PIERCE GOES ON A JOURNEY.
That winter was a very quiet and a very sad one. As the days passed
we felt the wings of death brooding closer over the house. Little by
little Pierce had given up the ways of one who was to live, had given
up his bath-chair which was Lady O'Brien's present, and the sofa in
Aline's room, and the coming downstairs. We knew now that he would
come down no more till he was carried down, and we dreaded the spring
that would bring further weakness to our beloved invalid, and the
summer that would take him from us.
He liked to get up about noon and lie on a sofa drawn near the fire
and have us to talk to him, and as the days turned towards the spring
he lay by the window where he could see the cloudiness coming on the
bare boughs and Brandon turning bronze and pink in the fresh cold air.
What his room became in those days I never could tell. Whatever had
befallen our Pierce out in the world, and he carried the secret with
him to the grave, he had saved his soul triumphantly out of it. To
see him there dying in the flush of his youth, so resigned, so
gentle, so merry even, clutched at our hearts. He prayed incessantly
when he was alone or quiet, and in those latter days he came to have
visibly the light of God's countenance upon his face. His room was
like the cell of a saint to which we went for help, and comfort, and
refreshment. Once when Aline and I came out together she suddenly
caught at me and began to sob silently against my shoulder, yet in
the midst of her anguish she whispered to me:
"Oh, Hilda, I wouldn't keep him if I could! I can see that he is
ripe for heaven. And yet, and yet, it breaks my heart to see him so
glad to go."
All this put Esther's love affairs greatly out of my mind. Daily she
and her godmother drove over to see how Pierce was, and to sit with
him a little. When his voice had sunk almost to a whisper he still
tried to keep up the old merry banter with the friend who had been so
good to him and us, and I have seen the dear old woman respond
bravely while the big tears stood in her eyes.
Once when she had had to go away to conceal her emotion, she said to
Aline:
"'Tis not tears of sorrow, my dear, I'm giving him, 'tis only that it
dazzles my sinful old eyes to have sight of one of God's saints
passing. Hush, now, my dear, don't be grudging him his joy. 'Tis
for you who love him to be glad for him."
"But he is so young to die," said poor Aline, "and he and I were to
have been always together."
"Ah, my child," responded the old woman with a sudden intuition, "you
might have lost him more cruelly! Don't you see that he's had some
trouble, young as he is, that has just ended his life for him. And
kinder so. He wasn't one to grow hard and wicked, nor yet was he one
to live carrying a dead heart about with him the rest of his days.
Indeed, indeed, God gave him the better part."
"Oh," said Aline, "you think he has had a great sorrow?"
"I am sure of it, child, but maybe it was just through that same
sorrow that God gathered him."
"Yet let him keep the rest
But keep them with repining restlessness:
Let him be rich and weary, that at least,
If goodness lead him not, yet weariness
May toss him to my breast"--
I said softly from my corner, where they had not seemed to notice me.
Lady O'Brien turned round sharply.
"That's it, Hilda, that's it. Your poetry has said it a thousand
times better than I ever could."
Esther, during these visits, would sit on the floor by Pierce, and
now and again would lay her cheek to his hand.
"I wish I could tell him, Hilda," she said once, "but I can't trouble
him now. If all were well with us it would be another matter, but I
must not bring trouble near him. And yet his touch comforts me."
Esther's fears now were mainly concerned with her lover's health.
Her experience of Pierce had taught her to look for the signs and
tokens of illness, and sometimes she came to me in a paroxysm of
terror because she thought Harry De Lacy looked frailer than when
last she had seen him, or because she had heard him cough, or noted
the transparency of his hand against the light.
He was not an over-frequent visitor at Annagower, not more so than
many other gentlemen, and as yet the understanding between him and
Esther was not a formal one. She could not, she said, in these sad
days, trouble anyone about her affairs, and it was better that he
should be very patient and not come too often, nor try to force
things to a conclusion.
"If I had him to nurse and feed up and take care of, everything would
be well," she used to say; "but now I fear that he will stay at
Angry, only to die there. I wish he would go back to Warwickshire
and grow strong. I could bear absence, silence, anything, if I had
not this dreadful fear."
"Except separation," I suggested.
