Guy and his mother were together. She lay on a sofa in her
dressing-room; he sat on a stool beside her, so that her arm could rest
on his neck and she could now and then turn his face towards her and
look at it--oh, what a look!
She had had him with her for two whole days--two days to be set against
eight years! Yet the eight years seemed already to have collapsed into
a span of time, and the two days to have risen up a great mountain of
happiness, making a barrier complete against the woeful past, as
happiness can do--thanks to the All-merciful for His mercies. Most
especially for that mercy--true as His truth to the experience of all
pure hearts--that one bright, brief season of joy can outweigh, in
reality and even in remembrance, whole years of apparently interminable
pain.
Two days only since the night Guy came home, and yet it seemed months
ago! Already we had grown familiar to the tall, bearded figure; the
strange step and voice about the house; all except Maud, who was rather
shy and reserved still. We had ceased the endeavour to reconcile this
our Guy--this tall, grave man of nearly thirty, looking thirty-five and
more--with Guy, the boy that left us, the boy that in all our lives we
never should find again. Nevertheless, we took him, just as he was, to
our hearts, rejoicing in him one and all with inexpressible joy.
He was much altered, certainly. It was natural, nay, right, that he
should be. He had suffered much; a great deal more than he ever told
us--at least, not till long after; had gone through poverty, labour,
sickness, shipwreck. He had written home by the
"Stars-and-Stripes"--sailed a fortnight later by another vessel--been
cast away--picked up by an outward-bound ship--and finally landed in
England, he and his partner, as penniless as they left it.
"Was your partner an Englishman, then?" said Maud, who sat at the foot
of the sofa, listening. "You have not told us anything about him yet."
Guy half smiled. "I will by and by. It's a long story. Just now I
don't want to think of anybody or anything except my mother."
He turned, as he did twenty times a day, to press his rough cheek upon
her hand and look up into her thin face, his eyes overflowing with love.
"You must get well now, mother. Promise!"
Her smile promised--and even began the fulfilment of the same.
"I think she looks stronger already--does she, Maud? You know her
looks better than I; I don't ever remember her being ill in old times.
Oh, mother, I will never leave you again--never!"
"No, my boy."
"No, Guy, no."--John came in, and stood watching them both contentedly.
"No, my son, you must never leave your mother."
"I will not leave either of you, father," said Guy, with a reverent
affection that must have gladdened the mother's heart to the very core.
Resigning his place by her, Guy took Maud's, facing them; and father
and son began to talk of various matters concerning their home and
business arrangements; taking counsel together, as father and son ought
to do. These eight years of separation seemed to have brought them
nearer together; the difference between them--in age, far less than
between most fathers and sons, had narrowed into a meeting-point.
Never in all his life had Guy been so deferent, so loving, to his
father. And with a peculiar trust and tenderness, John's heart turned
to his eldest son, the heir of his name, his successor at Enderley
Mills. For, in order that Guy might at once take his natural place,
and feel no longer a waif and stray upon the world, already a plan had
been started, that the firm of Halifax and Sons should become Halifax
Brothers. Perhaps, ere very long--only the mother said privately,
rather anxiously too, that she did not wish this part of the scheme to
be mentioned to Guy just now--perhaps, ere long it would be "Guy
Halifax, Esquire, of Beechwood;" and "the old people" at happy little
Longfield.
As yet Guy had seen nobody but ourselves, and nobody had seen Guy.
Though his mother gave various good reasons why he should not make his
public appearance as a "ship-wrecked mariner," costume and all, yet it
was easy to perceive that she looked forward not without apprehension
to some meetings which must necessarily soon occur, but to which Guy
made not the smallest allusion. He had asked, cursorily and generally,
after "all my brothers and sisters," and been answered in the same
tone; but neither he nor we had as yet mentioned the names of Edwin or
Louise.
They knew he was come home; but how and where the first momentous
meeting should take place we left entirely to chance, or, more rightly
speaking, to Providence.
So it happened thus. Guy was sitting quietly on the sofa at his
mother's feet, and his father and he were planning together in what way
could best be celebrated, by our school-children, tenants, and
work-people, an event which we took a great interest in, though not
greater than in this year was taken by all classes throughout the
kingdom--the day fixed for the abolition of Negro Slavery in our
Colonies--the 1st of August, 1834. He sat in an attitude that reminded
me of his boyish lounging ways; the picture of content; though a stream
of sunshine pouring in upon his head, through the closed Venetian
blind, showed many a deep line of care on his forehead, and more than
one silver thread among his brown hair.
