It seemed to me only a second after I had left that frightful room, that I stood beside Miss Pounden's bed upstairs. She slept with not only her shutters, but the window open. It was so perfectly silent, the street as well as the house, that through the wall from the nursery next door I could faintly hear a little baby crying. The moonlight shone dazzlingly on the white curtains of Miss Pounden's bed. I shook her by the shoulder, and called her. She started up, and I remember the odd effect of her wide open eyes, lighted by the white reflection, and staring from the shadow at me with a horror that she caught from my looks.
"Merciful Heaven! Miss Ware – my dear child – why are you here? – what is it?"
"Come with me; we must get help. Papa is dreadfully hurt in the dressing-room. Mamma knows nothing of it; don't say a word as you pass her door."
Together we went down, steadily drawing towards the awful room, from which we saw, at the end of the dark passage, the faint flush of the candle fall on the carpet.
When I told Miss Pounden what had happened, nothing would induce her to come with me beyond the lobby. I had to go into the room alone; I had to look in to be sure that he was actually dead. Oh! it was appalling, incredible. I, Ethel Ware, looking at my handsome, gay, good-natured father, killed by his own hands, the smoke of the fatal shot not yet quite cleared away! Why was there no pitying angel near to call me but a minute earlier? My tap at the door would have arrested his hand, and the moment of temptation would have passed harmlessly by. All too late – for time and eternity all is irretrievable now. One glance was sufficient. I could not breathe; I could not, for some dreadful moments, withdraw my eyes. With a faint cry, I stepped backward. I was trembling violently as I asked Miss Pounden to send any one of the servants for Sir Jacob Lake, and to tell whoever was going not to leave his house without him.
I waited in the drawing-room while she went down, and I heard her call to the servants over the stairs. The message was soon arranged, and the messenger gone. I had not cried all this time; I continued walking quickly about the drawing-room, with my hands clenched together, talking wildly to myself and to God. When Miss Pounden returned, I implored of her not to leave me.
"Come up to my room; we'll wait there till Sir Jacob Lake comes. Mamma must not know it, except as he advises. If she learned it too suddenly, she would lose her mind."
CHAPTER XXXIX
farewell, miss ware
I do not mean to describe the terrible scenes that followed. When death comes attended with a scandal like this, every recollection connected with it is torture. The gross and ghastly publicity, the merciless prying into details, and over all the gloom of the maddest and most mysterious of crimes! You look in vain in the shadow for the consoling image of hope and repose; a medium is spread around that discolours and horrifies, and the Tempter seems to haunt the house.
Then, the outrage of a public tribunal canvassing the agitations and depressions of "the deceased" in the house which within a few days was his own, handling the fatal pistol, discussing the wounds, the silent records of a mental agony that happy men cannot even imagine, and that will for life darken the secret reveries of those who loved the dead!
But as one of our proverbs, old as the days of Glastonbury, says:
"Be the day never so long,
At length cometh the even song."
Mamma is now in her crape and widow's cap; I in my deep mourning also, laden with crape. A great many people have called to inquire, and have left cards. A few notes, which could not be withheld, of embarrassed condolence, have come from the more intimate, who thought themselves obliged to make that sacrifice and exertion. Two or three were very kind indeed. Sore does one feel at the desertions that attend a great and sudden change of fortune. But I do not, on fairly thinking it over, believe that there is more selfishness or less good-nature in the world in which we were living than in that wider world which lies at a lower social level. We are too ready to take the intimacies of pleasure or mere convenience as meaning a great deal more than they ever fairly can mean. They are not contracted to involve the liabilities of friendship. If they did, they would be inconveniently few. You must not expect people to sacrifice themselves for you merely because they think you good company or have similar tastes. When you begin the facilis deccensus, people won't walk with you very far on the way. The most you can expect is a graceful, and sometimes a compassionate, farewell.
It was about a fortnight after poor papa's death that some law-papers came, which, understanding as little about such matters as most young ladies do, I sent, with mamma's approval, to Mr. Forrester, who, I mentioned, had been poor papa's man of business in town.
Next day he called. I was with mamma in her room at the time, and the servant came up with a little pencilled note. It said, "The papers are important, and the matter must be looked after immediately, to prevent unpleasantness." Mamma and I were both startled. "Business," which we had never heard of before, now met us sternly face to face, and demanded instant attention. The servant said that Mr. Forrester was waiting in the drawing-room, to know whether mamma wished to see him. She asked me to go down instead, which accordingly I did.
