“What does the doctor say?”
“Oh, Mr. Fairfax! worse, far worse than nothing! He looks at us as if
his heart would break. He has known us all our lives. He steals out
through the garden not to see me. But I know what he means, I know very
well what he means,” Alice said with irrestrainable tears.
“But the other one from London--Sir Thomas: he is coming?”
“This afternoon: but it will not do any good. Mr. Fairfax, will you
telegraph once more to Paul? I don’t think he believes us. Tell him that
papa----”
“Don’t say any more, Miss Markham; I understand. But one moment,” said
Fairfax; “Paul will not like to find me here. No, there is no reason
why--we have never quarrelled. But he will not like to find me here.”
“You have been very kind, very good to us, Mr. Fairfax; you have stayed
and helped us when there was no one else; you have always been
a--comfort. But then it must have been very, very dismal and gloomy for
you to be in a house where there was nothing but trouble,” Alice said.
Her pretty eyes were swimming in tears. It gave her a little pang to
think that perhaps this visitor, though he had been so kind, had been
staying out of mere civility, and thinking it hard. It was not out of
any other feeling in her mind that she was aware of; but to think that
Fairfax had been longing to get away perhaps, feeling the tedium of his
stay, gave her a sharp little shock of pain.
“Do not speak so--pray do not speak so,” said Fairfax, distressed. “That
is not the reason. But I think I will go to the village. There I can be
at hand whatever is wanted. You will know that I am ready by night or
day--but I have no right to be here.”
Alice looked at him, scarcely seeing him through the great tears with
which her eyes were brimming over. She put out her hand with a
tremulous gesture of appeal.
“Then you think,” she said, in a voice which was scarcely louder than a
whisper, “you think--it is very near?”
Fairfax felt that he could not explain himself. In the very presence of
death could any one pause to think that Paul might find a visitor
intrusive, or that the visitor himself might be conscious of a false
position?
“No,” he said, “no: how can I tell? I have not seen him. I could not be
a judge. It is on Paul’s account; but I shall be at the village--always
at hand whatever you may want.”
This reassured her a little, and the glimmer of a feeble smile came on
her face. She gave him her trembling hand for a moment. He had been very
“kind.” It was not a word that expressed his devotion, but Alice did not
know what other to use: very--very kind.
“The house will seem more empty still if you go. It looks so lonely,”
said Alice; “like what it used to be when they were away in town and we
left behind. Oh, if that were all! Paul ought to have been here all the
time, and you have taken his place. It is unjust that you should go when
he comes.”
“I shall not go,” said Fairfax softly. He had held her hand in his for a
moment--only for a moment. Alice, in her grief, was soothed by his
sympathy; but Fairfax, on the other hand, was very well aware that he
must take no advantage of that sympathy. He would have liked to kiss the
trembling hand in an effusion of tender pity, and if it had been Lady
Markham he might have done so; but it was Alice, and he dared not. He
held himself aloof by main strength, keeping himself from even a word
more. There was almost a little chill in it to the girl, whose heart was
full of trouble and pain, and whose tearful eyes appealed unconsciously
to that “kindness” in which she had such confidence. To be deserted by
any one at such a moment would have seemed hard to her. The house was
oppressed by the slow rolling-up of this cloud, which was about to
overcloud all their life.
Lady Markham now scarcely left the sick-room at all. When they warned
her that she would exhaust herself, that she would not be able to bear
the strain, she would shake her head with a woeful sort of smile. She
was not of the kind that breaks down. She was sure of herself so long as
she should be wanted, and afterwards, what did it matter? Now and then
she would come out and take a turn or two along the corridor, rather
because of the restlessness of anguish that would take possession of her
than from any desire to “change the air,” as the nurse said. And when
she was out of the room Sir William’s worn eyes would watch the door.
