THE LAST VISION.
I had engaged to accompany one of Charley’s barrister-friends, in whose
society I had found considerable satisfaction, to his father’s
house--to spend the evening with some friends of the family. The
gathering was chiefly for talk, and was a kind of thing I disliked,
finding its aimlessness and flicker depressing. Indeed, partly from the
peculiar circumstances of my childhood, partly from what I had
suffered, I always found my spirits highest when alone. Still, the
study of humanity apart, I felt that I ought not to shut myself out
from my kind, but endure some little irksomeness, if only for the sake
of keeping alive that surface friendliness which has its value in the
nourishment of the deeper affections. On this particular occasion,
however, I yielded the more willingly that, in the revival of various
memories of Charley, it had occurred to me that I once heard him say
that his sister had a regard for one of the ladies of the family.
There were not many people in the drawing-room when we arrived, and my
friend’s mother alone was there to entertain them. With her I was
chatting when one of her daughters entered, accompanied by a lady in
mourning. For one moment I felt as if on the borders of insanity. My
brain seemed to surge like the waves of a wind-tormented tide, so that
I dared not make a single step forward lest my limbs should disobey me.
It was indeed Mary Osborne; but oh, how changed! The rather full face
had grown delicate and thin, and the fine pure complexion if possible
finer and purer, but certainly more ethereal and evanescent. It was as
if suffering had removed some substance unapt, [Footnote: Spenser’s
‘Hymne in Honour of Beautie.’] and rendered her body a better-fitting
garment for her soul. Her face, which had before required the softening
influences of sleep and dreams to give it the plasticity necessary for
complete expression, was now full of a repressed expression, if I may
be allowed the phrase--a latent something ever on the tremble, ever on
the point of breaking forth. It was as if the nerves had grown finer,
more tremulous, or, rather, more vibrative. Touched to finer issues
they could never have been, but suffering had given them a more
responsive thrill. In a word, she was the Athanasia of my dream, not
the Mary Osborne of the Moldwarp library.
Conquering myself at last, and seeing a favourable opportunity, I
approached her. I think the fear lest her father should enter gave me
the final impulse; otherwise I could have been contented to gaze on her
for hours in motionless silence.
‘May I speak to you, Mary?’ I said.
She lifted her eyes and her whole face towards mine, without a smile,
without a word. Her features remained perfectly still, but, like the
outbreak of a fountain, the tears rushed into her eyes and overflowed
in silent weeping. Not a sob, not a convulsive movement, accompanied
their flow.
‘Is your father here?’ I asked.
She shook her head.
‘I thought you were abroad somewhere--I did not know where.’
Again she shook her head. She dared not speak, knowing that if she made
the attempt she must break down.
‘I will go away till you can bear the sight of me,’ I said. She
half-stretched out a thin white hand, but whether to detain me or bid
me farewell I do not know, for it dropped again on her knee.
[Illustration: “I will come to you by and by,” I said.]
‘I will come to you by-and-by,’ I said, and moved away. The rooms
rapidly filled, and in a few minutes I could not see the corner where I
had left her. I endured everything for awhile, and then made my way
back to it; but she was gone, and I could find her nowhere. A lady
began to sing. When the applause which followed her performance was
over, my friend, who happened to be near me, turned abruptly and said,
‘Now, Cumbermede, _you_ sing.’
The truth was that, since I had loved Mary Osborne, I had attempted to
cultivate a certain small gift of song which I thought I possessed. I
dared not touch any existent music, for I was certain I should break
down; but having a faculty--somewhat thin, I fear--for writing songs,
and finding that a shadowy air always accompanied the birth of the
words, I had presumed to study music a little, in the hope of becoming
able to fix the melody--the twin sister of the song. I had made some
progress, and had grown able to write down a simple thought. There was
little presumption, then, in venturing my voice, limited as was its
scope, upon a trifle of my own. Tempted by the opportunity of realizing
hopes consciously wild, I obeyed my friend, and, sitting down to the
instrument in some trepidation, sang the following verses--
I dreamed that I woke from a dream,
And the house was full of light;
At the window two angel Sorrows
Held back the curtains of night.
