‘To stoop and kiss the tender little thumb
That crossed the platter as she laid it down’, and to suit the action to the word—an audacious liberty for which, I feel bound to report, he was not duly reprimanded.
As no topic of conversation seemed to occur to any one, and as we were, all four, on those delightful terms with one another (the only terms, I think, on which any friendship, that deserves the name of intimacy, can be maintained) which involve no sort of necessity for speaking for mere speaking’s sake, we sat in silence for some minutes.
At length I broke the silence by asking ‘Is there any fresh news from the harbour about the Fever?’
‘None since this morning,’ the Earl said, looking very grave. ‘But that was alarming enough. The Fever is spreading fast: the London doctor has taken fright and left the place, and the only one now available isn’t a regular doctor at all: he is apothecary, and doctor, and dentist, and I don’t know what other trades, all in one. It’s a bad outlook for those poor fishermen—and a worse one for all the women and children.’
‘How many are there of them altogether?’ Arthur asked.
‘There were nearly one hundred, a week ago,’ said the Earl: ‘but there have been twenty or thirty deaths since then.’
‘And what religious ministrations are there to be had?’
‘There are three brave men down there,’ the Earl replied, his voice trembling with emotion, ‘gallant heroes as ever won the Victoria Cross! I am certain that no one of the three will ever leave the place merely to save his own life. There’s the Curate: his wife is with him: they have no children. Then there’s the Roman Catholic Priest. And there’s the Wesleyan Minister. They go amongst their own flocks mostly; but I’m told that those who are dying like to have any of the three with them. How slight the barriers seem to be that part Christian from Christian, when one has to deal with the great facts of Life and the reality of Death!’
‘So it must be, and so it should be—’ Arthur was beginning, when the front-door bell rang, suddenly and violently.
We heard the front-door hastily opened, and voices outside: then a knock at the door of the smoking-room, and the old house-keeper appeared, looking a little scared.
‘Two persons, my Lord, to speak with Dr. Forester.’
Arthur stepped outside at once, and we heard his cheery ‘Well, my men?’ but the answer was less audible, the only words I could distinctly catch being ‘ten since morning, and two more just—’
‘But there is a doctor there?’ we heard Arthur say: and a deep voice, that we had not heard before, replied ‘Dead, Sir. Died three hours ago.’
Lady Muriel shuddered, and hid her face in her hands: but at this moment the front-door was quietly closed, and we heard no more.
For a few minutes we sat quite silent: then the Earl left the room, and soon returned to tell us that Arthur had gone away with the two fishermen, leaving word that he would be back in about an hour. And, true enough, at the end of that interval—during which very little was said, none of us seeming to have the heart to talk—the front-door once more creaked on its rusty hinges, and a step was heard in the passage, hardly to be recognized as Arthur’s, so slow and uncertain was it, like a blind man feeling his way.
He came in, and stood before Lady Muriel, resting one hand heavily on the table, and with a strange look in his eyes, as if he were walking in his sleep.
‘Muriel—my love—’ he paused, and his lips quivered: but after a minute he went on more steadily. ‘Muriel—my darling—they—want me—down in the harbour.’
‘Must you go?’ she pleaded, rising and laying her hands on his shoulders, and looking up into his face with her great eyes brimming over with tears. ‘Must you go, Arthur? It may mean—death!’
He met her gaze without flinching. ‘It does mean death,’ he said, in a husky whisper: ‘but—darling—I am called. And even my life itself—’ His voice failed him, and he said no more.
For a minute she stood quite silent, looking upwards with a helpless gaze, as if even prayer were now useless, while her features worked and quivered with the great agony she was enduring. Then a sudden inspiration seemed to come upon her and light up her face with a strange sweet smile. ‘Your life?’ she repeated. ‘It is not yours to give!’
Arthur had recovered himself by this time, and could reply quite firmly, ‘That is true,’ he said. ‘It is not mine to give. It is yours, now, my—wife that is to be! And you—do you forbid me to go? Will you not spare me, my own beloved one?’
