THE DAY OF DESOLATION.
Yes; the terrible day had come. Mary Marchmont roamed hither and
thither in the big gaunt rooms, up and down the long dreary corridors,
white and ghostlike in her mute anguish, while the undertaker's men
were busy in her father's chamber, and while John's widow sat in the
study below, writing business letters, and making all necessary
arrangements for the funeral.
In those early days no one attempted to comfort the orphan. There was
something more terrible than the loudest grief in the awful quiet of
the girl's anguish. The wan eyes, looking wearily out of a white
haggard face, that seemed drawn and contracted as if by some hideous
physical torture, were tearless. Except the one long wail of despair
which had burst from her lips in the awful moment of her father's death
agony, no cry of sorrow, no utterance of pain, had given relief to Mary
Marchmont's suffering.
She suffered, and was still. She shrank away from all human
companionship; she seemed specially to avoid the society of her
stepmother. She locked the door of her room upon all who would have
intruded on her, and flung herself upon the bed, to lie there in a dull
stupor for hour after hour. But when the twilight was grey in the
desolate corridors, the wretched girl wandered out into the gallery on
which her father's room opened, and hovered near that solemn
death-chamber; fearful to go in, fearful to encounter the watchers of
the dead, lest they should torture her by their hackneyed expressions
of sympathy, lest they should agonise her by their commonplace talk of
the lost.
Once during that brief interval, while the coffin still held terrible
tenancy of the death-chamber, the girl wandered in the dead of the
night, when all but the hired watchers were asleep, to the broad
landing of the oaken staircase, and into a deep recess formed by an
embayed window that opened over the great stone porch which sheltered
the principal entrance to Marchmont Towers.
The window had been left open; for even in the bleak autumn weather the
atmosphere of the great house seemed hot and oppressive to its living
inmates, whose spirits were weighed down by a vague sense of the Awful
Presence in that Lincolnshire mansion. Mary had wandered to this open
window, scarcely knowing whither she went, after remaining for a long
time on her knees by the threshold of her father's room, with her head
resting against the oaken panel of the door,--not praying; why should
she pray now, unless her prayers could have restored the dead? She had
come out upon the wide staircase, and past the ghostly pictured faces,
that looked grimly down upon her from the oaken wainscot against which
they hung; she had wandered here in the dim grey light--there was light
somewhere in the sky, but only a shadowy and uncertain glimmer of
fading starlight or coming dawn--and she stood now with her head
resting against one of the angles of the massive stonework, looking out
of the open window.
The morning which was already glimmering dimly in the eastern sky
behind Marchmont Towers was to witness poor John's funeral. For nearly
six days Mary Marchmont had avoided all human companionship: for nearly
six days she had shunned all human sympathy and comfort. During all
that time she had never eaten, except when forced to do so by her
stepmother; who had visited her from time to time, and had insisted
upon sitting by her bedside while she took the food that had been
brought to her. Heaven knows how often the girl had slept during those
six dreary days; but her feverish slumbers had brought her very little
rest or refreshment. They had brought her nothing but cruel dreams, in
which her father was still alive; in which she felt his thin arms
clasped round her neck, his faint and fitful breath warm upon her
cheek.
A great clock in the stables struck five while Mary Marchmont stood
looking out of the Tudor window. The broad grey flat before the house
stretched far away, melting into the shadowy horizon. The pale stars
grew paler as Mary looked at them; the black-water pools began to
glimmer faintly under the widening patch of light in the eastern sky.
The girl's senses were bewildered by her suffering, and her head was
light and dizzy.
Her father's death had made so sudden and terrible a break in her
existence, that she could scarcely believe the world had not come to an
end, with all the joys and sorrows of its inhabitants. Would there be
anything more after to-morrow? she thought; would the blank days and
nights go monotonously on when the story that had given them a meaning
and a purpose had come to its dismal end? Surely not; surely, after
those gaunt iron gates, far away across the swampy waste that was
called a park, had closed upon her father's funeral train, the world
would come to an end, and there would be no more time or space. I think
she really believed this in the semi-delirium into which she had fallen
within the last hour. She believed that all would be over; and that she
and her despair would melt away into the emptiness that was to engulf
the universe after her father's funeral.
Then suddenly the full reality of her grief flashed upon her with
horrible force. She clasped her hands upon her forehead, and a low
faint cry broke from her white lips.
It was _not_ all over. Time and space would _not_ be annihilated. The
weary, monotonous, workaday world would still go on upon its course.
