Miss Bretherton

by Mrs. Humphry Ward

'I would do anything you asked. But she is so likely to love and marry. Probably there is some one—already. How could it not be with her beauty and her fame? Anybody would be proud to marry her, and she has such a quick eager nature.

'There is no one!' said Marie, with deep conviction in the whispered words. 'Her life has been too exciting—too full of one interest. She stayed with me; I got to know her to the bottom. She would not have hidden it. Only say you will make one trial and I should be content.'

And then her innate respect for another's individuality, her shrinking from what might prove to be the tyranny of a dying wish interposed, and she checked herself. 'No, don't promise; I have no right—no one has any right. I can only tell you my feeling—my deep sense that there is hope—that there is nothing against you. Men—good men—are so often over-timid when courage would be best. Be bold, Eustace; respect your own love; do not be too proud to show it—to offer it!' Her voice died away into silence, only Eustace still felt the caressing touch of the thin fingers clasped round his. It seemed to him as if the life still left in her were one pure flame of love, undimmed by any thought of self, undisturbed by any breath of pain. Oh, this victory of the spirit over the flesh, of soul over body, which humanity achieves and renews from day to day and from age to age, in all those nobler and finer personalities upon whom the moral life of the world depends! How it burns its testimony into the heart of the spectator! How it makes him thrill with the apprehension which lies at the root of all religion—the apprehension of an ideal order—the divine suspicion

'That we are greater than we know!'

How it impresses itself upon us as the only miracle which will bear our leaning upon, and stand the strain of human questioning! It was borne in upon Eustace, as he sat bowed beside his dying sister, that through this fragile body and this failing breath the Eternal Mind was speaking, and that in Marie's love the Eternal Love was taking voice. He said so to her brokenly, and her sweet eyes smiled back upon him a divine answer of peace and faith.

Then she called faintly, 'Paul!' The distant figure came back; and she laid her head upon her husband's breast, while Eustace was gently drawn away by the nurse. Presently, he found himself mechanically taking food and mechanically listening to the low-voiced talk of the kindly white-capped woman who was attending to him. Every fact, every impression, was misery,—these details so unexpected, so irrevocable, so charged with terrible meaning, which the nurse was pouring out upon him,—that presence in the neighbouring room of which his every nerve was conscious,—and in front of him, like a frowning barrier shutting off the view of the future, the advancing horror of death! Yesterday, at the same time, he had been walking along the sandy Surrey roads, delighting in the last autumn harmonies of colour, and conscious of the dawn of a period of rest after a period of conflict, of the growth within him of a temper of quiet and rational resignation to the conditions of life and of his own individual lot, over the development of which the mere fact of his sister's existence had exercised a strong and steadying influence. Life, he had persuaded himself, was for him more than tolerable, even without love and marriage. The world of thought was warm and hospitable to him; he moved at ease within its friendly familiar limits; and in the world of personal relations, one heart was safely his, the sympathy and trust and tenderness of one human soul would never fail him at his need. And now this last tender bond was to be broken with a rough, incredible suddenness. The woman he loved with passion would never be his; for not even now, fresh from contact with his sister's dying hope, could he raise himself to any flattering vision of the future; and the woman he loved, with that intimate tenacity of affection which is the poetry of kinship, was to be taken from him by this cruel wastefulness of premature death. Could any man be more alone than he would be? And then suddenly a consciousness fell upon him which made him ashamed. In the neighbouring room his ear was caught now and then by an almost imperceptible, murmur of voices. What was his loss, his agony, compared to theirs?

When he softly returned into the room he found Marie lying as though asleep upon, her husband's arm. It seemed to him that since he had left her there had been a change. The face was more drawn, the look of exhaustion more defined. Paul sat beside her, his eyes riveted upon her. He scarcely seemed to notice his brother-in-law's entrance; it was as though he were rapidly losing consciousness of every fact but one; and never had Kendal seen any countenance so grief-stricken, so pinched with longing. But Marie heard the familiar step. She made a faint movement with her hand towards him, and he resumed his old place, his head bowed upon the bed. And so they sat through the morning, hardly moving, interchanging at long intervals a few words—those sad sacred words which well from the heart in the supreme moments of existence—words which, in the case of such natures as Marie de Châteauvieux, represent the intimate truths and fundamental ideas of the life that has gone before. There was nothing to hide, nothing to regret. A few kindly messages, a few womanly commissions, and every now and then a few words to her husband, as simple as the rest, but pregnant with the deepest thoughts and touching the vastest problems of humanity,—this was all. Marie was dying as she had lived—bravely, tenderly, simply.

Presently they roused her to take some nourishment, which she swallowed with difficulty. It gave her a momentary strength. Kendal heard himself called, and looked up. She had opened the hand lying on the bed, and he saw in it a small miniature case, which she moved towards him.

'Take it,' she said—oh, how faintly!—'to her. It is the only memento I can think of. She has been ill, Eustace: did I tell you? I forget. I should have gone—but for this. It is too much for her,—that life. It will break her down. You can save her and cherish her—you will. It seems as if I saw you—together!'

Then her eyes fell and she seemed to sleep—gently wandering now and then, and mentioning in her dying dream names and places which made the reality before them more and more terrible to the two hushed listeners, so different were the associations they called up. Was this white nerveless form, from which mind and breath were gently ebbing away, all that fate had grudgingly left to them, for a few more agonised moments, of the brilliant, high-bred woman who had been but yesterday the centre of an almost European network of friendships and interests! Love, loss, death,—oh, how unalterable is this essential content of life, embroider it and adorn it as we may!