In a pause--during which no one exactly liked to ask what we were all
thinking about--there came a little tap at the door, and a little voice
outside.
"Please, me want to come in."
Maud jumped up to refuse admission; but Mr. Halifax forbade her, and
himself went and opened the door. A little child stood there--a little
girl of three years old.
Apparently guessing who she was, Guy rose up hastily, and sat down in
his place again.
"Come in, little maid," said the father; "come in, and tell us what you
want."
"Me want to see Grannie and Uncle Guy."
Guy started, but still he kept his seat. The mother took her
grandchild in her feeble arms, and kissed her, saying softly,
"There--that is Uncle Guy. Go and speak to him."
And then, touching his knees, Guy felt the tiny, fearless hand. He
turned round, and looked at the little thing, reluctantly,
inquisitively. Still he did not speak to or touch her.
"Are you Uncle Guy?"
"Yes."
"Why don't you kiss me? Everybody kisses me," said everybody's pet;
neither frightened nor shy; never dreaming of a repulse.
Nor did she find it. Her little fingers were suffered to cling round
the tightly-closed hand.
"What is your name, my dear?"
"Louise--mamma's little Louise."
Guy put back the curls, and gazed long and wistfully into the childish
face, where the inherited beauty was repeated line for line. But
softened, spiritualised, as, years after its burial, some ghost of a
man's old sorrows may rise up and meet him, the very spirit of peace
shining out of its celestial eyes.
"Little Louise, you are very like--"
He stopped--and bending down, kissed her. In that kiss vanished for
ever the last shadow of his boyhood's love. Not that he forgot it--God
forbid that any good man should ever either forget or be ashamed of his
first love! But it and all its pain fled far away, back into the
sacred eternities of dreamland.
When, looking up at last, he saw a large, fair, matronly lady sitting
by his mother's sofa, Guy neither started nor turned pale. It was
another, and not his lost Louise. He rose and offered her his hand.
"You see, your little daughter has made friends with me already. She
is very like you; only she has Edwin's hair. Where is my brother
Edwin?"
"Here, old fellow. Welcome home."
The two brothers met warmly, nay, affectionately. Edwin was not given
to demonstration; but I saw how his features twitched, and how he
busied himself over the knots in his little girl's pinafore for a
minute or more. When he spoke again it was as if nothing had happened
and Guy had never been away.
For the mother, she lay with her arms folded, looking from one to the
other mutely, or closing her eyes with a faint stirring of the lips,
like prayer. It seemed as if she dared only THUS to meet her exceeding
joy.
Soon, Edwin and Louise left us for an hour or two, and Guy went on with
the history of his life in America and his partner who had come home
with him, and, like himself, had lost his all.
"Harder for him than for me; he is older than I am. He knew nothing
whatever of business when he offered himself as my clerk; since then he
has worked like a slave. In a fever I had he nursed me; he has been to
me these three years the best, truest friend. He is the noblest
fellow. Father, if you only knew--"
"Well, my son, let me know him. Invite the gentleman to Beechwood; or
shall I write and ask him? Maud, fetch me your mother's desk. Now
then, Guy--you are a very forgetful fellow still; you have never yet
told us your friend's name."
Guy looked steadily at his father, in his own straightforward way;
hesitated--then apparently made up his mind.
"I did not tell you because he wished me not; not till you understood
him as well as I do. You knew him yourself once--but he has wisely
dropped his title. Since he came over to me in America he has been
only Mr. William Ravenel."
This discovery--natural enough when one began to think over it, but
incredible at first, astounded us all. For Maud--well was it that the
little Louise seated in her lap hid and controlled in some measure the
violent agitation of poor Auntie Maud.
Ay--Maud loved him. Perhaps she had guessed the secret cause of his
departure, and love creates love often times. Then his brave
renunciation of rank, fortune, even of herself--women glory in a moral
hero--one who has strength to lose even love, and bear its loss, for
the sake of duty or of honour. His absence, too, might have done
much:--absence which smothers into decay a rootless fancy, but often
nourishes the least seed of a true affection into full-flowering love.
Ay--Maud loved him. How, or why, or when, at first no one could
tell--perhaps not even herself; but so it was, and her parents saw it.
Both were deeply moved--her brother likewise.
"Father," he whispered, "have I done wrong? I did not know--how could
I guess?"
"No, no--my son. It is very strange--all things just now seem so
strange. Maud, my child,"--and John roused himself out of a long
silence into which he was falling,--"go, and take Louise to her mother."
