IN ENGLAND AGAIN: CONCLUSION
Let us take a leap in time and space! Leaving behind us the crowded cities, the dusky tribes, the deep skies and burning plains of India, let us cross the Black Water, and return to the little island of the West, whence the hands that have subdued these strange regions and the minds—many of the greatest of them, alas! gone forth from earth and her concerns for ever—that have governed them, took their origin. We are in England once more, and the month is the sweetest month of all the year—leaf-clad, rose-embowered June.
Just two years have gone by since the day when Thomas Gregory, the widow's son, received the news which was destined to change the whole current of his life, and was visited by a dream stranger than any of those he had encountered in his nightly excursions through the many visions of his poet friends. Yes; and we are in the very same spot where then we saw him receive the letter—the garden of the little cottage in which his early years were spent.
It has changed very little. The same green summer-house looks down upon the river, which murmurs eternally the same sweet song; the same willows brush it with feathery, golden-green branches; the same flowers, once so dear to Grace and Tom—azure-blue speedwell and dainty forget-me-not, and starry celandine—mantle now, as they did then, the low, sloping bank with beauty; the same soft mossy lawn sweeps down to the river bank; the same weeping-ash lifts its green tent from the green carpet; above the lawn are the same carefully-trimmed fruit and flower gardens. The cottage which, from where we stand, we can see peeping through a delicious network of foliage and blossoming trees, looks newer than of old, and there are certainly more boats upon the river; but these are the only changes.
No one lives in the cottage now. It is looked after by a gardener and his wife. Mrs. Gregory, who owns it still, has had it, at her son's request, rebuilt and kept in perfect order, but she lives herself in the fine house, built, as all the neighbourhood knows, after her son's design, on the high ground above the river. Folks say that she likes the cottage better than the mansion. Often, in the evening, when the weather is soft and mild, she comes down to the little place to see if her orders are being carried out. Last summer, during the dreadful days of suspense and anguish when no one knew what a day might bring forth, she haunted the cottage and garden like an unquiet ghost. Mrs. Stevens, the good old wife of her faithful gardener, could, if she liked, tell sad tales of the frenzy which would now and then seize upon the unhappy lady, as she stole round the little garden, in which she had spent so many tranquil days, or sat wringing her hands and weeping in the room that had been her son's.
But Mrs. Gregory is happier and more hopeful now, for the peril is over, and her son has promised her a visit. She is in the garden this evening. Dressed richly, in costly black lace and silk, with a Spanish mantilla thrown over her head, she is walking backwards and forwards slowly on the lawn above the river. She has changed in these two years. Her hair is perfectly white now, her figure, not nearly so full as of old, has a tendency to droop, and her face, whose comely outlines and healthy colour made her once the admiration and envy of her middle-aged friends, has lost its roundness. Neither have her eyes the brightness which they possessed then. If we look at her closely, we shall remark a curious pallor and tremulousness about them; while in all her movements there is a restlessness—a nervous timidity, pitiful in one of her age and condition.
She is joined presently by a neat-looking, elderly woman, in black gown, white apron and mob cap.
'Tea is ready, ma'am,' she says. 'Shall I bring it out to the lawn, or will you take it in the parlour?'
'Tea!' echoes Mrs. Gregory. 'Why, to be sure! I told you to get tea for me, didn't I? I had forgotten.' And she turns with a sigh to walk up the garden.
'Mayn't I take your parcel, ma'am?' said the gardener's wife pleasantly. 'It's too heavy for you.'