been and for what is, never seems to leave me," was his reply. "For
some moments after I awoke from that dream I thought it was reality: I
believe I called out 'Arthur.' Rachel started, and inquired between
sleeping and waking what the matter was. To find it was only a dream--to
remember that what _is_ can never be changed or redeemed in this world,
was the worst pain of all."
"You may have children yet," said Lady Chavasse, after a pause. "It is
not impossible."
"Well, I suppose not impossible," was the hesitating rejoinder.
"But----"
"But you don't think it. Say it out, Geoffry."
"I do not think it. My darling mother, don't you see how it is with me?"
he added, in an impulse of emotion--"that I am not to live. A very short
time now, and I shall be lying with my father."
A piteous cry broke from her. It had to be suppressed. The ungrateful
peacock, seeing no more dainty biscuit in store, had fluttered off with
a scream, putting his tail down into the smallest possible compass; and
Arthur came running back to the room. Mr. Duffham next appeared; his
face grave, his account of Lady Rachel evasive. He suspected some latent
disease of the spine, but did not wish to say so just yet.
The horse and pony were brought round. Arthur and the doctor mounted;
Arthur turning round to lift his cap to Lady Chavasse and Sir Geoffry as
he rode away. A noble boy in all his actions; sitting his pony like the
young chieftain he ought to have been but for my lady's adverse will.
But Mr. Duffham was by no means prepared for an inroad on his privacy
made that evening by my lady. She surprised him in his shabbiest
parlour, when he was taking his tea: the old tin teapot on the Japan
tray, and the bread-and-butter plate cracked across. Zuby Noah,
Duffham's factotum, was of a saving turn, and never would bring in
the best things except on Sundays. He had a battle with her over it
sometimes, but it did no good. Duffham thought Lady Chavasse had come
to hear about Lady Rachel, but he was mistaken.
She began with a despairing cry, by way of introduction to the
interview; Zuby might have heard it as she went along the kitchen
passage, but for her clanking pattens. The man-servant was out that
evening, and Zuby was in waiting. Duffham, standing on the old
hearthrug, found his arm seized by Lady Chavasse. He had never seen
her in agitation like this.
"Is it to be so really? Mr. Duffham, can _nothing_ be done? Is my son to
die before my very eyes, and not be saved?"
"Sit down, pray, Lady Chavasse!" cried Duffham, trying to hand her
into the chair that had the best-looking cushion on it, and wishing
he had been in the other room and had not slipped on his worn, old
pepper-and-salt coat.
"He ought not to die--to die and leave no children!" she went on, as if
she were a lunatic. "If there were but one little son--but one--to be
the heir! _Can't_ you keep him in life? there may be children yet, if he
only lives."
Her eyes were looking wildly into his; her fingers entwined themselves
about the old grey cuffs as lovingly as though they were of silk velvet.
No: neither Duffham nor any one else had ever seen her like this. It was
as though she thought it lay with Duffham to keep Sir Geoffry in life
and to endow Chavasse Grange with heirs.
"Lady Chavasse, I am not in the place of God."
"Don't you care for my trouble? Don't you _care_ for it?"
"I do care. I wish I could cure Sir Geoffry."
Down sat my lady in front of the fire, in dire tribulation. By the way
she stared at it, Duffham thought she must see in it a vision of the
future.
"We shall have to quit the Grange, you know, if he should die: I and
Lady Rachel. Better that I quitted it in my young life; that I had never
had a male child to keep me in it. I thought that would have been a
hardship: but oh, it would have been nothing to this."
"You shall take a cup of tea, Lady Chavasse--if you don't mind its being
poured out of this homely tea-pot," said Duffham. "Confound that Zuby!"
he cried, under his breath.
"Yes, I will take the tea--put nothing in it. My lips and throat are dry
with fever and pain. I wish I could die instead of Geoffry! I wish he
could have left a little child behind to bless me!"
Duffham, standing up whilst she took the tea, thought it was well that
these trials of awful pain did not fall often in a lifetime, or they
would wear out alike the frame and the spirit. She grew calm again. As
if ashamed of the agitation betrayed, her manner gradually took a sort
of hard composure, her face a defiant expression. She turned it on him.
"So, Mr. Duffham! It has been well done of you, to unite with Sir
Geoffry in deceiving me! That child over the way has never been Colonel
Layne's."
