"AND THE LAST PANG SHALL TEAR THEE FROM HIS HEART."
It was supper-time, and Lavendale sat at the head of his table, with
Lady Polwhele on his right hand and Lady Judith on his left, in a room
brilliant with the light of multitudinous wax candles and the blaze of a
huge wood fire. It was a spacious apartment, with five long sash-windows
opening on to a terrace with a marble balustrade, and two flights of
steps leading to the lower level of the Italian garden--the prettiest
summer room in the house, and by no means to be despised as a winter
apartment when lighted and warmed as it was to-night.
Durnford and Irene had done everything to create an atmosphere of
brightness and gaiety throughout the house, most of all in this room
where the midnight hour was to be passed. They had summoned a little
band of fiddlers and pipers from Kingston, and these, stationed in the
hall, were to enliven the feast from time to time with their homely,
merry, old English tunes. The table was loaded with the usual
substantial fare; but Irene's light hands had assisted the housekeeper
in decorating the board with holly-berries and greenery, and such winter
flowers as the gardener could find for her in an age when the first
hothouse ever built in England was yet a novelty. The shining scarlet
berries, the rich red and purple and gold of the Bristol china, the
silver tankards and silver-gilt bowls shining under the light of the
candles or reflecting the flame of the fire, produced a dazzling effect.
"Why, this is truly cheerful!" cried Lady Polwhele; "and though I
over-eat myself at dinner, and have been cursedly cross with my cards
all the evening, I long to put a knife into that turkey."
"Will your ladyship operate upon the bird?" said Durnford, placing the
dish in front of the Dowager, who was a famous carver: "it will be a
kind of divine honours for him, and rank him at once among the
celestials."
Lady Polwhele squared her elbows, tucked up her ruffles, and proceeded
to dissect the turkey with the calm dexterity of a great surgeon.
The champagne corks began to fly and the knives to clatter amidst a
crescendo movement of talk and laughter, while Lavendale sat back in his
chair and conversed in half-whispers with Judith, who also leant back in
her chair, so that they two were, in a manner, apart from the
gormandisers and merrymakers at the table. He was looking better than he
had looked in the morning; but the glow on his cheek and the brightness
of his eye were but the transient effect of the Burgundy he had drunk at
dinner and the excitement of an evening at bassett.
He held his glass for a footman to fill with champagne, and drained it
at a gulp.
"Aren't you going to eat something?" asked Judith.
"Eat! no; in your society I am too ethereal to eat. Mind has the upper
hand of matter."
He drank his second glass of wine next moment.
"Champagne does not count, I suppose?" said Judith; "and yet I never
heard of sylphs that were wine-bibbers."
"A bottle of champagne is no more to me than a drop of dew to a sylph:
there is nothing earthy about it. Look at Lady Polwhele devouring turkey
and ham with the appetite of a chairman, and yet after supper she will
be as _évaporée_ as you please--a bundle of nerves and emotions. Hark!"
It was the eight-day clock in the hall striking the hour. Lavendale had
made no comment upon the passage of time hitherto, and all his friends
were inwardly chuckling over the trick that had been played him, which
had been explained to them as a wager of Bolingbroke's. Could his
lordship cheat his host out of an hour before the end of the year, he
was to win a hundred guineas.
This time Lavendale stopped talking, listened intently, and counted
every stroke.
"Eleven!" he exclaimed; "how late we are supping!"
"We sat so long at that devilish game," said Judith, who had been a
heavy loser. "Well, I must resign myself to be unlucky at cards, if
'tis but at that price one can be fortunate in love."
To her, in a quarter of an hour's confidential talk after dinner,
Herrick had told much more of the truth than had been imparted to
Lavendale's other guests. He had implored her to do her utmost to
distract her lover, to prevent his thinking his own thoughts, were it
possible; to absorb him, interest him, bewitch him, as only she could.
"Alas, I fear all my weapons are stale, my armoury is used up," she
said, with a sigh; "we have been so deep in love with each other, so
frank in our love-making for this last happy week, that I have no
treasures of tenderness, no refinement of coquetry in reserve. Like
Juliet, I have been too lightly won, too frank--I have too openly
adored. O Durnford, if I am to lose him at last, I shall go stark mad!"
"You will not lose him, if you can beguile him to forget his waking
dream."
"Was it a dream? Was it not the presage of death, rather a physical
influence, the poor decaying body conscious of the coming change? He had
a look of death this morning. There was an ashy grayness upon his face
that horrified me. Yes, I was racked with despair in the midst of our
talk of future happiness. And now you bid me be gay, when my heart sinks
within me every time I look at him."
