"Child!" he murmured, "I thought it was your mother!"
And by midnight, alone, and in the dark, he died, and went to find that mother.
As for Éloise, she was like some one made dumb by a thunderbolt. Her garden had become a desert. Ice had fallen in her summer. Death was too large a fact for her to comprehend. She had seen the Medusa's head in its terror, but not in its loveliness, and been stricken to stone. At length in the heart of that stone the inner fountains broke,—broke in rains of tempestuous tears, such gusts and gushes of grief as threatened to wash away life itself; and when Éloise issued from this stormy deep, the warmth and the wealth of being obscured, the effervescence and bubble of the child destroyed, feeling like a flower sodden with showers, if she had been capable of finding herself at all, she would have found herself a woman.
Among Mr. Erne's disorderly papers, full of incipient schemes, sketches, and schedules of gold-mining, steam-companies, and railways to the nebulæ in Orion, was discovered after his death a scrap witnessed by two signatures. The owner of one of these signatures was already dead, and there were no means to prove its genuineness. The other was that of a young man who had just enough of that remote taint in his descent which incapacitates one, in certain regions, from bearing witness. It was supposed that Mr. Erne had some day hurriedly executed this paper in the absence of his lawyer, as being, possibly, better than no paper at all, and he had certainly intended to have the whole matter arranged legitimately; but these are among the things which, with a superstitious loitering, some men linger long before doing, lest they prove to be, themselves, a death-warrant.
By this paper, in so many words, Disbrowe Erne left to Éloise Changarnier all the property of which he died possessed. An old friend of her father's in the neighborhood assured her that the only relatives were both distant, distinguished, and wealthy, unlikely to present any claims, and that she would be justified in fulfilling her father's desire. And so, without other forms, Éloise administered the affairs of The Rim,—waiting until the autumn to consult the usual lawyer, who was at present in England.
There had reigned over the domestic department of The Rim, for many years, a person who was the widow of a maternal cousin of Mr. Erne's, and who, when left destitute by the death of this young cousin, had found shelter, support, and generous courtesy beneath the roof of her late husband's kinsman. It was on the accession of this person, who was not a saint, that Éloise had become so ungovernable as to require the constraint of a nunnery. Mrs. Arles was a dark and quiet little lady, with some of the elements of beauty which her name suggested, and with a perfectly Andalusian foot and ankle. These being her sole wealth, it was, perhaps, from economy of her charms that she hid the ankle in such flowing sables, that she bound the black locks straightly under a little widow's-cap, seldom parted the fine lips above the treasured pearls beneath, disdained to distort the classic features, and graved no wrinkles on the smooth, rich skin with any lavish smiling. She went about the house, a self-contained, silent, unpleasant little vial of wrath, and there was ever between her and Éloise a tacit feud, waiting, perhaps, only for occasion to fling down the gage in order to become open war. Mrs. Arles expected, therefore, that, so soon Éloise should take the reins in hand herself, she would be lightly, but decisively shaken off,—for the old friend had mentioned to Mrs. Arles that Mr. Erne's will left Éloise heir, as she had always supposed it would. She was, accordingly, silently amazed, when Éloise, softened by suffering, hoped she would always find it convenient to make a home with herself, and informed her that a certain section of the farm had been measured off and allotted to her, with its laborers, as the source of a yearly income. This delicacy, that endeavored to prevent her feeling the perpetual recurrence of benefits conferred, touched the speechless Mrs. Arles almost to the point of positive friendliness.
The plantation was one of those high and healthy spots that are ever visited by land- and sea-breezes, and there Éloise determined to stay that spring and summer; for this ground that her father had so often trod, this air that had given and received his last breath, were dear to her, and just now parting with them, for ever so short a time, would be but a renewal of her loss. As she became able to turn her energy to the business requiring attention, she discovered at last her sad ignorance. Dancing, drawing, music, and languages were of small avail in managing the interior concerns and the vexatious finance of a great estate. The neighbors complained that her spoiled and neglected servants infected theirs, and that her laxity of discipline was more ruinous in its effects than the rigor of Blue Bluffs. But she just held out to them her helpless little hands in so piteous and charming a way that they could not cherish an instant's enmity. If she tried to remedy the evil complained of, she fell into some fresh error; take what advice she would, it invariably twisted itself round and worked the other way. The plantation, always slackly managed, saw itself now on the high road to destruction. Let her do the very best in her power, she found it impossible to plan her season's campaign, to carry it out, to audit her accounts, to study agricultural directions, to preserve the peace, to keep her fences in order, to attend to the sick, to rule her household and her spirit, to dispose of her harvest, and to bring either end of the thread out of the tangled skein of her affairs.
Perhaps there could have been really no better thing for Éloise than the diversion from her sorrow which all this perplexity necessarily in some degree occasioned.
As for Mrs. Arles, so soon as Éloise had begun to move about again, she had taken herself off on a long-promised visit to the West, and was but just returning with the October weather.
Éloise, worn and thin, and looking nearly forty, as she had remarked to herself that morning in the brief moment she could snatch for her toilet, welcomed the cool and quiet little Mrs. Arles, who might be forty, but looked any age between twenty and thirty, with affectionate warmth, and made all the world bestir themselves for her comfort. It is only justice to the owner of the little Andalusian foot to say that in her specific domain things immediately changed for the better. But that was merely within-doors, and because she tightened the reins and used the whip in a manner which Éloise could not have done, if the whole equipage tumbled to pieces about her ears.