DEATH IN ANOTHER SHAPE.
In the afternoon Mrs. Martin walked up to the farm to see Mrs. Rushmere and Dorothy, and to call upon their new friends. Dorothy had not been to the parsonage for three weeks, and her place at church and in the Sunday school had been vacant. Mr. Martin and his wife suspected that all was not right with Dorothy; that either her mother was worse, or that she was so fatigued with overwork that she was unable to attend to these important duties; both were convinced that Dorothy would never desert her post unless compelled to do so. Mrs. Martin had been confined to the house by the dangerous illness of little Johnnie, whom the doctor had only pronounced that day out of danger. Anxious as she was to learn in what manner Dorothy had borne the meeting with her lover, and whether his wife and mother were agreeable people, she had not been able to leave the sick-bed of her child to satisfy her natural curiosity. When Dorothy opened the door, she was startled by her pale face and altered appearance.
"My dear girl, are you ill?"
"Not ill—only heartsick, weary of the world and its ways. If it were not for the love of a few dear friends, I could leave it to-morrow without the least regret."
As she said this, the poor girl looked so sadly and earnestly into Mrs. Martin's face, that it brought the tears into her eyes.
"You must have thought that we had forsaken you altogether; but Johnnie has been very ill, alarmingly so; and I could not leave him to the care of the servant. Henry would have been up to see you, but since Mr. Fitzmorris has left us, every moment of his time has been occupied, as he is obliged to take the charge of both the parishes, with the additional care of the Sunday schools; I have been unable to attend my class, and your absence threw all the work upon him."
"Mr. Fitzmorris gone?" Dorothy turned pale and almost gasped for breath. "What took him away?"
"A sad, sad accident. Did no one tell you of it."
"My dear Mrs. Martin, how should I hear the news of the parish. I am confined all day, and sometimes during the greater part of the night, to my mother's sick-room. But tell me about Mr. Fitzmorris; I have felt grieved and hurt at his seeming desertion of us, when Mrs. Rushmere grew so much worse. Is anything amiss with Lord Wilton?"
"His lordship has written once to his nephew, since he left England. In his letter he spoke very despondingly of the health of his son. Mr. Fitzmorris' sudden departure from Hadstone had no reference to the Earl or his affairs. In truth, Dorothy, it is a sad tale. His brother is dead. Lost his life by a fall from his horse in a steeple chase. Mr. Fitzmorris was sent for in all haste. He started immediately, and though his brother was living when he arrived at ——, he was unconscious, and never recovered his senses before he died. Poor Mr. Fitzmorris feels this dreadfully, and keenly regrets that he was not able to prepare him for the awful change from time to eternity—that his brother should die in his sins among gamblers and men of the world, who had dissipated his fortune and led him astray."
"It is dreadful!" said Dorothy. "I know how he feels it; I believe that if he could have saved his brother's soul by the sacrifice of his own, he would have done it. But will he ever return to Hadstone?"
"Directly he can arrange his brother's affairs, which are in a state of great confusion. His reckless extravagance has involved the estate, and Gerard is afraid, that when everything is sold, there will hardly be enough to satisfy the creditors. You know how honest and upright he is, and how it will pain him if he thought these people would suffer loss through any one belonging to him. He carries this romantic sense of honesty so far, that Henry is afraid that he will give up his property to pay these debts."
"He is so noble! How I honour him for it!" cried Dorothy. "How cruel it was of me to blame him for neglect, when he was not only at the post of duty, but suffering such anguish of mind. How cautious we should be in judging the actions of others. I can scarcely forgive myself for harbouring against him an unkind thought."
"And how is dear Mrs. Rushmere?" said her friend, anxious to turn the conversation into another channel, when she saw the big, bright tears that trembled on Dorothy's eyelids.
"She is fast sinking. We may not hope to keep her here much longer. I read and pray with her whenever she is able to bear it. But, oh, dear Mrs. Martin, my reading and praying is so different from his! I did so long to see him and hear him again."
"Do not look so despondingly, Dorothy. You will soon see him again. In the meanwhile, tell me about Gilbert, and how you met."