"Only death could bring that about," said Esther solemnly. "If he
were to leave me, and I were to hear nothing from him, I should know
that he was dead."
The trouble that was brooding over us seemed to bind us Brandons more
closely. The poor boys were always hanging about with wistful faces
that spring, wanting to do something to help if they could. They
used to come into Pierce's room and sit down with a great parade of
not creaking or making noise, and soften their rough young voices to
a hoarse whisper as they addressed him. I have seen the old humour
flash into Pierce's sunken eyes as he looked at them, humour oddly
blent with immense tenderness. Then out of sheer kindness he would
send them off fishing or shooting, with an expressed desire for a
trout or a quail, for which, when they arrived, he had no appetite.
The twins, too, proved themselves little hearts of gold. They would
bring in their treasures from garden and woodland to show to
Pierce--early primroses, or a group of tall daffodils, or a mass of
wild hyacinths;--such things brought to him by his shy little sisters
seemed to give him great pleasure. He would stroke their brown heads
and tell them to be very good to Aline, and then would watch them
fondly while they sat before the fire, their two heads bent over one
book, till he fell asleep.
At Easter Freda came for a week. We thought she would have waited
for the end, though that was not a thought we put into words for each
other, but it seemed strange that she could not stay by Pierce as
long as we kept his precious body on the earth.
Yet she seemed to care as much as any of us, and hardly left Pierce's
room during that week.
"I suppose it is the child," Aline said to me as if she would excuse
her. "We can't be expected to understand how a mother's heart drags
her back to where her child is.
"Yet I should think," I said, "that she might have trusted him to
Mrs. Vincent for a while, so that she might stay with Pierce while
... while--"
And here I broke off with a sob and went out of the room.
But I was present when Freda and Pierce said good-bye, at least for
the beginning of their parting.
Freda had come in with her hat on, and looked very pale, I noticed,
but tearless. She knelt down by Pierce, and I heard her say:
"I have to go, darling. You know, darling, that I must go, though it
is breaking my heart to leave you now."
"I know, Freda," he said, "and it has been good to have had you this
week. Good-bye, my dearest! When I am gone you will have two
instead of one in that distant country."
I saw Freda wring her hands. Then I got up and went out of the room.
I thought it best to leave them together.
So Freda went away, and though we said nothing, Aline, I am sure,
felt a little chill at her heart against her that she could go. Yet,
having seen the trouble in her face, I could not judge her. There
must be reasons that we did not know.
But when Lady O'Brien broached the subject I did not know how to
answer her.
"I don't want, my dear," she said, "to be prying and impertinent, and
I can't think badly of a Brandon; yet, how is it that your sister
couldn't stay to see the last of that dear saint, and to be a comfort
to poor Aline when the time comes?"
"I do not know, Lady O'Brien," I answered truthfully.
"And why didn't you ask her, my dear?"
Yes; the old lady was right. Why hadn't we asked Freda to solve for
us the mystery that had somehow grown up about her. It would have
been the simplest thing to do, and might have saved us the wondering
pain that was in our hearts when we thought of her.
"It is what we ought to have done, Lady O'Brien," I assented. "But
one thing I can assure you of, Freda is not hard-hearted. If you had
seen her face as I did, when she said good-bye to Pierce, you would
be as sure as I am."
I have always heard that consumptives take it hard to die. Looking
back now on those days, I thank God that it was not so with Pierce.
He seemed to have foreseen every step of the way, and to be prepared
to endure it all joyfully--the night-sweats, and the fevers, and the
exhaustion, and the terrible, terrible difficulty of breathing. He
never complained, and his only distress seemed to be that it caused
pain to those he loved so dearly.
The month of May turned round in a glorious succession of scented
days and silver nights. The end was very near now, and Aline was
sitting up at nights with Pierce. It was a duty she would yield to
no one, and even Oona forbore to press her, for we felt that she
could not endure to be away from him a minute longer than she could
help, and they were to be together so short a time.
I could not sleep those nights. The moon was so brilliant, and the
scent of hawthorn and lilac so ravishing, and all night the corncrake
sawed incessantly in the ripening grasses. So I often kept vigil
with Aline and Pierce, though they did not know it.
