That had been a weary morning in the new wing. Dick had gone to
Edinburgh with his brother, half by way of seeing the beautiful town,
half to console Val, who was very eager and anxious. With a curious
interest he had walked about Moray Place, to which he had directed his
letters in the strange old time when he was still Dick Brown,--a time
which it gave him a certain vertigo to think of. And I am sorry to say
that Val, in the heat of disappointment, when he came out from Mrs
Pringle’s presence, forgot that his brother was walking about on the
other side of the square waiting for him, and had rushed back to
Lasswade without ever thinking of Dick. When he saw that he had been
forgotten, Dick too made his way to the railway, and went back; but it
was afternoon when he arrived at Rosscraig. He had never left his mother
for so long a time before, and this, no doubt, had its effect upon her.
She was alone in the beautiful rooms of the new wing all the morning. It
was like a silent fairy palace, where everything was done by mysterious
unseen hands; for the sight of servants fretted her, and she would not
admit any personal attendance. She had grown feeble in that lonely
splendour without any notice being taken of it; for Dick, with the
inexperience of youth, made no observations on the subject, and to Lady
Eskside, who visited her every day, she asserted always that she was
quite well. More feeble than ever she had got up that morning, and
dressed herself as usual, and taken her sparing breakfast with Dick.
After the first few days, Lady Eskside had yielded to this arrangement,
seeing it impossible, at least for the moment, to habituate the newcomer
to the family table. “If it is such a distress to her, why should we
force her to it?” said my lady, not without offence; and the poor soul
was grateful for the exemption. “Don’t find fault with me, Dick,” she
said to him faintly; “it can’t be for long. I’ll get used to it, and
easy in my mind before long;”--and therefore she had been sorrowfully
left to herself in the beautiful new rooms furnished for her
three-and-twenty years before. When Dick left her she went to a little
room in the front part of the wing, which looked out upon the great door
and court, where she sat watching till the two young men went away, and
waved her hand in answer to their salutations. Valentine had already
paid her a visit in the morning, a visit which he never neglected; and
wherever they were going, the young men never forgot to look up to that
window from which it was her pleasure to watch their movements, one of
the few pleasures she had.
When they had left the house she had no more interest in it. She
wandered back again through various empty rooms to the great handsome
sitting-room which had a light-some bow-window looking out upon the
sloping bank of wood down to where the Esk foamed and tumbled below. Had
she had any work to do, as in the days when she was Dick’s housekeeper,
and kept all his treasures in order, and prepared his simple meals, she
might have forgotten herself and got through the weary hours. But she
had nothing to do, poor soul! She sat down in the window, and passed she
did not know how long a time there, gazing vaguely out, sometimes
thinking, sometimes quite vacant: in so hazy a state was her mind that
it seemed to her sometimes that soft Thames flowed at her feet instead
of the brawling Esk; and that she was waiting till Mr Ross’s boat should
come down the gentle river. Poor bewildered soul! a haze of times and
places, of the vacant present, and the gleams of interest which had been
in the past, possessed her mind; she scarcely could have told where she
was had any one asked her. The silence grew painful to her brain, and
reeled and rustled round her in eddies of suppressed sound all centring
in herself; and now and then the light swam in her eyes, and darkened,
and there was an interval in which everything was black around her, and
all that she was aware of was that rustle, overpowering in its
intensity, of the silence, raying out in circles, like those in water,
from her brain. I almost think she must have lapsed into some kind of
faint, without knowing it, in those moments. About noon Lady Eskside
came to see her, and did, as she always did, her very utmost to win some
sort of hold upon her. She talked to her of the boys, of Val who must
soon go to London, of trifles of every description, working hard to
rouse her to some interest. “I wish you would come with me,” my lady
said; and she was glad afterwards that she had said it. “I am alone, and
we would be cheerier together, we two women, when all the others are
away. Won’t you come with me, Myra? My woman, you look lonely here.” “I
am used to be alone,” she said quite gently, but without moving; and
half provoked, half sorry, the old lady had at last gone away,
despairing in her mind, and wondering whether it had been kind to bring
this wild creature here even in her subdued state, and whether she would
ever find any comfort in her life. “Perhaps when Richard goes,” Lady
Eskside said to herself; for Richard’s influence did not seem to be
advantageous to his wife, though he was very careful, very anxious, not
to step over the distance which she had tacitly placed between them,
though strangely tantalised and excited by it, as his mother saw. What
was to be done? The old lady shook her head, and took refuge with her
old lord in the library, not saying anything to him to vex him, for what
could he do? but finding a little consolation in her own vexation and
perplexity in being near him. How different that silent support and
society was from the solitude in the new wing, and even from Richard’s
dainty and still retirement, where he wrote his letters, with his
noiseless Italian servant close at hand to answer every call! It eased
my lady’s old heart, which had felt so many pains, only to walk into the
library where her old lord sat, and put up the window, or down the
window, and look at the letters on his table, and say something about
the weather or the garden--just as it eased Lord Eskside, when he was in
any perplexity, to go into the drawing-room, and pronounce the novel on
her table to be “some of your rubbish, my lady,” and let her know that
the glass was falling, and that she had better take precautions about
her drive. Lady Eskside wondered with a sigh whether it would ever be
possible to bring her new guest--her strange daughter-in-law--into the
household life. She meant nothing but kindness towards her; but there
was--how could she help it?--a little impatience in the sigh.
