A STARTLING PROPOSAL.
Whether some feeling of remorse prompted Roderick to a tardy act of
justice, Hugh could only conjecture. In any case, Olivia Fenton’s
brother-in-law appeared and claimed the remains of his wife’s sister.
There was no inquest, and the unfortunate girl was quietly buried in
Woking Cemetery.
After those few days of excitement, Hugh’s life fell back into the daily
humdrum. His thoughts were concentrated upon his work, now augmented by
the final preparation for the coming examination for an important
degree, so that the memory of Lilia, and that peculiar feeling, half
pleasure, half pain, when he thought back upon his visit to the
Pinewood, ceased to trouble him so much.
Weeks of quiet study, of unbroken hospital routine: then came two
startling days, two startling visits.
It was a gusty autumn morning. Hugh was coming out of one ward and just
about to enter another, when the hall-porter brought him word that the
Rev. Mr. Paull was below and wished to speak with him.
He hurried downstairs and found his father, who informed him that he was
paying a flying visit to town, and must have a serious talk with him on
important business.
“It is quite clear we cannot talk here and now,” said Hugh.
“No, no, my boy; of course not.”
The old gentleman, who looked overwhelmed with some weighty affair or
another, asked his son to dine with him at his hotel.
* * * * *
“And now for the serious talk,” said Hugh, who had been slightly amused
at his father’s portentous manner and evident preoccupation during their
dinner in a private room at a quiet hotel near Piccadilly, “I can see
that something has happened. What is it?”
“Well, it is Daisy,” said Mr. Paull.
“Daisy! What is wrong?”
“Oh, there is nothing exactly wrong. But I shall know better presently.
She is thinking of getting married.”
“Daisy married!”
Hugh smiled.
“Why not?”
“Somehow I can’t realise the idea of Daisy married. Who is the man?”
“Ah!” Mr. Paull drew up his chair and stirred the fire. It was a chill
autumnal evening. “Do you remember the Danvers?” he asked.
“Of course.” (Mr. Danvers was a neighbouring clergyman, and his wife was
a stout lady of much amiability, who, childless herself, had been fond
of entertaining children.) “If I remember rightly,” said Hugh, “one of
her juvenile parties brought about my first bilious attack.”
“I daresay. Well, you remember they went away for his health when you
were at school, leaving a curate in charge. Since you came down last
time, they have returned. At their house Daisy met this young man. I
suppose you know that Mrs. Danvers was a Miss Clithero?”
“Clithero?”
Hugh gave a visible start.
“Yes; the sister of the Clithero who is partner of the Pyms. Oh! it is
hard upon a man, Hugh, left alone as I am, when his girls begin to have
love affairs.”
“It is,” said Hugh. “But whatever I can do, dad, shall be done. You know
that.”
The old man was touched. For a few moments he gazed steadily at the
fire. Then he said:
“I do; and I feel sure that you will tell me if there is any truth in
the shocking stories about those Pyms.”
“The Pyms! What have they got to do with it?”
“The man who wants to marry Daisy is a son of the head of the firm.”
“Not _Captain_ Pym?”
Hugh spoke almost fiercely.
“Why not?”
Mr. Paull looked at him curiously.
“Never mind. Tell me all—everything.”
It seemed that when Daisy Paull was staying at Mrs. Danvers’ house for a
week, there had been also staying there a newly-ordained young
clergyman, Herbert Pym, third son of Mr. Pym, the reputed millionaire.
At the end of the week he had offered himself to Daisy.
“He is a nice young fellow,” added Mr. Paull. “Frank, no nonsense about
him. He has expectations: will share equally with his eldest brother. He
told me that his brother Roderick (the Captain Pym you mentioned) is to
inherit nothing from his father, having been adopted by his uncle, Sir
Roderick, who will leave him his whole fortune.”
“That is, to put it mildly, a mistake,” said Hugh. “You know that I
stayed at the Pinewood, Sir Roderick’s place in Surrey, for a couple of
days. Captain Pym is a favourite nephew, but is not an adopted son. Sir
Roderick is wrapped up in his daughter.”
“His daughter? Now, Hugh, what is the mystery about that daughter? Is
she an idiot? Don’t get angry! I have heard such queer tales.”
“Why did you listen to them?” said Hugh, disdainfully. “I thought you
were above listening to gossip.”
