A BEREAVED HUSBAND.
I will not attempt to describe the state of the house out of which
Innocent had fled--the dismal excitement of all the attendants, the
sudden turning of night into day, the whole household called up to help
where no help was possible, and the miserable haste with which the two
men, of whose lives Amanda was the centre and chief influence, came to
the room in which she lay beyond their reach. Batty, roused from his
sleep, stupid with the sudden summons and with the habitual brandy and
water which had preceded it, stumbled into the room, distraught but
incapable of understanding what had befallen him; while Frederick,
stunned by the sudden shock, came in from the room where he had been
dozing over a novel, and pretending to write letters, scarcely more
capable of realizing the event which had taken place in his life than
was his father-in-law. It was only when the doctor came, that any one of
the party actually believed in the death which had thus come like a
thief in the night. After he had made his dismal examination, he told
them that the sad event was what he had always expected and foretold. “I
have warned you again and again, Mr. Batty,” he said, “that in your
daughter’s state of health any sudden excitement might carry her off in
a moment.” There was nothing extraordinary in the circumstances, so far
as he knew, or any one. The often-repeated passion had recurred once too
often, and the long-foreseen end had come unawares, as everybody had
known it would come. That was all. There was no reason for doubt or
inquiry, much less suspicion. The glass which had fallen from the dead
hand had been taken away, the black stain on the coverlit concealed by a
shawl, which aunty in natural tidiness had thrown over it. Poor Batty,
hoarsely sobbing, calling upon his child, was led back to his room, and
with more brandy and water was made to go to bed, and soon slept
heavily, forgetting for an hour or two what had befallen him. With
Frederick the effect was different. He could not rest, nor seek to
forget in sleep the sudden change which had come upon his life. He went
out into the garden, in the broad, unchanged moonlight, out of sight of
all the dismal bustle, the arrangements of the death-chamber, the last
cares which poor aunty, weeping, was giving to the dead. The dead! Was
that his wife? Amanda! She whom he had wooed and worshipped; who had
given him rapture, misery, disgust, all mingled together; who had been
the one prize he had won in his life, and the one great blight which had
fallen upon that life? Was it she who was now called by that dismal
title? who lay there now, rigid and silent, taking no note of what was
done about her, finding no fault? Frederick stood in the moonlight, and
looked up at her window with a sense of unreality, impossibility, which
could not be put into words; but a few hours before he had been there,
with his little cousin, glad to escape from the surroundings he hated,
from Batty’s odious companionship, from Amanda’s termagant fits. He had
felt it a halcyon moment, a little gentle oasis which refreshed him in
the midst of the desert which by his own folly his life had become. And
now--good heavens! was it true?--in a moment this desert was past, the
consequences of his folly over, his life his own again to do something
better with it. The world and the garden, and the broad lines of the
moonlight, seemed to turn round with him as he stood and gazed at the
house and tried to understand what had come upon him.
It may be thought strange that this should have been the first sensation
which roused him out of the dull and stupefying pain of the shock he had
just received. Frederick was not a man of high mould to begin with, but
he was proud and sensitive to all that went against his self-love, his
sense of importance, his consciousness of personal and family
superiority--and he had the tastes of an educated man, and clung to the
graces and refinements of life, except at those moments which no one
knew of, when he preferred pleasure, so-called, to everything, moments
of indulgence which had nothing to do with his revealed and visible
existence. He had been wounded in the very points at which he was most
susceptible, by Amanda and her belongings. She, herself, had been an
offence to him even in the first moments of his passion, and, as his
passion waned and disappeared altogether, what had he not been compelled
to bear? He had brought it upon himself, he was aware, and he had
believed that he would have to bear it all his life, or most of his
life. And now, in a moment, he was free! But Frederick was not unnatural
in exultation over his deliverance. The shock of seeing her lying dead
upon that bed, the strange, pitiful, remorseful sense, which every
nature not wholly deadened feels at sight of that sudden blow which has
spared him and struck another--that sudden deprivation of the “sweet
light,” the air, the movement of existence which we still enjoy, but
which the other has lost--affected him with that subduing solemnity of
feeling which often does duty for grief. How could any imagination
follow Amanda into the realms of spiritual existence? Her life had been
all physical--of the flesh, not of the spirit; there had been nothing
about her which could lead even her lover, in the days when he was her
lover, to think of her otherwise than as a beautiful development of
physical life, a creature all made of lovely flesh and blood, with
fascinations which began and ended in satiny gloss and dazzling colour,
in roundness and brightness, and softness and warmth. What could he
think of her now? She had gone, and had left behind all the qualities by
which he knew her. Her voice was silent, that one gift she possessed by
which she could call forth any emotion that was not of the senses; with
it she could rouse a man to fierce rage, to wild impatience, to hatred
and murderous impulses; but that was silent, and her beauty was turned
into marble, a solemn thing that chilled and froze the beholder. What
else was there of her that her husband could think of, could follow with
his thoughts? Her soul--what was it? Frederick had never cared to know.
