THE VESPER HYMN.
He was not dead. He was not even insensible. While they carried him
carefully through the chill, black night, and when they carried him into
the nearest house, and laid him tenderly on a bed, the large, dark eyes
were wide open and fixed, but neither in death nor unconsciousness. It
was a hotel they had carried him to; and one of the pretty chambermaids,
who owned a sentimentally-tender heart, and read a great many novels,
cried as she looked at him.
"Poor fellow!" she said, to another pretty chambermaid; "it's such a
pity, ain't it--and he so handsome?"
"Who is he, I wonder?" the other chambermaid wanted to know; but no one
could tell her.
"He looks like an officer," some one remarked; "I think I've seen him in
the town before, and I'm pretty sure he's one of the officers."
"The doctor will know, maybe," suggested the land-lord. "Poor fellow!
I'm afraid it's all up with him. I don't think he can speak."
He had never spoken but that once, when the soul of the infidel, in that
supreme moment of mortal agony, in spite of the infidel creed of his
life, had uttered that awful invocation--"O my God!" But the power of
speech was not gone, nor of hearing; he retained all his senses, and,
strangely enough, did not seem to suffer much. He lay quiescent, his
dark eyes wide open, and staring vacantly straight ahead, his dark hair,
dabbled with blood, falling loose on the pillow and around his bloodless
face. They had drawn a white spread over him; and he had a strangely
corpse-like look, with his white set face, and marble-like rigidity. But
life burned yet in the strained, wide-open eyes.
The doctor came--it was Dr. Leach; and he knew him immediately, and told
the gaping and curious bystanders who he was. He was very much shocked,
and more shocked still when the white spread was drawn away, and the
terrible truth revealed. The eyes of the wounded man followed him as he
made his examination, but with no eagerness or hopefulness--only with a
dull and awful sort of apathy.
"Do you know me, Captain Cavendish?" Dr. Leach asked, tenderly touching
the heavy, dark hair falling over his face.
"Yes. How long----?"
He did not finish the sentence, not because he was unable to do it, but
that he evidently thought he had finished it, and his eyes never once
left the physician's face.
Dr. Leach looked very sadly down in the dark, inquiring eyes.
"My poor fellow!" he said, "it is hard, I know, and for one so young and
so far from all your friends. It is hard to die like this; but it is
Heaven's will, and we must submit."
"How long?" repeated the sufferer, as if he had not heard him, and with
that steady, inquiring gaze.
"You mean, how long can you last? I am afraid--I am afraid, my poor boy,
but a short time; not over three hours at the most."
The dark, searching eyes turned slowly away from his face, and fixed
themselves on vacancy as before; but he showed no signs of any emotion
whatever. Physical and mental sense of suffering and fearing seemed
alike to have forsaken him in this last dreadful hour. He had been a
bad man; the life that lay behind him was a shameful record. He had been
a gamester, a swindler, a libertine, a robber, and a murderer; and now
he was dying in his sins, in a dull stupor, without remorse for the past
or fear of the awful future. Dr. Leach stooped over him again, wondering
at his unnatural apathy.
"Would you like a clergyman, my poor boy?" he said.
"No!"
"Is there any one you would like to see? Your time is very short,
remember."
Captain Cavendish turned to him with something like human interest in
his glance, for the first time.
"I should like to see Val Blake," he said, "and Mr. Darcy."
"I'll send for them," said the doctor, going out, and dispatching a
couple of messengers in hot haste. "He wants to make his will, I
suppose," Dr. Leach thought, as he returned to the bedroom. "Poor
fellow; and Val Blake was his friend!"
Dr. Leach had requested one of the messengers to go for the army-surgeon
before he came back. He knew the case was utterly hopeless, but still it
was better to have the surgeon there. He found his patient lying as he
had left him, staring blankly at a lamp flaring on a table under the
window, while the slow minutes trailed away, and his short span of life
wore away. His last night on earth! Did he think of it as he lay there,
never taking his eyes from the lamp-flame, even when the doctor came to
his bedside again and held something to his lips.
"My dear," Dr. Leach said, feeling as though he were speaking to a
woman, and again stroking back his hair with a tender touch; "hadn't you
better see a clergyman? You are dying, you know."
"Did you send for them?" said Captain Cavendish, looking at him.
"For Blake and Darcy? Yes. But will I not send for a clergyman too?"
"No."
"Would you like me to read to you, then? There is a Bible on the table?"
"No."
He sank back into his lethargic indifference once more and looked at the
lamp again. Dr. Leach sighed as he sat down beside him, to watch and
wait for the coming of the others.
