IN ENGLAND AGAIN: CONCLUSION
Let us take a leap in time and space! Leaving behind us the crowded
cities, the dusky tribes, the deep skies and burning plains of India,
let us cross the Black Water, and return to the little island of the
West, whence the hands that have subdued these strange regions and the
minds--many of the greatest of them, alas! gone forth from earth and
her concerns for ever--that have governed them, took their origin. We
are in England once more, and the month is the sweetest month of all
the year--leaf-clad, rose-embowered June.
Just two years have gone by since the day when Thomas Gregory, the
widow's son, received the news which was destined to change the whole
current of his life, and was visited by a dream stranger than any of
those he had encountered in his nightly excursions through the many
visions of his poet friends. Yes; and we are in the very same spot
where then we saw him receive the letter--the garden of the little
cottage in which his early years were spent.
It has changed very little. The same green summer-house looks down
upon the river, which murmurs eternally the same sweet song; the
same willows brush it with feathery, golden-green branches; the same
flowers, once so dear to Grace and Tom--azure-blue speedwell and dainty
forget-me-not, and starry celandine--mantle now, as they did then, the
low, sloping bank with beauty; the same soft mossy lawn sweeps down
to the river bank; the same weeping-ash lifts its green tent from the
green carpet; above the lawn are the same carefully-trimmed fruit and
flower gardens. The cottage which, from where we stand, we can see
peeping through a delicious network of foliage and blossoming trees,
looks newer than of old, and there are certainly more boats upon the
river; but these are the only changes.
No one lives in the cottage now. It is looked after by a gardener and
his wife. Mrs. Gregory, who owns it still, has had it, at her son's
request, rebuilt and kept in perfect order, but she lives herself in
the fine house, built, as all the neighbourhood knows, after her son's
design, on the high ground above the river. Folks say that she likes
the cottage better than the mansion. Often, in the evening, when the
weather is soft and mild, she comes down to the little place to see if
her orders are being carried out. Last summer, during the dreadful days
of suspense and anguish when no one knew what a day might bring forth,
she haunted the cottage and garden like an unquiet ghost. Mrs. Stevens,
the good old wife of her faithful gardener, could, if she liked, tell
sad tales of the frenzy which would now and then seize upon the unhappy
lady, as she stole round the little garden, in which she had spent so
many tranquil days, or sat wringing her hands and weeping in the room
that had been her son's.
But Mrs. Gregory is happier and more hopeful now, for the peril is
over, and her son has promised her a visit. She is in the garden this
evening. Dressed richly, in costly black lace and silk, with a Spanish
mantilla thrown over her head, she is walking backwards and forwards
slowly on the lawn above the river. She has changed in these two years.
Her hair is perfectly white now, her figure, not nearly so full as of
old, has a tendency to droop, and her face, whose comely outlines and
healthy colour made her once the admiration and envy of her middle-aged
friends, has lost its roundness. Neither have her eyes the brightness
which they possessed then. If we look at her closely, we shall remark a
curious pallor and tremulousness about them; while in all her movements
there is a restlessness--a nervous timidity, pitiful in one of her age
and condition.
She is joined presently by a neat-looking, elderly woman, in black
gown, white apron and mob cap.
'Tea is ready, ma'am,' she says. 'Shall I bring it out to the lawn, or
will you take it in the parlour?'
'Tea!' echoes Mrs. Gregory. 'Why, to be sure! I told you to get tea for
me, didn't I? I had forgotten.' And she turns with a sigh to walk up
the garden.
'Mayn't I take your parcel, ma'am?' said the gardener's wife
pleasantly. 'It's too heavy for you.'
Mrs. Gregory looks down with a start. In her right hand is a bulky
packet, which she is holding with a curious tension pressed tightly
against her side.
'This!' she exclaims. 'Oh no, thank you! It is not in the least heavy.
I have promised, besides, to give it into no hands but my son's.'
'Bless me, ma'am, do you really mean to say so?' cries Mrs. Stevens,
who is astonished to find her offer treated so seriously. 'But I
only meant carrying it to the house. You look hard put to it to carry
yourself to-night, if I may make so bold. My William and me was just
saying this very evening as it might be, "If so be as Mr. Thomas don't
come soon, there won't be much left of the missis for him to see." But
it won't be long now, as the saying is.'
'No, it won't be long now. I was just trying, when you came out, to
reckon the time by his last letter. It seems to me that he ought to
have been here before this.'
