COMING HOME.
"Alice," said Robert Streightley to the old nurse, who had kept an
anxious watch upon him from the moment she had heard Yeldham's parting
words, "I want to speak to you. Come upstairs with me to Miss Ellen's
room."
It was about noon, on the second day after Charles Yeldham reached
Paris; and Robert had received his letter, with the enclosure from
Katharine, that morning. It had been delivered at the hour which
usually found Robert at breakfast, and old Alice in attendance upon
him; as in the old time, which had had so brief, so brilliant, and so
melancholy an interruption. But on this occasion Robert was alone, by
his own express desire; and Alice, too much concerned, too seriously
apprehensive to be affronted, had acquiesced without grumbling in his
request that she would leave him for a little. No human eye,
therefore, had seen Robert's perusal of his wife's letter--had
witnessed the effect produced on him by such a reversal of his life
for the past three years. His heart had known its own bitterness, and
neither friend nor stranger was near now to meddle with its joy--a joy
too deep for utterance, too supreme almost for endurance--a joy full
of keen and piercing pain, of repentance, infinitely more terrible
since forgiveness had come, and rich with the divinest blessings of
hope. Hours had gone over since the glorious light of this new life
had dawned--unheeded hours; and now Robert called to Alice, and she
came. As he spoke, the old woman looked at him anxiously, but his face
reassured her. It was very pale, and he looked old--he had been
looking old of late, she had often thought--but peace, serenity, a
calm, which she felt without understanding or questioning, were on the
features, and a smile--a sweet and serious smile--lighted them. She
followed him without a word to the now disused but always orderly,
room which had been Mrs. Dutton's in her maiden days. It was a pretty,
bright, simple apartment, with gay chintz curtains, carefully pinned
up now, and covered with holland wrappings; with a bright carpet,
covered with its linen shroud; and pretty furniture, simple and
inexpensive, but in good taste and in perfect order. The day was
bright and clear, and the tireless room, though cold, was not
cheerless. Robert glanced round the room, placed a chair for Alice,
bade her sit down, and shut the door. Then he set his back against the
door, and said:
"Alice, I want you to get this room made ready for a lady as soon as
possible."
"Lord bless us! Master Robert," said the old woman nervously, "who
ever's coming, and the mistress away, and Miss Ellen not fit to be
left, I'm sure--not for a fortnight yet, if so soon----"
"Alice, dear old woman!" said Robert, and he bent his tall figure, and
laid his hands kindly on her shoulders,--"it is for my wife. My wife
is coming back to me!"
She looked at him with the timid uncertainty of old age, and began to
tremble and cry.
"Yes, she's coming," he said. "You don't know her, Alice,--you saw her
very seldom; you don't know how good she is----"
"Good, Master Robert! and stay from you so long, and you in trouble,
and so fond of her!"
"She did not know I was in trouble, nurse; I never told her anything
of the kind. She thought I was the same rich man I had been when she
left me; and it was all my fault. I cannot explain; but if you love
me,--and I know you do, old nurse, I know you do--who so well?--never
blame my wife in your heart, or let others blame her in your hearing.
But she's coming back to me; think of that."
"When?" was Alice's first practical question; "does my mistress know?"
was her second.
"To-morrow, or the next day, I hope; I am not sure, until I hear
again--no, my mother does not know; no one knows. She will come here
to me, until I can get a quiet home of our own; then she and I will
begin our life again;" and as Robert spoke the words, he could hardly
believe in the meaning they conveyed.
Alice had entertained no favourable opinion of Katharine, and had
never thought at all of her of late, since she had ceased to be
mentioned by Mrs. Streightley. But Robert's joy acted as a revelation
of his sorrow to the faithful friend who watched him more closely, and
knew him better than any one in the world beside. She listened,
therefore, with the utmost attention to his directions, and promised
the closest compliance with his wishes. Every thing should be done to
make the house fit for Mrs. Streightley's reception; little was
needed, indeed, but the fires should be lighted and the rooms swept
and garnished. Robert thought of the suite of apartments at Portland
Place, and of the "Lady-Kilmantan" hangings at Middlemeads, but not
bitterly; he thought of them, indeed, with a smile: such things
mattered little now to him, or to his wife. His wife! He called her by
the sacred name, in his thoughts, a thousand times in an hour, and
life seemed too short and narrow for all his thankfulness and joy.
