IN LUCERNE.
Phebe found herself alone, with the burden of Jean Merle's secret
resting on her unshared. It depended upon her sagacity and tact whether
he should escape being connected in a mysterious manner with the sad
event that had just transpired in Engelberg. The footstep she had heard
on the stairs was that of the landlady, who had gone into the salon and
had thus missed seeing Jean Merle as he left the house. Phebe met her in
the doorway.
"I have sent a message by the guide who brought me here," she said in
slowly pronounced French; "he is gone to Lucerne, and he will telegraph
to England for me."
"Is he gone--Jean Merle?" asked the landlady.
"Certainly, yes," answered Phebe; "he is gone to Lucerne."
"Will he return, then?" inquired the landlady.
"No, I suppose not," she replied; "he has done all he had to do for me.
He will telegraph to England, and our friends will come to us
immediately. Good-night, Madame."
"Good-night, Mademoiselle," was the response. "May you sleep well!"
But sleep was far away from Phebe's agitated brain that night. She felt
herself alone in a strange land, with a great grief and a terrible
secret oppressing her. As the night wore on a feverish dread took
possession of her that she should be unable to prevent Felicita's burial
beside Roland Sefton's grave. Even Felix would decide that it ought to
be so. As soon as the dawn came she rose and went out into the icy
freshness of the morning air, blowing down from the snow-fields and the
glaciers around her.
The village was beginning to arouse itself. The Abbey bells were
ringing, and at the sound of them, calling the laborers to a new day's
toil, here and there a shutter was thrown back or a door was opened, and
light volumes of gray wood-smoke stole upwards into the still air. There
was a breath of serenity and peace in this early hour which soothed
Phebe's fevered brain, as she slowly sauntered on with the purpose of
finding the cemetery, where the granite cross stood over the grave that
had occupied so much of her thoughts since she had heard of Roland
Sefton's death. She reached it at last and stood motionless before it,
looking back through all the years in which she had mourned with
Roland's mother his untimely death. He whom she had mourned for was not
lying here; but did not his life hold deeper cause for grief than his
death ever had? Standing there, so far from home, in the quiet morning,
with this grave at her feet, she answered to herself a question which
had been troubling her for many months. Yes, it was a right thing to do,
on the whole, to keep this secret--Felicita's secret as well as
Roland's--forever locked in her own heart. There was concealment in it
closely verging, as it must always do, on deception. Phebe's whole
nature revolted against concealment. She loved to live her life out in
the eye of day. But the story of Roland Sefton's crime, and the penance
done for it, in its completeness could never be given to the world; it
must always result in some measure in misleading the judgment of those
most interested in it. There was little to be gained and much to be
sacrificed by its disclosure. Felicita's death seemed to give a new
weight to every reason for keeping the secret; and it was safe in her
keeping and Mr. Clifford's: when a few years were gone it would be hers
alone. The cross most heavy for her to bear she must carry, hidden from
every eye; but she could bear it faithfully, even unto death.
As her lips whispered the last three words, giving to her resolution a
definite form and utterance, a shadow beside her own fell upon the
cross. She turned quickly and met the kindly inquisitive gaze of the
mountain curé who had led Felicita to this spot yesterday. He had been
among the first who followed Jean Merle as he carried her lifeless form
through the village street; and he had run to the monastery to seek what
medical aid could be had there. The incident was one of great interest
to him. Phebe's frank yet sorrowful face, turned to him with its
expression of ready sympathy with any fellow-creature, won from the
young priest the cordial friendliness that everywhere greeted her. He
stood bareheaded before her, as he had done before Felicita, but he
spoke to her in a tone of more familiar intercourse.
"Madame, pardon," he said, "but you are in grief, and I would offer you
my condolence. Behold! to me the lady who died yesterday spoke her last
words--here, on this spot. She said not a word afterwards to any human
creature. I come to communicate them to you. There is but little to
tell."