_Nothing_ would be changed. The great gaunt stone mansion would still
stand, and the dull machinery of its interior would still go on: the
same hours; the same customs; the same inflexible routine. John
Marchmont would be carried out of the house that had owned him master,
to lie in the dismal vault under Kemberling Church; and the world in
which he had made so little stir would go on without him. The
easy-chair in which he had been wont to sit would be wheeled away from
its corner by the fireplace in the western drawing-room. The papers in
his study would be sorted and put away, or taken possession of by
strange hands. Cromwells and Napoleons die, and the earth reels for a
moment, only to be "alive and bold" again in the next instant, to the
astonishment of poets, and the calm satisfaction of philosophers; and
ordinary people eat their breakfasts while the telegram lies beside
them upon the table, and while the ink in which Mr. Reuter's message is
recorded is still wet from the machine in Printing-house Square.
Anguish and despair more terrible than any of the tortures she had felt
yet took possession of Mary Marchmont's breast. For the first time she
looked out at her own future. Until now she had thought only of her
father's death. She had despaired because he was gone; but she had
never contemplated the horror of her future life,--a life in which she
was to exist without him. A sudden agony, that was near akin to
madness, seized upon this girl, in whose sensitive nature affection had
always had a morbid intensity. She shuddered with a wild dread at the
prospect of that blank future; and as she looked out at the wide stone
steps below the window from which she was leaning, for the first time
in her young life the idea of self-destruction flashed across her mind.
She uttered a cry, a shrill, almost unearthly cry, that was
notwithstanding low and feeble, and clambered suddenly upon the broad
stone sill of the Tudor casement. She wanted to fling herself down and
dash her brains out upon the stone steps below; but in the utter
prostration of her state she was too feeble to do this, and she fell
backwards and dropped in a heap upon the polished oaken flooring of the
recess, striking her forehead as she fell. She lay there unconscious
until nearly seven o'clock, when one of the women-servants found her,
and carried her off to her own room, where she suffered herself to be
undressed and put to bed.
Mary Marchmont did not speak until the good-hearted Lincolnshire
housemaid had laid her in her bed, and was going away to tell Olivia of
the state in which she had found the orphan girl.
"Don't tell my stepmother anything about me, Susan," she said; "I think
I was mad last night."
This speech frightened the housemaid, and she went straight to the
widow's room. Mrs. Marchmont, always an early riser, had been up and
dressed for some time, and went at once to look at her stepdaughter.
She found Mary very calm and reasonable. There was no trace of
bewilderment or delirium now in her manner; and when the principal
doctor of Swampington came a couple of hours afterwards to look at the
young heiress, he declared that there was no cause for any alarm. The
young lady was sensitive, morbidly sensitive, he said, and must be kept
very quiet for a few days, and watched by some one whose presence would
not annoy her. If there was any girl of her own age whom she had ever
shown a predilection for, that girl would be the fittest companion for
her just now. After a few days, it would be advisable that she should
have change of air and change of scene. She must not be allowed to
brood continuously on her father's death. The doctor repeated this last
injunction more than once. It was most important that she should not
give way too perpetually to her grief.
So Mary Marchmont lay in her darkened room while her father's funeral
train was moving slowly away from the western entrance. It happened
that the orphan girl's apartments looked out into the quadrangle; so
she heard none of the subdued sounds which attended the departure of
that solemn procession. In her weakness she had grown submissive to the
will of others. She thought this feebleness and exhaustion gave warning
of approaching death. Her prayers would be granted, after all. This
anguish and despair would be but of brief duration, and she would ere
long be carried to the vault under Kemberling Church, to lie beside her
father in the black stillness of that solemn place.
Mrs. Marchmont strictly obeyed the doctor's injunctions. A girl of
seventeen, the daughter of a small tenant farmer near the Towers, had
been a special favourite with Mary, who was not apt to make friends
amongst strangers. This girl, Hester Pollard, was sent for, and came
willingly and gladly to watch her young patroness. She brought her
needlework with her, and sat near the window busily employed, while
Mary lay shrouded by the curtains of the bed. All active services
necessary for the comfort of the invalid were performed by Olivia or
her own special attendant--an old servant who had lived with the Rector
ever since his daughter's birth, and had only left him to follow that
daughter to Marchmont Towers after her marriage. So Hester Pollard had
nothing to do but to keep very quiet, and patiently await the time when
Mary might be disposed to talk to her. The farmer's daughter was a
gentle, unobtrusive creature, very well fitted for the duty imposed
upon her.