The news soon spread through the little household, and was received
with much indifference. The three female servants who composed the
modest establishment were new-comers; they had known nothing of
Robert's wife, and cared nothing about her. But they liked him, and
they were rather glad than otherwise that any thing should occur to
give him pleasure, more especially as Nurse Alice informed them the
"young madam's" residence would be but temporary, for they agreed
unanimously that they "couldn't abide two mistresses, and in course it
was only natural as Mr. Robert's wife should like to have her own
way." Thus they set to work with very tolerable activity and
good-will, and the work of preparation went on briskly.
How the hours of that day passed over Robert Streightley he could not
have told, had there been any to question him. Should he write? he had
asked himself, when he was once more shut up in the dining-room and
secure from interruption. What could he say? To Yeldham he might
possibly write a few words of thanks and thankfulness; but what would
they avail? what a poor mockery they would be! But perhaps he had
better write them. Then the strong man, who had seen his fortunes
crumble into dust, and stood upright amid the ruins, took a pen in his
hand, and tried to form a few simple words, and he could not do it;
darkness gathered before his eyes and his senses reeled. So he went
out to the nearest telegraph-office, and he dictated a message to a
clerk in three words,--"Come home quickly;" and he lingered about
until he knew they had been clicked off to Paris, and then he began to
count the time as he walked, he hardly knew where, about the clean,
frosty suburban roads, and to speculate upon the exact moment when his
wife would receive his message. So wandering, while the short hours of
the winter's day were waning, he found himself on the borders of
Clapham Common, and leant for a few minutes idly against an iron post,
watching the omnibuses starting from the Plough, and their conductors
warming themselves by brisk exercise, assisted by strong drink. A
narrow road led away to his right; and a little way down, a tall,
graceful, lancelike church-spire showed solemn and beautiful against
the steel-coloured vault of the sky; the stars were beginning to
twinkle, and the leafless trees rustled sharp and brittle in the
frosty air. Looking upward at the spire, Robert turned down the narrow
road, and found himself in a minute before the low gate and little
paved court in front of a modern Gothic church, small, but of rich and
correct architecture. The gate swung open as he came up to it, and
several children ran gladly out into the road. Through the porch and
the heavy oak-door, iron-clamped, and half-open, Robert saw glimpses
of the interior of the church, saw gleams of rich colour and bits of
quaint Gothic decoration. The grand sonorous tones of an organ swelled
out suddenly, and ceased, as he stood idly looking and listening. The
notes were the last of the "practice," and accompanied a reiterated
"Amen" by children's voices. He passed through the gate into the
porch, and, after a moment's hesitation, entered the church. A great
longing for the peace of God had come over him, and here was God's
house; it mattered not to him that the form of the worship therein
was Catholic, not that to which he was accustomed, and he went in.
There was no light in the church save the red gleam from the
sacramental-lamp, swung by long silver chains before the High Altar;
the gas-jets which had given light to the organist were turned out as
he went into the church, and the children went down the gallery-stairs
and trooped noisily away. A man lingered for a few minutes to arrange
some chairs piled against the wall of a side aisle, and then departed,
having left all in order for the evening service, to commence in an
hour. Robert was quite alone: over the large window, high up in the
wall, behind which the guests of the Community (for the church was
attached to a monastery) were wont to sit and assist unseen at Divine
worship, a crimson curtain hung; there was no human eye to witness the
emotion of his soul.
Robert sat long, absorbed in thought; then he drew near the
altar-rail, and kneeled down upon the marble step. The red light shone
solemnly upon his kneeling figure, and upon the paintings glowing on
the sanctuary-walls. His eyes wandered over these, until they rested
upon one, and then they stayed their wandering. It represented a Man
of infinitely benign and sorrowful aspect, in whose figure there was
great dignity and power. He stood with outstretched arms and piercing
gaze directed out from the canvas, as though he looked into the faces
of a multitude. A scroll ran round the top of the picture, and bore
these words: "Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white
as snow."