"As friends—nothing more. I might add, scarcely as friends. I am so thankful that my heart was weaned from him months ago. I now marvel at myself how I ever could have felt for him the passionate affection I did, or how his desertion could plunge me into such intense grief."
Mrs. Martin pressed her hand warmly.
"I expected as much. And his wife?"
"Don't ask me what I think of her;" and Dorothy waved her hands impatiently.
"Your silence is eloquent, Dorothy. And when can you come to me?"
"When dear mother no longer requires my services. At times she suffers cruel agony, but she bears it with angelic patience. She will be delighted to see you."
Dorothy led the way to the sick chamber. They found Mrs. Rushmere awake and in a very happy frame of mind; she greeted Mrs. Martin with unaffected pleasure, and talked cheerfully and hopefully of her approaching end. She made no comment on her son's marriage, and scarcely alluded to his wife, expressing great thankfulness that she had been permitted to see Gilbert before she died.
"Dear Mrs. Martin," she said, "I need scarcely ask you to be kind to Dorothy when she has no longer a mother to love and care for her, or a home here in which she can live in peace. A loving daughter she has been to me, a faithful and devoted nurse. The blessing she has been to me in this cruel and loathsome illness, the good God who gave her to me alone knows. That He may bless and reward her when I am in the clay is my constant prayer. May she never want a friend in her hour o' need."
Mrs. Martin stooped and kissed the pale earnest face of the dying woman.
"God will raise her up friends, never fear. The good Father never forsakes those who love and honour him."
Mrs. Rushmere threw her arms about her visitor's neck, and drew her head down to the pillow, while she whispered in her ear, "Take her out o' this, Mrs. Martin, as soon as I am gone. These strange women are killing her with their hard, unfeeling ways. It is a'most breaking my poor heart to see the dear child pining day by day."
"She will have her reward, my dear old friend, no one ever loses by suffering in a good cause."
Mrs. Martin sat for some time with the invalid, and explained to her the cause why Mr. Fitzmorris and her husband had not been up to see her, and promised that Mr. Martin should visit her on the morrow. On inquiring of Martha Wood for Mrs. Rowly and her daughter, she was not sorry to learn that they had walked down to the village.
"In the humour I feel towards them," she said to Dorothy, "I would rather that they made the acquaintance of my handwriting than of me."
It was Dorothy's practice to visit Mrs. Rushmere the first thing in the morning, and carry her a cup of tea before the inmates of the house were stirring. Mr. Rushmere slept in the same room with his wife, but, since her illness, occupied a separate bed. As Dorothy unclosed the chamber door, she was startled by a low, hoarse moaning, that seemed to proceed from the bed of the invalid. Alarmed at such an unusual occurrence, she hurried forward; the cup dropped from her hand, and, with a wild cry, she flung herself upon the bed, and clasped in her arms the still, pale figure that, for so many years, she had loved and honoured as her mother.
Mr. Rushmere was kneeling upon the floor, his face buried in the coverlid, holding in his trembling grasp the thin, white hand that no longer responded to the pressure.
"Mother! dear, blessed mother!" sobbed Dorothy, "speak to me again. One word, one little word. You must not leave me for ever without your love and blessing!"
"Alas! my child, she cannot, death has silenced the kind voice for ever," groaned the stricken old man. "My wife! my precious wife! I never knew half your value until now. All that you were, and have been to me. Oh speak to me, Mary, my lost darling, smile once more upon me as in the happy days gone by. Say that you forgive your Larry for all that he has said and done amiss. You were allers an angel of kindness to a stern husband. I have been a hard man to you; but I loved you with my whole heart, though I could not allers tell you how dear you were."
"She was quite sensible of your affection, dear father, and would grieve to hear you reproach yourself; we have all our faults of temper. Mother made every allowance for that. She knew how truly you loved her, that your heart was in the right place. How did she die?"
The old man raised his head, and looked long and fondly on the still calm face of his dead wife.