They came at last--Val Blake and Mr. Darcy--knowing all beforehand.
Their presence seemed to rouse him. Dr. Leach would have left the room,
but the lawyer detained him.
"You may as well stay," he said, "it can make no difference to him now
if all the world hears him. It is not his will--it is a confession he
has to make."
Mr. Darcy was right. Strangely enough he wanted to do that one act of
justice before he went out of life, and he seemed to make an effort to
rally, and rouse himself to do it. The doctor gave him a stimulant, for
he was perceptibly sinking, and the lawyer sat down to write out the
broken sentences of that dying confession. It was not long; but it was
long enough to triumphantly vindicate Charley Marsh before any court in
the world, and just as it was completed the surgeon came. But a more
terrible visitor was there too, before whom they held their breath in
mute awe. Death stood terrible and invisible in their midst, and no word
was spoken. They stood around the bed, pale and silent, and watched him
go out of life with solemn awe at their hearts. There was no frightful
death struggles--he died peacefully as a little child, but it was a
fearful deathbed for all that. The soul of the unbeliever had gone to be
judged. "God be merciful to him!" Dr. Leach had said, and they had all
answered, "Amen." They drew the counterpane over the marble face,
beautiful in death, and left the room together. All were pale, but the
face of Val Blake was ghastly. He leaned against an open window, with a
feeling of deadly sickness at his heart. It was all so awful, so
suddenly awful; they, poor erring mortals, had judged and condemned him,
and now he had gone before the Great Judge of all mankind--and the dark
story had ended in the solemn wonder of the winding-sheet.
"Speak nothing but good of the dead," a pitiful old proverb says. "We
were friends once," Val Blake thought. "I never want to speak of him
again."
The body of the dead man was to be taken to his hotel. The surgeon and
Mr. Darcy volunteered to arrange it, and Dr. Leach and Val left. The
doctor had his patients to attend to, and Val was going to tell Cherrie.
She was his wife and ought to know, and Val remembered how she had loved
the dead man once. But that love had died out long ago, under his cruel
neglect; and though she cried when she heard the tragic end of the man
to whom she had been bound by the mysterious tie of marriage, they were
no very passionate tears. And before the Nettleby family had quite
learned to comprehend she was a wife they found that Mrs. Cherrie
Cavendish was a widow!
Of all the shocks which Speckport had received within the last twenty
years, there was none to equal this. Charley Marsh innocent, Captain
Cavendish guilty! Cherrie Nettleby come back, his wife, his widow! And
still it spread, and "still the wonder grew;" and it was like a play or
a sensation novel, and the strange old proverb, "Truth is stranger than
fiction," was on the tongues of all the wiseacres in the town.
And while the good people talked and exclaimed and wondered, and told
the story over and over and over again to one another, and found it ever
new, the dead man lay in his own elegant room in the hotel, and Cherrie,
his widow, sat at his bedhead, feeling she had become all at once a
heroine, and making the most of it.
Among the visitors to that darkened room were Mr. and Mrs. Wyndham, Miss
Blair, and Mr. Blake. Olive Wyndham, stately and beautiful, as ever, but
paler and thinner, and less defiantly bright than of old, stood beside
the bed of death, and looked down on the white, beautiful face of the
dead man, with a strange, remorseful pang at her heart. How her soul
bowed down before the disembodied spirit, and how touching was the
marble beauty of that rigid face! If he had been old and ugly, perhaps
people would not have felt so sadly pitiful about his dreadful fate; but
he was so young and so handsome, that tears came into their eyes, and
they forgot he had been a villain in life, and went away shaking their
heads and saying, "Poor fellow! Poor fellow! It's such a pity!"
Laura Blair--but Laura was always tender-hearted--cried as she looked at
him, and thought how much she had liked him, and what pleasant hours
they had spent together. He was very bad, of course, but still----Laura
never could get any further, for the tears came so fast they choked her
words.
She actually kissed Cherrie, who cried from sympathy, and Val Blake
looked at her with a more tender glance than any one had ever seen in
Val's unsentimental eyes before.
The pony-phaeton from Redmon was in waiting at the hotel door. Mr.
Wyndham assisted the ladies in, and touched his hat as if in
leave-taking.
"Are you not going back?" his wife asked, with strange timidity. She was
in the habit now of speaking to him, and always in that
strangely-hurried tone so foreign to her character.
"No," Mr. Wyndham said, "not just now. I shall return before dinner."
The carriage drove off. Mr. Wyndham took Val's arm, lit a cigar, and
strolled with him down Queen Street.