“Don’t leave me alone,” he said to her in his feeble voice. He had grown
very feeble now. For by far the greater part of the time he was occupied
entirely with his bodily sufferings; but now and then it would occur to
him that there was something in his pocket-book, something that would
give a great deal of trouble--and that there was somebody who wanted to
see him and to force an explanation. How was he able in his weak state,
to give any explanation? He had entreated his wife at first not to allow
him to be disturbed, and now as everything grew dimmer, he could not
bear that she should leave him. There was protection in her presence. At
times it occurred to him that his enemy was lurking outside, and that
all his attendants could do was to keep the intruder at bay. Now and
then he would hear a step in the corridor, which no doubt was his; but
the nurses were all faithful, and the dangerous visitor was never let
in. At these moments Sir William turned his feeble head to look for his
wife. She would protect him. As he went further and further, deeper and
deeper, into the valley of the shadow, he forgot even what the danger
was; but the idea haunted him still. All this time he had never asked
for Paul. He had not wished to see any one, only to have his room well
watched and guarded, and nobody allowed to disturb him. When the doctors
came there was always a thrill of alarm in his mind--not for his own
condition, as might have been supposed, but lest in their train or under
some disguise the man who was his enemy might get admission. And thus,
without any alarm in respect to himself, without any personal uneasiness
about what was coming, he descended gradually the fatal slope. The
thought of death never occurred to him at all. No solemn alarm was his,
not even any consciousness of what might be coming. He never breathed a
word as to what he wished to be done, or gave any directions. In short,
he did not apparently think much of his illness. The idea of a
dangerous and disagreeable visitor who would go away again if no notice
was taken of him, and of whom it was expedient to take no notice, was
the master idea in his mind, and with all the strength he had he kept
this danger secret--it was all the exertion of which he was now capable.
And to be a visitor in the house at such a melancholy moment was most
embarrassing. There are some people who have a special knack of mixing
themselves up in the affairs of others, and Fairfax was one of these. He
was himself strangely isolated and alone in the world, and it seemed to
him that he had never found so much interest in anything as in this
family story into the midst of which he had been so suddenly thrown.
Almost before he had become acquainted with them, circumstances had made
him useful, and for the moment necessary, to them. He was an intruder,
yet he was doing the work of a son. And then in those long summer
evenings which Lady Markham spent in her husband’s sick-room, what a
strange charmed life the young man had drifted into! When the children
went to bed, Alice would leave the great drawing-room blazing with
lights, for that smaller room at the end which was Lady Markham’s
sanctuary, and which was scarcely lighted at all, and there the two
young people would sit alone, waiting for Lady Markham’s appearance or
for news from the sick-room, with only one dim lamp burning, and the
summer moonlight coming in through the little golden-tinted panes of the
great Elizabethan window. Sometimes they scarcely said anything to each
other, the anxiety which was the very atmosphere of the house hushing
them into watchfulness and listening which forbade speech; but
sometimes, on the other hand, they would talk in half-whispers, making
to each other without knowing it, many disclosures both of their young
lives and characters, which advanced them altogether beyond that
knowledge of each other which ordinary acquaintances possess.
Nothing like love, it need not be said, was in those bits of
intercourse, broken sometimes by a hasty summons from the sick-room to
Alice, or a hurried commission to Fairfax--a telegram that had to be
answered, or something that it was necessary to explain to the doctor.
In the intervals of these duties, which seemed as natural to the one as
to the other, the girl and the young man would talk or would be silent,
somehow pleased and soothed mutually by each other’s presence, though
neither was conscious of thinking of the other. Alice at least was not
conscious. She felt that it was “a comfort” that he should be there, so
sympathetic, so kind, ready to go anywhere at a moment’s notice; and she
had come to be able to say to him “Go” or “Come” without hesitation, and
to take for granted his willing service. But it was scarcely to be
expected that Fairfax should be unconscious of the strangeness of the
union which was invisibly forming itself between them. At first a
certain amusement had mixed with the natural surprise of suddenly
finding himself in circumstances so strange; but it must be allowed that
by degrees Fairfax came to think Sir William’s illness a fortunate
chance, and so long as imminent danger was not thought of, had no
objection to its continuance.
But things had become more grave from day to day. Sir William, without
doubt, seemed going to die, and Paul did not come, and the stranger’s
services became more and more necessary, yet more and more incongruous
with the circumstances of the house. The whole came to a climax when Gus
whispered that revelation across the table in the inn parlour. The
excitement and distress with which Fairfax received it is not to be
described. Could it be true? Certainly Gus was absolutely convinced of
its truth, and unaware of any possibility of denial. Fairfax asked
himself, with a perplexity more serious than he had ever known in his
life before, what he ought to do. Was it his duty to say something or to
say nothing? to warn them of the extraordinary blow that was coming, or
to hold his peace and merely look on? When he went back up the peaceful
avenue into the house which he was beginning to call home--the house
over which one dread cloud was hanging, but which had no prevision of
the other calamity--he felt as if he himself were a traitor conniving at
its destruction. But to whom could he speak? Not to Lady Markham who had
so much to bear--and Alice--to tell such a tale to Alice was impossible.
