MRS. KINGSWARD said nothing of the communication her husband had made to
her. Did she understand it? He went about heavily all day, pondering the
matter, going and coming to her room, trying in vain to make out what
was in her mind. But he could not divine what was in that mind, hidden
from him in those veils of individual existence which never seemed to
him to have been so baffling before. In the afternoon she had heard,
somehow, the voices of the elder boys, and had asked if they were there,
and had sent for them. The two big fellows, with the mud on their boots
and the scent of the fresh air about them, stood huddled together,
speechless with awe and grief, by the bedside, when their father came
in. They did not know what to say to their mother in such circumstances.
They had never talked to her about herself, but always about themselves;
and now they were entirely at a loss after they had said, “How are you,
mamma? Are you very bad, mamma? Oh, I’m so sorry;” and “Oh, I wish you
were better.” What could boys of twelve and fourteen say? For the moment
they felt as if their hearts were broken; but they did not want to stay
there; they had nothing to say to her. Their pang of sudden trouble was
confused with shyness and awkwardness, and their consciousness that she
was altogether in another atmosphere and another world. Mrs. Kingsward
was not a clever woman, but she understood miraculously what was in
those inarticulate young souls. She kissed them both, drawing each close
to her for a moment, and then bade them run away. “Were you having a
good game?” she said, with that ineffable, feeble smile. “Go and finish
it, my darlings.” And they stumbled out very awkwardly, startled to meet
their father’s look as they turned round, and greatly disturbed and
mystified altogether, though consoled somehow by their mother’s look.
They said to each other after a while that she looked “jolly bad,” but
that she was in such good spirits it must be all right.
Their father was as much mystified as they; but he was troubled in
conscience, as if he had not spoken plainly enough, had not made it
clear enough what “her state” was. She had not asked for the
clergyman--she had not asked for anything. Was it necessary that he
should speak again? There was one thing she had near her, but that so
fantastic a thing!--a photograph--one of the quantities of such rubbish
the girls and she had brought home--a woman wrapped in a mantle floating
in the air.
“Take that thing away,” he said to Moulsey. It irritated him to see a
frivolous thing like that--a twopenny-halfpenny photograph--so near his
wife’s bed.
“Don’t take it away,” she said, in the whisper to which her voice had
sunk; “it gives me such pleasure.”
“Pleasure!” he cried; even to speak of pleasure was wrong at such a
moment. And then he added, “Would you like me to read to you? Would you
like to see--anyone?”
“To see anyone? Whom should I wish to see but you, Edward, and the
children?”
“We haven’t been--so religious, my dear, as perhaps we ought,” stammered
the anxious man. “If I sent for--Mr. Baldwin perhaps, to read the
prayers for the sick and--and talk to you a little?”
She looked at him with some wonder for a moment, and then she said, with
a smile, “Yes, yes; by all means, Edward, if you like it.”
“I shall certainly like it, my dearest; and it is right--it is what we
should all wish to do at the----” He could not say at the last--he could
not say when we are dying--it was too much for him; but certainly she
must understand now. And he went away hurriedly to call the clergyman,
that no more time might be lost.
“Moulsey,” said Mrs. Kingsward, “have we come then quite--to the end
now?”
“Oh, ma’am! Oh, my dear lady!” Moulsey said.
“My husband--seems to think so. It is a little hard--to leave them all.
Where is Bee?”
“I am here, mamma,” said a broken voice; and the mother’s hand was
caught and held tight, as she liked it to be. “May Betty come too?”
“Yes, let Betty come. It is you I want, not Mr. Baldwin.”
“Mr. Baldwin is a good man, ma’am. He’ll be a comfort to them and to the
Colonel.”
“Yes, I suppose so; he will be a comfort to--your father. But I don’t
want anyone. I haven’t done very much harm----”
“No! oh, no, ma’am, none!” said Moulsey, while Betty, thrown on her
knees by the bedside, tried to smother her sobs; and Bee, worn out and
feeling as if she felt nothing, sat and held her mother’s hand.
