Elster's Folly Part 76

A far greater change, than the one called up by recollection and its shame, came over his face now. He did not speak; and Mrs. Ashton continued. She held his hands as he bent towards her.

"I have seen it all along. At first--I don't mind confessing it--I took it for granted that you were on bad terms with yourself on account of the past. I feared there was something wrong between you and your wife, and that you were regretting Anne. But I soon put that idea from me, to replace it with a graver one."

"What graver one?" he asked.

"Nay, I know not. I want you to tell me. Will you do so?"

He shook his head with an unmistakable gesture, unconsciously pressing her hands to pain.

"Why not?"

"You have just said I am dear to you," he whispered; "I believe I am so."

"As dear, almost, as my own children."

"Then do not even wish to know it. It is an awful secret; and I must bear it without sympathy of any sort, alone and in silence. It has been upon me for some years now, taking the sweetness out of my daily bread; and it will, I suppose, go with me to my grave. Not scarcely to lift it off my shoulders, would I impart it to _you_."

She sighed deeply; and thought it must be connected with some of his youthful follies. But she loved him still; she had faith in him; she believed that he went wrong from misfortune more than from fault.

"Courage, Val," she whispered. "There is a better world than this, where sorrow and sighing cannot enter. Patience--and hope--and trust in G.o.d!--always bearing onwards. In time we shall attain to it."

Lord Hartledon gently drew his hands away, and turned to the window for a moment's respite. His eyes were greeted with the sight of one of his own servants, approaching the Rectory at full speed, some half-dozen idlers behind him.

With a prevision that something was wrong, he said a word of adieu to Mrs. Ashton, went down, and met the man outside. Dr. Ashton, who had seen the approach, also hurried out.

There had been some accident in the Park, the man said. The pony had swerved and thrown little Lord Elster: thrown him right under the other pony's feet, as it seemed. The servant made rather a bungle over his news, but this was its substance.

"And the result? Is he much hurt?" asked Lord Hartledon, constraining his voice to calmness.

"Well, no; not hurt at all, my lord. He was up again soon, saying he'd lash the pony for throwing him. He don't seem hurt a bit."

"Then why need you have alarmed us so?" interrupted Dr. Ashton, reprovingly.

"Well, sir, it's her ladyship seems hurt--or something," cried the man.

Lord Hartledon looked at him.

"What have you come to tell, Richard? Speak out."

Apparently Richard could not speak out. His lady had been frightened and fainted, and did not come to again. And Lord Hartledon waited to hear no more.

The people, standing about in the park here and there--for even this slight accident had gathered its idlers together--seemed to look at Lord Hartledon curiously as he pa.s.sed them. Close to the house he met Ralph the groom. The boy was crying.

"'Twasn't no fault of anybody's, my lord; and there ain't any damage to the ponies," he began, hastening to excuse himself. "The little lord only slid off, and they stood as quiet as quiet. There wasn't no cause for my lady's fear."

"Is she fainting still?"

"They say she's--dead."

Lord Hartledon pressed onwards, and met Mr. Hillary at the hall-door. The surgeon took his arm and drew him into an empty room.

"Hillary! is it true?"

"I'm afraid it is."

Lord Hartledon felt his sight failing. For a moment he was a man groping in the dark. Steadying himself against the wall, he learned the details.

The child's pony had swerved. Ralph could not tell at what, and Lady Hartledon did not survive to tell. She was looking at him at the time, and saw him flung under the feet of the other pony, and she rose up in the carriage with a scream, and then fell back into the seat again. Ralph jumped out and picked up the child, who was not hurt at all; but when he hastened to tell her this, he saw that she seemed to have no life in her.

One of the servants, Richard, happened to be going through the Park, within sight; others soon came up; and whilst Lady Hartledon was being driven home Richard ran for Mr. Hillary, and then sought his master, whom he found at the Rectory. The surgeon had found her dead.

"It must have been instantaneous," he observed in low tones as he concluded these particulars. "One great consolation is, that she was spared all suffering."

"And its cause?" breathed Lord Hartledon.

"The heart. I don't entertain the least doubt about it."

"You said she had no heart disease. Others said it."

"I said, if she had it, it was not developed. Sudden death from it is not at all uncommon where disease has never been suspected."

And this was all the conclusion come to in the case of Lady Hartledon.

Examination proved the surgeon's surmise to be correct; and in answer to a certain question put by Lord Hartledon, he said the death was entirely irrespective of any trouble, or care, or annoyance she might have had in the past; irrespective even of any shock, except the shock at the moment of death, caused by seeing the child thrown. That, and that alone, had been the fatal cause. Lord Hartledon listened to this, and went away to his lonely chamber and fell on his knees in devout thankfulness to Heaven that he was so far innocent.

"If she had not given way to the child!" he bitterly aspirated in the first moments of sorrow.

That the countess-dowager should come down post-haste and invade Hartledon, was of course only natural; and Lord Hartledon strove not to rebel against it. But she made herself so intensely and disagreeably officious that his patience was sorely tried. Her first act was to insist on a stately funeral. He had given orders for one plain and quiet in every way; but she would have her wish carried out, and raved about the house, abusing him for his meanness and want of respect to his dead wife.

For peace' sake, he was fain to give her her way; and the funeral was made as costly as she pleased. Thomas Carr came down to it; and the countess-dowager was barely civil to him.

Her next care was to a.s.sume the entire management of the two children, putting Lord Hartledon's authority over them at virtual, if not actual, defiance. The death of her daughter was in truth a severe blow to the dowager; not from love, for she really possessed no natural affection at all, but from fear that she should lose her footing in the house which was so desirable a refuge. As a preliminary step against this, she began to endeavour to make it more firm and secure. Altogether she was rendering Hartledon unbearable; and Val would often escape from it, his boy in his hand, and take refuge with Mrs. Ashton.

That Lord Hartledon's love for his children was intense there could be no question about; but it was nevertheless of a peculiarly reticent nature.

He had rarely, if ever, been seen to caress them. The boy told tales of how papa would kiss him, even weep over him, in solitude; but he would not give him so much as an endearing name in the presence of others. Poor Maude had called him all the pet names in a fond mother's vocabulary; Lord Hartledon always called him Edward, and nothing more.

A few evenings after the funeral had taken place, Mirrable, who had been into Calne, was hurrying back in the twilight. As she pa.s.sed Jabez Gum's gate, the clerk's wife was standing at it, talking to Mrs. Jones. The two were laughing: Mrs. Gum seemed in a less depressed state than usual, and the other less snappish.

"Is it you!" exclaimed Mrs. Jones, as Mirrable stopped. "I was just saying I'd not set eyes on you in your new mourning."

"And laughing over it," returned Mirrable.

"No!" was Mrs. Jones's retort. "I'd been telling of a trick I served Jones, and Nance was laughing at that. Silk and crepe! It's fine to be you, Mrs. Mirrable!"

"How's Jabez, Nancy?" asked Mirrable, pa.s.sing over Mrs. Jones's criticism.

"He's gone to Garchester," replied Mrs. Gum, who was given to indirect answers. "I thought I was never going to see you again, Mary."

"You could not expect to see me whilst the house was in its recent state," answered Mirrable. "We have been in a bustle, as you may suppose."

"You've not had many staying there."