CHAPTER LXXIV.
FROM HADES’ GATES
In the old house and good household, warmth of opinion and heat of expression abounded now about everything. Pages might be taken up by saying what even one man thought, and tens of pages would not contain the half of what one woman said. Enough, that when poor Alice was brought back through the snow-drifts quietly, every moveable person in the house was at the door. Everybody loved her, and everybody admired her; but now with a pendulous conscience. Also, with much fear about themselves; as the household of Admetus gazed at the pale return of Alcestis.
Alice, being still so weak, and quite unfit for anything, was frightened at their faces, and drew back and sank with faintness.
“Sillies!” cried Mabel, jumping out, with Polly’s doll inside her muff; “naturals, or whatever you are, just come and do your duty.”
They still hung away, and not one of them would help poor Alice across her own father’s threshold, until a great scatter of snow flew about, and a black horse was reigned up hotly.
“You zanies!” cried the Rector; “you cowardly fools! You never come to church, or you would know what to do. You skulking hounds, are you afraid of your own master’s daughter? I have got my big whip. By the Lord, you shall have it. Out of my parish I’ll set to and kick every dastardly son of a cook of you.”
“Where is my father?” said Alice faintly; “I hoped that he would have come for me.”
At the sound of her voice they began to perceive that she was not the ghost of the Woeburn; and the Rector’s strong championship cast at once the broad and sevenfold shield of the church over the maiden’s skeary deed. “Oh, Uncle Struan,” she whispered, hanging upon his arm, as he led her in; “have I committed some great crime? Will my father be ashamed of me?”
“He should rather be ashamed of himself, I think,” he answered, for the present declining the subject which he meant to have out with her some day; “but, my dear, he is not quite well; that is why he does not come to see you. And, indeed, he does not know – I mean he is not at all certain how you are. Trotman, open that door, sir, this moment.”
The parson rather carried than led his niece into a sitting-room, and set her by a bright fire, and left Mabel Lovejoy to attend to her; while he himself hurried away to hear the last account of Sir Roland, and to consult the doctor as to the admittance of poor Alice. But in the passage he met Colonel Clumps, heavily stumping to and fro, with even more than wonted energy.
“Upon my life and soul, Master Parson, I must get out of this house,” he cried; “slashing work, sir, horrible slashing! I had better be under Old Beaky again. I came here to quiet my system, sir: and zounds, sir, they make every hair stand up.”
“Why, Colonel, what is the matter now? Surely, a man of war, like you – ”
“Yes, sir, a man of war I am; but not a man of suicide, and paralysis, and precipices, and concussions of the brain, sir – battle, and murder, and sudden death – why, my own brain is in a concussion, sir!”
“So it appears,” said the Rector softly. “But surely, Colonel, you can tell us what the news is?”
“The news is just this, sir,” cried the Colonel, stamping, “the two Chapmans were upset in their coach last night down a precipice, and both killed as dead as stones, sir. They sent for the doctor; that’s proof of it; our doctor has had to be off for his life. No man ever sends for the doctor, until he is dead.”
“There is some truth in that,” replied Mr. Hales; “but I won’t believe it quite yet, at any rate. No doubt they have been upset. I said so as soon as I heard they were gone; particularly with their postilions drunk. And I dare say they are a good deal knocked about. But snow is a fine thing to ease a fall. Whatever has happened, they brought on themselves by their panic and selfish cowardice.”
“Ay, they ran like rats from a sinking ship, when they saw poor Sir Roland’s condition. Alice had frightened them pretty well; but the other affair quite settled them. Sad as it was, I could scarcely help laughing.”
“A sad disappointment for your nice girls, Colonel. Instead of a gay wedding, a house of death.”
“And for your pretty daughters, Rector, too. However, we must not think of that. You have taken in the two Lovejoys, I hear.”
“Gregory and Charlie? Yes, poor fellows. They were thoroughly scared last night, and of course Bottler had no room for them. That Charlie is a grand fellow, and fit to follow in the wake of Nelson. He was frozen all over as stiff as a rick just thatched, and what did he say to me? He said, ‘I shall get into the snow and sleep. I won’t wet mother Bottler’s floor.’”
“Well done! well said! There is nothing in the world to equal English pluck, sir, when you come across the true breed of it. Ah, if those d – d fellows had left me my leg, I would have whistled about my arm, sir. But the worst of the whole is this, supposing that I am grossly insulted, sir, how can I do what a Briton is bound to do – how can I kick – you know what I mean, sir?”
