THE VALLEY OF THE DARK SHADOW
There were yet three weeks--three weeks only--to the marriage. It was
an exceptionally cold spring. But everybody said the warm weather would
come in time for the marriage.
Gerald Eversley went back to Oxford. It was necessary that he should
arrange to close his residence there and remove his effects with a view
to beginning married life in London. He was sorry to leave Helmsbury,
still more sorry to leave Ethel; for she had not been very well for
the last two or three days, and was confined to her room with a sore
throat. Still the time was short, and he could not without discourtesy
to his college omit some customary ceremonial duties before quitting it
for good.
He wrote to Ethel from Oxford, saying that the master of the college
had expressed much interest in his marriage, and sincere regret at his
leaving the university; he had also sent him a wedding present. He
added that he found himself involved in so many engagements at Oxford
that he doubted if it would be possible for him to return to Helmsbury
(except perhaps for one night) until a day or two before the wedding.
He begged her to let him know that she had got over the cold and was
feeling well again.
The answer to his letter came from Harry Venniker. He said that Ethel
could not write herself, as she was in bed, suffering from a slight
feverish attack following on the sore throat, but the village doctor
had seen her and did not take a serious view of her case; there was no
reason why Gerald should make any change in his plans. If Ethel should
not be so well, Harry would telegraph. Gerald was disturbed in mind; he
resolved to go to Helmsbury the next day if the medical report were not
entirely satisfactory.
Next morning he received the news that she was better. It was again
Harry who wrote, but Ethel had added at the foot of the letter the
words, ‘Don’t be anxious, Gerald dearest. I shall soon be quite well.’
A day later she was in much the same state. Gerald would wait no
longer, but would go on Monday to Helmsbury.
On the evening of Saturday, March the -th, 187-, he was going into
Hall--he was actually halfway up the length of the Hall--when a
telegram was put into his hand. It was in these words:
‘Come at once. Harry.’
He turned and left the Hall. His heart was as lead. Nobody in the Hall
knew why he turned back. One or two of the fellows of the college who
were sitting at dinner noticed his disappearance; they supposed he
had forgotten something, perhaps an invitation to dinner in another
college. But the servant who had handed him the telegram, and had
looked at him while he read it, remarked that he was afraid Mr.
Eversley had got some bad news.
Gerald Eversley, after leaving the Hall, rushed to his rooms. He flung
his cap and gown on the sofa. The sense of hunger was dead within
him. Hastily he began putting a few clothes--he hardly knew what they
were--into a small travelling-bag. Stopping himself in the act of
packing, he seized his hat, ran across the grass plot to the porter’s
lodge, and told the underporter to order a fly at once. Then he looked
at the table of trains. There would be a train starting for London in
three-quarters of an hour. Whether he could get on to Helmsbury before
next morning he did not stay to ask.
The telegram left room for the worst fears; it did not say that Ethel
was still alive. He would go to London and take his chance. In a few
minutes his packing was finished, and he stood under the great gateway
of the college, awaiting the fly.
‘Is there anything wrong, sir?’ said the underporter, impressed by his
manner. ‘I hope you....’
But here he caught sight of Gerald’s face. There was that in his face
which forbade words.
O the horror of that wintry night-journey! The sky was flecked with
dark ominous clouds. The moon looked gibbous. It was bitterly cold.
Here and there large patches of snow still lay on the ground. Gerald
gazed at them now and again through the frozen window-pane. But for the
most part he sat in a corner of the railway carriage, wrapped in his
rug, his head bent forward and buried in his hands.
O darkness of dread fear! when the worst is not known. Nothing is so
awful, so appalling as that.
It was near midnight when he reached London. The train was an hour
late. No hope of proceeding to Helmsbury that night. But he drove
across London. He would sleep, if sleep he could and must, as near as
might be to his beloved.
The drive through London at night is always an impressive experience.
The vast suspended animation of the great city of men solemnises the
mind. But Gerald thought not of that. Onwards he drove until the stir
of life had died away, and scarce a soul was moving in the desolate
squares. It was Sunday morning!
