It was not until a fatal disease had seized upon her mother, that Mary ventured to appeal again to her uncle's generosity. "My second brother," she said, "has out of his small means remitted her five pounds. My eldest brother seems altogether to have disappeared from amongst us; finding that his unhappy presence had occasioned so fatal a separation between his mother and you—a disunion which I saw was the effect of many small causes, rather than one great one—he left us, and we cannot trace him. This has broken my poor mother's heart; he was the cherished one of all her children. My youngest brother has been for the last month an inmate of one of the hospitals which my poor father attended for so many years, and where his word was law. My sister Rosa, she upon whom my poor father poured, if possible, more of his affection than he bestowed upon me—my lovely sister, of whom, even in our poverty, I was so proud—so young, only upon the verge of womanhood—has, you already know, left us. Would to God it had been for her grave, rather than her destroyer!—a fellow-student of that poor youth, who, if he dreamt of her dishonour, would stagger like a spectre from what will be his death-bed to avenge her. Poverty is one of the surest guides to dishonour; those who have not been tempted know nothing of it. It is one thing to see it, another to feel it. Do not think her altogether base, because she had not the strength of a heroine. I have been obliged to resign my situation to attend my mother, and the only income we have is what I earn by giving lessons on the harp and piano. I give, for two shillings, the same instruction for which my father paid half a guinea a lesson; if I did not I should have no pupils. It is more than a month since my mother left her bed; and my youngest sister, bending beneath increased delicacy of health, is her only attendant. I know her mind to be so tortured, and her body so convulsed by pain, that I have prayed to God to render her fit for Heaven, and take her from her sufferings. Imagine the weight of sorrow that crushed me to my knees with such a petition as that. I know all you have done, and yet I ask you now, in remembrance of the boyish love that bound you and my father together, to lessen her bodily anguish by the sacrifice of a little more; that she, nursed in the lap of luxury, may not pass from life with starvation as her companion. My brother's gift is expended; and during the last three weeks I have earned but twelve shillings; my pupils are out of town. Do, for a moment remember what I was, and think how humbled I must be to frame this supplication; but it is a child that petitions for a parent, and I know I have never forfeited your esteem. In a few weeks, perhaps in a few days, my brother and my mother will meet my poor father face to face. Oh! that I could be assured that reproach and bitterness for the past do not pass the portals of the grave. Forgive me this, as you have already forgiven me much. Alas! I know too well that our misfortunes drew misfortunes upon others. I was the unhappy but innocent cause of much sorrow at the Grange; but, oh! do not refuse the last request that I will ever make." The letter was blotted by tears.
Charles Adams was from home when it arrived, and his wife, knowing the handwriting, and having made a resolution never to open a letter "from that branch of the family," did not send it after her husband "lest it might tease him." Ten days elapsed before he received it; and when he did, he could not be content with writing, but lost not a moment in hastening to the address. Irritated and disappointed that what he really had done should have been so little appreciated, when every hour of his life he was smarting in one way or other from his exertions—broken-hearted at his daughter's blighted health and happiness—angered by the reckless wildness of one nephew, and what he believed was the idleness of another—and convinced that Rosa's fearful step was owing to the pampering and mismanagement of her foolish mother—Charles Adams satisfied himself that, as he did not hear to the contrary from Mary, all things were going on well, or at least not ill. He thought as little about them as he possibly could, no people in the world being so conveniently forgotten (when they are not importunate) as poor relations; but the letter of his favourite niece spoke strongly to his heart, and in two hours after his return home he set forth for the London suburb from whence the letter was dated. It so chanced, that to get to that particular end of the town, he was obliged to pass the house his brother had occupied so splendidly for a number of years; the servants had lit the lamps, and were drawing the curtains of the noble dining-room; and a party of ladies were descending from a carriage, which prevented two others from setting down. It looked like old times. "Some one else," thought Charles Adams, "running the same career of wealth and extravagance. God grant it may not lead to the same results!" He paused, and looked up the front of the noble mansion; the drawing-room windows were open, and two beautiful children were standing on an ottoman placed between the windows, probably to keep them apart. He thought of Mary's childhood, and how she was occupied at that moment, and hastened onward. There are times when life seems one mingled dream, and it is not easy to become dispossessed of the idea when some of its frightful changes are brought almost together under our view.
"Is Miss Adams at home?" inquired her uncle of a woman leaning against the door of a miserable house.
"I don't know; she went to the hospital this morning; but I'm not sure she's in; it's the second pair back; it's easy known, for the sob has not ceased in that room these two nights; some people do take on so"—
Charles Adams did not hear the concluding sentence, but sought the room; the door would not close, and he heard a low sobbing sound from within; he paused, but his step had aroused the mourner—"Come in, Mary; come in; I know how it is," said a young voice; "he is dead; one grave for mother and son—one grave for mother and son! I see your shadow, dark as it is; have you brought a candle? It is very fearful to be alone with the dead—even one's own mother—in the dark."
Charles Adams entered the room; but his sudden appearance in the twilight, and evidently not knowing him, overcame the girl, his youngest niece, so much, that she screamed, and fell on her knees by her mother's corpse. He called for lights, and was speedily obeyed, for he put a piece of gold in the woman's hand. She turned it over, and as she hastened from the room, muttered, "If this had come sooner, she'd not have died of starvation or burdened the parish for a shroud; it's hard the rich can't look to their own."
When Mary returned, she was fearfully calm. "No, her brother was not dead," she said; "the young were longer dying than those whom the world had worn out; the young knew so little of the world, they thought it hard to leave it;" and she took off her bonnet, and sat down; and while her uncle explained why he had not written, she looked at him with eyes so fixed and cold, that he paused, hoping she would speak, so painful was their stony expression; but she let him go on, without offering one word of assurance of any kind feeling or remembrance; and when she stooped to adjust a portion of the coarse plaiting of the shroud—that mockery of "the purple and fine linen of living days"—her uncle saw that her hair, her luxuriant hair, was striped with white.
"There is no need for words now," she said at last; "no need. I thought you would have sent; she required but little—but very little; the dust rubbed from the gold she once had would have been riches: but the little she did require she had not, and so she died; but what weighs heaviest upon my mind was her calling so continually on my father, to know why he had deserted her: she attached no blame latterly to any one, only called day and night upon him. Oh! it was hard to bear—it was very hard to bear."
"I will send a proper person in the morning to arrange that she may be placed with my brother," said Charles.
Mary shrieked almost with the wildness of a maniac. "No, no; as far from him as possible! Oh! not with him! She was to blame in our days of splendour as much as he was; but she could not see it; and I durst not reason with her. Not with him! She would disturb him in his grave!"