“Come, Colonel, if you can manage to spin round like that, you need not despair of compassing the national salute. But here we are at Sir Roland’s door. Are we allowed to go in? or what are the orders of the doctor?”
“Oh yes; he is quite unconscious. You might fire off a cannon close to his ear, without his starting a hair’s breadth. He will be so for three days, the doctor thinks; and then he will awake, and live or die according as the will of the Lord is.”
“Most of us do that,” answered the parson; “but what shall I say to his daughter?”
“Leave her to me. I will take her a message, sir. I have been hoaxed so in the army, that now I can hoax any one.”
“I believe you are right. She will listen to you a great deal more than she would to me. Moreover, I want to be off, as soon as I have seen poor Sir Roland. I shall ride on, and ask how the Chapmans are. I don’t believe they are dead; they are far too tough. What a blessing it is to have you here, Colonel, with the house in such a state! How is that confounded old woman, who lies at the bottom of all this mischief?”
“Lady Valeria Lorraine,” said the Colonel, rather stiffly, “is as well as can be expected, sir. She has been to see her son Sir Roland, and her grandson Hilary. My opinion is that this brave girl inherits her spirit from her grandmother. Whatever happens, I am sure of one thing, she ought to be the mother of heroes, sir; not the wife of Steenie Chapman.”
“Ah’s me!” cried the Rector; “it will take a brave man to marry her, after what she has done.”
“Stuff and nonsense!” answered the Colonel; “a good man will value her all the more, and scorn the opinion of the county, sir.”
The Rector, in his own stout heart, was much of the same persuasion; but it would not do for him to say so yet. So, after a glance at Sir Roland’s wan and death-like features, he rode forth with a sigh, to look after the Chapmans.
CHAPTER LXXV.
SOMETHING LIKE A LEGACY
A grand physician being called from London, pronounced that Sir Roland’s case was one of asthenic apoplexy, rather than of pure paralysis. He gave the proper directions, praised the local practitioners, hoped for the best, took his fifty guineas with promptitude, and departed. If there were any weight on the mind, it must be cast aside at once, as soon as the mind should have sense of it. For this a little effort might be allowed, “such as the making of a will, or so forth, or good-bye to children; for on the first return of sense, some activity was good for it. But after that, repose, dear sir, insist on repose, and nourishing food. No phlebotomy – no, that is quite a mistake; an anachronism, a barbarism, in such a case as this is. It is anæmia, with our poor friend, and vascular inaction. No arterial plethorism; quite the opposite, in fact. You have perfectly diagnosed the case. How it will end I cannot say, any more than you can.”
One more there was, one miserable heart, perpetually vexed and torn, that could not tell how things would end, if even they ended anyhow. Alice Lorraine could not be kept from going to her father’s bed, and she was not strong enough yet to bear the sight of the wreck before her.
“It is my doing – my doing!” she cried; “oh, what a wicked thing I must have done, to be punished so bitterly as this!”
“If you please, Miss, to go away with your excitement,” said the old nurse, who was watching him. “You promised to behave yourself; and this is how you does it! Us never can tell what they hears, or what they don’t; when they lies with their ears pricked up so.”
“Nurse, I will go away,” said Alice; “I always do more harm than good.”
The only comfort she now could get flowed from the warm bright heart of Mabel. Everybody else gave signs of being a little, or much, afraid of her. And what is more dreadful for any kind heart, than for other hearts to dread it? She knew that she had done a desperate thing; and she felt that everybody had good reason for shrinking away from her large deep eyes. She tried to keep up her courage, in spite of all that was whispered about her; and, truly speaking, her whole heart vested in her father and her brother.
Mabel watched the whole of this, and did her best to help it. But sweet and good girl as she was, and in her way very noble, she belonged to a stratum of womanhood distinct from that of Alice. She would never have jumped into the river. She would simply have defied them to take her to church. She would have cried, “Here I am, and I won’t marry any man, unless I love him. I don’t love this man; and I won’t have him. Now do your worst, every one of you.” A sensible way of regarding the thing, except for the need of the money.
On the third day, Sir Roland moved his eyes, and feebly raised one elbow. Alice sat there at his side, as now she was almost always sitting. “Oh father,” she cried, “if you would only give me one little sign that you know me. Just to move your darling hand, or just to give me one little glance. Or, if I have no right to that – ”
“Go away, Miss; leave the room, if you please. My orders was very particular to have nobody near him, when he first begins to take notice to anything.”
Alice, with a deep sigh, obeyed the orders of the cross old dame; and when the doctor came she received her reward in his approval. It was pitiful to see how humble this poor girl was now become. The accident to the Chapmans, her father’s “stroke,” poor Hilary’s ruin, the lowering of the family for years, had all been attributed to her “wicked sin,” by Lady Valeria, whose wrath was boundless at the overthrow of all her plans.