"Sleeping as you see her there, Dorothy, as sweet and peacefully as a little child. The Lord bless her. She was surely one o' his gentle lambs. She generally spoke to me when the sun rose, an' told me to call up the folk to their work. About half an hour ago, I heard her own dear voice call me three times. 'Larry, Larry, Larry! it be time for thee to wake up out o' sleep. The Lord calls upon thee to rise. The night is far spent, the morning is at hand in which thou must give to him an account of the deeds done in the flesh.' I jump up, all in a cold sweat an' cries out trembling all over with a deadly fear. 'Mary, did'st thee call?' An awful stillness filled the room. No answer came. The sun shone right upon the still pale face, an' told me all. It was a voice from heaven that spoke, the dear angel had been dead for hours."
Again his heart sank upon the coverlid, and the strong frame shook with the still stronger agony that mastered him. Dorothy thought it best to leave nature to deal with him, who is ever the best physician and comforter of the wounded heart, while she went to rouse the household, and take necessary steps to perform the last sad offices for the dead.
In a few minutes all was hurry and alarm, as the suddenly aroused inmates of the house rushed half-dressed into the chamber of death.
In vain Gilbert Rushmere tried to lead his father into another room; the heartbroken old man resisted every effort to separate him from his wife. The common-place condolences of Mrs. Rowly and her daughter were alike unheeded. It was useless to tell him that it was a merciful release from great suffering, that Mrs. Rushmere dying in her sleep had been saved the pain and agony of a separation from her family, or that she was now an angel in heaven.
The bereaved old man admitted all this; but looked upon her death, as far as he was concerned, as the greatest calamity. A loss so terrible and overwhelming, that he disdained to ask of heaven fortitude to bear it, and he drove these Job's comforters out of his room, in the frenzy of his great sorrow.
"Do not torture him," sobbed Dorothy, "with this cruel kindness. However well meant, his mind is not in a state to bear it. Leave him alone with his dead for one little hour, till nature softens his sorrow with the holy balm of tears. The shock has been so sudden that his mind is prostrated with the blow. He will recover himself when left alone with the beloved. The silent eloquence of that sweet calm face will do more to restore him to peace, than all we can say to reconcile him to his loss."
"Oh, if she had only spoken to me before she died;" groaned Rushmere. "I should not feel so bad. I could bear my misfortune like a man. If she had only said in her soft kind voice. 'God bless you, Lawrence,' it would ha' been something to think on, in the long lonesome nights afore me; but she left me without a word. How can I sleep in peace in my comfortable warm bed, knowing her to be alone in the cold earth. Oh, Mary! my love, my treasure! How can I live a' wanting thee."
After a pause of some minutes, he looked up from the dead wife to his son, who was leaning against the bed-post, his face covered with his sole remaining hand.
"You may well mourn for your mother, Gilbert, many a salt tear she shed for you. The grief she felt for your cruel desertion broke down her constitution, and brought her to this."
"Father, I was not alone to blame," said Gilbert, in a hoarse voice.
"Yes—yes, lay the fault on the old man, he has no one now to take his part, but that poor lass whose heart he nearly broke."
"Father," whispered Dorothy, gently taking his hand. "Mother forgot and forgave that long ago. She loved you and Gilbert too well to cherish animosity against either. We are all human and prone to err. If she could speak, she would tell you to banish all these sinful heart-burnings, these useless recriminations, and prepare to follow her to the better land, where she has found peace and assurance for ever."
"I will, I will, if so be I could only find the way," responded Rushmere, with a heavy sigh. "Oh, God forgive me! I am a sinful man. I wish I could follow her dear steps, for I am a' weary o' my life."
He laid his head upon the pillow beside his wife, and the tears streamed from his closed eyelids down his pale cheeks.
"Come, let us leave him," said Dorothy. "He will feel calmer soon. And here is dear Mr. Martin, who can better soothe him in his grief than we can. Oh, I am so glad you are come," she whispered to the good curate, as she followed the rest of the family from the room. "He is dreadfully afflicted. Poor old father, he loved her so much."