I used to sit on the top step of the stairs from the great hall of
Brandon, round the gallery of which many doors open. One at the
stair-head opened into Pierce's room, and sitting there huddled in my
dressing-gown I could hear his laboured breathing, and sometimes the
soft murmur of Aline's voice as she spoke to him, or her quiet
movements as she went to and fro in the room.
I sat there sometimes till well into the dawn. Over my head the
great hall window held the east, and through its colours the sunrise
came magnificently.
I was sitting there one night with my head in my hands, and the
moonlight was casting black lozenges on to the floor. Everything was
quiet in Pierce's room, save only the struggle for breath that went
on incessantly. Suddenly there rang through the night outside the
cry of a woman. It began thin as an Æolian harp, and swelled to a
full chord of passionate lamentation. It came from without, but it
seemed to ring through the old house and beat against the rafters of
the high roof overhead.
I sprang to my feet terrified, and with a wild impulse to fly
anywhere for human companionship, but my fear of disturbing the dying
and the mourner kept me still.
Again the wild cry rang out, more piercing and heart-broken. I
looked at the sick-room door, expecting Aline to appear, but all was
quiet.
The third time it rang, and now it was close by me, close against the
great window. I lifted my eyes in fascinated terror, and for a
moment the moonlight was blotted out. Something like the wings of a
great bird, or the trailing veil of a woman, passed slowly across the
panes. Then I fell, huddled up, with my head against the upper step.
When I came to myself I was lying on my own bed, and Oona was bathing
my head with something sharp and aromatic. The gray dawn was filling
the room like a tide.
"Oh, Oona!" I cried; "what was it? Did you hear it, the dreadful
thing?"
"Whisht, my lamb! I heard her. Many's the time I've heard her these
sorrowful months. But she's not dreadful, my jewel. She loves every
one of ye, and 'tis because her heart's breaking for the trouble in
the family that she cries like that."
"They didn't hear, Oona?" I asked, with a new fear.
"Not a sound. Master Pierce was asleep when I went in, an' Miss
Aline, poor lamb, was sound off, with her head against his hand.
She's wore out, sure she is. I didn't disturb her. 'Sleep, my
honey,' I said, for I knew she'd need all her strength for the
trouble that's so close at hand. Why, when I found you in your white
gown I thought 'twas you was the banshee, Miss Hilda, darling.
There, never be afraid of her. Sure she loves every hair of your
heads."
In the afternoon of the next day Pierce died. All through the day he
had been dozing quietly, with his hand lying in Aline's, while
incessantly she dried his face with a handkerchief. We were all in
the room, including Esther, who had been sent for, all huddled about
miserably, some of us weeping, and the boys manfully trying to keep
the tears out of sight.
Now and again Oona would steal into the room, and bring one or
another away for food. It was terrible waiting there for the end,
with nothing to do but wait. At every least sound Pierce would
start, and open his eyes, and then would sink off again into a stupor.
We were troubled about Aline, who had eaten nothing. After all it
was Hugh who persuaded her. He brought some nourishing jelly to her,
and when she shook her head, he was not to be put off like the rest
of us.
"Pierce said last night that he gave you to me to take care of," said
the poor boy huskily, and as he said it Pierce opened his eyes and
smiled at him.
"You are the head of the house," he said slowly. "You will be what I
failed in being."
Then he closed his eyes, and Aline allowed herself to be fed by
spoonfuls with the jelly.
About three o'clock in the afternoon Pierce seemed to rally. He
looked round at us all with calm seeing eyes, and seemed to know us
quite well. His lethargy had passed away for the moment. He turned
to Aline, and looked at her with great tenderness.
"I wish you would find out Desmond," he said, "and let him know that
I loved him at the last, and that I knew he was right, and thanked
him."
"I will do it, Pierce," said Aline.
"I wanted to say more," he said, "but I am too tired to think."
Then he smiled on us all round, and fell asleep smiling. We thought
he would have died in that sleep, but he did not. The clock in the
stable-yard had just struck five when he opened his eyes, full and
wide, and gazed upwards.
"_Remember me_," he cried, "_when Thou art come into Thy kingdom._"
And then a film seemed to settle on the brightness, and the light
slowly faded out.