Abel Carew locked up his cottage and began his pilgrimage into
Hertfordshire with a staff and a wallet, intending to walk all the way.
In a fortnight he was back again, bringing with him a long face.
"It is sad to see the child," he said to me, as I sat in his room
listening to the news. "She is no more like the bonnie Kettie that we
knew here, than a dead girl's like a living one. Worn out, bent and
silent, she sits, day after day and week after week, and her mother
cannot rouse her. She has sat so all along."
"But what is the matter with her?"
"She is slowly dying, sir."
"What of?"
"A broken heart."
"Oh dear!" said I; believing I knew who had broken it.
"Yes," said Abel, "_he_. He won her heart's best love, Master Johnny,
and she pines for him yet. Ketira says it was his marriage that struck
her the death-blow. A few weeks she may still linger, but they won't be
many."
Very sorry did I feel to hear it: for Ketira's sake as well as Kettie's.
The remembrance of the day I had gilded the oak-ball, and her wonderful
gratitude for it, came flashing back to me.
And there's nothing more to add to this digression. Except that Kettie
died.
The tidings did not appear to affect Hyde Stockhausen. All his thoughts
were given to his wife and child. Old Abel had never reproached him by
as much as a word: if by chance they met, Abel avoided looking at him,
or turned off another way.
When the baby was six months old and began to cut his teeth, he did
not appear inclined to do it kindly. He grew thin and cross; and the
parents, who seemed to think no baby ever born could come up to this
one, began to be anxious. Hyde worshipped the child ridiculously.
"The boy will do well enough if he does not get convulsions," Duffham
said in semi-confidence to some people over his surgery counter. "If
_they_ come on--why, I can't answer for what the result might be. Fat?
Yes, he is a great deal too fat: they feed him up so."
The surgeon was sitting by his parlour-fire one snowy evening shortly
after this, when Stockhausen burst upon him in a fine state of
agitation; arms working, breath gone. The baby was in a fit.
"Come, come; don't you give way," cried the doctor, believing Hyde was
going into a fit on his own account. "We'll see."
Out of one convulsion into another went the child that night: but in a
few days it was better; thought to be getting well. Mr. and Mrs.
Stockhausen in consequence felt themselves in the seventh heaven.
"The danger is quite past," observed Hyde, walking down the snowy path
with Duffham, one morning when the doctor had been paying a visit; and
Hyde rubbed his hands in gleeful relief, for he had been like a crazed
lunatic while the child lay ill. "Duffham, if that child had died, I
think _I_ should have died."
"Not a bit of it," said Duffham. "You are made of tougher stuff."
He was about to open the garden-gate as he spoke. But, suddenly
appearing there to confront them stood Ketira the gipsy. A moment's
startled pause ensued. Duffham spoke kindly to her. Hyde recoiled a step
or two; as if the sight had frightened him.
"You may well start back," she said to the latter, taking no notice of
Duffham's civility. "I told you, you should not see me many times in
life, Hyde Stockhausen, but that when you did, I should be the harbinger
of evil. Go home, and meet it."
Turning off under the garden-hedge, without another word, she
disappeared from their view as suddenly as she had come into it. Hyde
Stockhausen made a feint of laughing.
"The woman is more mad than ever," he said. "Decidedly, Duffham, she
ought to be in confinement."
Never an assenting syllable gave Duffham. He was looking as stern as
a judge. "What's that?" he suddenly exclaimed, turning sharply to the
house.
A maid-servant was flying down the path. Deborah Preen stood at the
door, crying and calling as if in some dire calamity. Hyde rushed
towards her, asking what was amiss. Duffham followed more slowly. The
baby had got another attack of convulsions.
And this time it was for death.
* * * * *
When these events were happening, Great Malvern was not the overgrown,
fashionable place it is now; but a quiet little spot with only a few
houses in it, chiefly clustering under the highest of the hills. Amid
these houses, one bright May day, Hyde Stockhausen went, seeking
lodgings.
Hyde had not died of the loss of the baby. For here he was, alive and
well, nearly eighteen months afterwards. That it had been a sharp trial
for him nobody doubted; and for his wife also. And when a second baby
came to replace the first, it brought them no good, for it did not live
a week.
That was in March: two months ago: and ever since Mrs. Stockhausen
had been hovering between this world and the next. A fever and other
ailments had taken what little strength she had out of her. _This_,
to Hyde Stockhausen, was a worse affliction than even the loss of the
children, for she was to him as the very apple of his eye. When somewhat
improving, the doctors recommended Malvern. So Hyde had brought her to
it with a nurse and old Deborah; and had left them at the Crown Hotel
while he looked for lodgings.