The door was wide, and the house
Was full of the morning wind;
At the door two armed warders
Stood silent, with faces blind.
I ran to the open door,
For the wind of the world was sweet;
The warders with crossing weapons
Turned back my issuing feet.
I ran to the shining windows--
There the winged Sorrows stood;
Silent they held the curtains,
And the light fell through in a flood.
I clomb to the highest window--
Ah! there, with shadowed brow,
Stood one lonely radiant Sorrow,
And that, my love, was thou.
I could not have sung this in public, but that no one would suspect it
was my own, or was in the least likely to understand a word of
it--except her for whose ears and heart it was intended.
As soon as I had finished, I rose, and once more went searching for
Mary. But as I looked, sadly fearing she was gone, I heard her voice
close behind me.
‘Are those verses your own, Mr Cumbermede?’ she asked, almost in a
whisper.
I turned trembling. Her lovely face was looking up at me.
‘Yes,’ I answered--‘as much my own as that I believe they are not to be
found anywhere. But they were given to me rather than made by me.’
‘Would you let me have them? I am not sure that I understand them.’
‘I am not sure that I understand them myself. They are for the heart
rather than the mind. Of course you shall have them. They were written
for you. All I have, all I am, is yours.’
Her face flushed, and grew pale again instantly.
‘You must not talk so,’ she said. ‘Remember.’
‘I can never forget. I do not know why you say _remember_.’
‘On second thoughts, I must not have the verses. I beg your pardon.’
‘Mary, you bewilder me. I have no right to ask you to explain, except
that you speak as if I must understand. What have they been telling you
about me?’
‘Nothing--at least nothing that--’
She paused.
‘I try to live innocently, and were it only for your sake, shall never
stop searching for the thread of life in its ravelled skein.’
‘Do not say for _my_ sake, Mr Cumbermede. That means nothing. Say for
your own sake, if not for God’s.’
‘If _you_ are going to turn away from me, I don’t mind how soon I
follow Charley.’
All this was said in a half-whisper, I bending towards her where she
sat, a little sheltered by one of a pair of folding doors. My heart was
like to break--or rather it seemed to have vanished out of me
altogether, lost in a gulf of emptiness. Was this all? Was this the end
of my dreaming? To be thus pushed aside by the angel of my
resurrection?
‘Hush! hush!’ she said kindly. ‘You must have many friends. But--’
‘But you will be my friend no more? Is that it, Mary? Oh, if you knew
all! And you are never, never to know it!’
Her still face was once more streaming with tears. I choked mine back,
terrified at the thought of being observed; and without even offering
my hand, left her and made my way through the crowd to the stair. On
the landing I met Geoffrey Brotherton. We stared each other in the face
and passed.
I did not sleep much that night, and when I did sleep, woke from one
wretched dream after another, now crying aloud, and now weeping. What
could I have done? or rather, what could any one have told her I had
done to make her behave thus to me? She did not look angry--or even
displeased--only sorrowful, very sorrowful; and she seemed to take it
for granted I knew what it meant. When at length I finally woke after
an hour of less troubled sleep, I found some difficulty in convincing
myself that the real occurrences of the night before had not been one
of the many troubled dreams that had scared my repose. Even after the
dreams had all vanished, and the facts remained, they still appeared
more like a dim dream of the dead--the vision of Mary was so wan and
hopeless, memory alone looking out from her worn countenance. There had
been no warmth in her greeting, no resentment in her aspect; we met as
if we had parted but an hour before, only that an open grave was
between us, across which we talked in the voice of dreamers. She had
sought to raise no barrier between us, just because we _could_ not
meet, save as one of the dead and one of the living. What could it
mean? But with the growing day awoke a little courage. I would at least
try to find out what it meant. Surely _all_ my dreams were not to
vanish like the mist of the morning! To lose my dreams would be far
worse than to lose the so-called realities of life. What were these to
me? What value lay in such reality? Even God was as yet so dim and far
off as to seem rather in the region of dreams--of those true dreams, I
hoped, that shadowed forth the real--than in the actual visible
present. ‘Still,’ I said to myself, ‘she had not cast me off; she did
not refuse to know me; she did ask for my song, and I will send it.’
