THE PLOT THICKENS.
The money which Griselda had brought the day before had added some
comfort to that bare room. A good fire was burning, and the bed on which
the man lay was covered with blankets.
There was wine, too, and food; and thus, all unawares, the daughter had
performed a daughter's duty, and had ministered to the comfort of the
last sad hours of that wasted life.
But it were vain to try to tell how Griselda's whole nature shrank from
this sudden revelation--how the impulse was strong to leave the room
before consciousness returned to the dying man--so intensely did she
dread the recognition which she knew must follow.
For Graves had risen from her knees; and, going to the table, had taken
a small case, and a letter from it, saying:
"He showed me these last night; they tell their own tale."
Poor little Norah had resumed her place by the bedside, exhausted with
her long watching. She had slipped down on the floor, and had fallen
into a doze. When Graves touched the case, she sprang up:
"No; you must not. Father said I was to let no one touch it till she
came. No----"
The movement, and the child's voice, roused the sick man. He opened his
large eyes, and looked about him--at first with no expression in them;
but presently those black, lack-lustre eyes became almost bright as he
fastened them on Griselda, and said, in a collected manner:
"Yes; I am glad I have lived to see you. Look! there is the portrait of
your mother, and a letter from her, in which is her wedding-ring. I
would not bury it with her; I kept it for you--her child--her only
child--_my_ child. Let me hear you call me 'father!' I was so cruel--so
base--she had to flee from me--my poor Phyllis!"
Griselda had opened the case, and stood irresolute with the portrait of
her mother in her hand. A lock of light hair was twisted into a curl,
fastened by a narrow band of small pearls.
The mother's face, lovely yet sad, looked up at the daughter's, and
seemed to express sympathy and pity for her.
Deeply had the mother suffered--would her child be like her in this, as
in outward form and semblance? The likeness was so unmistakable, that,
except for the different style of dress, the miniature might have been
painted as a portrait of Griselda herself.
"My mother!" she whispered softly; and, to the surprise of those who
stood by, the sick man said, in a voice very different from the raving
tones which had been ringing through the room and reaching to every part
of the house:
"Yes; your mother. I remember you, little Griselda--little Griselda. I
took you to Longueville, and left you there. You cried then to leave me;
you weep now to find me. Well, it is just. I have been a wicked wretch;
I have but little breath left--but take my poor little one out of
this--this stage-life. Take her, and try to love her; she is your
sister."
"I will," Griselda said. "I shall have a home soon--she shall share it."
"I thought as much--I hoped as much. He looks worthy of you, Griselda.
Norah," he said, "this is your sister--your princess, as you call her;
she will care for you. You will be a good little maid to her?"
"Yes, father," Norah said; and then, with touching simplicity, she put
her little hand into Griselda's, and, looking up at her, she saw tears
were coursing each other down her cheeks.
"Will you pray for me?" the dying man said. "Pray that I may be
forgiven."
"Pray for yourself, father," Griselda whispered.
He heard the word fall from her lips; and, putting out his long, thin,
wasted hand, he laid it on her head as she knelt by the bed, and said:
"I pray to be forgiven, and for blessings on you."
"For Christ's sake!"
The voice was from Graves, who, in broken accents, called upon the
Master whom she loved to have mercy on the poor penitent who lay dying.
Then little Norah, nestling close to her father, repeated the 23rd
Psalm; but before she had ended, her father became restless, and fumbled
for the paper, and said:
"The ring--the ring--her mother's ring!"
Griselda put it into his feeble, uncertain grasp, and he murmured:
"Put it on--put it on; and forgive me for all the misery I caused your
mother. I broke her heart; and then the flames--the cruel flames--took
from me the other poor child who loved me. My wife--Norah's
mother--well, if she had lived, I should have broken her heart, too."
After this there were no coherent words--all was confusion again; and
before the Abbey clock had struck out eleven, the spirit had passed
away. Who shall dare to limit the love and forgiveness of God in Christ?