And then she went on in a style that put Duffham's back up. It was not
his place to tell her, he answered. At the same time he had had no
motive to keep it from her, and if she had ever put the question to him,
he should readily have answered it. Unsolicited, unspoken to, of course
he had held his peace. As to uniting with Sir Geoffry to deceive her,
she deceived herself if she thought anything of the kind. Since the
first moment they had spoken together, when the fact had become known to
Sir Geoffry, never a syllable relating to it had been mentioned between
them. And then, after digesting this for a few minutes in silence, she
went back to Sir Geoffry's illness.
"It is just as though a blight had fallen on him," she piteously
exclaimed, lifting her hand and letting it drop again. "A blight."
"Well, Lady Chavasse, I suppose something of the kind did fall upon
him," was Duffham's answer.
And _that_ displeased her. She turned her offended face to the doctor,
and inquired what he meant by saying it.
So Duffham set himself to speak out. He had said he would, if ever the
opportunity came. Reverting to what had happened some nine or more years
ago, he told her that in his opinion Sir Geoffry had never recovered it:
that the trouble had so fixed itself upon him as to have worked
insensibly upon his bodily health.
"Self-reproach and disappointment were combined, Lady Chavasse; for
there's no doubt that the young lady was very dear to him," concluded
Duffham. "And there are some natures that cannot pick up again after
such a blow."
She was staring at Duffham with open eyes, not understanding.
"You do not mean to say that--that the disappointment about _her_ has
killed Sir Geoffry?"
"My goodness, no!" cried Duffham, nearly laughing. "Men are made of
tougher stuff than to die of the thing called love, Lady Chavasse. What
is it Shakespeare says? 'Men have died, and worms have eaten them, but
not for love.' There is no question but that Sir Geoffry has always had
an inherent tendency to delicacy of constitution," he continued more
seriously: "my partner Layne told me so. It was warded off for a time,
and he grew into a strong, hearty man: it might perhaps have been
warded off for good. But the blight--as you aptly express it, Lady
Chavasse--came: and perhaps since then the spirit has not been able
to maintain its own proper struggle for existence--in which lies a
great deal, mind you; and now that the original weakness has shown
itself again, he cannot shake it off."
"But--according to that--he _is_ dying of the blight?"
"Well--in a sense, yes. If you like to put it so."
Her lips grew white. There rose before her mind that one hour of bitter
agony in her lifetime and her son's, when he had clasped his pleading
hands on hers, and told her in a voice hoarse with its bitter pain and
emotion that if she decided against him he could never know happiness
again in this world: that to part from one to whom he was bound by sweet
endearment, by every tie that ought to bind man to woman, would be like
parting with life. Entrenched in her pride, she had turned a deaf ear,
and rejected his prayer: and now there had come of it what had come.
Yes, as Lady Chavasse sat there, she had the satisfaction of knowing
that the work was hers.
"A warmer climate?--would it restore him?" she exclaimed, turning her
hot eyes on Mr. Duffham.
"Had it been likely to do so, Lady Chavasse, I should have sent him to
one long ago."
She gathered her mantle of purple velvet about her as she rose up, and
went out of the room in silence, giving Duffham her hand in token of
friendship.
Duffham opened the front-door, and was confronted by a tall
footman--with a gold-headed cane and big white silk calves--who had been
waiting in the air for his lady. She took the way to the Grange; the man
and his protecting cane stepping grandly after her.
* * * * *
"Sir Geoffry Chavasse."
Buried in her own reflections by the drawing-room fire, in the coming
dusk of the winter's evening, Miss Layne thought her ears must have
deceived her. But no. It was Sir Geoffry who advanced as the servant
made the announcement; and she rose to meet him. Strangely her heart
fluttered: but she had been learning a lesson in calmness for many
years; he had too, perhaps; and they shook hands quietly as other people
do. Sir Geoffry threw back his overcoat from his wasted form as he sat
down.
Wasted more than ever now. Some weeks have gone on since my lady's
impromptu visit to Mr. Duffham's tea-table; winter is merging into
spring; and the most sanguine could no longer indulge hope for Sir
Geoffry.
"You have heard how it is with me?" he began, looking at Mary, after
recovering his short breath.
"Yes," she faintly answered.
"I could not die without seeing you, Mary, and speaking a word of
farewell. It was in my mind to ask you to come to the Grange for
half-an-hour's interview; but I scarcely saw how to accomplish it: it
might have raised some speculation. So as the day has been fine and
mild, I came to you."
"You should have come earlier," she murmured. "It is getting late and
cold."
"I did come out earlier. But I have been with Duffham."