The four days that intervened between Mrs. Rushmere's death and the funeral were very trying to Dorothy. She had to receive so many visitors, and listen to so many unfeeling remarks and questions regarding her future position in the Rushmere family, put to her with the coarse bluntness of uneducated people, who could not realize her grief for the loss of one who was not a blood relation. "Was she going," they asked, "to remain at the farm, or to take service elsewhere?" and they expressed great surprise that young Mrs. Rushmere had suffered her to remain there so long. Then, she was asked to give minute particulars regarding the terrible disease of which her foster-mother had died; of how she bore her sufferings, what doctor she employed, and what remedies had been applied? All this was trying enough to a sensitive mind; but they went further still, and utterly regardless of the wounds they were inflicting, demanded of the weeping girl, "If Mrs. Rushmere had left her anything, and who was to get her clothes?"
This important piece of information, was urged by no less a personage than Letty Barford, who in company with her mother-in-law and Miss Watling, called to look at the corpse.
"I think Mrs. Rushmere has done enough for her," said Miss Watling as they descended the stairs, "keeping her for so many years after all the trouble she has made in the family."
This was not said in Dorothy's hearing, but addressed to Mrs. Gilbert and her mother, to whom the party were offering their condolence.
"These interlopers are always a nuisance in families," said Mrs. Rowly. "This Dorothy Chance is a good enough girl, but my daughter will be very glad to get rid of her. It does not do to have two mistresses in a house, and she has been used to have her own way in everything."
"It was but natural," suggested the elder Mrs. Barford. "She was more than a daughter to them, and it must have been trying to Dorothy to give up the place she had held for so many years, with such credit to herself, to strangers. I pity her with all my heart; when does she leave you Mrs. Gilbert?"
"As soon after the funeral as possible. It is only on the old man's account that I allowed her to remain here so long. She is the only creature in the house that can manage him, but it is high time that all this should be put a stop to."
"You are perfectly right, Mrs. Gilbert," cried Miss Watling. "I think you have shown great forbearance in tolerating the presence of such a dangerous person in the house so long. While she was kept in her place as servant of all work, it was all very well; but since the Earl has taken her under his especial patronage, there is no bounds to her assumption and insolence. Would you believe it, ladies, he is paying for her education, and is actually having her taught to play upon the piano."
"Strange, that we never heard a word of this before," cried both the ladies in a breath. "Is she his mistress?"
"That's the inference which most people have drawn from such strange conduct on his part," and Miss Watling shrugged her shoulders significantly.
"I don't believe a word of it," cried the elder Mrs. Barford. "I heard just now, that Dorothy was going to live with Mrs. Martin, and she is too good a woman to tolerate such doings in her house."
"It is an easy thing for a man of Lord Wilton's rank and wealth to bribe people to hold their tongues," sneered Miss Watling. "It is nothing to me what she is, I shall never give my countenance to a person of doubtful character, and one so every way my inferior. It is a good thing for you, Mrs. Gilbert, that it has pleased God to take the old woman, or this artful girl might make mischief between you and your husband."
"Oh ma'am, I have no fears on that head," replied Sophia tartly. "I am not afraid of such a mischance. I saw very little of Mrs. Rushmere, and considering the nature of her complaint, I think her death a happy release; and if the old man were to follow his wife, it would not break my heart—"
"Sophia, you should not speak your mind so freely," said her mother shaking her head. "But indeed, ladies, my daughter has been treated with so little respect by the whole family, that you must not wonder at her indifference at the death of a mother-in-law, who hardly said a civil thing to her since she came into the house. Of course it was the interest of this girl, Chance, to set the old folk against us, in the hope, which I have every reason to believe she entertained, that they would leave her all their personal property."
"Has the old woman left her a legacy?" demanded Letty, with breathless interest.
"Not a thing. Her sudden death prevented that. The old man wanted to give her all his wife's clothes and some of the fine linen, which he said belonged to Dorothy; but Sophia lifted up her voice against it, and the creature refused to accept the least thing, when she found that she could not get all."
"Just like such domestic sneaks," cried Miss Watling. "I am so glad she was disappointed. It will serve as a warning to others like her."
Shaking hands with Mrs. Gilbert in the most affectionate manner, and hoping that they would soon become excellent friends, Miss Watling and the two Barfords took their leave, all but the elder of the twain, delighted with Mrs. Rowly and her daughter, whom Miss Watling pronounced, a very sweet, lady-like young person.