After that visit the recluse in the new wing was left to herself again,
and all kinds of strange thoughts came up into her heart. They were not
so articulate as Lady Eskside’s; but somehow there arose in her, as the
old lady went away, a curious reflection of her impatience, an
incoherent desire to call her back again. She sat and listened to her
steps going all the way along the corridor, and down the stair, and
never opened her lips nor made a movement to detain her; and yet there
rose in her mind a mute cry, could the dull air but have carried it
without any action of hers. She caught the sound of Lady Eskside’s sigh,
and, for the first time, a dim understanding of it seemed to dawn upon
her mind. Why could not she go with her--make herself one with the
others? The thought was very shadowy and vague, like a suggestion some
unseen observer had made to her; but it raised a visionary ferment in
her soul, a gasping for breath, as if she already felt herself confined
within an atmosphere where she had no room to breathe.
Then she took refuge in her own room in this painful rush of new
feeling. The curtains at the windows, the hangings of the bed, the
draperies everywhere, seemed to shut her in and cut short her breath.
The great glass which reflected her figure from head to foot, the other
lesser ones which multiplied her face, glancing back resemblances at her
as if she, in her solitude, had grown into half-a-dozen women, affected
her imagination wildly. She left that room like one pursued--pursued by
herself, always the worst ghost of solitude. Then she went to the little
room with the window which commanded the great door. Perhaps by this
time the boys might be come back; and the boys formed her bridge, as it
were, into the world, her sole link of connection with life in this
artificial phase. A little warmth, a little hope, came into her as she
sat down there and strained her eyes to watch for some sign of their
coming. After a while, the door opened and Richard came out. He stood on
the great steps for a moment, putting on his gloves, then, looking up,
saw her, and took off his hat to her; then he made a pause, as if in
doubt, drew off the gloves again, and went back into the house. At this
sight a sudden wild panic came upon her. She thought he was coming to
see her, which indeed was the purpose with which he had turned back. She
sprang up, her heart beating, and flying through the lonely rooms,
seized a shawl which lay on a chair, and darted down a little stair in
the turret which led into the woods. Her excitement carried her on for
some distance before her breath failed her altogether, though her heart
beat loud in her bosom, like some hard piston of iron, swinging and
creaking in fierce unmanageable haste. She had got into the shrubberies,
not knowing where she went, and sank down among the bushes to rest, when
her strength failed. The thought of meeting her husband now, with nobody
by, drove her wild. She had lived under the same roof with him for days
at Oxford, and thought little of it, being occupied with other matters;
but deadly panic, as of a wild deer flying from the hunter, had seized
upon her now. She never asked herself what harm he could do her. She
feared nothing actual, but, with overwhelming blind terror, she feared
the future and the unknown.
