Dark house, by which once more I stand
Here in the long unlovely street.
Doors, where my heart was wont to beat
So quickly, waiting for a hand--
A hand that can be clasped no more.
Behold me, for I cannot sleep.--Tennyson.
“Mother Carey,” to call her by the family name that her husband had
given the first day she held a baby in her arms, had a capacity of
enjoyment that what she called her exile could not destroy. Even Bobus
left theory behind him and became a holiday boy, and the whole six
climbed rocks, paddled, boated, hunted sea weeds and sea animals, lived
on the beach from morning to night; and were exceedingly amused by the
people, who insisted on addressing the senior of the party as “Miss,”
and thought them a young girl and her brothers under the charge of Mrs.
Acton. She, though really not a year older than her friend, looked like
a worn and staid matron by her side, and was by no means disposed to
scramble barefoot over slippery seaweed, or to take impromptu a part in
the grand defence of the sand and shingle edition of Raglan Castle.
Even to Mrs. Acton it was a continual wonder to see how entirely under
control of that little merry mother were those great, lively, spirited
boys, who never seemed to think of disobeying her first word, and, while
all made fun together, and she was hardly less active and enterprising
than they, always considered her comfort and likings.
So went things for a fortnight, during which the coming of the others
had been put off by Dr. Drew’s absence. One morning Mr. Acton sought
Mrs. Brownlow on the beach, where she was sitting with her brood round
her, partly reading from a translation, partly telling them the story of
Ulysses.
He called her aside, and told her that her husband had telegraphed to
him to bid him to carry her the tidings that good old Mrs. Brownlow had
been taken from them suddenly in the night, evidently in her sleep.
Carey turned very white, but said only “Oh! why did I go without them?”
It was such an overwhelming shock as left no room for tears. Her first
thought, the only one she seemed to have room for, was to get back to
her husband by the next train. She would have taken all the children,
but that Mrs. Acton insisted, almost commanded, that they should be left
under her charge, and reminded her that their father wished them to be
out of London; nor did Allen and Robert show any wish to return to a
house of mourning, being just of the age to be so much scared at sorrow
as to ignore it. And indeed their mother was equally new to any real
grief; her parents had been little more than a name to her, and the only
loss she had actually felt was that of a favourite schoolfellow.
She had no time to think or feel till she had reached the train and
taken her seat, and even then the first thing she was conscious of was
a sense of numbness within, and frivolous observation without, as she
found herself trying to read upside down the direction of her opposite
neighbour’s parcels, counting the flounces on her dress, and speculating
on the meetings and partings at the stations; yet with a terrible weight
and soreness on her all the time, though she could not think of the dear
grannie, of whom it was no figure of speech to say that she had been
indeed a mother. The idea of her absence from home for ever was too
strange, too heartrending to be at once embraced, and as she neared the
end of her journey on that long day, Carey’s mind was chiefly fixed on
the yearning to be with her husband and Janet, who had suffered such a
shock without her. She seemed more able to feel through her husband--who
was so devoted to his mother, than for herself, and she was every moment
more uneasy about her little daughter, who must have been in the room
with her grandmother. Comfort them? How, she did not know! The others
had always petted and comforted her, and now--No one to go to when the
children were ailing or naughty--no one to share little anxieties
when Joe was out late--no one to be the backbone she leant on--no dear
welcome from the easy chair. That thought nearly set her crying; the
tears burnt in her strained eyes, but the sight of the people opposite
braced her, and she tried to fix her thoughts on the unseen world, but
they only wandered wide as if beyond her own control, and her head was
aching enough to confuse her.
At last, late on the long summer day, she was at the terminus, and with
a heart beating so fast that she could hardly breathe, found herself in
a cab, driving up to her own door, just as the twilight was darkening.
How dark it looked within, with all the blinds down! The servant who
opened the door thought Miss Janet was in the drawing-room, but the
master was out. It sounded desolate, and Carey ran up stairs, craving
and eager for the kiss of her child--the child who must have borne the
brunt of the shock.