“I was compelled, in Daisy’s interests, to investigate the matter,” said
Mr. Paull, with a dignity which recalled Hugh to a sense of propriety
his anxiety was tempting him to forget. “Mrs. Danvers hinted to me that,
although Herbert was the nicest young man she knew, the family were
eccentric. She had heard all sorts of things about them—untrue,
doubtless; still, there seldom was so much smoke without some fire. Mr.
Bullock, the banker, knew how much or how little there was in the
stories. Now, Bullock being my banker, I called upon him.”
“Bullock,” said Hugh, thoughtfully. “He always seemed an honest,
matter-of-fact sort of man. What did he say?”
“He said much,” said Mr. Paull. “There is a painful family story. What
sort of a girl is this daughter?”
“Simple, innocent, good,” said Hugh, shortly, and in as matter-of-fact a
manner as he could assume in his perturbation.
“Dear me! How strange that bad women so often have good children!”
sighed his father.
“Is Lady Pym alive?” asked Hugh.
“I will tell you exactly what Bullock told me. Sir Roderick was quite
different from that which I understand him to be now, when he was young.
A roistering ‘young blood,’ as they termed fast young fellows then.
There was a handsome girl who was one of the Society beauties. No one
noticed Sir Roderick’s admiration. The young lady disappeared one
season. Her disappearance caused quite a talk, especially as her
relations were reticent on the subject. About two years afterwards, when
she is almost forgotten, she reappears as Sir Roderick’s wife. When,
how, and where they were married—why, and for what reason the affair was
kept dark—no one has ever known.”
“But the child?”
“The girl seems to have been a young infant when they returned. Well, it
appears that Sir Roderick was quite Eastern in his ideas of how a wife
should be treated. He took that lively young creature to that place of
his, the Pinewood, and shut her up. She saw no one but some of his
relations.”
“Jealous, doubtless,” said Hugh, thinking back upon the pretty, mutinous
face, miniatured in Sir Roderick’s locket. “Well?”
“Well, now comes the sad part. Mr. Pym, the brother, who was already a
husband and the father of several children, had then, as I daresay you
know he still has, an estate about twenty miles distant from Sir
Roderick’s. He seems to have divided his time between the two houses. No
one knows what took place there. But there was a serious family quarrel.
Sir Roderick withdrew from the firm of Pym, Clithero, and Pym, and shut
his doors against his whole family. The beautiful Lady Pym no one saw
again. Some say she ran away and hid herself abroad: at least, hid
herself from everyone but the object of her husband’s jealousy, Mr. Pym.
The other rumour is that Sir Roderick shut her up more closely than
ever, and that she died and was buried at the Pinewood.”
Hugh thought of the chapel in the grounds.
“That last story is more likely to be true than the other,” he said.
“Yes,” said Mr. Paull; “if, indeed, there is any fact in the gossip at
all. Bullock said he felt positive that if Sir Roderick suspected his
brother of wronging him in regard to Lady Pym, his suspicion had been
utterly groundless. He knows Mr. Pym. He said that no doubt he pitied
his young sister-in-law for being immured in so un-English a fashion,
and did his best to brighten her life; but that this was all his part in
the affair. That Sir Roderick has come to believe so too, is, I should
think, proved by his love for his brother’s son.”
An idea came into Hugh’s mind which took away his breath for a moment.
He unconsciously rose from his chair and straightened himself.
“How does anyone know that he is really fond of Captain Pym?” he
suggested. “His statement that he is his heir may have been made in
revenge, to spoil the young man, to place him in an unnatural position
in his own family circle, and to leave him stranded and befooled at the
last.”
“Impossible, Hugh! No human being could be so mean!”
“Nothing is impossible in Sir Roderick, father. Think back on what you
have told me of his conduct to his wife! His brain is unbalanced. He is
clever enough, kind enough, in a way; but he is extravagantly eccentric.
For instance, I am sure he adores that daughter of his as far as he is
capable of adoration; yet he keeps her as much shut up as he did her
mother.”
“Poor child!” said Mr. Paull, sympathetically. “What a good thing it
would be for her to know Maud and Daisy.”
“To return to Daisy’s affair,” said Hugh. “It does not seem a very
bright specimen of a family to marry into.”