With this sad story of a misspent and miserable life we have no more to
do here. It rolls back into the mists of oblivion with tens of thousands
like it in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and in all the
centuries since the world began. We dare not say such life-stories leave
no trace behind, for true it is that the evil lives, when the doer of
the evil is gone. The two daughters of this unhappy man were bearing the
consequences of his sin. The child cast penniless on the cold world, the
beautiful girl by her side suffering as only such a nature could suffer
from the sense of humiliation and distress that her father had been a
man whose very name must perish with him--for who would wish to keep it
in remembrance? Oh for the good name which is better than riches to
leave to our children! Surely, when troubled for the future of our sons
and daughters, we may strive to leave them that which is better than
silver and gold--the inheritance of a good name, of parents who have
been honourable members of the great commonwealth, true to God, and true
to man, and have scorned the paths of deceit and guile, as well as the
ways of open sin and treacherous wickedness.
"We must get back, Miss Griselda. Her ladyship will be returned. We must
go at once."
"Yes. But Norah--the child?"
"I will take care of her," Brian Bellis said. "See! she is almost
stupefied with her grief--she will scarce heed your departure!"
"I cannot leave her--poor little girl! She has no one in the world but
me!" Griselda said, in a tone of deep emotion.
While they were thus speaking, the stairs creaked under the weight of
Mrs. Betts, who, with one of the actors from the theatre, came to
inquire for Lamartine. Mrs. Betts was a coarse, loud-voiced woman, but
her nature was kind, and she pitied the child who had done so much for
her father with all her heart. She was a woman of decision too, and,
with one glance at the bed, she lifted the almost unconscious Norah in
her arms, and turning to the pale, haggard man, who had been acting in
Lamartine's place, she said:
"You bide here while I take the child to my lodgings. And we must give
notice of the death, and club to get him decently buried. Mr. Palmer
will give a guinea, and we'll all follow in the same line. Harrison, do
you hear?"
"Yes--yes," the man said hurriedly; "but don't leave me long alone here.
I--I don't care to have the company of a dead man for long."
"You are an arrant coward, then, for your pains! There, go into the
inner chamber, and I'll be back in half an hour. Turn the key in the
lock," Mrs. Betts said, as she began to trudge down the dark stairs with
Norah in her arms--"turn the key."
But the man sprang to the door:
"Don't--don't lock me in! I'll stay; but don't lock the door!"
A scornful laugh from Mrs. Betts was the answer, and Graves coolly
turned the key as she was told.
Brian Bellis had gone down to look for Zach and the torch, but no Zach
was to be found. He had made off to earn another gold-piece, and had
performed his errand well, as the event proved.
Poor Griselda had need of the support of Graves's strong arm as she
hurried her along to the North Parade. What if Lady Betty were before
her! What if it should come to her being really refused admittance to
the house! Graves trembled to think of it, and of what she would
personally be made to suffer if she were not at her post in her
mistress's bedroom at the appointed hour.
Griselda had really no thought about this. Her one longing was to get
back--back to her room, where she could pour forth her trouble, and
consider how she should tell him who had loved her so well, that she was
the daughter of the man by whose bedside they had stood together, all
unconscious that they were doing anything more than responding to the
entreaty of a child who was almost starving, and who was the only friend
the wretched man seemed to possess.
To Graves's intense relief, Mrs. Abbott opened the door, and, in reply
to the anxious question, said:
"No, her ladyship is not come home. Nobody has been here since Zach
returned to say you did not want him any more."
"I never said so!" Graves exclaimed. "We've groped home as best we
could, for the rain and mist put out the lights, and as to the lamps,
the glass is so thick with damp you can scarce see a spark in them."
While Graves was speaking, Griselda had gone wearily upstairs. Her cloak
was saturated with rain, and as she unfastened her _caleche_ the masses
of her hair fell back. At the top of the first flight she stopped.
"Graves! ask if a messenger has brought a letter for me."
"No," Mrs. Abbott said, answering--"no. Not a soul has been near the
house since you left it."
