That was almost the last of those happy autumn days. Winter fell upon
the country suddenly with nipping cold. The mountains, always sombre,
lowered in great tumbled masses from under the heavy clouds that
seldom rose from their summits. Terrible gales kept the sea in
torment, and the voice of its rage and pain filled Castletownrock
without ceasing. Torrents of rain tore up the roads, and rendered them
almost impassable. There was stolid endurance and suffering written on
every face out of doors, while within the people cowered over their
peat fires, a prey to hunger, cold, and depression. Draughts made
merry through the large rooms and passages in Captain Caldwell's
house; the wind howled in the chimneys, rattled at the windows, and
whistled at the keyholes, especially at night, when Beth would hide
her head under the bed-clothes to keep out the racket, or, in another
mood, lie and listen to it, and imagine herself out in the storm, till
her nerves were strung to a state of ecstatic tension, and her mind
fairly revelled in the sense of danger. When her father was at home in
the evening, she would sit still beside the fire in the sitting-room,
listening in breathless awe, and excitement wholly pleasurable, to the
gale raging without; but if Captain Caldwell had not returned, as
frequently happened now that the days were short, and the roads so
bad, well knowing the risks he ran, she would see the car upset a
hundred times, and hear the rattle of musketry in every blast that
shook the house, and so share silently, but to the full, the terrible
anxiety which kept her mother pacing up and down, up and down, unable
to settle to anything until he entered and sank into a seat, often so
exhausted that it was hard to rouse him to change his dripping
clothes. His duties, always honourably performed whatever the risk to
himself, were far too severe for him, and he was rapidly becoming a
wreck;--nervous, liverish, a martyr to headache, and a slave to
stimulants, although not a drunkard--he only took enough to whip him
up to his work. His digestion too had become seriously impaired, and
he had no natural appetite for anything. He was fond of his children,
and proud of them, but had hitherto been too irritable to contribute
anything to their happiness; on the contrary, his name was a terror to
them, and "Hush, papa has come in!" was enough at any time to damp
their wildest spirits. Now, however, he suffered more from depression
than from irritability, and would cower over the fire on stormy days
in a state of despondency which was reflected in every face, taking
no notice of any of them. The children would watch him furtively in
close silent sympathy, sitting still and whispering for fear of
disturbing him; and if perchance they saw him smile, and a look of
relief came into their mother's anxious face, their own spirits went
up on the instant. But everything was against him. The damp came up
from the flags in the sitting-room through the cocoanut matting and
the thick carpet that covered it, which it defaced in great patches.
Close to the fire the wires of the piano rusted, and had to be rubbed
and rubbed every day, or half the notes went dumb. The paper, a rare
luxury in those parts, began to drop from the walls. Great turf-fires
were constantly kept up, but the damp stole a march on them when they
smouldered in the night, and made mildew-marks upon everything.
Good food and cooking would have helped Captain Caldwell, but the food
was indifferent, and there were no cooks to be had in the country.
Biddy had never seen such a thing as a kitchen-range before she took
the situation, and when she first had to use the oven, she put the
turf on the bottom shelf in order to heat the top one. Mrs. Caldwell
made what were superhuman efforts to a woman of her training and
constitution, to keep the servants up to the mark, and grew grey in
the endeavour; but Mrs. Caldwell in the kitchen was like a racehorse
at the plough; and even if she had been a born housewife, she could
have done little with servants who would do nothing themselves except
under her eyes, and stole everything they could lay their hands on,
including the salt out of the salt-cellars between meals, if it were
not locked up.
Towards the end of January, Captain Caldwell was ill in bed; he had
wet cloths on his head, and seemed as if he could hardly speak. Beth
hung about his door all day, watching for opportunities to steal in.
Mamma always sent her away if she could, but if papa heard her, he
would whisper, "Let the child come in," and then mamma would let her
in, but would still look cross. And Beth sat at one side of the bed,
and mamma sat on the other, and no one spoke except papa sometimes;
only you could seldom understand what he said. And mamma cried, but
Beth did not. She ached too much inside for that. You can't cry when
you ache so much.