The light was very dim; he could not have read the written words by
its glimmer had he needed to read them; but he did not. Kneeling
there, on the altar-step, before the face and the words of promise,
Robert took his wife's two letters from his breast, and, like Hezekiah
in his trouble, he, in his repentance and his gratitude, "spread them
before the Lord."
It was late when Robert reached home, and Alice was anxiously
expecting him. He was very cheerful, and listened with pleasure to the
old woman's account of all that had been done during the day in the
way of preparation for Katharine's reception. He had several matters
of business to attend to; and so the hours wore themselves away; and
at length he was the only one waking in the quiet house.
"You'll go to bed soon, Master Robert," old Alice had said to him;
"and you'll sleep well, I hope, for you'll not like to be looking ill
when Mrs. Streightley comes; and you're not strong, you know. Promise
me, now, that you'll not sit up."
So Robert promised, and he fully meant to keep his word; but as the
night wore on restlessness came upon him, and distressing pain in the
head and eyeballs. He wondered that any illness or pain could come
near him, he was so happy so thankful--God had been so good to him,
and Katharine was coming home! He could not sleep; no, the effort
would be useless; so he made up the fire in the sitting-room, and he
walked up and down, trying to tire himself into sleepiness. He had
lost command over his thoughts; and though he might not have tried to
guide them otherwise than they were going, he felt that he had lost
it, and they hurried wildly into the past. All his life seemed to pass
before him in a strange phantasmagoria, of which he was but a
spectator; and innumerable forgotten scenes, and faces which he had
not seen for years, rose up before him,--the first day he had seen
Katharine, the day at the Flower-show, the day Mr. Guyon had shown him
the letter. Good God, how terrible that recollection was! But she had
forgiven him now, and he might fairly try to forgive himself, with
this blessed assurance (and he grasped the letter in his breast with
his hand as he walked up and down) in his possession, and the
certainty of reading a full pardon in her eyes before long. And then
he shuddered, shook through all his limbs with the strong contest of
emotion, with irrepressible passionate delight and pain. Anon he rose
again, and was whirled away upon another storm of thoughts. Mr. Guyon
was present to him--the terrible sudden death. Ah, he had taken that
too lightly; he had condemned the dead man too hastily and too
heavily; the dead man, who had cared for trifles, who had found
pleasure in things he could not comprehend, but was no worse than he;
the dead man, who loved money and enjoyment, and naught beside. Well,
he ought to have pitied him for that--he did pity him, for he was
dead. His daughter could not come to him with soft words of peace, and
heavenly smiles of pardon, as she was coming to the husband who had
wronged her. He did pity the dead old man. He thought how coldly he
had looked on the dead face--the rigid, ashy face; he remembered it
well, how forlorn and ghastly it was! how awfully alone!--more so than
any dead face he had ever seen. And then he remembered how carelessly
he had attended the funeral; he had had no thought, no sorrow for the
dead; his heart had been rent and wrung with anguish for the loss of
Katharine; he had hardly heard the Burial Service at all: he had been
glad when it was over, and had turned away to his business and his
grief. He remembered some of it now: "Man that is born of a woman hath
but a short time to live, and is full of misery." Yes, full of misery;
but not now, not now--that was over. "The sure and certain hope"--this
was troubling him; he would read it all through, and try to steady his
thoughts upon it.
Mrs. Streightley's "church-books" lay upon a shelf near one of the
windows. She rarely used the Common Prayer-book, inclining rather to
dissenting forms of worship; so Robert found the book without
difficulty. He sat down beside the fire, and read the Burial Service
throughout, half aloud; and as he concluded it, heavy sleep fell upon
him suddenly, as it had done a few times lately since he had not been
so strong and well as formerly. He slept on, though the wintry dawn
came and the fire died out; and when the housemaid came into the room
in the morning, "it gave her," as she described it, "quite a turn, to
see the master a-sittin' there asleep, and the gas a-burnin' in the
broad daylight."
Old Alice came bustling in to rouse and scold him; and Robert, feeling
very much ashamed of himself, went off sheepishly to bathe and dress.