Moving his chair a little nearer to hers, he spoke to her long and
earnestly. In all that was said there seemed to be a solemn meaning--as
is often the case when the speaker is drawing to the confines of this
world and about to enter on the next. He referred a little to the past,
and there was some mutual explanation. But it seemed to be of the future
that Sir Geoffry had come chiefly to speak--the future of Baby Arthur.
"You will take care of him, Mary?--of his best interests?" And the tears
came into Mary Layne's eyes at the words. He could not really think it
necessary to ask it.
"Yes. To the very utmost of my power."
"I am not able to leave him anything. You know how things are with us
at the Grange. My wish would have been good----"
"It is not necessary," she interrupted. "All I have will be his, Sir
Geoffry."
"_Sir_ Geoffry! Need you keep up that farce, Mary, in this our last
hour? He seems to wish to be a soldier: and I cannot think but that the
profession will be as good for him as any other, provided you can _like_
it for him. You will see when the time comes: all that lies in the
future. Our lives have been blighted, Mary: and I pray God daily and
hourly that, being so, it may have served to expiate the sin--my sin, my
love, it was never yours--and that no shame may fall on him."
"I think it will not," she softly said, the painful tears dropping fast.
"He will always be regarded as Colonel Layne's son: the very few who
know otherwise--Mr. Duffham, Colonel and Mrs. Layne, and Lady Chavasse
now--will all be true to the end."
"Ay. I believe it too. I think the boy may have a bright and honourable
career before him: as much so perhaps as though he had been born my
heir. I think the regret that he was not--when he so easily might have
been--has latterly helped to wear me out, Mary."
"I wish you could have lived, Geoffry!" she cried from between her
blinding tears.
"I have wished it also," he answered, his tone full of pain. "But it was
not to be. When the days shall come that my mother is alone, except for
Lady Rachel, and grieving for me, I want you to promise that you will
sometimes see her and give her consolation. Something tells me that you
can do this, Mary, that she will take it from you--and I know that she
will need it sadly. Be kind to her when I am gone."
"Yes. I promise it."
"You are the bravest of us all, Mary. And yet upon you has lain the
greatest suffering."
"It is the suffering that has made me brave," she answered. "Oh,
Geoffry, I am getting to realize the truth that it is better to have too
much of suffering in this world than too little. It is a truth hard to
learn: but once learnt, it brings happiness in enduring."
Sir Geoffry nodded assent. He had learnt somewhat of it also--too late.
"I have begun a confidential letter to Colonel Layne, Mary, and shall
post it before I die. To thank him for----"
The words were drowned in a gleeful commotion--caused by the entrance of
Arthur. The boy came dashing in from his afternoon's study with the
curate, some books under his arm.
"I have not been good, Aunt Mary. He said I gave him no end of trouble;
and I'm afraid I did: but, you see, I bought the marbles going along,
instead of in coming back, as you told me, and---- Who's that!"
In letting his books fall on a side-table, he had caught sight of the
stranger--then standing up. The fire had burnt low, and just for the
moment even the young eyes did not recognize Sir Geoffry Chavasse. Mary
stirred the fire into a blaze, and drew the crimson curtains before the
window.
"What have you come for?" asked the little lad, as Sir Geoffry took his
hand. "Are you any better, sir?"
"I shall never be better in this world, Arthur. And so you gave your
tutor trouble this afternoon!"
"Yes; I am very sorry: I told him so. It was all through the marbles. I
couldn't keep my hands out of my pockets. Just look what beauties they
are!"
Out came a handful of "beauties" of many colours. But Mary, who was
standing by the mantelpiece, her face turned away, bade him put them up
again. Arthur began to feel that there was some kind of hush upon the
room.
"I have been talking to Miss Layne about your future--for, do you know,
Arthur, you are a favourite of mine," said Sir Geoffry. "Ever since the
time when my horse knocked you down--and might have killed you--I have
taken a very warm interest in your welfare. I have often wished that
you--that you"--he seemed to hesitate in some emotion--"were my own
little son and heir to succeed me; but of course that cannot be. I don't
know what profession you will choose, or may be chosen for you----"
"I should like to be a soldier," interrupted Arthur, lifting his
sparkling eyes to Sir Geoffry's.
"Your ideas may change before the time for choosing shall come. But a
soldier may be as brave a servant of God as of his queen: should you
ever become a soldier, will you remember this truth?"
"Yes," said Arthur, in a whisper, for the grave tones and manner
impressed him with some awe.