He found them in one of the houses down by the abbey. Some nice rooms,
quite suitable. And to them his wife was taken. For a very few days
afterwards she seemed to be getting better: and then all the bad
symptoms returned. A doctor was called in. He feared she might not
rally again; that the extreme debility might prevent it: and he said
as much to Hyde in private.
Anything more unreasonable than the spirit in which Hyde met this, the
Malvern doctor had never seen.
"You are a fool," said Hyde. "Begging your pardon, sir, I should think
you don't know your profession. My wife is fifty pounds better than she
was at Church Dykely. How can you take upon yourself to say she will not
rally?"
"I said she might not," replied the surgeon, who happened to possess a
temper mild as milk. "I hope she will with all my heart. I shall do my
best to bring it about."
It was an anxious time. Mrs. Stockhausen fluctuated greatly: to-day able
to sit up in an easy-chair; to-morrow too exhausted to be lifted out of
bed. But, one morning she did seem to be ever so much better. Her cheeks
were pink, her lips had a smile.
"Ah," said the doctor cheerfully when he went in, "we shall do now, I
hope. You are up early to-day."
"I felt so much better that I wanted to get up and surprise you," she
answered in quite a strong voice--for her. "And it was so warm, and the
world looked so beautiful. I should like to be able to mount one of
those donkeys and go up the hill. Hyde says that the view, even from St.
Ann's well, is charming."
"So it is," assented the surgeon. "Have you never seen it?"
"No, I have not been to Malvern before."
This was the first day of June. Hyde would not forget the date to the
last hour of his life. It was hot summer weather: the sun came in at the
open window, touching her hair and her pale forehead as she lay back in
the easy-chair after the doctor left; a canary at a neighbouring house
was singing sweetly; the majestic hills, with their light and shade,
looked closer even than they were in reality. Hyde began to lower the
blind.
"Don't, please, Hyde."
"But, my darling, the sun will soon be in your eyes."
"I shall like it. Is it not a lovely day! I think it is that which has
put new life into me."
"And we shall soon have you up the hill, where we can sit and look
all over everywhere. On one or two occasions, when the atmosphere was
rarefied to an unusual degree, I have caught the silver line of the
Bristol Channel."
"How pleasant it will be, Hyde! To sit there with you, and to know that
I am getting well!"
Early in the afternoon, when Mabel lay down to rest, Hyde went strolling
up the hill, for the first time since his present stay at Malvern. He
got as far as St. Ann's; drank a tumbler of the water, and then paced
about, hither and thither, to the right and left, not intending to
ascend higher that day. If he went to the summit, Mabel might be awake
before he got home again; and he would not have lost five minutes of her
waking moments for a mine of gold. Looking at his watch, he sat down on
a bench that was backed by some dark trees.
"Yes," he mused, "it will be delightful to sit about here with Mabel,
and show her the different points of interest in the landscape.
Worcester Cathedral, and St. Andrew's Spire; and the Bristol----"
Some stir behind caused him to turn his head. The words froze on his
tongue. There stood Ketira the gipsy. She had been sitting or lying
amidst the trees, wrapped in her red cloak. Hyde's look of startled
dread was manifest. She saw it; and accosted him.
"We meet again, Hyde Stockhausen. Ah, you have cause to fear!--your face
may well whiten to the shivering hue of snow at sight of me! You are
alone in the world now--as you left my daughter to be. Once more we
shall see one another. Till then farewell."
Recovering his equanimity when left alone, Hyde betook himself down the
zig-zag path towards the village, calling the gipsy all the wicked names
in the dictionary, and feeling tempted to give her into custody.
At his home, he was met by a commotion. The nurse wore a scared face;
Deborah Preen, wringing her hands, burst out sobbing.
Mabel was dead. Had died in a fainting-fit.
* * * * *
Leaving his wife in her grave at Malvern, Hyde Stockhausen returned to
Church Dykely. We hardly knew him.
A more changed man than Hyde was from that time the world has
never seen. He walked about like a melancholy maniac, hands in his
coat-pockets, eyes on the ground, steps dragging; looking just like
one who has some great remorse lying upon his conscience and is being
consumed by the past. The most wonderful thing in the eyes of Church
Dykely was, that he grew religious: came to church twice on Sunday,
stayed for the Sacrament, was good to the poor, gentle and kindly to
all. Mr. Holland observed to the Squire that Stockhausen had become a
true Christian. He made his will, and altogether seemed to be tired of
life.