He looked and felt much better after those restoratives, and assured
Alice that it had not harmed him to sleep on a chair instead of his
bed; he felt just a little giddy of course, but it was nothing, he
told her. He told himself it was the expectation of the post-hour, and
the news it would bring. He did not venture to ask Alice to leave him
to breakfast alone this morning; so the old woman was in the room when
the expected letter arrived. It was very short; and with his first
glance at it, he said:
"She will be here this evening, Alice; she comes by the day-mail."
"Thank God!" said the old woman fervently. "I am thankful there's to
be no more waiting; for you ain't fit for it, Robert, my boy, and
that's the truth."
"The train comes in at six; she will be here before seven. Mr. Yeldham
is coming with her. Is every thing ready, Alice?"
"Every thing, Master Robert. I will have the fire lighted in her room
immediately, and the things all put straight; and then you can look at
it, and satisfy yourself. And you won't worry yourself--will you
promise me not to worry yourself?"
"I worry myself!--no, indeed, nurse. I think that nothing can ever
harm or grieve or 'worry' me, as you call it, any more."
Then he told her he must go into the City for an hour or two: and he
took a kind leave of her and went. The old woman sat down on the chair
he had vacated, and burst into an unaccountable fit of crying.
"I am an old fool, to be sure, if ever there was one!" she said
irritably, after a few minutes; "but I can't help it--there's
something over me, though I'm glad for my dear boy. Now that _that's_
over, I'll go and look after those girls, and see what's best to have
for her dinner."
It was nearly four o'clock when Robert returned; and he came in a cab
which looked like a small conservatory on wheels, for every available
space in it was filled with flowers. He carried the pots and the
bouquets carefully into the house; and having assured Alice that he
was not hungry--for her anxiety on that point had not slumbered since
his infancy--he asked her if the rooms upstairs were ready.
"I have just come down from looking after them myself, Master Robert;
and nothing could be prettier nor nicer."
"Well, nurse, help me to take these flowers upstairs, and show me all
your beautiful decorations."
Alice was right: nothing nicer or prettier than the room prepared for
Katharine could be seen. A bright fire burned in the polished grate,
and a soft white lambskin rug lay before the fender; the chintz
curtains shaded the windows cosily, and the uncovered carpet looked
fresh and gay; the simple furniture was tastefully disposed; and a low
velvet chair, borrowed from the drawing-room, stood invitingly before
the fire. Ellen had been fond of flowers, and some pretty Parian vases
were among the ornaments of her forsaken chamber. Aided by Alice,
Robert arranged the flowers he had brought--and which, though
numerous, were not various, for even money will not avail to procure
floral variety in December--and disposed the vases as his taste
dictated. Then they set the flower-pots in the balcony, and looked
round approvingly on their completed task. The two faithful friends
stood a while in silence, and then Robert said,
"Is all ready downstairs as well?"
"All ready, my dear; and not long to wait now, God be praised! What
are you going to do--not going to the station to meet them surely, are
you?"
"O no, nurse--I'm going to wait for her here; and I want you to take
care that I'm not disturbed. I have a great deal to think about,
Alice, and I want to be alone now until she comes."
"Very well, Robert; no one shall come near you. What time is it now?"
"Half-past four. Have plenty of light downstairs, that the house may
look cheerful when she comes; and, Alice, I will light the gas here
now, so shut the shutters."
He went with her to one of the windows to aid her, and they looked
out. The red wintry sun was going down in a fiery ball, and red
streaks were lying low upon the sky.
"They have had a pleasant journey, no doubt," said Alice cheerfully;
"and they're on the sea now, I suppose."
Robert made her no answer: he was looking at the sunset, a fold of the
shutter in each hand. He closed them together, fastened the bolt, and
drew the curtains, while Alice lighted the gas-lamps. His face was
very pale, but there was a smile of exultation and delight upon it. He
spoke aloud, forgetting his reticence in his joy:
"The last sun has set that I shall see rise without her. All my
troubles are over, nurse."
The old woman went up to him, gently lifted her arms, and drew his
face down towards her own. She kissed him fondly more than once, and
said in a low broken tone,
"God bless you, my darling boy! Don't forget the Lord, who has granted
you your heart's desire."
Then she left the room quickly, and went downstairs, wiping her eyes
with her apron.