“My dear boy, all families have their skeletons in the cupboard,” said
the rector, somewhat nervously. (Hugh was seemingly getting into one of
his stern humours, which would be bad for poor Daisy.) “Find me the
family that has not.”
“Ours,” said Hugh.
“I daresay, if the truth were known, our ancestors had their foibles.”
“Madness has, unfortunately, the habit of going obliquely, father; it
often attacks the nephew or niece, rather than the son or daughter. This
Herbert Pym may develop into a Sir Roderick.”
“Madness may do that, Hugh; but surely not eccentricity.”
Hugh paced the room and thought deeply. He had felt there was some
mystery connected with Sir Roderick’s wife, Lilia’s mother. But that any
scandal was attached to her name he had not believed. For himself, he
would not care. But when his sister was in question, he felt it behoved
him to be uncompromisingly judicial.
“I do not think mother would have liked Daisy’s marrying this young man,
father,” he said at last.
“If you say that, you cannot have understood her, Hugh,” said the
rector, warmly. “She was the largest-hearted woman on earth. Scandal was
her greatest horror. When young Pym came to me and asked for Daisy, I
felt she would have liked him. It was just that which influenced me.”
“Well, you know best, father. Shall I see him and talk to him? Perhaps I
might say things to him that you could scarcely say.”
“I wish you would see him,” said his father, reassured.
Hugh left him with the understanding that whenever it suited the Rev.
Herbert Pym to make an appointment he was ready to receive him as his
probable brother-in-law.
But the meeting was destined to be postponed. Next morning, just before
noon, the porter came again.
“You are wanted, sir. A lady, this time.”
“I am engaged, you know that,” said Hugh, annoyed, for a dresser he had
had occasion to reprove was just passing, and he saw the young man grin.
“You should have asked her name.”
“I did, sir. But she said it didn’t matter, she would not keep you a
minute. I took her into the board-room, sir.”
She, whoever she was, had evidently known the passport to the porter’s
goodwill, thought Hugh, running downstairs. What lady could it be? If it
were Daisy, he would give her a scolding she would remember.
Entering the board-room he was met by Mrs. Mervyn, pale, agitated.
“Oh, Mr. Paull! How could you forsake us so?” she said, almost
indignantly.
Then she broke down, turned away, and hid her face in her handkerchief.
Hugh was so taken aback that for a moment or two he stood and stared.
Then he felt that something must have happened—he hardly dared think
what.
“I—forsaken you?” he said, as Mrs. Mervyn conquered her emotion and sat
down. “I have not heard one word from the Pinewood since I spent those
two days there.”
“You have had a letter and two telegrams,” said Mrs. Mervyn. “Sir
Roderick was taken ill a week ago. Lilia wrote and asked your advice. No
answer came. She telegraphed. No answer. Captain Pym offered to go to
town to fetch Dr. Beard, the physician our doctor asked for. Mr. Mervyn
wired to you,—silence. Captain Pym said he called here, but finding that
you had been in the hospital all the time, and that therefore you
evidently did not want to be bothered with us, or you would have taken
some notice of the letter and telegrams, he did not trouble you in the
matter.”
Hugh repressed his impulse to anathematise Captain Pym as a liar. “My
time will come; I will bide my time,” he thought. Then he turned to Mrs.
Mervyn, and said, gently:
“There has been some mistake. It does not matter now. How is he?”
“Dying.”
Mrs. Mervyn gave an account of the last trying seven days: the attention
of Dr. Beard, who gave no hope from the first; Lilia’s repressed
anguish; the goodness of the two sick nurses; the summoning of the great
Sir Edward Debenham yesterday (a mere matter of form, to state that
death had proved himself conqueror, that nothing could be done to
reverse the sentence). Then she was about to add something further, when
Hugh asked, suddenly, hoarsely:
“If this be so, why have you come?”
“He asked for you—he wants you,” said Mrs. Mervyn. “He will not be
pacified.”
“Did he know I was sent for?”
“Yes; and he knew no answer came. But it was he who said the messages
could not have reached you. I would not be the one to suggest anything
else.”
“You thought me a wretch, Mrs. Mervyn?”
She shrugged her shoulders.
“What does it matter now?” she said, in agitation. “Let us go by the
next train, if we can.”
