The news of Sir William Markham’s death made a great sensation in the
neighbourhood. It was as if a great house had fallen to the ground, a
great tree been riven up by the roots. There are some people whom no one
expects ever to die, and he was one of them. There seemed so much for
him to do in the world. He was so full of occupation, so well qualified
to do it, so precise and orderly in all his ways, every moment of his
time filled up, he did not seem to have leisure for all the troublesome
preliminaries of dying. But as it happened, he had found the time for
them, as we all do, and everybody was astonished. It was whispered in
the county that there had been “a very strange scene at the deathbed,”
and everybody concluded that this was somehow connected with the heir,
it being well known that Paul had only appeared the day before his
father’s death. Some vague rumours on this score flew about in the days
which elapsed before the funeral, but nobody could tell the rights of
the story, and it had already begun to fade before the great pomp and
ceremonial of the funeral day. This was to be a very great day at
Markham Royal. In the Markham Arms all the stables were getting cleared
out, in preparation for the horses of the gentry who would collect from
far and near to pay honour to the last scene in which the member for the
county would ever play any part; and all the village was roused in
expectation. No doubt it was a very solemn and sad ceremonial, and
Markham Royal knew that it had lost its best friend; but,
notwithstanding, any kind of excitement is pleasant in the country, and
they liked this well enough in default of better. The little gentleman
too, who was living at the Markham Arms, was a great diversion to the
village. He gave himself the air of superintending everything that was
done at the Markham burying place. He went about it solemnly--as if it
could by any possibility be his business--and he put on all the
semblance of one who has lost a near relation. He put away his light
clothes, and appeared in black, with a hat-band which almost covered
his tall hat. The village people felt it very natural that the little
gentleman should be proud of his relationship to the Markhams, and
should take such a good opportunity of showing it; but those who knew
about such matters laughed a little at the size of his hat-band. “If he
had been a son it could not have been larger. Sir Paul himself could not
do more,” Mr. Remnant, the draper, said.
It happened that Dolly Stainforth was early astir on the funeral
morning. She thought it right to get all her parish work over at an
early hour, for the village would be full of “company,” and indeed Dolly
was aware that even in the rectory itself there would be a great many
people to luncheon, and that her father’s stables would be as full of
horses as those of the Markham Arms. She was full of excitement and
grief herself, partly for Sir William whom she had known all her life,
but still more for Alice and Lady Markham, for whom the girl grieved as
if their grief had been her own. She had put on a black frock to be so
far in sympathy with her friends, and before the dew was off the
flowers, had gathered all she could find in the rectory garden, and
made them into wreaths and crosses. This is an occupation which soothes
the sympathetic mourner. She stood under the shadow of a little
_bosquet_ on the slope of the rectory garden which looked towards the
churchyard, and worked silently at this labour of love, a tear now and
then falling upon the roses still wet with morning dew. From where she
stood she could see the preparations in the great Markham burying place;
the sexton superintending the place prepared in which Sir William was to
lie with his father, the lychgate under which the procession would pause
as they entered, and the path by which they would sweep round to the
church. That which was about to happen so soon seemed already to be
happening before her eyes. The tears streamed down Dolly’s fresh morning
cheeks. To die, to be put away under the cold turf, to leave the warm
precincts of the cheerful day, seems terrible indeed to a creature so
young as she was, so full of life, and on a summer morning all brimming
over with melody and beauty. When she shook the tears off her eyelashes
she saw a solitary figure coming through the churchyard, pausing for a
moment to look at the grave, then turning towards the gate which led
into the rectory garden. Dolly put the wreath she was making on her
arm, and hastened to meet him. Her heart beat; it was full of sorrow and
pity, and yet of excitement too. She went to him with the tears once
more streaming from her pretty eyes. “Oh Paul!” she said, putting her
hand into his, and able to say no more. Of late she had begun to call
him Mr. Markham, feeling shy of her old playfellow and of herself, but
she could not stand upon her dignity now. She would have liked to throw
her arms round his neck, to console him, to have called him dear Paul.
