THE DARKENING SKY.
The day after the inquest, the funeral took place. As the clock of
Speckport cathedral chimed in sonorous sweetness the hour of ten, all
that was earthly of Mrs. Leroy was placed in the hearse, and the gloomy
cortege started. A great many carriages followed the mistress of Redmon
to her last long home; and, in the foremost, two ladies, robed in sable,
and vailed in crape, rode. The outward mourning was for the dead, the
deeper _deuil_ of the heart for the living--for him who, on this
wretched August day, was a prisoner in Speckport jail, awaiting his
trial for the greatest crime man can commit, doomed to suffer, perhaps,
the greatest penalty man can inflict.
Nobody in all the long line of carriages talked; they crouched into
corners, and shivered, and were silent, and sulky, and cross, and
uncomfortable, and gaped, and wished the thing was well over, or that
they had never come.
They got their wish after a while. The last sod was beaten down, and the
carriages rattled back into the foggy town--all but three or four; and
they drove back to the eerie old house, never so lonely and desolate as
now. One ceremony was yet to be gone through--that ceremony the reading
of the last will and testament of Mrs. Leroy. Here, where it had been
written, in the ghostly reception-room, where the inquest had taken
place, and where the rats and black beetles had it all their own way, it
was to be read. It was this that brought Mrs. Marsh, who had been ill
and hysterical ever since she had heard the result of the inquest, to
the funeral at all. To her it was a great and joyful thing this wealth
that after to-day was to be theirs, and not even in her grief could she
forego the pleasure of being present. Heaven knows, it was nothing of
the sort brought her daughter--the silent agony she had endured since
yesterday can never be told; but she had hope yet. She had hope in this
very wealth that was to be hers to help him. Young as she was, she knew
enough of the power of money to be aware it can do almost anything in
this world, and smooth the road to the next; and she trusted in its
magic power to free her imprisoned brother. They all went into the
silent and forlorn house together; Mr. Darcy, who was to read the will,
and whose face was distressed and troubled to the last degree; Mr.
Blair, as an intimate friend of the family; Mr. McGregor, Senior, and
Dr. Leach; Mrs. McGregor and Mrs. Blair were with Mrs. Marsh, and Miss
McGregor and Miss Blair were deeply sympathetic with Miss Marsh--the
heiress!--and Mr. Val Blake, with his sister on his arm; and Midge, who
had been at the signing of the will, brought up the rear.
The shutters of the closed rooms had all been opened, and the casements
raised, for the first time in many a day, and the pale light of the
foggy morning poured in. Lawyer Darcy took his seat at a table, and laid
out on it a legal-looking document tied with red tape. The others seated
themselves around the apartment; and Nathalie Marsh, in her deep
mourning-robes, and her thick black crape vail down over her face, took
her seat beside one of the open windows, and leaned her forehead on her
hand, as if it ached.
Long afterward, when she was gone from them forever, they remembered
that drooping black figure and bowed young head, with one or two bright
curls, like lost sunbeams, shimmering out from under her crape bonnet.
Long afterward, they thought of how she had sat that dull and miserable
day, suffering as these patient womanly martyrs only suffer, and making
no sign.
Lawyer Darcy seemed strangely reluctant to commence his task. He
lingered and lingered, his face pale and agitated, his lips twitching
nervously, and the fingers that untied the document before him,
trembling. His voice, too, when he spoke, was not quite steady.
"I am afraid," said the lawyer, in that unsteady voice, "that the
reading of this will will be a shock--a disappointment! I know it must
astonish all, as it did me, and I should like to prepare you for it,
before it is read."
There was a surprised and alarmed murmur, but no one spoke.
"You are all aware," the lawyer went on, keeping his eyes resolutely
from that drooping figure at the window, "that when Mrs. Leroy made her
will after coming to Speckport she bequeathed all she possessed to her
ward, Miss Marsh. I drew up the will, and she made no secret of her
intentions."
There was another painful pause. Val Blake broke it.
"Of course," he said, impatiently, "we all know Mrs. Leroy left Miss
Marsh heiress of Redmon."
"But you do not know," said Mr. Darcy, "that a short time ago--in fact,
a few days before her tragical death, she revoked that first will and
made a new one."
"What?" the cry was from Val Blake, but no one heeded him; every eye was
strained upon the lawyer.