Sir Geoffry was sitting down and holding Arthur before him. To the
latter's intense surprise, he saw two tears standing on the wasted
cheeks. It made him feel a sort of discomfort, and he began, as a
relief, to play with the chain and seal that hung on the baronet's
waistcoat. A transparent seal, with a plain device on it.
"Should you like to have them when I am gone, Arthur--and wear them in
remembrance of me when you are old enough? I think it must be so: no one
can have a better right to them than my little friend who once nearly
lost his arm by my carelessness. I will see about it. But I have a
better present than that--which I will give you now."
Taking from his pocket the small Bible that had been his companion for
some months, he put it into Arthur's hands, telling him that he had
written his name in it. And the child, turning hastily to the fly-leaf,
saw it there: "Arthur Layne. From G. A. C." Lower down were the words:
"Come unto Me all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give
you rest."
"Jesus said that!" cried the boy, simply.
"Jesus Christ. My Saviour and yours--for I am sure you will let Him be
yours. Do not part with this Book, Arthur. Use it always: I have marked
many passages in it. Should it be your fate ever to encamp on the
battle-field, let the Book be with you: your guide and friend. In time
you will get to love it better than any book that is to be had in the
world."
The child had a tender heart, and began to cry a little. Sir Geoffry
drew him nearer.
"I have prayed to God to bless you, Arthur. But you know, my child, He
will only give His best blessing to those who seek it, who love and
serve Him. Whatsoever may be your lot in life, strive to do your duty in
it, as before God; loving Him, loving and serving your fellow-creatures;
trusting ever to Christ's atonement. These are my last solemn words to
you. Do you always remember them."
His voice faltered a little, and Arthur began to sob. "Oh, Sir Geoffry,
must you die?"
Sir Geoffry seemed to be breathing fast, as though agitation were
becoming too much for him. He bent his head and kissed the boy's face
fervently: his brow, his cheeks, his lips, his eyelids--there was not a
spot that Sir Geoffry did not leave a kiss upon. It quite seemed as
though his heart had been yearning for those kisses, and as though he
could not take enough of them.
"And now, Arthur, you must do a little errand for me. Go over to Mr.
Duffham, and tell him I am coming. Leave the Bible on the table here."
Arthur went out of the house with less noise than he had entered it. Sir
Geoffry rose.
"It is our turn to part now, Mary. I must be gone."
Her sweet face was almost distorted with the efforts she had been making
to keep down emotion before the child. She burst into tears, as her hand
met Sir Geoffry's.
"God bless you! God bless you always, my darling!" he murmured. "Take my
thanks, once for all, for the manner in which you have met the past;
there is not another woman living who would have done and borne as you
have. This is no doubt our last meeting on earth, Mary; but in eternity
we shall be together for ever. God bless you, and love you, and keep you
always!"
A lingering hand-pressure, a steady look into each other's eyes, reading
the present anguish there, reading also the future trust, and then their
lips met--surely there was no wrong in it!--and a farewell kiss of pain
was taken. Sir Geoffry went out, buttoning his overcoat across his
chest.
A fly was waiting before Mr. Duffham's house; the surgeon and Arthur
were standing by it on the pavement. Sir Geoffry got inside.
"Good-bye, Sir Geoffry!" cried the little lad, as Mr. Duffham, saying he
should be at the Grange in the morning, was about to close the door. "I
shall write and tell papa how good you've been, to give me your own
Bible. I can write small-hand now."
"And fine small-hand it is!" put in old Duffham in disparagement.
Sir Geoffry laid his hand gently on Arthur's head, and kept it there
for a minute. His lips were moving, but he said nothing aloud. Arthur
thought he had not been heard.
"Good-bye, Sir Geoffry," he repeated.
"Good-bye, my child."
* * * * *
Sir Geoffry lay back in an easy-chair in front of the fire in his
library. The end was near at hand now, but he was bearing up quite well
to the last. Lady Chavasse, worn almost to a shadow with grief and
uncertainty--for there were times yet when she actually entertained a
sort of hope--sat away in the shade; her eyes watching every change
in his countenance, her heart feeling ever its bitter repentance and
despair.
Repentance? Yes, and plenty of it. For she saw too surely what might
have been and what was--and knew that it was herself, herself only, who
had worked out this state of things. Her self-reproach was terrible; her
days and nights were one long dream of agony. Lady Rachel was not with
them very much. She lay down more than ever in her own room; and Lady
Chavasse had begun to learn that this almost continuous lying was
not caused by inert idleness, but of necessity. The Grange was a sad
homestead now.
