A BELL RINGING OUT AT MIDNIGHT.
I wonder whether you remember that most charming weather we had in the
October of that same year 1861. The first fortnight of the month was
more lovely than can be imagined of October; it was brilliant and warm
as summer.
Toiling up the ascent of the Côte de Grace went Mark Cray and his wife
on one of these delightful days. The word toiling would be misapplied
to you, I hope, for the way is gentle, the ascent easy; but it was
toil now to Caroline Cray. The past three or four months had made a
great change in her: health and spirits had alike sunk. As the lump
got larger--we may as well call it by its familiar name--the body got
weaker, and she felt the fatigue of walking now. Mark and the
weather's unusual beauty had tempted her out, and they had taken the
way through the town to the Cête de Grace.
Winding up the shady road--and the sun was too hot not to make the
shade welcome--they gained the top. Caroline sat down at once on a
bench that faced the sea: Mark stepped forward to the edge, dangerous
enough if unprotected, and looked down. Was any panorama ever more
beautiful? It happened to be full tide, as it was that morning when
you saw him looking at it before--the same view, from the windows of
the Cheval Blanc. But the same view, extended, enlarged, altogether
grander, from the height on which he now stood.
Mark Cray took a glass from his pocket--it belonged to Monsieur Le
Bleu, with whom they were now passably intimate--one of those small
but effective telescopes rather rare to meet with. Adjusting its
focus, he swept it round the horizon. He turned it to the right, and
saw the women winding up the paths on their way from Honfleur market,
their unbecoming borderless caps of everyday wear quite plain to him.
Opposite was Harfleur, flickering in the light and shade; underneath
him, beyond the cultivated precipice, were the walks by the sea--if
you call it sea--the road winding on afar, the bathing establishment
with its seats, and its linen spread out to dry. Havre itself looked
rather cloudy from local smoke, but its entrance was beautifully
clear, and Mark put up his glass again to gaze at it. Vessels, great
and small, were rounding the point. A large steamer, which he
recognised as the London boat, was turning into it, her steam so full,
seemingly so close, that he might have fancied he heard its hiss. A
fine sailing vessel was being towed out, to commence her long voyage;
she looked like an Indiaman. The steamer plying between Havre and
Trouville had reached its midway passage; a little funnelled boat was
bearing swiftly on in the direction of Fiquefleur bay; an ugly,
black-looking yacht had pointed its nose towards the dangerous bar of
Quillebeuf; one of the everlasting flat barges was moving
imperceptibly up the Seine; smaller boats and more picturesque were
coquetting on the _manche_, and the Honfleur steamer was coming on
quickly, leaving Havre far behind her. Mark extended the glass in the
direction of the extreme left, and studied the vessels in the
distance. Not a breath seemed to fill their sails. The blue and clear
waters of the Seine were not calmer than that sometimes turbulent sea:
river, _manche_, sea, were today still as a lake. A fair scene! none
fairer throughout the department of the Calvados.
How familiar the scene had grown to Mark Cray he could tell you now.
His days unfortunately were days of idleness, and he, had nothing to
do but look at it from some point or other of the heights. Mark's
fondly-anticipated patients had not come to him: whether the handful
of English stationary at Honfleur preferred Monsieur Le Bleu or one of
his compatriots to attend them, or whether they were so disobliging as
to keep in perfect health, Mark Cray never clearly ascertained. All he
could be sure of was, that _he_ was not summoned. His professional
services had been called into requisition but three times, including
the stranger at the hotel who gave him the large fee. An English
maid-servant had come to him once to have a tooth drawn; she could not
speak French, she said, and did not like to go to a chemist's shop for
it; Mark drew it, borrowing his friend Monsieur Le Bleu's pincers--or
whatever you call the things--and charged her three francs. He said
five at first; but she slightly reproached him, said she could have it
done in a shop fer one and in fact had but three francs with her. So
Mark took the three. The third time he was called in to a gentleman
who said he had lived in Honfleur six years and had never been ill
yet. He had now got an attack of what he called "La grippe," which
Mark interpreted into the gripes, utterly unconscious that la grippe
in French means influenza in English. The patient soon got well,
despite a little wrong treatment at that; and Mark's remuneration was
ten francs. That was all he had earned, this ten francs and the three
for the tooth, besides the present made him at the hotel.
