THE SADDEST IN THE BOOK.
Let this part of our story be quickly told, for it is very sad! Let us
not dwell upon this sorrow, and analyze it, and anatomize it, and
lecture upon it, as if it were merely a study for the intellect, and
caused the heart no pain!
It is the middle of winter. The streets of Sootythorn are sloppy with
blackened snow, the sky is dreary and gray, and dirtied by the smoke
from the factory-chimneys. Sootythorn is dismal, and Manchester is all
in a fog. The cotton-spinners' train that goes from Sootythorn to
Manchester is running into a cloud that gets ever denser and yellower,
and the whistle screams incessantly. The knees of the travellers are
covered with "Guardians," and "Couriers," and "Examiners," for there is
not light enough to read comfortably. One manufacturer asks his neighbor
a question: "Where is John Stedman of Sootythorn? He uses comin' by this
train, and I haven't seen him as I cannot tell how long."
The question interests us also. Where is John Stedman?
Not at Chesnut Hill, certainly. There is nobody at Chesnut Hill but the
old gardener and his wife. He tends the plants in the hothouse, and
keeps them comfortable in this dreary Lancashire winter by the help of
Lancashire coal. But the house is all shut up, except on the rare days
when a bit of sunshine comes, and the old woman opens the shutters and
draws up the blinds to let the bright rays in. Every thing seems ready
for Alice, if she would only come. There is her little pretty room
upstairs, and there are twenty things of hers in the drawing-room that
wait for their absent mistress.
Miss Alice is far away in the south, and her father is with her--and
there is a third, who never leaves them.
They had been travelling towards Italy, but when they reached Avignon,
Alice became suddenly worse, and they stayed there to give her a long
rest. The weather happened to be very pure and clear, and it suited her.
The winter weather about Avignon is often very exhilarating and
delicious, when the keen frost keeps aloof, and the dangerous winds are
at rest.
As for saving Alice now, not one of the three had a vestige of delusive
hope. The progress of the malady had been terribly rapid; every week had
been, a visible advance towards the grave. John Stedman had hoped little
from the very beginning, Philip Stanburne had hoped much longer, and
Alice herself longest of all. But none of the three hoped any longer
now.
When Alice found herself settled at Avignon, she felt a strong
indisposition to go farther. The railway tired and agitated her, and the
dust made her cough more painful. "Papa," she said one day, as she sat
in her easy-chair looking up the Rhone, "I think we cannot do better
than just remain where we are. I shall not keep you in this place very
long. No climate can save me now, and this weather is as pleasant as any
Italian weather could be. I am cowardly about travelling, and it
troubles me to think of the journey before us." Mr. Stedman feebly tried
to encourage Alice, and talked of the beautiful Italian coast as if they
were going to see it; but it soon became tacitly understood that Alice's
travels were at an end.
Mr. Stedman, who, since he had left England with his daughter, had never
considered expense in any thing in which her comfort was, or seemed to
be, involved, sought out a pleasanter lodging than the hotel they had
chosen as a temporary resting-place. He found a charming villa on the
slopes that look towards Mount Ventoux. The view from its front windows
included the great windings of the Rhone and the beautiful mountainous
distance; whilst from the back there was a very near view of Avignon,
strikingly picturesque in composition, crowned by the imposing mass of
the Papal palace. Alice preferred the mountains, and chose a delightful
little _salon_ upstairs as her own sitting-room, whilst her bedroom was
close at hand. There was a balcony, and she liked to sit there in the
mild air during the warmest and brightest hours.
Mr. Stedman's powerful and active nature suffered from their monotonous
life at the villa, and he needed exercise both for the body and the
mind. Alice perceived this, and, well knowing that it was impossible for
her father to do any thing except in her service, plotted a little
scheme by which she hoped to make him take the exercise and the interest
in outward things which in these sad days were more than ever necessary
to him.