He had never perceived its presence in any secret moment. But he was not
impious, nor a speculatist of any kind; he indulged in no questions
which the most orthodox theologian could have thought dangerous. He
tried even to think piously of his Amanda as passed into another, he
hoped a better, world; but he stood bewildered and saddened on that
threshold, not knowing how to shape these thoughts, nor what to make of
the possibility of spiritual non-bodily existence for her. He could not
follow her in idea to any judgment, to any heaven. He stood dully sad
before the dim portals within which she had passed, with a heavy aching
in his heart, a blank and wondering sense of something broken off. He
was not without feeling; he could not have gone to bed and slept
stupefied as did the father, who had lost the only thing he loved. A
natural awe, a natural pang, were in Frederick’s mind; he felt the life
run so warm in his own veins, and she was dead and ended. Poor Amanda!
he was more sorry for her than he was for himself. The anguish of love
is more selfish; it is its own personal loss, the misery of the void in
which it has to live alone, which wrings its heart. But Frederick, for
once, felt little for himself. To himself the change was not
heart-breaking; he was free from much that had threatened to make his
life a failure; but for once his mind departed from selfish
considerations. He was sorry for her. Poor Amanda! who had lost all she
cared for, all she knew.
This is not a bitter kind of grief, but so far as it went it was a true
feeling. He had more sympathy with his wife in that moment than he had
had throughout all their life together. Poor Amanda! it might be that he
had gained, but she had lost. I need not say what a different, far
different, sentiment this was, from that which feels with an ineffable
elevation of anguish that she, who is gone, has gained everything, and
that it is the survivor whose loss is unspeakable, irremediable.
Frederick’s loss was not irremediable. But he was sorry, very sorry for
_her_; the tears came into his eyes as he thought of the grave, and the
silence, for Amanda. Poor Amanda! so fond of sound, and bustle, and
motion; so confident in her own beauty; so bent upon gratification--all
taken away from her at a stroke. He looked up at her window through his
tears; the flickering lights had been put out, the movement stilled; no
more shadows flitted across the white blinds; the windows were open, the
place was quiet, one small taper left burning--the room given over to
the silence of death. And all this in a few hours! It was then the
middle of the night, three or four o’clock; he had been wandering there
a long time, full of many thoughts. When he saw that all was still, he
went back softly to the house. He had nowhere to go to but the little
parlour in which he had been writing, where he threw himself on the sofa
to get a few hours’ rest; and then it suddenly occurred to him to think
of Innocent. Where was she? how had she disappeared out of that scene of
consternation and distress? Frederick was cold and weary; he had wrapped
a railway rug round him, and he could not now disturb himself and the
house to inquire after his cousin. She must have gone to bed before it
happened, he said to himself. He had not seen her, or heard her referred
to, and doubtless it had been thought unnecessary to call her when the
others were called. No doubt she was safe in bed, unconscious of all
that had happened, and he would see her next morning. Thus Frederick
assured himself ere he fell into a dreary comfortless doze on the sofa.
Nothing could have happened to Innocent; she was safe and asleep, no
doubt, poor child, slumbering unconsciously through all these sorrows.
It was not till late next morning that he found out how it really was.
Neither aunty nor any one else entertained the slightest suspicion that
Innocent had anything to do with Mrs. Frederick’s death. She had
disappeared, and no one thought of her in the excitement of the moment.
The very maid who had seen her leave the house had not identified the
figure which had appeared and disappeared so suddenly in the moonlight.
