THE PANACEA
As if my own trouble were not enough, so deeply was I grieved by this
sad news that I had a great mind to turn back on my own and fly to
far-off disasters. To do so appeared for the moment a noble thing, and
almost a duty; but now, looking back, I perceive that my instinct was
right when it told me to stay where I was, and see out my own sad story
first. And Betsy grew hot at the mere idea of my hankering after a
miller's affairs, as she very rudely expressed it. To hear about lords
and ladies, and their crimes and adventures, was lovely; but to dwell
upon people of common birth, and in trade, was most unbeseeming. A man
who mended his own mill, and had hands like horn--well, even she was of
better blood than that, she hoped.
Before these large and liberal views had fairly been expounded, Major
Hockin arrived, with his mind in such a state that he opened his watch
every second.
“Erema, I must speak to you alone,” he cried; “no, not even you, Mrs.
Strouss, if you please. If my ward likes to tell you, why, of course she
can; but nobody shall say that I did. There are things that belong to
the family alone. The most loyal retainers--you know what I mean.”
“General, I was not aware that you belonged to the family. But this way,
Sir; this way, if you please. There is lath and plaster to that wall,
and a crack in the panel of the door, Sir. But here is a room where I
keep my jams, with double brick and patent locks, from sweet-toothed
lodgers. The 'scutcheon goes over the key-hole, General. Perhaps you
will see to that, while I roll up the carpet outside; and then, if any
retainers come, you will hear their footsteps.”
“Bless the woman, what a temper she has!” whispered the Major, in dread
of her ears. “Is she gone, Erema? She wants discipline.”
“Yes, she is gone,” I said, trying to be lightsome; “but you are enough
to frighten any one.”
“So far from that, she has quite frightened me. But never mind such
trifles. Erema, since I saw you I have discovered, I may almost say,
every thing.”
Coming upon me so suddenly, even with all allowance made for the Major's
sanguine opinion of his own deeds, this had such effect upon my flurried
brain that practice alone enabled me to stand upright and gaze at him.
“Perhaps you imagined when you placed the matter in my hands, Miss
Castlewood,” he went on, with sharp twinkles from the gables of his
eyes, but soft caresses to his whiskers, “that you would be left in the
hands of a man who encouraged a crop of hay under his feet. Never did
you or any body make a greater mistake. That is not my character, Miss
Castlewood.”
“Why do you call me 'Miss Castlewood' so? You quite make me doubt my own
right to the name.”
Major Hockin looked at me with surprise, which gladdened even more than
it shamed me. Clearly his knowledge of all, as he described it, did not
comprise the disgrace which I feared.
“You are almost like Mrs. Strouss to-day,” he answered, with some
compassion. “What way is the wind? I have often observed that when one
female shows asperity, nearly all the others do the same. The weather
affects them more than men, because they know nothing about it. But to
come back--are you prepared to hear what I have got to tell you?”
I bowed without saying another word. For he should be almost the last of
mankind to give a lecture upon irritation.
“Very well; you wish me to go on. Perceiving how sadly you were upset by
the result of those interviews, first with Handkin, and then with Goad,
after leaving you here I drove at once to the office, studio, place of
business, or whatever you please to call it, of the famous fellow in
the portrait line, whose anagram, private mark, or whatever it is, was
burned into the back of the ivory. Handkin told me the fellow was dead,
or, of course, his work would be worth nothing; but the name was carried
on, and the register kept, at a little place somewhere in Soho, where,
on the strength of his old repute, they keep up a small trade with
inferior hands. I gave them a handsome order for a thing that will never
be handsome, I fear--my old battered physiognomy. And then I produced
the locket which in some queer state of mind you had given me, and made
them hunt out their old books, and at last discovered the very entry.
But to verify it I must go to Paris, where his son is living.”
“Whose son? Lord Castlewood's?”
“Erema, have you taken leave of your senses? What son has Lord
Castlewood? The artist's son, to be sure; the son of the man who did the
likeness. Is it the vellum and the stuff upon it that has so upset your
mind? I am glad that you showed it to me, because it would have been
mean to do otherwise. But show it to no one else, my dear, except your
cousin, Lord Castlewood. He has the first right of all to know it,
though he will laugh at it as I do. Trumpery of that sort! Let them
produce a certified copy of a register. If they could do that, need they
ever have shot that raffish old lord--I beg pardon, my dear--your highly
respected grandfather? No, no; don't tell me. Nicholas Hockin was never
in any way famous for want of brains, my dear, and he tells you to keep
your pluck up.”