Still clinging to him, she laid her head softly on his breast. She had never done such a thing in my presence before, and I knew how deeply she must be moved. ‘I will spare you’, she said, calmly and quietly, ‘to God.’
‘And to God’s poor,’ he whispered.
‘And to God’s poor,’ she added. ‘When must it be, sweet love?’
‘To-morrow morning,’ he replied. ‘And I have much to do before then.’
And then he told us how he had spent his hour of absence. He had been to the Vicarage, and had arranged for the wedding to take place at eight the next morning (there was no legal obstacle, as he had, some time before this, obtained a Special Licence)
in the little church we knew so well. ‘My old friend here,’ indicating me, ‘will act as "Best Man", I know: your father will be there to give you away: and—and—you will dispense with bride’s-maids, my darling?’
She nodded: no words came.
‘And then I can go with a willing heart—to do God’s work—knowing that we are one—and that we are together in spirit, though not in bodily presence—and are most of all together when we pray! Our prayers will go up together—’
‘Yes, yes!’ sobbed Lady Muriel. ‘But you must not stay longer now, my darling! Go home and take some rest. You will need all your strength to-morrow—’
‘Well, I will go,’ said Arthur. ‘We will be here in good time to-morrow. Good night, my own own darling!’
I followed his example, and we two left the house together. As we walked back to our lodgings, Arthur sighed deeply once or twice, and seemed about to speak—but no words came, till we had entered the house, and had lit our candles, and were at our bedroom-doors. Then Arthur said ‘Good night, old fellow! God bless you!’
‘God bless you!’ I echoed from the very depths of my heart.
We were back again at the Hall by eight in the morning, and found Lady Muriel and the Earl, and the old Vicar, waiting for us.
It was a strangely sad and silent party that walked up to the little church and back; and I could not help feeling that it was much more like a funeral than a wedding: to Lady Muriel it was in fact, a funeral rather than a wedding, so heavily did the presentiment weigh upon her (as she told us afterwards) that her newly-won husband was going forth to his death.
Then we had breakfast; and, all too soon, the vehicle was at the door, which was to convey Arthur, first to his lodgings, to pick up the things he was taking with him, and then as far towards the death-stricken hamlet as it was considered safe to go. One or two of the fishermen were to meet him on the road, to carry his things the rest of the way.
‘And are you quite sure you are taking all that you will need?’ Lady Muriel asked.
‘All that I shall need as a doctor, certainly. And my own personal needs are few: I shall not even take any of my own wardrobe—there is a fisherman’s suit, ready-made, that is waiting for me at my lodgings. I shall only take my watch, and a few books, and—stay—there is one book I should like to add, a pocket-Testament—to use at the bedsides of the sick and dying—’
‘Take mine!’ said Lady Muriel: and she ran upstairs to fetch it. ‘It has nothing written in it but "Muriel",’ she said as she returned with it: ‘shall I inscribe—’
‘No, my own one,’ said Arthur, taking it from her. ‘What could you inscribe better than that? Could any human name mark it more clearly as my own individual property? Are you not mine? Are you not,’ (with all the old
playfulness of manner) ‘as Bruno would say, "my very mine"?’
He bade a long and loving adieu to the Earl and to me, and left the room, accompanied only by his wife, who was bearing up bravely, and was—outwardly, at least—less overcome than her old father. We waited in the room a minute or two, till the sounds of wheels had told us that Arthur had driven away; and even then we waited still, for the step of Lady Muriel, going upstairs to her room, to die away in the distance. Her step, usually so light and joyous, now sounded slow and weary, like one who plods on under a load of hopeless misery; and I felt almost as hopeless, and almost as wretched as she. ‘Are we four destined ever to meet again, on this side the grave?’ I asked myself, as I walked to my home. And the tolling of a distant bell seemed to answer me, ‘No! No, No!’