The last night-train to Helmsbury had started an hour ago. He could
go by the first train in the morning. For that he waited. Of sleep
he could not think. Pacing the platform or sitting uneasily in the
waiting-room, never at rest for more than a few minutes together, he
spent the hours of that chill night. Once somebody spoke to him on the
platform, but he knew not who it was, and he made no answer.
In the grey light of early morning he reached Helmsbury. Harry Venniker
was at the station to meet him. They clasped hands.
‘Is she better?’ whispered Gerald.
Harry Venniker shook his head, and said only ‘Come.’
They took their seats in the brougham. Like a gasp came the question
from Gerald, ‘She is not dead?’
Harry Venniker said, ‘No.’
They drove to the Hall. Neither of them spoke again. It was not until
afterwards that Gerald heard that Ethel had become suddenly worse the
day before. Sir William D---- had been summoned; he had arrived last
night, and had pronounced her to be in imminent danger.
The carriage drew up at the Hall door. A lamp was burning faintly on
the great staircase. By its light Gerald saw Lord Venniker standing
there. His face looked haggard; he was shedding tears. He embraced
Gerald with passionate sorrow, crying, ‘My poor boy, you are too late.
She died half an hour ago.’
There was a heavy thud upon the floor. Gerald had fallen. Lord Venniker
and Harry raised him from the ground and laid him on a sofa. The shock
of his fall had restored consciousness. He asked where he was.
The sore throat from which Ethel Venniker had been suffering when
Gerald left Helmsbury had, it seemed, been the premonitor of dire
disease. Unhappily the local doctor had not understood its early
symptoms. When Sir William D---- arrived, he pronounced it to be acute
diphtheria. The breathing was already difficult. The end was at hand.
No human skill could have saved her.
It was thought afterwards that she had contracted the disease in
visiting one of the cottages where the drainage was bad. Her act of
charity had been fatal to her. O God!
The days that follow are a blank. Lady Venniker was so ill that grave
anxiety was felt for her life. The doctors never left her.
Gerald sat in the chamber of death until he was led away lovingly by
Harry. On the fourth day was the funeral. Gerald was the chief mourner.
He seemed dazed. Next to him walked Lord Venniker and Harry.
The bishop of the diocese, who was to have performed the marriage, came
at his own desire to officiate at the funeral.
The orange-flower was exchanged for the cypress leaf.
The church was crowded with the villagers all dressed in mourning. At
the words ‘Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust,’ the bishop’s
voice broke down, and it was as though a sob arose from all that
multitude.
When the mourners of the family had withdrawn, many lingered around
the grave, weeping. It was growing dark before the last mourner went
home. The coffin was covered with wreaths and crosses. At the lych-gate
two women, farmers’ wives, who had a long-standing quarrel, chanced to
meet, and, hardly realising what they were doing, one of them clasped
the other’s hand, saying fervently amidst her tears, ‘She loved us all.’
Lord Venniker and Harry sobbed like children, standing by the grave.
Gerald alone remained unmoved, as if insensible.
On his return to the Hall he went to his bedroom and locked the door.
A packet of letters was waiting for him on the table. He looked at the
envelopes and put them down, all except one. It was in the handwriting
of Mr. Selby.
Just as he was about to open it there came a gentle knock at the door,
and the voice of the old family butler was heard inquiring if he could
do anything for him. Gerald answered, ‘Nothing.’ He heard the butler’s
steps returning along the passage, and it seemed that the butler
stopped once not far from the door and listened.
Gerald opened Mr. Selby’s letter and read it. It was written on
black-edged paper. At one place the paper was blistered a little,
as if a tear had fallen upon it; but that might be fancy. Mr. Selby
wrote that, being away from home, he had only just heard of Gerald’s
bereavement. It was so terrible, so personal, that he feared to intrude
upon it, even by a word of sympathy. But Gerald would forgive him for
writing. He could never forgive himself if he did not write. And there
was something (he said) which seemed to give him perhaps a title to
write such a letter; something beyond the privilege of friendship,
something which he had never told to anyone at St. Anselm’s. Nobody
knew it, nobody guessed it. (Perhaps that was not quite so, Mr. Selby.)
