THE LAST
In the still dark hour of that April morning, the Rev. Septimus Barmby
was roused by Mr. Peridon, with a scribbled message from Victor, which he
deciphered by candlelight held close to the sheet of paper, between short
inquiries and communications, losing more and more the sense of it as his
intelligence became aware of what dread blow had befallen the stricken
man. He was bidden come to fulfil his promise instantly. He remembered
the bearing of the promise. Mr. Peridon's hurried explanatory narrative
made the request terrific, out of tragically lamentable. A semblance of
obedience had to be put on, and the act of dressing aided it. Mr. Barmby
prayed at heart for guidance further.
The two gentlemen drove Westward, speaking little; they had the dry sob
in the throat.
'Miss Radnor?' Mr. Barmby asked.
'She is shattered; she holds up; she would not break down.'
'I can conceive her to possess high courage.'
'She has her friend Mademoiselle de Seilles.'
Mr. Barmby remained humbly silent. Affectionate deep regrets moved him
to say: 'A loss irreparable. We have but one voice of sorrow. And how
sudden! The dear lady had no suffering, I trust.'
'She fell into the arms of Mr. Durance. She died in his arms. She was
unconscious, he says. I left her straining for breath. She said
"Victor"; she tried to smile:--I understood I was not to alarm him.'
'And he too late!'
'He was too late, by some minutes.'
'At least I may comfort. Miss Radnor must be a blessing to him.'
'They cannot meet. Her presence excites him.'
That radiant home of all hospitality seemed opening on from darker
chambers to the deadly dark. The immorality in the moral situation could
not be forgotten by one who was professionally a moralist. But an
incorruptible beauty in the woman's character claimed to plead for her
memory. Even the rigorous in defence of righteous laws are softened by a
sinner's death to hear excuses, and may own a relationship, haply
perceive the faint nimbus of the saint. Death among us proves us to be
still not so far from the Nature saying at every avenue to the mind:
'Earth makes all sweet.'
Mr. Durance had prophesied a wailful end ever to the carol of Optimists!
Yet it is not the black view which is the right view. There is one
between: the path adopted by Septimus Barmby:--if he could but induce his
brethren to enter on it! The dreadful teaching of circumstances might
help to the persuading of a fair young woman, under his direction . . .
having her hand disengaged. Mr. Barmby started himself in the dream of
his uninterred passion for the maiden: he chased it, seized it, hurled it
hence, as a present sacrilege:--constantly, and at the pitch of our
highest devotion to serve, are we assailed by the tempter! Is it, that
the love of woman is our weakness? For if so, then would a celibate
clergy have grant of immunity. But, alas, it is not so with them! We
have to deplore the hearing of reports too credible. Again we are pushed
to contemplate woman as the mysterious obstruction to the perfect purity
of soul. Nor is there a refuge in asceticism. No more devilish
nourisher of pride do we find than in pain voluntarily embraced. And
strangely, at the time when our hearts are pledged to thoughts upon
others, they are led by woman to glance revolving upon ourself, our vile
self! Mr. Barmby clutched it by the neck.
Light now, as of a strong memory of day along the street, assisted him to
forget himself at the sight of the inanimate houses of this London, all
revealed in a quietness not less immobile than tombstones of an unending
cemetery, with its last ghost laid. Did men but know it!--The habitual
necessity to amass matter for the weekly sermon, set him noting his
meditative exclamations, the noble army of platitudes under haloes, of
good use to men: justifiably turned over in his mind for their good. He
had to think, that this act of the justifying of the act reproached him
with a lack of due emotion, in sympathy with agonized friends truly dear.
Drawing near the hospitable house, his official and a cordial emotion
united, as we see sorrowful crape-wreathed countenances. His heart
struck heavily when the house was visible.
Could it be the very house? The look of it belied the tale inside. But
that threw a ghostliness on the look.
Some one was pacing up and down. They greeted Dudley Sowerby. His
ability to speak was tasked. They gathered, that mademoiselle and 'a
Miss Pridden' were sitting with Nesta, and that their services in a
crisis had been precious. At such times, one of them reflected, woman
has indeed her place: when life's battle waxes red. Her soul must be
capable of mounting to the level of the man's, then? It is a lesson!
Dudley said he was waiting for Dr. Themison to come forth. He could not
tear himself from sight of the house.
The door opened to Dr. Themison departing, Colney Durance and Simeon
Fenellan bare-headed. Colney showed a face with stains of the lashing of
tears.
Dr. Themison gave his final counsels. 'Her father must not see her. For
him, it may have to be a specialist. We will hope the best. Mr. Dartrey
Fenellan stays beside him:--good. As to the ceremony he calls for, a
form of it might soothe:--any soothing possible! No music. I will
return in a few hours.'
He went on foot.
Mr. Barmby begged advice from Colney and Simeon concerning the message he
had received--the ceremony requiring his official presidency. Neither of
them replied. They breathed the morning air, they gave out long-drawn
sighs of relief, looking on the trees of the park.
A man came along the pavement, working slow legs hurriedly. Simeon ran
down to him.
