THE SORROWFUL MESSAGE.
I have no wealth of grief; no sobs, no tears.
Nor any sighs, no words, no overflow,
Nor storms of passion; no reliefs; yet oh!
I have a leaden grief, and with it fears
Lest they who think there's nought where nought appears
May say I never loved him.
--Hon. Mrs. Knox.
Dolly was with John Morgan. At that minute they were coming up the steps
at the end of a narrow street near the Temple. The steps led up from the
river, and came from under an archway. The morning was fine, and the
walk had brought some colour into Dolly's pale cheeks as she came up,
emerging from the gloom of the arch. John thought he had not seen her
look so like herself for a long time past. Dolly liked the quaint old
street, the steps, the river beyond, the alternate life and sleep of
these old City places.
As they came along, John Morgan had been telling Dolly something that
had touched her and made her forget for a time the sad preoccupations
from which she found it so difficult to escape. He had been confiding in
her--George had known the story he told her--no one else. It was a
melancholy, middle-aged episode of Mrs. Carbury's faithlessness. 'She
had waited so long,' said poor John, 'and with so much goodness, that it
has, I confess, been a blow to me to find that her patience could ever
come to an end. I can't wonder at it, but it has been a disappointment.
She is Mrs. Philcox now. Philcox is a doctor at Brighton.... It is all
over now,' said John, slowly, 'but I was glad to leave Kensington at the
time.'
'I am so sorry and so glad, too, for she could not have been at all
worthy of you,' cried Dolly, sympathising. 'Of course, she ought to have
waited. People who love don't count time.'
'Hush, my dear girl,' said John. 'She was far too good for me, and I was
a selfish fool to hope to keep her. How could I expect her to wait for
me? What man has a right to waste a woman's life in uncertainty?'
'Why, I am waiting for Robert,' said Dolly.
John muttered uncomfortably that that was different. 'Robert is a very
different person to me,' said John. 'This is the house.'
'What a nice old house,' said Dolly. 'I should like to live here for a
little.' John rang at the bell. It was a door with a handsomely carved
lintel, over which a few odd bow-windows were built out to get gleams of
the river. There was a blank wall, too, leading to the arch; the steady
stream of traffic dinned in the distance of the misty street end.
Mrs. Fane lived in one of the streets that lead out of the Strand. At
one time she had worked for the Sisters of St. James, who lived not far
off; but when, for various reasons, she ceased to become an active
member of the community, she set up a little house of refuge, to which
the Sisters often sent their convalescents. She had a sick kitchen for
people who were leaving the hospitals, weak still and unfit for their
work: mutton-chops and words of encouragement were dealt out to them; a
ground-floor room had been fitted up as a reading-room, in which she
gave weekly banquets of strong congon and dripping-cake, such as her
guests approved. She was a clever, original-minded woman; she had once
thought of being a Sister, but life by rule had become intolerable to
her, and she had gone her own way, and set to work to discover a clue of
her own in the labyrinth in which people go wandering in pursuit of the
good intentions which are said to lead to a dreary terminus. London
itself may be paved with good intentions for all we know. Who shall say
what her stones might cry out if they had voices? But there they lie
cold and hard and silent, except for the monotonous roll of the wheels
passing on from suburbs to markets, to docks, and to warehouses, those
cities within a city.
Charlotte Fane's clue in the labyrinth was a gift for other people's
happiness, and a sympathy that no sorrow could ever over-darken. She had
not been beautiful in her youth, but now in her middle age all her life
seemed written in her kind face, in the clear brown eyes, in the gentle
rectitude of her understanding sympathy. Some human beings speak to us
unconsciously of trust and hope, as others, in their inner discordance,
seem to jar and live out before our very eyes our own secret doubts and
failings, and half-acknowledged fears.
I have a friend, a philosopher, who thinks more justly than most
philosophers. The other day when he said, 'To be good is such a
tremendous piece of luck,' we all laughed, but there was truth in his
words, and I fear this luck of being born good, does not belong to all
the people in my little history. John Morgan is good. His soul and his
big body are at peace, and evenly balanced. Everything is intensely
clear to him. The present is present, the past is past. Present the
troubles and the hopes of the people among whom he is living; past the
injuries and disappointments, the failures and grievances of his lot;
once over they are immediately put away and forgotten. Charlotte Fane's
instincts were higher and keener, perhaps, than the curate's, but she,
too, was born in harmony with sweet and noble things.
'Yes,' said Morgan, 'I come here whenever I want help and good advice.