“What good have you done? What good have you done by such a heinous outrage? You have disgraced yourself for ever. Who will ever look at you now?”
“Everybody, I am afraid, Madam,” Alice answered, with a blush.
“You know what I mean, as well as I do. Even if you were drowned, I believe you would catch at the words of your betters.”
“Drowning people catch at straws,” she answered with a shudder of memory.
“And you could not even drown yourself. You were too clumsy to do even that.”
“Well, Madam,” said Alice, with a smile almost resembling that of better times; “surely even you will admit that I did my best towards it.”
“Ah, you flighty child, leave my room, and go and finish killing your father.”
Now when the doctor came and saw the slight revival of his patient, he hurried in search of Miss Lorraine, towards whom he had taken a liking. After he had given his opinion of the case, and comforted her until she cried, he said – “Now you must come and see him. And if you can think of anything likely to amuse him, or set his mind in motion – any interesting remembrance, or suggestion of mild surprise, it will be the very best thing possible.”
“But surely, to see me again will sufficiently astonish him.”
“It is not likely. In most of these cases perfect oblivion is the rule as to the occurrence that stimulated the predisposition to these attacks. Sir Roland will not have the smallest idea that – that anything has happened to you.”
And so it proved. When Alice came to her father’s side, he looked at her exactly as he used to do, except that his glance was weak and wavering, and full of desire to comfort her. The doctor had told her to look cheerful, and even gay – and she did her best. Sir Roland had lost all power of speech; but his hearing was as good as ever; and being ordered to take turtle-soup, he was propped up on a bank of pillows, and doing his best to execute medical directions.
“Oh, my darling, darling!” cried Alice, after a little while, being left to feed her father delicately: “I have got such a surprise for you! You will say you were never so astonished in all the course of your life before.”
She knew how her father would have answered if he had been at all himself. He would have lifted his eyebrows, and aroused her dutiful combativeness, with some of that little personal play which passes between near relatives, who love and understand each other. As it was, he could only nod, to show his anxiety for some surprise. And then Alice did a thing which under any other circumstances, would have been most inconsistent in her. In the drawer of his looking-glass she found his best-beloved snuff-box, and she put one little pinch between his limp forefinger and white thumb, and raised them towards the proper part, and trusted to nature to do the rest. A pleasant light shone forth his eyes; and she felt that she had earned a kiss. Betwixt a smile and a tear, she took it; and then, for fear of a chill, she tucked him up, and sat quietly by him. She had learned, as we learn in our syntax, what “vacuis committere venis.”
When he had slept for two or three hours, with Alice hushing the sound of her breath, he was seized with sudden activity. His body had been greatly strengthened by the most nourishing of all food; and now his mind began to aim at like increase of movement.
“What do you think I have got to show you?” said Alice, perceiving this condition. “Nothing less, I do believe, than the key of the fine old Astrologer’s case! Of course, I can only guess, because you have got it locked away, papa. But from the metal looking just the same, and the shape of it, and the seven corners, and its being found at Shoreham, in the sea, where Memel was said to have lost it, I do think it must be that very same key. And I found it, papa – well I found it under rather peculiar circumstances. Now may I go and try? There can be no harm, if it turns out to be pure fancy.”
Her father nodded, and pointed to a drawer where he kept his important keys, as his daughter of course was well aware. And in five minutes, Alice came back again, with the strange old case in one hand, and Polly’s queer doll in the other. Mabel lingered in the passage, not being sure that she ought to come in, though Alice tried to fetch her. Then Alice set the case, or cushion, upon her father’s bedside table, and with a firm hand pushed the key down, and endeavoured to turn it. Not a tittle would anything yield or budge; although it was clear to the dullest eye that lock and key belonged together.
“It is the key, papa,” cried Alice; “it fits to a hair; but it won’t turn. This queer old thing goes round and round, instead of staying quiet, and waiting to be unlocked justly. I suppose my hands are too weak. Oh there! Provoking thing, it goes round again. I know how I could manage it, if I may, my darling father. In the Astrologer’s room, I saw a tremendous vice, fit to take anything. I have inherited some of his turn for tools and mechanism; though of course in a most degenerate degree. Now may I go up? I shall have no fear whatever, if Mabel comes with me.”
Winning mute assent, she ran for the key of that room, and took Mabel with her: and soon they had that obstinate case set fast in a vice, whose screw had not been turned for more than two centuries. The bottom of the cone was hard and solid, and bedded itself in the old oak slabs.