It was then that he determined at any cost that Paul must come, and he
himself go away. That Paul would not tolerate his presence in the house
he was aware, instinctively feeling that neither could he, in Paul’s
place, have borne it. And to go away was not so easy as it once might
have been; but there seemed no longer any question what his duty was.
He put up some of his things in a bag, and himself carried them with him
down the avenue, not able to feel otherwise than sadly heavy and sore
about the heart. He could not abandon the ladies; but he could not stay
there any longer with that secret in his possession. His telegram to
Paul was in a different tone from those which the ladies sent.
“The doctors give scarcely any hope,” he said. “Come instantly. I cannot
but feel myself an intruder at such a moment; but I will not leave till
you come.”
Then he went sadly with his bag to the Markham Arms. Was it right? Was
it wrong? It even glanced across his mind that to establish himself
there by the side of Gus might seem to the Markhams like taking their
enemy’s side against them. But what else could he do? He would neither
intrude upon them nor abandon them.
Fairfax calculated justly. Paul, who had resisted his mother’s appeals
and his sister’s entreaties, obeyed at once the imperative message of
the man who threw the light of outside opinion and common necessity upon
the situation. He arrived that night, just after the great London
physician, who had come down to pronounce upon Sir William’s condition,
had been driven to the railway. Paul had no carriage sent for him, and
had said to himself that it was all an exaggeration and piece of folly,
since some one from Markham was evidently dining out. There were,
however, all the signs of melancholy excitement which usually follow
such a visit visible in the hall and about the house when he reached it.
Brown and one of his subordinates were standing talking in low tones on
the great steps, shaking their heads as they conversed. Mr. Brown
himself had managed to change his usually cheerful countenance into the
semblance of that which is characteristic of an undertaker’s mute.
“I knew how it would be the moment I set eyes upon him,” Mr. Brown was
saying. “Death was in his face, if it ever was in a man’s.”
Paul sprang from the lumbering old fly which he had found at the station
with a mixture of eagerness and incredulity.
“How is my father?” he said.
“Oh, sir, you’re come none too soon,” said Brown, “Sir William is as bad
as bad can be.” And then Alice, hearing something, she did not know
what, rushed out. Every sound was full of terror in the oppressed house.
She flung herself upon her brother and wept. There was no need to say
anything; and Paul who had been lingering, thinking they did not mean
what they said, believing it to be a device to get him seduced into that
dangerous stronghold of his enemy’s house, was overcome too.
“Why did not I hear before?” he said. But nobody bid him remember that
he had been told a dozen times before.
Sir William was very ill that night. He began to wander, and said things
in his confused and broken utterance which were very mysterious to the
listeners. But as none of them had any clue to what these wanderings
meant, they did not add, as they might have done, to the misery of the
night. There was no rest for any one during those tedious hours. The
children and the inferior servants went to bed as usual, but the elder
ones, and those domestics who had been long in the family, could not
rest any more than could those individually concerned; the excitement of
that gloomy expectation got into their veins. Mrs. Fry was up and down
all night, and Brown lay on a sofa in the housekeeper’s room, from which
he appeared at intervals looking very wretched and troubled, with that
air of half-fearing half hoping the worst, which gets into the faces of
those who stand about the outer chamber where death has shown his face.
Nothing however “happened” that night. The day began again, and life,
galvanised into a haggard copy of itself, with all the meals put upon
the table as usual. The chief figure in this new day, in this renewed
vigil, was Paul, who, always important in the house, was now doubly
important as so soon to be master of all. The servants were all very
careful of him that he should not be troubled; messages and commissions
which the day before would have been handed unceremoniously to Fairfax,
were now managed by Brown himself as best he could rather than trouble
Mr. Paul; and even Mrs. Fry was more anxious that he should lie down and
rest, than even that Alice, her favourite, should be spared.
“It will all come upon him _after_,” the housekeeper said.