The room was silent, all dusky and shadowed; the window-frames were
traced on the blinds by the gas freshly lighted outside, and moving in
the breeze with a monotonous dreariness. Carey stood a moment, and then
her eyes getting accustomed to the darkness, she discerned a little
heap lying curled up before the ottoman, her head on a great open book,
asleep--poor child! quite worn out. Carey moved quietly across and sat
down by her, longing but not daring to touch her. The lamp was brought
up in a minute or two, and that roused Janet, who sprang up with a
sudden start and dazzled eyes, exclaiming “Father! Oh, it’s Mother
Carey! Oh, mother, mother, please don’t let him go!”
“And you have been all alone in the house, my poor child,” said Carey,
as she felt the girl shuddering in her close embrace.
“Mrs. Lucas came to stay with me, but I didn’t want her,” said Janet,
“so I told her she might go home to dinner. It’s father--”
“Where is father?”
“Those horrid people in Tottenham Court Road sent for him just as he had
come home,” said Janet.
“He went out as usual?”
“Yes, though he had such a bad cold. He said he could not be spared;
and he was out all yesterday till bedtime, or I should have told him
grandmamma was not well.”
“You thought so!”
“Yes, she panted and breathed so oddly; but she would not let me say a
word to him. She made me promise not, but being anxious about him helped
to do it. Dr. Lucas said so.”
There was a strange hardness and yet a trembling in Janet’s voice; nor
did she look as if she had shed tears, though her face was pale and her
eyes black-ringed, and when old nurse, now very old indeed, tottered
in sobbing, she flung herself to the other end of the room. It was more
from nurse than from Janet that Carey learnt the particulars, such as
they were, namely, that the girl had been half-dressed when she had
taken alarm from her grandmother’s unresponsive stillness, and had
rushed down to her father’s room. He had found that all had long
been over. His friend, old Dr. Lucas, had come immediately, and had
pronounced the cause to have been heart complaint.
Nurse said her master had been “very still,” and had merely given the
needful orders and written a few letters before going to his patients,
for the illness was at its height, and there were cases for which he was
very anxious.
The good old woman, who had lived nearly all her life with her mistress,
was broken-hearted; but she did not forget to persuade Caroline to
take food, telling her she must be ready to cheer up the master when
he should come in, and assuring her that the throbbing headache which
disgusted her with all thoughts of eating, would be better for the
effort. Perhaps it was, but it would not allow her to bring her thoughts
into any connection, or to fix them on what she deemed befitting, and
when she saw that the book over which Janet had been asleep in the
twilight was “The Last of the Mohicans,” she was more scandalised than
surprised.
It was past Janet’s bedtime, but though too proud to say so, she
manifestly shrank from her first night of loneliness, and her mother,
herself unwilling to be alone, came with her to her room, undressed
her, and sat with her in the darkness, hoping for some break in the dull
reticence, but disappointed, for Janet hid her head in the clothes, and
slept, or seemed to sleep.
Perhaps Carey herself had been half dozing, when she heard the
well-known sounds of arrival, and darted down stairs, meeting indeed the
welcoming eye and smile; but “Ah, here she is!” was said so hoarsely and
feebly, that she exclaimed “Oh Joe, you have knocked yourself up!”
“Yes,” said Dr. Lucas, whom she only then perceived. “He must go to bed
directly, and then we will see to him. Not another word, Brownlow, till
you are there, nor then if you are wise.”
He strove to disobey, but cough and choking forbade; and as he began to
ascend the stairs, Caroline turned in dismay to the kind, fatherly old
man, who had always been one of the chief intimates of the house, and
was now retired from practice, except for very old friends.
He told her that her husband was suffering from a kind of sore throat
that sometimes attacked those attending on this fever, though generally
not unless there was some predisposition, or unless the system had
been unduly lowered. Joe had indeed been over-worked in the absence of
several of the regular practitioners and of all those who could give
extra help; but this would probably have done little harm, but for a
cold caught in a draughty room, and the sudden stroke with which the day
had begun. Dr. Lucas had urged him to remain at home, and had undertaken
his regular work for the day, but summonses from his patients had been
irresistible; he had attended to everyone except himself, and finally,
after hours spent over the critical case of the wife of a small
tradesman, he had found himself so ill that he had gone to his friend
for treatment, and Dr. Lucas had brought him home, intending to stay all
night with him.