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
A NEWSPAPER-CUTTING
EXTRACT FROM THE ‘FAYFIELD CHRONICLE’
Our readers will have followed with painful interest, the accounts we have from time to time published of the terrible epidemic which has, during the last two months, carried off most of the inhabitants of the little fishing-harbour adjoining the village of Elveston. The last survivors, numbering twenty-three only, out of a population which, three short months ago, exceeded one hundred and twenty, were removed on Wednesday last, under the authority of the Local Board, and safely lodged in the County Hospital: and the place is now veritably ‘a city of the dead’, without a single human voice to break its silence.
The rescuing party consisted of six sturdy fellows—fishermen from the neighbourhood—directed by the resident Physician of the Hospital, who came over for that purpose, heading a train of hospital-ambulances. The six men had been selected—from a much larger number who had volunteered for this peaceful ‘forlorn hope’—for their strength and robust health, as the expedition was considered to be, even now, when the malady has expended its chief force, not unattended with danger.
Every precaution that science could suggest, against the risk of infection, was adopted: and the sufferers were tenderly carried on litters, one by one, up the steep hill, and placed in the ambulances which, each provided with a hospital nurse, were waiting on the level road. The fifteen miles, to the Hospital, were done at a walking-pace, as some patients were in too prostrate a condition to bear jolting, and the journey occupied the whole afternoon.
The twenty-three patients consist of nine men, six women, and eight children. It has not been found possible to identify them all, as some of the children—left with no surviving relatives—are infants: and two men and one woman are not yet able to make rational replies, the brain-powers being entirely in abeyance. Among a more well-to-do race, there would no doubt have been names marked on the clothes; but here no such evidence is forthcoming.
Besides the poor fishermen and their families, there were but five persons to be accounted for: and it was ascertained, beyond a doubt, that all five are numbered with the dead. It is a melancholy pleasure to place on record the names of these genuine martyrs—than whom none, surely, are more worthy to be entered on the glory-roll of England’s heroes!
They are as follows:
The Rev. James Burgess, M. A., and Emma his wife. He was the Curate at the Harbour, not thirty years old, and had been married only two years. A written record was found in their house, of the dates of their deaths.
Next to theirs we will place the honoured name of Dr. Arthur Forester, who, on the death of the local physician, nobly faced the imminent peril of death, rather than leave these poor folk uncared for in their last extremity. No record of his name, or of the date of his death, was found: but the corpse was easily identified, although dressed in the ordinary fisherman’s suit (which he was known to have adopted when he went down there), by a copy of the New Testament, the gift of his wife, which was found, placed next his heart, with his hands crossed over it. It was not thought prudent to remove the body, for burial elsewhere: and accordingly it was at once committed to the ground, along with four others found in different houses, with all due reverence. His wife, whose maiden name was Lady Muriel Orme, had been married to him on the very morning on which he undertook his self-sacrificing mission.
Next we record the Rev. Walter Saunders, Wesleyan Minister. His death is believed to have taken place two or three weeks ago, as the words ‘Died October 5’ were found written on the wall of the room which he is known to have occupied—the house being shut up, and apparently not having been entered for some time.
Last—though not a whit behind the other four in glorious self-denial and devotion to duty—let us record the name of Father Francis, a young Jesuit Priest who had been only a few months in the place. He had not been dead many hours when the exploring party came upon the body, which was identified, beyond the possibility of doubt, by the dress, and by the crucifix which was, like the young Doctor’s Testament, clasped closely to his heart.
Since reaching the hospital, two of the men and one of the children have died. Hope is entertained for all the others:
though there are two or three cases where the vital powers seem to be so entirely exhausted that it is but ‘hoping against hope’ to regard ultimate recovery as even possible.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
A FAIRY-DUET
THE year—what an eventful year it had been for me!—was drawing to a close, and the brief wintry day hardly gave light enough to recognize the old familiar objects, bound up with so many happy memories, as the train glided round the last bend into the station, and the hoarse cry of ‘Elveston! Elveston!’ resounded along the platform.