The blaze from the fire flickered on Sir Geoffry's wasted face. _Hers_
was kept in the shadow, or it might have betrayed the bitterness of
her aching heart. He had been speaking of things that touched her
conscience.
"Yes, it was a sin, mother. But it might have been repaired; and, if
it had been, I believe God would have blessed us all. As it is--well,
we did not repair it, you and I; and so--and so, as I take it, there
has not been much of real blessing given to us here; certainly not of
heartfelt comfort. I seem to see all things clearly now--if it be not
wrong to say it."
Lady Chavasse saw them too--though perhaps not exactly in the way he
meant. Never was the vision, of what might have been, more vividly
before her than now as he spoke. She saw him, a hale happy man; his wife
Mary, their children, a goodly flock, all at the Grange, and herself
first amongst them, reigning paramount, _rejoicing_ in her good and
dutiful daughter-in-law. Oh, what a contrast between that vision and
reality! A repressed groan escaped her lips; she coughed to smother it.
"Mother!"
"Well, Geoffry?"
"You need not have suppressed my last letter to Mary--the letter of
explanation I wrote when I quitted her and the Grange. You might have
been sure of me--that I would be true to my word to you."
No answer. There was a great deal that she would not suppress, besides
the letter, if the time had to come over again. The log sparkled and
crackled and threw its jets of flame upwards; but no other noise
disturbed the room's stillness.
"Mother!"
"Well, Geoffry?"
"I should like the child, little Arthur, to have my watch and its
appendages. Have you any objection?"
"None."
"It will be looked upon, you know, as a token of remembrance to the
little fellow who had so sharp an illness through my horse."
"Yes."
"And--I have two desks, you know. The old one of common stained wood I
wish sent to Miss Layne, locked as it is. The key I will enclose in a
note. Let them be sent to her when I am dead."
"It shall be done, Geoffry."
"There's not much in the desk. Just a few odds and ends of papers;
mementoes of the short period when I was happy--though I ought not to
have been. Nothing of value; except a ring that I bought for her at
Worcester at the time, and which she would not take."
"I promise it, Geoffry. I will do all you wish."
"Thank you. You have ever been my loving friend, mother."
"_Ever_, Geoffry?"
"Well--you did for the best there, mother; though it was a mistake. You
acted for what you thought my welfare."
"Would you not like to see her, Geoffry?"
"I have seen her and bidden her farewell. It was the afternoon I went to
Duffham's and you said that I stayed out too late. And now I think I'll
lie down on the sofa, and get, if I can, a bit of sleep; I feel tired.
To-morrow I will talk about you and Rachel--and what will be best for
you both. I wish to my heart, for your sake and hers, that Rachel had
borne a son; I am thinking of you both daily, and of what you will do
when I am gone."
"I shall never know pleasure in life again, Geoffry," she cried, with a
heartbroken sob. "Life for me will be, henceforth, one of mortification
and misery."
"But it will not last for ever. Oh, mother! how merciful God is!--to
give us the blessed hope of an eternal life of perfect happiness, after
all the mistakes and tribulations and disappointments of this! My
darling mother! we shall all be there in sweet companionship for ever."
* * * * *
They buried Sir Geoffry Chavasse by the side of his father--and any one
who likes to go there may see his tomb against the graveyard wall of
Church Dykely. My Lady Chavasse arranged the funeral. The Earl of
Derreston and a Major Chavasse were chief mourners, with other grand
people. Duffham's diary gives the particulars, but there is no space
here to record them. Duffham was bidden to it; and brought Arthur
Layne in his hand to the Grange, in obedience to a private word of my
lady's--for she knew the dead, if he could look out of his coffin, would
like to see Arthur following. So the procession started, a long line;
the village gazing in admiration as it passed; and Dobbs the blacksmith
felt as proud as ever was the Grange peacock, when he saw Colonel
Layne's little son in a coach, amidst the gentlefolks. 'Twere out of
respect to the colonel's bravery, you might be sure, he told a select
audience: and p'r'aps a bit because o' that back accident to the child
hisself. And so, amidst pomps, and coaches, and comments, Geoffry
Chavasse was left in his last home.
[_Final matters extracted from Duffham's Diary._]
It is eighteen months now since Sir Geoffry died; and strange changes
have taken place. The world is always witnessing such: you go up, and I
go down.