“It is really a comfort to see what a fine appetite he has! — is it not, Helen?” said Rosalind, surrounding his plate with rolls of all sorts and sizes.
“I will call you ‘Wild Irish Girl’ in the very midst of the ball this evening if you do not behave better,” said young Mowbray.
“And if you do, I will....”
“Come along, Charles,” said his father; “her threats may put you out of heart for the whole day.”
“And might not we too take a walk before any of the people arrive?” said Fanny. “I have heard the cuckoo this morning for the first time. He was certainly thanking God for the sunshine; and I really think we ought to go out, and then we shall do so too.”
“A most delightful proposal!” cried Rosalind; “and if the birds should happen to introduce a jig movement, we can practise our dancing steps as we go along.”
“Wait half an hour for me,” said Charles, rising to accompany his father, “and I will join your party. Let us go to the Pebble-Ford, Rosalind; and you shall all three drink my health out of that dear pool beside it, that Ros.... Miss Torrington — admired so much the other day.”
“No, no, we can’t wait a moment, Char.... Mr. Mowbray—” said Rosalind. “Come, dear girls, let us be gone instantly.”
“Not wait for him on his birthday!” cried Helen. “But you are not in earnest, Rosalind?”
“How you do labour and toil to spoil that man, Helen!” said Miss Torrington, raising her hands and eyes as he left the room. “It is a great blessing for him that I have come amongst you! If any thing can save him from utter destruction, it is I shall do it.”
Charles however was waited for, and that for at least three times the period he had named; but he came at last, and the walk was taken, and the birds sang, and the brook sparkled, and the health was drunk cordially, even by Rosalind; and the gay party returned in time to see the first carriage approach, bearing guests invited to be present at the tenants’ dinner in the Park. Their morning toilet was hastily readjusted, as another and another equipage rolled onwards towards the house; and then the business of the day began. Lords and ladies, knights and squires, yeomen and peasants, were seen riding, driving, running, and walking through the spacious park in all directions. Then followed the rustic fête and the joyous carouse, in which the name of Charles Mowbray made the welkin ring; and then, the company having retreated to the house, came the hurried steps of a dozen lady’s-maids hastening to their various scenes of action, and valets converting closets of all sorts and sizes into dressing-rooms for unnumbered gentlemen; and then the banquet, and then the coffee and the short repose — and then the crowded ball.
All this came and went in order, and without the intervention of a single circumstance that might mar the enjoyment of a day long set apart for happiness, and which began and ended more exactly according to the wishes and intentions of those who arranged its festivities than often falls out at galas planned by mortals.
At five o’clock on the following morning the joyous din at length sank into silence, and as many as hospitable ingenuity could find room for lay down at Mowbray Park to enjoy again in dreams the untarnished gaiety of that happy day.
CHAPTER II.
THE MORNING AFTER THE BIRTHDAY.
Even the stable-boys deemed themselves privileged to sleep later than usual on the day after; and the ploughboy, as he went afield, missed the merry smile of the park dairy-maid, who, like her superiors, seemed to think on such an occasion time was made for very vulgar souls indeed, and that none who had joined in so illustrious a gala, could be expected to recover the full possession of their waking senses for some hours after the usual time.
By slow degrees, however, the different members of the establishment began to stretch themselves and give sign of reviving animation. The housemaids yawningly opened the window-shutters; the footmen crept after them to aid in removing from one room at least the traces of the jubilee, which, like the relics of a lamp that has burnt out, showed but the more unsightly from its past splendour; and at length, to a superficial eye, the breakfast-room looked like the breakfast-room of former years; though a more discriminating glance might have detected girandoles where no such things had ever glittered before, card-tables in the place of work-tables, and flowers, still blooming in situations as little usual to them as a bed of strawberries would have been the day before.
But it was long after these hireling efforts of forced labour had prepared the table for the morning meal, that any one of the favoured sleepers destined to partake of it left his or her downy pillow.... In short ... it was past mid-day before the family and their guests began to assemble; and even then many stragglers were still waited for before they appeared, and Mrs. Mowbray and Helen began at length to talk of breaking up the long session, and of giving orders to the butler to take care of all those who should come after.
“It is not very surprising that the Davenports, who never ceased dancing till long after the sun came to look at them,” said Helen,— “it is not all wonderful that they should sleep late, and I believe Mr. Vivian makes it a principle to be the last on all occasions. But I am quite astonished that papa does not appear: was he asleep, mamma, when you came down this morning?”
“No, Helen, not quite asleep, for he spoke to me. But I think he was very sleepy, for I hardly understood what he said; and as he appeared extremely tired when he went to bed, I told Curtis to darken the room again, and leave him quiet.”
Another half-hour brought forth the Davenports and Mr. Vivian; but still Mr. Mowbray did not appear, and Helen, though hitherto she had been quite satisfied by her mother’s account of his prolonged slumbers, again began to feel uneasy about him.
“Do you not think, mamma,” said she, “that I might venture to go up to him?”
“I see not the least objection to it, Helen; especially as we know, that if it were you who happened to wake him out of the soundest sleep he ever enjoyed, the pleasure of seeing you near him would quite atone for it.”