Beth day after day sat with her hands folded on her lap, and her feet
dangling from a chair that was much too high for her, watching her
father with an intensity of silent anxiety that was terrible to
witness in so young a child. Her mother might have beaten her to
death, but she could never have dislodged her from the room once she
had her father's leave to stay there. Mrs. Caldwell rarely beat her
now, however; she generally ignored her; so Beth came and went as she
chose. She would climb up on to the bed when there was nobody in the
room, and kiss the curls of papa's thick glossy black hair so softly
that he never knew, except once, when he caught her, and smiled. His
dark face grew grey in bed, and his blue eyes sunken and haggard; but
he battled it out that time, and slowly began to recover.
Beth was sitting in her usual place beside her father's bed one day
when the doctor came and discovered her. He was standing on the other
side of the bed, and exclaimed, "Why, it's all eyes!"
"Yes, it's a queer pixie," her father said. "But it's going to do
something some day, or _I'm_ much mistaken."
"It's going to make a nuisance of itself if you put such nonsense into
its head, or I'm much mistaken," Mrs. Caldwell observed.
"I shall _not_ make a nuisance of myself," Beth indignantly protested.
"I shall never be able to make you understand, Caroline," Captain
Caldwell exclaimed. "Little pitchers are generally bad enough, but
when there is large intelligence added to the long ears, they're the
devil."
Before the doctor left he said to Mrs. Caldwell, "We must keep our
patient amused, you know."
"O doctor!" Beth exclaimed, clasping her hands in her earnestness, "do
you think if Sophie Keene came?"
The doctor burst into a shout of laughter, in which Captain Caldwell
also joined. "Just stay here yourself, Beth," he said, when he had
recovered himself. "For amusement, neither Sophie Keene nor any one
else I ever knew could hold a candle to you."
"What's 'hold a candle to you'?" Beth instantly demanded.
And then there was more laughter, in which even Mrs. Caldwell joined;
and afterwards, when the doctor had gone, she actually patted Beth on
the back, and stroked her hair, which was the first caress Beth ever
remembered to have received from her mother.
"Now, mamma," she exclaimed, with great feeling, in the fulness of her
surprise and delight, "now I shall forget that you ever beat me."
Her mother coloured painfully.
Her father muttered something about a noble nature.
"And that was the child you never wanted at all!" slipped, with a ring
of triumph, from Mrs. Caldwell unawares--an interesting example of the
complexity of human feelings.
Captain Caldwell soon went back to his duty--all too soon for his
strength. The dreadful weather continued. Day after day he returned
soaking from some distant station to the damp and discomfort of the
house, and the ill-cooked, unappetising food, which he could hardly
swallow. And to all this was added great anxiety about the future of
his family. His boys were doing well at school by this time; but he
was not satisfied with the way in which the little girls were being
brought up. There was no order in their lives, no special time for
anything; and he knew the importance of early discipline. He tried to
discuss the subject with his wife, but she met his suggestions
irritably.
"There's time enough for that," she said. "_I_ had no regular lessons
till I was in my teens."
"But what answered with you may be disastrous to these children," he
ventured. "They are all unlike you in disposition, more especially
Beth."
"You spoil that child," Mrs. Caldwell protested. "And at any rate I
can do no more. I am run off my feet."
This was true, and Captain Caldwell let the subject drop. His patience
was exemplary in those days. He suffered severely both mentally and
physically, but never complained. The shadow was upon him, and he knew
it, but he met his fate with fortitude. Whatever his faults, they were
expiated in the estimation of all who saw him suffer now.
Mrs. Caldwell never realised how ill he was, but still she was uneasy,
and it was with intense relief that she welcomed a case of soups and
other nourishing delicacies calculated to tempt the appetite, which
arrived for him one day from one of his sisters in England.
"This is just what you want, Henry," she said, with a brighter look in
her face than he had seen there for months. "I shall soon have you
yourself again now."
Captain Caldwell's spirits also went up.
In the evening they were all together in the sitting-room. Mrs.
Caldwell was playing little songs for Mildred to sing, Baby Bernadine
was playing with her bricks upon the floor, and Beth as usual was
hanging about her father. He had shaken off his despondency, and was
quite lively for the moment, walking up and down the room, and making
merry remarks to his wife in Italian, at which she laughed a good
deal.
"Come, Beth, fetch 'Ingoldsby.' We shall just come to my favourite,
and finish the book before you go to bed," he said.
Beth brought the book, and then climbed up on his knee, and settled
there happily, with her head on his shoulder.