As I entered, he was standing looking from the window with a thoughtful and rather disgusted countenance, as if he had something disagreeable to tell. He came forward and spoke very kindly, and then told me that the papers were notices to the effect that unless certain mortgages were paid off upon a certain early day, which was named, the house and furniture would be sold. He saw how startled I was. He looked very kindly, and as if he pitied me.
"Has your mamma any relation, who understands business, to advise with under her present circumstances?" he asked.
"Chellwood, I think, ought," I began.
"I know. But this will be very troublesome; and they say Lord Chellwood is not a man of business. He'll never undertake it, I'm sure. We can try, if you like; but I think it is merely losing time and a sheet of paper, and he's abroad, I know, at Vichy; for I wrote to him to try to induce him to take an assignment of this very mortgage, and he would not, or said he could not, which means the same thing. I don't think he'll put himself out of his way for anybody. Can you think of no one else?"
"We have very few kinsmen," I answered; "they are too remote, and we know too little about them, to have any chance of their taking any trouble for us."
"But there was a family named Rokestone connected with you at Golden Friars?"
"There is only Sir Harry Rokestone, and he is not friendly. We have reason to know he is very much the reverse," I answered.
"I hope, Miss Ware, you won't think me impertinent, but it is right you should ascertain, without further loss of time, how you stand. There are expenses going on. And all I positively know is that poor Mr. Ware's affairs are left in a very entangled state. Does your mamma know what balance there is in the bank?"
"How much money in the bank?" I repeated. "Papa said there was fifty pounds."
"Fifty pounds! Oh, there must be more than that," he replied, and looked down, with a frown, upon the floor, and, with his hands in his pockets, meditated for a minute or two.
"I don't like acting alone, if it can be helped," he began again; "but if Mrs. Ware, your mamma, wishes it, I'll write to the different professional men, Mr. Jarlcot at Golden Friars, and Mr. Williams at Cardyllion, and the two solicitors in the south of England, and I'll ascertain for her, as nearly as we can, what is left, and how everything stands, and we must learn at the bank what balance stands to your credit. But I think your mamma should know that she can't possibly afford to live in the way she has been accustomed to, and it would only be prudent and right that she should give all the servants, except two or three whom she can't do without, notice of discharge. Is there a will?"
"I don't know. I think not – mamma thinks not," I said.
"I don't believe there is," he added. "It's not likely, and the law makes as good a will for him as he could have made for himself." He thought for a minute, and then went on. "I felt a great reluctance, Miss Ware, to talk upon these unpleasant subjects: but it would not have been either kind or honest to be silent. You and your mamma will meet your change of circumstances with good sense and good feeling, I am sure. A very great change, I fear, it will be. You are not to consider me as a professional man, tell your mamma. I am acting as a friend. I wish to do all I can to prevent expense, and to put you in possession of the facts as quickly and clearly as I can, and then you will know exactly the case you have to deal with."
He took his leave, with the same air of care, thought, and suppressed fuss which belongs to the overworked man of business.
When these people make a present of their time, they are giving us something more than gold. I was not half grateful enough to him then. Thought and years have enabled me to estimate his good-nature.
I was standing at the window of a back drawing-room, a rather dark room, pondering on the kind but alarming words, at which, as at the sound of a bell, the curtain seemed to rise for a new act in my life. These worldly terrors were mingling a new poison in my grief. The vulgar troubles, which are the hardest to bear, were near us. At this inopportune moment I heard the servant announce some one, and, looking over my shoulder quickly, I saw Mr. Carmel come in. I felt myself grow pale. I saw his eye wander for a moment in search, I fancied, of mamma. I did not speak or move. The mirror reflected my figure back upon myself as I turned towards him. What did he see? Not quite the same Ethel Ware he had been accustomed to. My mourning-dress made me look taller, thinner, and paler than before. I could not have expected to see him; I looked, I suppose, as I felt, excited, proud, pained, resentful.
He came near; his dark eyes looked at me inquiringly. He extended his hand, hesitated, and said:
"I am afraid I did wrong. I ought not to have asked to see you."
"We have not seen anyone – mamma or I – except one old friend, who came a little time ago."
My own voice sounded cold and strange in my ear; I felt angry and contemptuous. Had I not reason? I did not give him my hand, or appear to perceive that he had advanced his. I could see, though I did not look direct at him, that he seemed pained.
"I thought, perhaps, that I had some claim, also, as an old friend," he began, and paused.
"Oh! I quite forgot that," I repeated, in the same tones; "an old friend, to be sure." I felt that I smiled bitterly.
"You look at me as if you hated me, Miss Ware," he said – "why should you? What have I done?"