Since the wife had arrived, the good old man, knowing how much rather
they would be alone, consented to sleep in another room, after having
done all that was possible for the night, and cautioned against talking.
Indeed, Joe, heavy, stupefied, and struggling for breath, knew too well
what it all meant not to give himself all possible chance by silent
endurance, lying with his wife’s hand in his, or sometimes smoothing
her cheek, but not speaking without necessity. Once he told her that her
head was aching, and made her lie down on the bed, but he was too ill
for this rest to last long, and the fits of struggling with suffocation
prevented all respite save for a few minutes.
With the early light of the long summer morning Dr. Lucas looked in,
and would have sent her to bed, but she begged off, and a sign from her
husband seemed to settle the matter, for the old physician went away
again, perhaps because his eyes were full of tears.
The first words Joe said when they were again alone was “My tablets.”
She went in search of them to his dressing-room, and not finding them
there, was about to run down to the consulting-room, when Janet came out
already dressed, and fetched them for her, as well as a white slate, on
which he was accustomed to write memorandums of engagements.
Her father thanked her by a sign, but there was possibility enough
of infection to make him wave her back from kissing him, and she took
refuge at the foot of the bed, on a sofa shut off by the curtains which
had been drawn to exclude the light.
Joe meantime wrote on the slate the words, “Magnum bonum.”
“Magnum bonum?” read his wife, in amazement.
“Papers in bureau,” he wrote; “lock all in my desk. Mention to no one.”
“Am I to put them in your desk?” asked Caroline, bewildered as to his
intentions, and finding it hard to read the writing, as he went on--
“No word to anyone!” scoring it under, “not till one of the boys is
ready.”
“One of the boys!” in utter amazement.
“Not as a chance for himself,” he wrote, “but as a great trust.”
“I know,” she said, “it is a great trust to make a discovery which will
save life. It is my pride to know you are doing it, my own dear Joe.”
“It seems I am not worthy to do it,” was traced by his fingers. “It is
not developed enough to be listened to by anyone. Keep it for the fit
one of the boys. Religion, morals, brains, balance.”
She read each word aloud, bending her head in assent; and, after a
pause, he wrote “Not till his degree. He could not work it out sooner.
These is peril to self and others in experimenting--temptation to
rashness. It were better unknown than trifled with. Be an honest
judge--promise. Say what I want.”
Spellbound, almost mesmerised by his will, Caroline pronounced--“I
promise to keep the magnum bonum a secret till the boys are grown up,
and then only to confide it to the one that seems fittest, when he has
taken his degree, and is a good, religious, wise, able man, with brains
and balance, fit to be trusted to work out and apply such an invention,
and not make it serve his own advancement, but be a real good and
blessing to all.”
He gave her one of his bright, sweet smiles, and, as she sealed her
promise by a kiss, he took up the slate again and wrote, “My dear
comfort, you have always understood. You are to be trusted. It must be
done worthily or not at all.”
That was the burthen of everything; and his approval and affection gave
a certain sustaining glow to the wife, who was besides so absorbed in
attending to him, as not to look beyond the moment. He wrote presently,
after a little more, “You know all my mind for the children. With God’s
help you can fill both places to them. I should like you to live at
Kenminster, under Robert’s wing.”
After that he only used the tablets for temporary needs, and to show
what he wanted Dr. Lucas to undertake for his patients. The husband and
wife had little more time for intimate communings, for the strangulation
grew worse, more remedies were tried, and one of the greatest physicians
of the day was called in, but only to make unavailing efforts.
Colonel Brownlow arrived in the middle of the day, and was thunderstruck
at the new and terrible disaster. He was a large, tall man, with a
good-humoured, weather-beaten face, and an unwieldy, gouty figure;
and he stood, with his eyes brimming over with tears, looking at
his brother, and at first unable to read the one word Joe traced for
him--for writing had become a great effort--“Carey.”