‘Many years ago,’ he went on, ‘it was my own blessed privilege to know
and love one so much higher than myself in life and character, that
now, after all those years, I can only wonder how it was ever permitted
me to win her love. We were going to be married soon. She died. O my
dear Eversley, may not my affliction minister to yours? The world has
not been the same to me since then; it can never be. There is not a day
of my life when I do not dwell upon her memory, and in the thought and
hope of seeing her again death has lost for me its sting.’ It was idle,
Mr. Selby’s letter proceeded to say, to seek to minimise such sorrows;
it was only the base or the shallow who could forget the past, or live
as if it had not been; but God, who is all-merciful, did send with
human grief the grace to bear it, and at last the consciousness of a
blessing underlying it. ‘And what inspiration of good,’ said Mr. Selby,
‘can be so potent as the memory of a saintly life now veiled in heaven?’
Gerald folded the letter again. It had done for him what the funeral
service had not done. It had touched the fountain-springs of his heart.
He wept.
An hour--two hours--three hours passed away, and then the butler
knocked again, bringing him some food. He opened the door and took it
in. ‘Mr. Henry thought you would like it best here, sir,’ said the
butler. Gerald placed it on the table. He tasted it, but could not eat
it.
A little later, perhaps in consequence of something that the butler had
said, Harry himself entered the room. He made the excuse of bringing
him some verses which had been found lying in his sister’s room with
the inscription, ‘For dear Gerald on Good Friday.’ Gerald remembered
that they had been talking, when he was last at Helmsbury, about the
Divine Passion to which that day is sacred. Whether the verses were her
own or another’s did not appear; probably another’s, but it has not
proved possible to trace them.
Gethsemane, Gethsemane,
My spirit yearneth to be free
From sin and shame at thought of thee.
There did the Saviour’s blood-sweat rain
In agony of mortal pain
Upon thy soil--oh! not in vain.
Friendship’s default, the lying kiss,
The serried spite of enemies,
This was His soul’s experience, this.
Gethsemane, Gethsemane,
Oh! that thou wouldst reveal to me
That which thine olives once did see!
And what in that fierce strife with hell
He suffered none may dare to tell,
But the Lord God remembereth well.
For in that solemn hour He bore
The sins of all that sinned before
Or shall sin till sin be no more.
Gethsemane, Gethsemane,
From thy deep shades of silence He
Passed to His death upon the tree.
He died--and all the angelic eyes
Looked in adoring strong surprise
On that eternal sacrifice;
And He who sits upon the throne
Declared the deed divinely done,
And God and man for ever one.
Gerald read the lines mechanically. The two friends sat side by side.
Never had Harry’s character shown itself so tender and beautiful as
now. He forgot himself in his sorrow for his friend. He said not a
word of his own loss; he spoke of Gerald’s. He said his mother was
very ill, dangerously ill, but it was her deep desire to see Gerald,
if only for a minute, to-morrow. With a true instinct of sympathy he
poured out his reminiscences of Ethel’s life, telling how she used to
write to him every week when he was at St. Anselm’s, and used often to
mention his great friend Gerald Eversley, and ask after him; how the
people of Helmsbury loved her, and would do anything for her sake, and
could never speak of her since her death without weeping; how she had
been delicate even from childhood, and could not bear unkindness or
roughness; how fond she had been of all living creatures, and would
never hurt any one of them, but treated them (like St. Francis of old,
though Harry did not say so) as brothers and sisters, and would not let
them be deprived of their native liberty. Poor Harry! he reproached
himself bitterly if he had ever acted against her wish. Death makes
little disagreements or disobediences seem terrible. Then he went on
to tell how she had spoken to him of her love for Gerald, saying with
womanly self-forgetfulness that she was unworthy of him--he was so
clever, so far above herself--but she would try to make him happy when
she was his wife, and to sympathise with his interests and pursuits,
and to live for him alone.
So Harry Venniker ran on, making talk a duty, not without tears. It may
be that no better comforter could have been found--so artless as he was
and generous and sympathetic. Yet the comfort was vain. It is thought
that Nature contains in herself a remedy for every physical ill to
which humanity is heir, though the remedies so often lie hid; but there
are spiritual ills for which no remedy exists.