"Why do you ask me? Ask yourself. Look into your conscience. I think, Mr. Carmel, you are the last person who should have come here."
"I won't affect to misunderstand you; you think I influenced Lady Lorrimer," he said.
"The whole thing is coarse and odious," I said. "I hate to speak or think of it; but, shocking as it is, I must. Lady Lorrimer had no near relations but mamma; and she intended – she told her so in my hearing – leaving money to her by her will. It is, I think, natural and right that people should leave their money to those they love – their own kindred – and not to strangers. I would not complain if Lady Lorrimer had acted of her own thought and will in the matter. But it was far otherwise; a lady, nervous and broken in health, was terrified, as death approached, by people, of whom you were one, and thus constrained to give all she possessed into the hands of strangers, to forward theological intrigues, of which she could understand nothing. I say it was unnatural, cruel, and rapacious. That kind lady, if she had done as she wished, would have saved us from all our misery."
"Will you believe me, Miss Ware?" he said, in the lowest possible tones, grasping the back of the chair, on which his hand rested, very hard, "I never knew, heard, or suspected that Lady Lorrimer had asked or received any advice respecting that will, which I see has been publicly criticised in some of the papers. I never so much as heard that she had made a will. I entreat, Miss Ware, that you will believe me."
"In matters where your Church is concerned, Mr. Carmel, I have heard that prevarication is a merit. With respect to all that concerns poor Lady Lorrimer, I shall never willingly hear another word from you, nor ever speak to you again."
I turned to the window, and looked out for a minute or two, with my fingers on the window-sash. Then I turned again rather suddenly. He was standing on the same spot, in the same attitude, his hands clasped together, his head lowered, his eyes fixed in a reverie on the ground, and I thought I saw the trace of tears on his cheek.
My moving recalled him, and he instantly looked up and said:
"Let me say a word – whatever sacrifice my holy calling may impose, I accept with gratitude to Heaven. We are not pressed into this service – we are volunteers. The bride at the altar never took vow more freely. We have sworn to obey, to suffer, to fight, to die. Forewarned, and with our eyes opened, we have cast all behind us: the vanities, hopes, and affections of mortality – according to the word of God, hating father, mother, sister, brother; we take up the heavy cross, and follow in the blood-stained footsteps of our Master, pressing forward; with blind obedience and desperate stoicism, we smile at hunger, thirst, heat and cold, sickness, perils, bonds, and death. Such soldiers, you are right in thinking, will dare everything but treason. If I had been commanded to withhold information from my dearest friend, to practise any secresy, or to exert for a given object any influence, I should have done so. All human friendship is subject with me to these inexorable conditions. Is there any prevarication there? But with respect to Lady Lorrimer's will, I suggested nothing, heard nothing, thought nothing."
All this seemed to me very cool. I was angry. I smiled again, and said:
"You must think all that very childish, Mr. Carmel. You tell me you are ready to mislead me upon any subject, and you expect me to believe you upon this."
"Of course that strikes you," he said, "and I have no answer but this: I have no possible motive in deceiving you – all that is past, inexorable, fixed as death itself!"
"I neither know nor care with what purpose you speak. It is clear to me, Mr. Carmel, that with your principles, as I suppose I must call them, you could be no one's friend, and no one but a fool could be yours. It seems to me you are isolated from all human sympathies; toward such a person I could feel nothing but antipathy and fear; you don't stand before me like a fellow-creature, but like a spirit – and not a good one."
"These principles, Miss Ware, of which you speak so severely, Protestants, the most religious, practise with as little scruple as we, in their warfare, in their litigation, in their diplomacy, in their ordinary business, wherever, in fact, hostile action is suspected. If a Laodicean community were as earnest about winning souls as they are about winning battles, or lawsuits, or money, or elections, we should hear very little of such weak exceptions against the inevitable strategy of zeal and faith."
I made him no answer; perhaps I could not do so at the moment. I was excited; his serene temper made me more so.
"I have described my obligations, Miss Ware," he said. "Your lowest view of them can now charge me with no treachery to you. It is true I cannot be a friend in the sense in which the world reads friendship. My first allegiance is to Heaven; and in the greatest, as in the minutest things, all my obedience is due to that organ of its will which Heaven has placed above me. If all men thought more justly, such relations would not require to be disclosed or defended; they would simply be taken for granted – reason deduces them from the facts of our faith; we are the creatures of one God, who has appointed one Church to be the interpreter of his will upon earth."