“We will do our best for her, Ellen and I, my dear fellow. But you’ll
soon be better. Horrid things, these quinsies; but they pass off.”
Poor Joe half-smiled at this confident opinion, but he merely wrung his
brother’s hand, and only twice more took up the pencil--once to write
the name of the clergyman he wished to see, and lastly to put down the
initials of all his children: “Love to you all. Let God and your mother
be first with you.--J. B.”
The daylight of the second morning had come in before that deadly
suffocation had finished its work, and the strong man’s struggles were
ended.
When Colonel Brownlow tried to raise his sister-in-law, he found her
fainting, and, with Dr. Lucas’s help, carried her to another room,
where she lay, utterly exhausted, in a kind of faint stupor, apparently
unconscious of anything but violent headache, which made her moan from
time to time, if anything stirred her. Dr. Lucas thought this the effect
of exhaustion, for she had not slept, and hardly taken any food since
her breakfast at Kyve three days ago; and finding poor old nurse too
entirely broken down to be of any use, he put his own kind wife in
charge of her, and was unwilling to admit anyone else--even Mrs.
Robert Brownlow, who arrived in the course of the day. She was a tall,
fine-looking person, with an oval face--soft, pleasant brown skin, mild
brown eyes, and much tenderness of heart and manner, but not very well
known to Caroline; for her periodical visits had been wholly devoted to
shopping and sight-seeing. She was exceedingly shocked at the tidings
that met her, and gathered Janet into her arms with many tears over the
poor orphan girl! It was an effusiveness that overwhelmed Janet, who had
a miserable, hard, dried-up feeling of wretchedness, and injury too; for
the more other people cried, the less she could cry, and she heard them
saying to one another that she was unfeeling.
Still Aunt Ellen’s presence was a sort of relief, for it made the house
less empty and dreary, and she took upon her the cares that were greatly
needed in the bereaved household, where old nurse had lost her head,
and could do nothing, and the most effective maid was away with the
children. So Janet wandered about after her aunt, with an adverse
feeling at having her home meddled with, but answering questions
and giving opinions, called or uncalled for. Her longing was for her
brothers, and it was a great blow to find that her uncle had written to
both Allen and Mr. Acton that they had better not come home at present.
She thought it cruel and unjust both towards them and herself; and in
her sickening sense of solitude and injury she had a vague expectation
that they were all going to be left wholly orphans, like the children
of fiction, dependent on their uncle and aunt, who would be unjust, and
prefer their own children; and she had a prevision of the battles she
was to fight, and the defensive influence she was to exert.
That brought to her mind the white slate on which her father had been
writing, and she hurried to secure it, though she hardly knew where to
go or to look; but straying into her father’s dressing-room, she found
both it and the tablets among a heap of other small matters that had
been, cleared away when the other chamber had been arranged into the
solemnity of the death-room. Hastily securing them, she carried them to
her own desk in the deserted school-room, feeling as if they were her
charge, and thus having no scruple in reading them.
She had heard what passed aloud; and, as the eldest girl, had been so
constantly among the seniors, and so often supposed to be intent on
her own occupations when they were conversing, that she had already
the knowledge that magnum bonum, was the pet home term for some great
discovery in medical, science that her father had been pursuing, with
many disappointments and much incredulity from the few friends to whom
it had been mentioned, but with absolute confidence on his own part.
What it was she did, not know, but she had fully taken in the injunction
of secrecy and the charge to hand on the task to one of her brothers;
only, while her father had spoken of it as a grave trust, she viewed it
as an inheritance of glory; and felt a strange longing and repining that
it could not be given to her to win and wear the crown of success.
Janet, did not, however, keep the treasure long, for that very evening
Mrs. Lucas sought her out to tell her that her mother had been saying
something, about a slate, and Dr. Lucas thought it was one on which her
father had been writing. If she could find it, they hoped her mother
would rest better.