"Papa," she said one day, "I think if I'd a little regular work to do,
it would do me good. I wish you would go geologizing for me, and bring
me specimens. You might botanize a little, too, notwithstanding the time
of the year; it would be amusing to puzzle out some of the rarer plants.
It's a very curious country, isn't it, papa? I'm sure, if I were well,
we should find a great deal of work to do together here." Then she began
to question him about the geology and botany of the district, and made
him buy some books which have been written upon these subjects by
scientific inhabitants of Avignon. Her little trick succeeded. Mr.
Stedman, under the illusion that he was working to please his poor
Alice, trudged miles and miles in the country, and extended his
explorations to the very slopes of Mount Ventoux itself. In this way he
improved the tone of his physical constitution, and Alice saw with
satisfaction that it would be better able to endure the impending
sorrow.
He had long ceased to treat Philip Stanburne with coldness or distrust.
His manner with his young friend was now quite gentle, and even
affectionate, tenderly and sadly genial. The one point on which they
disagreed was no longer a sore point for either of them. One day, when
they were together, they met a religious procession, with splendid
sacerdotal costumes and banners, and Philip kneeled as the host was
carried by. Their conversation, thus briefly interrupted, was resumed
without embarrassment, and Mr. Stedman asked some questions about the
especial purpose of the procession, without the slightest perceptible
expression of contempt for it. He began to take an interest in the
charities of the place, and having visited the hospital, said he thought
he should like to give something, and actually left a bank-note for five
hundred francs, though the managers of the institution, and the nurses,
and the patients, were Romanists without exception. Meanwhile, he read
his Bible very diligently every day, and the prayers of the little
household, in which Philip willingly joined.
During one of Mr. Stedman's frequent absences on the little scientific
missions ordered by his daughter Alice, she and Philip had a
conversation which he ever afterwards remembered.
"Philip," she said, "do you ever think much about what _might have
been_, if just one circumstance had been otherwise? I have been thinking
a great deal lately, almost constantly, about what might have been, for
us two, if my health had been strong and good. People say that love such
as ours is only an illusion--only a short dream--but I cannot believe
that. It might have changed, as our features change, with time, but it
would have remained with us all our lives. Do you ever fancy us a quiet
respectable old couple, living at the Tower, and coming sometimes to
Sootythorn together? I do. I fancy that, and all sorts of things that
might have been--and some of them would have been, too--if I had lived.
There's one thing vexes me, and that is, that I never saw the Tower. I
wish I had just seen it once, so that I might fancy our life there more
truly. How glad dear papa would have been to come and stay with us, and
botanize and geologize amongst your rocks there! You would have let him
come, wouldn't you, dear?--I am sure you would have been very kind to
him. You _will_ be kind to him, won't you, my love, when he has no
longer his poor little Lissy to take care of him? Don't leave him
altogether by himself. I am afraid his old age will be very sad and
lonely. It grieves me to think of that, for he will be old in a few
years now, and his poor little daughter will not be near him to keep him
cheerful. Fancy him coming home every evening from the mill, and nobody
but servants in the house! Go and stay with him sometimes, dear, at
Chesnut Hill, and get him to go to the Tower, and you will sometimes
talk together about Alice, and it will do you both good."
Philip had kept up manfully as long as he was able, but the vivid
picture that these words suggested of a world without Alice was too much
for him to bear, and he burst into passionate tears. As for Alice, she
remained perfectly calm, but when she spoke again it was with an
ineffable tenderness. She took his hand in hers, and drew him towards
her, and kissed him. Again and again she kissed him, smoothing his hair
caressingly with her fingers--gentle touches that thrilled through his
whole being. "You don't know, my darling," she said, "how much I love
you, and how miserable it made me when I thought we must be separated in
this world. It isn't so hard to be separated by death; but to live both
of us in the same world, seeing the same sun, and moon, and stars, even
the same hills, and not to be together, but always living out of sight
and hearing of each other, and yet so near--it would have been a trial
beyond my strength! And isn't it something, my love, to be together as
we are now for the last few weeks and days? You don't know how happy it
makes me to see you and papa getting on so nicely as you do. Isn't he
nice, now? I don't believe he thinks a bit the worse of you for being a
Catholic. We shall all meet again, darling--shall we not?--in the same
heaven, and then we shall have the same perfect knowledge, and our
errors and differences will be at an end for ever."