"Go you, Johnny, and ask him to come over to us sometimes in an evening;
tell him it will be a break to his loneliness," said the Squire to me
one day. "Now that the poor fellow is ill and repentant, we must let
bygones be bygones. I hear that Abel Carew spent half-an-hour sociably
with him yesterday."
I went off as directed. Summer had come round again, for more than a
year had now passed since Mabel's death, and the Virginia creeper on
the cottage walls was all alight with red flowers. Hyde was pacing his
garden in front of it, his head bent.
"Is it you, Johnny?" he said, in the patient, gentle tone he now always
used, as he held his hand out. He was more like a shadow than a man; his
face drawn and long, his blue eyes large and dark and sad.
"We should be so glad if you would come," I added, after giving the
message. "Mrs. Todhetley says you make yourself too much of a stranger.
Will you come this evening?"
He shook his head slightly, clasping my hand the while, his own feeling
like a burning coal, and smiling the sweetest and saddest smile.
"You are all too good for me; too considerate; better far than I
deserve. No, I cannot come to you this evening, Johnny: I have not the
spirits for it; hardly the strength. But I will come one evening if I
can. Thank them all, Johnny, for me."
And he did come. But he could not speak much above a whisper, so
weak and hollow had his voice grown. And of all the humble-minded,
kindly-spirited individuals that ever sat at our tea-table, the chiefest
was Hyde Stockhausen.
"I fear he is going the way of all the Stockhausens," said Mrs.
Todhetley afterwards. "But what a beautiful frame of mind he is in!"
"Beautiful, you call it!" cried the pater. "The man seems to me to be
eating his heart out in some impossible atonement. Had I set fire to the
church and burnt up all the congregation, I don't think it could have
subdued me to that extent."
Of all places, where should I next meet Hyde but at Worcester races! We
knew that he had been worse lately, that his mother had come to Virginia
Cottage to be with him at the last, and that there was no further hope.
Therefore, to see Hyde this afternoon, perched on a tall horse on
Pitchcroft, looked more like magic than reality.
"_You_ at the races, Hyde!"
"Yes; but not for pleasure," he answered, smiling faintly; and looking
so shadowy and weak that it was a marvel how he could stick on the
horse. "I am in search of one who is growing too fond of these scenes.
I want to find him--and to say a few last words to him."
"If you mean Jim Massock"--for I thought it could be nobody but young
Jim--"I saw him yonder, down by the shows. He was drinking porter
outside a booth. How are you, Hyde?"
"Oh, getting on slowly," he said, with a peculiar smile.
"Getting on! It looks to me to be the other way."
Turning his horse quickly round, after nodding to me, in the direction
of the shows and drinking booths, he nearly turned it upon a tall, gaunt
skeleton in a red cloak--Ketira the gipsy. She must have sprung out of
the crowd.
But oh, how ill she looked! Hyde was strangely altered; but not as she
was. The yellow face was shrivelled and shrunken, the fire had left
her eyes. Hyde checked his horse; but the animal turned restive. He
controlled it with his hand, and sat still before Ketira.
"Yes, look at me," she burst forth. "_For the last time._ The end is
close at hand both for you and for me. We shall meet Kettie where we are
going."
He leaned from his horse to speak to her: his voice a low sad wail, his
words apparently those of deprecating prayer. Ketira heard him quietly
to the end, gazing into his face, and then slowly turned away.
"Fare you well, Hyde Stockhausen. Farewell for ever."
Before leaving the course Hyde had an accident. While talking to Jim
Massock, some drums and trumpets struck up their noise at a neighbouring
show; the horse started violently, and Hyde was thrown. He thought he
was not much hurt and mounted again.
"What else could you expect?" demanded Duffham, when Hyde got back to
Virginia Cottage. "You have not strength to sit a donkey, and you must
go careering off to Worcester races on a fiery horse!"
But the fall had done Hyde some inward damage, and it hastened the end.
He died that day week.
"Some men's sins go before them to Judgment, and some follow after,"
solemnly said Mr. Holland the next Sunday from the pulpit. "He who is
gone from among us had taken his to his Saviour--and he is now at rest."
* * * * *
"All chance and coincidence," pronounced Duffham, talking over the
strange threat of Ketira the gipsy and its stranger working out. "Yes;
chance, I say, each of the three times. The woman, happening to be at
hand, must have known by common report that the child was in peril;
she may have learnt at Malvern that the wife was dying; and any goose
with eyes in its head might have read coming death on _his_ face that
afternoon on Pitchcroft. That's all about it, Johnny."
Very probably. The reader can exercise his own judgment. I only know it
all happened.