At this very moment--they had reached the upper lawn and
flower-garden--Mrs. Stevens, who was a little in front of her mistress,
saw a hackney carriage pull up at the gate. She turned round. 'Ma'am!
ma'am!' she cried, 'there's some one come. Don't faint, like a dear!
William, I say, William, run to the gate! I'll go through the house and
open the hall-door.'
There followed a few moments of agonising suspense, and then, how it
came about Mrs. Gregory never knew, she found herself lying in her
son's arms, helpless as a child, with his warm kisses raining upon her
cheeks and lips and brow.
Her first thought, strange as it may seem, was not of him, but of the
packet which she had been carrying, and which Mrs. Stevens had picked
up from the ground when in that intoxicating moment her senses had
deserted her. Drawing herself away from her son, she made a rapid sign
that it should be given to her, and when Mrs. Stevens obeyed she hid it
in her mantilla. This manœuvre was unnoticed by Tom, all whose thoughts
were of her.
'So I have frightened you, little mother!' he said. 'And yet I sent a
message. Didn't you receive it? It should have arrived early in the
day.'
'I was out very likely. I took lunch with Lady Winter, and then I came
on here. But I am not sorry. I wanted to see you first here, dear;
here, where we have been so happy. I thought you would be more likely
to forgive me and think kindly of me.'
'Dearest mother, you are dreaming. Forgive! What have I to forgive? Are
you tormenting yourself because you could not make up your mind to tell
me by word of mouth what you told me by letter? But that is the most
natural thing in the world to me. And as to the days that have gone, we
are to have better ones, little mother, much--much better. Let me look
at you. Do you know that you have changed?'
'Yes, dear, I have changed. I couldn't help it,' with a plaintive
little smile, and clinging to him like a child. 'If I could have been
certain, quite certain, of this beautiful moment, I would have kept
myself as I was. Do you remember how you used to call me your pretty,
rosy, little mother?'
'You will be my pretty, rosy, little mother again,' said Tom. 'Ah,
there is the colour coming! A good beginning!'
'And you, Tom, you! You have changed, too, my son. But I expected that.
Your face is sterner; there are some sad lines. Your eyes. Ah! how they
carry me back to the past! How foolish, how foolish I have been!'
'In what way, mother?'
'In dreaming that I could keep you. You are his.'
'I am yours, too, little mother. It was his wish, his thought. But we
shall have plenty of time to talk seriously. This evening I want to
enjoy.' He looked round him. 'How good it is to find you here in this
dear old garden!' he said. 'Give me your hand, and let us make one
round as we used to, you know, and then you must come back with me
to your fine house on the hill, where I have left our travellers. I
suppose, by the bye, that that stylish-looking housekeeper of yours
can be trusted to look after them for a few minutes?'
'Oh, yes. She is perfect. Lady Winter trained her. And everything has
been ready for you for days. But I ought to be there myself to welcome
them. Did the dear child bear the journey well?'
'I think it did her good. She has had a more natural life than at
Gumilcund. Such a number of children, many of them orphans, came
home with us, and Aglaia was like a little mother amongst them. Mrs.
Lyster, I am afraid, will only stop with us to-night. She is impatient
naturally to see her own little ones, who are at school in Ireland. If
you don't mind, I want you to ask her to bring them all to us for the
summer holidays.'
'Certainly, dear; it will be a pleasure to me. And the General, and my
dear, dear Lady Elton, and the girls--what have they done?'
'I left them in London. A house has been taken for them there for a few
months. I suppose you know that we left Trixy behind us?'
'Yes; Lady Elton wrote. Dear little Trixy! I hope she will be happy.'
'I think she has every chance of it,' said Tom, smiling. 'Bertie Liston
is one of the best fellows I know.'
'And the others, when shall I see them?' said Mrs. Gregory.
'We must bring them down,' said Tom. 'What should you think of
persuading them to make the cottage their country home during the
summer? Lady Elton won't be able to bear much racketing about; the
quiet of this place and your society would be the best medicine for
her, and pottering about the garden would just suit the dear old
General.'
'It would be delightful,' said Mrs. Gregory. 'We must see what we can
do.'
They were close to the river bank. It was a serene and lovely evening,
and the water was gay with boat-loads of holiday-makers. As the mother
and son stood, for a moment, looking down the stream, a skiff full of
young people floated past them. The girls wore light dresses; they were
laughing and talking gaily. It went on, and another followed, then
another. With wet eyes and a painful contraction of heart the young man
turned away. 'Mother!' he said. 'Do you remember?'
