to whom she paid a very shifting devotion, very sincere while it lasted.
One of her odd fancies was to go into the graveyard which surrounded the
church, and to play about in the grass there, or, more often, gather
flowers and leaves, and carry them to a low tomb, and sit there, weaving
them into garlands. These garlands she used to offer to the ladies whose
faces she liked, as they passed in and out of the church. The strange
little girl who sat among the graves, weaving garlands, and who would
run up to them so shyly, and with so serious a smile, offering them her
flowers, seemed to these ladies rather a disquieting little person, as
if she, like her flowers, had a churchyard air about her.
Blonde, tall, slim, delicately-complexioned, with blue eyes and a
wavering, somewhat sensuous mouth, the child took after her father; and
he used to say of her sometimes, half whimsically, that she was bound to
be like him altogether, bound to go to the bad. The big, brilliant man,
who had made so winning a failure of life, so popular always, and the
centre of a little ring of intellectual people, used sometimes to let
her stay in the room of an evening, while he and his friends drank their
ale and smoked pipes and talked their atheistical philosophy. These
friends of her father used to pet her, because she was pretty; and it
was one of them who paid her the first compliment she ever had,
comparing her face to a face in a picture. She had never heard of the
picture, but she was immensely flattered; for she did not think a
painter would ever paint any one who was not very pretty. She listened
to their conversation, much of which she could not understand, as if she
understood every word of it; and she wondered very much at some of the
things they said. Her mother was a Catholic, and, though religion was
rarely referred to, had taught her some little prayers; and it puzzled
her that all this could be true, and yet that clever people should have
doubts of it. She had always learned that cleverness (book-learning, or
any disinterested journeying of the intellect) was the one important
thing in the world. Her father was clever: that was why everything must
bow to him. There must be something in it, then, if these clever people,
if her father himself, doubted of God, of heaven and hell, of the good
ordering of this world. And she announced one day to the pious servant,
who had told her that God sees everything, that when she was older she
meant to get the better of God, by building a room all walls and no
windows, within which she would be good or bad as she pleased, without
his seeing her.
Lucy was never sent to school, like most children; that was partly
because they were very poor, but more because her father had always
intended to teach her himself, on a new and liberal scheme of education,
which seemed to him better than the education you get in schools. And
sometimes, for as much as a few weeks together, he would set her lessons
day by day, and be excessively severe with her, not permitting her to
make a single slip in anything he had given her to learn. He would even
punish her sometimes, if she still failed to learn some lesson
perfectly; and that seemed to her a mortal indignity; so that one day
she rushed out into the garden, and climbed up into a tree, and then
called out, tremulously but triumphantly: 'If you promise not to punish
me, I'll come down; but if you don't, I'll throw myself down!'
She always disliked learning lessons, and those fits of scrupulousness
on his part were her great dread. They did not occur often; and between
whiles he was very lenient, ready to get out of the trouble of teaching
her on the slightest excuse; only too glad if she did not bother him by
coming to say her lessons. Both were quite happy then; she to be allowed
to sit in his room with her lesson-book on her knees, dreaming; he not
to be hindered in the new sketch he was making or the notes he was
preparing for that great book of the future, perhaps out of one of those
old, calf-covered books which he used to bring back from second-hand
shops in the town, and which Lucy used to admire for their ancient
raggedness, as they stood in shelves round the room, brown and
broken-backed.
And then if she had not her geography to learn by heart (those lists of
capes and rivers and the population of countries, which she could indeed
learn by heart, but which represented nothing to her of the actual world
itself) she had of course all the more time for her own reading. When
she had outgrown that old fancy about the fairies, and about being a
princess, she cared nothing for stories of adventure; but little for the
material wonders of the 'Arabian Nights'; somewhat more for the
'Pilgrim's Progress,' in which she always lingered over that passage of
the good people through the bright follies of Vanity Fair; but most of
all for certain quiet stories of lovers, in which there was no
improbable incident, and no too fantastical extravagance of passion; but
a quiet probable fidelity, plenty of troubles, and of course a wedding
at the end. One book, 'The Story of Mrs. Jardine,' she was never tired
of reading; and she liked almost all the stories in the bound volumes of
the 'Argosy.' Then there was a little book of poetical selections; she
never could remember the name of it afterwards; and there were the songs
of Thomas Moore, and, above all, there was Mrs. Hemans. Those gentle and
lady-like poems 'of the affections,' with their nice sentiments, the
faded ribbons of their second-hand romance, seemed to the child like a
beautiful glimpse into the real, tender, not too passionate world, where
men and women loved magnanimously, and had heroic sufferings, and died,
perhaps, but for a great love, or a great cause, and always nobly. She
thought that the ways of the world blossomed naturally into Casabiancas
and Gertrudes and Imeldas, who were faithful to death, and came into
their inheritance of love or glory beyond the grave. She used to wonder
if she, too, like Costanza, had a 'pale Madonna brow'; and she wished
nothing more fervently than to be like those saintly and affectionate
creatures, always so beautiful, and so often (what did it matter?)