After a few minutes Robert went into the adjoining room, and returned,
carrying a large leather box. He set it upon a small table, near the
toilet, and opened it with a key attached to his watch-chain. Then he
took from it several cases, which he arranged symmetrically on the
dressing-table, opening each, and displaying its contents.
"Yes," he murmured; "I am sure it was in just such order they lay that
night when she put on the bracelet when I asked her, and put her hand
in mine. The amethysts here, and the opal cross beside the pincushion,
and the diamonds there." And he placed them as he spoke. The diamond
serpent came to his hand last, and he held it, turning it to the light
and watching the flashes of rich colour which gleamed from the gems.
Then he replaced it in its satin case, and laid it upon the stand of
the toilet-mirror.
"Yes, my darling," he murmured, "they are beautiful, and worth much
money; and I have wanted money sorely since you adorned them last and
turned from them with disdain; but I would have starved, I think,
before I could have parted with them, for they had touched you."
He sat down in the velvet chair by the fire, took something from his
waistcoat-pocket, and held it towards the light on his open palm. It
was a plain gold ring, and a date was engraved inside it. It was that
of the day then passing into evening, and he had had it done that
morning.
"This is the true symbol," he murmured, "she will wear this
willingly."
He sat for many minutes gazing at the ring upon his outstretched hand;
then he put it back into his pocket, and started up.
A quarter to six.
Later than he had thought, than he had hoped. His thoughts were
confused. Now they were hurrying him away again. This must not be. In
this supreme hour of his life there must be no vagueness; he must rule
his mind. But how? Her letter--he would read her letter--yes, that
would reassure him, would restore his composure. A horrid feeling of
unreality was creeping over him. This was not a dream, surely?
Katharine his wife was really coming--this was her room. The fire and
light were real; the doors of yonder wardrobe were lying open to
receive her dresses, and the jewels upon the table there were
hers--she had worn them. He was really standing in the midst of
objects which assured him all was true. Then why had he felt for a
moment a wide cold barren heath around him, and seen the sky and the
stars? They were shut out, and there was no picture upon the wall
opposite? Of course not. There was no picture there; he was only
remembering the picture he had seen yesterday. He would read her
letter, and he would read it on his knees, and remain kneeling until
he should hear the sound of wheels--and then? How painful the slow
heavy beating of his heart grew! It quite confused him. He would be
much easier kneeling down. He crossed the room to the low white bed,
touching the table with his hand for a moment, and knelt down on the
side of the bed which faced the door. He took Katharine's letter from
his breast, spread it open on the coverlet, stretching his arms out
round it, like a frame. He was steadier now--that strange hurry had
passed away. This was the letter:--
"I wrote to you three years ago, on the day after my father died; and
I then believed, and intended what I said, that that should be the
last communication I would ever hold with you. I left you, full of
anger and revenge, full of self-contempt that I had permitted myself
to be deceived, and with no thought beyond myself, my injuries, and my
vengeance. From that day I never heard your name spoken, or was
recalled by any outward circumstance to the recollection of the life I
had forsaken, until a few days ago; and the letter I am now writing to
you, Robert, is the result of what I then accidentally learned.
"The knowledge I have gained is the knowledge of your loss of
fortune--ruin. The person who mentioned it called it in the strong
phrase natural to those who love wealth best, and value it above all.
I hope it is not so bad as this; but whatever it be, you are what the
world I lived in once, but which has forgotten me, and which I have
forgotten, calls a poor man. Thus the great barrier which did exist
between you and me exists no longer, and I can address you as frankly
and as freely as I will, with my whole heart. You may have ceased to
love me, you may not care for my pardon now; but at least you cannot
say I am tired of obscurity and poverty, and would return to my former
position of wealth and luxury as your wife. Neither you nor the world,
if it should ever know any thing of me again,--nor even my own proud
self-doubting heart, which has so often tortured me with suggestions
of deceitful motives,--can whisper that I have any purpose but the
right to serve in this.
