Hush!
Pale and silent those three beautiful sisters sat. The horrible quietude
of a suspense that had grown all but insupportable oppressed the guests
of Lady Mardykes, and something like the numbness of despair had reduced
her to silence, the dreadful counterfeit of peace.
Sir Bale Mardykes on a sudden softly entered the room. Reflected from
the floor near the window, the white moonlight somehow gave to his fixed
features the character of a smile. With a warning gesture, as he came
in, he placed his finger to his lips, as if to enjoin silence; and then,
having successively pressed the hands of his two sisters-in-law, he
stooped over his almost fainting wife, and twice pressed her cold
forehead with his lips; and so, without a word, he went softly from the
room.
Some seconds elapsed before Lady Walsingham, recovering her presence of
mind, with one of the candlesticks from the table in her hand, opened
the door and followed.
She saw Sir Bale mount the last stair of the broad flight visible from
the hall, and candle in hand turn the corner of the massive banister,
and as the light thrown from his candle showed, he continued, without
hurry, to ascend the second flight.
With the irrepressible curiosity of horror she continued to follow him
at a distance.
She saw him enter his own private room, and close the door.
Continuing to follow she placed herself noiselessly at the door of the
apartment, and in breathless silence, with a throbbing heart, listened
for what should pass.
She distinctly heard Sir Bale pace the floor up and down for some time,
and then, after a pause, a sound as if some one had thrown himself
heavily on the bed. A silence followed, during which her sisters, who
had followed more timidly, joined her. She warned them with a look and
gesture to be silent.
Lady Haworth stood a little behind, her white lips moving, and her hands
clasped in a silent agony of prayer. Lady Mardykes leaned against the
massive oak door-case.
With her hand raised to her ear, and her lips parted, Lady Walsingham
listened for some seconds--for a minute, two minutes, three. At last,
losing heart, she seized the handle in her panic, and turned it sharply.
The door was locked on the inside, but some one close to it said from
within, "Hush, hush!"
Much alarmed now, the same lady knocked violently at the door. No answer
was returned.
She knocked again more violently, and shook the door with all her
fragile force. It was something of horror in her countenance as she did
so, that, no doubt, terrified Lady Mardykes, who with a loud and long
scream sank in a swoon upon the floor.
The servants, alarmed by these sounds, were speedily in the gallery.
Lady Mardykes was carried to her room, and laid upon her bed; her
sister, Lady Haworth, accompanying her. In the meantime the door was
forced. Sir Bale Mardykes was found stretched upon his bed.
Those who have once seen it, will not mistake the aspect of death. Here,
in Sir Bale Mardykes' room, in his bed, in his clothes, is a stranger,
grim and awful; in a few days to be insupportable, and to pass alone
into the prison-house, and to be seen no more.
Where is Sir Bale Mardykes now, whose roof-tree and whose place at board
and bed will know him no more? Here lies a chap-fallen, fish-eyed image,
chilling already into clay, and stiffening in every joint.
There is a marble monument in the pretty church of Golden Friars. It
stands at the left side of what antiquarians call "the high altar." Two
pillars at each end support an arch with several armorial bearings on as
many shields sculptured above. Beneath, on a marble flooring raised some
four feet, with a cornice round, lies Sir Bale Mardykes, of Mardykes
Hall, ninth Baronet of that ancient family, chiseled in marble with
knee-breeches and buckled-shoes, and _ailes de pigeon_, and
single-breasted coat and long waist-coat, ruffles and sword, such as
gentlemen wore about the year 1770, and bearing a strong resemblance to
the features of the second Charles. On the broad marble which forms the
background is inscribed an epitaph, which has perpetuated to our times
the estimate formed by his "inconsolable widow," the Dowager Lady
Mardykes, of the virtues and accomplishments of her deceased lord.
Lady Walsingham would have qualified two or three of the more
highly-coloured hyperboles, at which the Golden Friars of those days
sniffed and tittered. They don't signify now; there is no contemporary
left to laugh or whisper. And if there be not much that is true in the
letter of that inscription, it at least perpetuates something that _is_
true--that wonderful glorificaion of partisanship, the affection of an
idolising wife.
Lady Mardykes, a few days after the funeral, left Mardykes Hall for
ever. She lived a great deal with her sister, Lady Walsingham; and died,
as a line cut at the foot of Sir Bale Mardykes' epitaph records, in the
year 1790; her remains being laid beside those of her beloved husband in
Golden Friars.
The estates had come to Sir Bale Mardykes free of entail. He had been
pottering over a will, but it was never completed, nor even quite
planned; and after much doubt and scrutiny, it was at last ascertained
that, in default of a will and of issue, a clause in the
marriage-settlement gave the entire estates to the Dowager Lady
Mardykes.
By her will she bequeathed the estates to "her cousin, also a kinsman of
the late Sir Bale Mardykes her husband," William Feltram, on condition
of his assuming the name and arms of Mardykes, the arms of Feltram being
quartered in the shield.
Thus was oddly fulfilled the prediction which Philip Feltram had
repeated, that the estates of Mardykes were to pass into the hands of a
Feltram.
About the year 1795 the baronetage was revived, and William Feltram
enjoyed the title for fifteen years, as Sir William Mardykes.