“Very well mamma, — then I shall certainly let him sleep no longer now;” and, so saying, Helen left the room.
“Is not Helen Mowbray a charming creature!” said a gentleman who was seated next Miss Torrington, and who, being neither young, handsome, rich, nor noble, felt that he could wound no feelings by expressing his admiration of one young lady to another.
“I will tell you what she is,” answered Rosalind warmly: “she is just as much better than every body else in the world, as her sister, there, is more beautiful.”
“And you are....” said the middle-aged gentleman, fixing a pair of very intelligent eyes on her face,— “you are....”
But notwithstanding the look of curiosity with which Miss Torrington listened, the speaker suddenly stopped, for a bell was rung with that sort of sudden and continued vehemence which denotes haste and agitation in the hand that gives it movement.
“That is my father’s bell!” said Charles in an accent of alarm; and starting up, he was out of the room in an instant.
Mrs. Mowbray immediately followed him, and for several minutes a sort of heavy silence seemed to have fallen on every individual present — not a word being uttered by any one, and the eyes of all fixing themselves on the face of Fanny, who kept her place as if spell-bound, but with a countenance that expressed a feeling approaching to terror.
“This is not to be borne!” exclaimed Rosalind abruptly. “Excuse us for a moment,” she added, addressing those who still remained in the breakfast-room.— “Come with me, Fanny, and let us know the worst at once.”
The two girls left the room together; and in a very few minutes afterwards a servant entered, the violent agitation of whose manner announced the news he brought before he spoke it.
“My master ... my poor master is dead!” were the words he uttered; and their effect upon a party assembled for an occasion of so much festivity, and who had so lately parted with their kind and happy host in perfect health, may be easily imagined.
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One single word in reply to the eager chorus of inquiry told the manner of his death —
“Apoplexy!”
The scene which followed was what such an event must necessarily produce. No single creature present, except one pretty portionless young lady who thought it very likely that Mr. Charles might now fall in love with her, could by possibility be benefited by the death of the amiable man who had just breathed his last, and it is therefore probable that the universal expression of regret was sincere in quality, though its quantity might have been somewhat preternaturally increased by the circumstances in which the parties were relatively placed when the awful event was made known. Several tears were shed, and some glasses of cold water called for, while the carriages were getting ready; the gentlemen all looked grave, and many of the ladies pale; but in less than half an hour they had all left the house, not one of them, as it happened, being on terms of sufficient intimacy with the family to justify their offering to remain at such a moment.
It is easy enough to dismiss from the scene persons whose feelings were so slightly interested in it; but far different would be the task were I to attempt painting the heartfelt anguish of those who remained. Mr. Mowbray had been so deeply yet so tranquilly loved by every member of his family — his intercourse with them had been so uniformly that of constant endearment, unchequered by any mixture of rough temper or unreasonable caprice, that their love for him was so natural and inevitable, that they had never reasoned upon it, or were fully aware of its intensity, till the dreadful moment in which they learned that they had lost him for ever.
The feelings of Mrs. Mowbray for many hours amounted to agony; for till a medical gentleman who examined the body at length succeeded in convincing her that she was mistaken, she felt persuaded that her beloved husband owed his death to her neglect, and that if, when she mistook his unintelligible speech for sleepiness, she had discovered his condition, and caused him to be bled, his precious life might have been saved. It was evident, however, from many circumstances, that the seizure was of a nature not to be baffled or parried by art; and the relief this conviction at length afforded the widow was so great, that her having first formed a contrary opinion was perhaps a blessing to her.
The grief of Charles was that of a young, ardent, and most affectionate spirit; but his mother and his sisters now seemed to hang upon him wholly, and the Being who alone can read all hearts only knew how deep was the sorrow he felt. The young Fanny, stealing away to her chamber, threw herself, in an agony of tears, upon her bed, and, forgotten in the general dismay that had fallen upon all, wept herself into a sleep that lasted till she awakened on the following morning to a renewed sense of sorrow which came over her like the dreadful memory of some frightful dream.
But of all those whom poor Mowbray had left to deplore his loss, it was Helen — his darling Helen — who unquestionably felt it the most profoundly. His love for her had all that is most touching in partiality, without one atom of the injustice which renders such a feeling criminal; and its effect upon her loving and enthusiastic temper was stronger than any words can describe.
Miss Torrington was perhaps beyond any other member of the family aware of this, and the tenderest pity for the silent, suffering Helen took possession of her. She was in truth a looker-on upon the melancholy scene, and as such, was more qualified to judge how sorrow worked in each of them than any other could be. Her residence in the family, though sufficient to impress her with the kindest feelings towards its chief, and the deepest impression of his worth, had hardly been long enough to awaken thoroughly her affections towards him, and she wept more in pity for those around her than from any personal feeling of grief for the loss she had herself sustained. To soothe poor Helen, to lead her thoughts even for a moment from the subject that engrossed them, and to keep her as much as possible from gazing in vain tenderness and hopeless agony upon the body of her father, became the sole occupation of Rosalind during the dreadful interval between the real loss of the beloved being to whom the soul of his child still fondly clung, and the apparently more final separation still which took place when all that was left of him was borne from the house.