In spite of soul-devouring anxiety, Lady Judith had contrived to be
brilliantly gay all the evening: as gay as Mrs. Oldfield in her most
vivacious character, with all the charms of fashionable coquetry and
modish insolence. She had laughed at her own losses, had challenged
Lavendale and Bolingbroke to the wildest wagers about the cards, had
been the leading spirit in reckless revelry, and had exercised a
fascination upon her lover which had made him forget everything but that
beautiful creature, leaning over the table with round white arms
glittering with diamonds, and the famous Topsparkle necklace flashing
upon the loveliest, whitest neck in England, showing all the whiter
against the lady's black velvet weeds. Never had those glorious eyes
shone with so brilliant a light; and Lavendale knew not that it was the
wild lustre of despair. Her voice, her eyes, the caressing sweetness in
every word which she addressed to him, might have made Damiens forget
his agony upon the wheel.
So it had come to eleven by the hall clock, and Lavendale had been
scarce conscious of the passage of time.
"One more hour," he said, with sudden gravity, "and the year of his
Majesty's accession will be over."
"Let us be merry while it lasts," said Judith; "let us see the old year
out with joyous spirits. What say you to a dance by and by, when these
people have finished their gormandising?"
"I will do anything you bid me--dance or sing, preach a sermon or throw
the dice."
"No, you shall not dance. You are not strong enough for their robust
country dances, and a minuet is too slow and solemn, though you and I
excel in the figure. The other butterflies shall dance, and you and I
will look on like king and queen. But let them finish their supper
first; and we must have some toasts, political, friendly, sentimental.
We will drink to the King over the water out of compliment to
Bolingbroke. We will drink George and Caroline because they are good
honest souls, and our very intimate friends. We will drink to anybody
and everybody, were it only for the sake of drinking."
"My lovely Bacchanalian," he murmured tenderly, "even vice is beautiful
when you inspire it."
"O, 'tis hardly a vice to drown the dying year in good wine. I'm sure,
could old Father Time have a voice in the matter he would like to die
like Clarence in a butt of Malmsey," laughed Judith, holding out her
glass to be filled. She had neither eaten nor drunk until this moment,
and now her lips scarce touched the brim of her glass: she sat looking
at Lavendale, counting the moments as she watched him.
The toasting began presently. Lord Bolingbroke rose, and in a speech
full of veiled meaning proposed the King, waving his glass lightly over
a great silver dish of rose-water which the butler had placed in front
of him. Some drank and some refused, while everybody laughed.
"Your lordship might see the inside of the Tower for that pretty
oration, were one of us minded to turn traitor," said Asterley, as he
set down his empty glass.
"I am not afraid," answered Bolingbroke. "I have a good many friends
capable of playing Judas, but not one whose word would be taken without
confirmatory evidence."
"As you are in the house of a man who owes title and estate to a staunch
adherence to Whig principles in the person of his ancestors, I think you
should drink to her Majesty Queen Caroline, who is a much better King
than her husband," said Lavendale.
"O, to Caroline by all means," cried Bolingbroke; "Caroline is a capital
fellow." And the Queen's health was drunk upstanding, with three times
three.
Then came the toast of Woman, Wit, and Beauty, coupled with the name of
Lady Judith Topsparkle, in a brilliant speech from Bolingbroke, who had
swallowed as much champagne as would have made a lesser man dead-drunk,
but who was only pleasantly elevated, a more vivid brightness in his
flashing eyes, a more commanding air in his fine and somewhat portly
person. He spoke for twenty minutes at a stretch, and the company all
hung upon his words with delight--could have listened to that gay
spontaneous eloquence for an hour.
"Woman, wit, beauty, and the highest exemplar of all three, Lady Judith
Topsparkle," cried Asterley, standing upon his chair, and waving his
glass above his head.
There was a roar of applause, a guzzling of wine, a crash of shivered
glass, as the more reckless drinkers flung their empty glasses across
their shoulders; and then above that medley of sounds, came silver clear
the striking of the clock in the hall.
Midnight.
Lavendale counted the strokes, listening with breathless intensity, his
hand inside his waistcoat pressed nervously against his heart.
The last stroke sounded, and he lived. The beating of his heart seemed
to him calmer and more regular than it had been all day. He had no sense
of faintness or failing strength--a keener life rather, a quicker
circulation in all his veins, a sense of lightness and well-being, as
of one who had cast off some heavy burden.
"Gentlemen," he said, "look at your watches and tell me--is that clock
right?"
His friends pulled out their watches and consulted them with the most
natural air in the world.
"Yes, your clock is right enough," said Bolingbroke.
"'Tis three minutes slow by my timekeeper," said Asterley: "I take it
the new year is just three minutes old."
"Then 'twas an hallucination," cried Lavendale, "and I am a free man."