How were they to get along? How _had_ they got along? They, poor
sufferers, looking to the past, could hardly tell. Barker, who was in
Paris still, full of wild hopes as usual, had sent Mark once a
hundred-franc note in a letter and a promise of more; a little had
come to Caroline from Barbadoes, for she had told of her woes; and so
they existed somehow. Mark Cray was by no means one to sit down tamely
and starve; any hopeless scheme rather than that; but Mark was caged,
as it were, at Honfleur, and did not see how to get away from it, or
where to travel to. Under happier auspices that "lump" might not have
got so large as it was now getting: had that Great Wheal Bang mine
only sent its ore to market instead of getting drowned it might never
have shown itself at all; or, at least, not for years.
Mark Cray lowered the glass and turned to speak to his wife, who was
seated but three or four yards behind him. Towards her left were those
enclosed and accommodating gardens of entertainment, where you might
order a dinner and eat it _al fresco_, or where you might take your
own basket of provisions and they would bring you drink from the
house, wine, milk, beer, lemonade, or coffee, at choice. Behind her,
looking beyond, rose the little Chapelle de Nôtre-Dame-de-Grâce, on
whose interior walls were recorded accounts of devoted pilgrims who
had toiled on crutches up to the shrine, and whose faith Our Lady had
rewarded by an instantaneous cure, whereupon they went down rejoicing,
leaving their crutches behind them, a memento of the miracle. On the
right was the small building called, surely by courtesy, the
Observatoire, where innumerable wonders might be seen for two sous.
And on the near plateau close around was many a bench similar to the
one occupied by Mrs. Cray; the grass forming a carpet underfoot, the
trees a shade overhead. A pleasant spot to rest in on a summer's day;
a charming tableau to look upon in silence.
"Won't you come and have a look, Caroline I don't think I ever saw the
atmosphere so clear on a brilliant day."
She only shook her head by way of answer: wearily, despondently.
"The boat's coming in," he resumed. "Two minutes more, and she'll pass
us. You'll like to see her go by."
"I can't Mark. My side is paining me worse then ever. I must not walk
up the hill again."
It was a very obstinate side, as M. Le Bleu would express it, a very
persistent, provoking lump, and that renowned practitioner--who was
really a skilful man, for all his obscure English--had formed his own
opinion upon it. It baffled him and his remedies persistently. Even
those highly-regarded bêtes, the sangsues, had tried their best to
subdue it--and tried in vain. Evidently the effective remedy was not
sangsues. The lump had had its own way all these months. It had been
growing larger and larger, giving by degrees more and more pain.
Monsieur Le Bleu had once hinted his doubts of a "tumeur fibreuse,"
and Mark had politely retorted that he was an idiot to fancy such
things. What the end of it all was to be--of the disease, of the
semi-starvation, of the next to impossibility to go on in Honfleur, and
the equal impossibility to get away from it, of Mark Cray's little
difficulty with England and the shareholders of the old company--would
take a wiser head than either Caroline's or Mark's to tell.
This day has been noticed because it was a sort of turning-point in
this persistent malady: not a turning for better but for worse.
Whether the walk up the hill injured her--for perhaps she had grown
really unfit for it--or whether the disease itself made a sudden leap
onwards, certain it was that poor Mrs. Cray never went up the Côte de
Grâce again. She walked home with Mark very slowly, and fainted when
she got in. Mark did not like her look, and ran off for Monsieur Le
Bleu. It was only the fatigue, she said to them: but the next morning
she did not rise from her bed.
Several weeks dragged themselves slowly on, Caroline growing worse and
weaker. An idea arose to her--it may have almost been called a morbid
fancy--that if her uncle Richard were alive and at hand, her cure
would be certain and speedy. From him it was natural perhaps that her
hopes should stray to other English doctors; not young men such as
Mark, but men of note, of experience, of known skill; and a full
persuasion took possession of her mind that she had only to go
to London to be made well. It grew too strong for any sort of
counter-argument or resistance; it became a mania: to remain in
Honfleur was to die; to go to England and the English faculty would be
cure and life.
Mark would have gratified the wish had it been in his power, but how
was he to find the money? But for Barker, they could not have gone on
at all. He sent a trifle to Mark from time to time, and they managed
to get along with it. Once, when they were at a very low ebb Mark had
written a pitiful account of their state to his brother Oswald, and a
ten-pound note came back again. Ah what a contrast was this to the
prosperity that might have been theirs at Hallingham!
Winter had come now. December was in; its first days were rapidly
passing; and so intense had grown Caroline's yearning for home that
Monsieur Le Bleu himself said to keep her would be to kill her. "It
would only be the passage-money, Mark," she reiterated ten times in a
day. "I should go straight to Aunt Bettina's. Angry as she was with us
for leaving Hallingham, she'd not refuse to take me in. Mark, Mark!
only the passage-money!"
