CHAPTER XXXIV.
THE VESPER HYMN
He was not dead. He was not even insensible. While they carried him carefully through the chill, black night, and when they carried him into the nearest house, and laid him tenderly on a bed, the large, dark eyes were wide open and fixed, but neither in death nor unconsciousness. It was a hotel they had carried him to; and one of the pretty chambermaids, who owned a sentimentally-tender heart, and read a great many novels, cried as she looked at him.
"Poor fellow!" she said, to another pretty chambermaid; "it's such a pity, ain't it – and he so handsome?"
"Who is he, I wonder?" the other chambermaid wanted to know; but no one could tell her.
"He looks like an officer," some one remarked; "I think I've seen him in the town before, and I'm pretty sure he's one of the officers."
"The doctor will know, maybe," suggested the land-lord. "Poor fellow! I'm afraid it's all up with him. I don't think he can speak."
He had never spoken but that once, when the soul of the infidel, in that supreme moment of mortal agony, in spite of the infidel creed of his life, had uttered that awful invocation – "O my God!" But the power of speech was not gone, nor of hearing; he retained all his senses, and, strangely enough, did not seem to suffer much. He lay quiescent, his dark eyes wide open, and staring vacantly straight ahead, his dark hair, dabbled with blood, falling loose on the pillow and around his bloodless face. They had drawn a white spread over him; and he had a strangely corpse-like look, with his white set face, and marble-like rigidity. But life burned yet in the strained, wide-open eyes.
The doctor came – it was Dr. Leach; and he knew him immediately, and told the gaping and curious bystanders who he was. He was very much shocked, and more shocked still when the white spread was drawn away, and the terrible truth revealed. The eyes of the wounded man followed him as he made his examination, but with no eagerness or hopefulness – only with a dull and awful sort of apathy.
"Do you know me, Captain Cavendish?" Dr. Leach asked, tenderly touching the heavy, dark hair falling over his face.
"Yes. How long – ?"
He did not finish the sentence, not because he was unable to do it, but that he evidently thought he had finished it, and his eyes never once left the physician's face.
Dr. Leach looked very sadly down in the dark, inquiring eyes.
"My poor fellow!" he said, "it is hard, I know, and for one so young and so far from all your friends. It is hard to die like this; but it is Heaven's will, and we must submit."
"How long?" repeated the sufferer, as if he had not heard him, and with that steady, inquiring gaze.
"You mean, how long can you last? I am afraid – I am afraid, my poor boy, but a short time; not over three hours at the most."
The dark, searching eyes turned slowly away from his face, and fixed themselves on vacancy as before; but he showed no signs of any emotion whatever. Physical and mental sense of suffering and fearing seemed alike to have forsaken him in this last dreadful hour. He had been a bad man; the life that lay behind him was a shameful record. He had been a gamester, a swindler, a libertine, a robber, and a murderer; and now he was dying in his sins, in a dull stupor, without remorse for the past or fear of the awful future. Dr. Leach stooped over him again, wondering at his unnatural apathy.
"Would you like a clergyman, my poor boy?" he said.
"No!"
"Is there any one you would like to see? Your time is very short, remember."
Captain Cavendish turned to him with something like human interest in his glance, for the first time.
"I should like to see Val Blake," he said, "and Mr. Darcy."
"I'll send for them," said the doctor, going out, and dispatching a couple of messengers in hot haste. "He wants to make his will, I suppose," Dr. Leach thought, as he returned to the bedroom. "Poor fellow; and Val Blake was his friend!"
Dr. Leach had requested one of the messengers to go for the army-surgeon before he came back. He knew the case was utterly hopeless, but still it was better to have the surgeon there. He found his patient lying as he had left him, staring blankly at a lamp flaring on a table under the window, while the slow minutes trailed away, and his short span of life wore away. His last night on earth! Did he think of it as he lay there, never taking his eyes from the lamp-flame, even when the doctor came to his bedside again and held something to his lips.
"My dear," Dr. Leach said, feeling as though he were speaking to a woman, and again stroking back his hair with a tender touch; "hadn't you better see a clergyman? You are dying, you know."
"Did you send for them?" said Captain Cavendish, looking at him.
"For Blake and Darcy? Yes. But will I not send for a clergyman too?"
"No."
"Would you like me to read to you, then? There is a Bible on the table?"
"No."
He sank back into his lethargic indifference once more and looked at the lamp again. Dr. Leach sighed as he sat down beside him, to watch and wait for the coming of the others.