There are a few sick people upstairs that I visit. Mrs. Fane will show
you her little hospital. Two of her nurses have just gone out to the
East. She has been nursing some cholera patients with great success. I
sent a letter to _The Times_ on the subject; I don't know if they have
put it in; I have not seen the paper to-day.' As he spoke, there came a
sudden, deep, melodious sound.
'That is Big Ben,' said John. 'Three-quarters. We are late.' The strokes
fell one by one and filled the air and echoed down the street; they
seemed to sound above the noise and the hurry of the day.
Dolly remembered afterwards how a man with an organ had come to the end
of the street and had begun playing that tune of Queen Hortense's as
they went into the house. The door was opened by a smiling-looking girl
in a blue dress with some stiff white coiffe and a big apron.
'Mrs. Fane expected them; she would be down directly; would Mr. Morgan
go up and speak to her first? Mrs. Connor was dying they feared. Would
the lady wait in the nurses' sitting-room?' The little maid opened the
door into a back room looking on to a terrace, beyond which the river
flowed. There was a bookcase in the room: some green plants were growing
in the window, a photograph hung over the chimney of one of Mr. Royal's
pictures. Dolly knew it again, that silent figure, that angel that ruled
the world; she had come face to face with the solemn face since she had
looked at the picture two years ago in the painter's studio. Seeing it
brought back that day very vividly--the young men's talk in the green
walk: how Rhoda startled her when she came from behind the tree. The
clocks were still going on tolling out the hour one by one and ringing
it out with prosy reiteration, some barges were sailing up the river,
some children were at play, and the drone of that organ reached her
occasionally; so did the dull sound of voices in the room overhead. She
saw two more white caps pass the window. She had waited some minutes,
when she saw a paper lying on a chair, and Dolly, remembering John's
letter to _The Times_, took it up and looked to see if it had been
inserted. The letter was almost the first thing she saw, and she read it
through quietly. It was signed 'Clericus,' and advocated a certain
treatment for cholera. Long afterwards she talked it over quite calmly;
then she turned the page. A quarter of an hour had passed by, for the
clock in the room had begun to strike twelve. Did it strike into her
brain? Did the fatal words come with a shriek from the paper? What was
this? For a minute she sat stunned, staring at the printed words--then
she knew that she had known it all along, that she never had had hope
not for one instant since he left them. For one minute only she could
not believe that harm had happened to him, and that was the minute when
she read a list printed in pitiless order--'Killed on the 20th of
September; wounded at the battle of the Alma; died on the following day
of wounds received in action, Captain Errington Daubigney, Lieutenant
Alexander Thorpe, --th Regiment, Ensign George Francis Vanborough....'
There were other names following, but she could read no more. No one
heard her cry, 'My George, oh, my George!' but when the door opened and
two nurses came in quietly in their white coiffes and blue dresses, they
found a poor black heap lying upon the floor in the sunlight.
* * * * *
I heard a sailor only the other day telling some women of his watch on
the night of the Alma, and how he had worked on with some of the men
from his ship, and as they went he searched for the face of a comrade
who came from his own native town. 'His friends lived next door to us,'
said Captain B----, 'and I had promised his mother to look after him. I
could hear nothing of the poor fellow. They said he was dead, and his
name was in the papers; and they were all in mourning for him at home,
when he walked in one day long after. They found it harder to tell his
mother that he was alive than that he was dead.' Alas! many a tender
heart at home had been struck that day by a deadly aim from those fatal
heights for whom no such happy shock was in store.
'If it had not been for George,' Jonah afterwards wrote to his mother,
'you would never have seen me again.'
On that deadly slope, as they struggled up through the deadly storm of
which 'the hail lashed the waters below into foam,' Jonah fell, wounded
in the leg, and as he fell the bugles sounded, and he was left alone and
surrounded. A Russian came up to cut him down. He had time to see the
muzzle of a gun deliberately aimed. Jonah himself could hardly tell what
happened. Suddenly some soldier, springing from behind, fired, and the
gun went up, and Jonah was able to struggle to his feet. He saw his new
ally run one man through with his bayonet, and then, with his clenched
fist, strike down a third who had come to close quarters. It was a
gallant rescue. When a moment came to breathe again Jonah turned. 'Thank
you, my man,' he gasped. The man looked at him and smiled. Jonah's
nerves were sharpened, for even in that instant he recognised George
dressed in his private's dress: his cap had gone, and he was
bare-headed.