"Every traitor is a sophist, sir; I have neither skill nor temper for such discussions," I answered, proving my latter position sufficiently. "I had no idea that you could have thought of visiting here, and I hoped I should have been spared the pain of seeing you again. Nor should I like to continue this conversation, because I might be tempted to say even more pointedly what I think than I care to do. Good-bye, Mr. Carmel, good-bye, sir," I repeated, with a quiet emphasis meant to check, as I thought, his evident intention to speak again.
He so understood it. He paused for a moment, undecided, and then said:
"Am I to understand that you command me to come no more?"
"Certainly," I answered, coldly and angrily.
His hand was on the door, and he asked very gently, but I thought with some little agitation:
"And that you now end our acquaintance?"
"Certainly," I repeated, in the same tone.
"Heaven has sent my share of sorrow," he said; "but no soldier of Christ goes to his grave without many scars. I deserve my wounds and submit. It must be long before we meet again under any circumstances; never, perhaps, in this life."
He looked at me. He was very pale, and his large eyes were full of kindness. He held out his hand to me silently, but I did not take it. He sighed deeply, and placed it again on the handle of the door, and said, very low:
"Farewell, Miss Ware – Ethel – my pupil, and may God for ever bless you!" So the door opened, and he went.
I heard the hall door shut. That sullen sound smote my heart like a signal telling me that my last friend was gone.
Few people who have taken an irrevocable step on impulse, even though they have done rightly, think very clearly immediately after. My own act for a while confounded me. I don't think that Mr. Carmel was formed by nature for deception. I think, in my inmost soul, I believed his denial, and was sure that he had neither act nor part in the management of Lady Lorrimer's will. I know I felt a sort of compunction, and I experienced that melancholy doubt as to having been quite in the right, which sometimes follows an angry scene. In this state I returned to mamma to tell her all that had passed.
CHAPTER XL
a rainy day
Mamma knew nothing distinctly about the state of our affairs, but she knew something generally of the provision made at her marriage, and she thought we should have about a thousand a year to live upon.
I could hardly recognise the possibility of this, with Mr. Forrester's forbodings. But if that, or even something like it, were secured to us, we could go down to Malory, and live there very comfortably. Mamma's habits of thinking, and the supine routine of her useless life, had sustained a shock, and her mind seemed now to rest with pleasure on the comparative solitude and quiet of a country life.
All our servants, except one or two, were under notice to go. I had also got leave from mamma to get our plate, horses, carriages, and other superfluous things valued, and fifty other trifling measures taken to expedite the winding-up of our old life, and our entrance upon our new one, the moment Mr. Forrester should tell us that our income was ascertained, and available.
I was longing to be gone, so also was mamma. She seemed very easy about our provision for the future, and I, alternating between an overweening confidence and an irrepressible anxiety, awaited the promised disclosures of Mr. Forrester, which were to end our suspense.
Nearly a fortnight passed before he came again. A note reached us the day before, saying that he would call at four, unless we should write in the meantime to put him off. He did come, and I shall never forget the interview that followed. Mamma and I were sitting in the front drawing-room, expecting him. My heart was trembling. I know of no state so intolerable as suspense upon a vital issue. It is the state in which people in money troubles are, without intermission. How it is lived through for years, as often as it is, and without the loss of reason, is in my eyes the greatest physical and psychological wonder of this sorrowful world.
A gloomier day could hardly have heralded the critical exposition that was to disclose our future lot. A dark sky, clouds dark as coal-smoke, and a steady down-pour of rain, large-dropped and violent, that keeps up a loud and gusty drumming on the panes, down which the wet is rushing in rivers. Now and then the noise rises to a point that makes conversation difficult. Every minute at this streaming window I was looking into the street, where cabs and umbrellas, few and far between, were scarcely discoverable through the rivulets that coursed over the glass.
At length I saw a cab, like a waving mass of black mist, halt at the door, and a double knock followed. My breath almost left me. In a minute or two the servant, opening the door, said, "Mr. Forrester," and that gentleman stepped into the gloomy room, with a despatch-box in his hand, looking ominously grave and pale. He took mamma's hand, and looked, I thought, with a kind of doubtful inquiry in her face, as if measuring her strength to bear some unpleasant news. I almost forgot to shake hands with him, I was so horribly eager to hear him speak.
Mamma was much more confident than I, and said, as soon as he had placed his box beside him, and sat down:
"I'm so obliged to you, Mr. Forrester; you have been so extremely kind to us. My daughter told me that you intended making inquiries, and letting us know all you heard; I hope you think it satisfactory?"
He looked down, and shook his head in silence. Mamma flushed very much, and stood up, staring at him, and grew deadly pale.
"It is not – it can't be less – I hope it's not – than nine hundred a year. If it is not that, what is to become of us?"
