“Except in all that was my duty, Jane. He has known no home, no care, no love. Perhaps now, if it should not be too late—”
And then she resumed her preparations with that concentrated calm of despair which sometimes apes ordinary composure so well as to deceive the lookers-on. Jane could not understand what was her lady’s meaning. She followed her about with anxious looks, doing nothing on her own part to aid, paralyzed by the extraordinary suggestion. Madam was fully equipped before Jane had stirred, except to follow wistfully every step Mrs. Trevanion took.
“Are you not coming?” she said at length. “Am I to go alone? For the first time in our lives do you mean to desert me, Jane?”
“Madam,” cried the woman, “it cannot be—it cannot be! You must be dreaming; we cannot go without the children.” She stood wringing her hands, beyond all capacity of comprehension, thinking her mistress mad or criminal, or under some great delusion—she could not tell which.
Mrs. Trevanion looked at her with strained eyes that were past tears. “Why,” she said, “why—did you not say so seventeen years ago, Jane?”
“Oh, Madam,” cried Jane, seizing her mistress by the hands, “don’t do it another time! They are all so young, they want you. It can’t do them any good, but only harm, if you go away. Oh, Madam, listen to me that loves you. Who have I but you in the world? But don’t leave them. Oh, don’t we both know the misery it brings? You may be doing it thinking it will make up. But God don’t ask these kind of sacrifices,” she cried, the tears running down her cheeks. “He don’t ask it. He says, mind your duty now, whatever’s been done in the past. Don’t try to be making up for it, the Lord says, Madam; but just do your duty now; it’s all that we can do.”
Mrs. Trevanion listened to this address, which was made with streaming eyes and a face quivering with emotion, in silence. She kept her eyes fixed on Jane’s face as if the sight of the tears was a refreshment to her parched soul. Her own eyes were dry, with that smile in them which answers at some moments in place of weeping.
“You cut me to the heart,” she said, “every word. Oh, but I am not offering God any vain sacrifices, thinking to atone. He has taken it into his own hand. Life repeats itself, though we never think so. What I did once for my own will God makes me do over again not of my own will. He has his meaning clear through all, but I don’t know what it is, I cannot fathom it.” She said this quickly, with the settled quietness of despair. Then, the lines of her countenance melting, her eyes lit up with a forlorn entreaty, as she touched Jane on the shoulder, and asked, “Are you coming? You will not let me go alone—”
“Oh, Madam, wherever you go—wherever you go! I have never done anything but follow you. I can neither live nor die without you,” Jane answered, hurriedly; and then, turning away, tied on her bonnet with trembling hands. Madam had done everything else; she had left nothing for Jane to provide. They went out together, no longer alarmed to be seen—two dark figures, hurrying down the great stairs. But the languor that follows excitement had got into the house: there were no watchers about; the whole place seemed deserted. She, who that morning had been the mistress of Highcourt, went out of the home of so many years without a soul to mark her going or bid her good-speed. But the anguish of the parting was far too great to leave room for any thought of the details. They stepped out into the night, into the dark, to the sobbing of the wind and the wildly blowing trees. The storm outside gave them a little relief from that which was within.
Madam went swiftly, softly along, with that power of putting aside the overwhelming consciousness of wretchedness which is possessed by those whose appointed measure of misery is the largest in this world. To die then would have been best, but not to be helpless and encounter the pity of those who could give no aid. She had the power not to think, to address herself to what was before her, and hold back “upon the threshold of the mind” the supreme anguish of which she could never be free, which there would be time enough, alas! and to spare, to indulge in. Perhaps, though she knew so much and was so experienced in pain, it did not occur to her at this terrible crisis of life to think it possible that any further pang might be awaiting her. The other, who waited for her within shade of the copse, drew back when he perceived that two people were coming towards him. He scarcely responded even when Mrs. Trevanion called him in a low voice by name. “Whom have you got with you?” he said, almost in a whisper, holding himself concealed among the trees.