"I have suffered and learned since I left you, Robert. That suffering
has been good for me, and that learning has changed me; so that I have
often wished to do that which I am now doing, but have been held back
by pride. For I am asking you to take me back; I am asking you to give
me once more the place in your home and in your life which I wilfully,
in my blind wrath, abandoned. The wrong you did me I have long ago
forgiven; will you forgive me the wrong I have done you? I never
understood it aright until I knew that your fortunes had fallen, until
I knew that you, too, had lapsed out of your place in the world; and
then, though you never cared for these things as I cared for them, I
came to understand what I had done to you. You hid all your troubles
from me; you kept a cheerful face to me when your heart was sad; and
you allowed me to lavish money when it was melting out of your hands;
you never found a fault with me, or denied a wish of mine its most
ample gratification. Foolish, vain, worthless wishes they were, and I
think of them with shame; but I remember your forbearance, your
generosity, your constant kindness with gratitude, which is no new
feeling, for I have been learning life's lessons for a long time in
silence and loneliness; and if I could have conquered my pride, if I
could have known above all what I know now, I should long ago have
told you this. What am I, that I should be relentless to you? what am
I, that I should not forgive? I never fulfilled a wife's duties; I
never understood them; no one ever tried to teach me but one, and I
set my headstrong will against her. I left you to sorrow and
perplexity, to humiliation, and to ruin; I, who had enjoyed your
wealth, and had married you without love. Your sin was not greater in
reality than mine, Robert. I wonder can any sin be really greater than
a marriage without love? But I was implacable to you, and you never
complained of me. We lived together, the one a mystery for the other,
each a lie to ourselves, and there was no confidence between us, and
in me no forbearance. God help me, I was ignorant indeed; and it was
not until I had become a lonely looker-on at life that I learned the
lessons which earlier might have saved both you and me.
"I soon forgave you, Robert; but I have never been able to forgive
myself. Perhaps when you have forgiven me, as I know you will, peace
will come to me. External quiet I have had, but not peace, though it
took me long to learn that I was seeking a vain shadow, under that
name, and that in doing the right alone can any human being ever find
it. In the day when self-delusion fell away from me, it left me as
lonely as I had left you; and there was no possibility of substituting
self-made duties for those which God's law and my own vow had laid
upon me, and which I had forsaken. If you have been unhappy--and,
little as I know you, in comparison with the comprehension which a
wife's ought to be, I know you well enough to feel only too sure that
you have been unhappy--my life has had no joy in it, no serenity. All
that ever pleased me in the past has utterly lost its charm. God has
had too much compassion on me to suffer me to say, 'Peace, peace, when
there is no peace;' and now the end of the struggle has come. Careless
words spoken by a stranger have been a revelation to me. You have
sought for me in vain, Robert; then you desire to find me? Is it that
you love me still, as you loved me in those evil days when I so ill
requited your love? Or is it because you too would expiate the past
for God's sake and the right? Whatever be your motive, there is but
one course for me--the course I am taking. If you will receive me, I
am ready to return to you whenever you shall summon me.
"Do you remember Dr. Hudson, who attended me at Martigny after our
marriage? He has been a true and untiring friend to me. Nobly has he
redeemed the unasked pledge of fidelity which he gave me when we
parted there. I sought him out when I left you, and he has taken care
of me ever since. Part of the time I lived in a convent, and was
permitted to work among the poor and the sick; but of late I have been
living with Dr. Hudson's mother in Brittany. This is a brief history
of a long time. If you can forgive me, and bid me come home, I will
tell you all the story of my outwardly quiet life, and you shall; tell
me yours. We are husband and wife, Robert; and yet what strangers we
are to each other! I wonder if you are as much changed as I am. Since
I have known that you have had other heavy griefs besides those which
I laid upon you, I dread to think how they may have altered you. Let
me help you to bear them now--I, who never before touched your burdens
with so much as a finger--let me be to you in adversity what in
prosperity I did not care, did not know how to be. Let our dead past
bury its dead. Life must always be sad and serious, I think, to those
who are neither foolish nor wicked; and it will be always sad and
serious to us. There are shadows cast from the time that is gone upon
our paths, which no light can wholly dissipate, until we emerge into
the perfect day; but the shades of anger and resentment are not among
them: they have vanished, and can never come again. I do not know
where your home is, Robert, and I must direct this letter to your
mother's house; but wherever and whatever it may be, I entreat you let
me share it. Let me come to you, late as it is, and keep my vow to
you, so long and so wilfully broken, 'until death do us part.'