unfortunate, who took poison from the lips of their lovers, and served
God in prison, and came back afterwards, spirits, out of the angelical
rapture of heaven, to be as some rare music, or subtle perfume, in the
souls of those who had loved them. Many of these poems were about death,
and it seemed natural to her, at that time, to think much about death,
which she conceived as a quite peaceful thing, coming to you invisibly
out of the sky, and which she never associated with the pale faces and
more difficult breathing of those about her. She had never known her
mother to be quite well; and when, on her twelfth birthday, her mother
called her into her room, where she lay in bed now so often, and talked
to her more solemnly than she had ever talked before, saying that if she
became very ill, too ill to get up at all, Lucy was to look after her
father as carefully as she herself had looked after him, always to look
after him, and never let him want for anything; even then it did not
seem to the child that this meant more than a little more illness; and
it was so natural for people to be ill.
And so, after all, the end came almost suddenly; and the first great
event of her childhood took her by surprise. The gentle, suffering
woman had been failing for many months, and when, one afternoon in early
March, the doctor told her to take to her bed at once, life seemed to
ebb out of her daily, with an almost visible haste to be gone. Whenever
she was allowed to come in, Lucy would curl herself up on the foot of
the bed, never taking her eyes off the face of the dying woman, who was
for the most part unconscious, muttering unintelligible words sometimes,
in a hoarse voice, broken by coughs, and breathing, all the time, in
great, heavy breaths, which made a rattle in her throat. When she was in
the next room, Lucy could hear this monotonous sound going on, almost as
plainly as in the room itself. It was that sound that frightened her,
more than anything; for, when she was sitting on the bed, watching the
face lying among the pillows (drawn, and glazed with a curious flush, as
it was), it seemed, after all, only as if her mother was very, very ill,
and as if she might get better, for the lips were still red, and sucked
in readily all the spoonsful of calvesfoot jelly, and brandy and water,
which were really just keeping her alive from hour to hour. On Friday
night, in the middle of the night, as Lucy was sleeping quietly, she
felt, in her dream, as it seemed to her, two lips touch her cheek, and,
starting awake, saw her father standing by the bedside. He told her to
get up, put on some of her things, and come quietly into the next room.
She crept in, huddled up in a shawl, very pale and trembling, and it
seemed to her that her mother must be a little better, for she drew her
breath more slowly and not quite so loudly. One arm was lying outside
the clothes, and every now and then this arm would raise itself up, and
the hand would reach out, blindly, until the nurse, or her father, took
it and laid it back gently in its place. They told her to kiss her
mother, and she kissed her, crying very much, but her mother did not
kiss her, or open her eyes; and as she touched her hair, which was
coming out from under her cap, she felt that it was all damp, but the
lips were quite dry and warm. Then they told her to go back to bed, but
she clung to the foot of the bed, and refused to go, and the nurse said,
'I think she may stay.' The tears were running down both her cheeks,
but she did not move, or take her eyes off the face on the pillow. It
was very white now, and once or twice the mouth opened with a slight
gasp; once the face twitched, and half turned on the pillow; she had to
wait before the next breath came; then it paused again; then, with an
effort, there was another breath; then a long pause, a very slow breath,
and no more. She was led round to kiss her mother again on the forehead,
which was quite warm; but she knew that her mother was dead, and she
sobbed wildly, inconsolably, as they led her back to her own room,
where, after they had left her, and she could hear them moving quietly
about the house, she lay in bed trying to think, trying not to think,
wondering what it was that had really happened, and if things would all
be different now.
And with her mother's death it seemed as if her own dream-life had come
suddenly to an end, and a new, more desolate, more practical life had
begun, out of which she could not look any great distance. After the
black darkness of those first few days; the coming of the undertakers,
the hammering down of the coffin, the slow drive to the graveside, the
wreath of white flowers which she shed, white flower by white flower,
upon the shining case of wood lying at the bottom of a great pit, in
which her mother was to be covered up to stay there for ever; after
those first days of merely dull misery, broken by a few wild outbursts
of tears, she accepted this new life into which she had come, as she
accepted the black clothes which Linda the servant, now more a friend
than ever, had had made for her. Her father could no longer bear to
sleep in the room in which his wife had died, so Lucy gave up her own
room to him, and moved into the room that had been her mother's; and it
seemed to bring her closer to her mother to sleep there. She thought of
her mother very often, and very sadly, but the remembrance of those
almost last words to her, those solemn words on her twelfth birthday,
that she was to look after her father as her mother had looked after
him, and never let him want for anything, helped her to meet every day
bravely, because every day brought some definite thing for her to do.