Until the morning appointed for the funeral, the poor old yeoman had confined himself entirely to his own room, beside the coffin which contained the mortal remains of his wife. On that morning, however, he rose early; washed his pale, haggard face, and shaved himself, and put on with unusual care, the mourning suit his son had provided for the melancholy occasion. Kissing with reverence the cold brow of his wife, he screwed down the lid of the coffin with his own hands, "that no one," he said, "should see her again, or rob him of that last look. It was now time for him to gird up his loins and act like a man."
Dorothy hearing him stirring, brought up his breakfast, for he had tasted nothing but bread and water for the last four days, and she knew that he must be weak and faint from his long fast. She found him standing behind the closed curtains of the window, looking mournfully into the court below. At the sound of the light well known footsteps, he turned to her and held out his hand. Dorothy threw her arms about his neck, and for some minutes they mingled their tears together. At length, rousing himself, Rushmere placed his large hand upon her bent head, and solemnly blessed her.
"Dolly," he said, "Dolly, my dear child, had I only known the woman that now fills the place in this house that you ought to have held, I would ha' seen my right hand struck from my body afore I would ha' refused my consent to your marriage with Gilbert. I ha' been punished, terribly punished for my folly and sin, ever since yon deceitful woman came into my house to lord it over me and mine. Night and day I hear Mary's voice, repeating to me over an' over again, the words she said to me on that sorrowful morn that Gilly first left his home, an' I turned you out friendless upon the pitiless world. You, who I ought to ha' protected to the last hour o' my life. 'Larry, as a man sows, so must he reap.' Oh, my daughter, what sort o' a crop am I likely to reap with these women when you be gone?"
"They will be kinder to you, father, when I am away."
"Not a bit, not a bit. It is not in their natur, child. People cannot act agen natur. The only thing that reconciles me to my Mary's death, is, that she will not have to put up with their evil tempers, and that you, Dolly, will be removed from their malice."
"Dear father, don't vex your mind with anticipating troubles; they always come soon enough without opening the door to call them in. Come with me into the next room and eat a bit of breakfast. You have been fasting too long, and look as weak as a child. I have cooked the steak with my own hands that you might have it nice."
"Ay, Dolly, you wor allers a first-rate hand at making good cheer. Yon Lunnon fine lady wu'd starve a body with her dirty ways."
"Don't think of her, father," said Dorothy, leading him by the hand like a child into the adjoining room, where she had a small table neatly spread, and his breakfast all ready. "You must do justice to my cooking. It is the last meal your poor Dolly will ever cook for you in the old house."
"Oh, that it wor the last a' would ever want to eat," sighed Rushmere, wiping his eyes, and consenting to partake of the meal so temptingly spread before him.
After moving the dishes, Dorothy entreated him to go down stairs, and take a turn in the open air, to revive him after his confinement in the close atmosphere of the death-chamber. But this the old man could not be persuaded to do.
"I wu'd not ha' minded, Dorothy, had the day been wet." And he looked sadly toward the window, where the gay sunbeams were glancing through the closed white drapery, "but such a fine morn as this, wi' the birds singing gaily, as if they never knew sorrow or care, an' the blessed beams o' the young sun laughing in the glistening drops o' dew, an' all things o' God's making, but man, looking so bright and cheery, just maddens me wi' grief, to think that my Mary will never look upon this beautiful world again. It doth seem grievous to the wounded heart, that natur is allers happy; an' to-day I can't stand the smile on her gladsome face; it wu'd comfort me to see it covered up in storm and cloud. You know the old saying, Dolly, 'Happy is the corpse that the rain rains on.'"
If there was any truth in the old rhyme, Lawrence Rushmere's wish was gratified. The beautiful morning rapidly clouded over, and just as the funeral procession left the house, the storm burst over the melancholy train in awful thunder-claps, accompanied by floods of rain. Every one was drenched and looked uncomfortable, but the chief mourner. He held up his sad, pale face to the pitiless shower, as if its desolating progress was in unison with his own sad heart; nor did the tempest abate its fury until the sods were piled upon the narrow bed which separated him from the love of his youth.