CHAPTER IX.
At twelve o'clock that night—the hour when, on the previous one, they had all met in the brilliant salle of the Hotel de Ville—an express train was whirling Mr. Earnscliffe away from Paris, Flora Adair was walking restlessly up and down her room, and Mary Elton lay upon her deathbed.
The doctor had just left her, after having, as gently as possible, told Mrs. Elton that the last ray of hope for her daughter's recovery was gone,—she was sinking, and now it was only a question of how long she might hold out. Probably she might linger until the same time to-morrow, but it was also possible that the end might come much more quickly.
The night-lamp burned dimly, the nurse dozed in an armchair, and Mrs. Elton knelt in despairing grief beside her dying child, her head pressed down upon the bed-clothes, as she tried to smother the sound of her convulsive sobs, and prevent them from disturbing Mary; and she thought to herself, "I have killed her by letting her go to that ball. I saw that she was not fit to go, and yet through weakness I allowed it. Mary, my most precious child, my firstborn, do not leave me! What can the others be to me, if you are taken? Great God, in pity give me back this favourite one, or let me die with her!"
Mary was indeed Mrs. Elton's "most precious child;" she resembled her father strikingly in appearance, as also in many points of disposition, and far more than either Charles or Helena; therefore was she dearer to her mother than they were. Her husband's memory was the passion of Mrs. Elton's existence, as he himself had been whilst he lived; so now she felt that to lose the child who resembled him most was like losing all that remained to her of him, and to this was added the torture of believing that she might have saved her if she had only been firm about the ball. Her agony in her utter loneliness was piteous; her favourite child was dying, and the other two were far away; they had been telegraphed for, but neither of them could possibly have come to her as yet. Helena was expected to arrive early in the morning, but Mrs. Elton could make no guess as to when her son might come. He was quartered far up in the north of Scotland, and of course he could not start instantly on receipt of the telegram, as Helena would; he must wait to get leave, and thus the time of his arrival could not be counted upon.
Mary scarcely ever spoke, save to ask, "Can Lena soon be here?" But this question she repeated almost every hour, and each time it wrung her mother's heart anew, for it showed her that Mary felt herself to be dying, and that she feared she might not live to see her sister. Mrs. Elton saw with dismay that this dread was worrying her beloved child, yet she could do nothing to relieve it; and there are few sufferings more difficult to endure than this feeling of powerlessness even to give ease to one whom we love, although we must yield them up to the grave in a few short hours.
Through the whole of that lone night-watch Mrs. Elton remained on her knees beside the bed. Several times the nurse had tried to induce her to sit down, but she never answered, or appeared even to hear her; she seemed insensible to everything except the dying girl, but to her slightest movement, or barely audible words, she was keenly alive.
At last, about five in the morning, a carriage was heard to stop at the door. Mary quivered all over, and murmured, "Mamma, there is Lena; go to her and tell her that she must not be frightened when she sees me. Poor Lena, it is too bad to ask her to come almost from her honeymoon to see me thus; and she has never looked upon approaching death before. And you, mamma, you must not grieve so wildly for me: I heard your sobs and passionate prayers all through the long night, but I did not dare to speak to you, I was so afraid of exhausting my strength before Lena came. Mamma, she is far more worthy of your affection than I have been,—give it all to her, and she will repay you well. Go to her now."
"I cannot," murmured Mrs. Elton. "Nurse, go and receive Mrs. Caulfield, and beg of her to wait for a few moments in the drawing-room;" and, with an irrepressible sob, she added, as she clasped Mary's hand in hers, "My own child, take me with you to your father! Life without him and you will be too awful!"
"Shall I ever see him?" whispered Mary fearfully. "But it is cruel to treat Lena thus. Mamma, go to her for my sake, and let me see her as soon as possible, and then you must go and rest for a few hours,—I insist upon it," she said with a faint smile; "and you know you cannot disobey me, as it will be the last time."
Mrs. Elton turned away with a choking sensation in her throat, and left the room.
From the time that Mary had been carried from the carriage to her bed she felt that she had risked the last chance for her life, and lost it in order to gratify her revenge and gloat over the sight of her rival's misery; but even so she did not then regret it, for her triumph had been so full and complete, and every other thought was for the moment absorbed in the wish to see her sister; her affection for her being, as we have said before, the one pure feeling which not even the terrible passion of revenge could sully. But during the twenty-eight or thirty hours that she had lain on her dying bed she had been haunted by grim phantoms of terror regarding the unknown world to which she was going so fast, and she began to feel that the success of her revenge was far less sweet to think of than she had expected; now, however, Helena's coming brought up vividly before her the remembrance of that miserable night at Naples, and once more a flush of fierce satisfaction covered her face, as she muttered, "Well, at least I paid him off to the last farthing!" As these words passed her lips the door opened, and Helena entered, with the tears streaming from her eyes.