Hugh procured a time-table. There was time to catch a fast train to F——.
He saw the secretary, arranged for a deputy, and before he hardly
realised the situation London was left far back in the distance in its
purple veil of smoke, and they were rushing through brilliant autumnal
scenes, under a breezy October sky.
They could not talk during the journey; they had fellow-passengers. It
was painful for Hugh to think that Mrs. Mervyn had doubted him, and
still more painful to remember Lilia. Of course the non-arrival of the
letter and telegrams meant—Roderick.
Mr. Mervyn was on the platform, looking careworn and eager. At the sight
of Hugh he brightened. He grasped his hand.
“I knew you would come,” he said. Then, drawing him aside, he said: “You
did not get my telegram? I thought not. Say as little as you can, will
you? and be as unfathomable as a sphinx. I will explain later.”
Evidently he knew more, in one respect, than Hugh did.
A light dogcart was awaiting Hugh, and presently he was speeding along
the lanes between the devastated hop-gardens behind Reindeer, who was
going at full speed, while Mrs. Mervyn was following in the brougham
with her husband.
During the uphill slackening of Reindeer’s pace, Hugh gathered that Sir
Roderick was still alive, though his death was, according to the
doctors, imminent; that none of his servants were surprised—they had
seen so great a change in their master since his accident; and that,
since he had sent for his brother, Mr. Pym, even Miss Lilia had given up
hope.
“Miss Lilia couldn’t have believed he was agoing to die like other
folks, I don’t believe, sir, if it hadn’t ha’ been for that,” said the
sagacious Thomas. “They said as when she heard that the captain was to
fetch his father, at Sir Roderick’s wish, she fainted dead away. They
haven’t been friends, you see, sir, for many a long year; and Sir
Roderick, when he makes up his mind—well, it isn’t easy to turn him. So
I expect Miss Lilia knew, when he sent for Mr. Pym, that there wasn’t
what you might call a straw left to cling to.”
“She is better now?” asked Hugh.
“I can’t say, sir, I’m sure.”
It was hard work to obey Mr. Mervyn’s recommendation to be sphinx-like.
But as the dogcart jogged down the steep incline leading to the garden
entrance of the house, Hugh rallied himself, and determined to put aside
all personal feeling, all emotions and passions, to follow no impulse,
and to bear in mind that he was here on duty, as a species of death-bed
sentinel—silent, motionless, except to salute the passing soul.
The house looked the same, as houses will, happen what may. There was
even a greater gaiety about the place. A windy autumn day, when the
cloudlets sail joyously across the luminous blue sky, and the red and
golden trees are shaken by the fresh breezes, has a liveliness of its
own, as if Nature were at play after the hard work of the spring and
summer before the night of winter sets in, when she herself falls
asleep. And within these four walls? As Hugh alighted at the garden
door, and walked in without ringing the bell (all bells had been muffled
by the doctors’ orders), he did not think with any pleasurable
anticipation of the possible scene within.
But he miscalculated the influence of the young girl who was so soon to
be left alone in the world.
As he entered the hall by one door, Lilia came in by another. She looked
pale and thinner in her clinging grey gown; but she was calm, and met
him with a half-smile and clinging clasp of the hand.
“You know?” she asked, in a hushed voice.
“That he is doomed by the doctors, and that a letter and two telegrams
were _not_ sent to me? Yes,” he said, dryly.
“I trusted——” She hesitated, and looked round.
“Explanations afterwards,” she added, with a hopeless, bitter meaning in
her tones and manner. “Now we must only think of _him_. Will you have
some refreshment, or see him now?”
“Now, at once,” said Hugh.
Then he followed her in silence up the old oaken staircase, wondering at
her power of self-control—she, so sensitive and emotional a creature!
Until now, she had drawn his sympathies by her gift of fascination;
thus, she seized and held his respect.
At a tap from Lilia, a nurse opened the door.
“Mr. Paull,” whispered Lilia, gliding away.
“I am thankful you have come,” said the nurse, who looked worn and
harassed. “There are two of us, but he has been dreadful. You are a
doctor. You will not let him over-excite himself? We are to leave you
alone.”
Hugh satisfied the nurse, as they stood by the door behind the screen.
They whispered, but the hearing of the dying man was sharpened.
