CHAPTER XXXIX.
"I am very ill indeed this morning," said Lady Hastings, addressing her maid about eleven o'clock. "I feel as if I were dying. Call my husband and my daughter to me."
"Lord, my lady," said the maid, "had I not better send for the doctor too? You do not look as if you were dying at all. You look a good deal better, I think, my lady."
"Do I?" said Lady Hastings in a hesitating tone. But she did not want the doctor to be sent for immediately, and repeated her order to call her husband and her daughter.
Emily was with her in an instant, but Sir Philip Hastings was some where absent in the grounds, and nearly half an hour elapsed before he was found. When he entered he gazed in his wife's face with some surprise--more surprise indeed, than alarm; for he knew that she was nervous and hypondriacal, and as the maid had said, she did not look as if she were dying at all. There was no sharpening of the features--no falling in of the temples--none of that pale ashy color, or rather that leaden grayness, which precedes dissolution. He sat down, however, by her bedside, gazing at her with an inquiring look, while Emily stood on the other side of the bed, and the maid at the end; and after speaking a few kind but somewhat rambling words, he was sending for some restoratives, saying "I think, my dear, you alarm yourself without cause."
"I do not indeed, Philip," replied Lady Hastings. "I am sure I shall die, and that before very long--but do not send for any thing. I would rather not take it. It will do me more good a great deal to speak what I have upon my mind--what is weighing me down--what is killing me."
"I am sorry to hear there is any thing," said Sir Philip, whose thoughts, intensely busy with other things, were not yet fully recalled to the scene before him.
"Oh, Philip, how can you say so?" said Lady Hastings, "when you know there is. You need not go," she continued, speaking to the maid who was drawing back as if to quit the room, "I wish to speak to my husband and my daughter before some one who will remember what I say."
Sir Philip however quietly rose, opened the door, and motioned to the girl to quit the room, for such public exhibitions were quite contrary to his notions of domestic economy. "Now, my dear," he said, "what is it you wish to tell me? If there be any thing that you wish done, I will do it if it is in my power."
"It is in your power, Philip," replied Lady Hastings; "you know and Emily knows quite well that her engagement to Mr. Marlow was against my consent, and I must say the greatest shock I ever received in my life. I have never been well since, and every day I see more and more reason to object. It is in the power of either of you, or both, to relieve my mind in this respect--to break off this unhappy engagement, and at least to let me die in peace, with the thought that my daughter has not cast herself away. It is in your power, Philip, to--"
"Stay a moment," said her husband, "it is not in my power."
"Why, are you not her father?" asked Lady Hastings, interrupting him. "Are you not her lawful guardian? Have you not the disposal of her hand?"
"It is not in my power," repeated Sir Philip coldly, "to break my plighted word, to violate my honor, or to live under a load of shame and dishonor."
"Why in such a matter as this," said Lady Hastings, "there is no such disgrace. You can very well say you have thought better of it."
"In which ease I should tell a lie," said Sir Philip dryly.
"It is a thing done every day," argued Lady Hastings.
"I am not a man to do any thing because there are others who do it every day," answered her husband. "Men lie, and cheat, and swindle, and steal, and betray their friends, and relations, and parents, but I can find no reason therein for doing the same. It is not in my power, I repeat. I cannot be a scoundrel, whatever other men may be, and violate my plighted word, or withdraw from my most solemn engagements. Moreover, when Marlow heard of the misfortunes which have befallen us, and learned that Emily would not have one-fourth part of that which she had at one time a right to expect, he showed no inclination to withdraw from his word, even when there was a good excuse, and I will never withdraw from mine, so help me God."
Thus speaking he turned his eyes towards the ground again and fell into a deep reverie. While this conversation had been passing, Emily had sunk upon her knees, trembling in every limb, and hid her face in the coverings of the bed. To her, Lady Hastings now turned. Whether it was that remorse and some degree of shame affected her, when she saw the terrible agitation of her child, I cannot tell, but she paused for a moment as if in hesitation.
She spoke at length, saying "Emily, my child, to you I must appeal, as your father is so obdurate."
Emily made no answer, however, but remained weeping, and Lady Hastings becoming somewhat irritated, went on in a sharper tone. "What! will not my own child listen to the voice of a dying mother?" she asked rather petulantly than sorrowfully, although she tried hard to make her tone gravely reproachful; "will she not pay any attention to her mother's last request?"
"Oh, my mother," answered Emily, raising her head, and speaking more vehemently than was customary with her, "ask me any thing that is just; ask me any thing that is reasonable; but do not ask me to do what is wrong and what is unjust. I have made a promise--do not ask me to break it. There is no circumstance changed which could give even an excuse for such a breach of faith. Marlow has only shown himself more true more faithful, more sincere. Should I be more false, more faithless, more ungenerous than he thought me? Oh no! it is impossible--quite impossible," and she hid her streaming eyes in the bedclothes again, clasping her hands tightly together over her forehead.
Her father, with his arms crossed upon his chest, had kept his eyes fixed upon her while she spoke with a look of doubt and inquiry. Well might he doubt--well might he doubt his own suspicions. There was a truth, a candor, a straightforwardness, in that glowing face which gave the contradiction, plain and clear, to every foul, dishonest charge which had been fabricated against his child. It was impossible in fact that she could have so spoken and so looked, unless she had so felt. The best actress that ever lived could not have performed that part. There would have been something too much or too little. something approaching the exaggerated or the tame. With Emily there was nothing. What she said seemed but the sudden outburst of her heart, pressed for a reply; and as soon as it was spoken she sunk down again in silence, weeping bitterly under the conflict of two strong but equally amiable feelings.
