A PROTECTOR.
I was in mamma's room; I was holding up her head; old Rebecca and Anne
Owen were at the bedside. My terrified eyes saw the doctor drawing near
softly in the darkened room. I asked him some wild questions, and he
answered gently, "No, dear; no, no."
The doctor took his stand at the bedside, and, with his hands behind his
back, looked down at her face sadly. Then he leaned over. He laid his
hand gently on mamma's, put his fingers to her wrist, felt, also, for
the beating of her heart, looked again at her face, and rose from his
stooping posture with a little shake of the head and a sigh, looked in
the still face once more for a few seconds, and turning to me, said
tenderly:
"You had better come away, dear; there's nothing more to be done. You
must not distress yourself."
That last look of the physician at his patient, when he stands up, and
becomes on a sudden no more than any other spectator, his office over,
his command ended, is terrifying.
For two or three minutes I scarcely knew who was going or coming. The
doctor, who had just gone downstairs, returned with an earnest request
from Sir Harry Rokestone that in an hour or so he might be permitted to
come back and take a last look of mamma. He did come back, but his heart
failed him. He could not bear to see her now. He went into the
drawing-room, and, a few minutes later, Rebecca Torkill came into my
room, where, by this time, I was crying alone, and said:
"Ye mustn't take on so, my darling; rouse yourself a bit. That old man,
Sir Harry Rokestone, is down in the drawing-room in a bit of a taking,
and he says he must see you before he goes."
"I can't see him, Rebecca," I said.
"But what am I to say to him?" said she.
"Simply that. Do tell him I can't go down to see anybody."
"But ain't it as well to go and have it over, miss?--for see you he
will, I am sure of that; and I can't manage him."
"Does be seem angry?" I said, "or only in grief? I daresay he is angry.
Yesterday, when he was here, he never spoke one word to me--he took no
notice of me whatever."
At another time an interview with Sir Harry Rokestone might have
inspired many more nervous misgivings; as it was, I had only this: I
knew that he had hated papa, and I, as my father's child, might well
"stand within his danger," as the old phrase was. And the eccentric and
violent old man, I thought, might, in the moment and agony of having
lost for ever the object of an affection which my father had crossed,
have sent for me, his child, simply to tell me that with my father's
blood I had inherited his curse.
"I can't say, miss, indeed. He was talking to himself, and stamping with
his thick shoes on the floor a bit as he walked. But ain't it best to
have done with him at once, if he ain't friendly, and not keep him here,
coming and going?--for see you he will, sooner or later."
"I don't very much care. Perhaps you are right. Yes, I will go down and
see him," I said. "Go you down, Rebecca, and tell him that I am coming."
I had been lying on my bed, and required to adjust my hair, and dress a
little.
As I came downstairs a few minutes later, I passed poor mamma's door;
the key turned in it. Was I walking in a dream? Mamma dead, and Sir
Harry Rokestone waiting in the drawing-room to see me! I leaned against
the wall, feeling faint for a minute.
As I approached the drawing-room door, which was open, I heard
Rebecca's voice talking to him; and then the old man said, in a broken
voice:
"Where's the child? Bring her here. I will see the bairn."
I was the "bairn" summoned to his presence. This broad north-country
dialect, the language, I suppose, of his early childhood, always
returned to him in moments when his feelings were excited. I entered the
room, and he strode towards me.
"Ha! the lassie," he cried, gently. There was a little tremor in his
deep voice; a pause followed, and he added, vehemently, "By the God
above us, I'll never forsake you!"
He held me to his heart for some seconds without speaking.
"Gimma your hand. I love you for her sake," he said, and took my hand
firmly and kindly in his, and he looked earnestly in my face for awhile
in silence. "You're like her; but, oh! lassie, you'll never be the same.
There'll never be another such as Mabel."
Tears, which he did not dry or conceal, trickled down his rugged cheeks.
He had been talking with Rebecca Torkill, and had made her tell him
everything she could think of about mamma.
"Sit ye down here, lass," he said to me, having recovered his
self-possession. "You are to come home wi' me, to Gouden Friars, or
wherever else you like best. You shall have music and flowers, and books
and dresses, and you shall have your maid to wait on you, like other
young ladies, and you shall bring Rebecca with you. I'll do my best to
be kind and helpful; and you'll be a blessing to a very lonely old man;
and as I love you now for Mabel's sake, I'll come to love you after for
your own."
I did not think his stern old face could look so gentle and sorrowful,
and the voice, generally so loud and commanding, speak so tenderly. The
light of that look was full of compassion and melancholy, and indicated
a finer nature than I had given the uncouth old man credit for. He
seemed pleased by what I said; he was doing, he felt, something for
mamma in taking care of the child she had left so helpless.
Days were to pass before he could speak to me in a more business-like
way upon his plans for my future life, and those were days of agitation
and affliction, from which, even in memory, I turn away.
I am going to pass over some little time. An interval of six weeks finds
me in a lofty wainscoted room, with two stone-shafted windows, large and
tall, in proportion, admitting scarcely light enough however, to make it
cheerful. These windows are placed at the end of an oblong apartment,
and the view they command is melancholy and imposing. I was looking
through the sudden hollow of a mountain gorge, with a level of pasture
between its craggy sides, upon a broad lake, nearly three hundred yards
away, a barrier of mountains rising bold and purple from its distant
margin. A file of gigantic trees stretches from about midway down to the
edge of the lake, and partakes of the sombre character of the scene. On
the steeps at either side, in groups or singly, stand some dwarf oak and
birch-trees, scattered and wild, very picturesque, but I think enhancing
the melancholy of the view.
For me this spot, repulsive as it would have been to most young people,
had a charm; not, indeed, that of a "happy valley," but the charm of
seclusion, which to a wounded soul is above price. Those who have
suffered a great reverse will understand my horror of meeting the people
whom I had once known, my recoil from recognition, and how welcome are
the shadows and silence of the cloister compared with the anguish of a
comparative publicity.
Experience had early dissipated the illusions of youth, and taught me to
listen to the whisperings of hope with cold suspicion. I had no trust in
the future--my ghastly mischances had filled me with disgust and terror.
My knowledge haunted me; I could not have learned it from the experience
of another, though my instructor had come to me from the dead. I was
here, then, under no constraint, not the slightest. It was of my own
free choice that I came, and remained here. Sir Harry Rokestone would
have taken me anywhere I pleased.
Other people spoke of him differently; I can speak only of my own
experience. Nothing could be more considerate and less selfish than his
treatment of me, nothing more tender and parental. Kind as he was,
however, I always felt a sort of awe in his presence. It was not,
indeed, quite the awe that is founded on respect--he was old--in most
relations stern--and his uneducated moral nature, impetuous and fierce,
seemed capable of tragic things. It was not a playful nature, with which
the sympathies and spirits of a young person could at all coalesce.
Thormen Fell, at the north of the lake, that out-topped the rest, and
shielded us from the wintry wind, rearing its solemn head in solitude,
snowy, rocky, high in air, the first of the fells visible, the first to
greet me, far off in the sunshine, with its dim welcome as I returned to
Golden Friars. It was friendly, it was kindly, but stood aloof and high,
and was always associated in my mind with danger, isolation, and
mystery. And I think my liking for Sir Harry Rokestone partook of my
affection for Thormen Fell.
So, as you have no doubt surmised, I was harboured in the old baronet's
feudal castle of Dorracleugh. A stern, wild, melancholy residence, but
one that suited wonderfully my present mood.
He was at home; another old gentleman, whose odd society I liked very
well, was also at that time an inmate of the house. I will tell you more
about him in my next chapter.