"It's a very sad business!" he said, thoughtfully. "I am sorry for him,
poor fellow!--one can't help it; but, after all, I don't know that it is
not a merciful deliverance. The public disgrace, the imprisonment, the
trial, the sentence, would have been to him far more terrible. There are
worse things than death!"
He said the last words with a sudden bitterness that made Val look at
him. "It's his mother he is thinking of," said Mr. Blake to himself.
"Poor woman, she's mad!"
"And it is really true that he confessed all before he died?" Mr.
Wyndham asked; "and exculpated, beyond all doubt, Charley Marsh?"
"Yes," said Val; "Charley Marsh is free to return to Speckport whenever
he pleases now. I always knew he was innocent. I had a letter from him
last night, too, inclosing one to his mother."
"Indeed!" Mr. Wyndham said, with a look of interest. "Is he well? Is he
still in the army?"
"Yes; but his time is nearly up, it appears. I shall write to him
to-day, and tell him to come back to us. I have a note--she called it a
note, though it's four sheets of paper closely written, and she sat up
until three this morning to finish it--from Laura Blair, to inclose to
him. If he is proof against four sheets of entreaty from a lady, all I
can say to him will not avail much."
"Laura is a good little girl," said Mr. Wyndham, "and very much in
earnest about all her friends. You ought to marry her, Blake."
"Eh!" said Mr. Blake, aghast.
"You ought to marry her," repeated Mr. Wyndham, as composedly as though
he were saying, "You ought to smoke another cigar." "I am sure you will
never come across one more suited to the purpose, if you live to be as
old as Methuselah's cat!"
"My dear Wyndham," expostulated Mr. Blake, rather shocked than
otherwise, "what are you talking about? I give you my word I never
thought of such a thing in my life."
"I don't doubt it, in the least; but you know the proverb, 'Better late
than never.'"
"Nonsense! What do I want with a wife?"
"A good deal, I should think; if only to save the trouble of boarding
out, and securing some one to darn your stockings and button your
shirt-collar. Have you never indulged in any vision, O most prosaic of
men! of a quiet domestic fireside, garnished on one side by yourself,
with your feet in slippers, and on the other by a docile cat and a Mrs.
Blake?"
"Never!" responded Mr. Blake, emphatically.
"Then it's time you did! Your hair's turning gray, man, and your sister
has left you! Come, rouse up, old fellow, and secure that little prize,
Laura Blair, before some more ardent wooer bears her off, and leaves you
in the lurch."
Mr. Blair stared at him.
"I say, Wyndham, what crotchet have you got in your head to-day? Marry
Laura Blair! What should I marry her for, more than any one else?"
"Well, for pure artlessness, Mr. Blake," he said, "I'll back you against
the world! Why should you marry Laura Blair, indeed! Why you overgrown
infant, because you are in love with her! That's why!"
"Am I?" responded Mr. Blake, helplessly. "I didn't know it. Is she in
love with me, too?"
"Ask her," said Mr. Wyndham, still laughing. "Here we are at the office.
Good-morning to you."
"Won't you come in?"
"Not this morning; I am going to Rosebush Cottage."
"Oh," said Val, hesitatingly, for it was an understood thing the subject
was very painful, "how is your mother?"
"She is no better," said Mr. Wyndham, briefly. "Good-morning!"
Mr. Blake went into his sanctum, and the first thing he did was to write
to Charley and tell him all.
"Come back to Speckport, dear old boy," wrote Val, "everybody is in a
state of remorse, you know, and dying to see you. Come back for your
mother's sake, and we will give you such a reception as no man has had
since the Prince of Wales, long life to him! visited our town. Come
back, Charley, and cheer us again with the sight of your honest sonsie
face."
It took some time for Speckport to recover thoroughly from the severe
shock its nervous system had received in the death of Captain Cavendish,
and the various wonderful facts that death brought to light. It was
fully a month before the wonder quite subsided, and people could talk of
other things over the tea-table.
Cherrie, the bereaved, was safely back again in the parental nest.
Creditors had flocked in with the dead man's long bills; and when all
was settled, nothing was left for the widow. But some good men among
them made up two hundred pounds, and Mrs. Wyndham added another hundred,
and the three were presented to Mrs. Cavendish, with the sympathy of the
donors. It was a little fortune for Cherrie, though a pitiful ending of
the brilliant match she had made; and she took it, crying very much, and
was humbly thankful. Once more she tripped the streets of her native
town, and her crape, and bombazine, and widow's cap, were charmingly
becoming; and when the roses began to return to her cheeks, she was
prettier than ever.
The town was quiet, and October was wearing away. The last week of that
month brought a letter from Charley Marsh--a letter that was not like
Charley, but was very grave, almost sad.