She felt years and years older, and quietly ready for whatever was now
likely to happen.
For a little while she saw more of her father, for they had their
mid-day meal together now, and she used to come and sit at the table
when he was having his nine o'clock meat supper, with which he had
always indulged himself, even when there was very little in the house
for the others. He still took it, and his claret with it, which the
doctor had ordered him to take; but he took it with scantier and
scantier appetite; talking less over his wine, and falling into a
strange and brooding listlessness. During his wife's illness he had let
his affairs drift; and the society of which he was the secretary had
overlooked it, as far as they could, on account of his trouble. But now
he attended to his duties less than ever; and he was reminded, a little
sharply, that things could not go on like this much longer. He took no
heed of the warning, though the duns were beginning to gather about
him. When there was a ring at the door, Lucy used to squeeze up against
the window to see who it was; and if it was one of those troublesome
people whom she soon got to know by sight, she would go to the door
herself, and tell them that they could not see her father, and explain
to them, in her grave, childish way, that it was no use coming to her
father for money, because he had no money just then but he would have
some at quarter-day, and they might call again then. Sometimes the men
tried to push past her into the hall, but she would never let them; her
father was not in, or he was very unwell, and no one could see him; and
she spoke so calmly and so decidedly that they always finished by going
away. If they swore at her, or said horrid things about her father, she
did not mind much. It did not surprise her that such dreadful people
used dreadful language.
In telling the duns that her father was very unwell, she was not always
inventing. For a long time there had been something vaguely the matter
with him, and ever since her mother's death he had sickened visibly,
and nothing would rouse him from his pale and cheerless decrepitude. He
would lie in bed till four, and then come downstairs and sit by the
fireplace, smoking his pipe in silence, doing nothing, neither reading,
nor writing, nor sketching. All his interest in life seemed to have gone
out together; his very hopes had been taken from him, and without those
fantastic hopes he was but the shadow of himself. It scarcely roused him
when the directors of his society wrote to him that they would require
his services no longer. When they sent a man to unscrew the brass plate
on the door, on which there were the name of the society and the amount
of its capital, he went outside and stood in the garden while it was
being done. Then he gave the man a shilling for his trouble.
Soon after that, he refused to eat or get up, and a great terror came
over Lucy lest he, too, should die; and now there was no money in the
house, and the duns still knocked at the door. She begged him to let her
write to his relations, but he refused flatly, saying that they would
not receive her mother, and he would never see them, or take a penny of
their money as long as he lived. One day a cab drove up to the door, and
a hard-featured woman got out of it. Lucy, looking out of the bedroom
window, recognised her aunt, Miss Marsden, her mother's eldest sister,
whom she had only seen at the funeral, and to whose grim face and rigid
figure she had already taken a dislike. It appeared that Linda, unknown
to them, had written to tell her into what desperate straits they had
fallen; and her severe sense of duty had brought her to their help.
And the aunt was certainly good to them in her stern, unkindly way. The
first thing she did was to send for a doctor, who shook his head very
gravely when he had examined the patient; and spoke of foreign travel,
and other impossible, expensive remedies. That was the first time that
Lucy ever began to long for money, or to realise exactly what money
meant. It might mean life or death, she saw now.
Her father now lay mostly in bed, very weak and quiet, and mostly in
silence; and whether his eyes were closed or open, he seemed to be
thinking, always thinking. He liked Lucy to come and sit by him; but if
she chattered much he would stop her, after a while, and say that he was
tired, and she must be quiet. And then sometimes he would talk to her,
in his vague, disconnected way, about her mother, and of how they had
met, and had found hard times together a great happiness; and he would
look at her with an almost impersonal scrutiny, and say: 'I think you
will live happily, not with the happiness that we had, for you will
never love as we loved, but you will find it easy to like people, and
many people will find it easy to like you; and if you have troubles they
will weigh on you lightly, for you will live always in the day, that is,
without too much memory of the day that was, or too much thought of the
day that will be to-morrow.' And once he said: 'I hardly know why it is
I feel so little anxiety about your future. I seem somehow to know that
you will always find people to look after you. I don't know why they
should, I don't know why they should.' And then he added, after a pause,
looking at her a little sadly, 'You will never love nor be loved
passionately, but you have a face that will seem to many, the first time
they see you, like the face of an old and dear friend.'