As for Paul himself, the effect upon him was very great. Perhaps it was
because of the profound dissatisfaction in his mind with all his own
plans, that he had so long resisted the call to come home. Since his
father had left Oxford, Paul had gone through many chapters of
experience. Every day had made him more discontented with his future
associates, more secretly appalled by the idea that the rest of his life
was to be spent entirely among them. He had left his rooms in college,
and gone into some very homely ones not far from Spears’s, by way of
accustoming himself to his new life. This was a thing he had long
intended to do, and he had been angry with himself for his weak-minded
regard for personal comfort, but unfortunately his enthusiasm had begun
to sink into disgust before he took this step, and his loathing for the
little mean rooms, the narrow street full of crowding children and evil
odours was intense. That he had forced himself to remain,
notwithstanding this loathing, was perhaps all the worse for his plans.
He would not yield to his own disgust, but it inspired him with a secret
horror and opposition far more important than this mere dislike of his
surroundings. He saw that none of the others minded those things, which
made his existence miserable. Even Spears, whose perceptions in some
respects were delicate, did not smell the smell, nor perceive the
squalor. He thought Paul’s new lodgings very handsome; he called him
Paul, without any longer even the apologetic smile which at first
accompanied that familiarity, as a matter of course. And Janet gave him
no peace. She called him out with little beckonings and signs. She was
always in the way when he came or went. She took the charge of him,
telling him what he ought to do and what not to do, with an attempt at
that petty tyranny which a woman who is loved may exercise with
impunity, but which becomes intolerable in any other.
It was thus with a kind of fierce determination to remain faithful to
his convictions that Paul had set himself like a rock against all the
appeals from home. His convictions! These convictions gradually resolved
themselves into a conviction of the utter unendurableness of life, under
the conditions which he had chosen, as day by day went on. Nothing, he
had resolved, should make him yield, or own himself mistaken--nothing
would induce him to give up the cause to which he had pledged himself.
But now that at last he had been driven out of that stronghold, and
forced to leave the surroundings he hated, and come back to those that
were natural to him, Paul’s mind was in a chaos indescribable. After the
first burst of penitence and remorse, there had stolen on him a sense of
well-being, a charm of association which he strove to struggle against,
but in vain. He was grieved, deeply grieved for his father; but is it
possible that in the mind of a young heir, aware of all the incalculable
differences in his own life which the end of his father’s must make,
there should not be a quivering excitement of the future mingling with
the sorrow of the present, however sincere? When he went out in the
morning, after the feverishness of that agitated night, to feel the
fresh air in his face, and saw around him all the spreading woods, all
the wealthy and noble grace of the old house which an hour or moment,
might make his own, a strange convulsion shook his being. Was not he
pledged to give all up, to relinquish everything--to share whatever he
had with his brother, and, leave all belonging to him? The question
brought a deadly faintness over him. While he stood under the trees
looking at his home, he seemed to see the keen eyes of the Scotsman,
Fraser, inspecting the place, and Short jotting down calculations on a
bit of paper as to what would be the value of the materials, and how
many villas semi-detached might be built on the site--while Spears,
perhaps, patted him on the shoulder, and bid him remember that even if
he had not given it up, this could not have lasted,--“the country would
not stand it long.” He seemed to see and hear them discussing his fate;
and Janet, standing at the door, making signs to him with her hand. What
had he to do here? It was to that society he belonged. Nevertheless,
Paul’s heart quivered with a strange excitement when he thought that
to-morrow--perhaps this very night!--And then he bethought himself of
the darkened room upstairs, and his mother’s lingering watch; and his
heart contracted with a sudden pang.
Next evening it was apparent that the end was at hand. Just as the sun
went down, when the soft greyness of the summer twilight began to steal
into the air, the children were sent for into Sir William’s room. They
thronged in with pale faces and wide open eyes, having been bidden not
to cry--not to disturb the quiet of the death chamber. The windows were
all open, the sky appearing in wistful stretches of clearness; but near
the bed, in the shadow, a shaded lamp burned solemnly, and the window
beyond showed gleams of lurid colour in the western sky, barred by
strong black lines of cloud. These black lines of cloud, and the
mysterious shining of the lamp, gave a strange air of solemnity to the
room, all filled already by the awe and wonder of death. A sob of
mingled grief and terror burst from little Marie, as grasping her
sister’s hand convulsively, she followed Alice to her father’s bedside.