As Jonah exclaimed, he was carried on by a sudden rush from behind; he
looked back, and he thought he saw George leap forward and fall. It was
a sudden rally--a desperate push--men fell right and left. The Colonel,
too, was down a few paces off, and then came a blinding crash. Jonah
himself was knocked over a second time by a spent shell. When he came to
himself, he was being carried to the rear, and the tide of battle had
swept on.
That night, while Dolly was at home watching in the mourning house, two
men were searching along a slope beyond a vineyard, where a fierce
encounter had taken place. A village not far off had been burned to the
ground; there were shreds and wrecks of the encounter lying all about.
Some sailors came up with lanterns and asked the men what they were
doing.
'They were looking for a man of their own corps. The Colonel had been
making inquiry,' said the two soldiers. A reward had been offered--it
was to be doubled if they brought him in alive.
'A gentleman run away from his friends,' said one of the men. 'There is
an officer in the Guards has offered the money; he's wounded himself,
and been carried to the shore.'
'Do you take money for it?' said one of the sailors, turning away, and
then he knelt down and raised some one in his arms, and turned his
lantern upon the face.
It was that of a young fellow, who might have seemed asleep at first. He
had been shot through the temple in some close encounter. There was no
mark except a dull red spot where the bullet had entered. He had been
lying on his back on the slope, with his feet towards the sea; his brows
were knit, but his mouth was smiling.
'Why, that's him, poor fellow!' said Corporal Smith, kneeling down and
speaking below his breath. 'So he's dead: so much the worse for him, and
for us too--twenty pound is twenty pound.'
'Here is a letter to his sweetheart,' said one of the sailors, laying
the head gently down, and holding out a letter that had fallen from the
dead man's belt.
'Miss Vanbur--Vanborough; that's the name,' said Smith.
The sailors had moved on with their lanterns: they had but little time
to give to the dead in their search for the living; and then the
soldiers, too, trudged back to the camp.
All that night George lay still under the stars, with a strange look of
Dolly's own steadfast face that was not there in life. It was nobler
than hers now, tear-stained and sorrowing, in the old house at home.
Afterwards, looking back, it seemed some comfort to Dolly to remember
how that night of mourning had been spent, not discordantly separated
from her George whom she had loved, but with him in spirit.
All that night George lay still under the stars. In the morning, just at
sunrise, they laid him in his grave. A breeze blew up from the sea in
the soldiers' faces, and they could hear the echo of some music that the
French were playing on the heights. Some regiment was changing quarters,
and the band was playing 'Partant pour la Syrie,' and the music from the
heights swelled over the valley. Then the armies passed on to fresh
battle, leaving the soldiers who had fallen lying along the valley and
by the sea.
Jonah, on board ship, heard a rumour that George had been found
desperately wounded, but alive. When he came back to the camp he found,
to his bitter disappointment, that it was but a vain hope. George's name
was on the list of the officers who had died of their wounds on the day
after the battle. That unlucky reward had made nothing but confusion.
Smith and his companion declared they had found him alive and sent him
to the shore to be taken on board. He must have died on the way, they
said. Jonah paid the twenty pounds without demur when the men came to
claim it. The letter they brought made their story seem true. Jonah
asked them a few questions. 'Did he send me this letter for his sister?'
he said: 'was he able to speak?'
Jonah was choking something down as he tried to speak quietly.
'He sent his duty, sir,' said Smith, 'and gave me the letter. He said we
should meet in a better world.'
'Did he use those words?' said Jonah, doubtfully. Something in the man's
tone seemed odd to him.
Smith gained courage as he went on. 'He couldn't speak much, poor
gentleman. Joe can tell you as well as me. He said, "Smith, you are a
good fellow," says he, didn't he, Joe?'
Joe did not like being appealed to, and stopped Smith short. 'Come
along,' he said, gruffly, 'the Captain don't want you now.'
Jonah let them go. He was giddy and weak from illness, and overcome. He
began to cry, poor fellow, and he did not want them to see it; he walked
up and down, struggling with his grief. His was a simple, grateful
heart.
Colonel Fane, too, saw the men, who had gained confidence, and whose
story seemed probable: they said nothing of the money that Jonah had
offered. Poor George's commission had come only the day before the
battle. Colonel Fane sent his name home with the list of the officers
who had fallen. He thought of the sweet-looking girl, his old friend's
daughter, and remembered their talk together. His heart ached for her as
he wrote her a few words of remembrance and feeling for her sorrow. His
praise of George was Dolly's best comfort at that miserable time, and
the few words he enclosed written by her brother on the very morning of
the battle.