed to me like an hour. I don’t know what I said, but I fancied that if he were not already dead, he would lose his life by the delay. I suppose I was speaking very wildly, for Mrs. Rusk said —
‘My dear child, you ought to come in and see him; indeed but you should, Miss Maud. He’s quite dead an hour ago. You’d wonder all the blood that’s come from him — you would indeed; it’s soaked through the bed already.’
‘Oh, don’t, don’t, don’t, Mrs. Rusk.’
‘Will you come in and see him, just?
‘Oh, no, no, no, no!’
‘Well, then, my dear, don’t of course, if you don’t like; there’s no need. Would not you like to lie down, Miss Maud? Mary Quince, attend to her. I must go into the room for a minute or two.’
I was walking up and down the room in distraction. It was a cool night; but I did not feel it. I could only cry:— ‘Oh, Mary, Mary! what shall I do? Oh, Mary Quince! what shall I do?’
It seemed to me it must be near daylight by the time the Doctor arrived. I had dressed myself. I dared not go into the room where my beloved father lay.
I had gone out of my room to the gallery, where I awaited Dr. Elweys, when I saw him walking briskly after the servant, his coat buttoned up to his chin, his hat in his hand, and his bald head shining. I felt myself grow cold as ice, and colder and colder, and with a sudden sten my heart seemed to stand still.
I heard him ask the maid who stood at the door, in that low, decisive, mysterious tone which doctors cultivate —
‘In here?’
And then, with a nod, I saw him enter.
‘Would not you like to see the Doctor, Miss Maud?’ asked Mary Quince.
The question roused me a little.
‘Thank you, Mary; yes, I must see him.’
And so, in a few minutes, I did. He was very respectful, very sad, semi-undertakerlike, in air and countenance, but quite explicit. I heard that my dear father ‘had died palpably from the rupture of some great vessel near the heart.’ The disease had, no doubt, been ‘long established, and is in its nature incurable.’ It is ‘consolatory in these cases that in the act of dissolution, which is instantaneous, there can be no suffering.’ These, and a few more remarks, were all he had to offer; and having had his fee from Mrs. Rusk, he, with a respectful melancholy, vanished.
I returned to my room, and broke into paroxysms of grief, and after an hour or more grew more tranquil.
From Mrs. Rusk I learned that he had seemed very well — better than usual, indeed — that night, and that on her return from the study with the book he required, he was noting down, after his wont, some passages which illustrated the text on which he was employing himself. He took the book, detaining her in the room, and then mounting on a chair to take down another book from a shelf, he had fallen, with the dreadful crash I had heard, dead upon the floor. He fell across the door, which caused the difficulty in opening it. Mrs. Rusk found she had not strength to force it open. No wonder she had given way to terror. I think I should have almost lost my reason.
Everyone knows the reserved aspect and the taciturn mood of the house, one of whose rooms is tenanted by that mysterious guest.
I do not know how those awful days, and more awful nights, passed over. The remembrance is repulsive. I hate to think of them. I was soon draped in the conventional black, with its heavy folds of crape. Lady Knollys came, and was very kind. She undertook the direction of all those details which were to me so inexpressibly dreadful. She wrote letters for me beside, and was really most kind and useful, and her society supported me indescribably. She was odd, but her eccentricity was leavened with strong common sense; and I have often thought since with admiration and gratitude of the tact with which she managed my grief.
There is no dealing with great sorrow as if it were under the control of our wills. It is a terrible phenomenon, whose laws we must study, and to whose conditions we must submit, if we would mitigate it. Cousin Monica talked a great deal of my father. This was easy to her, for her early recollections were full of him.
One of the terrible dislocations of our habits of mind respecting the dead is that our earthly future is robbed of them, and we thrown exclusively upon retrospect. From the long look forward they are removed, and every plan, imagination, and hope henceforth a silent and empty perspective. But in the past they are all they ever were. Now let me advise all who would comfort people in a new bereavement to talk to them, very freely, all they can, in this way of the dead. They will engage in it with interest, they will talk of their own recollections of the dead, and listen to yours, though they become sometimes pleasant, sometimes even laughable. I found it so. It robbed the calamity of something of its supernatural and horrible abruptness; it prevented that monotony of object which is to the mind what it is to the eye, and prepared the faculty for those mesmeric illusions that derange its sense.
Cousin Monica, I am sure, cheered me wonderfully. I grow to love her more and more, as I think of all her trouble, care, and kindness.