Was it he that lay there, propped up with cushions, breathing so hard
and painfully? The boys stood at the foot of the bed. Their hearts were
full of that dreary anguish of the unaccustomed and unknown, which gives
additional depth to every sorrow of early youth. Alice, who had taken
her place close to the head of the bed had lost this. She knew all about
it, poor child--what to do for him; what was coming; all that should be
administered to him. She was as pale as those pale stretches of sky, and
like them in the clear pathetic wistfulness of her face; but she had
something to do, and she was not afraid.
“William--are you able to say anything to the children?” said Lady
Markham. “They have all come--to see you--to ask how you are----” She
could not say, “to bid you farewell;” that was not possible. Her voice
was quite steady and calm. The time was coming when she would be able to
weep, but not now.
He opened his eyes and looked at them with a faint smile. He had always
been good to the children. At his most busy moment they had never been
afraid of him. Little Bell held her breath, opening her eyes wider and
wider to keep down that passion of tears which was coming, while Marie
clung to her, trying to imitate her, but with the tears already come,
and making blinding reflections of the solemn lamp and the evening
light.
“Ah, yes, the children,” Sir William said. “I have not seen them since
Sunday. They have been very good--and kind; they have not--made any
noise. Who is that? I thought--I heard--some one--”
“Nobody, papa,” said Alice--“nobody--except all of us.”
“Ah! all of you,” he said, and gave one of those panting, hard-drawn
breaths which were so terrible to hear.
The door was open, like the windows, to give all the air possible. The
servants were standing about the stairs and in the passages. Everybody
knew that the last act was about to be performed solemnly, and the
master of the house on the eve of his going away. Most of the women were
crying. Even when it is nothing to you, what event is there that can be
so much as this final going--this departure into the unseen? There was a
general hush of awe and excitement. And how it was that amidst them all
that stranger managed to get entrance, to walk up stairs, to thread
through the mournful group, no one ever knew. His step was audible, even
among that agitated company, as he came along the corridor. They all
heard it, with a certain sense of alarm. Was it the doctor coming back
again with something new he had thought of, or was it----
“Ah, all of you,” Sir William said; and as he spoke the words the
new-comer came in at the door. He walked up to the foot of the bed, no
one molesting him. They were all struck dumb with surprise; and what
could they have done, when a momentary tumult or scuffle would have
killed the sufferer at once? For the moment every eye was turned from
Sir William, and directed to Mr. Gus in his light clothes, with his
little brown face, so distinct from all the others. He came up close to
the foot of the bed.
“Yes, all of us, now I am here,” he said. “I am sorry to disturb you at
such a time; but, Sir William Markham, you’ll have to own me before you
die.”
Paul made a hasty step towards him, and put a hand upon his shoulder.
“Don’t you see,” he said. “Go away, for God’s sake. Whatever you want
I’ll attend to you after.”
“I’ll not go away,” said Gus. “I must stand for my rights, even if he is
dying. Sir William Markham, it’s your own doing. I have given you
warning. You’ll have to own me before you die.”
Paul, beside himself, seized the stranger by the shoulders; but Gus,
though he was small, was strong.
“Don’t make a scuffle,” he said in a low tone; “I won’t go, but I’ll
make no disturbance. He’s going to speak. Be still, you, and listen to
what he says.”
Sir William signed impatiently to his attendants on each side--Alice and
her mother--to raise him. He looked round him, feebly peering into the
waning light.
“They are beginning to fight--over my bed,” he said, with a quiver in
his voice.
“No,” said Gus, getting free from Paul’s restraining grasp. He made no
noise, but he was supple and strong, and slid out of the other’s hands.
“No, there shall be no fighting; I have more respect--but own me,
father, before you die. I’ll take care of them. I’ll do no one any harm,
I swear before God; but own me before you die.”
They all stood and listened, gazing, forgetting even the man who was
dying. The very children forgot him, and turned to the well-known
countenance of the little gentleman. Then there came a gasp, a sob, a
great quiver in the bed. Sir William flung out his emaciated arms with a
gesture of despair.
“I said I was not to be disturbed,” he said, and fell back, never to be
disturbed any more.