Half-an-hour after he had received the message from the servant who had been despatched for him, Dr. Prater spun up in his little low carriage,--hung on C springs to prevent the doctor's highly sensitive organisation being disturbed by bumps or jolts over the horrible pavement,--and drawn by a pair of little bays, which might have been the property of any millionaire in the land. The great butler condescended to leave the society of the housekeeper, and to rouse himself so far as to hold open the drawing-room door for the doctor's entrance; also to produce a decanter and a couple of glasses; and placing them at the doctor's elbow, to croak out, "Our '20, sir!" and to fill a wine-glass.
"Ah, thank ye, Pilkington," said the little doctor, taking up the glass, and holding it between his eye and the candle; "this is a dreadful thing, Pilkington."
"Yes, sir," said the butler, shortly; "it's ill-conwenient. Do you find the wine agreeable to your taste, sir?"
"Yes, yes, thank ye. I want you now to show me--ah, here's some one coming;" and the door opened, and Barbara Churchill entered the room.
"Mrs. Schröder is very ill, doctor; you must see her before you go, if you please; in her absence I will conduct you. Pilkington--oh, there are lights, I suppose?--this way, doctor;" and she led the way to the library. This had been Barbara's first experience of death, and it was a severe trial for her, broken down as she was with her other miseries; but she saw how utterly helpless poor little Alice Schröder was, and she determined to help to bear the misery of her sudden misfortune. So she preceded Dr. Prater to the library; and when she had opened the door, she beckoned to the kitchen-maid and page-boy, who were sitting bolt upright on the edge of their chairs, and let the doctor enter by himself, she returning to the dining-room. In a very few minutes she was joined by the little doctor, who had in the passage composed his face to its usual aspect by this time. "Not the slightest hope, my dear madam,--not the slightest hope. If I had been here the minute after, I could not have been of the least assistance. Must have been instantaneous, my dear madam,--instantaneous,--disease of the heart,--under which I long knew he laboured; but I never told him. What was the need? I've said to myself fifty times, 'Prater, you should tell Mr. Schröder of his danger;' and then, again, I've said to myself, 'What's the use? Mr. Schröder's not a man to relax those gigantic enterprises in which he is engaged, on the mere word of a theorist like myself. He'll only be annoyed at my interference.' There was no cause for any excitement, any special excitement, my dear miss? Pardon me; to whom have I the pleasure of speaking?"
"I am Mrs. Churchill,--I was Miss Lexden,--a very intimate friend of Mrs. Schröder's before her marriage."
"Ay, ay, ay! of course! how very remiss of me not to bear it in mind! Pleasure of including your husband, Mrs. Churchill, among my distinguished literary friends. I hope he's quite himself. Ay, ay; Miss Lexden that was, eh? Think I've had the pleasure of meeting you, before you took rank as a matron, in the house of my dear old friend Sir Marmaduke Wentworth? Ah! I thought so. Ill now, poor dear fellow,--ill in the Pyrenees; hum, ha! And no cause for any special excitement in the present lamentable case, you say, my dear Mrs. Churchill?--hum! Well, well; death from natural causes, of course. I can testify as to his heart-disease. Still, I'm afraid, my dear madam, there'll have to be a horrible--what we call a post-mortem. The ridiculous laws of this country are not satisfied with a professional man's word in such cases, and though--of course I'll take care there's no annoyance. Bad thing for Mrs. Schröder,--very! I'll go up and see her directly. By the way, my dear Mrs. Churchill," added the little doctor, edging himself very close to Barbara, and looking more than ever like an owl; "here's a paper which I picked off the floor of the library when I went in to see our poor late friend just now. I haven't looked at it myself, of course; but perhaps it might be well to put it away, and not to let Mrs. Schröder see it just yet; and," continued the doctor, examining with great attention the pattern of the Turkey carpet, "I don't see that there's any necessity to mention its existence before the coroner's people,--no one else seems to have seen it,--and these things are better kept quiet;" and the doctor handed Barbara a folded paper, which she at once placed in her pocket, and bowed himself out.