"As I laye a-thynkynge, the golden sun was sinking,
O merrie sang that Bird as it glitter'd on her breast,
With a thousand gorgeous dyes,
While soaring to the skies,
'Mid the stars she seem'd to rise,
As to her nest;
As I laye a-thynkynge, her meaning was exprest:--
'Follow, follow me away,
It boots not to delay,'--
'Twas so she seemed to saye,
'HERE IS REST!'"
After he had read those last lines, there was a moment's silence, and
then Beth burst into a tempest of tears. "O papa--papa! No, no, no!"
she sobbed. "I couldn't bear it."
"What _is_ the matter with the child?" Mrs. Caldwell exclaimed,
starting up.
"'The vision and the faculty divine,' I think," her father answered.
"Leave her to me."
* * * * *
Beth was awake when Anne entered the nursery next morning to call the
children.
"Get up, and be good," Anne said. "Your pa's ill."
Mrs. Caldwell came into the nursery immediately afterwards, very much
agitated. She kissed Beth, and from that moment the child was calm;
but there settled upon her pathetic little face a terrible look of age
and anxiety.
When she was dressed, she ran right into her father's room before any
one could stop her. He was moaning--"O my head, my head! O my head, my
head!" over and over again.
"You mustn't stay here, little woman--not to-day," the doctor said.
"It will make your father worse if you do."
Beth stole from the room, and returned to the nursery. There, however,
she could still hear her father moaning, and she could not bear it, so
she took her prayer-book, by way of life-saving apparatus, and went
down to the kitchen to "see" what the servants were thinking--her own
significant expression. They were all strangely subdued. "Sit down,
Miss Beth," Biddy said kindly. "Sit down in the window there wid your
book if you want company. It's a sore heart you'll be having, or I'm
much mistaken."
Beth sat in the window the whole morning, reading prayers to herself,
while she watched and waited. The doctor sent Riley down from the
sick-room several times to fetch things, and each time Beth consulted
his countenance anxiously for news, but asked no questions. Biddy
tried to persuade her to eat, but the child could not touch anything.
Late in the afternoon Riley came down in a hurry.
"Is the master better, Pat?" Biddy demanded.
"'Deed, thin, he isn't," Riley replied; "and the doctor's sending me
off on the horse as hard as I can go for Dr. Jamieson."
"Och, thin, if the doctor's sending you for Dr. Jamieson it's all up.
He's niver sent for till the last. The Lord himself won't save him
now."
Beth shuffled over the leaves of her prayer-book hurriedly. She had
been crying piteously to God in her heart for hours to save her
father, and He had not heard; now she remembered that the servants
said if you read the Lord's Prayer backwards it would raise the devil.
Beth tried; but the invocation was unavailing. Before Riley could
saddle the horse, a message was sent down to stop him; and then Anne
came for Beth, and took her up to her father's room. The dreadful
sounds had ceased at last, and there was a strange silence in the
house. Mrs. Caldwell was sitting beside her husband's bed, rocking
herself a little as if in pain, but shedding no tears. Mildred was
standing with her arm round her mother's neck crying bitterly, while
Baby Bernadine gazed at her father wonderingly.
He was lying on his side with his arms folded. His eyes were shut, and
there was a lovely look of relief upon his face.
"I sent for you children," their mother said, "to see your father just
as he died. You must never forget him."
Ellis and Rickards, two of papa's men, were in the room, and Mrs.
Ellis too, and the doctor, and Riley, and Biddy, and Anne; and there
was a foot-bath, with steaming hot water in it, on the floor; some
mustard on the table; and the fire burnt brightly. These details
impressed themselves on Beth's mind involuntarily, as indeed did
everything else connected with that time. It seemed to her afterwards
as if she had seen everything and felt nothing for the moment--nothing
but breathless excitement and interest. Her grief was entirely
suspended.
Mrs. Ellis and the doctor led mamma down to the sitting-room; they
didn't seem to think that she could walk. And then Mrs. Ellis made her
some tea, and stood there, and coaxed her to drink it, just as if
mamma had been a child. Mrs. Caldwell sat on the big couch with her
back to the window, and Mildred sat beside her, with her arm round
her, crying all the time. Bernadine cried too, but it was because she
was hungry, and no one thought of giving her anything to eat. Beth
fetched her some bread-and-butter, and then she was good. People began
to arrive--Mr. Macbean, Captain and Mrs. Keene, the Smalls, the
curate--Father Madden even. He had heard the news out in the country,
and came hurrying back to pay his respects, and offer his condolences
to Mrs. Caldwell, and see if there was anything he could do. He hoped
it was not taking a liberty to come; but indeed he came in the fulness
of his heart, and because he couldn't help it, for he had known him
well, and a better man and truer gentleman never breathed. The widow
held out her hand to the priest, and looked up at him gratefully.