The girl rose, eager to get away. As she crossed the room--the little
creature clinging round her neck, and she clasping it close, in the
sweet motherliness of character which had come to her so early--I
thought--I hoped--
"Maud!" said John, catching her hand as she passed him by--"Maud is not
afraid of her father?"
"No,"--in troubled uncertainty--then with a passionate decision, as if
ashamed of herself--
"No!"
She leaned over his chair-back and kissed him--then went out.
"Now--Guy."
Guy told, in his own frank way, all the history of himself and William
Ravenel; how the latter had come to America, determined to throw his
lot for good or ill, to sink or swim, with Maud's brother--chiefly, as
Guy had slowly discovered, because he was Maud's brother. At last--in
the open boat, on the Atlantic, with death the great revealer of all
things staring them in the face--the whole secret came out. It made
them better than friends--brothers.
This was Guy's story, told with a certain spice of determination too,
as if--let his father's will be what it might, his own, which had now
also settled into the strong "family" will, was resolute on his
friend's behalf. Yet when he saw how grave, nay sad, the father sat,
he became humble again, and ended his tale even as he had begun, with
the entreaty--"Father, if you only knew--"
"My knowing and my judging seem to have been of little value, my son.
Be it so. There is One wiser than I--One in whose hands are the issues
of all things."
The sort of contrition with which he spoke--thus retracting, as it
costs most men so much to retract, a decision given however justly at
the time, but which fate has afterwards pronounced unjust, affected his
son deeply.
"Father, your decision was right--William says it was. He says also,
that it could not have been otherwise; that whatever he has become
since, he owes it all to you, and to what passed that day. Though he
loves her still, will never love any one else; yet he declares his loss
of her has proved his salvation."
"He is right," said Mrs. Halifax. "Love is worth nothing that will not
stand trial--a fiery trial, if needs be. And as I have heard John say
many and many a time--as he said that very night--in this world there
is not, ought not to be, any such words as 'too late.'"
John made no answer. He sat, his chin propped on his right hand, the
other pressed against his bosom--his favourite attitude. Once or
twice, with a deep-drawn, painful breath, he sighed.
Guy's eagerness could not rest. "Father, I told him I would either
write to or see him to-day."
"Where is he?"
"At Norton Bury. Nothing could induce him to come here, unless certain
that you desired it."
"I do desire it."
Guy started up with great joy. "Shall I write, then?"
"I will write myself."
But John's hand shook so much, that instead of his customary free, bold
writing, he left only blots upon the page. He leant back in his chair,
and said faintly--
"I am getting an old man, I see. Guy, it was high time you came home."
Mrs. Halifax thought he was tired, and made a place for his head on her
pillow, where he rested some minutes, "just to please her," he said.
Then he rose and declared he would himself drive over to Norton Bury
for our old friend.
"Nay, let me write, father. To-morrow will do just as well."
The father shook his head. "No--it must be to-day."
Bidding good-bye to his wife--he never by any chance quitted her for an
hour without a special tender leave-taking--John went away.
Guy was, he avouched, "as happy as a king." His old liveliness
returned; he declared that in this matter, which had long weighed
heavily on his mind, he had acted like a great diplomatist, or like the
gods themselves, whom some unexacting, humble youth calls upon to
"Annihilate both time and space,
And make two lovers happy!"
"And I'm sure I shall be happy too, in seeing them. They shall be
married immediately. And we'll take William into partnership--that was
a whim of his, mother--we call one another 'Guy' and 'William,' just
like brothers. Heigho! I'm very glad. Are not you?"
The mother smiled.
"You will soon have nobody left but me. No matter. I shall have you
all to myself, and be at once a spoiled child, and an uncommonly merry
old bachelor."
Again the mother smiled, without reply. She, too, doubtless thought
herself a great diplomatist.
William Ravenel--he was henceforward never anything to us but
William--came home with Mr. Halifax. First, the mother saw him; then I
heard the father go to the maiden bower where Maud had shut herself up
all day--poor child!--and fetch his daughter down. Lastly, I watched
the two--Mr. Ravenel and Miss Halifax--walk together down the garden
and into the beech-wood, where the leaves were whispering and the
stock-doves cooing; and where, I suppose, they told and listened to the
old tale--old as Adam--yet for ever beautiful and new.
That day was a wonderful day. That night we gathered, as we never
thought we should gather again in this world, round the family
table--Guy, Edwin, Walter, Maud, Louise, and William Ravenel--all
changed, yet not one lost. A true love-feast it was: a renewed
celebration of the family bond, which had lasted through so much
sorrow, now knitted up once more, never to be broken.