'Humour, as much as you can,' Colney said to Mr. Barmby. 'Let him
imagine.'
'Miss Radnor?'
'Not to speak of her.'
'The daughter he so loves?'
Mr. Barmby's tender inquisitiveness was unanswered. Were they inducing
him to mollify a madman? But was it possible to associate the idea of
madness with Mr. Radnor?
Simeon ran back. 'Jarniman,' he remarked. 'It's over!'
'Now!' Colney's shoulders expressed the comment. 'Well, now, Mr. Barmby,
you can do the part desired. Come in. It's morning!' He stared at the
sky.
All except Dudley passed in.
Mr. Barmby wanted more advice, his dilemma being acute. It was
moderated, though not more than moderated, when he was informed of the
death of Mrs. Burman Radnor; an event that occurred, according to
Jarniman's report, forty-five minutes after Skepsey had a second time
called for information of it at the house in Regent's Park--five hours
and a half, as Colney made his calculation, after the death of Nataly.
He was urged by some spur of senseless irony to verify the calculation
and correct it in the minutes.
Dudley crossed the road. No sign of the awful interior was on any of the
windows of the house either to deepen awe or relieve. They were blank as
eyeballs of the mindless. He shivered. Death is our common cloak; but
Calamity individualizes, to set the unwounded speculating whether indeed
a stricken man, who has become the cause of woeful trouble, may not be
pointing a moral. Pacing on the Park side of the house, he saw Skepsey
drive up and leap out with a gentleman, Mr. Radnor's lawyer. Could it
be, that there was no Will written? Could a Will be executed now? The
moral was more forcibly suggested. Dudley beheld this Mr. Victor Radnor
successful up all the main steps, persuasive, popular, brightest of the
elect of Fortune, felled to the ground within an hour, he and all his
house! And if at once to pass beneath the ground, the blow would have
seemed merciful for him. Or if, instead of chattering a mixture of the
rational and the monstrous, he had been heard to rave like the utterly
distraught. Recollection of some of the things he shouted, was an
anguish: A notion came into the poor man, that he was the dead one of the
two, and he cried out: 'Cremation? No, Colney's right, it robs us of our
last laugh. I lie as I fall.' He 'had a confession for his Nataly, for
her only, for no one else.' He had 'an Idea.' His begging of Dudley to
listen without any punctilio (putting a vulgar oath before it), was the
sole piece of unreasonableness in the explanation of the idea: and that
was not much wilder than the stuff Dudley had read from reports of
Radical speeches. He told Dudley he thought him too young to be 'best
man to a widower about to be married,' and that Barmby was 'coming all
haste to do the business, because of no time to spare.'
Dudley knew but the half, and he did not envy Dartrey Fenellan his task
of watching over the wreck of a splendid intelligence, humouring and
restraining. According to the rumours, Mr. Radnor had not shown the
symptoms before the appearance of his daughter. For awhile he hung, and
then fell, like an icicle. Nesta came with a cry for her father. He
rose: Dartrey was by. Hugged fast in iron muscles, the unhappy creature
raved of his being a caged lion. These things Dudley had heard in the
house.
There are scenes of life proper to the grave-cloth.
Nataly's dead body was her advocate with her family, with friends, with
the world. Victor had more need of a covering shroud to keep calamity
respected. Earth makes all sweet: and we, when the privilege is granted
us, do well to treat the terribly stricken as if they had entered to the
bosom of earth.
That night's infinite sadness was concentrated upon Nesta. She had need
of her strength of mind and body.
The night went past as a year. The year followed it as a refreshing
night. Slowly lifting her from our abysses, it was a good angel to the
girl. Permission could not be given for her to see her father. She had
a home in the modest home of Louise de Seilles on the borders of
Dauphins; and with French hearts at their best in winningness around her,
she learned again, as an art, the natural act of breathing calmly; she
had by degrees a longing for the snow-heights. When her imagination
could perch on them with love and pride, she began to recover the throb
for a part in human action. It set her nature flowing to the mate she
had chosen, who was her counsellor, her supporter, and her sword. She
had awakened to new life, not to sink back upon a breast of love, though
thoughts of the lover were as blows upon strung musical chords of her
bosom. Her union with Dartrey was for the having an ally and the being
an ally, in resolute vision of strife ahead, through the veiled dreams
that bear the blush. This was behind a maidenly demureness. Are not
young women hypocrites? Who shall fathom their guile! A girl with a
pretty smile, a gentle manner, a liking for wild flowers up on the rocks;
and graceful with resemblances to the swelling proportions of garden-
fruits approved in young women by the connoisseur eye of man; distinctly
designed to embrace the state of marriage, that she might (a girl of
singularly lucid and receptive eyes) the better give battle to men
touching matters which they howl at an eccentric matron for naming.
So it was. And the yielding of her hand to Dartrey, would have appeared
at that period of her revival, as among the baser compliances of the
fleshly, if she had not seen in him, whom she owned for leader, her
fellow soldier, warrior friend, hero, of her own heart's mould, but a
greater.