They came at last – Val Blake and Mr. Darcy – knowing all beforehand. Their presence seemed to rouse him. Dr. Leach would have left the room, but the lawyer detained him.
"You may as well stay," he said, "it can make no difference to him now if all the world hears him. It is not his will – it is a confession he has to make."
Mr. Darcy was right. Strangely enough he wanted to do that one act of justice before he went out of life, and he seemed to make an effort to rally, and rouse himself to do it. The doctor gave him a stimulant, for he was perceptibly sinking, and the lawyer sat down to write out the broken sentences of that dying confession. It was not long; but it was long enough to triumphantly vindicate Charley Marsh before any court in the world, and just as it was completed the surgeon came. But a more terrible visitor was there too, before whom they held their breath in mute awe. Death stood terrible and invisible in their midst, and no word was spoken. They stood around the bed, pale and silent, and watched him go out of life with solemn awe at their hearts. There was no frightful death struggles – he died peacefully as a little child, but it was a fearful deathbed for all that. The soul of the unbeliever had gone to be judged. "God be merciful to him!" Dr. Leach had said, and they had all answered, "Amen." They drew the counterpane over the marble face, beautiful in death, and left the room together. All were pale, but the face of Val Blake was ghastly. He leaned against an open window, with a feeling of deadly sickness at his heart. It was all so awful, so suddenly awful; they, poor erring mortals, had judged and condemned him, and now he had gone before the Great Judge of all mankind – and the dark story had ended in the solemn wonder of the winding-sheet.
"Speak nothing but good of the dead," a pitiful old proverb says. "We were friends once," Val Blake thought. "I never want to speak of him again."
The body of the dead man was to be taken to his hotel. The surgeon and Mr. Darcy volunteered to arrange it, and Dr. Leach and Val left. The doctor had his patients to attend to, and Val was going to tell Cherrie. She was his wife and ought to know, and Val remembered how she had loved the dead man once. But that love had died out long ago, under his cruel neglect; and though she cried when she heard the tragic end of the man to whom she had been bound by the mysterious tie of marriage, they were no very passionate tears. And before the Nettleby family had quite learned to comprehend she was a wife they found that Mrs. Cherrie Cavendish was a widow!
Of all the shocks which Speckport had received within the last twenty years, there was none to equal this. Charley Marsh innocent, Captain Cavendish guilty! Cherrie Nettleby come back, his wife, his widow! And still it spread, and "still the wonder grew;" and it was like a play or a sensation novel, and the strange old proverb, "Truth is stranger than fiction," was on the tongues of all the wiseacres in the town.
And while the good people talked and exclaimed and wondered, and told the story over and over and over again to one another, and found it ever new, the dead man lay in his own elegant room in the hotel, and Cherrie, his widow, sat at his bedhead, feeling she had become all at once a heroine, and making the most of it.
Among the visitors to that darkened room were Mr. and Mrs. Wyndham, Miss Blair, and Mr. Blake. Olive Wyndham, stately and beautiful, as ever, but paler and thinner, and less defiantly bright than of old, stood beside the bed of death, and looked down on the white, beautiful face of the dead man, with a strange, remorseful pang at her heart. How her soul bowed down before the disembodied spirit, and how touching was the marble beauty of that rigid face! If he had been old and ugly, perhaps people would not have felt so sadly pitiful about his dreadful fate; but he was so young and so handsome, that tears came into their eyes, and they forgot he had been a villain in life, and went away shaking their heads and saying, "Poor fellow! Poor fellow! It's such a pity!"
Laura Blair – but Laura was always tender-hearted – cried as she looked at him, and thought how much she had liked him, and what pleasant hours they had spent together. He was very bad, of course, but still – Laura never could get any further, for the tears came so fast they choked her words.
She actually kissed Cherrie, who cried from sympathy, and Val Blake looked at her with a more tender glance than any one had ever seen in Val's unsentimental eyes before.
The pony-phaeton from Redmon was in waiting at the hotel door. Mr. Wyndham assisted the ladies in, and touched his hat as if in leave-taking.
"Are you not going back?" his wife asked, with strange timidity. She was in the habit now of speaking to him, and always in that strangely-hurried tone so foreign to her character.
"No," Mr. Wyndham said, "not just now. I shall return before dinner."
The carriage drove off. Mr. Wyndham took Val's arm, lit a cigar, and strolled with him down Queen Street.