Helen made little apparent return to all these tender cares, but she was fully conscious of them. She felt that Rosalind read her heart, and knew how to pity her; and the conviction turned liking into love, of that enduring kind which such hearts as Helen’s alone know how to give.
CHAPTER III.
THE VICAR OF WREXHILL.
On the day preceding that appointed for the funeral, Mrs. Mowbray received the following letter: —
“Madam,
“I trust that, as the minister of your parish, my venturing to break in upon your grief will not be considered as an intrusion. In the festivities which have ended so awfully, your hospitality invited me and my children to bear a part; and although I declined the invitation, I am most anxious to prove to you, madam, and to your family, that no deficiency of friendly feeling induced me to do so. But ‘it is better to go to the house of mourning than to the house of feasting,’ and I now therefore ask your permission to wait on you, with the most earnest hope that the sacred office I hold may enable you to receive me rather with a feeling of comfort than of pain. Be assured, madam, that short as the period of my ministry in the Parish of Wrexhill has been, it is with deep sympathy in the grief that afflicts you that I subscribe myself, madam,
“Your humble servant and friend,
“William Jacob Cartwright.
“Wrexhill Vicarage, May 9th, 1833.”
Little calculated as this letter may seem to excite violent emotion, it threw poor Mrs. Mowbray into an agony of renewed grief. The idea of seeing for the first time since her loss a person who, however well-meaning in his wish to visit her, must be classed as a stranger, was inexpressibly painful; and, unused to encounter difficulty or inconvenience of any kind, she shrank from receiving Mr. Cartwright with a degree of weakness which made her son, who had seldom left her side, tremble to think how little she was calculated to endure with firmness the desolation that had fallen upon her.
“Oh! no! no! no!” she exclaimed vehemently, “I cannot see him — I can see no one! — keep him from me, Charles, — keep every one from me, if you would not see me sink to the earth before your eyes!”
“My poor mother!...” said Charles, tenderly taking her hand, “do not let me see you tremble thus — you will make me tremble too! and we have need of strength — we have all great need of strength in this time of trial.”
“But you will not let this clergyman come to me, Charles!... Oh no! you cannot be so cruel!”
“The very weakness which makes you shrink from this, my dearest mother, is the strongest proof that such a visit should be sought, and not avoided. Where, mother, are we any of us to look for the strength we want, except from Him whose minister now seeks to comfort us?”
“He cannot comfort me!... Can you, can Helen, can my pretty Fanny comfort me?... Then how should he?... Charles, Charles, there is no comfort in seeing this strange man; you cannot think there is: then why do you still stand with his note in your hand as if doubtful how you ought to answer it?”
“No, mother, I am not doubtful: my very soul seems to sink within me, when I think that he whose precepts....”
Tears — copious woman-like tears choked the utterance of the athletic youth, who looked as if he could fight and conquer in any strife to which fortune or misfortune could lead him. But the softness that now mastered him came not of weakness, but of strength — strength of every feeling that might do honour to a man. For a few moments he gave way to this burst of passionate sorrow, and the mother and son wept together.
“My own dear Charles!” said Mrs. Mowbray, taking his hand and pressing it to her heart, “how could I think for a moment that you would urge me to do what was so very painful!”
“It can hardly be so painful for you to do as for me to urge it, dearest mother; and yet I must do so ... because I think it righ
t. There is no other person in the world, I think, of what rank or station soever, for whose admittance I would plead so earnestly, unless it were one who, like this gentleman, offered to visit you as the minister of God.”
Mrs. Mowbray buried her face in her handkerchief, and turned from him with a movement of impatience. At this moment, Helen, and her constant attendant Rosalind, entered the room. Mr. Cartwright’s note was still in Charles’s hand, and he gave it to his sister, saying, “Helen, I think my mother ought not to refuse this visit; but she is very averse to it. I would not pain her for the world; but this is not a moment to refuse any one who offers to visit us as the minister of Heaven.”
Helen read the note, and her pale cheeks were washed anew with tears as she did so.
“It is meant kindly,” she said as she laid it upon the table; “but it is very soon for my poor mother to meet a stranger.”
Rosalind’s eyes rested on the folded note, and some feeling suggested by the consciousness that she too was almost a stranger brought a flush to her cheek, and led her to step back towards a distant sofa. Whether Charles observed or understood the movement, she knew not; but he followed and placed the letter in her hand.
The words of Helen seemed to comfort her mother, for she again looked up, and addressing Charles, almost reproachfully, said,
“Your sister Helen thinks as I do, Charles: it would almost be an outrage against decency to receive a stranger on such a day as this.”
“Had the request to wait upon you come from our late clergyman, mother, would you have refused it?”
“Certainly not: but he was a friend of long standing, not a stranger, Charles.”
“But had he not been a clergyman, mother, you would hardly have wished him to choose such a time to make a visit here; and our not having yet become familiar with Mr. Cartwright in the common intercourse of society, seems to me no sufficient reason for refusing to see him in the sacred character in which he has offered to come....”
Collected Works of Frances Trollope Page 54