"Made a new one," the lawyer repeated, still averting his eyes from the
black form at the window; "a new one, entirely different; leaving, I am
sorry to say, Redmon away from Miss Marsh--in point of fact,
disinheriting her."
There were two little feminine shrieks from the Misses Blair and
McGregor, a hysterical cry from Mrs. Marsh, but the bowed figure at the
window never stirred. In the unnatural stillness of her attitude, her
face hidden behind her crape mask, there was something more fearful than
any outbursts of wild womanly distress.
"The new will was made, as I told you," continued Mr. Darcy, "but a few
days before her death; made whilst smarting under a sense of anger, and
what she called ingratitude. Miss Marsh had offended her, disobeyed her
in a matter on which she had set her heart, and for this she was going
to disinherit her. I expostulated, entreated, did all I could, but in
vain. She was obstinate, and this new will was made, which I now hold in
my hand."
Mrs. Marsh's face had turned as white as that of a dead woman, and great
beads of cold sweat stood on her forehead. But she sat rigidly still,
listening, and feeling as though she were in some dreadful dream.
"I drew up the will," pursued Mr. Darcy, "and Midge yonder and old
Nettleby signed it. I fancied when her first resentment cooled, she
would see the injustice of her act, and retract it. I was right; the day
preceding the night of her death, hearing she was ill, I called to see
her, and she told me to come the next morning, and a third will should
be made, leaving all to Nathalie as at first. Next morning she was
dead."
To the dark form, whose drooping face was pitifully hidden by the black
vail, did any memory come of the words spoken to her by the dead woman
that fatal night, and which had then been so mysterious:
"I'll make it all right, Natty! I'll make it all right!" Did she know
what was meant now?
"And do you mean to say, Mr. Darcy," Val Blake cried, astonished and
indignant, "that Nathalie Marsh is not the heiress of Redmon?"
"I do! this will disinherits her! It is a crying wrong, but no fault of
mine."
"And who, then, is the heir?" asked Mr. McGregor.
"She bequeaths all she possesses, unconditionally, to her brother,
Philip Henderson, or, in case of his death, to his children. I will read
the will."
Amid that profound and impressive stillness, the lawyer read the last
will and testament of Jane Leroy. It was concise enough, and left the
whole of her property, real and personal, without conditions, to her
brother, Philip Henderson, and his heirs, with the exception of five
pounds to Miss Nathalie Marsh, to buy a mourning-ring.
Mr. Darcy hesitated over this last cruel passage, and felt inclined to
leave it out; but he did not, and there was a suppressed murmur of
indignation from every lip on hearing it.
Poor Mrs. Marsh was catching her breath in hysterical gasps, and being
fanned and sprinkled with cold water, and the palms of her hands slapped
by Miss Jo and the two married ladies. And still the vailed figure at
the window sat rigidly there, uttering no cry, shedding no tears.
There are griefs too deep for words, too intense for tears, when we can
only sit in mute and stony despair, while the world reels under our
feet, and the light of the sun is blackness. To Nathalie Marsh, the loss
of fortune was the loss of everything--brother, lover, home,
happiness--the loss of all to which she had looked forward so long, for
which she had endured so much. And now, she sat there, like a figure
carved in ebony; and only for the ghastly pallor of her face in the
indistinct glimpses of it they could catch through the vail, could they
tell that she even heard.
It was Val Blake who again broke the silence that followed the reading
of the will.
"I protest against this will!" he indignantly cried. "It is unjust and
ungrateful! You should never have produced it, Mr. Darcy. You should
have read the former will."
"You are jesting, Mr. Blake! While regretting as much as you can
possibly do this unfortunate change, my duty is sacred, and by this will
we must abide. Mrs. Marsh seems very ill; I think she had better be
conveyed home."
No one ventured to speak to Nathalie, her unnatural manner awed them;
but when her mother was supported from the room, and she arose to
follow, good natured Miss Jo was beginning a homily on resignation, and
on its being all for the best, perhaps, in the end. Her brother,
however, cut her short with very little ceremony, and handed Miss Marsh
in after her mother, and seating himself by the coachman, they started
off rapidly. He might have spared himself the trouble; good Miss Jo
might have preached for an hour, and Nathalie would not have heard one
word of it. She sat looking straight before her, seeing nothing, hearing
nothing, conscious of nothing, save only that dull and dark despair at
her heart. Midge, who had come with them in the carriage, waited on Mrs.