"Darling Lena!" exclaimed Mary, but without attempting to sit up, for the doctor had warned her that to do so would surely bring on a recurrence of the hemorrhage—"how good you were to come so quickly."
Helena threw herself on the bed beside Mary, and kissed her again and again, but she could not speak; and as Mary tried to soothe her, her tears only flowed the faster, until at last the former said in a broken voice, "Lena, think how you are trying me, and I have so little strength left to talk to you, or even to listen to you. I think I hear the nurse coming. Go and tell her not to come until you call her, and I begged mamma to lie down and rest for a little; so once more, Lena, you and I can have a tête-à-tête chat, as in days of old."
Helena silently rose, and did as Mary desired her; then returning, she seated herself beside the bed, and took her sister's cold hand in hers and began to rub it, saying, "How cold your hands are, sister!—let me warm them for you."
"They will never be warm again, Lena," answered Mary, with a sort of smile; "but never mind that now, tell me about yourself. Are you as happy as you expected to be?"
"Oh, Mary," rejoined Helena, trying to suppress her tears, "until I received that miserable telegram my happiness was unalloyed, and I only longed for the time when I could get you to come and stay with me, that you might have the pleasure of seeing what your kindness and affection had done for me; for had you not been all that you were to me, I should never have had the happiness of being Harry's. Mary, you must live to see your own work."
"Lena, how can you talk so! Has not mamma told you that by this time to-morrow I shall no longer be with you?"
"Yes," sobbed Helena; "but while there is life there is hope—and I will hope."
"You must not, Lena, for there is none; this is the second since——" a spasm caught her breath, but she went on, although her voice was evidently getting weak—"since that evening when you found me half fainting by the stone bench."
"Mary," cried Helena, almost angrily, "you have treated me shamefully in not letting me be told that you had an attack of this kind on the night of my wedding; and I saw by mamma that she blames me bitterly for having left you; she thinks that my doing so increased, even though it did not cause, your illness; and in justice to me, Mary, you ought to have written to me. I could have been with you all these weeks past since Harriet's marriage, and I might have saved you; being in your confidence, I could in some degree have prevented you from brooding over the past until it has killed you. Why have you kept me away from you, sister? But tell me what is all this about the ball, and Mr. Earnscliffe, and Flora Adair? I could not understand anything from mamma's account of it."
"You remember the first time in Rome that you spoke of those two names together,—I said then that I would rather see him dead than loving and beloved by her; then in Naples he spurned my love for her sake, and I swore to be revenged; and I have been!"
"Mary, for God's sake stop!" interrupted Helena, with an expression of horror; "it is too awful to hear the dying speak of revenge!"
But Mary resumed with increasing vehemence, "By chance I heard that he had been married, and that his divorced wife was living. I knew then that she could not marry him, and at the same time I was certain that he did not know enough of Catholics to be aware that this would be a barrier, so in all probability he had not told her; therefore I could easily make it appear that he had intended to deceive her, and thus torture her doubly: and through my instrumentality, too, he should feel the bitter agony of having his love rejected by the being whom he loved. Lena, I carried it all out at the ball, and I saw them both writhe under my blows! Ay, I paid him off fully for that night in Naples! Ah!——"
She half rose from her recumbent posture, and then fell back heavily. Helena caught her in her arms and screamed, "Nurse!"
The nurse was fortunately in the adjoining room, and she ran to Helena's assistance at once. She saw that her patient had only a passing faintness; and under her experienced treatment Mary soon rallied. Helena then asked her to leave them alone again, and she did so, but gravely cautioned Helena not to allow her sister to excite herself, as any violent agitation might be instantly fatal. Helena promised to do her best to prevent it, and the nurse left them.
For a full hour more the sisters' conference lasted, and then Helena went into the next room, murmuring, through her tears, "Nurse, desire a clergyman to be sent for; and wait: I must write a note, which can be left at its destination as the messenger goes to the clergyman."
Helena burst out crying afresh as she opened Mary's desk and tried to write; at last she succeeded in scribbling these few lines:—
"My dear Flora,
"Poor dearest Mary we fear is dying. She would like to see you; so I hope you will come to us as soon as you can.