“I never can thank you enough,” I replied, “for such inspiriting
counsel. I have been rather miserable all this day. And I have had such
a letter from America!”
Without my intending any offer of the kind, or having such idea at the
furthest tip of any radius of mind, I found myself under a weight about
the waist, like the things the young girls put on now. And this was the
arm of the Major, which had been knocked about in some actions, but was
useful still to let other people know, both in this way and that, what
he thought of them. And now it let me know that he pitied me.
This kindness from so old a soldier made me partial to him. He had taken
an age to understand me, because my father was out of the army almost
before I was born, and therefore I had no traditions. Also, from want
of drilling, I had been awkward to this officer, and sometimes mutinous,
and sometimes a coward. All that, however, he forgave me when he saw
me so downhearted; and while I was striving to repress all signs, the
quivering of my lips perhaps suggested thoughts of kissing. Whereupon
he kissed my forehead with nice dry lips, and told me not to be at all
afraid.
“How many times have you been brave?” he inquired, to set me counting,
knowing from all his own children, perhaps, that nothing stops futile
tears and the waste of sobs like prompt arithmetic. “Six, if not seven,
times you have displayed considerable valor. Are you going to fall
away through some wretched imagination of your own? Now don't stop to
argue--time will not allow it. I have put Cosmopolitan Jack as well upon
the track of Captain Brown. I have not told you half of what I could
tell, and what I am doing; but never mind, never mind; it is better that
you should not know too much, my dear. Young minds, from their want of
knowledge of the world, are inclined to become uneasy. Now go to bed and
sleep soundly, Erema, for we have lots to do to-morrow, and you have had
a most worrying day to-day. To-morrow, of course, you must come with me
to Paris. You can parleyvoo better than I can.”
However, as it happened, I did nothing of the kind, for when he came
back in the morning, and while he was fidgeting and hurrying me, and
vowing that we should lose the tidal train, a letter from Bruntsea was
put into my hand. I saw Mrs. Price's clear writing, followed by good
Aunt Mary's crooked lines, and knew that the latter must have received
it too late to be sent by her messenger. In few words it told me that
if I wished to see my cousin alive, the only chance was to start
immediately.
Shock and self-reproach and wonder came (as usual) before grief, which
always means to stay, and waits to get its mourning ready. I loved and
respected my cousin more deeply than any one living, save Uncle Sam; and
now to lose them both at once seemed much too dreadful to be true.
There was no time to think. I took the Major's cab, and hurried off to
Paddington, leaving him to catch his tidal train.
Alas! when I got to Castlewood, there was but a house of mourning!
Faithful Stixon's eyes were dim, and he pointed upward and said,
“Hush!” I entered with great awe, and asked, “How long?” And he said,
“Four-and-twenty hours now; and a more peacefuller end was never seen,
and to lament was sinful; but he was blessed if he could help it.” I
told him, through my tears, that this was greatly to his credit, and he
must not crush fine feelings, which are an honor to our nature. And he
said that I was mistress now, and must order him to my liking.
I asked him to send Mrs. Price to me, if she was not too busy; and he
answered that he believed her to be a very good soul, and handy. And if
he ever had been thought to speak in a sense disparishing of her, such
things should not be borne in mind, with great afflictions over us. Mrs.
Price, hearing that I was come, already was on her way to me, and
now glanced at the door for Mr. Stixon to depart, in a manner past
misunderstanding.
“He gives himself such airs!” she said; “sometimes one would think--but
I will not trouble you now with that, Miss Castlewood, or Lady
Castlewood--which do you please to be called, miss? They say that the
barony goes on, when there is no more Viscount.”
“I please to be called 'Miss Castlewood,' even if I have any right to be
called that. But don't let us talk of such trifles now. I wish to hear
only of my cousin.”
“Well, you know, ma'am, what a sufferer he has been for years. If ever
an angel had pains all over, and one leg compulsory of a walking-stick,
that angel was his late lordship. He would stand up and look at one, and
give orders in that beautiful silvery voice of his, just as if he was
lying on a bed of down. And never a twitch, nor a hitch in his face, nor
his words, nor any other part of him. I assure you, miss, that I have
been quite amazed and overwhelmed with interest while looking at his
poor legs, and thinking--”
“I can quite enter into it. I have felt the same. But please to come to
what has happened lately.”
“The very thing I was at the point of doing. Then last Sunday, God alone
knows why, the pain did not come on at all. For the first time for seven
years or more the pain forgot the time-piece. His lordship thought that
the clock was wrong; but waited with his usual patience, though missing
it from the length of custom, instead of being happy. But when it
was come to an hour too late for the proper attack of the enemy, his
lordship sent orders for Stixon's boy to take a good horse and ride to
Pangbourne for a highly respectable lawyer. There was no time to fetch
Mr. Spines, you see, miss, the proper solicitor, who lives in London.