“But, then,” she said, “I’ve never, never, done any good.”
“Oh! my dear lady, my dear lady! And all the poor people, and all the
children.”
“Hush! Moulsey. I never gave anything--not a bit of bread, not a
shilling--but because I liked to do it. Never! oh, never from any good
motive. I always liked to do it. It was my pleasure. It never cost me
anything. I have done no good in my life. I just liked the poor
children, that was all, and thought if they were my own---- Oh, Bee and
Betty, try to be better women--different from me.”
Betty, who was so young, crept nearer and nearer on her knees, till she
came to the head of the bed. She lifted up her tear-stained face,
“Mother! oh, mother! are you frightened?” she cried.
Mrs. Kingsward put forth her other arm and put it freely round the
weeping girl. “Perhaps I ought to be, perhaps I ought to be!” she said,
with a little thrill and quaver.
“Mother,” said Betty, pushing closer and closer, almost pushing Bee
away, “if I had been wicked, ever so wicked, I shouldn’t be frightened
for you.”
A heavenly smile came over the woman’s face. “I should think not,
indeed.”
And then Betty, in the silence of the room, put her hands together and
said very softly, “Our Father, which art in Heaven--”
“Oh, children, children,” cried Moulsey, “don’t break our hearts! She’s
too weak to bear it. Leave her alone.”
“Yes, go away, children dear--go away. I have to rest--to see Mr.
Baldwin.” Then she smiled, and said in gasps, “To tell the
truth--I’m--I’m not afraid; look--” She pointed to the picture by her
bedside. “So easy--so easy! Just resting--and the Saviour will put out
his hand and take me in.”
Mr. Baldwin came soon after--the good Rector, who was a good man, but
who believed he had the keys, and that what he bound on earth was bound
in Heaven--or, at least, he thought he believed so--with Colonel
Kingsward, who felt that he was thus fulfilling all righteousness, and
that this was the proper way in which to approach the everlasting doors.
He put away the little picture in which Catherine of Siena lay in the
hold of the angels, in the perfect peace of life accomplished, the rest
that was so easy and so sweet--hastily with displeasure and contempt. He
did not wish the Rector to see the childish thing in which his wife had
taken pleasure, nor even that she had been taking pleasure at all at
such a solemn moment; even that she should smile the same smile of
welcome with which she would have greeted her kind neighbour had she
been in her usual place in the drawing-room disturbed her husband. So
near death and yet able to think of that! He watched her face as the
Rector read the usual prayers. Did she enter into them--did she
understand them? He could scarcely join in them himself in his anxiety
to make sure that she felt and knew what was her “state,” and was
preparing--preparing to meet her God. That God was awaiting severely the
appearance of that soul before him, the Colonel could not but feel. He
would not have said so in words, but the instinctive conviction in his
heart was so. When she looked round for the little picture it hurt him
like a sting. Oh, if she would but think of the things that concerned
her peace--not of follies, childish distractions, amusements for the
fancy. On her side, the poor lady was conscious more or less of all that
was going on, understood here and there the prayers that were going over
her head, prayers of others for her, rather than anything to be said by
herself. In the midst of them, she felt herself already like St.
Catherine, floating away into ineffable peace, then coming back again to
hear the sacred words, to see the little circle round her on their
knees, and to smile upon them in an utter calm of weakness without pain,
feeling only that they were good to her, thinking of her, which was
sweet, but knowing little more.
It was the most serene and cloudless night after that terrible day. A
little after Colonel Kingsward had left the room finally and shut
himself up in his study, Moulsey took the two girls out into the garden,
through a window which opened upon it. “Children, go and breathe the
sweet air. I’ll not have you in a room to break your hearts. Look up
yonder--yonder where she’s gone,” said the kind nurse who had done
everything for their mother. And they stole out--the two little ghosts,
overborne with the dreadful burden of humanity, the burden which none of
us can shake off, and crept across the grass to the seat where she had
been used to sit among the children. The night was peace itself--not a
breath stirring, a young moon with something wistful in her light
looking down, making the garden bright as with a softened ethereal day.