When we came quietly to examine one another and fall into one another's
old ways, there was less than one might have expected even of outward
change. The table appeared the same; all took instinctively their old
places, except that the mother lay on her sofa and Maud presided at the
urn.
It did one's heart good to look at Maud, as she busied herself about,
in her capacity as vice-reine of the household; perhaps, with a natural
feeling, liking to show some one present how mature and sedate she
was--not so very young after all. You could see she felt deeply how
much he loved her--how her love was to him like the restoring of his
youth. The responsibility, sweet as it was, made her womanly, made her
grave. She would be to him at once wife and child, plaything and
comforter, sustainer and sustained. Ay, love levels all things. They
were not ill-matched, in spite of those twenty years.
And so I left them, and went and sat with John and Ursula--we, the
generation passing away, or ready to pass, in Heaven's good time, to
make room for these. We talked but little, our hearts were too full.
Early, before anybody thought of moving, John carried his wife
up-stairs again, saying that, well as she looked, she must be compelled
to economise both her good looks and her happiness.
When he came down again he stood talking for some time with Mr.
Ravenel. While he talked I thought he looked wearied--pallid even to
exhaustion; a minute or two afterwards he silently left the room.
I followed him, and found him leaning against the chimney-piece in his
study.
"Who's that?" He spoke feebly; he looked--ghastly!
I called him by his name.
"Come in. Fetch no one. Shut the door."
The words were hoarse and abrupt, but I obeyed.
"Phineas," he said, again holding out a hand, as if he thought he had
grieved me; "don't mind. I shall be better presently. I know quite
well what it is--ah, my God--my God!"
Sharp, horrible pain--such as human nature shrinks from--such as makes
poor mortal flesh cry out in its agony to its Maker, as if, for the
time being, life itself were worthless at such a price. I know now
what it must have been; I know now what he must have endured.
He held me fast, half unconscious as he was, lest I should summon help;
and when a step was heard in the passage, as once before--the day Edwin
was married--how, on a sudden, I remembered all!--he tottered forward
and locked, double-locked, the door.
After a few minutes the worst suffering abated, and he sat down again
in his chair. I got some water; he drank, and let me bathe his face
with it--his face, grey and death-like--John's face!
But I am telling the bare facts--nothing more.
A few heavy sighs, gasped as it were for life, and he was himself again.
"Thank God, it is over now! Phineas, you must try and forget all you
have seen. I wish you had not come to the door."
He said this, not in any tone that could wound me, but tenderly, as if
he were very sorry for me.
"What is it?"
"There is no need for alarm;--no more than that day--you recollect?--in
this room. I had an attack once before then--a few times since. It is
horrible pain while it lasts, you see; I can hardly bear it. But it
goes away again, as you also see. It would be a pity to tell my wife,
or anybody; in fact, I had rather not. You understand?"
He spoke thus in a matter-of-fact way, as if he thought the explanation
would satisfy me and prevent my asking further. He was mistaken.
"John, what is it?"
"What is it? Why, something like what I had then; but it comes rarely,
and I am well again directly. I had much rather not talk about it.
Pray forget it."
But I could not; nor, I thought, could he. He took up a book and sat
still; though often times I caught his eyes fixed on my face with a
peculiar earnestness, as if he would fain test my strength--fain find
out how much I loved him; and loving, how much I could bear.
"You are not reading, John; you are thinking--what about?"
He paused a little, as if undetermined whether or not to tell me; then
said: "About your father. Do you remember him?"
I looked surprised at the question.
"I mean, do you remember how he died?"
Somehow--though, God knows, not at that dear and sacred remembrance--I
shuddered. "Yes; but why should we talk of it now?"
"Why not? I have often thought what a happy death it was--painless,
instantaneous, without any wasting sickness beforehand--his sudden
passing from life present to life eternal. Phineas, your father's was
the happiest death I ever knew."
"It may be--I am not sure. John," for again something in his look and
manner struck me--"why do you say this to me?"
"I scarcely know. Yes, I do know."
"Tell me, then."
He looked at me across the table--steadily, eye to eye, as if he would
fain impart to my spirit the calmness that was in his own. "I believe,
Phineas, that when I die my death will be not unlike your father's."
Something came wildly to my lips about "impossibility," the utter
impossibility, of any man's thus settling the manner of his death, or
the time.
"I know that. I know that I may live ten or twenty years, and die of
another disease after all."
"Disease!"