She thought first it was a ghost, and then that it was some one who had
been passing and had been tempted to look in at the open door. In the
spent excitement of the closed-up house next day--it was Sunday, most
terrible of all days in the house of death--when the household, shut up,
in the first darkness, had to realise the great change that had
happened, and the two men, who had been arbitrarily drawn together by
Amanda, were thrown upon each other for society in the darkened rooms,
at the melancholy meals, with now no bond whatever between
them--Frederick asked, with a kind of longing for his cousin. “Is Miss
Vane still in her room? Is she ill?” he asked of the maid who attended
at the luncheon which poor Batty swallowed by habit, moaning between
every mouthful.
“Miss Vane, sir? oh, the young lady. She went away last night,
when--when it happened,” answered the maid.
“Went away last night? Where has she gone?” cried Frederick, in dismay.
“That none on us knows. She went straight away out of the house, sir,
the next moment after--it happened,” said the maid.
“She was frightened, I suppose, poor young lady. She took the way to the
Minster, up the street. It was me that saw her. I didn’t say nothing
till this morning, for I thought it was a ghost.”
“A ghost! My poor Innocent!” said Frederick. “Did she say nothing? Good
heavens! where can the poor child have gone?”
He started up in real distress, and got his hat.
“Stay where you are,” said Batty. “You are not going out of my house
this day, and my girl lying dead. My girl!--my pretty ’Manda!--none of
them were fit to tie her shoes. Oh Lord, oh Lord! to think an old hulk
like me should last and my girl be gone! You don’t go a step out of my
house, mind you, Eastwood--not a step--to show how little you cared for
my girl, if I have to hold you with my hands.”
“I have no desire to show anything but the fullest respect for Amanda,”
said Frederick; “poor girl, she shall have no slight from me; but I must
look after my little cousin. Miss Vane trusted her to me. My mother will
be anxious----”
“D---- Miss Vane,” said poor Batty, “d---- every one that comes in the
way of what’s owed to my poor girl, my pretty darling. Oh, my ’Manda, my
’Manda! How shall I live when she’s gone? Look you here, Frederick
Eastwood, I know most of your goings on. I know about that cousin. You
shan’t step out of here, not to go after another woman, and the breath
scarce out of my poor girl.”
“I must know where Innocent has gone,” cried Frederick, chafing at this
restriction, yet moved by so much natural emotion as to hesitate before
wounding the feelings of Amanda’s father. “I have little wish to go out,
Heaven knows; but the poor child----”
“I will find out about the child,” said Batty; and Frederick did not
escape till the night had come again, and he could steal out in the
darkness to supplement the information which Batty’s groom managed to
collect. Innocent had been seen by various people in her flight. She had
been watched to the shadow of the Minster, and then to the railway,
where nobody had seen her go into the train, but which was certainly the
last spot where she had been. Frederick was discomposed by this
incident, more perhaps than became a man whose wife had died the day
before. He could not leave the house in which Amanda lay dead to follow
Innocent; but in his mind he thought a great deal more of her than of
his wife on the second night of his bereavement. Where was she--poor,
innocent, simple-hearted child? He sent a messenger to the High Lodge,
hoping she might be there. He felt himself responsible for her to his
mother, to Miss Vane, to all who knew him. As it was Sunday, however, he
had no means--either by post or telegraph--to communicate with his
mother. He had to wait till morning, with burning impatience in his
mind. Poor Innocent! how his heart warmed to the little harmless, tender
thing, who had nestled to him like a child, who had always trusted him,
clung to him, believed in him. Nothing had ever shaken her faith. Even
his marriage, which had detached many of his friends from him, had not
detached her. She had believed in him whatever happened. I have said
that Frederick had always been kind to Innocent. It had not indeed
always been from the most elevated of motives; her supposed love for him
had pleased his vanity, and he had indulged himself by accepting her
devotion without any thought of those consequences to her which his
mother feared; he had, indeed, believed as firmly as his mother and her
maids did, that Innocent was “in love” with him--and instead of
honourably endeavouring to make an end of that supposititious and most
foolish passion he had “encouraged” Innocent, and solaced himself by her
childish love. But through all this vanity and self-complacency there
had been a thread of natural affection, which was perhaps the very best
thing in Frederick, during that feverish period of his life which had
now suddenly come to an end. He had always been “fond of” his little
cousin. Now this tender natural affection came uppermost in his mind.