The gentleman from Pangbourne was here by eight o'clock; and then and
there his lordship made his will, to supersede all other wills. He put
it more clearly, the lawyer said, than he himself could have put it, but
not, of course, in such legal words, but doubtless far more beautiful.
Nobody in the house was forgotten; and the rule of law being, it seems,
that those with best cause to remember must not witness, two of the
tenants were sent for, and wrote down their names legitimate. And then
his lordship lay back and smiled, and said, 'I shall have no more pain.'
“All that night and three days more he slept as sound as a little child,
to make up for so many years. We called two doctors in; but they only
whispered and looked dismal, and told us to have hot water ready at any
hour of the day or night. Nobody loved him as I did, miss, from seeing
so much of his troubles and miraculous way of bearing them; and I sat by
the hour and hour, and watched him, trusting no paid nurses.
“It must have been eight o'clock on Wednesday morning--what is to-day?
Oh, Friday--then Thursday morning it must have been, when the clouds
opened up in the east, and the light of the sun was on the window-sill,
not glaring or staring, but playing about, with patterns of leaves
between it; and I went to screen it from his poor white face; but he
opened his eyes, as if he had been half awake, half dreaming, and he
tried to lift one of his thin, thin hands to tell me not to do it. So I
let the curtain stay as it was, and crept back, and asked, very softly,
'Will your lordship have some breakfast?'
“He did not seem to comprehend me, but only watched the window; and
if ever a blessed face there was, looking toward heaven's glory, his
lordship had it, so that I could scarcely keep from sobbing. For I never
had seen any living body die, but knew that it must be so. He heard me
catching my breath, perhaps, or at any rate he looked at me; and the
poor angel knew that I was a woman; and being full of high respect, as
he always was for females--in spite of the way they had served him--it
became apparent to his mind that the pearl button of his neck was open,
as ordered by the doctors. And he tried to lift his hand to do it; and
then he tried to turn away, but could not manage either. Poor dear! the
only movement he could make was to a better world.
“Then I drew the sheet across his chest, and he gave me a little smile
of thanks, and perhaps he knew whose hand it was. But the look of his
kind soft eyes was flickering--not steady, I mean, miss--but glancing
and stopping and going astray, as drops of rain do on the window-glass.
But I could not endure to examine him much; at such a holy time I felt
that to watch death was unholy.
“Perhaps I ought to have rung the bell for others to be present. But his
lordship was always shy, you know, miss; and with none of his kindred
left, and no wife to say 'good-by' to him, right or wrong I resolved
alone to see him depart to his everlasting rest. And people may talk
about hirelings, but I think nobody loved him as I did.”
Here Mrs. Price broke fairly down, and I could not help admiring her.
To a faithful servant's humility and duty she had added a woman's pure
attachment to one more gifted than herself, and ruined for life by her
own sex. But she fell away frightened and ashamed beneath my look, as if
I had caught her in sacrilege.
“Well, miss, we all must come and go,” she began again, rather clumsily;
“and, good and great as he was, his lordship has left few to mourn for
him. Only the birds and beasts and animals that he was so good to; they
will miss him, if men don't. There came one of his favorite pigeons,
white as snow all over, and sat on the sill of the window, and cooed,
and arched up its neck for his fingers. And he tried to put his fingers
out, but they were ice already. Whether that or something else brought
home his thoughts, who knows, miss? but he seemed to mix the pigeon up
with some of his own experience.
“'Say that I have forgiven her, if ever she did harm to me,' he
whispered, without moving lips. 'Times and times, when I was young, I
was not always steady;' and then he seemed to wander in his mind among
old places; and he would have laughed at something if his voice had been
sufficient.
“'Bitter grief and pain shall never come again,' he seemed to breathe,
with a calm, soft smile, like a child with its rhyme about the rain when
the sun breaks out; and sure enough, the sun upon the quilt above
his heart was shining, as if there could be no more clouds. Then he
whispered a few short words to the Lord, more in the way of thanks than
prayer, and his eyes seemed to close of their own accord, or with some
good spirit soothing them. And when or how his sleep passed from this
world into the other there was scarcely the flutter of a nerve to show.
There he lies, like an image of happiness. Will you come and see him?”
I followed her to the bedroom, and am very glad that I did so; for
it showed me the bliss of a good man's rest, and took away my fear of
death.