“Who’s—that?” Hugh heard, in reedy, querulous tones he hardly
recognised.
“You must come at once,” said the nurse.
Then her worn, anxious expression suddenly changed to the placid,
cheerful smile that is as necessary an adjunct in the case of a
sick-room attendant as in a _danseuse_ before the public.
Hugh, following her, saw a yellowish-white face on the pillows of a big
bed hung with dark green. The change was at hand. Sir Roderick’s
aquiline features were pinched and shrunken; the great bluish circles
round his dark eyes intensified the fixedness of his gaze; there was the
heaviness of death in his arms, stretched motionless at his sides.
“Hamlet!” he said, in a far-away voice, and his pallid lips drew aside
in the faint mockery of a dying smile. “Come here—close. You two women,
_go_.”
There was a slight suggestion of the living Sir Roderick in the
irritable peremptoriness of that abrupt dismissal of his faithful
nurses; in his “What on earth are they doing? Why don’t they go?” as
they arranged bottles, glasses, and gong on a table at Hugh’s elbow; and
in his “Are they gone?” when the door shut upon them so softly that he
could not hear it.
“Of course they are gone.” Hugh bent over his former patient with a new,
real tenderness. “I am here to do everything you wish me to do, Sir
Roderick,” he said; “you have only to command.”
“Everything!” said the invalid, hoarsely, with a searching look.
“Everything that my conscience will allow me to do, Sir Roderick!”
The old man laughed, or tried to laugh; but it was a curious rattling
sound, at which Hugh involuntarily bit his lip.
“That’s a dying laugh. Funny sound, isn’t it?” said Sir Roderick. Speech
was evidently becoming more and more difficult. “Ugly sound; nasty
feeling; choked feeling, too. I shall soon cast my chrysalis, Hamlet. I
sha’n’t come to an end. No. I hope I shall be a poisonous serpent. Don’t
look shocked. I want to sting human beings. They are worse than devils,
if there were those fables. Yes, worse than devils,” he muttered, his
eyes dimming with, Hugh feared, approaching coma. “Devils would be good
if they could; men can be good, and won’t. I’m not dying, or going to
sleep, Hamlet, so don’t look like that,” he suddenly said, in a voice so
like his own, and with such reviving animation, that Hugh almost hoped
that death was not imminent, despite appearances. “You clergyman’s son,
you would like me to believe in devils, wouldn’t you? Well, I do. In
human devils. And you must help me to punish them.”
The last words were said dispassionately, gravely. What did he mean? The
old man groped for Hugh’s hand, which was resting on the bed near to his
own. Hugh clasped the icy, clammy fingers in his warm, living grasp.
“Did you ever wonder why I wanted you here?”
It was a question, sudden, and to the point. With those dying eyes
riveted upon him, Hugh must answer with bare fact.
“I did,” he acknowledged.
“I can’t waste my minutes palavering,” said Sir Roderick, irritable as
he recognised his utter helplessness. “I read you like a book. I wanted
you for Lilia.”
Hugh started, and flushed. The room seemed to sway and reel; he hardly
knew whether he was shocked, hurt, delighted, or horrified. The
possession of Lilia had been, so to say, hinted to him by his
inclinations as something he might possibly dare to aspire to in the
future. To have his ideal, as it were, snatched at, pounded together,
and shot at him in this fashion was like being physically assaulted. He
felt mentally wounded, but did not realise how or where.
“I see you know what I mean,” went on the dying man. “You blush like a
girl. Love is nonsense. But you have a passion for her——”
“I love her!” interrupted Hugh. “I would not have dared—if you had not
spoken.”
A dreadful chuckle from the sick man seemed to freeze Hugh. If Sir
Roderick would only refrain from that ghastly, rattling laugh!
“You say you love her, but that you would not have dared—what bosh!
Hamlet, you would be a bad witness. Never mind. The question is—to be,
or not to be? Will you marry Lilia, or _not_?”
What a position! He was utterly unprepared, too. For some moments he
hardly knew what to do or say; then he felt he must fight Sir Roderick’s
eccentricity for _her_ sake.
“What would your daughter say?” he asked, gently. “You must not dispose
of her. No one has a right to dispose of another. Of course, I would ask
her to marry me, if I thought she wished it.”
“Of course she wishes it!” gasped Sir Roderick.