And Mark, thus piteously appealed to, began to think he must do
something desperate to get the passage-money. Perhaps he would, if he
had only known what. But while Mark was thinking of it help arrived,
in the shape of a hundred-franc note from Barker. Things were
beginning to look up with him he wrote. Perhaps he meant this as an
earnest of it.
"Divide it, Mark," she said, with feverish cheeks. "I know how badly
you want it here: but I want it badly too. I want help, I want medical
skill; divide it between us: fifty francs will take me over."
And so it was done. How willingly Mark would have given her the
whole!--but that was impossible. How willingly he would have gone with
her to take care of her on the voyage!--but that was impossible. Mark
Cray might not show his face in London. He took her as far as he could,
and that was to Havre. On the morning after the arrival of Barker's
letter and its inclosure they were off: and so great an effect had the
knowledge that she was really going wrought on Caroline, that she
seemed to have recovered health and strength in a manner little short
of miraculous.
She walked down to the Honfleur boat; she would walk; she was quite
well enough to walk, she said. As they turned out of the house the
postman was approaching it, selecting a letter from his bundle.
"Pour Madame," he said, giving it to Mark.
It was from Sara: they could see that by the handwriting. Caroline
thrust it into her pocket. There was not time for reading letters
there; the bell of the starting boat had sounded over the town, and
they and the man behind, who was wheeling Caroline's trunk on a
barrow, had much ado to catch it. They read the letter going over. It
was merely a friendly letter of news, the chief item, of which news
was, that they were expecting Captain Davenal and his wife hourly from
India.
"Then, Caroline, they won't be able to take you in," was Mark Cray's
remark.
"Oh, yes, yes, it can be managed," was her answer, so feverishly and
eagerly delivered that Mark suspected she feared he might wish to
detain her; and he said no more.
But now, when they reached Havre, Mark discovered that he and Caroline
between them had made a very stupid mistake as to the departure of the
London boat. He afterwards found that they had inadvertently consulted
the list of departures for November, instead of December. There was no
London steamer departing from Havre that day.
They stood on what is called the English Quai, Caroline weak, sick,
depressed. A check of this kind thrown upon one in her state of health
is as very despair. Opposite to them was moored a small English
steamer; a board upon her, or which was inscribed "for London,"
indicating her destination. "I could go by that," she said,
feverishly; "Mark, I could go by that."
"I don't think it is a passenger boat," was Mark's reply.
They advanced to the edge of the quai and looked down. Two or three
men, apparently English, were taking bales of goods on board by means
of a crane. "Is this a passenger boat?" Mark asked them.
"No sir. She's for goods."
The answer was unmistakably English. A stout, middle-aged,
respectable-looking man, who was seated across a bar, watching the men
and smoking a pipe, looked up and inquired of Mark why he asked.
It was the master of the vessel. They got into conversation with him,
and told him their dilemma. He was a kind-hearted man, and he offered
to convey the lady to London if she could put up with the
accommodation. She was quite welcome to go with them, free of expense,
he said, and his wife had come the trip with him this time, so she'd
not, as it were, be alone on board. How eagerly Mrs. Cray seized upon
the offer, rather than go home again to wait a day or two for the
regular boat, I'll leave you to judge.
She went at once on board, and the vessel got out of harbour in the
course of the afternoon, the master saying they should make London on
the afternoon of the following day. But there's no time to linger over
this part, or to give any details of the voyage; it is enough to say
that the passage, from unavoidable causes, was an unusually slow one,
and they did not reach their destination in the Thames until late in
the evening. It was a memorable day for us that; Saturday the 14th of
December; a day of sadness irreparable for our land. Not quite yet,
however, had the hour of calamity come; and the astounding grief, half
paralysing England with its suddenness, had not fully broken upon it.
It was getting on for ten o'clock before Mrs. Cray was able to leave
the steamer. To present herself, an unexpected intruder, at Miss
Davenal's at midnight was not to be thought of. All the way over she
had been revolving the news contained in Sara's letter, of which she
had made so light to Mark: should Captain Davenal and his wife have
arrived, she did not think there would be room for her; and the
untoward lateness of the hour increased her difficulty.
There came a thought flashing into her mind, welcome as a ray of
light. "I wonder if Watton could take me in for the night?"