I wrote it out, adding a stanza to the verses:--
I bowed my head before her,
And stood trembling in the light;
She dropped the heavy curtain,
And the house was full of night.
I then sought my friend’s chambers.
‘I was not aware you knew the Osbornes,’ I said. ‘I wonder you never
told me, seeing Charley and you were such friends.’
‘I never saw one of them till last night. My sister and she knew each
other some time ago, and have met again of late. What a lovely creature
she is! But what became of you last night? You must have left before
any one else.’
‘I didn’t feel well.’
‘You don’t look the thing.’
‘I confess meeting Miss Osborne rather upset me.’
‘It had the same effect on her. She was quite ill, my sister said, this
morning. No wonder! Poor Charley! I always had a painful feeling that
he would come to grief somehow.’
‘Let’s hope he’s come to something else by this time, Marston,’ I said.
‘Amen,’ he returned.
‘Is her father or mother with her?’
‘No. They are to fetch her away--next week, I think it is.’ I had now
no fear of my communication falling into other hands, and therefore
sent the song by post, with a note, in which I begged her to let me
know if I had done anything to offend her. Next morning I received the
following reply:
‘No, Wilfrid--for Charley’s sake, I must call you by your name--you
have done nothing to offend me. Thank you for the song. I did not want
you to send it, but I will keep it. You must not write to me again. Do
not forget what we used to write about. God’s ways are not ours. Your
friend, Mary Osborne.’
I rose and went out, not knowing whither. Half-stunned, I roamed the
streets. I ate nothing that day, and when towards night I found myself
near my chambers, I walked in as I had come out, having no intent, no
future. I felt very sick, and threw myself on my bed. There I passed
the night, half in sleep, half in helpless prostration. When I look
back, it seems as if some spiritual narcotic must have been given me,
else how should the terrible time have passed and left me alive? When I
came to myself, I found I was ill, and I longed to hide my head in the
nest of my childhood. I had always looked on the Moat as my refuge at
the last; now it seemed the only desirable thing--a lonely nook, in
which to lie down and end the dream there begun--either, as it now
seemed, in an eternal sleep, or the inburst of a dreary light. After
the last refuge it could afford me it must pass from my hold; but I was
yet able to determine whither. I rose and went to Marston.
‘Marston,’ I said, ‘I want to make my will.’
‘All right!’ he returned; ‘but you look as if you meant to register it
as well. You’ve got a feverish cold; I see it in your eyes. Come along.
I’ll go home with you, and fetch a friend of mine, who will give you
something to do you good.’
‘I can’t rest till I have made my will,’ I persisted.
‘Well, there’s no harm in that,’ he rejoined. ‘It won’t take long, I
dare say.’
‘It needn’t anyhow. I only want to leave the small real property I have
to Miss Osborne, and the still smaller-personal property to yourself.’
He laughed.
‘All right, old boy! I haven’t the slightest objection to your willing
your traps to me, but every objection in the world to your _leaving_
them. To be sure, every man, with anything to leave, ought to make his
will betimes;--so fire away.’
In a little while the draught was finished.
‘I shall have it ready for your signature by to-morrow,’ he said.
I insisted it should be done at once. I was going home, I said. He
yielded. The will was engrossed, signed, and witnessed that same
morning; and in the afternoon I set out, the first part of the journey
by rail, for the Moat.