In his trouble it seemed impossible to do too much for him. And Paul on
his side took the little hand in both his, and held it fast. The tears
rose to his eyes too. He was very grown up, very tall and solemn, and
his mind was full of many a serious thought--but when he had little
Dolly by the hand the softest influence of which he was susceptible came
over him. “Thank you, Dolly,” he said, with quivering lips.
“How are they?” said the little girl, coming very close to his side, and
looking up at him with her wet eyes.
“Oh, how can they be?” said Paul; “my mother is worn out, she cannot
feel it yet: and Alice is with her night and day.”
“Will they come?” said Dolly, with a sob in her voice.
“I fear so; it is too much for them. But I am afraid they will come,
whatever I may say.”
“Oh, don’t you think it is best? Then they will feel that they have not
left him, not for a moment, nor failed him, as long as there was
anything to do.”
“But that makes it all the worse when there is nothing to do. I fear for
my mother.”
“She has got you, Paul--and the children.”
“Yes, me; and I did not come till the last. Did you hear that,
Dolly?--that I wasted all the time when he was dying, and was only here
the last day?”
“Dear Paul,” said Dolly, giving him her hand again, “you did not mean
it. Do you think he does not know now? Oh, you may be sure he
understands!” she cried, with that confidence in the advancement of the
dead above all petty frailties which is so touching and so universal.
“I hope so,” Paul said, with quivering lips; and as he stood here, with
this soft hand clasping his, and this familiar, almost childish, voice
consoling him, Paul felt as if he had awakened out of a dream. This was
the place he belonged to, not the squalid dream to which he had given
himself. Standing under those beautiful trees, with this soft, fair
innocent creature comprehending and consoling him, there suddenly
flashed before his eyes a vision of a narrow street, the lamp-post, the
children shouting and fighting, and another creature, who did not at all
understand him, standing close by him, pressing her advice upon him,
looking up at him with eager eyes. A sudden horror seized him even while
he felt the softness of Dolly’s consoling touch and voice. It quickened
the beating of his heart and brought a faintness of terror like a film
over his eyes.
“Come and sit down,” said Dolly, alarmed. “You are so pale. Oh, Paul,
sit down, and I will run and bring you something. You have been shutting
yourself up too much; you have been making yourself ill. Oh, Paul! you
must not reproach yourself. You must remember how much there is to do.”
“Do not leave me, Dolly. I am going to speak to the rector. I am not
ill--it was only a sudden recollection that came over me. I have not
been so good a son as I ought to have been.”
“Oh, Paul! he sees now--he sees that you never meant it,” Dolly said.
“Do you think _they_ are like us, thinking only of the outside? And you
have your mother to think of now.”
“And so I will,” he said, with a softening rush of tears to his eyes.
“Come in with me, Dolly.”
Dolly was used to comforting people who were in trouble. She did not
take away her hand, but went in with him very quietly, like a child,
leading the young man who was so deeply moved. Her own heart was in a
great flutter and commotion, but she kept very still, and led him to her
father’s study and opened the door for him. “Here is Paul, papa,” she
said, as if Paul had been a boy again, coming with an exercise, or to be
scolded for some folly he had done. But afterwards Dolly went back to
her wreaths with her heart beating very wildly. She was ashamed and
angry with herself that it should be so on such a day--the morning of
the funeral. But then it is so in nature, let us chide as we will. One
day ends weeping, and the next thrusts its recollection away with
sunshine. Already the new springs of life were beginning to burst forth
from the very edges of the grave.
When Paul went away after this last bit of melancholy business (he had
come to tell the rector what the hymn was which his mother wished to be
sung) he did not see Dolly again. She was putting all her flowers ready
with which to cover the darkness of the coffin--a tender expedient which
has everywhere suggested itself to humanity. He went away through the
early sunshine, walking with a subdued and measured tread as a man
enters a church not to disturb the worshippers. In Paul’s own mind there
was a feeling like that of convalescence--the sense of something painful
behind yet hopeful before--the faintness and weakness, yet renewal of
life, which comes after an illness. There was no anguish in his grief,
nor had there been after the first agony of self-reproach which he had
experienced, when he perceived the cruelty of his lingering and
reluctance to obey his mother’s call. But that was over. He had at least
done his duty at the last, and now the feeling in Paul’s mind was more
that of respectful compassion for his father now withdrawn out of all
the happiness of his life, than of any sorer, more personal sentiment.