His eyes shone with excitement; cold beads were on his pale forehead.
“How can you tell?” suggested Hugh, in desperation.
The sick man had a fit of gasping. Hugh supported him, fearing that the
end was come. But after he had swallowed a stimulating draught, he
revived somewhat, and asked that his brother, Mr. Pym, his nephew,
Roderick, and Lilia might be summoned.
Feeling a certain dread and a thorough reluctance, Hugh fetched the
nurses, one of whom was despatched to bring in Mr. and Captain Pym and
Lilia.
“Hold me,” said Sir Roderick. “Sit by me. Yes, that’s right; and hold
me. Goodness! why ever there are women nurses I can’t make out! They
can’t hold one like that!”
It took all Hugh’s strength to support his host’s dead weight. Sir
Roderick’s cunning had evidently not left him. In Hugh’s position, as
prop to a dying man, he could hardly assert himself if called upon to do
so.
The first to enter the sick chamber was Mr. Pym, a slight old man of
middle height, with a long thin face and small keen eyes. His manner was
quiet and self-contained. He accepted a chair from the nurse as calmly
as he would had she been one of his clerks and he in his own office. “An
emotionless man of business,” was Hugh’s mental comment. “The hero of a
scandal? Never!”
Then came Roderick—pale, handsome. He inclined his head haughtily to
Hugh, then bent over his uncle.
“You are not worse, uncle, I hope?” he said.
“Better, according to religious people, like your father,” sneered Sir
Roderick. “You feel better every Sunday, don’t you, William? Nearer
heaven? I’m dying, so of course I’m better, nearer heaven.”
Mr. Pym reddened. At that moment Lilia entered. Mr. Pym rose and offered
her his chair. She was declining it, and going to the bedside, when her
father querulously said, “No, no; take it!” and she accordingly seated
herself.
“I wanted you together,” began Sir Roderick, “to tell you a few truths.
I once believed in honest men.” He looked from one to the other; then
gave a chuckle, and choked. When he recovered, he added, meaningly:
“You, William, put an end to that. You made me wiser, much wiser.”
Lilia’s pale face flushed. Hugh met her glance of appeal, and turned
away. What could he do?
Mr. Pym looked gravely at his brother; then, half-turning to the others,
said:
“Pray, say what pleases you, Roderick; it will not hurt me.”
“You made a Diogenes of me,” went on Sir Roderick. “Well, at last, I
found a _man_. This is the man—the rock I am leaning against to die!”
There was silence. Whatever Roderick or his father may have felt, they
were silent; nor did they betray any emotion by glance or movement. But
Lilia knelt down and kissed the cold hand lying on the bed. At that
little spontaneous action Sir Roderick smiled, and Hugh began to believe
that Lilia’s heart was his.
“I knew I was done for after the accident,” he went on; “but as I had
found an honest man I didn’t mind. Where’s Mervyn?”
He roused himself, and struggled into a sitting posture.
“Don’t kneel there; fetch Mervyn, can’t you?” he said to Lilia,
querulously.
“Fetch him,” said Hugh, pleadingly.
He felt overwhelmed by this sudden and unexpected crisis in his life. He
pitied himself and each one of them for being, as it were, called to
arms without hint or warning of war. And Lilia—he felt almost as if her
holiest feelings were to be outraged. Yet, without troubling the dying
man, he could do nothing to protect her.
There was a hush in the sick chamber. Roderick stood leaning against a
wardrobe; Mr. Pym remained quietly seated as if he were on the
magisterial bench, or in his pew in church. Presently the door opened,
and Lilia came in, followed by Mr. Mervyn.
At the sight of him Sir Roderick gave a sort of grunt of satisfaction.
“You know what I want you for,” he said.
Mr. Mervyn’s pale face flushed, and he glanced uneasily round. Then he
went up to the bed and laid his hand kindly on Sir Roderick’s.
“Not exactly,” he said, cheerily. “You must tell me, for you said so
many things. I do not know which one of them you allude to.”
With evident difficulty, Sir Roderick raised his hand and pointed from
Hugh to Lilia.
“Marry them!” he gasped. “Here, now, at once!”
Mr. Mervyn looked helplessly at Hugh.
“What am I to do, Mr. Paull?” he said. “Lilia!”