Mamma's voice sounded hard and stern, though she spoke very low. I, too, was staring at the messenger of fate with all my eyes, and my heart was thumping hard.
"Very far from satisfactory. I wish it were anything at all like the sum you have named," said Mr. Forrester, very dejectedly, but gathering courage for his statement as he proceeded. "I'll tell you, Mrs. Ware, the result of my correspondence, and I am really pained and grieved that I should have such a statement to make. I find that you opened your marriage settlement, except the provision for your daughter, which, I regret to say, is little more than a thousand pounds, and she takes nothing during your life, and then we can't put it down at more than forty pounds a year."
"But – but I want to know," broke in poor mamma, with eyes that glared, and her very lips white, "what there is – how much we have got to live on?"
"I hope from my heart there may be something, Mrs. Ware, but I should not be treating you fairly if I did not tell you frankly that it seems to me a case in which relations ought to come forward."
I felt so stunned that I could not speak.
"You mean, ask their assistance?" said mamma. "My good God! I can't – we can't – I could not do that!"
"Mamma," said I, with white lips, "had not we better hear all that Mr. Forrester has to tell us?"
"Allow me," continued mamma, excitedly; "there must be something, Ethel – don't talk folly. We can live at Malory, and, however small our pittance, we must make it do. But I won't consent to beg." Mamma's colour came again as she said this, with a look of haughty resentment at Mr. Forrester. That poor gentleman seemed distressed, and shifted his position a little uneasily.
"Malory," he began, "would be a very suitable place, if an income were arranged. But Malory will be in Sir Harry Rokestone's possession in two or three days, and without his leave you could not get there; and I'm afraid I dare not encourage you to entertain any hopes of a favourable, or even a courteous, hearing in that quarter. Since I had the pleasure of seeing Miss Ware here, about ten days or a fortnight since, I saw Mr. Jarlcot, of Golden Friars; a very intelligent man he evidently is, and does Sir Harry Rokestone's business in that part of the world, and seemed very friendly; but he says that in that quarter" – Mr. Forrester paused, and shook his head gloomily, looking on the carpet – "we have nothing good to look for. He bears your family, it appears an implacable animosity, and does not scruple to express it in very violent language indeed."
"I did not know that Sir Harry Rokestone had any claim upon Malory," said mamma; "I don't know by what right he can prevent our going into my house."
"I'm afraid there can be no doubt as to his right as a trustee; but it was not obligatory on him to enforce it. Some charges ought to have been paid off four years ago; it is a very peculiar deed, and, instead of that, interest has been allowed to accumulate. I took the liberty of writing to Sir Harry Rokestone a very strong letter, the day after my last interview with Miss Ware; but he has taken not the slightest notice of it, and that is very nearly a fortnight ago, and Jarlcot seems to think that, if he lets me off with silence, I'm getting off very easily. They all seem afraid of him down there."
I fancied that Mr. Forrester had been talking partly to postpone a moment of pain. If there was a shock coming, he wanted resolution to precipitate the crisis, and looked again with a perplexed and uneasy countenance on the carpet. He glanced at mamma, once or twice, quickly, as if he had nearly made up his mind to break the short silence that had followed. While he was hesitating, however, I was relieved by mamma's speaking, and very much to the point.
"And how much do you think, Mr. Forrester, we shall have to live upon?"
"That," said he, looking steadfastly on the table, with a very gloomy countenance, "is the point on which, I fear, I have nothing satisfactory – or even hopeful," he added, raising his head, and looking a little stern, and even frightened, "to say. You must only look the misfortune in the face; and a great misfortune it is, accustomed as you have been to everything that makes life happy and easy. It is, as I said before, a case in which relations who are wealthy, and well able to do it, should come forward."
"But do say what it is," said mamma, trembling violently. "I shan't be frightened, only say distinctly. Is it only four hundred? – or only three hundred a year?" She paused, looking imploringly at him.
"I should be doing very wrong if I told you there was anything – anything like that – anything whatever certain, in fact, however small. There's nothing certain, and it would be very wrong to mislead you. I don't think the assets and property will be sufficient to pay the debts."
"Great Heaven! Sir – oh! oh! – is there nothing left?"
He shook his head despondingly. The murder was out now; there was no need of any more questioning – no case could be simpler. We were not worth a shilling!
If in my vain and godless days the doctor at my bedside had suddenly told me that I must die before midnight, I could not have been more bewildered. Without knowing what I did, I turned and walked to the window, on which the rain was thundering, and rolling down in rivers. I heard nothing – my ears were stunned.