'Two years ago,' she murmured. 'Yes; I remember very well; how
beautiful they were!'
'_She_ was beautiful to the last,' said Tom in a whisper.
'You must tell me of her, dear. It will do you good, and I, yes; it
will do me good too. I loved her so. I built so many hopes upon her.'
'So dreams pass!' said Tom.
'No, no,' said his mother, grasping at his arm; 'not pass--nothing that
is good goes quite away. They come back again, brighter and purer and
more beautiful. My son, believe me! I am simple, I know, far too simple
to be the wife and mother of great men; but,' smiling sweetly through
her tears, 'the simple sometimes see further than the wise. And now let
us come back to the house and welcome my new daughter and your dear
friend.'
* * * * *
The meeting between Mrs. Gregory and her guests was very pleasant
and touching. The traces of sadness which gave a new dignity to her
charming face, her gentle motherliness, and her ardent anxiety to be
sure that they were comfortable and at their ease, won Mrs. Lyster's
warm heart at once. Aglaia, in whom Mrs. Gregory at once recognised a
sensitiveness like her own, did not respond to her advances so readily;
but she was careful not to alarm the child by being too demonstrative
all at once, and in a very short time her gentle reverence told. Before
that evening was over, Aglaia was talking in the little quaint fashion
which was so peculiarly her own, answering with pretty childlike
sedateness all the questions put to her, and looking up at Daddy Tom's
mother with unmistakable admiration and confidence.
To Mrs. Gregory the evening that followed was almost dream-like in its
charm. The delight of having her son with her, of waiting upon him,
of seeing him take possession of the things which she had spent so
many happy hours preparing for him, the pleasure of entertaining these
dear guests, who had escaped, by her son's hand, from peril so awful
that the memory of it made her shudder--the joy, after her long famine
of home affections, in uniting them round her table; in looking from
face to face; in listening to tales which were all of the valour of
her boy, and the beauty and dignity of his city in the far East; whose
wonderful arrangements, Mrs. Lyster would insist, were due to no one
but himself--all this it would take a more graphic pen than mine to
describe. I doubt, in fact, if words could do justice to it. But for a
little pricking sense of discomfort, an ever-recurrent consciousness of
something painful to be done before she could rest, Mrs. Gregory would
have been perfectly happy that evening.
It came to an end, as all happy times must and will. Sumbaten, who,
at her earnest entreaty, had been allowed to cross the Black Water
with her adored Missy Sahib, had long since taken Aglaia to the pretty
nursery provided for them. Family prayers had been read. Mrs. Lyster,
who, while Tom went off with Hoosanee to see his new quarters, had
lingered to tell one or two stories, which she could not tell before
him, had risen to say good-night. Mrs. Gregory accompanied her to her
room, and left her there.
The house was very still; she had a little silver lamp in her hand,
with which it was her custom to go round every night and make sure that
all the bolts and bars were fastened. Mrs. Lyster's room opened on to
an upper gallery, which commanded the lower hall. She lingered for a
moment, her heart beating, and her lips quivering nervously. The lights
here were out; but the large hanging lamp below was alight still. As
she stood looking down, her son came out of one of the rooms on the
ground-floor and stood under it. 'Do you want the hall lamp put out?'
he said. 'Hoosanee and I have been round.'
'Thank you, dear,' she answered nervously. 'Yes, put it out. I will say
good-night to you in your room.'
Then she turned, ran hastily to her own room, and, having seized a
packet which lay on the table, went back with it to the upper gallery.
The door of Tom's apartments stood open.
There was a little study exquisitely fitted up with everything a writer
or student could require, and within it a spacious and luxurious
bedroom. When Tom planned the house he had designed these rooms for
his mother, and already, that evening, there had been a little amiable
contest about them, which, 'possession being nine points of the law,'
had ended, as it was bound to do, in Mrs. Gregory's triumph.
She went in breathless, and sat down, for she could not stand.
Hoosanee, who was standing, with arms crossed, as dignified and
well-dressed as usual, awaiting his master's commands, made her a deep
salaam. She pointed to the inner room, whereupon he retired, closing
the door of communication.
By this time Tom was outside. 'My dear mother,' he said, noticing, with
regret, her pallor and agitation. 'You mustn't really fatigue yourself
in this way! Come!' kissing her. 'Don't you know that I want to have my
rosy little mother back as soon as possible? Let me take you to your
room!'