Harry Venniker did not quit Gerald’s bedroom until he had persuaded him
to lie down and rest. He lay like one in a swoon. He moved not at all.
Hour succeeded hour. The great clock in the courtyard told the hours.
The shadows had long since stolen across the room in which he lay. It
was night. Who can enter into the pathos of his thoughts? He had been
lonely in his life and misunderstood. He had yearned for sympathy and
had not found it. He had gone down into that dark spiritual valley
into which all deep human souls descend and from which they do not all
emerge. He had looked upon the earth, and had found no consoler there.
He had lifted his eyes to heaven and had seen no God. Life had been
terrible in his eyes, and it had been his all. In the anguish of his
soul he had cried for help--for any help, however faint--in heaven or
earth, and no help had come to him--none! Then from this misery, of
which no man may fathom the depth, he had been delivered by a passion
so intense, so delightful, that it absorbed and enthralled his whole
being. He had contemplated an ideal goodness. He had been permitted to
call it his own. The measure of his misery had been the measure of his
deliverance. Having won back faith in a human soul, he had won it in
God. Once more the heaven above him had become bright. Beautiful with
a sacred beauty had life seemed to him. He was as a man restored from
the grave. And now she who had brought this change in him--the idol of
his soul--lay dead; in a moment, without a word of farewell, without a
loving glance, she had been cut off from him. He was alone again. Was
there then a God in heaven? Did He live only to mock and cajole the
children of men? What right had He, if He were good and gracious, to
hold the cup of blessing to human lips, thirsting for His love, and
then to tear it ruthlessly away? Gerald Eversley cursed God in his
heart.
The clock in the courtyard struck midnight. He heard what seemed to him
like a howling far off in the dark.
Another hour he waited--more. Sleep was not for him that night. He rose
from his bed. The embers were still aglow in his fireplace. He sat down
and leaned his head upon the writing-table. There stood a Bible upon
it, but he threw the Bible away.
He took a sheet of notepaper out of one of the drawers. His hand
shook palsiedly as he wrote on it these words: ‘I can bear it no more.
Life is hateful to me. I follow her to death. My body will be found
by the willow at the south end of the lake. Tell my father. When you
read this, I shall be a corpse. Forgive me, Harry. Beg your mother’s
forgiveness. Ask her to pray for me. If there is a God, he will hear
her prayer. Gerald.’
He put the paper in an envelope, addressed it ‘For Harry,’ and placed
it in the centre of the writing-table.
Then he read over the verses which Harry had given him, kissed them,
and put them in his pocket. They seemed to make him hesitate for a
moment.
Then he opened the door stealthily and listened. Not a sound in the
house. He stole down the stairs. The key of the garden door was in
the lock. He turned it and went out. The night was dark. The wind was
sighing in the trees. A bitter rain blew in his teeth. There were still
a few patches of snow upon the ground.
Silently, looking back at times to see if he were followed, he made his
way to the lake. It is nearly half a mile from the Hall. At the south
end of it a large willow hangs down to the water’s edge. There beneath
it Gerald stood for a few minutes, gazing at the cold surface of the
water. Then he took off his coat, wrapped it round a large stone, and
flung it into the lake. It sank, and the wavelets caused by its falling
came rippling to the margin.
He sat down until the last wavelet had spent itself. The wind drove
them fast to the shore. Then he rose, clasped his hands, peered down
into the deep black water, and----
A hand was laid sharply on his shoulder. He stood transfixed.
Harry Venniker, pale as a ghost, stood at his side.
For nearly a minute they remained by the water’s edge, the one turning
half round with his face towards the lake, the other holding him back.
At last Harry Venniker whispered hoarsely, ‘Come away.’
‘How did you come here?’ was the reply, spoken also in a whisper.
‘I could not sleep,’ said Harry, rapidly. ‘I was sitting up. I heard
you get up and open the door and go downstairs. As you did not come
back, I went to your room. I found this lying on the table. It told
me where you would be. I ran after you. You did not hear my steps;
the wind was so loud. I came up just as you threw your coat into the
water. I waited and watched. Come away.’
Not a word passed between them as they returned to the Hall.
Gerald flung himself again upon his bed. He hid his face in his hands,
sobbing convulsively.
