HIS OWN CHILDREN.
The tidings of Felicita's death spread rapidly in England, and the
circumstances attending it, its suddenness, and the fact that it had
occurred at the same place that her husband had perished by accident
many years before, gave it more than ordinary interest and excited more
than ordinary publicity. It was a good deal talked of in literary
circles, and in the fashionable clique to which she belonged through her
relationship with the Riversford family. There were the usual kindly
notices of her life and works in the daily papers; and her publisher
seized the occasion to advertise her books more largely. But it was in
Riversborough that the deepest impression was made, and the keenest
curiosity aroused by the story of her death, obscure in some of its
details, but full of romantic interest to her old towns-people, who were
thus recalled to the circumstances attending Roland Sefton's
disappearance and subsequent death. The funeral also was to be in the
immediate neighborhood, in the church where all the Riversfords had been
buried time out of mind, long before a title had been conferred on the
head of the house. It appeared quite right that Felicita should be
buried beside her own people; and every one who could get away from
business went down to the little country churchyard to be present at the
funeral.
But Phebe was not there: when she reached London she was so worn out
with fatigue and agitation that she was compelled to remain at home,
brooding over what she had come through. And Jean Merle had not trusted
himself to look into the open grave, about to close over all that
remained of the woman he had so passionately loved. The tolling of the
minute-bell, which began early in the day and struck its deep knell
through the tardy hours till late in the evening, smote upon his ear and
heart every time the solemn tone sounded through the quiet hours. He was
left alone in his old home, for Mr. Clifford was gone as one of the
mourners to follow Felicita to the grave; and all the servants had asked
to be present at the funeral. There was nothing to demand his attention
or to distract his thoughts. The house was as silent as if it had been
the house of death and he himself but a phantom in it.
Though he had been six months in the house, he had never yet been in
Felicita's study--that quiet room shut out from the noise both of the
street and the household, which he had set apart and prepared for her
when she was coming, stepping down a little from her own level to be his
wife. It was dismantled, he knew; her books were gone, and all the
costly decorative fittings he had chosen with so much joyous anxiety.
But the panelled doors which he had worked at with his own hands were
there, and the window, with its delicately tinted lattice-frames,
through which the sun had shone in daintily upon her at her desk. He
went slowly up the long staircase, pausing now and then lost in thought;
and standing, at last before the door, which he had never opened without
asking permission to enter in, he hesitated for many minutes before he
went in.
An empty room, swept clean of everything which made it a living
habitation. The sunshine fell in pencils of colored light upon the bare
walls and uncarpeted floor. It bore no trace of any occupant; yet to him
it seemed but yesterday that he had been in here, listening to the low
tones of Felicita's sweet voice, and gazing with silent pride on her
beautiful face. There had been unmeasured passion and ambition in his
love for her, which had fatally changed his whole life. But he knew now
that he had failed in winning her love and in making her happy; and the
secret dissatisfaction she had felt in her ill-considered marriage had
been fatal both to her and to him. The restless eagerness it had
developed in him to gain a position that could content her, had been a
seed of worldliness, which had borne deadly fruit. He opened the
casement, and looked out on the familiar landscape, on which her eyes
had so often rested--eyes that were closed forever. The past, so keenly
present to him this moment, was in reality altogether dead and buried.
She had ceased to be his wife years ago, when she had accepted the
sacrifice he proposed to her of his very existence. That old life was
blotted out; and he had no right to mourn openly for the dead, who was
being laid in the grave of her fathers at this hour. His children were
counting themselves orphans, and it was not in his power to comfort
them. He knelt down at the open window, and rested his bowed head on
the window-sill. The empty room behind him was but a symbol of his own
empty lot, swept clean of all its affections and aspirations. Two thirds
of his term of years were already spent; and he found himself bereft and
dispossessed of all that makes life worth having--all except the power
of service. Even at this late hour a voice within him called to him, "Go
work to-day in my vineyard." It was not too late to serve God who had
forgiven him and mankind whom he had wronged. There was time to make
some atonement; to work out some redemption for his fellow-men. To
Roland Sefton had arisen a vision of a public and honorable career,
cheered on by applause of men and crowned with popularity and renown for
all he might achieve. But Jean Merle must toil in silence and
difficulty, amid rebuffs and discouragements, and do humble service
which would remain unrecognized and unthanked. Yet there was work to do,
if it were no more than cheering the last days of an old man, or
teaching a class of the most ignorant of his townsfolk in a night
school. He rose from his knees after a while, and left the room,
closing the door as softly as he had been used to do when afraid of any
noise grating on his wife's sensitive brain. It seemed to him like the
closing up of the vault where she was buried. She was gone from him
forever, and there was nothing left but to forget the past if that were
possible.
As he went lingeringly down the staircase, which would henceforth be
trodden seldom if ever by him, he heard the ringing of the house-bell,
which announced the return of Mr. Clifford and of Felix and Hilda, who
were coming to stay the night in their old home, before returning to
London on the morrow. He hastened down to open the door and help them to
alight from their carriage. It was the first time he had been thus
brought into close contact with them; but this must happen often in the
future, and he must learn to meet them as strangers, and to be looked
upon by them as little more than a hired servant.
But the sight of Hilda's sad young face, so pale and tear-stained, and
the expression of deep grief that Felix wore, tried him sorely. What
would he not have given to be able to take this girl into his arms and
soothe her, and to comfort his son with comfort none but a father can
give? He stood outside the sphere of their sorrows, looking on them with
the eyes of a stranger; and the pain of seeing them so near yet so far
away from him was unutterable. The time might come when Jean Merle could
see them, and talk with them calmly as a friend, ready to serve them to
the utmost of his power; when there might be something of pleasure in
gaining their friendship and confidence. But so long as they were
mourning bitterly for their mother and could not conceal the sharpness
of their grief, the sight of them was a torture to him. It was a relief
to him and to Mr. Clifford when they left Riversborough the next
morning.