"No letter!--no letter!" Griselda murmured; and then, when she reached
her room, she threw aside her cloak and seated herself, with folded
hands, staring out into the embers of the fire with a look in her face
which made Graves say, as she hastened towards her:
"My dear! my poor child! don't look like that. It is over now--and a
mercy too. There will never be any need to tell--no one need know. It's
safe with me, and no one else need know. Come, let me help you to bed
before I am wanted elsewhere. Come!"
"I am not going to bed," Griselda said. "I must wait till he comes or
sends again."
"We'll, the gentleman won't send at this time of night, that's certain!
Come, they will be back at any minute now! Let me put you to bed. I
declare," said Graves, shuddering, "a change in the weather like this is
enough to give one rheumatism! I don't call the Bath climate so
wonderful--frost one day, thaw and rain the next!"
Graves made up the fire, and then, finding Griselda quite determined to
sit up, she left her to fetch some refreshment, wisely thinking that to
urge her against her will was hopeless just then.
"She will come round, poor child! It is a dreadful shock! I almost wish
I'd told her last night; but I hadn't the courage to do it. I make no
doubt the Lord is leading her to Himself by a rough path. But I don't
like that look in her face; it is not natural. She ought to cry; tears
are always softening to grief. Not that one can call it grief to lose a
father like him!"
No, it was not grief, but it was deep pity; and it was shame, and
soreness of heart, and wounded pride.
Then that letter she had written in the fulness of her first joy--that
letter, by which she cast herself upon Leslie Travers, and confided to
him her trouble about Sir Maxwell. He had never answered it. He had come
to the house, it is true, but he had been sent away. Hours had gone by
since, and he made no sign. What could she think but that he had looked
with an unfavourable eye upon that outpouring of her full
heart--perhaps thought her reference to Sir Maxwell's hateful addresses
unmaidenly, unwomanly?
Griselda went over all this again and again, sitting as Graves had left
her, her head resting against the back of a high Chippendale chair, her
feet on the brass fender, her hands clasped, and the wealth of her
beautiful hair covering her as with a mantle.
"How shall I tell him?" she said at last. "I must tell him; he must
know; he will not wish me to be his wife now, perhaps. There is little
Norah; I cannot part from her. How selfish I am! I am not thinking of
her, or of anybody but myself. Oh, what a cruel, cruel blow to all my
hopes! Ah, mother! mother!" she exclaimed as she suddenly remembered the
case she had dropped into her wide pocket with the ring and the letter.
"Ah! mother!"
For as her cold hands drew out the case, and she pressed the spring, it
flew open, and the mother's face seemed to have a living power for the
daughter.
Sympathy and maternal love and tenderness were all seen on that
beautiful countenance; and yet there was a strength in the lines of the
lovely mouth, those rosy, curved lips, parting as if to say, "Be of good
courage! the battle may be sore; but victory comes at length. Trust, and
be not afraid!"
Then tenderly and reverently Griselda unfolded the yellow paper, to
which a ring was fastened with many clumsy stitches of silk, and read
the faint characters of the few lines which were traced there.
"I send you back the ring, as the tie between us is broken, Patrick.
Keep it for our child; she is in safety at Longueville Park. Do not
molest her; leave her to a better home than _you_ can give her. You took
her there by my request; leave her there. Before you read this I shall
be no longer on earth; but I have forgiven you, dear, as I hope to be
forgiven. Ours has been the wrong. Oh, do not let the child suffer!
Leave her in the place where I was born and bred, and fulfil your vow,
never, never to do aught which may turn her uncle's heart against her.
It is my last request--my last hope! Adieu, Patrick!"
These words were so blurred that they were illegible; and Griselda sunk
on her knees by the chair, and the tears, so long frozen, poured forth
in a flood till her full heart was relieved.
Graves, coming in an hour later, found her with her fair head bowed on
her arms, asleep. Youth had triumphed over sorrow of heart, and sleep
had come, as it does come, with gentle power to blot out for a time the
sorrows of the young. Graves's eyes filled with tears as she looked at
her, and, taking a quilted cover from the bed, she threw it over her,
putting a pillow under her head, and murmuring:
"Alas, poor dear! I fear the worst for her is _not_ over. May God help
her! for man's help is vain. I can only pray for her. I dare not wake
her--not yet--not yet!"