Janet produced it, and, being evidently most unwilling to let it go out
of her hands, was allowed to carry it in, and to tell her mother that
she had it. There was no need for injunctions to do so softly and
cautiously, for she was frightened by her mother’s dull, half-closed
eye, and pale, leaden look; but there was a little air of relief as she
faltered, “Here’s the slate, dear mother:” and the answer, so faint that
she could hardly hear it, was, “Lock it up, my dear, till I can look.”
Mrs. Lucas told Janet she might kiss her, and then sent the girl away.
There was need of anxious watch lest fever should set in, and therefore
all that was exciting was kept at a distance as the poor young widow
verged towards recovery.
Once, when she heard voices on the stairs, she started nervously, and
asked Mrs. Lucas, “Is Ellen there?”
“Yes, my dear; she shall not come to you unless you wish it,” seeing her
alarm; and she laid her head down again.
The double funeral was accomplished while she was still too ill to hear
anything about it, though Mrs. Lucas had no doubt that she knew; and
when he came home, Colonel Brownlow called for Janet, and asked her
whether she could find her grandmother’s keys and her father’s for him.
“Mother would not like anyone to rummage their things,” said Janet, like
a watch-dog.
“My dear,” said her uncle, in a surprised but kind tone, as one who
respected yet resented her feeling; “you may trust me not to rummage,
as you call it, unnecessarily; but I know that I am executor, if you
understand what that means, my dear.”
“Of course,” said Janet, affronted as she always was by being treated as
a child.
“To both wills,” continued her uncle; “and it will save your mother much
trouble and distress if I can take steps towards acting on them at once;
and if you cannot tell where the keys are, I shall have to look for
them.”
“Janet ought to obey at once,” said her aunt, not adding to the serenity
of Janet’s mind; but she turned on her heel, ungraciously saying, “I’ll
get them;” and presently returned with her grandmother’s key-box, full
of the housekeeping keys, and a little key, which she gave to her uncle
with great dignity, adding, “The key of her desk is the Bramah one; I’ll
see for the others.”
“A strange girl, that!” said her uncle, as she marched out of the room.
“I am glad our Jessie has not her temper!” responded his wife; and then
they both repaired to old Mrs. Brownlow’s special apartment, the back
drawing-room, while Janet quietly dropped downstairs with the key she
had taken from her father’s table on her way to the consulting-room. She
intended to prevent any search, by herself producing the will from among
his papers, for she was in an agony lest her uncle should discover the
clue to the magnum bonum, of which she regarded herself the guardian.
Till she had actually unlocked the sloping lid of the old-fashioned
bureau, it did not occur to her that she did not know either what the
will was like, nor yet the magnum bonum, which was scarcely likely to be
so ticketed. She only saw piles of letters and papers, marked, some with
people’s names, some with a Greek or Latin word, or one of the curious
old Arabic signs, for which her father had always a turn, having, as his
mother used to tell him, something of the alchemist in his composition.
One of these parcels, fastened with elastic rings, must be magnum bonum,
and Janet, though without much chance of distinguishing it, was reading
the labels with a strange, sad fascination, when, long before she had
expected him, her uncle stood before her, with greatly astonished and
displeased looks, and the word “Janet.”
She coloured scarlet, but answered boldly, “There was something that I
know father did not want anyone but mother to see.”
“Of course there is much,” said her uncle, gravely--“much that I am
fitter to judge, of than any little girl.”
Words cannot express the offence thus given to Janet. Something swelled
in her throat as if to suffocate her, but there could be no reply, and
to burst out crying would only make him think her younger still; so as
he turned to his mournful task, she ensconced herself in a high-backed
chair, and watched him from under her dark brows.
She might comfort herself by the perception that he was less likely
than even herself to recognise the magnum bonum. He would scarcely have
thought it honourable to cast a glance upon the medical papers, and
pushing them aside from where she had pulled them forward, searched till
he had found a long cartridge-paper envelope, which he laid on the table
behind him while he shut up the bureau, and Janet, by cautiously craning
up her neck, managed to read that on it was written “Will of Joseph
Brownlow, Executors: Mrs. Caroline Otway Brownlow, Lieutenant-Colonel
Robert Brownlow.”
Her uncle then put both that and the keys in his pocket, either not
seeing her, or not choosing to notice her.