Marsh, and cried quietly all the way, bestowing anything but blessings
on the memory of her late mistress.
Mr. Blake assisted both ladies into the house when they reached Cottage
Street. Mrs. Marsh, who was very ill and in a state of hysterics, he
carried in his arms and laid on the sofa. Nathalie entered the parlor,
closed the door, and, still wearing her bonnet and mantle, sat down by
the window that looked out on the blurred and misty street. She had
flung back her vail, and in her white and ghastly face and dilated
violet eyes you could read a waiting look. Nathalie was waiting for one,
who, by some secret prescience, she knew would soon come.
Doctor Leach entered the cottage soon after their return, prescribed for
Mrs. Marsh, and departed again. Had he been able to minister to a mind
diseased, he might have prescribed for Nathalie, too; but that not
coming within his pharmacopoeia, he left without seeing her.
It was dusk when he for whom she waited came. The dull wet day was
ending in a duller and wetter evening, and the tramp, tramp of the
long-roaring waves on the shore made a dull bass for the high, shrill
soprano shrieks of the wind. The lamps were flaring through the foggy
twilight in the bleak streets, when Captain Cavendish, in a loose
overcoat, and bearing an umbrella, wended his way to that house of
mourning. He had not been two hours in Speckport, but he had heard all
that had transpired. Was there one in the town, from the aristocratic
denizens of Golden Row and Park Lane to the miserable dwellers in filthy
back-alleys and noisome water-side streets, that did not know, and were
not discussing these unhappy events with equal gusto? The robbery and
murder of Mrs. Leroy, the inquest, the sentence and imprisonment of
Charley Marsh, the will, and the disinheriting of Nathalie, all were as
well known in the obscurest corner of Speckport as in that unhappy home
to which he was going.
In the course of that long afternoon Midge had only once ventured into
the parlor, and that was in fear and trembling, to ask her young
mistress to take a cup of tea and some toast which she brought.
Nathalie had tasted nothing since the day before; and poor Midge, with
tears in her fretful eyes, urged it upon her now. The girl looked at her
out of a pair of hollow eyes, unnaturally large and bright, in a vague
way, as if trying to comprehend what she said; and when she did
comprehend, refusing. Midge ventured to urge; and then Nathalie broke
out of her rigid, despairing stillness, into passionate impatience.
"Take it away!" she cried, "and leave me alone! Leave me alone, I tell
you!"
Midge could do nothing but obey. As she quitted the room with the tray,
there came a knock at the front door. She set down the tray and opened
it, and the tall form of the young English officer confronted her. Midge
had no especial love for Captain Cavendish, as we know; but she was
aware her young lady had, and was, for the first time in her life, glad
to see him. It was good of him to come, she thought, knowing what had
happened; and perhaps his presence might comfort her poor Miss Natty,
and restore her to herself.
"Yes," Midge said, in answer to his inquiry; "Miss Marsh was at home,
and would see him, she thought. If he would wait one minute she would
ascertain."
She returned to the parlor to ask. But Nathalie had already heard his
voice, and was sitting up, with a strained white face, and her poor
wasted hands pressed hard over her heart. She only made an assenting
motion to Midge's question, should she show him in, and a negative one
when she spoke of bringing a lamp. Through all her torpor of utter
misery, she was dimly conscious of a change in herself; that she was
haggard and ghastly, and the beauty which had won him first to her side,
utterly gone. That gloomy twilight hour was best befitting the scene so
soon to take place; for her prophetic heart told her, as surely as if
she had read it in the Book of Fate, that this meeting was to be their
last.
Midge admitted him, and closing the door behind him, retired into a
distant corner of the hall, and throwing her apron over her head, cried
quietly, as she had done all day. She would have given a good deal if
the white painted panels of the parlor door had been clear glass, and
that she could have seen this man comforting her beloved young lady.
Much as she had disliked him, she could have knelt down in her
gratitude, and kissed the dust off his feet.
Even in the pale, sickly half-twilight of the dark evening, Captain
Cavendish could see the haggard cheeks, the sunken eyes, and the
death-like livid pallor of the girl's face, and was shocked to see it.
