THE END.
It was early in November when the time came for Catherine to leave the
Grange. She had made a selection of a very few things to go with her,
and all the others had been valued for the sale. She spoke quite
cheerfully about the sale. She had gathered a great many valuable things
about her, and it was thought they would sell very well. She had some
pictures which had been in the house for generations, and some things
which her great-uncle had picked up when he made the _grand tour_. And
there was a great deal of valuable china and quantities of old silver,
the accumulations of a family that had not been disturbed for
generations. She showed no feeling about it, people said; and indeed
Catherine felt that neither about this nor any other external thing was
she capable of showing much feeling. She cared nothing about leaving the
Grange. Had she been actually brought down as far as the almshouse, in
all likelihood she would have taken it with the proudest placidity. What
was there in that to move a soul? One room was very much like another if
you went to general principles, though it might be larger or smaller.
Were these matters to make one's self unhappy about? So she said, fully
meaning it, and with a smile. She was at the office every day. It seemed
a matter almost of economy to keep for the present the brougham with its
one horse which took her there; but of everything else she divested
herself with the frankest good will. To the outer world she kept her
good looks, though she was thinner, and her complexion paled; but those
who watched her more closely found that there were many changes in
Catherine. "I'm killed, sire," old Captain Morgan still said. He himself
had given them a great alarm; he had had "a stroke" in the beginning of
the winter, but it had passed away, though he still said everything was
too far for him, and found his evening hobble to the Grange too much. He
went as often as he could, sometimes to bring Hester home, who was
always there to receive Catherine at her return, sometimes only to sit
and talk for an hour in the evening. With other people when they came,
Catherine employed the same plan which she had first set on foot with
Harry. She made Hester her representative in the conversation. She said
it did her good, while she rested, to hear the voices and to take into
her mind now and then a scrap of the conversation. But it seemed to
Hester that she paid less and less attention to what people said. She
was very cheerful in her time of business, but when she lay back in her
chair in the evenings, she was so still sometimes that but for her hand
now and then stealing to her eyes, her anxious companion would scarcely
have known that she lived. She thought nothing of her health for her own
part, and constantly said that she was quite well and that her work
agreed with her. There had been a little excitement in her appearance
when she came home in the evening of the last day she was to spend at
the Grange. Hester thought it was the coming change that occasioned
this, though Catherine declared her indifference to it. She talked with
a little haste and excitement during dinner, and when they were alone
afterwards did not flag as was her wont, but continued the talk. "It is
a great pity," she said, "a girl like you, that instead of teaching or
doing needlework, you should not go to Vernon's, as you have a right to
do, and work there."
"I wish I could," Hester said, with eager eyes.
"They tell me you wanted to do something like what I had done. Ah! you
did not know it was all to be done over again. This life is full of
repetitions. People think the same thing does not happen to you twice
over, but it does in my experience. You would soon learn. A few years'
work, and you would be an excellent man of business; but it can't be."
"Why cannot it be? You did it. I should not be afraid----"
"I was old. I was past my youth. All that sort of thing was over for me.
It could be in one way--if you could make up your mind to marry
Harry----"
"I could not--I could not! I will never marry."
"It is a great pity you cannot--I think it is a mistake. I have done him
a great deal of injustice in my time; but one finds out sooner or later
that brains are not everything. There is another man, and he has brains,
who would marry you if you would have him, Hester--Roland Ashton. Take
him--it is better in the end."
"Oh, do not ask me! I will never marry," Hester cried.
Then Catherine suddenly sat upright in her chair, and clasped her hands
together with almost wild emphasis. "I would marry," she cried, "if I
were you! I would wipe out every recollection. Did they tell you the
pitiful story of a meeting in the train, a marriage suddenly made
up--and who it was that went away into the darkness in what was to have
been your place?"
"Yes, they have told me," said Hester, in a low voice.
"Lord in Heaven!" cried Catherine, "what a world, what a world this
is!--all mockery and delusion, all farce except when it is tragic. And
after that you will not marry--for the sake of----"
"How can I help it?" cried the girl, with wistful eyes. "You do the same
yourself."
"Myself? that is different. Your heart will not be empty for ever,
Hester. It cannot close itself up for ever. With me that was the
last;--this is one thing that makes a mother like no one else. Hold the
last fast, they say. It was everything one had to look to. I am very
cheerful, and I shall live for years--many people do. But I have got my
death blow," Catherine said. Then the silence dropped again between
them. It was before a cheerful fire, with a lamp burning--altogether a
more cheerful scene than in those sad summer days.
"There are some people who would not take much interest in it,"
Catherine continued, "but you do. I think you are like me, Hester. We
were kept apart by circumstances; perhaps it is possible we might have
been kept apart on purpose. "He"--Catherine made a pause before and
after, and said the word with a sob--"never understood me. They say he
was--afraid of me, never could trust me with what he really wished.
Alas, alas! It must have been my fault----"
"Oh no, no!"
"Ah, yes, yes. I had rather think that; and there is a great deal that
is base in me. I could not but laugh even at that story of Emma--even
now. Human nature is so strange--it is a farce. I am not angry though,
not at all: all things seem floating off from me. I could think we were
floating away altogether, you and I----"
"You are not well. You are doing too much. I should like to send for the
doctor."
"I believe in no doctors. No, no; I am quite well, only tired with the
day's work and ready for rest."
And the silence resumed its sway. She laid herself back as before--her
pale head against the dark curtains stood out like ivory. Some time
afterwards she sighed two or three times heavily, then there was no
sound at all. The fire burned cheerfully, the lamp shed its steady glow
upon Hester's book, to which after this talk she did not, as may be
supposed, pay very much attention. But Catherine did not like a vacant
watcher, and the book was a kind of safeguard, protecting her from the
sense of an eye upon her. Perhaps an hour passed so. A chill crept into
the room like nothing Hester had ever felt before, though all was still,
serenely warm and bright to outward appearance. She rose softly at last
and touched Catherine's hands, that were folded in her lap, to wake her.
It was from them the cold had come that had crept to her heart.
There was, then, no need that Catherine Vernon should ever live in
cramped rooms, in another house from that in which she had been born.
When they carried her out from it a week after, the whole population
came out to meet the procession, and followed her weeping, lining the
path, filling the streets. Her misfortunes, and the noble courage with
which she had stood up against them at the end, brought back all the
fulness of the love and honour with which she had been regarded when she
first became supreme in the place, and all bounty flowed from her. There
was not any one connected with her, high or low, not only the poor
Vernons who had snarled and scoffed while they accepted her favours, but
the very men of money who had of late taken upon themselves the air of
patronising Catherine, but was proud to be able to repeat now, on the
day of her burying, what she had said to them, and how they had come in
contact with her. The doctors were not clear as to how she died. She had
never been suspected of heart disease, or any other disease. But it was
her heart somehow, with or without a medical reason for it, that had
failed her. The last touch, those who loved her thought, had been too
much. Derision such as she had delighted in in other circumstances, had
overtaken the last tragic occurrence of her life. Catherine had not been
able to bear the grim mockery, the light of a farce upon that tragedy of
her own.
And as for Hester, all that can be said for her is that there are two
men whom she may choose between, and marry either if she pleases--good
men both, who will never wring her heart. Old Mrs. Morgan desires one
match, Mrs. John another. What can a young woman desire more than to
have such a possibility of choice?
FINIS.
TRANSCRIBER NOTES
Obvious errors and inconsistencies in spelling, punctuation and
hyphenation have been corrected.
Archaic spellings have been retained.
End of Project Gutenberg's Hester, Volume 3 (of 3), by Margaret Oliphant