I had not forgotten my promise to dear papa about the key, concerning which he had evinced so great an anxiety. It was found in the pocket where he had desired me to remember he always kept it, except when it was placed, while he slept, under his pillow.
‘And so, my dear, that wicked woman was actually found picking the lock of your poor papa’s desk. I wonder he did not punish her — you know that is burglary.’
‘Well, Lady Knollys, you know she is gone, and so I care no more about her — that is, I mean, I need not fear her.’
‘No, my dear, but you must call me Monica — do you mind — I’m your cousin, and you call me Monica, unless you wish to vex me. No, of course, you need not be afraid of her. And she’s gone. But I’m an old thing, you know, and not so tender-hearted as you; and I confess I should have been very glad to hear that the wicked old witch had been sent to prison and hard labour — I should. And what do you suppose she was looking for — what did she want to steal? I think I can guess — what do you think?’
‘To read the papers; maybe to take banknotes — I’m not sure,’ I answered.
‘Well, I think most likely she wanted to get at your poor papa’s will — that’s my idea.
‘There is nothing surprising in the supposition, dear,’ she resumed. ‘Did not you read the curious trial at York, the other day? There is nothing so valuable to steal as a will, when a great deal of property is to be disposed of by it. Why, you would have given her ever so much money to get it back again. Suppose you go down, dear — I’ll go with you, and open the cabinet in the study.’
‘I don’t think I can, for I promised to give the key to Dr. Bryerly, and the meaning was that he only should open it.’
Cousin Monica uttered an inarticulate ‘H’m!’ of surprise or disapprobation.
‘Has he been written to?’
‘No, I do not know his address.’
‘Not know his address! come, that is curious,’ said Knollys, a little testily.
I could not — no one now living in the house could furnish even a conjecture. There was even a dispute as to which train he had gone by — north or south — they crossed the station at an interval of five minutes. If Dr. Bryerly had been an evil spirit, evoked by a secret incantation, there could not have been more complete darkness as to the immediate process of his approach.
‘And how long do you mean to wait, my dear? No matter; at all events you may open the desk; you may find papers to direct you — you may find Dr. Bryerly’s address — you may find, heaven knows what.’
So down we went — I assenting — and we opened the desk. How dreadful the desecration seems — all privacy abrogated — the shocking compensation for the silence of death!
Henceforward all is circumstantial evidence — all conjectural — except the litera scripta, and to this evidence every
notebook, and every scrap of paper and private letter, must contribute — ransacked, bare in the light of day — what it can.
At the top of the desk lay two notes sealed, one to Cousin Monica, the other to me. Mine was a gentle and loving little farewell — nothing more — which opened afresh the fountains of my sorrow, and I cried and sobbed over it bitterly and long.
The other was for ‘Lady Knollys.’ I did not see how she received it, for I was already absorbed in mine. But in awhile she came and kissed me in her girlish, goodnatured way. Her eyes used to fill with tears at sight of my paroxysms of grief. Then she would begin, ‘I remember it was a saying of his,’ and so she would repeat it — something maybe wise, maybe playful, at all events consolatory — and the circumstances in which she had heard him say it, and then would follow the recollections suggested by these; and so I was stolen away half by him, and half by Cousin Monica, from my despair and lamentation.
Along with these lay a large envelope, inscribed with the words ‘Directions to be complied with immediately on my death.’ One of which was, ‘Let the event be forthwith published in the county and principal London papers.’ This step had been already taken. We found no record of Dr. Bryerly’s address.
We made search everywhere, except in the cabinet, which I would on no account permit to be opened except, according to his direction, by Dr. Bryerly’s hand. But nowhere was a will, or any document resembling one, to be found. I had now, therefore, no doubt that his will was placed in the cabinet.
In the search among my dear father’s papers we found two sheafs of letters, neatly tied up and labelled — these were from my uncle Silas.
My cousin Monica looked down upon these papers with a strange smile; was it satire — was it that indescribable smile with which a mystery which covers a long reach of years is sometimes approached?
These were odd letters. If here and there occurred passages that were querulous and even abject, there were also long passages of manly and altogether noble sentiment, and the strangest rodomontade and maunderings about religion. Here and there a letter would gradually transform itself into a prayer, and end with a doxology and no signature; and some of them expressed such wild and disordered views respecting religion, as I imagine he can never have disclosed to good Mr. Fairfield, and which approached more nearly to the Swedenborg visions than to anything in the Church of England.
Complete Works of Sheridan Le Fanu (Illustrated) Page 226