Lilia had evidently not heard, or hearing, had not understood.
“What is it he wants?” she asked, coming to the bedside.
“Will you marry her now?” asked Sir Roderick, struggling away from Hugh,
so that he could look up into his face.
“If she consents,” said Hugh, looking fixedly at Lilia. But her eyes
were cast down: she was red as a rose—the picture of shame.
Mr. Pym jumped up, as if suddenly awakened from a stupor of
astonishment.
“I—I protest against this—this mad notion—this insult to my niece!” he
began, evidently angered beyond power of self-control.
Once more Sir Roderick chuckled.
“You protest against her money being her own, eh?” he said. “You would
like your handsome son to spend it on his women, eh? Stand back!” he
said, solemnly, raising his hand warningly as Roderick stepped forward,
white with passion. “Mervyn, marry them! Do you hear?”
“I cannot, my dear old friend; it is impossible. Think, I have no
license. To read any service would be mere waste of words——”
His speech was interrupted by a hoarse cry, as the dying man turned up
his glazing eyes and fell back into Hugh’s arms.
“Take them all away, and send the nurses,” said Hugh, peremptorily.
Mr. Pym and his son instantly retired, but Lilia pleaded to remain.
“Have mercy on me, and let me stay!” she said, turning from Mr. Mervyn
to Hugh with a piteous expression in her distended eyes.
“You shall stay,” said Hugh, tenderly; “only wait just a minute. Nurse!”
Mr. Mervyn took her to the window, and said all he could think of to
comfort her. He, like Hugh, sorry though he was, felt almost thankful to
Death for putting an end to the embarrassing position. But all he could
think of saying was nothing to the poor child in her agony, he saw that.
When the nurses had arranged the now unconscious man, under Hugh’s
direction, Hugh came across to the window.
“Coma has set in,” he said to them; “all pain and suffering are over for
him. But as this state remains somewhat of a mystery to us doctors—I
myself believe there may sometimes remain a super-conscious state we
know nothing about—will you come quite close to him, Lilia? Hold his
hand; let your head rest by him. We never know, it might comfort him!”
Lilia put out her hand, and, guided by him, reached the bed. Presently
the dying father and the living child were lying side by side, as
motionless as if both were dead. The nurses sat near, watching and
waiting. Mr. Mervyn and Hugh sat silently at the window, with plenty to
occupy their thoughts. The minutes were slowly ticked off by the old
clock outside the sick-room door, which presently, after some wheezing
sounds, struck one, hoarsely, in a cracked, aged tone.
One of the nurses rose with a warning “Mr. Paull.”
Hugh knew then what was before him. He went to the bedside, gently
roused Lilia, who seemed half-asleep, half-stupefied. Then followed the
feeling of the dead man’s pulse, the listening to the silent heart, the
mirror held over the blue lips—all in vain.
“Kiss him, dear,” said Hugh, tenderly, to Lilia.
She looked up at him with a wan, bewildered look—the look of a lost
child; then she flung her arms round her father, and the touch of his
icy face told her that she was an orphan.
She flung herself back with a shriek.
“You have let him die!” she cried, frantically, to Hugh. “How dared you?
Why did you? Oh father! come back, come back!”
“Lilia! you forget,” said Hugh, firmly, seizing her wrist. “Remember, we
cannot dictate to God!”
He threw all the will he was capable of into those words. To his relief,
he felt that he had some influence over his future wife. She recoiled,
he felt her stiffen; then she slowly turned her head towards him.
“He is gone? There is no hope?” she asked, quietly.
“No hope—_here_” said Hugh. “Now, you will be good, be worthy of him?
You will come away with me, _me_ (he trusted me, you know, dear), for a
little while? We will come back very, very soon!”
Like a child she held out her arms, and allowed him to assist her from
the bed, and to half-support, half-carry her from the room and
downstairs to the drawing-room, where, like a tired child, she sobbed
herself into calm, then sleep.
When she was soundly asleep upon the sofa, Hugh fetched Mrs. Mervyn.
“It is best as it is, is it not?” she asked him, somewhat timidly, by
which Hugh gathered that the proposed death-bed marriage was no secret.
“I hope so,” he said, ambiguously. Then, outwardly calm, inwardly racked
with mingled emotions, he turned to face his life under the new
conditions.