'Presently, dear, presently,' she murmured. 'But shut the door first;
I have something to say to you.'
'Won't to-morrow do?'
'No, Tom. It must be now--to-night. While I can, while I dare----'
'Mother, what do you mean? You are dreaming.'
She pressed her hand to her brow. 'God knows I think so myself,' she
said. 'Often, very often, I say, "You are dreaming: there never was
anything so hideous done; and for you to do it--you! It is impossible!"
and then,' throwing aside her lace shawl and showing the parcel on her
lap, 'I look at this, and I know that it is true.'
She stopped, Tom had turned deadly pale. 'Give it to me!' he said. She
placed it in his hands. He sat down and opened it slowly, his mother
watching him with oh! such pitiful eyes. There it lay before him,
just as he had seen it last--the legacy of the dead, which he had so
strangely, and, as he believed, so hopelessly lost.
For a few moments after his discovery he did not so much as look up. He
dared not even look what he felt.
His silence and abstraction wounded his poor mother more than words,
even stern words, could have done. Too pained to weep, she sat gazing
out before her with stony eyes. He was noting meanwhile, with a curious
pang, how the very arrangement of the papers had not changed. There
were the manuscripts in Persian and Arabic and Hindi, as he had thrown
them together in his boyish wrath and disappointment; and above them
was the sealed roll, unopened still, that, if he had mustered courage
to open it, would, as he believed, have given him a key to a hundred
mysteries.
Unable to bear any longer the silence and suspense, Mrs. Gregory crept
close to him. 'Tom!' she said.
He looked up. There was reproach in his eyes, but no anger, and she
breathed more freely. 'Why did you do it, mother?' he said sorrowfully.
'Could you not have trusted the dead?'
'Listen to me!' she said. 'Dear, I don't want to justify myself. I
have sinned and I must bear my punishment. I have borne it, God knows,
through these two awful years. But I may not have been quite so guilty
as you think. When I saw you go out that night, I had no thought of
robbing you. You left me alone. Oh! Tom, you shouldn't have done it,
you shouldn't! There was a presence in the house that night. I felt
it as soon as you had gone, and I fought with it for you. You were
mine; I had brought you up; I had cared for you all these years; you
were everything I had; I couldn't bear that you should be taken from me
even for a larger life. That was my sin, not the other. My son, I am
telling you a strange thing, but I give you my word that it is true.
When I left the candle burning in the passage and went to your room,
I was in a trance--I must have been, for I have no remembrance of it,
not the least. Often and often since, I have tried to think myself back
into that few minutes, and I cannot. The first thing I remember is the
cry of fire. I was not in your room then, I was on the stairs. The
girls caught me and dragged me out. Then, while we stood on the lawn
together, I felt that against my side.'
'You should have given it to me then, mother.'
'Do I not know it, my son? Have I not said, so to myself a thousand
times? God knows I should have been saved a host of troubles if I had.
But I could not. Do you see how it was? I had not taken them. They had
been given to me by a mysterious agency, and it seemed to me like a
sign that you were to be mine still. Then you went away, and I saw
from your letter, that _his_ life, _his_ ideas, _his_ people were
taking possession of you. At last came the letter from Lucknow, which
told me only too clearly what I had seemed to know already, that you
belonged to me and to England no longer. Then I made up my mind to tell
you the secret of your birth, and, if it should please a merciful God
to bring you home safely, to give you up the papers. Are you satisfied?'
The question was in response to a softened look in his face.
'Yes, mother,' he said. 'I am satisfied. Love blinded you for a time;
but justice and rectitude, which should be stronger even than love,
have opened your eyes.'
'That is a man's view, not a woman's,' she said, looking up at him with
dewy eyes. 'But good-night. I am tired. Take my advice, and keep the
papers till to-morrow. There is no danger of your losing them again,
and here, you see, is a fire-proof safe, where you can put them if you
like.'
'Thank you, mother,' said Tom, smiling to see her look and speak like
herself again. 'Good-night! You will sleep well, I am sure!'
'Well! With you in the house, and that gone! It will be like Paradise.
If only you knew what I have gone through! But I mustn't talk of it,
now. Good-night, my son.'
* * * * *
'To my son and successor a word of warning and counsel.'
So ran the opening words of the sealed-up paper; and those were about
all Tom was able to read that night. After the many fatigues and
excitements of the day his brain was too heavy to be taxed any further.