A line of white cloud dimly detached from the softness of the blue lay
far off towards the west amid the radiance, a long faint line as of
something in the far distance. Bee and Betty stood and gazed at it with
eyes and hearts over-charged, each leaning upon the other. Their young
souls were touched with awe and an awful quiet. They were too near the
departure to have fallen down as yet into the vacancy and emptiness of
re-awakening life. “Oh,” they said, “if that should be her!” And why
should it not be? Unless perhaps there was a quicker way. They watched
it with that sob in the throat which is of all sounds and sensations the
most overwhelming. It seemed to them as if they were watching her a
little further on her way, to the very horizon, till the soft distance
closed over, and that speck like a sail upon the sea could be seen no
more. And when it was gone they sank down together upon her seat, under
the trees she loved, where the children had played and tumbled on the
grass about her, and talked of her in broken words, a little phrase now
and then, sometimes only “Mother,” or “Oh, mamma, mamma,” now from one,
now from another--in that first extraordinary exaltation and anguish
which is not yet grief.
They did not know how long they had been there when something stirred in
the bushes, and the two big boys, Arthur and Fred, came heavily into
sight, holding each other by the arm. The boys were bewildered, heavy
and miserable, not knowing what to do with themselves nor where to go.
But they came up with a purpose, which was a little ease in the trouble.
It cost them a little convulsion of reluctant crying before they could
get out what they had to say. Then it came out in broken words from both
together. “Bee, there’s someone wants to speak to you at the gate.”
“Oh! who could want to speak to me--to-night? I cannot speak to anyone;
you might have known.”
“Bee,” said Arthur, the eldest, “it isn’t just--anyone; it’s--we thought
you would perhaps--”
“He told us,” said Fred, “who he was; and begged so hard--”
Then there came back upon poor Bee all the other trouble that she had
pushed away from her. Her heart seemed to grow hard and cold after all
the softening and tenderness of this dreadful yet heavenly hour. “I will
see no one--no one,” she said.
“Bee,” said the boys, “we shut the gate upon him; but he took hold of
our hands, and--and cried, too.” They had to stop and swallow the sob
before either could say any more. “He said she was his best friend. He
said he couldn’t bear it no more than us. And if you would only speak to
him.”
Bee got up from her mother’s seat; her poor little heart swelled in her
bosom as if it would burst. Oh! how was she to bear all this--to bear it
all--to have no one to help her! “No, no, I will not. I will not!” she
said.
“Oh, Bee,” cried Betty, “if it is Aubrey--poor Aubrey! She was fond of
him. She would not like him to be left out. Oh, Bee, come; come and
speak to him. Suppose one of us were alone, with nobody to say mother’s
name to!”
“No, I will not,” said Bee. “Oh! Betty, mother knows why; she knows.”
“What does she know?” cried Betty, pleading. “She was fond of him. I am
fond of him, without thinking of you, for mother’s sake.”
“Oh, let me go! I am going in; I am going to her. I wish, I wish she had
taken me with her! No, no, no! I will never see him more.”
“I think,” said Betty to the boys, pushing them away, “that she is not
quite herself. Tell him she’s not herself. Say she’s not able to speak
to anyone, and we can’t move her. And--and give poor Aubrey--oh, poor
Aubrey!--my love.”
The boys turned away on their mission, crossing the gravel path with a
commotion of their heavy feet which seemed to fill the air with echoes.
Colonel Kingsward heard it from his study, though that was closed up
from any influence outside. He opened his window and came out, standing
a black figure surrounded by the moonlight. “Who is there?” he said.
“Are there any of you so lost to all feeling as to be out in the
garden, of all nights in the world on this night?”