The loss of him was not a thing against which his son’s whole soul cried
out as darkening heaven and earth to himself. The loss of a child has
this effect upon a parent, but that of a parent seldom so affects a
child; yet he was sorry, with almost a compunctious sense of the
happiness of living, for his father who had lost that--who had been
obliged to give up wife and children, and his happy domestic life, and
his property and influence, and the beautiful world and the daylight. At
this thought his heart bled for Sir William; yet for himself beat softly
with a sense of unbounded opening and expansion and new possibility. As
he walked softly home, his step instinctively so sobered and gentle, his
demeanour so subdued, the thoughts that possessed him were such as he
had never experienced before. They possessed him indeed; they were not
voluntary, not originated by any will of his, but swept through him as
on the wings of the wind, or gently floated into him, filling every nook
and corner. He was no longer the same being; the moody, viewy,
rebellious young man who was about to emigrate with Spears, to join a
little rude community of colonists and work with his hands for his daily
bread and sacrifice all his better knowledge, all the culture of a
higher social caste, to rough equality and primitive justice--had died
with Sir William. All that seemed to be years behind him. Sometimes his
late associates appeared to him as if in a dream, as the discomforts of
a past journey or the perils that we have overcome, flash upon us in
sudden pictures. He saw Spears and Fraser and the rest for a moment
gleaming out of the darkness, as he might have seen a precipice in the
Alps on the edge of which for a moment he had hung. It was not that he
had given them up; it was that in a moment they had become impossible.
He walked on, subdued, in his strange convalescence, with a kind of
content and resignation and sense of submission. A man newly out of a
fever, submits sweetly to all the immediate restraints that suit his
weakness. He does not insist upon exercises or indulgences of which he
feels incapable, but recognises with a grateful sense of trouble over,
the duty of submitting. This was how Paul felt. He was not glad, but
there was in his veins a curious elation, expansion, a rising tide of
new life. He had to cross the village street on his way home, and there
all the people he met took off their hats or made their curtseys with a
reverential respect that arose half out of respect for his new
dignities, and half out of sympathy for the son who had lost his father.
Just when his mind was soft and tender with the sight of this universal
homage, there came up to him a strange little figure, all in solemn
black.
“You are going home,” said this unknown being. “I will walk with
you and talk it over; and let us try if we cannot arrive at an
understanding----”
Paul put up his hand with sudden impatience. “I can’t speak to you
to-day,” he said hastily.
“Not to-day? the day of our father’s funeral; that ought to be the most
suitable day of all--and indeed it must be,” the little gentleman said.
“Mr. Gaveston,” said Paul, “if that is your name----”
“No, it is not my name,” said Mr. Gus.
“I suppose you lay claim to ours, then? You have no right. But Mr.
Markham Gaveston, or whatever you call yourself, you ought to see that
this is not the moment. I will not refuse to examine your claims at a
more appropriate time,” said Paul with lofty distance.
A slight redness came over Gus’s brown face. He laughed angrily. “Yes,
you will have to consider my claims,” he said. And then after a little
hesitation, he went away. This disturbed the current of Paul’s languid,
yet intense, consciousness. He felt a horror of the man who had thus, he
thought, intruded the recollection of his father’s early errors to cloud
the perfect honour and regret with which he was to be carried to his
grave. The interruption hurt and wounded him. Of course the fellow would
have to be silenced--bought off at almost any price--rather than
communicate to the world this stigma upon the dead. By and by, however,
as he went on, the harshness of this jarring note floated away in the
intense calm and peace of the sweet atmosphere of the morning which
surrounded him. The country was more hushed than usual, as if in
sympathy with what was to happen to-day. The very birds stirred softly
among the trees, giving place, it might have been supposed, to that
plaintive coo of the wood pigeon “moaning for its mate” which is the
very voice of the woods. A soft awe seemed over all the earth--an awe
that to the young man seemed to concern as much his own life which was,
as the other which was ending. The same awe crept into his own heart as
he went towards his home, that temple of grief and mourning, from which
all the sunshine was shut out. There seemed to rise up within him a
sudden sense of the responsibilities of the future, a sudden warmth of
resolution which brought the tears to his eyes.