"Nay--it is nothing to be afraid of. You see I am not afraid. I have
guessed it for many years. I have known it for a certainty ever since
I was in Paris."
"Were you ill in Paris?--You never said so."
"No--because--Phineas, do you think you could bear the truth? You know
it makes no real difference. I shall not die an hour sooner for being
aware of it."
"Aware of--what? Say quickly."
"Dr. K---- told me--I was determined to be told--that I had the disease
I suspected; beyond medical power to cure. It is not immediately
fatal; he said I might live many years, even to old age; and I might
die, suddenly, at any moment, just as your father died."
He said this gently and quietly--more quietly than I am writing the
words down now; and I listened--I listened.
"Phineas!"
I felt the pressure of his warm hand on my shoulder--the hand which had
led me like a brother's all my life.
"Phineas, we have known one another these forty years. Is our love,
our faith, so small, that either of us, for himself or his brother,
need be afraid of death?--"
"Phineas!"--and the second time he spoke there was some faint reproach
in the tone; "no one knows this but you. I see I was right to
hesitate; I almost wish I had not told you at all."
Then I rose.
At my urgent request, he explained to me fully and clearly the whole
truth. It was, as most truths are, less terrible when wholly known. It
had involved little suffering as yet, the paroxysms being few and rare.
They had always occurred when he was alone, or when feeling them coming
on he could go away and bear them in solitude.
"I have always been able to do so until to-night. She has not the
least idea--my wife, I mean."
His voice failed.
"It has been terrible to me at times, the thought of my wife. Perhaps I
ought to have told her. Often I resolved I would, and then changed my
mind. Latterly, since she has been ill, I have believed, almost hoped,
that she would not need to be told at all."
"Would you rather, then, that she--"
John calmly took up the word I shrank from uttering. "Yes; I would
rather of the two that she went away first. She would suffer less, and
it would be such a short parting."
He spoke as one would speak of a new abode, an impending journey. To
him the great change, the last terror of humanity, was a
thought--solemn indeed, but long familiar and altogether without fear.
And, as we sat there, something of his spirit passed into mine; I felt
how narrow is the span between the life mortal and the life
immortal--how, in truth, both are one with God.
"Ay," he said, "that is exactly what I mean. To me there is always
something impious in the 'preparing for death' that people talk about;
as if we were not continually, whether in the flesh or out of it,
living in the Father's presence; as if, come when He will, the Master
should not find all of us watching? Do you remember saying so to me,
one day?"
Ah, that day!
"Does it pain you, my talking thus? Because if so, we will cease."
"No--go on."
"That is right. I thought, this attack having been somewhat worse than
my last, some one ought to be told. It has been a comfort to me to
tell you--a great comfort, Phineas. Always remember that."
I have remembered it.
"Now, one thing more, and my mind is at ease. You see, though I may
have years of life--I hope I shall--many busy years--I am never sure of
a day, and I have to take many precautions. At home I shall be quite
safe now." He smiled again, with evident relief. "And rarely I go
anywhere without having one of my boys with me. Still, for fear--look
here."
He showed me his pocket-book; on a card bearing his name and address
was written in his own legible hand, "HOME, AND TELL MY WIFE CAREFULLY."
I returned the book. As I did so, there dropped out a little note--all
yellow and faded--his wife's only "love-letter,"--signed, "Yours
sincerely, Ursula March."
John picked it up, looked at it, and put it back in its place.
"Poor darling! poor darling!" He sighed, and was silent for a while.
"I am very glad Guy has come home; very glad that my little Maud is so
happily settled. Hark! how those children are laughing!"
For the moment a natural shade of regret crossed the father's face, the
father to whom all the delights of home had been so dear. But it soon
vanished.
"How merry they are!--how strangely things have come about for us and
ours! As Ursula was saying to-night, at this moment we have not a
single care."
I grasped at that, for Dr. K---- had declared that if John had a quiet
life--a life without many anxieties--he might, humanly speaking, attain
a good old age.
"Ay, your father did. Who knows? we may both be old men yet, Phineas."
And as he rose, he looked strong in body and mind, full of health and
cheer--scarcely even on the verge of that old age of which he spoke.
And I was older than he.
"Now, will you come with me to say good-night to the children?"
At first I thought I could not--then, I could. After the rest had
merrily dispersed, John and I stood for a long time in the empty
parlour, his hand on my shoulder, as he used to stand when we were
boys, talking.
What we said I shall not write, but I remember it, every word. And
he--I KNOW he remembers it still.
Then we clasped hands.
"Good-night, Phineas."
"Good-night, John."