"It's a very sad business!" he said, thoughtfully. "I am sorry for him, poor fellow! – one can't help it; but, after all, I don't know that it is not a merciful deliverance. The public disgrace, the imprisonment, the trial, the sentence, would have been to him far more terrible. There are worse things than death!"
He said the last words with a sudden bitterness that made Val look at him. "It's his mother he is thinking of," said Mr. Blake to himself. "Poor woman, she's mad!"
"And it is really true that he confessed all before he died?" Mr. Wyndham asked; "and exculpated, beyond all doubt, Charley Marsh?"
"Yes," said Val; "Charley Marsh is free to return to Speckport whenever he pleases now. I always knew he was innocent. I had a letter from him last night, too, inclosing one to his mother."
"Indeed!" Mr. Wyndham said, with a look of interest. "Is he well? Is he still in the army?"
"Yes; but his time is nearly up, it appears. I shall write to him to-day, and tell him to come back to us. I have a note – she called it a note, though it's four sheets of paper closely written, and she sat up until three this morning to finish it – from Laura Blair, to inclose to him. If he is proof against four sheets of entreaty from a lady, all I can say to him will not avail much."
"Laura is a good little girl," said Mr. Wyndham, "and very much in earnest about all her friends. You ought to marry her, Blake."
"Eh!" said Mr. Blake, aghast.
"You ought to marry her," repeated Mr. Wyndham, as composedly as though he were saying, "You ought to smoke another cigar." "I am sure you will never come across one more suited to the purpose, if you live to be as old as Methuselah's cat!"
"My dear Wyndham," expostulated Mr. Blake, rather shocked than otherwise, "what are you talking about? I give you my word I never thought of such a thing in my life."
"I don't doubt it, in the least; but you know the proverb, 'Better late than never.'"
"Nonsense! What do I want with a wife?"
"A good deal, I should think; if only to save the trouble of boarding out, and securing some one to darn your stockings and button your shirt-collar. Have you never indulged in any vision, O most prosaic of men! of a quiet domestic fireside, garnished on one side by yourself, with your feet in slippers, and on the other by a docile cat and a Mrs. Blake?"
"Never!" responded Mr. Blake, emphatically.
"Then it's time you did! Your hair's turning gray, man, and your sister has left you! Come, rouse up, old fellow, and secure that little prize, Laura Blair, before some more ardent wooer bears her off, and leaves you in the lurch."
Mr. Blair stared at him.
"I say, Wyndham, what crotchet have you got in your head to-day? Marry Laura Blair! What should I marry her for, more than any one else?"
"Well, for pure artlessness, Mr. Blake," he said, "I'll back you against the world! Why should you marry Laura Blair, indeed! Why you overgrown infant, because you are in love with her! That's why!"
"Am I?" responded Mr. Blake, helplessly. "I didn't know it. Is she in love with me, too?"
"Ask her," said Mr. Wyndham, still laughing. "Here we are at the office. Good-morning to you."
"Won't you come in?"
"Not this morning; I am going to Rosebush Cottage."
"Oh," said Val, hesitatingly, for it was an understood thing the subject was very painful, "how is your mother?"
"She is no better," said Mr. Wyndham, briefly. "Good-morning!"
Mr. Blake went into his sanctum, and the first thing he did was to write to Charley and tell him all.
"Come back to Speckport, dear old boy," wrote Val, "everybody is in a state of remorse, you know, and dying to see you. Come back for your mother's sake, and we will give you such a reception as no man has had since the Prince of Wales, long life to him! visited our town. Come back, Charley, and cheer us again with the sight of your honest sonsie face."
It took some time for Speckport to recover thoroughly from the severe shock its nervous system had received in the death of Captain Cavendish, and the various wonderful facts that death brought to light. It was fully a month before the wonder quite subsided, and people could talk of other things over the tea-table.
Cherrie, the bereaved, was safely back again in the parental nest. Creditors had flocked in with the dead man's long bills; and when all was settled, nothing was left for the widow. But some good men among them made up two hundred pounds, and Mrs. Wyndham added another hundred, and the three were presented to Mrs. Cavendish, with the sympathy of the donors. It was a little fortune for Cherrie, though a pitiful ending of the brilliant match she had made; and she took it, crying very much, and was humbly thankful. Once more she tripped the streets of her native town, and her crape, and bombazine, and widow's cap, were charmingly becoming; and when the roses began to return to her cheeks, she was prettier than ever.
The town was quiet, and October was wearing away. The last week of that month brought a letter from Charley Marsh – a letter that was not like Charley, but was very grave, almost sad.