“I will be good,” said the little princess, when she heard of the great
kingdom that was coming to her; and Paul, though he was not a child to
use that simple phraseology, felt the same. The follies of the past were
all departed like clouds. He was the head of the family--the universal
guardian. It lay with him to see that all were cared for, all kept from
evil; the fortune of many was in his hands; power had come to him--real
power, not visionary uncertain influence such as he had once thought the
highest of possibilities. “I will be good”--this thought swelled up
within him, filling his heart.
It was past mid-day when the procession set out; the whole county had
come from all its corners, to do honour to Sir William, and the parish
sent forth a humble audience, scattered along all the roads, half-sad,
half-amused by the sight of all the carriages and the company. When they
caught a glimpse of my lady in her deep crape, the women cried: but
dried their tears to count the number of those who followed, and felt a
vague gratification in the honour done to the family. All the men who
were employed on the estate, and the farmers, and even many people from
Farboro’, the markettown, swelled the procession. Such a great funeral
had never been seen in the district. Lady Westland and her daughter, and
Mrs. Booth, and the other ladies in the parish, assembled under the
rectory trees, and watched the wonderful procession, not without much
remark on the fact that Dolly had gone to the grave with the family, a
thing which no one else had been asked to do. It was not the ladies on
the lawn, however, who remarked the strange occurrence which surprised
the lookers-on below, and which was so soon made comprehensible by what
followed. When the procession left the church-door, the stranger who was
living at the Markham Arms appeared all of a sudden, in the
old-fashioned scarves and hat-bands of the deepest conventional woe, and
placed himself behind the coffin, in a line with, or indeed a little in
advance of, Paul. There was a great flutter among the professional
conductors of the ceremony when this was observed. One of the attendants
rushed to him, and took him by the arm, and remonstrated with anxious
whispers.
“You can follow behind, my good gentleman--you can follow behind,” the
undertaker said; “but this is the chief mourner’s place.”
“It is my place,” said the intruder aloud, “and I mean to keep it.”
“Oh, don’t you now, sir--don’t you now make a business,” cried the
distressed official. “Keep out of Sir Paul’s way!”
The stranger shook the man off with a sardonic grin which almost sent
him into a fit, so appalling was it, and contrary to all the decorum of
the occasion. And what more could any one do? They kept him out of the
line of the procession, but they could not prevent him from keeping up
with, keeping close by Paul’s side. Indeed Mr. Gus got close to the side
of the grave, and made the responses louder than any one else, as if he
were indeed the chief actor in the scene. And his appearance in all
those trappings of woe, which no one else wore, pointed him doubly out
to public notice. Indeed the undertaker approved of him for that; it was
showing a right feeling--even though it was not from himself that Mr.
Gus had procured that livery of mourning. It was he that lingered the
longest when the mourners dispersed. This incident was very much
discussed and talked of in the parish and among the gentlemen who had
attended the funeral, during the rest of the day. But the wonder which
it excited was light and trivial indeed in comparison with the wonders
that were soon to follow. All day long the roads were almost gay (if it
had not been wrong to use such an expression in the circumstances) with
the carriages returning from the funeral, and the people in the roadside
cottages felt themselves at liberty to enjoy the sight of them now that
all was over, and Sir William safely laid in his last bed.
“And here’s Sir Paul’s ’ealth,” was a toast that was many times repeated
in the Markham Arms, and in all the little alehouses where the thirsty
mourners refreshed themselves during the day; “and if he’s as good a
landlord and as good a master as his father, there won’t be much to say
again’ him.”
There were many, however, who, remembering all that had been said about
him, the “bad company” he kept, and his long absences from home, shook
their heads when they uttered their good wishes, and had no confidence
in Sir Paul.