WHAT CAN’T BE CURED MUST BE ENDURED.
All great evils are more intolerable, more terrible, before than after
they come. It seems to us in advance as if the mind could never accustom
itself to such a change, or life close over the wound. And yet, when but
a very short time has elapsed, we find that obedient Nature has accepted
and acknowledged the inevitable fact, and that use and wont, so rent
asunder by the change, have begun to throw new fibres of their cobweb
tissue over the chasm. There was a moment when poor Mrs. Joscelyn
thought that she could not bear this rending asunder. She turned her
face to the wall and closed her eyes, and declared that she could not
endure the light. She lay thus for weeks, but not in any stupor; on the
contrary, with every sense alert, and all standing sentinel, hearing
Harry’s step in every sound outside, and divining him in every whisper
of the wind. She had no objection to the detective now, but was kept
alive from morning to morning by the news which Selby brought her,
scraps of news entirely delusive, but which kept a fire of agitation and
expectation alive in her heart. Selby spent a great deal of money upon
the detective with little use, an expense which neither Joan nor her
mother divined or thought of. To them he had said at first that he had
left a “friend” on the spot to pursue the inquiry, and they had not
doubted his statement. But by-and-by there came a time when the
expenditure seemed to him no longer necessary. He was not rich, although
he was sufficiently well-off, and it was doing no good, neither in
respect to Harry nor to Joan, who was short and sharp with him in her
angry grief, and seemed almost to blame him for the catastrophe
altogether; and, indeed, Joan was unreasonably sharp. She could not help
asking within herself what was the good of a man if he could not do as
much as this? She felt sure that if she had gone herself she must have
discovered something; and she began to get sick of the sight of Selby
coming up to the White House morning after morning with his no news. It
provoked her entirely without reason; his long face provoked her. If he
would but stay away and hold his tongue when he could do no good! She
was all the more unjust to him, perhaps, that she had secretly built
upon his success almost as much as he himself had done, and had felt
that it would justify anything that might follow out of gratitude for
such a service. But the service had not been accomplished, though it had
cost more trouble and expenditure of one sort and another than if it had
been successfully done, and not only was Joan very miserable about her
brother, but she was thrown out altogether in respect to the suitor, who
had, she grudgingly allowed to herself, established a certain claim upon
her by his efforts, even though he had not been successful. She was very
difficult to get on with, all the household acknowledged, at this
period. A lover might well have been alarmed had he heard her voice
lifted high in the dairy, and in the house, setting everything in order.
Woe to the maid who neglected her work in these days, or the man
either. Joan came upon them like a thunderstorm; there were times when
Selby, stalking up to the house with his bulletin, heard her and
trembled. If this was how she was going to be, would it not be wiser in
a lover to give up such a dangerous pursuit? But though it gave him a
cold shiver he persevered, and took her sharpness gently, and bore with
her unreason, having a soul above his judgment. There were times when
this little conflict going on within him, and the trial of his faithful
purpose over all doubts, was visible in his countenance, betraying Joan
to a momentary amusement in the midst of her irritation and trouble; and
she would be still sharper to him afterwards--then break into a short
laugh within herself. It was her only diversion in her trouble to see
how Selby got frightened and swerved, and then took heart again.
“I’m enough to give any decent man a fright,” Joan said to herself, with
her half laugh; and it was true that she led the household, as all the
maids said, “a terrible life.”
But Mrs. Joscelyn lay with her face to the wall, and moaned by times:
but generally listened, listened, night and day, her whole being
concentrated into her ears. She got a kind of monomania on the subject.
He seemed to her to be always coming home, on the road, drawing nearer
and nearer. Joan, dozing in a chair by her bedside, when she was at her
worst, she would wake up suddenly and implore to go down to the door and
look out.
“Somebody went by and stopped, I am sure he stopped--and looked to see
if there was any one up. Run down, run down, and open to him, Joan!”
Joan did it a dozen times at least, and standing at the open door in the
middle of the night, looking over the black invisible country, or into
the pale moonlight which revealed it in a vague whiteness, would shed a
few tears, and feel the night wind go chill to her heart before she shut
and locked again the door that had been once closed upon her brother.