Beth opened the door for Mrs. Small, who exclaimed at once: "Oh, my
dear child, how is your poor mother? Does she cry at all? I do hope
she has been crying."
"No," Beth answered, "nobody cries but Mildred."
When Mrs. Small went in, Mrs. Caldwell spoke to her quite collectedly.
"He was taken ill at eight o'clock this morning with a dreadful pain
in his head," she told her. "He had suffered fearfully from his head
of late. I sent for the doctor at once. But nothing relieved him. From
ten o'clock he got worse and worse, and at four he was gone. He always
wished to die suddenly, and be spared a lingering illness. He has been
depressed of late, but this morning, early, he woke up quite brightly;
and last night he was wonderfully better. After the children had gone
to bed, he read aloud to me as he used to do in the old days; and he
looked so much more like his old self again that I thought a happier
time was coming. And so it was. But not for me."
"Poor lady!" Mrs. Small whispered. "It has been a fearful shock."
Mrs. Caldwell showed strength of character in the midst of the
overwhelming calamity which had fallen upon her with such awful
suddenness. She had a nice sense of honour, and her love was great;
and by the help of these she was enabled to carry out every wish of
her dead husband with regard to himself. He had had a fastidious
horror of being handled after death by the kind of old women who are
accustomed to lay out bodies, and therefore Mrs. Caldwell begged Ellis
and Rickards to perform that last duty for him themselves.
When the children went to bed, she took them to kiss their father. The
stillness of the chamber struck a chill through Beth, but she thought
it beautiful. The men had draped it in white, and decorated it with
evergreens, there being no flowers in season. Papa was smiling, and
looked serenely happy.
"Years ago he was like that," mamma said softly, as if she were
speaking to herself; "but latterly there has been a look of pain. I am
glad to see him so once more. You are at peace now--dearest." She
stroked his dark hair, and as she did so her hand showed white against
it.
The children kissed him; and then Mrs. Ellis persuaded mamma to come
and help her to put them to bed; and mamma taught them to say: "_Yea,
though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear
no evil: for Thou art with me; Thy rod and Thy staff they comfort
me._" She told them to remember they had learnt it on the day their
father died, and asked them to say it always in memory of him. Beth
believed for a long time that it was he who would walk with her
through the valley of the shadow, and in after years she felt sure
that her mother had thought so too.
Mrs. Ellis stayed all night, and slept with the children.
When their mother left them, Beth could not sleep. She had noticed how
cold her father was when she kissed him, and was distressed to think
he had only a sheet to cover him. The longer she thought of it, the
more wretched she became, especially when she contrasted the warmth
and softness of her own little bed with the hardness and coldness of
the one they had made up for him; and at last she could bear it no
longer. She sat up in bed and listened. She could hear by their
breathing that the other children were asleep, but she was not sure
about Mrs. Ellis. Very stealthily, therefore, she slipped out of bed,
and pulled off the clothes. She could only just clasp them in both
arms, but the nursery door was ajar, and she managed to open it with
her foot. It creaked noisily, and Beth waited, listening in suspense;
but nobody moved; so she slipped out into the passage. It was quite
dark there, and the floor felt very cold to her bare feet. She
stumbled down the passage, tripping over the bed-clothes as she went,
and dreading to be caught and stopped, but not afraid of anything
else. The door was open when she reached it, and there was a dim light
in the room. This was unexpected, and she paused to peep in before she
entered. Two candles were burning on a table at the foot of the bed.
Their flames flickered in a draught, and cast shadows on her father's
face, so that it seemed as if he moved and breathed again. Her mother
was kneeling beside the bed, with her face hidden on her husband's
breast, her left arm round him, while with the fingers of her right
hand she incessantly toyed with his hair. "Only last night," she was
saying, "only last night; oh, I cannot believe it!--perhaps I ought to
be glad--there will be no more pain for you--oh, my darling, I would
have given my life to save you a moment's pain--and I could do so
little--so little. Oh, if only you could come back to tell me that
your life had ever been the better for me, that I had not spoilt it
utterly, that I brought you some happiness." She raised her head and
looked into the tranquil face. The flickering shadows flitted across
it, but did not deceive her. She must ache on always for an answer
now--always, for ever. With a convulsive sob, she crawled up closer on
her knees, and laid her cheek beside his, but no tears came. She had
not wept at all that day.