Then there fell upon that house confusion, and silence, and sadness, and a general mistiness and ignorance. No one spoke above their breath; no one knew what day of the month it was, or what day of the week, or what length of time had elapsed since the occurrence of the event which had given rise to this state of affairs. All normal laws were suspended; the carte for the proposed dinner did not go up as usual in the morning; the great butler suspended his customary inspection of the plate and reviews of the china and glass; the young lady really born in Picardy, but passing current as a Parisian, who was called "Mumzell" by the other servants, and who was attached as special retainer to Mrs. Schröder, had no interviews with her lady on toilet subjects, and found her health undoubtedly improved by being relieved from mental anxiety on the subject of the perpetual invention of new styles of head-dress. The tradesmen seemed to take Mr. Schröder's dying out of the season as a kind of personal affront. Had it happened when every thing was in full swing, the poulterer had remarked, and when parties had the greatest worrit in supplying what parties ordered, why parties might have been glad of a lull; but now, in the slack time of year, when there was few families in town, and what was mostly supplied with game from friends as had shooting, to have a large and reg'lar customer's orders suddenly stopped, as might be said, in this way, was not what parties expected and might be said to look for. Perhaps the retainers attached to the stable-department took the pleasantest view of matters. It were a bad business, they allowed; but, after all, there muss be money left, and the establishment wouldn't be broke up; and besides, a missis were easier to serve than a master, and couldn't pry; not that any thing of that sort could be said of their late guv'nor, for a more innocenter man never breathed. He were a bad whip, always a tuggin' at the 'orses' mouths; but a good master. Meanwhile 'orses must be kep' exercised; and so Mrs. Edwards the coachman's wife, and Nancy and Billy her young 'uns, and Susan Gilbert, what was keeping company with Strapper the under-coachman, and one or two convivial friends, had two or three very pleasant days at Richmond and Hampton, proceeding thither in what they called a "weggynet," borrowed from the corn-chandler at the corner of the mews, and drawn now by the chestnuts which Mr. Schröder used to spin along in his mail-phaeton, now by the iron-grays which concentrated attention on Mrs. Schröder's equipage in the ring. And in every department of the servants' hall and in the outlying regions connected therewith, there seemed to be an impression of the over-weening necessity for going in for good eating and drinking, as if to counteract the baleful effect of the calamity which had occurred. In the house itself, the kitchen-maid, relieved from attendance in that dread library, gave herself up to the cooking of mighty joints for discussion at the "one-o'clock dinner." The housekeeper and the great butler had little refections, washed down with brown sherry, in the still-room; while one of the two-gallon stone jars of brown brandy,--originally ordered for preserve-purposes, and of a very different quality from the eau-de-vie-de-cognac in the tapering bottles--was apportioned by the butler to the nightly grog of the servants' hall. Then it was that Rawbert, one of the six-foot Johns, and son of an Oxford scout, first showed his remarkable talent for brewing punch; under the influence of which the assemblage grew so jolly, that some of them were only restrained from breaking into harmony by the representation of others as to what was lying upstairs.
What was lying upstairs had been moved from the library to a spare bedroom, had been handed over to the charge of such horrible ghoulish women as only appear at such dread times, and had been left all placid and composed and cold and statuesque by itself. What was lying upstairs had had visitors. The coroner--a fat man with a red face, smeared black clothes, beady black eyes, and boots slit here and there as a necessary accommodation for gout--had visited it; had stood at the head of the bed where it lay, and had it not been for thick carpeting and double doors, would have sent his opinion of it clanging to the ears of her whom it once cherished as its own heart's blood. The jury had visited it (some of them at least, nearly half were too frightened to come beyond the bedroom-door), and had said, "Oh!" and "Deary me!" and had looked at the coroner and gone away again to the Coburg Arms; and then and there, over hot brandy-and-water, administered as a corrective, and strongly recommended by the coroner, had found a verdict of "Death from natural causes." Then it had other visitors--men in black, who took off their coats at the door and left their boots outside, putting on list slippers, and who had foot-rules, and who whistled to themselves softly as they went about their ghastly work. These men came again at night with others, blundering up the stairs under the weight of a horrible burden, and the room assumed a different aspect, and what lay therein seemed further removed from humanity and less kin to any thing it had hitherto claimed kinship with. And after that, it had yet another visitor; a white-robed woman, who stole in at night and knelt at the side of its black prison-house, and implored pardon for past waywardness and thoughtlessness and girlish follies, and prayed for strength and succour and support; then rising, pressed her lips on its cold forehead, and was led from the room in a half-hysterical state.
Yes; Alice Schröder had begun to wake to the realities of life, to find that opera-boxes and drums and sealskin cloaks and equipages and money, all good things in their way, were powerless against Death; and that Death was not merely the bugbear which he had been always painted, but had other qualities horrific in their nature, which she at least had never imputed to him. He was a thought-compeller, and up to that time little Alice had never known what thinking was. But now she thought long and earnestly. She thought of her earlier days, long before she had received her father's orders as to her marriage; she thought of her school-girl flirtations and hopes and fears and intentions as to matrimony; recalling the cavalry cornet, the light-whiskered curate, and the Italian singing-master vividly in her memory. Then she had a vague recollection of her coming-out and her town-life, through all which there loomed a shadowy presentment of Captain Lyster, standing specially boldly out in her remembrance of her stay at Bissett Grange; and than came Mr. Townshend's imperative decision, and her acceptance of her dead husband's offer. Had she behaved well to that dead husband, who had behaved so kindly to her? Ah, how painfully, as though with an actual sting, came back the recollection of his kindness, of his lavish generosity; how with clumsy action and ill-chosen words, but showing in the highest degree the warmth of his affection and the delicacy of his mind, he had loaded her with gifts, and had endeavoured to forestall her every wish! How, with an evident straggle,--for had he not been matured to it from his youth up?--yet successfully, he had weaned himself from the cares of business (at one time his greatest pleasure), and learnt a new life in the society of his wife, and in manifesting his devotion to her. Had she brought him such wealth of affection as he had showered upon her? Had she even met him half-way? When she was a girl, she was fond of being considered "highly romantic" by her companions; she thought herself the essence of romance; and yet what was her romance compared to that shown by that elderly gray-headed German merchant, who had changed the whole tenor of his life for a woman's love? And had he possessed that love? that was the bitterest question of all. Respect, yes; honour, yes; but did she respect Mr. Beresford,--she certainly did not honour him,--who had so often been her companion during her husband's lifetime? had she not had a warmer feeling towards that accomplished cavalier? had she not permitted him to speak in somewhat slighting terms, to which she by her silence had given tacit approval of the dead man; ridiculing his age and habits, unfitting him for finding favour in ladies' eyes, and protesting against the hard fate which cast such pearls before such swine? All this came up clear and fresh in Alice Schröder's memory; and as it rose she hated Beresford with all her strength; and, struck with deepest remorse, wished--oh, how she wished!--that the time would come over again, that she might dower her husband with her love, and show how she appreciated his devotion to her.