It was sad to return to the place, and to feel that I should never again see the glad smile of welcome, that had awaited me here so few months ago. ‘And yet, if I were to find him here,’ I muttered, as in solitary state I followed the porter, who was wheeling my luggage on a barrow, ‘and if he were to "strike a sudden hand in mine, And ask a thousand things of home", I should not—no, "I should not feel it to be strange"!’
Having given directions to have my luggage taken to my old lodgings, I strolled off alone, to pay a visit, before settling down in my own quarters, to my dear old friends—for such I indeed felt them to be, though it was barely half a year since first we met—the Earl and his widowed daughter.
The shortest way, as I well remembered, was to cross through the churchyard. I pushed open the little wicket-gate and slowly took my way among the solemn memorials of the quiet dead, thinking of the many who had, during the past year, disappeared from the place, and had gone to ‘join the majority’. A very few steps brought me in sight of the object of my search. Lady Muriel, dressed in the deepest mourning, her face hidden by a long crape veil, was kneeling before a little marble cross, round which she was fastening a wreath of flowers.
The cross stood on a piece of level turf, unbroken by any mound, and I knew that it was simply a memorial-cross, for one whose dust reposed elsewhere, even before reading the simple inscription:
In loving Memory of ARTHUR FORESTER, M.D.
whose mortal remains lie buried by the sea:
whose spirit has returned to God who gave it.
‘GREATER LOVE HATH NO MAN THAN THIS, THAT
A MAN LAY DOWN HIS LIFE FOR HIS FRIENDS.’
She threw back her veil on seeing me approach, and came forwards to meet me, with a quiet smile, and far more self-possessed than I could have expected.
‘It is quite like old times, seeing you here again!’ she said, in tones of genuine pleasure. ‘Have you been to see my father?’
‘No,’ I said: ‘I was on my way there, and came through here as the shortest way. I hope he is well, and you also?’
‘Thanks, we are both quite well. And you? Are you any better yet?’
‘Not much better, I fear: but no worse, I am thankful to say.’
‘Let us sit here awhile, and have a quiet chat,’ she said. The calmness—almost indifference—of her manner quite took me by surprise. I little guessed what a fierce restraint she was putting upon herself.
‘One can be so quiet here,’ she resumed. ‘I come here every—every day.’
‘It is very peaceful,’ I said.
‘You got my letter?’
‘Yes, but I delayed writing. It is so hard to say—on paper —’
‘I know. It was kind of you. You were with us when we saw the last of —’ She paused a moment, and went on more hurriedly.
‘I went down to the harbour several times, but no one knows which of those vast graves it is. However, they showed me the house he died in: that was some comfort. I stood in the very room where—where —’ She struggled in vain to go on. The flood-gates had given way at last, and the outburst of grief was the most terrible I had ever witnessed. Totally regardless of my presence, she flung herself down on the turf, burying her face in the grass, and with her hands clasped round the little marble cross. ‘Oh, my darling, my darling!’ she sobbed. ‘And God meant your life to be so beautiful!’
I was startled to hear, thus repeated by Lady Muriel, the very words of the darling child whom I had seen weeping so bitterly over the dead hare. Had some mysterious influence passed, from that sweet fairy-spirit, ere she went back to Fairyland, into the human spirit that loved her so dearly? The idea seemed too wild for belief. And yet, are there not ‘more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophy’?
‘God meant it to be beautiful,’ I whispered, ‘and surely it was beautiful? God’s purpose never fails!’ I dared say no more, but rose and left her. At the entrance-gate to the Earl’s house I waited, leaning on the gate and watching the sun set, revolving many memories—some happy, some sorrowful—until Lady Muriel joined me.
Complete Works of Lewis Carroll Page 58