“Oh, there’s a deal of mother in him, the Lord have a care of him!” Joan
would say: and going back again, add: “There was no one, I knew very
well there was no one; I went to humour you. Now just you humour me and
go to sleep, go to sleep, poor dear!” and she would smooth the pillow
and the bed very softly for all her scolding.
It was a dreadful day, the day on which the portmanteau came back, and
the hamper, which smelt so badly, and which was now a half rotten mass,
not fit even for the pigs. To see them coming in the cart from the
station was like a funeral; the very horse went slowly, though he was
wont to break into a clumsy canter as soon as he came within sight of
his stable. Even the dumb beast felt it, old Simon said; and the man got
the things out very quietly, and carried them up to Harry’s room with
solemnity, as they might have carried his coffin. Joan unpacked all his
clothes again as she had folded them, with her tears falling like rain.
She put them back in his drawers with many a dismal thought. Would he
ever come back to find them all there waiting for him? or was it over
for ever, and would Harry never enter the house again? The arrival of
these relics increased Mrs. Joscelyn’s sufferings so much that the
doctor had to be sent for, who made but one prescription, succinct, in
one word: “Liddy:” for he knew the family well, and all its members.
Joan clasped her hands together as the thought struck her. “And me never
to have thought of that! It shows the head I must have,” she said.
And this was how it came about that suddenly, without anyone knowing of
it, one afternoon when Joan had been absent for an hour or two, there
arose a sudden commotion in the house, a clanging of doors, a sound of
voices, a rush up the stairs of something that was between the flight of
a bird and the blowing of a brisk wind and the patter of airy steps--a
movement, and a sentiment of fresh life, and arrival, and new hope. It
was not a noise, the creature was too light, too melodious for that: her
step scarcely touched the stair, the door which she pushed open did not
bang as when other hands touched it, but flew round upon its hinges as
airy as herself; and when she flung herself upon the bed with a soft cry
of “Mother!” the whole place seemed full of her, brightening and growing
warm with pleasure. Mrs. Joscelyn turned round with an answering cry,
and took happiness into her feeble arms with a shock of sudden
consolation that sent the blood into motion again in her veins. She was
not happy herself, poor soul! but happiness stood by her bed, and
clasped her neck, and breathed into her its soft natural sweetness.
“Oh, my Liddy, my Liddy!” the poor woman said.
Liddy was all in a commotion of gladness to get back; to stop her
lessons in mid-career of the “half;” to be of such importance that she
was sent for to help and cure her mother. Harry’s loss was a very
secondary matter to the girl, who had not seen very much of Harry, nor
had ever been used to look upon him as a necessary part of home; but she
listened to all the story, which her mother found a great relief in
telling her from beginning to end, with a childish pleasure in the tale
as well as sympathy with the teller.
“Oh, but he’ll come back,” Liddy said, with a happy confidence, which
made far more impression on her mother than all that had been said by
people who knew a great deal better than Liddy.
“Do you think so, my darling?” she asked with piteous eyes--as if the
child could tell. Joan looking on, and much advantaged herself by the
little stir of mind which her resolution to send for Liddy, and the
prompt carrying out of the same, had roused within her, could not but
laugh once more that sharp laugh of mingled amusement and wonder, to see
how efficacious her remedy was.
“Mother’s very queer when all’s done,” she said to herself. She had done
everything for everybody throughout all this troubled moment; but Liddy,
who could do nothing save kiss Mrs. Joscelyn’s white face and warm her
chilly hands, and promise with confident ignorance, “Oh, but he’ll come
back,” was of far greater account than she. But it was a great relief to
her mind all the same. And by and by this great event which had
disturbed even the rude soul of Ralph Joscelyn, and filled him with
shame and angry confusion, began to be a thing they were all used to,
and which had entered into the fabric of their lives.
END OF THE FIRST VOLUME.
London: Printed by A. Schulze, 13, Poland Street.