“Now turn, Mabel, turn; the key is warped, or we might apply more force,” said Alice. They did not know that it had been crooked by the jaws of Jack the donkey. Even so, it would not yield, until they passed an ancient chisel through its loop, and worked away. Then, with a thin and sulky screech, the cogs began to move, and the upper half of the case to slide aside.
“Oh, I am so frightened, Alice,” cried Mabel, drawing back her hands. “And the room is so cold! It seems so unholy! It feels like witchcraft! And all his old tools looking at us!”
“Witch or wizard, or necromancer, I am not going to leave off now,” answered Alice the resolute. “You may run away, if you like. But I mean to get to the bottom of this, if I – if I can, at least.”
She was going to say, “if I die for it.” But she had been so close to Death quite lately, that she feared to take his name in vain.
“How slowly it moves! How it does resist!” cried Mabel, returning to the charge. “I thought I was pretty strong – well, it ought to be worth something for all this work.”
“It is fire-proof! It is lined with asbestos!” Alice answered eagerly. “Oh, there must be an enormous lot of gold.”
“There can’t be,” said Mabel; why a thousand guineas is more than you or I could carry. And you carried this easily in one hand.”
“Don’t talk so!” cried Alice; “but work away. I am desperately anxious.”
“As for me, I am positively dying of curiosity. Lend me your pocket-handkerchief, dear. I am cutting my hands to pieces.”
“Here it comes, I do believe. Well, what an extraordinary thing!”
The dome of the cone had yielded sulkily to the vigour and perseverance of two good young ladies. It had slidden horizontally, the key of course sliding with it, upon a strong rack of metal, which had been purposely made to go stiffly; and now that the cover had passed the cogs, it was lifted off quite easily. All this was the handiwork of the man, the simple-minded Eastern sage, who loved the shepherds and the sheep; and whose fine spirit would have now rejoiced to see the result of good workmanship.
The two fair girls poured hair together, with forehead close to forehead, when the round substantial case lay coverless before them. A disc of yellow parchment was spread flat on the top of everything, with its edges crenelled into the asbestos lining. Hours, and perhaps days of care, had been spent by clever brain and hands, to keep the air and dust out.
“Who shall lift it?” asked Mabel, panting. “I am almost afraid to move.”
“I will lift it, of course,” said Alice; “I am his descendant; and he foresaw that I should do it.”
She took from the lathe a little narrow tool for turning ivory (which had touched no hand since the Prince’s), and she delicately loosened up the parchment, and examined it. It was covered with the finest manuscript, in concentric rings, beginning with half an inch of diameter; but she could not interpret a word of that. Below it shone a thick flossy layer of the finest mountain wool; and under that the soft spun amber of the richest native silk.
“Now, Alice, do you mean to stop all night!” cried Mabel; “see how the light is fading!”
The light was fading, and spreading also, in a way that reminded Alice (although the season and the weather were so entirely different) of her visit to that room two and a half long years ago, alone among the shadows. The white light, with the snow-gleam in it, favoured any inborn light in everything else that was beautiful.
Alice, with the gentlest touch of the fairy-gifts of her fingers, raised the last gossamer of the silk, and drew back and sighed with wonder. Mabel (always prompt to take the barb and shaft of everything) leaned over, and looked in, and at once enlarged her eyes and mouth in purest stupefaction.
Before and between these two most lovely specimens of the human race, lay the most beautiful and more lasting proofs of what nature used to do, before the production of women. Alice and Mabel, with the light in their eyes and the flush in their fair cheeks quivering, felt that their beauty was below contempt – except in the opinion of stupid men – if compared with what they were looking at.
Of all the colours cast by nature on the world, as lavishly as Shakespeare threw his jewels forth, of all the tints of sun and heaven in flower, sea and rainbow, there was not one that did not glance, or gleam, or lie in ambush, and then suddenly flash forth, and blush and then fall back again. None of them waited to be looked at; all were in perpetual play; they had been immured for centuries; and when the glad light broke upon them, forth they danced like meteors. And then, as all quick with life, they began to weave their crossing rays, and cast their tints through one another, like the hurtling of the Aurora. And to back their fitful brilliance, in amongst them lay and spread a soft, delicious, milky way of bashful white serenity.
“It is terrible witchcraft!” cried dazzled Mabel.
“No,” said Alice; “it is the noblest casket ever seen, of precious opals, and of pearls. You shall carry them to my father.”
“Indeed, I will not,” said the generous Mabel; “you have earned, and you shall offer them.”