"Under God, my dear Val," he wrote, "I owe the restoration of my good
name to you. I know all you have done for me and mine--my poor mother
has told me; but I cannot thank you. I am sure you do not want me to
thank you; but it is all written deep in my heart, and will be buried
with me. I am coming back to Speckport--ah! dear old Speckport! I never
thought it could be so dear! I shall be with you in November, and
perhaps I may say to you then what I cannot write now. I am coming back
a man, Val; I went away a hot-headed, passionate, unreasoning boy. I
have learned to be wise, I hope, and if the school has been a hard one,
I shall only remember its lessons the longer. I am coming back rich;
blessings as well as misfortunes do not come alone. I have been left a
fortune--you will see an account of it in the paper I send you. Our
colonel, a gallant fellow, and a rich Georgian planter, has remembered
me in his will. I saved his life shortly after I came here, almost at
the risk of my own, I believe. They promoted me for it at the time, and
I thought I had got my reward; but I was mistaken. He died last week of
a bayonet-thrust, and when his will was read, I found I was left thirty
thousand dollars. He was a childless widower, with no near relatives; so
no one is wronged. You see I shall not have to fall back upon Dr.
Leach's hand on my return, and my mother need depend no more on Mrs.
Wyndham's generosity. I am very grateful to that lady all the same."
"I believe I'll show this letter to Father Lennard," said Val to
himself; "he asked me on Sunday if I had heard from Charley lately, and
told me to let him know when I did. Charley was always a favorite of
his, since the day when he was a little shaver and an acolyte on the
altar."
Mr. Blake was not the man to let grass grow under his feet when he took
a notion in his head; so he started off at once, at a swinging pace, for
the cathedral. The October twilight was cold and gray. A dreary evening,
in which men went by with pinched noses and were buttoned up in
greatcoats, and women had vails over their faces, and shivered in the
street--a melancholy evening, speaking of desolation, and decay, and
death, and the end of all things earthly.
Mr. Blake, to whom it was only a rawish evening, strode along, and
reached the cathedral in the bleak dusk. The principal entrances were
all closed, but he went in through a side door, and looked into the side
chapel for the priest. Not finding him, he entered the cathedral through
one of the transepts, but neither was Father Lennard there. The gray
twilight shone but dimly through the painted windows, and the long and
lofty aisles were very dim and shadowy. There was but one light in the
great church--a tiny lamp burning on the grand altar--a lamp that never
went out by night or day. Two or three shadowy female figures knelt
around the altar-rails in silent prayer, and Val thought one of them
looked like Miss Rose. He knew she was in the habit of coming in the
twilight here; but something else had caught his attention, and he
turned away and went on tiptoe down the echoing nave, staring up at the
choir. Some one was singing softly there--singing so softly that it
seemed but the sighing of the autumn-wind, and seemed to belong to it.
But Val had a quick ear, and the low melancholy cadences struck him with
a nameless thrill. What was there that sounded so strangely familiar in
that voice? It was a woman's voice--a sweet, full soprano, that could
rise to power at its owner's will. But what did it remind him of? A
thought flashed through him--a sudden and startling thought--that
brought the blood in a red gush to his face, and then left him cold and
white. He softly ascended the stairs, the low, mournful voice breaking
into a sweetly-plaintive vesper hymn as he went.
Val Blake trembled from head to foot, and a cold sweat broke out on his
face. He paused a moment before he entered into the choir, his heart
beating faster than it ever had beat before. A woman sat before the
organ, not playing, but with her fingers wandering noiselessly over the
keys, her face upraised in the ghostly light. She looked like the
picture of St. Cecilia, with a cloud of tressed hazy golden hair falling
about that pale, earnest, upraised face. Her mantle had fallen back--a
white cashmere mantle, edged with ermine and lined with blue satin--and
she sung, unconscious, as it seemed, of all the world. Val Blake stood
like a man paralyzed--struck dumb and motionless--and the sweet voice
sang on:
"Ave Maria! Oh, hear when we call,
Mother of Heaven, who is Saviour of all;
Feeble and fearing, we trust in thy might;
In doubting and darkness thy love be our light.
Let us sleep on thy breast while the night-taper burns.
And wake in thine arms when the morning returns!
Ave Maria! Ave Maria! Ave Maria! audi nos!"
The singing ceased, the fingers were motionless, and the pale face
drooped and sunk down on the pale hands. And still Val Blake stood mute,
motionless, utterly confounded. For there before him, with only the
moonlight shadow of her former loveliness left, sat and sang, not the
dead, but the living, Nathalie Marsh!