"Death is here, and death is there;
Death is busy everywhere;
All around, within, beneath,
Above is death,--and we are death.
* * *
Fresh spring, and summer, and winter hoar,
Move my faint heart with grief, but with delight
No more, O never more."
--Shelley.
It is just two o'clock, and Sunday. They have all been to church. They
have struggled manfully through their prayers. They have chanted a
depressing psalm or two to the most tuneless of ancient ditties. They
have even sat out an incomprehensible sermon with polite gravity and
many a weary yawn.
The day is dull. So is the rector. So is the curate,--unutterably so.
Service over, they file out again into the open air in solemn silence,
though at heart glad as children who break school, and wend their way
back to Herst through the dismantled wood.
The trees are nearly naked: a short, sad, consumptive wind is soughing
through them. The grass--what remains of it--is brown, of an unpleasant
hue. No flowers smile up at them as they pass quietly along. The sky is
leaden. There is a general air of despondency over everything. It is a
day laid aside for dismal reflection; a day on which hateful "might
have beens" crop up, for "melancholy has marked it for its own."
Yet just as they come to a turn in the park, two magpies (harbingers of
good when coupled; messengers of evil when apart) fly past them
directly across their path.
"'Two for joy!'" cries Molly, gayly, glad of any interruption to her
depressing thoughts. "I saw them first. The luck is mine."
"I think _I_ saw them first," says Sir Penthony, with no object
beyond a laudable desire to promote argument.
"Now, how could you?" says Molly. "I am quite twenty yards ahead of
you, and must have seen them come round this corner first. Now, what
shall I get, I wonder? Something worth getting, I do hope."
"'Blessed are they that expect nothing, for they shall not be
disappointed,'" says Mr. Potts, moodily, who is as gloomy as the day.
"I expect nothing."
"You are jealous," retorts Molly. "Sour grapes,"--making a small
_moue_ at him. "But you have no claim upon this luck; it is all my
own. Let nobody for a moment look upon it as his or hers."
"You are welcome to it. I don't envy you," says Cecil, little thinking
how prophetic are her words.
They continue their walk and their interrupted thoughts,--the latter
leading them in all sorts of contrary directions,--some to love, some
to hate, some to cold game-pie and dry champagne.
As they enter the hall at Herst, one of the footmen steps forward and
hands Molly an ugly yellow envelope.
"Why, here is my luck, perhaps!" cries she, gayly. "How soon it has
come! Now, what can be in it? Let us all guess."
She is surprised, and her cheeks have flushed a little. Her face is
full of laughter. Her sweet eyes wander from one to another, asking
them to join in her amusement. No thought, no faintest suspicion of the
awful truth occurs to her, although only a thin piece of paper conceals
it from her view.
"A large fortune, perhaps," says Sir Penthony; while the others close
round her, laughing, too. Only Luttrell stands apart, calmly
indifferent.
"Or a proposal. That would just suit the rapid times in which we live."
"I think I would at once accept a man who proposed to me by telegraph,"
says Molly, with pretty affectation. "It would show such flattering
haste,--such a desire for a kind reply. Remember,"--with her finger
under the lap of the envelope,--"if the last surmise proves correct I
have almost said yes."
She breaks open the paper, and, smiling still, daintily unfolds the
enclosure.
What a few words!--two or three strokes of the pen. Yet what a change
they make in the beautiful, _debonnaire_ countenance! Black as ink
they stand out beneath her stricken eyes. Oh, cruel hand that penned
them so abruptly!
"Come home at once. Make no delay. Your brother is dead."
Gray as death grows her face; her body turns to stone. So altered is
she in this brief space, that when she raises her head some shrink away
from her, and some cry out.
"Oh, Molly! what is it?" asks Lady Stafford, panic-stricken, seizing
her by the arm; while Luttrell, scarcely less white than the girl
herself, comes unconsciously forward.
Molly's arms fall to her sides; the telegram flutters to the floor.
"My brother is dead," she says, in a slow, unmeaning tone.
"He is dead," she says again, in a rather higher, shriller voice,
receiving no response from the awed group that surrounds her. Their
silence evidently puzzles her. Her large eyes wander helplessly over
all their faces, until at length they fall on Luttrell's. Here they
rest, knowing she has found one that loves her.
"Teddy--Teddy!" she cries, in an agonized tone of desolation; then,
throwing up her arms wildly toward heaven, as though imploring pity,
she falls forward senseless into his outstretched arms.
* * * * *
All through the night Cecil Stafford stays with her, soothing and
caressing her as best she can. But all her soothing and caressing falls
on barren soil.
Up and down the room throughout the weary hours walks Molly, praying,
longing for the daylight; asking impatiently every now and then if it
"will never come." Surely on earth there is no greater cross to bear
than the passive one of waiting when distress and love call loudly for
assistance.
Her eyes are dry and tearless; her whole body burns like fire with a
dull and throbbing heat. She is composed but restless.
"Will it soon be day?" she asks Cecil, almost every half hour, with a
fierce impatience,--her entire being full of but one idea, which is to
reach her home as soon as possible.
And again:
"If I had not fainted I might have been there now. Why did I miss that
train? Why did you let me faint?"
In vain Cecil strives to comfort; no thought comes to her but a mad
craving for the busy day.