Sometimes, when he felt a little better, the sick man would come
downstairs, and at times he would walk about in the garden, stooping
under his great-coat and leaning upon his stick. One very bright day in
early February he seemed better than he had been since his illness had
come upon him, and as he stood at the window looking at the white road
shining under the pale sun, he said suddenly: 'I feel quite well to-day,
I shall go for a little walk.' His eyes were bright, there was a slight
flush on his cheek, and he seemed to move a little more easily than
usual. 'Lucy,' he said, 'I think I should like some claret with my
supper to-night, like old times. You must go into the town and get me
some: I suppose there is none in the house.' Lucy took the money gladly,
for she thought: 'He is beginning to be better.' 'Get it from Allen's,'
he called after her, as she went to put on her hat and jacket; 'it won't
take so very much longer to go there and back, and it will be better
there.' When she came downstairs her aunt was helping him to put on his
coat. 'Don't wait for me,' he said, smiling, and tapping her cheek with
his thin, chilly fingers; 'I shall have to walk slowly.' She went out,
and turning, as she came to the bend in the road, saw him come out of
the gate, leaning on his stick, and begin to walk slowly along in the
middle of the road. He did not look up, and she hurried on.
It was the last time she ever saw him. The house, when she returned to
it, after her journey into town, had an air of ominous quiet, and she
saw with surprise that her father's hat and coat were lying in a heap
across the chair in the hall, instead of hanging neatly upon the
hat-pegs. As she closed the door behind her, she heard the bedroom door
opened, and her aunt came quickly downstairs with a strange look on her
face. She began to tremble, she knew not why, and mechanically she put
the bottle of wine on the floor by the side of the chair; and her aunt,
though she would always have everything put in its proper place, did not
seem to notice it; but took her into the sitting-room, and said: 'There
has been an accident; no, you must not go upstairs'; and she said to
herself, seeming to hear her own words at the back of her brain, where
there was a dull ache that was like the coming-to of one who has been
stunned: 'He is dead, he is dead.' She felt that her aunt was shaking
her, and wondered why she shook her, and why everything looked so dim,
and her aunt's face seemed to be fading away from her, and she caught at
her; and then she heard her aunt say (she could hear her now), 'I
thought you were going to faint: I'll have no fainting, if you please; I
must go up to him again.' So he was not dead, after all; and she
listened, with a relief which was almost joy, while her aunt told her
rapidly what had happened: how the mail-cart had turned a corner at full
speed just as he was walking along the road, more tired than he had
thought, and he had not the strength to pull himself out of the way in
time, and had been knocked down, and the wheel had just missed him, but
he had been terribly shaken, and one of the horse's hoofs had struck him
on the face. They hoped it was nothing serious; he seemed to feel little
pain; but he had said: 'Don't let Lucy come in; she musn't see me like
this.'
Lucy had been so used to obey her father, his commands had always been
so capricious, that she obeyed now without a murmur. She understood him;
the fastidiousness which was part of his affection, and which made him
refuse to be seen, by those he loved, under a disfigurement which time
would probably heal, was one of the things for which she loved him, for
it was part of her pride in him.
The doctor had come and gone; he had been very serious, she had seen his
grave face, and had overheard one or two of his words to her aunt; she
had heard him say: 'Of course, it is a question of time.' Night came on,
and she sat in the unlighted room alone, and looking into the fire, in
which the last dreams of her childhood seemed to flicker in little
wavering tongues of flame, which throbbed, and went out, one after
another, in smoke or ashes. She cried a little, quietly, and did not
wipe away the tears; but sat on, looking into the fire, and thinking.
She was crying when her aunt came downstairs, and told her that she must
go to bed; he was resting quietly, and they hoped he would be better in
the morning.
She slept heavily, without dreams; and the hour seemed to her late when
she awoke in the morning. It was Linda, not her aunt, who came into the
room, and took her in her arms, and cried over her, and did not need to
tell her that she had no father. He had died suddenly in his sleep, and
just before he turned over on his side for the last rest, he had said to
her (she thought drowsily): 'I am very tired; if anything happens, cover
my face.' When Lucy crept into the room, on tip-toe, his face was
covered. It was a white, shrouded thing that lay there, not her father.
The terror of the dead seized hold upon her, and she shrieked, and
Linda caught her up in her arms, and carried her back to her room, and
soothed her, as if she had been a little, wailing child.
At the funeral she saw, for the first time, her father's relations, the
rich relations who had cast him off; and she hated them for being there,
for speaking to her kindly, for offering to look after her. She was rude
to them, and she wished to be rude. 'My father would never touch your
money,' she said, 'and I am sure he wouldn't like me to, and I don't
want it. I don't want to have anything to do with you.' She clung to the
severe aunt who had been good to her father; and she tried to smile on
her other uncle and aunt, and on her cousin, who was not many years
older than she was: he had seemed to her so kind, and so ready to be her
friend. 'I will go with my aunt,' she said. The rich relatives
acquiesced, not unwillingly. They did not linger in the desolate house,
where this unreasonable child, as they thought her, stood away from them
on the other side of the room. She seemed to herself to be doing the
right thing, and what her father would have wished; and she saw them go
out with relief, not giving a thought to the future, only knowing that
she had buried her childhood, on that day of the funeral, in the grave
with her father.
THE DEATH OF PETER WAYDELIN.