It was so little that Phebe felt greatly disappointed; though her eyes
grew blind with tears as she thought of Felicita standing here before
this deceptive cross and calling herself of all women the most
miserable. The cross itself had had no message of peace to her troubled
heart. "Most miserable," repeated Phebe to herself, looking back upon
yesterday with a vain yearning that she had been there to tell Felicita
that she shared her misery, and could help her to bear it.
"And now," continued the curé, "can I be of any service to Madame? You
are alone; and there are a few formalities to observe. It will be some
days before your friends can arrive. Command me, then, if I can be of
any service."
"Can you help me to get away," she asked, in a tone of eager anxiety,
"down to Lucerne as quickly as possible? I have telegraphed to Madame's
son, and he will come immediately. Of course, I know in England when a
sudden death occurs there are inquiries made; and it is right and
necessary. But you see Madame died of a heart disease."
"Without doubt," he interrupted; "she was ill here, and I followed her
down the village, and saw her enter Jean Merle's hut. I was about to
enter, for she had been there a long time, when you appeared with your
guide and went in. In a minute there was a cry, and I saw Jean Merle
bearing the poor lady out into the daylight and you following them.
Without doubt she died from natural causes."
"There are formalities to observe," said Phebe earnestly, "and they take
much time. But I must leave Engelberg to-morrow, or the next day at the
latest, taking her with me. Can you help me to do this?"
"But you will bury Madame here?" answered the curé, who felt deeply
what interest would attach to another English grave in the village
burial-ground; "she told me yesterday Roland Sefton was her relative,
and there will be many difficulties and great expenditure in taking her
away from this place."
"Yes," answered Phebe, "but Madame belongs to a great family in England;
she was the daughter of Baron Riversborough, and she must be buried
among her own people. You shall telegraph to the consul at Geneva, and
he will say she must be buried among her own people, not here. It does
not signify about the expenditure."
"Ah! that makes it more easy," replied the curé, "and if Madame is of an
illustrious family--I was about to return to my parish this morning; but
I will stay and arrange matters for you. This is my native place, and I
know all the people. If I cannot do everything, the abbot and the
brethren will. Be tranquil; you shall leave Engelberg as early as
possible."
It was impossible for Phebe to telegraph to England her intention of
returning immediately to Lucerne; for Felix must have set off already,
and would be on his way to the far-off valley among the Swiss
mountains, where he believed his father's grave lay, and where his
mother had met her death. Phebe's heart was wrung for him, as she
thought of the overwhelming and instantaneous shock it would be to him
and Hilda, who did not even know that their mother had left home; but
her dread lest he should judge it right to lay his mother beside this
grave, which had possessed so large a share in his thoughts hitherto,
compelled her to hasten her departure before he could arrive, even at
the risk of missing him on the way. The few formalities to be observed
seemed complicated and tedious; but at last they were ended. The
friendly priest accompanied her on her sorrowful return down the rough
mountain-roads, preceded by the litter bearing Felicita's coffin; and at
every hamlet they passed through he left minute instructions that a
young English gentleman travelling up to Engelberg was to be informed of
the little funeral cavalcade that was gone down to Lucerne.
Down the green valley, and through the solemn forests, Phebe followed
the rustic litter on foot with the priest beside her, now and then
reciting a prayer in a low tone. When they reached Grafenort carriages
were in waiting to convey them as far as the Lake. It was only a week
since she and Felicita had started on their secret and disastrous
journey, and now her face was set homewards, with no companion save this
coffin, which she followed with so heavy a spirit. She had come up the
valley as Jean Merle had done, with vague, dim hopes, stretching vainly
forward to some impossible good that might come to him when he and
Felicita stood face to face once again. But now all was over.