Real anxiety possessed him--painful questionings and suspicions. Where
had she fled to in her terror? She was not like other people,
understanding how to manage for herself, to tell her story, and make her
own arrangements. And then there was the strange alarming fact, that
though she had been seen to enter the railway station she had not gone
away, so the officials swore, by any train, and yet had disappeared
utterly, leaving no trace. It seemed natural enough to Frederick that
she should have fled in terror at thus finding herself face to face with
death. Neither aunty nor the maids had as yet sufficiently shaped their
recollections to give a very clear idea as to the moment at which poor
Amanda died, and no one knew how deeply Innocent was involved in that
terrible moment. But yet no one wondered that she had “run away,” partly
because the excitement of the great event itself still possessed the
house, and partly because the girl’s abstracted visionary look impressed
upon all vulgar spectators a belief that “she was not all there,” as the
maids said. She was supposed to be a little “weak,” even at the High
Lodge, where her piety had procured for her a kind of worship. That she
should be driven wild by fright and should fly out of the house seemed
no wonder to any one. Frederick lay awake all night thinking of her; he
could not turn his thoughts to any other subject. How soon the mind gets
accustomed to either gain or loss when it is final! Twenty-four hours
before, his brain had been giddy with the awful thought that Amanda was
dead, that the bonds of his life were broken, and that she who had been
his closest companion, the woman he had loved and loathed, had suddenly
and mysteriously departed from him, without notice or warning, into the
unseen. The shock of this sudden interruption to his life had for the
moment disturbed the balance of earth and heaven; in that terrible
region of mystery between the seen and the unseen, between life and
death, he had stood tottering, wondering, bewildered--for a moment. Now,
after twenty-four hours, Amanda’s death was an old, well-known tale, a
thing that had been for ages; it was herself who began to look like a
shadow, a dream. Had she really been his wife, his fate, the centre of
his life, colouring it wholly, and turning it to channels other than
those of nature? Already this began to seem half incredible to
Frederick--already he felt that his presence in Batty’s house was
unnatural; that he was a stranger altogether detached from it and its
disagreeable associations, waiting only for a point of duty, free from
it henceforward for ever. He was there “on business” only, as any other
stranger might be. And his whole mind was now occupied by the newer,
more hopeful mystery, the fate of his cousin. Poor little Innocent! how
sweet she had always been to him, how soothing in her truth and faith.
Perhaps in the halcyon time to come, free of all the bonds which his
folly had woven round him, might he not reward Innocent for her love? If
he could only be sure she was safe--if he but knew where she was!
Early on the Monday morning he rushed to the telegraph-office to
communicate with his mother, and ascertain if she had gone home. How he
chafed at his bondage here, and that he could not go to satisfy himself,
to secure the poor child’s safety! No one, however, who saw Frederick
with his melancholy aspect passing along the street, had any suspicion
that Amanda’s memory was treated with less “respect” than that of the
most exemplary of wives. The village was full of the sad story, and
people looked at him curiously as he passed. Poor fellow, how he seemed
to feel it! and no doubt she was very pretty, and men thought so much of
beauty. Frederick’s solemn aspect gained him the sympathy of all the
villagers. They spoke more tenderly of Batty’s daughter when they saw
the bereaved husband. No doubt it had been a love match on his side at
least, and whatever her faults might have been it was dreadful to be
taken so young and so sudden! Thus Sterborne murmured sympathetically as
Frederick went to send off his telegram, with very little thought of his
wife, and a burning impatience to escape from all her belongings, in his
heart.
He went to the railway before he went back, to ask if any further
information about Innocent had been obtained. The early train from town
had just arrived, and to his astonishment he was met by his mother,
looking very pale, anxious, and almost frightened, if that could be.
“Mother, this is kind,” he cried, rushing up to her, touched for the
moment by a sudden sense of the faithful affection that never failed
him; and then he added hurriedly, “Innocent! is she with you? do you
know where she is?”
“She is safe at home,” said Mrs. Eastwood, with a heavy sigh.
“Thank God!” he cried; and it did not occur to him that his mother did
not share his thankfulness, and that the cloud on her face was more
heavy than any he had before seen there through all her troubles.