Oh, how many thoughts came rushing upon her as she lay crouched together
on the cool earth among the bushes!--thoughts half made out, not one
altogether articulate--gleams of a consciousness that this was folly,
that it was impossible, that she must get the better of herself, that
the fever in her soul must be chased away, and could not be submitted
to. “I must change--I must make a change!” she moaned to herself. A
whole new being, a new creature, with dim evolutions of reason, dim
perceptions of the impossible, seemed to be rising up in her, blotting
out the old. Her faults, her follies, her wild impulses, the savage
nature which could endure no restraint, had all come to a climax in her;
and reason, which had struggled faintly in the old days, and won her to
so many sacrifices, had at last got the balance in hand, I think, and
the power to decide what could and what could not be. Yet, when she had
got her breath a little, she stumbled to her feet, and went on.
When Dick came back she was not to be found in her rooms, which troubled
him greatly; for she had never before gone out by herself. He searched
through every corner, then went to the other parts of the house--to the
drawing-room, to Lady Eskside’s rooms, to Val’s--hopeless of finding
her, indeed, yet so confident that something must have happened, that no
marvel would have surprised him. When he burst into the library he was
in despair. And this new alarm, so suddenly introduced among them,
diverted them at once from the other subject, which had lost its
enthralling and exciting power now that the secret had been made known.
Richard Ross had not been spending a pleasant afternoon. He was excited
by Val’s defiance, and he had been excited before. He turned very pale
as Dick spoke. He knew that his wife had fled out of the house to avoid
him--a thing which, naturally enough, had tried his temper greatly.
Where had she gone? He remembered that when he looked down the winding
staircase in the turret, through which she had evidently fled, the fresh
air blowing in his face had brought with it a sound of the Esk tumbling
over its rocks. This had not alarmed him then, and he had scorned to
follow the fugitive, or to force her into an interview she avoided, in
this way; but now suddenly it returned to him with an indescribable
shock of terror. He went out without saying a word to any one, moved by
sudden panic. The others started to explore the woods; the idea of the
river did not occur to either of the young men, who knew her better than
Richard did. They set off both together; while Lord Eskside, with the
servants, undertook to search the gardens and shrubberies nearer home.
“Oh, God forgive her if she’s gone away again!” cried the old lady,
wringing her hands. “I can’t think that she’s gone away,” said Dick. His
face was very grave. He scarcely said a word to Val, who went with him,
and who tried anxiously to ascertain from him what it was he really
feared. Dick kept silent, his heart too strained and sore for speech.
As for Val, he was swept out of one excitement and plunged into another
without a moment’s interval to take breath in, and the fresh air did him
good. I need not say of a public-school boy and well-trained “man,” that
he had picked himself up, to use an undignified but useful expression,
ere now, and betrayed, neither in look nor tone, the sudden blow he had
received. For that grace, if no other, let our English education be
blessed. Val had no idea of contending, of “making a row,” or of bearing
malice. If the right was Dick’s, why, then, the right was Dick’s,--and
there was nothing more to be said. If his mind was momentarily weak and
unable to seize all that was going on, he did not show it, except by a
certain mental feebleness and want of his usual energy, which made him
disposed to take Dick’s lead rather than to form any opinion of his own.
But even this lasted only a short time. “Come,” said Val, drawing a long
breath, “why should we be so downhearted? She has gone out to take the
air--to enjoy the--good weather.”
He had meant to say the beautiful afternoon; but then it suddenly
occurred to him that the day was dull and cloudy, and that the gleams of
sunshine which had been so sweet were gone.
“She never took her walk without me before,” said Dick. “Oh, why did I
stop away so long? I can’t tell you what a weight I have here at my
heart.”
“Cheer up, old fellow!” said Val, thrusting his arm into his brother’s:
“things will go better than you think. What harm could happen? She was
not ill; and the woods are innocent woods, with no precipices in them,
or pitfalls. I roamed about them all day long when I was a child, and
nothing ever happened to me.”