"Katharine Streightley."
A quarter-past six.
The hour chimed gaily with a treble ring from the little French clock
on the mantelpiece. The fire was burning steadily, as fires burn in
cheerful frosty weather; the delicate scent of the flowers had come
out under the genial influence of the warmth, and dispersed itself
through the room. The sharp roll of cab and carriage wheels upon the
road came deadened through the closed windows. Robert still knelt
beside the bed, and still framed his wife's letter with his
outstretched arms. The stir of expectation and preparation was audible
downstairs. The dining-room door stood invitingly open, the fights
burned brightly, the table was laid for three, and the snowy
tablecloth and glittering glass looked not the least attractive among
the items of the welcome prepared for the travellers. The little hall
was lighted too, and the very porcelain tiles seemed to have been
brightened for the occasion.
Half-past six.
Alice comes upstairs from the kitchen, opens the hall-door, and
listens. The keen air comes in, but the old woman is not afraid of the
keen air, and there is no wind. Soon she goes to the stair-head and
calls,----
"Susan, your clock is slow. The down-train is just leaving the
junction. They'll be here directly."
Susan answers from the bottom of the short staircase:
"Let 'em come. Dinner is all ready, and I doubt it'll be spoiled, if
they don't come soon, by the time they've got their things off.
Where's master?"
"In Miss Ellen's room; he's not to be disturbed till they come. O,
he'll hear 'em fast enough. There, it's gone the quarter!"
Alice comes back to the door, and holding it a little ajar, continues
to peep out. Many trains from distant places arrive about this hour,
and she is disappointed several times by cabs, luggage-laden, which
pass the gate.
"I've often heard Master Robert say a quarter of an hour should always
be allowed for them foreign trains," the old woman mutters a little
impatiently; "but surely they'll soon be here. He'll be worn out with
waiting."
Seven!
They are here. A cab stops at the gate, and Alice calls excitedly to
the servants, Susan cannot abandon the dinner, but the others come and
concern themselves about the luggage, while she opens wide the door,
and a lady and gentleman enter.
"Well, nurse," says Mr. Yeldham in an excited voice, "you see I have
brought Mrs. Streightley home."
"I see, sir," says Alice, trembling. "God bless you, ma'am; and
welcome home a thousand times!"
Katharine puts out her hand hurriedly, and takes the old woman's; but
she does not speak. She is very pale, and her lips are trembling; but
she is very, very beautiful. Alice is startled at her beauty. She
looks like a queen, she thinks; her deep-mourning dress drapes her
like robes. But she has only time for a glimpse of Katharine, for
Yeldham leads her quickly into the dining-room, whence he comes out in
a moment, and asks Alice, still in the hall, and watching the servants
and the cabman carrying the luggage up the little garden walk,
"Where's Robert?"
Alice explains that he is in the room prepared for Mrs. Streightley,
but wonders he has not heard the cab, and is bustling towards the
stairs to call him, when Yeldham stops her.
"No, nurse; I know the room. I'll take her to him."
So he calls Katharine, and she comes quickly; and they go up the
stairs together, Alice following. There is light on each landing, and
they are soon at the door. Yeldham taps rapidly, and at the same time
turns the door-handle; and Katharine, with a swift steady step, passes
into the room, into the glow of the light and the warmth and the
perfume of the flowers. She sees it all with one quick happy glance;
sees the jewels on the table, and recognises them; sees the light
glancing upon the scales of the diamond serpent; sees the outstretched
arms upon the bed, and the head now laid down upon them. In a moment
she is beside the kneeling figure, her hand upon the shoulder, her
breath upon the thick brown curls.
"Robert! I have come--I am here!"
There is no answer. The breathless listeners on the landing hear no
sound of glad welcome. An instant, and a faint gasping cry reaches
them; for Katharine has knelt beside her husband, and lifted his head
from off his outstretched arms, and it has swayed helplessly, and
fallen heavily against her bosom.
Death has parted them!
THE END.
LONDON:
ROBSON AND SON, GREAT NORTHERN PRINTING WORKS,
PANCRAS ROAD, N.W.
End of Project Gutenberg's Kissing the Rod, Vol. 3 (of 3), by Edmund Yates