"Yours affectionately,
"Helena Caulfield.
"Friday Morning."
As she gave the note to the nurse, Mrs. Elton came into the room, and Helena told her that Mary wished to see a clergyman, and also Flora Adair, and that the nurse had just gone to desire them to be sent for. Mrs. Elton passed on silently into Mary's room, and it was only the nervous quivering of her lips which told that she understood what had been said to her.
Helena had hard work to make Mary consent to receive a clergyman, and to see Flora Adair, in order to undo as far as she could the suffering which she had inflicted on her by calumniating Mr. Earnscliffe, and now she began to feel completely exhausted from fatigue and grief as she lay back in the chair after writing the note. But she was roused by Mrs. Elton, who lightly touched her shoulder, and said, like a person speaking in a dream, "Mary says that you must go and take some rest, and they will bring you breakfast." She rang the bell, and her own maid answered it, to whom she said, "Take Miss Helena to my room, and get her tea—breakfast—you know what to do." Then Mrs. Elton turned away and went back to Mary.
Helena followed the maid into Mrs. Elton's room, and gladly lay down upon the bed, as she said, "Margaret"—the maid was an old acquaintance of hers—"if my husband comes—he went to an hotel to be out of the way at first—show him in here, and also Miss Adair; of course you will tell me at once if Miss Elton should get worse."
"Yes, miss—I beg your pardon—ma'am; and now I will go and get you some breakfast."
"It will be useless to bring me anything but a cup of tea, Margaret."
After Helena had taken the tea she fell asleep, and slept for about an hour, when she was awaked by a kiss, and the sound of somebody saying, "Poor Cricket, how unlike itself it looks, doesn't it, Miss Adair?"
As she opened her eyes, and saw her husband and Flora standing beside her, she exclaimed, "Harry, I am so glad that you have come, and Flora too; but——" She covered up her face in her hands, and the tears trickled through her closed fingers.
Margaret now came in, and said, "Mrs. Caulfield, Miss Elton has asked for you."
"Say that I will be with her in a moment," answered Helena, springing off the bed, and hastening after Margaret, as she said to Mr. Caulfield and Flora, "Wait here for me."
She was only a few moments absent, and entering with her handkerchief pressed to her eyes, she took Flora's hand and led her in to Mary, over whose countenance the livid colour of death was fast spreading.
Flora felt awe-stricken as she thought that not six-and-thirty hours had passed since she saw her in the ball-room, and silently she went over and knelt down beside the bed, as Mary said in a hollow voice, "Flora Adair, can you forgive me?"
"It was right that I should know it, Mary."
"Yes, that I understand; but can you forgive me for having tried to lower you in his opinion by falsehood, and every means in my power, and finally for insinuating to you that he was deceiving you by not telling you of his marriage, although he knew that you could not be his wife in the sight of your Church if that were known?"
Mary paused, and Flora, shuddering, said, "It was very cruel, the bare suspicion of it tortured me; but I did not believe it, or it would have driven me mad. But, Mary, what had I ever done to you that you should have thus sought to harm me?"
"You gained the love of the man whom I loved with an overwhelming love, and for you he rejected me.... Was this no cause to hate you? Revenge became the object of my life, and I had it,—I saw him suffer that night at the ball even as he had made me suffer; but that longed-for revenge has turned into bitterness, instead of sweetness, and my gentle sister there has won me to better thoughts, and induced me to send for you to ask your forgiveness, and to tell you distinctly what I knew all along, that he did not know the Catholic rules about divorce. So again I ask your forgiveness."
"You have it, Mary; although God knows you have made us both suffer doubly!" Flora rose and kissed her forehead, but she almost started at its cold, clammy touch, and Mary murmured, "Lena, it has been growing dark to me for a long time, but now it is nearly night, so call mamma and your husband; I must say good-bye to him,—I have not seen him since your wedding"—Lena sobbed violently—"and the clergyman, he may come too if you like; he is with mamma. But he cannot throw light upon the darkness into which I am entering. O God!" and Mary moaned.
That moan was heard in the next room, where her mother, her brother-in-law, and the clergyman were waiting to be called; and they stood up and went into the sick room.
Surely we may draw a curtain over these last awful moments. Poor Mary!... her dying words might have been similar to those of the great world poet—"Light, light, more light!"
Half an hour later Mrs. Elton was carried in a state of utter unconsciousness from the room of her dead child, whilst Helena sobbed away her grief in her husband's arms, and Flora Adair drove home more saddened even than when she left it some two hours before.