Her kind friends, the captain and his wife--and very kind and
hospitable they had been to her--had a cab called, and Mrs. Cray and
her trunk were placed in it, a tide-waiter allowing the disembarkment.
She was then driven to St. Paul's Churchyard.
Watton came out in a state of wonder. A lady in a cab inquiring for
her! Perhaps it was not lessened when she recognised Mrs. Cray: but
Mrs. Cray looking so awfully ill, so greatly changed! Watton, always
of a demonstrative temper, could not conceal her shock of dismay; and
perhaps the woman's words first imparted to Caroline a suspicion of
what her real state might be. Always with Mark, he could not detect
the ravages in her face as a stranger detected them; and the recent
voyage of course added its evil effects to her looks.
"Watton, could you take me in for the night?"
She was too fatigued, too worn and ill to enter upon her demand with
introductory circumlocution. Watton only stared in reply. This,
coupled with Mrs. Cray's appearance, momentarily took her wits away.
"I could lie on a sofa, or on a blanket put down on the carpet,
anywhere just for tonight. I don't like to go on so late to Aunt
Bettina's; they do not expect me, and will have gone to bed. And you
know what she is, Watton."
"To be sure I can take you in, Miss Caroline," returned Watton,
recovering herself partially, and warming to the poor sick girl.
"Thirty hours in a steamer! My goodness! And they are horrid things
always. I crossed over to Jersey once in my young days, and I shall
never forget it. Of course you can't go on to Pimlico tonight. Bring
in the trunk, cabman."
The trunk was placed inside the passage, the man paid and dismissed,
and Watton was closing the street-door, when it was pushed against.
She flung it open with an impatient word, and a gentleman entered.
Watton was taken by surprise. "I beg your pardon, sir, I'm sure. I
thought it was the cabman wanting to stand out for another sixpence."
He passed her with a smile, glanced at Caroline and the trunk, and was
making his way up the stairs, when she again addressed him.
"Is there any fresh news, sir?"
"Yes, and it is not good, Mrs. Watton," he replied, turning to speak.
"Report says that a telegram has been received from Windsor, stating
that there is no hope; that the Prince is rapidly sinking."
His voice was low, his manner subdued; and he raised his hat with
unconscious reverence while he gave the answer. Watton lost her
breath.
"It may not be true, sir! it may not be true!"
"I trust indeed it is not."
"But, sir, was there not hope this afternoon?"
"According to the report that reached us, there was. Could the Prince
only bear up through this one night all would be well."
He passed up the stairs as he spoke. Watton led the way into a
sitting-room at the back of the house, and Mrs. Cray followed her in
perplexed silence, in eager curiosity, unable to understand the words
she had heard.
That great and good Prince, whom England knew too little, and whom to
know was to love, was indeed lying _in extremis_ in the castle that
had been his many years' home. On that calm, clear, soft December
night, when the streets of London were alive with bustle and pleasure,
there was a dying bed not many miles away from it, around whose hushed
stillness knelt England's sovereign, England's royal children. The
gracious and benignant Prince, the faithful consort, the loyal
husband, the tender anxious father, was winging his flight away;
sinking gradually but surely from those loving arms, those tearful
eyes, those yearning prayers, which could not keep him.
London had been shocked that day. Not so shocked as she might have
been; for perhaps not one living man within her walls realised to his
mind the possibility of the worst. _Death!--for him!_ It was
impossible to contemplate it: and from the first duke in the land down
to the little pauper boys who sold for a penny the newspapers
containing the bulletins none did seriously fear it.
Mrs. Cray listened as one aroused out of a dream. The Prince ill!--ill
unto danger! The Prince who had been associated in men's minds as one
enshrined in a bright halo of prosperity, in the very sunshine of
happiness!--who had looked down from his dizzy height on other men as
if he stood above the world! It seemed incredible. Watton gave the
details, so far as they were known to the general public; the few
days' illness, the apprehensions excited on the Friday, the
fluctuating accounts of that same day; the unfavourable news of the
morning, the afternoon's opinion of the medical men at Windsor, that
if the Prince could only bear up through that one night--the night now
entered upon--all would be well. And now the latest tidings were that
he was sinking!
Mrs. Cray forgot her own weakness, her fatigue, in these all-absorbing
tidings. But it was as impossible for her to believe in the worst for
him as it had been for the public. A few minutes of awestruck
consternation, and hope reasserted its supremacy in her heart. Nay,
not only hope, but a certainty that it "would be well." I honestly
believe that such was the prevailing feeling in every breast. It was
so hard, it was so _hard_ to look upon the reverse side of the
picture.