He had expected to find her changed, but not like this; and there was
real pity for the moment in his eyes as he bent over her and took her
hand. He started to find it cold as ice, and it lay in his passive, and
like a bit of marble.
"Nathalie," he said, "my darling! I am sorry; I cannot tell you how
sorry I am for you. You have suffered indeed since I saw you last."
She did not speak. She had not looked at him once. Her dilated eyes were
fixed on the blackening night-sky.
"I only reached Speckport an hour ago," he went on, "and I can never
tell you how deeply shocked I was to hear of the dreadful events that
have taken place since my departure. Is it all true?"
"Yes--all!" she said. Her voice sounded strange and far-off, even to
herself, and she was aware it must sound hollow and unnatural to him.
"All is true! My brother is in prison, accused of murder, and I am a
beggar!"
Her hand felt so icily deathlike in his, that he dropped it with a
shiver. She still sat looking out into the deepening gloom, her white,
set face gleaming marble-white against her black dress and the darkening
room.
Captain Cavendish rose up from the seat he had taken, and began pacing
rapidly up and down, heartily wishing the scene was over.
"I know," said the hollow voice, so unlike--so unlike the melodious
voice of Nathalie, "that all between us must end now. Disgrace and
poverty must be my portion from henceforth, and you will hardly care to
marry so fallen and degraded a creature as I am. From all that binds you
to me, Captain Cavendish, I free you now!"
In the depths of her heart, unseen in the darkness of despair even by
herself, did any feeble ray of hope--that great gift of a merciful
God--still linger? If so, the deep and prolonged silence that followed
her words must have extinguished the feeble glimmer forever. When
Captain Cavendish spoke, and it was some time before he did so, there
was a quiver of shame in his tones, all unusual there. Very few ever had
a better opinion of their own merits, or were less inclined to judge
hardly of themselves, than George Percy Cavendish, but she made him
despise himself now, and he almost hated her for it.
"You are generous, Miss Marsh," he said--cold and cruel words, and even
he felt them so to be, "and I thank you for that generosity. Loss of
fortune would be nothing to me--that is to say, I could overlook
it--though I am not rich myself, but this other matter is different. As
you say, I could hardly marry into a family stained with--unjustly let
us hope--the brand of murder. I shall ever esteem and respect you, Miss
Marsh, as the best and bravest of women, and I trust that you will yet
make happy some one worthier of you than I am."
Is murder, the murder of the body, when a man plunges a knife into his
fellow-man's breast, and leaves him stark and dead, the greatest of all
earthly crimes? Earthly tribunals consider it so, and inflict death on
the perpetrator. But is there not another murder--a murder of the
heart--committed every day, of which we hear nothing, and which man has
never made a law to punish. There are wounds which leave little outward
trace; but the patient bleeds inwardly, yet bleeds to death for all
that, and it is the same ultimatum, death, by a different means. But
there is a higher tribunal; and perhaps before that, the sins
over-looked by man shall be judged and condemned.
Captain Cavendish took his hat and turned to depart. He felt exceedingly
uncomfortable, to say the least of it. He wished that black figure
would not sit so petrified and stone-like, he wished that white face
gazing out into the night would look a little less like the face of a
corpse. He wished she would flame up in some wrathful outburst of
womanly fury and insulted pride, and order him to depart, and never show
her his false face again. He wished she would do anything but sit there,
in that frozen rigidity, as if slowly turning to stone.
"Nathalie!" he said, venturing to take her icy fingers again, "will you
not speak one word to me before I go?"
She withdrew her fingers, not hastily or in anger, but never looked at
him.
"I have nothing to say," her unnatural voice replied.
"Then good-bye, Nathalie!"
"Good-bye!"
He opened and closed the parlor door, opened and closed the front door,
and was gone. He looked at the window of that dark room as he strode by,
and fancied he saw the white face gleaming on him menacingly through the
gloom. The white face was there, but not menacing. Whatever she might
feel in the time to come, when the first terrible shock of all this was
over, she could feel nothing so petty as resentment now. Her anguish was
too supreme in this first dreadful hour. The world to her stood still,
and the blackness of desolation filled the earth. "All for love, and the
world well lost!" had been her motto. It was for his sake she had risked
everything, and verily, she had her reward!