Dick shook his head; but he was cheered in spite of himself, and began
to have a little hope. The woods were alive with sound on that dim
afternoon. The sun, indeed, was not shining, but the atmosphere was soft
with spring, and all the light airs that were about came and rustled in
the leaves, and tossed the light twigs which could not resist them. The
birds were twittering on every branch, scarcely singing, for they missed
the sun, but getting through all that melodious dramatic chatter which
they do ordinarily in the early morning, before their professional life,
so to speak, as minstrels of the universe, has begun. Everything was
soft, harmonious, subdued--no high notes, either of colour or sound, but
every tone gentle, low, and sweet. Even Esk added with a mellow note his
voice to the concert. It seemed impossible to conceive of anything
terrible, any grief that rends the heart, any failure of light and life,
upon such a subdued and gentle day. The young men went far,--much
further, alas! than they needed to have gone--almost as far as the
linn,--before Dick remembered that it was impossible she could have
walked to that distance. “I am thinking of her as she was in the old
times,” said Dick, “when she would get over a long bit of road, always
so quiet, not one to talk much, looking as if she saw to the end,
however far it was; but she couldn’t do that now. Now I think of it,”
said Dick, “she’s failed these last days.”
“I do not think it, Dick. Your fears make you see the gloomy side of
everything.”
“It ain’t my fears; it’s somehow borne in upon me. Please God,” said
Dick, devoutly, “that we find her, she shan’t be left to herself again
without being looked after. No, no one is to blame--except me that
should have known.”
“Do you think it has harmed her to bring her here?” Val spoke humbly,
with a sudden sense of some failure on his own part of duty towards her;
for indeed he had taken his mother’s strange ways for granted, as
children so often do.
“It couldn’t be helped, anyhow,” said Dick--“she had to come;” and then
he paused and thought all at once of the bank of primroses, which was a
mile at least nearer home than they were now. He put his hand on Val’s
arm, and turned back. “I have thought of a place to look for her,” he
cried.
The spot was deep in the silence of the woods, great trees standing
round about, one a huge old beech, every branch of which looked like a
tree in itself. Underneath it, in a curious circle, was a ring of
juniper-bushes, deep funereal green, contrasting with the lighter silken
foliage above. Close to this rose the low knoll, a deeper cool green
than either, all carpeted with the primrose-leaves. Something red lying
there showed a long way before they reached the knoll through the trees;
but it was not till they were quite close to it that they saw her whom
they sought. She was lying in a natural easy attitude reclined on the
green bank. With one hand she seemed to be groping for something among
the leaves, and it was only when they were within sight that she dropped
back as if in fatigue, letting her head droop upon the rich herbage.
“Mother!” Dick cried; but she did not move. Her consciousness was gone,
or going. How long she had been there no one ever knew. Her strength had
failed entirely when she had sat down among the flowers, after
struggling through the bushes as on a pilgrimage to that natural shrine
which had caught her sick fancy. She had a few of the primroses in her
lap, and one or two in her hand. The very last, one large star-like
flower just out of her reach, was the only other that remained, and she
had fallen as if in an overstrain, trying to reach this. Her face was
perfectly pallid, like white marble, contrasting with the brilliant
colour of her shawl, as she lay back among the leaves. Her eyes were
open, and seemed to be looking at the boys as they approached; but there
was no intelligence or consciousness in them. Her lips were parted with
a long-drawn struggling breath.
“Mother!” Dick cried, kneeling down by her side. She stirred faintly,
and tried to turn towards the voice. “Mother, mother!” he repeated
passionately; “you’re tired only? not ill, not ill, mother dear?”
Once more she made a feeble effort to turn to him. “Ay, Dick,” she said,
“ay, lad--that’s--what it is. I’m tired--dead tired; I don’t know--how I
am to get afoot--again.”
“Don’t lose heart,” he cried, poor fellow--though every look he gave her
took all heart from him--“there’s two of us here to help you, mother,
Val and me. Try to rouse up once more, for Val’s sake, if not for mine.”
She made no answer to this appeal; perhaps she was past understanding
it; her fingers fumbled feebly with the primroses; “I came out--for some
flowers,” she said,--“but I didn’t bring--no basket; ay, lad--it is a
long way--and it’s dark. Is there a tent--Dick? or where are we--to
sleep to-night?”
“Mother, mother dear--home is close by--for God’s sake come home!”
“That----I will!” she said, her voice low and dull and broken,
contrasting strangely with the apparent heartiness of the words. Then
she raised her head feebly for a moment, and looked at them with her
eyes expanding in great circles of light--light which was darkness; and
then dropped back again heavily, upon the green primrose-leaves.