A boat was ready at Stans, and here the friendly curé bade her farewell,
leaving her to go on her way alone. And now it seemed to Phebe, more
than ever before, that she had been living and acting for a long while
in a painful dream. Her usually clear and tranquil soul was troubled and
bewildered as she sat in the boat at the head of Felicita's coffin, with
her dear face so near to her, yet hidden from her eyes. All around her
lay the Lake, with a fine rapid ripple on the silvery blue of its
waters, as the rowers, with measured and rhythmical strokes of their
oars, carried the boat's sad freight on towards Lucerne. The evening sun
was shining aslant down the wooded slopes of the lower hills, and dark
blue shadows gathered where its rays no longer penetrated. That
half-consciousness, common to all of us, that she had gone through this
passage in her life before, and that this sorrow had already had its
counterpart in some other state of existence, took possession of her;
and with it came a feeling of resigning herself to fate. She was worn
out with anxiety and grief. What would come might come. She could exert
herself no longer.
As they drew near to Lucerne, the clangor of military music and the
merry pealing of bells rang across the water, jarring upon her faint and
sorrowful heart. Some fête was going on, and all the populace was
active. Banners floated from all the windows, and a gay procession was
parading along the quay, marching under the echoing roof of the long
wooden bridge which crossed the green torrent of the river. Numberless
little boats were darting to and fro on the smooth surface of the Lake,
and through them all her own, bearing Felicita's coffin, sped swiftly on
its way to the landing-stage, on which, as if standing there amid the
hubbub to receive it, her sad eyes saw Canon Pascal and Felix.
They had but just reached Lucerne, and were waiting for the next steamer
starting to Stans, when Felix had caught sight of the boat afar off,
with its long, narrow burden, covered by a black pall; and as it drew
nearer he had distinguished Phebe sitting beside it alone. Until this
moment it had seemed absolutely incredible that his mother could be
dead, though the telegram to Canon Pascal had said so distinctly. There
must be some mistake, he had constantly reiterated as they hurried
through France to Lucerne; Phebe had been frightened, and in her terror
had misled herself and them. No wonder his mother should be
ill--dangerously so, after the fatigue and agitation of a journey to
Engelberg; but she could not be dead. Phebe had had no opportunity of
telegraphing again; for they had set off at once, and from Basle they
had brought on with them an eminent physician. So confident was Felix
in his asseverations that Canon Pascal himself had begun to hope that he
was right, and but that the steamer was about to start in a few minutes,
they would have hired a boat to carry them on to Stans, in order to lose
no time in taking medical aid to Felicita.
But as Felix stood there, only dimly conscious of the scene about them,
the sight of the boat bringing Phebe to the shore with the covered
coffin beside her, extinguished in his heart the last glimmering of the
hope which had been little more than a natural recoil from despair. He
was not taken by surprise, or hurried into any vehemence of grief. A
cold stupor, which made him almost insensible to his loss, crept over
him. Sorrow would assert itself by and by; but now he felt dull and
torpid. When the coffin was lifted out of the boat, by bearers who were
waiting at the landing-stage for the purpose, he took up his post
immediately behind it, as if it were already the funeral procession
carrying his mother to the grave; and with all the din and tumult of the
streets sounding in his ears, he followed unquestioningly wherever it
might go. Why it was there, or why his mother's coffin was there, he did
not ask; he only knew that she was there.
"My poor Phebe," said Canon Pascal, as they followed closely behind him,
"why did you start homewards? Would it not have been best to bury her at
Engelberg, beside her husband? Did not Felicita forgive him, even in her
death?"
"No, no, it was not that," answered Phebe; "she forgave him, but I could
not bear to leave her there. I was with her just as she died; but she
had gone up to Engelberg alone, and I followed her, only too late. She
never spoke to me or looked at me. I could not leave Felicita in
Engelberg," she added excitedly; "it has been a fatal place to her."
"Is there anything we must not know?" he inquired.
"Yes," she said, turning to him her pale and quivering face, "I have a
secret to keep all my life long. But the evil of it is spent now. It
seems to me as if it is a sin no longer; all the selfishness is gone
out of it, and Felix and Hilda were as clear of it as Alice herself; if
I could tell you all, you would say so too."
"You need tell me no more, dear Phebe," he replied; "God bless you in
the keeping of their secret!"