The revulsion of feeling overpowered him, and he broke into a
half-hysterical sob; but Judith's hand upon his shoulder calmed him
again, and he sat by her side as the fiddles and flutes in the hall
struck up a joyous air, and the revellers left the table.
"Now for a dance," exclaimed Judith: "we have drunk out the old year;
let us dance in the new one. Lady Polwhele, I'll wager those girlish
feet of yours are impatient for a jig."
"Faith, my dear Judith, my feet don't feel a day older than when
William III. was king, and Lady Orkney and I were rivals," protested the
Dowager, "and I am as ready to dance as the youngest of you."
"And yet I know for certain that she was a martyr to podagra all last
summer, and could hardly hobble from the Rooms to her chair when she was
at the Bath," whispered Lady Bolingbroke to Mrs. Asterley.
They all trooped out into the great oak-panelled hall, and a country
dance was arranged in a trice, Durnford and Irene leading, as married
lovers, who might be forgiven if they were still silly enough to like
dancing with each other. Lavendale and Judith sat in the chimney-corner
and looked on. The tall eight-day clock was opposite to them, and he
looked up now and then at the hands.
Twenty minutes past twelve.
"We've jockeyed the ghost, I think," whispered Bolingbroke to Durnford,
in a pause of the dance. "See how much better and brighter Lavendale
looks. He was ready to expire of his own sick fancy. To cure that was to
cure him."
Never had Lavendale felt happier. Yes, he told himself, he had been
deceived by his own imagination. Remorse or unquiet love had conjured up
the vision, had evoked the warning. 'Twas well if it had won him to
repent the past, to think more seriously of the future. The solemn
thoughts engendered of that strange experience had confirmed him in his
desire to lead a better life. It was well, altogether well with him, as
he sat by Judith's side in the ruddy fire-glow, and watched the moving
figures in the dance, the long line of undulating forms, the lifted arms
and bended necks, the graceful play of curving throats and slender
waists, light talk and laughter blending with the music in _sotto voce_
accompaniment. Even Lady Polwhele looked to advantage in a country
dance. She had been taught by a famous French master at a time when
dancing was a fine art, and she had all the stately graces and graceful
freedoms of the highest school.
Yes, it was a pretty sight, Lavendale thought, a prodigiously pleasant
sight; but it all had a dream-like air, as everything seemed to have
to-night. Even Judith's face as he gazed at it had the look of a face
in a dream. There was an unreality about all things that he looked upon.
Indeed, nothing in his life had seemed real since that vision and that
mystic voice in the winter dusk last night.
Suddenly those tripping figures reeled and rocked as he gazed at them,
and then the perspective of the hall seemed to lengthen out into
infinite distance, and then a veil of semi-darkness swept over all
things, and he staggered to his feet.
"Air, air! I am choking!" he cried hoarsely.
That hoarse strange cry stopped the dance as by the stroke of an
enchanter's wand. Bolingbroke ran to the hall-door, and threw it wide
open. A rush of cold air streamed into the hall, and blew that darkening
veil off the picture.
"Thank God," said Lavendale, "I can breathe again! Pray pardon me,
ladies, and go on with your dance," he added courteously; and then,
half-leaning upon Bolingbroke, he walked slowly out to the terrace in
front of the porch, Judith accompanying him.
Here he sat upon a stone bench, and the cool still night restored all
his senses.
"I am well now, my dear friend," he said to Bolingbroke; "'twas only a
passing faintness. The fumes of the log fire stupefied me."
"And here you will catch a consumption, if you sit in this cold air,"
returned his friend, while Judith hung over him with a white scared
face, full of keenest anxiety.
"It is not cold, but if you are afraid of your gout--"
"I am, my dear Lavendale, so I will leave Lady Judith to take care of
you for a few minutes--I urgently advise you to stay no longer than
that. Are you sure you are quite recovered?"
"Quite recovered. Infinitely happy," murmured Lavendale, in a dreamy
voice, with his hand in Judith's, looking up at her as she stood by his
side.
Bolingbroke left them discreetly. To the old intriguer it seemed the
most natural thing in the world to leave those two alone together.
"How fond they are of each other!" he said to himself; "'tis a pity poor
Lavendale is so marked for death. And yet perhaps he may live long
enough for them to get tired of each other; so short a time is
sometimes long enough for satiety."
* * * * *
"My beloved, a few minutes ago I thought I was dying," said Lavendale,
in a low voice. "Had that deadly swooning come about an hour earlier, I
should have said to myself, 'This is the stroke of death.'"
"Why, dearest love?"
"Because it has been prophesied to me that I should die at midnight."
"Idle prophecy. Midnight is past, and we are here, you and I together,
happy in each other's love," said Judith.
"You are trembling in every limb!"
"It is the cold."
"No, it is not the cold, Judith: your face is full of fear. Do you see
death in mine?"