“Has she fainted?” said Valentine, in terror.
“Go and fetch some one!” cried Dick, imperiously commanding his brother
for the first time--“something to carry her home.” He was master of the
moment, in his sudden perception, and in the grief which he only could
fully feel. He did not say what had happened, but he knew it to the
depths of his heart. She had not fainted. She had got away where this
time no one could follow her, or bring her back any more.
Val rushed through the trees to the broad footpath, to obey his
brother’s orders, dismayed and anxious, but with no suspicion of what
had really taken place; and there met a pony-carriage which Lady Eskside
had sent after them, judging that if the poor wanderer were found, she
might be too weary to walk back. Val returned immediately to where his
mother lay, hoping, with a strange nervous dread which he could not
account for, that she might have changed her position, and closed her
eyes; for there was something that appalled him, he could not tell why,
in the brilliancy of that look, which did not seem to direct itself to
anything, not even to her sons. Dick raised her with difficulty in his
arms, showing his brother without a word how to help him. And thus they
made their way painfully through the brushwood. How heavy, how still,
how motionless, how awful was their burden! Val’s heart began to beat as
hers had done so short a time before. Was this how people looked when
they fainted? Before they reached the pony-carriage he was exhausted
with the strain, which was both physical and mental. He was afraid of
her, not knowing what had happened to her. “Should not we get
water--something to revive her?” he said, panting, as she was laid down
in the little carriage. Dick only shook his head. “Lead the pony very
gently,” he said to his brother; and Val once more did what he was
told--humbly sending the servant who had brought it, on before them, to
announce their coming, and to get the doctor. And thus her boys, all
alone, no one with them, brought her home. It was what she would have
chosen, poor soul! had she been able to choose.
I need not describe the commotion and excitement in Rosscraig when this
piteous procession came to the door. Dick supporting her who needed no
support; Val, with subdued looks, leading the pony. They carried her
up-stairs into her own room between them, letting no one else touch her;
and I think that, by that time, Val knew, as well as Dick. But of course
all kind of vain attempts were made to bring her to herself, till the
doctor came, who looked at her, and then sent all the foolish
ministrations away. Richard Ross, coming in very white and worn from the
river-side, where he had found nothing, met Mrs Harding coming
down-stairs with solemn looks, but did not stop to question her. He went
straight up into the rooms where up to this time there had existed a
kind of moral barricade against him which he had seldom ventured to
face. All was open now to him or any one. He could go where he pleased,
penetrating into the very chamber a little while ago more closely shut
against him than any Holy of Holies, where his wife lay. They had pulled
away, for the sake of air, all the curtains and draperies which a few
hours before had stifled her very soul; and there she lay, unveiled as
yet, a marble woman, white and grand, with everything gone that
detracted from her beauty. Her eyes were half closed, revealing still a
glimmer under the long eyelashes, which had never showed as they did
now, against the marble whiteness of her cheek. The kerchief on her head
had fallen off, and the long dark hair framed the white face. The living
woman had been beautiful with a beauty that was passing--the dead woman
was sublime in a beauty that would last, in the eyes that saw her now,
for ever. Richard thrust the doctor out of his way, who turned to speak
to him. He put Val away with the other hand, and went up close to the
bedside. What thoughts passed through his mind as he stood there!
Sorrow, a certain indignation, a profound and mournful pity. It was she
who had wronged him, not he who had wronged her; and there she lay, for
whom he had lost his life, and who had never been his. His cold bosom
swelled with an emotion greater than he knew how to account for. She was
so beautiful that he was proud of her even at this last moment, and felt
his choice justified; but she had got away for ever without one sign,
without one word, to show that she had ever thought of him. He had given
up everything for her, and she had never been his.
“Richard, Richard, come away,” said his mother, laying her hand on his
arm; “we can do her no good now; and she had her boys with her, thank
God, at the last.”
“Her boys!” he said, with a deep breath which was tremulous with injured
love, with wounded pride, with unspeakable minglings of indignant
sorrow. “I am her husband, mother, and she has gone without one word to
me.”
Then he turned, and, without looking at any one, went away.