"Under God, my dear Val," he wrote, "I owe the restoration of my good name to you. I know all you have done for me and mine – my poor mother has told me; but I cannot thank you. I am sure you do not want me to thank you; but it is all written deep in my heart, and will be buried with me. I am coming back to Speckport – ah! dear old Speckport! I never thought it could be so dear! I shall be with you in November, and perhaps I may say to you then what I cannot write now. I am coming back a man, Val; I went away a hot-headed, passionate, unreasoning boy. I have learned to be wise, I hope, and if the school has been a hard one, I shall only remember its lessons the longer. I am coming back rich; blessings as well as misfortunes do not come alone. I have been left a fortune – you will see an account of it in the paper I send you. Our colonel, a gallant fellow, and a rich Georgian planter, has remembered me in his will. I saved his life shortly after I came here, almost at the risk of my own, I believe. They promoted me for it at the time, and I thought I had got my reward; but I was mistaken. He died last week of a bayonet-thrust, and when his will was read, I found I was left thirty thousand dollars. He was a childless widower, with no near relatives; so no one is wronged. You see I shall not have to fall back upon Dr. Leach's hand on my return, and my mother need depend no more on Mrs. Wyndham's generosity. I am very grateful to that lady all the same."
"I believe I'll show this letter to Father Lennard," said Val to himself; "he asked me on Sunday if I had heard from Charley lately, and told me to let him know when I did. Charley was always a favorite of his, since the day when he was a little shaver and an acolyte on the altar."
Mr. Blake was not the man to let grass grow under his feet when he took a notion in his head; so he started off at once, at a swinging pace, for the cathedral. The October twilight was cold and gray. A dreary evening, in which men went by with pinched noses and were buttoned up in greatcoats, and women had vails over their faces, and shivered in the street – a melancholy evening, speaking of desolation, and decay, and death, and the end of all things earthly.
Mr. Blake, to whom it was only a rawish evening, strode along, and reached the cathedral in the bleak dusk. The principal entrances were all closed, but he went in through a side door, and looked into the side chapel for the priest. Not finding him, he entered the cathedral through one of the transepts, but neither was Father Lennard there. The gray twilight shone but dimly through the painted windows, and the long and lofty aisles were very dim and shadowy. There was but one light in the great church – a tiny lamp burning on the grand altar – a lamp that never went out by night or day. Two or three shadowy female figures knelt around the altar-rails in silent prayer, and Val thought one of them looked like Miss Rose. He knew she was in the habit of coming in the twilight here; but something else had caught his attention, and he turned away and went on tiptoe down the echoing nave, staring up at the choir. Some one was singing softly there – singing so softly that it seemed but the sighing of the autumn-wind, and seemed to belong to it. But Val had a quick ear, and the low melancholy cadences struck him with a nameless thrill. What was there that sounded so strangely familiar in that voice? It was a woman's voice – a sweet, full soprano, that could rise to power at its owner's will. But what did it remind him of? A thought flashed through him – a sudden and startling thought – that brought the blood in a red gush to his face, and then left him cold and white. He softly ascended the stairs, the low, mournful voice breaking into a sweetly-plaintive vesper hymn as he went.
Val Blake trembled from head to foot, and a cold sweat broke out on his face. He paused a moment before he entered into the choir, his heart beating faster than it ever had beat before. A woman sat before the organ, not playing, but with her fingers wandering noiselessly over the keys, her face upraised in the ghostly light. She looked like the picture of St. Cecilia, with a cloud of tressed hazy golden hair falling about that pale, earnest, upraised face. Her mantle had fallen back – a white cashmere mantle, edged with ermine and lined with blue satin – and she sung, unconscious, as it seemed, of all the world. Val Blake stood like a man paralyzed – struck dumb and motionless – and the sweet voice sang on:
"Ave Maria! Oh, hear when we call,
Mother of Heaven, who is Saviour of all;
Feeble and fearing, we trust in thy might;
In doubting and darkness thy love be our light.
Let us sleep on thy breast while the night-taper burns.
And wake in thine arms when the morning returns!
Ave Maria! Ave Maria! Ave Maria! audi nos!"
The singing ceased, the fingers were motionless, and the pale face drooped and sunk down on the pale hands. And still Val Blake stood mute, motionless, utterly confounded. For there before him, with only the moonlight shadow of her former loveliness left, sat and sang, not the dead, but the living, Nathalie Marsh!