At last it comes, slowly, sweetly. The gray dawn deepens into rose, the
sun flings abroad its young and chilly beams upon the earth. It is the
opening of a glorious morn. How often have we noticed in our hours of
direst grief how it is then Nature chooses to deck herself in all her
fairest and best, as though to mock us with the very gayety and
splendor of her charms!
At half-past seven an early train is starting. Long before that time
she is dressed, with her hat and jacket on, fearful lest by any delay
she should miss it; and when at length the carriage is brought round to
the door she runs swiftly down the stairs to meet it.
In the hall below, awaiting her, stands Luttrell, ready to accompany
her.
"Are you going, too?" Cecil asks, in a whisper, only half surprised.
"Yes, of course. I will take her myself to Brooklyn."
"I might have known you would," Cecil says, kindly, and then she kisses
Molly, who hardly returns the caress, and puts her into the carriage,
and, pressing Luttrell's hand warmly, watches them until they are
driven out of her sight.
During all the long drive not one word does Molly utter. Neither does
Luttrell, whose heart is bleeding for her. She takes no notice of him,
expresses no surprise at his being with her.
At the station he takes her ticket, through bribery obtains an empty
carriage, and, placing a rug round her, seats himself at the farthest
end of the compartment from her,--so little does he seek to intrude
upon her grief. And yet she takes no heed of him. He might, indeed, be
absent, or the veriest stranger, so little does his presence seem to
affect her. Leaning rather forward, with her hands clasped upon her
knees, she scarcely stirs or raises her head throughout the journey,
except to go from carriage to train, from train back again to carriage.
Once, during their last short drive from the station to Brooklyn, moved
by compassion, he ventures to address her.
"I wish you could cry, my poor darling," he says, tenderly, taking her
hand and fondling it between his own.
"Tears could not help me," she answers. And then, as though aroused by
his voice, she says, uneasily, "Why are you here?"
"Because I am his friend and--yours," he returns, gently, making
allowance for her small show of irritation.
"True," she says, and no more. Five minutes afterward they reach
Brooklyn.
The door stands wide open. All the world could have entered unrebuked
into that silent hall. What need now for bars and bolts? When the Great
Thief has entered in and stolen from them their best, what heart have
they to guard against lesser thefts?
Luttrell follows Molly into the house, his face no whit less white than
her own. A great pain is tugging at him,--a pain that is almost an
agony. For what greater suffering is there than to watch with
unavailing sympathy the anguish of those we love?
He touches her lightly on the arm to rouse her, for she has stood
stock-still in the very middle of the hall,--whether through awful
fear, or grief, or sudden bitter memory, her heart knoweth.
"Molly," says her lover, "let me go with you."
"You still here?" she says, awaking from her thoughts, with a shiver.
"I thought you gone. Why do you stay? I only ask to be alone."
"I shall go in a few minutes," he pleads, "when I have seen you safe with
Mrs. Massereene. I am afraid for you. Suppose you should--suppose--you
do not even know--_the_ room," he winds up, desperately. "Let me
guard you against such an awful surprise as that."
"I do," she answers, pointing, with a shudder, to one room farther on
that branches off the hall. "It--is there. Leave me; I shall be better
by myself."
"I shall see you to-morrow?" he says, diffidently.
"No; I shall see no one to-morrow."
"Nevertheless, I shall call to know how you are," he says,
persistently, and kissing one of her limp little hands, departs.
Outside on the gravel he meets the old man who for years has had care
of the garden and general out-door work at Brooklyn.
"It is a terrible thing, sir," this ancient individual says, touching
his hat to Luttrell, who had been rather a favorite with him during his
stay last summer. He speaks without being addressed, feeling as though
the sad catastrophe that has occurred has leveled some of the etiquette
existing between master and man.
"Terrible indeed." And then, in a low tone, "How did it happen?"
"'Twas just this," says the old man, who is faithful, and has
understood for many years most of John Massereene's affairs, having
lived with him from boy to man; "'twas money that did it. He had
invested all he had, as it might be, and he lost it, and the shock went
to his heart and killed him. Poor soul! poor soul!"
"Disease of the heart. Who would have suspected it? And he has lost
all. Surely something remains?"
"Only a few hundreds, sir, as I hear,--nothing to signify,--for the
poor mistress and the wee bits. It is a fearful thing, sir, and bad to
think of. And there's Miss Molly, too. I never could abide them
spickilations, as they're called."
"Poor John Massereene!" says Luttrell, taking off his hat. "He meant no
harm to any one,--least of all to those who were nearest to his kindly
heart."
"Ay, ay, man and boy I knew him. He was always kind and true, was the
master,--with no two ways about him. When the letter came as told him
all was gone, and that only beggary was before him, he said nothing,
only went away to his study dazed like, an' read it, an' read it, and
then fell down heart-broken upon the floor. Dead he was--stone
dead--afore any of us came to him. The poor missis it was as found him
first."
"It is too horrible," says Luttrell, shuddering. He nods his head to
the old man and walks away from him down to the village inn, depressed
and saddened.
The gardener's news has been worse than even he anticipated. To be
bereft of their dearest is bad enough, but to be thrown penniless on
the mercies of the cold and cruel--nay, rather thoughtless--world is
surely an aggravation of their misery. Death at all times is a
calamity; but when it leaves the mourners without actual means of
support, how much sadder a thing it is! To know one's comforts shall
remain unimpaired after the loss of one's beloved is--in spite of all
indignant denial--a solace to the most mournful.