Kissing the Rod: A Novel. (Vol. 3 of 3)

by Edmund Yates

"You'll go to bed soon, Master Robert," old Alice had said to him; "and you'll sleep well, I hope, for you'll not like to be looking ill when Mrs. Streightley comes; and you're not strong, you know. Promise me, now, that you'll not sit up."

So Robert promised, and he fully meant to keep his word; but as the night wore on restlessness came upon him, and distressing pain in the head and eyeballs. He wondered that any illness or pain could come near him, he was so happy so thankful--God had been so good to him, and Katharine was coming home! He could not sleep; no, the effort would be useless; so he made up the fire in the sitting-room, and he walked up and down, trying to tire himself into sleepiness. He had lost command over his thoughts; and though he might not have tried to guide them otherwise than they were going, he felt that he had lost it, and they hurried wildly into the past. All his life seemed to pass before him in a strange phantasmagoria, of which he was but a spectator; and innumerable forgotten scenes, and faces which he had not seen for years, rose up before him,--the first day he had seen Katharine, the day at the Flower-show, the day Mr. Guyon had shown him the letter. Good God, how terrible that recollection was! But she had forgiven him now, and he might fairly try to forgive himself, with this blessed assurance (and he grasped the letter in his breast with his hand as he walked up and down) in his possession, and the certainty of reading a full pardon in her eyes before long. And then he shuddered, shook through all his limbs with the strong contest of emotion, with irrepressible passionate delight and pain. Anon he rose again, and was whirled away upon another storm of thoughts. Mr. Guyon was present to him--the terrible sudden death. Ah, he had taken that too lightly; he had condemned the dead man too hastily and too heavily; the dead man, who had cared for trifles, who had found pleasure in things he could not comprehend, but was no worse than he; the dead man, who loved money and enjoyment, and naught beside. Well, he ought to have pitied him for that--he did pity him, for he was dead. His daughter could not come to him with soft words of peace, and heavenly smiles of pardon, as she was coming to the husband who had wronged her. He did pity the dead old man. He thought how coldly he had looked on the dead face--the rigid, ashy face; he remembered it well, how forlorn and ghastly it was! how awfully alone!--more so than any dead face he had ever seen. And then he remembered how carelessly he had attended the funeral; he had had no thought, no sorrow for the dead; his heart had been rent and wrung with anguish for the loss of Katharine; he had hardly heard the Burial Service at all: he had been glad when it was over, and had turned away to his business and his grief. He remembered some of it now: "Man that is born of a woman hath but a short time to live, and is full of misery." Yes, full of misery; but not now, not now--that was over. "The sure and certain hope"--this was troubling him; he would read it all through, and try to steady his thoughts upon it.

Mrs. Streightley's "church-books" lay upon a shelf near one of the windows. She rarely used the Common Prayer-book, inclining rather to dissenting forms of worship; so Robert found the book without difficulty. He sat down beside the fire, and read the Burial Service throughout, half aloud; and as he concluded it, heavy sleep fell upon him suddenly, as it had done a few times lately since he had not been so strong and well as formerly. He slept on, though the wintry dawn came and the fire died out; and when the housemaid came into the room in the morning, "it gave her," as she described it, "quite a turn, to see the master a-sittin' there asleep, and the gas a-burnin' in the broad daylight."

Old Alice came bustling in to rouse and scold him; and Robert, feeling very much ashamed of himself, went off sheepishly to bathe and dress. He looked and felt much better after those restoratives, and assured Alice that it had not harmed him to sleep on a chair instead of his bed; he felt just a little giddy of course, but it was nothing, he told her. He told himself it was the expectation of the post-hour, and the news it would bring. He did not venture to ask Alice to leave him to breakfast alone this morning; so the old woman was in the room when the expected letter arrived. It was very short; and with his first glance at it, he said:

"She will be here this evening, Alice; she comes by the day-mail."

"Thank God!" said the old woman fervently. "I am thankful there's to be no more waiting; for you ain't fit for it, Robert, my boy, and that's the truth."

"The train comes in at six; she will be here before seven. Mr. Yeldham is coming with her. Is every thing ready, Alice?"

"Every thing, Master Robert. I will have the fire lighted in her room immediately, and the things all put straight; and then you can look at it, and satisfy yourself. And you won't worry yourself--will you promise me not to worry yourself?"

"I worry myself!--no, indeed, nurse. I think that nothing can ever harm or grieve or 'worry' me, as you call it, any more."

Then he told her he must go into the City for an hour or two: and he took a kind leave of her and went. The old woman sat down on the chair he had vacated, and burst into an unaccountable fit of crying.