She was on Como, at the villa of the Signora Giulia Sanfredini, when
Dudley's letter reached her, with the supplicating offer of the share of
his earldom. An English home meanwhile was proposed to her at the house
of his mother the Countess. He knew that he did not write to a brilliant
heiress. The generosity she had always felt that he possessed, he thus
proved in figures. They are convincing and not melting. But she was
moved to tears by his goodness in visiting her father, as well as by the
hopeful news he sent. He wrote delicately, withholding the title of her
father's place of abode. There were expectations of her father's perfect
recovery; the signs were auspicious; he appeared to be restored to the
'likeness to himself' in the instances Dudley furnished:--his appointment
with him for the flute-duet next day; and particularly his enthusiastic
satisfaction with the largeness and easy excellent service of the
residence 'in which he so happily found himself established.' He held it
to be, 'on the whole, superior to Lakelands.' The smile and the tear
rolled together in Nesta reading these words. And her father spoke
repeatedly of longing to embrace his Fredi, of the joy her last letter
had given him, of his intention to send an immediate answer: and he
showed Dudley a pile of manuscript ready for the post. He talked of
public affairs, was humorous over any extravagance or eccentricity in the
views he took; notably when he alluded to his envy of little Skepsey. He
said he really did envy; and his daughter believed it and saw fair
prospects in it.
Her grateful reply to the young earl conveyed all that was perforce
ungentle, in the signature of the name of Nesta Victoria Fenellan:--
a name he was to hear cited among the cushioned conservatives, and plead
for as he best could under a pressure of disapprobation, and compelled
esteem, and regrets.
The day following the report of her father's wish to see her, she and her
husband started for England. On that day, Victor breathed his last.
Dudley had seen the not hopeful but an ominous illumination of the
stricken man; for whom came the peace his Nataly had in earth. Often did
Nesta conjure up to vision the palpitating form of the beloved mother
with her hand at her mortal wound in secret through long years of the
wearing of the mask to keep her mate inspirited. Her gathered knowledge
of things and her ruthless penetrativeness made it sometimes hard for her
to be tolerant of a world, whose tolerance of the infinitely evil stamped
blotches on its face and shrieked in stains across the skin beneath its
gallant garb. That was only when she thought of it as the world
condemning her mother. She had a husband able and ready, in return for
corrections of his demon temper, to trim an ardent young woman's
fanatical overflow of the sisterly sentiments; scholarly friends, too,
for such restrainings from excess as the mind obtains in a lamp of
History exhibiting man's original sprouts to growth and fitful
continuation of them. Her first experience of the grief that is in
pleasure, for those who have passed a season, was when the old Concert-
set assembled round her. When she heard from the mouth of a living
woman, that she had saved her from going under the world's waggon-wheels,
and taught her to know what is actually meant by the good living of a
shapely life, Nesta had the taste of a harvest happiness richer than her
recollection of the bride's, though never was bride in fuller flower to
her lord than she who brought the dower of an equal valiancy to Dartrey
Fenellan. You are aware of the reasons, the many, why a courageous young
woman requires of high heaven, far more than the commendably timid, a
doughty husband. She had him; otherwise would that puzzled old world,
which beheld her step out of the ranks to challenge it, and could not
blast her personal reputation, have commissioned a paw to maul her
character, perhaps instructing the gossips to murmur of her parentage.
Nesta Victoria Fenellan had the husband who would have the world
respectful to any brave woman. This one was his wife.
Daniel Skepsey rejoices in service to his new master, owing to the
scientific opinion he can at any moment of the day apply for, as to the
military defences of the country; instead of our attempting to arrest the
enemy by vociferations of persistent prayer:--the sole point of
difference between him and his Matilda; and it might have been fatal but
that Nesta's intervention was persuasive. The two members of the Army
first in the field to enrol and give rank according to the merits of
either, to both sexes, were made one. Colney Durance (practically
cynical when not fancifully, men said) stood by Skepsey at the altar.
His published exercises in Satire produce a flush of the article in the
Reviews of his books. Meat and wine in turn fence the Hymen beckoning
Priscilla and Mr. Pempton. The forms of Religion more than the Channel's
division of races keep Louise de Seilles and Mr. Peridon asunder: and in
the uniting of them Colney is interested, because it would have so
pleased the woman of the loyal heart no longer beating. He let Victor's
end be his expiation and did not phrase blame of him. He considered the
shallowness of the abstract Optimist exposed enough in Victor's history.
He was reconciled to it when, looking on their child, he discerned, that
for a cancelling of the errors chargeable to them, the father and mother
had kept faith with Nature.
ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
An incomprehensible world indeed at the bottom and at the top
Arrest the enemy by vociferations of persistent prayer
Country prizing ornaments higher than qualities
Death is our common cloak; but Calamity individualizes
How little we mean to do harm when we do an injury
Nation's half made-up of the idle and the servants of the idle
No companionship save with the wound they nurse
Not always the right thing to do the right thing
The night went past as a year
Universal censor's angry spite
[The End]