She was a good deal exhausted with saying this, and leaned back in her
chair, closing her eyes for a while. Philip gradually recovered his
usual melancholy tranquillity, and they sat thus without speaking, he
holding both her hands in his, and gently chafing and caressing them. He
had not courage to speak to Alice--indeed, in all their saddest and most
serious conversations, the courage was mainly on her side.
Whilst they were sitting thus, the sky became suddenly overcast, and
there came a few pattering drops of rain. Alice started suddenly, and
seemed to be agitated by an unknown terror. She grasped Philip's hand in
a nervous way, and complained of a strange suffering and foreboding. "I
felt so calm and peaceful all the morning," she said; "I wish I could
feel so now."
The agitation increased, and it was evident to Philip that a great
change had taken place. Alice threw her arms round him, and clasped him
to her. "O Philip!" she cried, wildly, "don't leave me now--don't leave
me even for a minute! Stay, darling, stay; it is coming, coming!"
The pattering of the rain had ceased. It had been nothing but a few
drops--scarcely even a shower--and it had ceased.
But the air was not clearer after the rain. On the contrary, it had been
clearer before it than it was now. The snowy summit of Mount Ventoux was
hidden in an opaque, thick atmosphere; mist it was not, as we northerns
understand mist, but a substantial thickening of the air.
Soon there was the same thickening, the same opacity in the atmosphere
of the remote plain that stretched to the mountain's foot. It was
invisible now, the Mount Ventoux, the Mountain of the Winds.
And as the plain grew dark the Rhone as suddenly whitened. It whitened
and whitened, nearer and nearer Avignon; then a dull distant roar became
audible, steadily increasing. A violent brief squall shook the villa.
What! so frightened already? Poor children, it is nothing yet!
Over the terrified plain, over the foaming river, comes the MISTRAL,
careering in his strength! Well for you, walls of Avignon, that you were
built for the shocks of battle! well for thee, most especially, O palace
of the transplanted Papacy, that thy fortress-heights were erected less
for pleasure than for resistance!
Louder and louder, nearer and nearer! How the trees bend like
fishing-rods! Crash, crash--they break before the tempest. What a
clatter against the windows! It is a volley of pebbles that the Mistral
carries with it as a torrent does. Bang, bang--the shutters are torn off
their iron hinges and pitched nobody knows where--into the court, on the
roof-top, it may be, or into the neighbor's garden!
The intensity of the noise made all human voices inaudible. The Mistral
likes to make an uproar--it is his amusement, when he comes to Avignon
from his mountain. And he whistles at once in a thousand chimneys, as a
boy whistles in two steel keys; and he makes such a clatter with
destroying things, that the most insured house-property leaves no peace
to its possessor. But straight in the midst of his path rise the towers
of the fortress-palace, and Peter Obreri, its architect, knows in the
world of spirits that they resist the Mistral yet.
But alas for our poor little Alice! This wind does not suit her at all;
this unceasing, this wearisome wind--this agitating, terrible wind! She
did not fear death before, in the calm serene weather, when it seemed
that her soul might rise in the blue ether, and be borne by floating
angels. But to go out into the bleak, stern tempest--to leave _his_
encircling arms, and be dashed no one knows whither along the desolate,
unfamiliar Provence, with twigs, and dead leaves, and pebbles, and that
choking cloud of sand!
"Forgive me these foolish fancies," she prayed, from the depths of this
horror. "My soul knows her way to the haven of thy rest, O Lord, my
Guide and my Redeemer!"