For a moment the sight seemed to rouse Sir Philip Hastings. "She should not, if she would," he said; "voluntarily, and knowing what she did, she consented to the promise I have made, and she neither can nor shall retract. To Marlow, indeed, I may have a few words to say, and he shall once more have the opportunity of acting as he pleases; but Emily is bound as well as myself, and by that bond we must abide."
"What have you to say to Marlow?" asked Lady Hastings in a tone of commonplace curiosity, which did not at all indicate a sense of that terrible situation in which she assumed she was placed.
"That matters not," answered Sir Philip. "It will rest between him and me at his return. How he may act I know not--what he may think I know not; but he shall be a partaker of my thoughts and the master of his own actions. Do not let us pursue this painful subject further. If you feel yourself ill, my love, let us send for further medical help. I do hope and believe that you are not so ill as you imagine; but if you are so there is more need that the physician should be here, and that we should quit topics too painful for discussion, where discussion is altogether useless."
"Well, then, mark me," said Lady Hastings with an air of assumed melancholy dignity, which being quite unnatural to her, bordered somewhat on the burlesque; "mark me, Philip--mark me, Emily! your wife, your mother, makes it her last dying request--her last dying injunction, that you break off this marriage. You may or you may not give me the consolation on this sick bed of knowing that my request will be complied with; but I do not think that either of you will be careless, will be remorseless enough to carry out this engagement after I am gone. I will not threaten, Emily--I will not even attempt to take away from you the wealth for which this young man doubtless seeks you--I will not attempt to deter you by bequeathing you my curse if you do not comply with my injunctions; but I tell you, if you do not make me this promise before I die, you have embittered your mother's last moments, and--"
"Oh, forbear, forbear," cried Emily, starting up. "For God's sake, dear mother, forbear," and clasping her hands wildly over her eyes, she rushed frantically out of the room.
Sir Philip Hastings remained for nearly half an hour longer, and then descended the stairs and passed through the drawing-room. Emily was seated there with her handkerchief upon her eyes, and her whole frame heaving from the agonized sobs which rose from her bosom. Sir Philip paused and gazed at her for a moment or two, but Emily did not say a word, and seemed indeed totally unconscious of his presence. Some movements of compassion, some feeling of sympathy, some doubts of his preconceptions might pass through the bosom of Sir Philip Hastings; but the dark seeds of suspicion had been sown in his bosom--had germinated, grown up, and strengthened--had received confirmation strong and strange, and he murmured to himself as he stood and gazed at her, "Is it anger or sorrow? Is it passion or pain? All this is strange enough. I do not understand it. Her resolution is taken, and taken rightly. Why should she grieve? Why should she be thus moved, when she knows she is doing that which is just, and honest, and faithful?"
He measured a cloud by an ell wand. He gauged her heart, her sensibilities, her mind, by the rigid metre of his own, and he found that the one could not comprehend the other. Turning hastily away after he had finished his contemplation, without proffering one word of consolation or support, he walked away into his library, and ringing a bell, ordered his horse to be saddled directly. While that was being done, he wrote a hasty note to Mr. Short, the surgeon, and when the horse was brought round gave it to a groom to deliver. Then mounting on horseback, he rode away at a quick pace, without having taken any further notice of his daughter.
Emily remained for about half an hour after his departure, exactly in the same position in which he had left her. She noticed nothing that was passing around her; she heard not a horse stop at the door; and when her own maid entered the room and said,--"Doctor Short has come, ma'am, and is with my lady. Sir Philip sent Peter for him; but Peter luckily met him just down beyond the park gates;" Emily hardly seemed to hear her.
A few minutes after, Mr. Short descended quietly from the room of Lady Hastings, and looked into the drawing-room as he passed. Seeing the beautiful girl seated there in that attitude of despondency, he approached her quietly, saying, "Do not, my dear mistress Emily, suffer yourself to be alarmed without cause. I see no reason for the least apprehension. My good lady, your mother is nervous and excited, but there are no very dangerous symptoms about her--certainly none that should cause immediate alarm; and I think upon the whole, that the disease is more mental than corporeal."
Emily had raised her eyes when he had just begun to speak, and she shook her head mournfully at his last words, saying, "I can do nothing to remedy it, Mr. Short--I would at any personal sacrifice, but this involves more--I can do nothing."
"But I have done my best," said Mr. Short with a kindly smile; for he was an old and confidential friend of the whole family, and upon Emily herself had attended from her childhood, during all the little sicknesses of early life. "I asked your excellent mother what had so much excited her, and she told me all that has passed this morning. I think, my dear young lady, I have quieted her a good deal."
"How? how?" exclaimed Emily eagerly. "Oh tell me how, Mr. Short, and I will bless you!"
The good old surgeon seated himself beside her and took her hand in his. "I have only time to speak two words," he said, "but think they will give you comfort. Your mother explained to me that there had been a little discussion this morning when she thought herself dying--though that was all nonsense--and it must have been very painful to you, my dear Mistress Emily. She told me what it was about too, and seemed half sorry already for what she had said. So, as I guessed how matters went--for I know that the dear lady is fond of titles and rank, and all that, and saw she had a great deal mistaken Mr. Marlow's position--I just ventured to tell her that he is the heir of the old Earl of Launceston--that is to say, if the Earl does not marry again, and he is seventy-three, with a wife still living. She had never heard any thing about it, and it seemed to comfort her amazingly. Nevertheless she is in a sad nervous state, and somewhat weak. I do not altogether like that cough she has either; and so, my dear young lady, I will send her over a draught to-night, of which you must give her a tablespoonful every three hours. Give it to her with your own hands; for it is rather strong, and servants are apt to make mistakes. But I think if you go to her now, you will find her in a very different humor from that which she was in this morning. Good bye, good bye. Don't be cast down, Mistress Emily. All will go well yet."