"I see only love, infinite love, the promise of our new life in the glad
new year."
"Judith," he murmured, leaning his head against her bosom as she leant
over him, "I know not if I am happy or miserable; I know only that I am
with you: past and future are lost in darkness. But indeed you are
shivering. You are not cold, are you, love? It is such a lovely night,
so still, so calm."
It was one of those exquisite nights which come sometimes in mid-winter.
Not a breath of wind stirred the light leafage of the shrubs, or waved
the pine-tops yonder. A light fall of snow had whitened the
garden-walks, but left the shrubberies untouched. The moon was at the
full, and every line and every leaf showed clear in that silver light.
The distant landscape glimmered in a luminous haze, deepening to purple
as it touched the horizon; while here and there in the valley a glint of
brighter silver showed where the river wound among low hills and dusky
islets towards the busier world beyond.
Suddenly, silver sweet in the moonlight and the silence, came the
musical fall of a peal of bells--joy-bells from the distant tower of
Flamestead Church--joy-bells ringing in the new year.
"My God!" cried Lavendale, "the clocks were wrong!"
He gazed at Judith with wide distended eyes, and the ghastly pallor on
his face took a more livid hue.
"Beloved, my mother's ghost spoke truth," he said: "death calls me with
the stroke of midnight. Beloved, beloved, never, never, never to be
mine! But O, 'tis more blessed than all I have known of life to die
here--thus."
His head was on her breast, her arms were wreathed round him, supporting
that heavy brow, on which the death-dews were gathering. Yes, it was
death. The cord, worn to attenuation long ago, had snapped at last; the
last sands of that wasted life had run out; and just when life seemed
worth living, death called the repentant sinner from the arms of love.
From the earthly love to love beyond, from the known to the unknown. In
that swift, sudden passage from life to death, he had been less of an
infidel than in the active life behind him. It had seemed to him that a
gate opened into the dim distance of eternity; that he stretched out his
arms to some one or to something that called and beckoned; that he went
not to outer darkness and extinction, but to a new existence. Yet the
wrench was scarce less bitter, since it parted him from the woman he
loved.
Friendly hands carried that lifeless form into the old house, and laid
the dead Lord Lavendale upon the bed where his father had lain before
him in the same funeral solemnity. Curtains and blinds were drawn in all
the windows; the guests, who had been so merry at the feast on New
Year's Eve, hurried off on New Year's morning as fast as coach-horses
could be got to carry them away; and the year began at Lavendale Manor
in the shadow of mourning. Only Herrick and Irene stayed in the darkened
house, and watched and prayed in the death-chamber.
And so the house of Lavendale expired with its last representative. Name
and race vanished suddenly from the eyes of men like a ship that
founders at sea.
* * * * *
Deeper yet drew the death shadows on Lavendale Manor House, for on the
morning of Lord Lavendale's funeral the old Venetian chemist was found
cold and stark beside his furnace, the elixir of life, the universal
panacea, simmering in the crucible beside him, and his attenuated
fingers clasping one of those antique guides to immortality, fraught
with the wisdom of old Arabia, which had been his solace and delight.
The shock of his friend and patron's death had accelerated the
inevitable end. The lamp of life, nursed in solitude, economised by
habits of exceptional temperance, had burned to the last drop of oil,
and the discoverer, baulked in all his searching after the supernatural,
had yet succeeded in living to his hundred and eleventh year.
* * * * *
Three years afterwards, and Herrick and Irene were living with their two
children at Lavendale Manor, and the fences that parted manor and court
had been thrown down, and the two estates were as one, the old squire
having settled Fairmile Court and all its belongings upon his adopted
daughter, whose husband was to assume the name of Bosworth in addition
to his own, and to sign himself Durnford-Bosworth henceforward. Time is
the best of all peace-makers, and after nursing his wrath for a year or
two Roland Bosworth had discovered that the orphan he had picked up on
Flamestead Common was dearer to him than resentment or wounded pride.
Perhaps he was all the better pleased to endow the changeling since Mr.
Topsparkle's magnificent bequest had made her independent of his bounty.
To Lavendale Manor every New Year's Eve comes a pensive lady to pass sad
hours in solitude and silence and pious prayers and meditations in those
rooms which were once so full of mirth. Alone she paces the terrace in
moonlight or in darkness: alone she keeps her midnight vigil, and prays
and weeps upon that stone bench where her lover died.
Irene and her husband respect the mourner's solitude, and in their pity
for an inconsolable grief they scarce lament the change in that
beautiful face which is but too prophetic of doom. Not again will that
widowed heart ache at the sound of New Year joy-bells, for their merry
peal will ring above her grave.
THE END.
End of Project Gutenberg's Mohawks, Volume 3 of 3, by Mary Elizabeth Braddon