Harry Venniker sat by his side until morning broke. He was calmer then.
Fearing that his presence in the room might excite observation, Harry
bent over his unhappy friend and said, ‘I think I must go now. But,
Gerald, you must give me your word that you will not do this dreadful
thing.’
Gerald said faintly, ‘I promise.’ Then he fell back upon the bed.
Just as Harry Venniker was leaving the room Gerald called ‘Harry.’
Harry Venniker returned to the bedside.
‘Harry,’ he said, ‘you remember promising to be my friend for ever,
whatever happened.’
‘Yes,’ replied Harry solemnly, ‘but I never thought of this.’
The only answer was, ‘You have saved me to-night.’
‘Yes,’ said Harry, ‘thank God.’
Harry Venniker went out.
He has never told to man or woman the incident of the night following
his sister’s funeral.
Next morning it was noticed by the servants that neither Harry Venniker
nor Gerald Eversley appeared to have slept in his bed.
Gerald Eversley was to leave Helmsbury that day. Before he left, Lady
Venniker sent word that she would see him for a minute. He was taken
into her bedroom. She was lying in bed, pale and anguished, as one
who is not far from the portals of death. Her eyes were suffused with
tears, but she held out her delicate hand to him, and he raised it to
his lips.
‘My poor dear Gerald,’ she whispered; then after a pause, ‘she was too
good for this world. His will be done.’ But even as she said the words,
her voice was choked with weeping. Recovering herself by a strong
effort she proceeded, ‘When she knew she was dying, she said, “Give
Gerald this.”’ It was an ivory crucifix which had hung over her bed,
the memorial of the Sorrow that is the solace of all sorrows.
It was evident that Lady Venniker’s strength was failing. ‘Kiss me,’
she said, ‘dear Gerald.’ He kissed her with such reverence as he might
have kissed the brow of an angel. Then he went out.
An hour later a carriage rolled away from the gates of Helmsbury Hall.
Two figures clad in deepest mourning were seated in it. They parted at
the station. One journeyed alone to London. The other went back to the
Hall.
Gerald Eversley never stayed again at Helmsbury. As soon as summer came
the doctors decided that the only hope of saving Lady Venniker’s life
lay in moving her before the cold months came to a southern clime. She
died at Mentone in the autumn. Lord Venniker seemed unable to settle
anywhere after her death. He travelled from place to place with his
younger son. Harry was ordered with his regiment to India.
Helmsbury Hall was shut up. Lord Venniker could not live in it, and
would not let it; he could not bear that the voice of strangers should
be heard in the home of his joy and his bereavement.
Lady Venniker’s grave is beside her daughter’s in the little churchyard
at Helmsbury. The villagers still lay fresh flowers upon them. Upon
the headstone common to both are graven the words hallowed by so many
sacred and pathetic memories:
‘They were lovely and pleasant in their lives, and in their death they
were not divided.’
Every year, at some time in Passion Week, a lovely garland of choicest
flowers was laid upon each grave. No one in Helmsbury knew whose were
the hands that laid them. But it was told in the village that once a
labourer, returning home from the next town long after midnight, saw in
the distance what looked like the figure of a man dressed all in black
kneeling by the graves, and in the morning the garlands were there.
EPILOGUE
There was, until the other day, a man living in a great commercial
city of the north of England. He was a man beloved and honoured,
taking a foremost part, though still comparatively young, in all the
varied activities of civic beneficence and charity. He never went into
society. He lived much to himself. But wherever any social good was to
be done, labour to be provided, thrift to be fostered, temperance to
be promoted, sorrow to be relieved, he was found there. He was never
married.
When he came to that city and began to be known there, people said, ‘He
is sure to marry soon;’ after a time they said, ‘It is a strange thing
that he has never married;’ at last they said, ‘He will never marry
now.’
Could they have read his secret, they would have seen that he wore
ever next his heart a small golden locket containing the portrait of
a beautiful and delicate girl, and on the shell of the locket, in pure
enamel, the one word
ETHEL.
He is dead now.
PRINTED BY
SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE
LONDON
Transcriber’s Notes
A few minor obvious errors in punctuation were fixed.