When Hoosanee, who had been waiting patiently in the inner room until
the hum of conversation should cease, receiving no summons from his
master, ventured to open the door between the rooms, he found him
seated before the table, his arms folded over the open paper, and his
head resting on his arms, fast asleep.
He awoke him, protested with him for his love of study, and persuaded
him to undress and lie down. So in dreamless sleep the night passed
peacefully away. Of his coming to himself the next morning I have often
heard the rajah speak. He was perfectly refreshed and strengthened; but
for a few moments he could not stir. As he lay, the blue of the June
sky, flecked with soft shreds of snow-white vapour, peeped in through
the open window. A tuneful chorus of English song-birds, linnets
and larks and thrushes, filled the air with throbbing gladness; the
familiar sound of the gardener's scythe, sweeping through swathes of
wet grass, fell dimly upon his ear; and sweet scents of eglantine and
roses and newly-mown hay saluted his nostrils. Ah! how delicious they
all were--dream-like sensations that seemed to be coming to him out
of the tranquil past, and making the fever of these last two years
unsubstantial as a vision!
So, for a few minutes, he mused. Then Hoosanee looked in, and seeing
him awake brought in tea and his bath, and, in a very short time he had
cast his languor aside, and was giving himself to his papers.
Those in Persian and Hindi he laid aside for the present. They were
closely written, and, with all the instruction he had given himself and
the facility he had been able to acquire, they would, he knew, take him
some time to decipher. The English paper he read at once. Its full text
I am not at liberty to give. I know, however, that it did not contain
the story, which Tom's mother had given to him, touching his birth.
From first to last, there was nothing to make him believe that the tie,
which, as the writer asserted, did actually bind him to the East, was
anything but spiritual.
It was written for use in the event, which, as we know, came about,
of the then rajah not being able personally to make the acquaintance
of his son by adoption. For purposes of his own it appeared, and in
order that his son's education and training should be entirely English,
he had bound himself not to interfere with him in any way until he
should have reached years of discretion. Then, if his life was spared,
he would pay a visit to England, and instruct his adopted son with
his own lips regarding the career that lay before him. For the rest,
it contained instructions concerning Tom's conduct on his arrival
in India, and upon taking up the government of Gumilcund, which,
as the young rajah recognised with a thrill of pleasure, agreed in
almost every particular with the course he had instinctively adopted.
There were, besides, dim and uncertain foreshadowings of spiritual
visitations, and dark forebodings of a time of trial and great terror
for the country the writer loved; the country that, he hoped and
believed, would be loved by his successor; with admonitions to him to
be courageous, bracing his nerves to receive whatever might come to him
in a manner becoming to a man into whose hands a sacred trust has been
given.
An entreaty that he would be patient, and not allow himself to fall
away into despair if the good to which they looked as the fruit of
their labours did not come in his time; a recommendation to train up
those who would come after him to regard themselves as the repositories
of the great trust, any one of whom might be the Revealer predestined
to give to the New World and the Old the light of the new revelation; a
hope that he would gain sufficient knowledge of the Eastern languages
to read the enclosed manuscripts, which contained the gist of their
philosophy and the definition of their hope; with a pathetic farewell,
couched in language which made Tom believe that Byrajee Pirtha Raj was
a Christian at heart--brought the paper to a conclusion.
And here, on the threshold of his new life, I find, to my deep regret,
that I must leave him. The life becomes too complicated; the interests
too numerous; the hopes too lofty and large, to find room in what
will generally be considered as a work of fiction. Besides, I am not
allowed. All I may venture to say is that he is working still. A
Maharajah in India--he was given this title after the mutiny--and in
England a private gentleman of fortune and distinction, he passes his
life between the two worlds of East and West, trying to induce that
sympathy, that mutual comprehension, upon which so many of his hopes
for the future depend.
Married now, and with children of his own, he does not forget his
lost love; and indeed, in the face of his gentle wife, there is an
expression that recalls Grace vividly. It is quite natural, Aglaia says
with a smile, for Grace is often with her.
And so I bid them, and those who have followed with me the strange
fortunes of the Rajah's Heir, an affectionate farewell. It is possible
that we may meet again. When the clouds that still hide the elder
continent lift--and some of us think that in their darkness we can
discern fissures, through which the azure of the far-off heaven
looks down--when the Revealer has spoken, when the long-hoped-for
consummation, the meeting of the nations, has come; then, if I am
still able to write, I will tell what part Gumilcund and her rulers
have played in the great ever-unfolding drama of the ages, and how the
present has grown out of the past.
THE END