Beth stood for a long time in the doorway, listening to her mother's
rambling talk, and watching her white fingers straying through her
father's hair. She hugged the bed-clothes close, but she had forgotten
why she came. She felt no cold; she held no thought; her whole being
was absorbed in the scene before her.
Presently, however, something that her mother said aroused her--"Cold,"
she was murmuring, "so cold. How you dreaded it too! You were always
delicate and suffering, yet you did more than the strongest men, for our
sakes. You never spared yourself. What you undertook to do, you did like
an honourable gentleman, neglecting nothing. You have died doing your
duty, as you wished to die. You have been dying all these months--and I
never suspected--I did not know--dying--killed by exposure--and
anxiety--and bad food. You came home hungry, and you could not eat what
I had to give you--cold, and I could not warm you--oh, the cruel, bitter
cold!"
Beth slipped up to her noiselessly.
"Mamma!"
Mrs. Caldwell started.
Beth held out the blankets--"to cover him."
Her mother caught her in her arms. "O my poor little child! my poor
little child!" she cried; and then at last she burst into tears.
* * * * *
During the days that preceded her father's funeral, Beth did not miss
him. It was as if he were somewhere else, that was all--away in the
mountains--and was himself thinking, as Beth did continually, about the
still, cold, smiling figure that reposed, serenely indifferent to them
all, in his room upstairs. One day, what he had said about being laid
out by old women came into her head, and she wondered what he would have
looked like when they laid him out that he should have objected so
strongly to their seeing him. She was near the death-chamber at the
moment, and went in. No one was there, and she stood a long time looking
at the figure on the bed. It was entirely covered, but she had only to
lift the sheet and learn the secret. She turned it back from the placid
face, then stopped, and whispered half in awe, half in interrogation,
"Papa!" As she pronounced the word, the inhuman impulse passed and was
forgotten.
Hours later, Mrs. Ellis found her sitting beside him as she had so
often done during his illness, on that same chair which was too high
for her, her feet dangling, and her little hands folded in her lap,
gazing at him with a face as placidly set, save for the eyes, as his
own.
The next day they had all to bid him the long farewell. Mrs. Caldwell
stood looking down upon him, not wiping the great tears that welled up
painfully into her eyes, lest in the act she should blot out the dear
image and so lose sight of it for one last precious moment. She was an
undemonstrative woman, but the lingering way in which she touched him,
his hair, his face, his waxen hands, was all the more impressive for
that in its restrained tenderness.
Suddenly she uncovered his feet. They were white as marble, and
beautifully formed. "Ah, I feared so!" she exclaimed. "They put them
into hot water that day. I knew it was too hot, and I said so; he
seemed insensible, but I felt him wince--and see!" The scar of a scald
proved that she had been right. This last act, due to the fear that he
had been made to suffer an unnecessary pang, struck Beth in after
years as singularly pathetic.
It was not until after the funeral that Beth herself realised that she
had lost her father. When they returned, the house had been set in
order, and made to look as usual--yet something was missing. The
blinds were up, the sun was streaming in, the "Ingoldsby Legends" lay
on the sofa in the sitting-room. When Beth saw the book her eyes
dilated with a pang. It lay there, just as he had left it; but he was
in the ground. He would never come back again.
Suddenly the child threw herself on the floor in an agony of grief,
sobbing, moaning, writhing, tearing her hair, and calling aloud,
"Papa! papa! Come back! come back! come back!"
Mrs. Caldwell in her fright would have tried her old remedy of shaking
and beating; but Mrs. Ellis snatched the child up and carried her off
to the nursery, where she kept her for the rest of that terrible day,
rocking her on her knee most of the time, and talking to her about her
father in heaven, living the life eternal, yet watching over her
still, and waiting for her, until she fired Beth's imagination, and
the terrible grave was forgotten.
That night, however, and for many nights to come, the child started up
out of her sleep, and wept, and wailed, and tore her hair, and had
again to be nursed and comforted.