"We had heard nothing of this at Honfleur!"
"And we can't be said to have heard much of it here until today," was
Watton's answer. "It has come upon us with startling suddenness. Oh,
if we can but get better tidings in the morning!"
"We shall be sure to do that, Watton," said Caroline, in a low,
hopeful tone. "Death surely could not come to _him_."
Watton made her some tea, and she sat over the fire in the
sitting-room while she drank it. She could not eat: generally her
appetite was good, but fatigue and excitement had taken it away
tonight. She told of her residence in the French town, she hinted
slightly at their want of success, and Watton looked grave as she
spoke of her side.
"You think the London doctors can cure you, Miss Caroline?"--for the
old name came far more familiar to Watton than the new one.
"I did think so," replied Caroline, feeling that the strong conviction
of this, which had amounted to a disease in Honfleur, had in some
unexplainable manner gone out of her. "I seem not to be sure of it, as
I was before I came."
"And shall you make a long stay in London?"
"About a week. I have come for advice only, not to stay to be cured.
Aunt Bettina's is no house for me; and perhaps I cannot even stay
there at all. Captain Davenal and his wife may have arrived."
She heaved a sigh of weary despondency. Watton urged her to retire;
but Caroline felt at rest in the easy chair, and still sat on. It was
so long since she had seen a home face, or conversed with a home
tongue.
"Who was that gentleman who passed us as I was coming in?" she asked,
"he who spoke of the Prince?" And Watton replied that it was Mr.
Comyng, a junior partner of the house, and the only one of the
partners who resided there.
It wanted scarce a quarter to twelve when Caroline at length went
upstairs to a very high bedroom. Whether it was Watton's room, or not
Caroline did not know, but it had been made cheery. The curtains and
bed were white and pleasant-looking, and a fire sparkled in the grate.
Watton would have stayed with her to help her undress, but Caroline
preferred to be alone.
When left to herself, she drew aside the window-curtains, and saw that
the room faced the front: there stood old St Paul's, grim and
formidable, and apparently so close to her that she might have fancied
it within a leap. Letting the curtain remain open, she sat down at the
fire, before which was drawn a chair as easy as the one downstairs.
She sat with her head pillowed on the high arm, gazing at the blaze,
and musing over present events. Their strangely uncertain life at
Honfleur, poor Mark's position and poverty, her own malady and the
curious manner in which she had lost that eager faith in the result of
her journey, her reception on the morrow by Miss Davenal--and with all
these thoughts were mingled more prominently the tidings which had
greeted her since her entrance.
Unconsciously to herself she dropped into a doze. It was a very
foolish thing to do, of course, for she would have been much better in
bed; but none of us are wise always. She dozed placidly; and the first
thing that in the least aroused her, and that only partially, was the
booming out in her ear of a deep-toned bell.
"St. Paul's clock striking twelve," was the supposition that crossed
her mind in its state of semi-sleep. But ere many minutes had gone by
she became alive to the fact that the striking did not cease, that
the strokes of the bell were tolling out fast and loud as--as--a
_death-bell_ strikes out.
It has not been the fate of many to hear the bell of St. Paul's
Cathedral strike out at midnight. Those who _have_ will never forget
it during life. Never, never, will it be forgotten by those few who
heard it as it went booming into the air on that still December night,
bearing forth its message of woe to the startled hearts of the
metropolis.
For a brief moment Mrs. Cray wondered what was the matter. She sprang
out of her chair and stood staring at the edifice, as if in mute
inquiry of what it meant. And then--when she remembered what had
been said that night--and the recollection flashed on her with that
heart-sickness that generally accompanies some awful terror--she
opened the window and leaned out.
Three or four persons were standing underneath, motionless, still as
if they had collected there to gaze at the dark cathedral, to listen
to the booming bell. "What is it?" she called out "What does it mean?"
Her voice, raised by excitement to unnatural strength and clearness,
was heard distinctly. Those standing below looked up. In one of them
she thought she recognised Mr. Comyng. He was standing bare-headed,
his hat in his hand, and his solemn answer came up to her in the
stillness of the night.
"Prince Albert's gone."
A moment of bewildering suspense, while the mind refused to admit the
dreadful truth, and Caroline Cray turned sick and faint. And then the
sobbing cry burst from her heart and lips--a cry that was to find its
echo from thousands and thousands as the hours went on--
"Oh, the Queen! the Queen! May God help and support the Queen!"