Henrietta's Wish; Or, Domineering Part 34

you must not speak so! It is the worst thing people can do to think despondingly of themselves. Aunt Geoffrey, do tell her so!"

"Despondingly! my child; you little know what the thought is to me!"

The words were almost whispered, and Henrietta scarcely marked them.

"No, no, you must not! It is too cruel to me,--I can't bear it!" she cried; the tears in her eyes, and a violence of agitation about her, which her mother, feeble as she was, could not attempt to contend with. She rested her head on her cushions, and silently and mournfully followed with her eyes the hasty trembling movements of her daughter, who continued to arrange the things on the table, and make desperate attempts to regain her composure; but completely failing, caught up her bonnet, and hurried out of the room.

"Poor dear child," said Mrs. Frederick Langford, "I wish she was more prepared. Beatrice, the comforting her is the dearest and saddest task I leave you. Fred, poor fellow, is prepared, and will bear up like a man; but it will come fearfully upon her. And Henrietta and I have been more like sisters than mother and daughter. If she would only bear to hear me--but no, if I were to be overcome while speaking to her, it might give her pain in the recollection. Beatrice, you must tell her all I would say."

"If I could!"

"You must tell her, Beatrice, that I was as undisciplined as she is now.

Tell her how I have come to rejoice in the great affliction of my life: how little I knew how to bear it when Frederick was taken from me and his children, in the prime of his health and strength. You remember how crushed to the ground I was, and how it was said that my life was saved chiefly by the calmness that came with the full belief that I was dying.

And O! how my spirit rebelled when I found myself recovering! Do you remember the first day I went to Church to return thanks?"

"It was after we were gone home."

"Ah! yes. I had put it off longer than I ought, because I felt so utterly unable to join in the service. The sickness of heart that came with those verses of thanksgiving! All I could do was to pray to be forgiven for not being able to follow them. Now I can own with all my heart the mercy that would not grant my blind wish for death. My treasure was indeed in heaven, but O! it was not the treasure that was meant. I was forgetting my mother, and so selfish and untamed was I, that I was almost forgetting my poor babies! Yes, tell her this, Beatrice, and tell her that, if duties and happiness sprang up all around me, forlorn and desolate as I thought myself, so much the more will they for her; and 'at evening time there shall be light.' Tell her that I look to her for guiding and influencing Fred. She must never let a week pa.s.s without writing to him, and she must have the honoured office of waiting on the old age of her grandfather and grandmother. I think she will be a comfort to them, do not you? They are fond of her, and she seems to suit them."

"Yes, I have little doubt that she will be everything to them. I have especially noted her ways with Mrs. Langford, they are so exactly what I have tried to teach Beatrice."

"Dear little Busy Bee! I am glad she is coming; but in case I should not see her, give her her G.o.dmother's love, and tell her that she and Henrietta must be what their mammas have been to each other; and that I trust that after thirty-five years' friendship, they will still have as much confidence in one another as I have in you, my own dear Beatrice.

I have written her name in one of these books," she added after a short interval, touching some which were always close to her. "And, Beatrice, one thing more I had to say," she proceeded, taking up a Bible, and finding out a place in it. "Geoffrey has always been a happy prosperous man, as he well deserves; but if ever trouble should come to him in his turn, then show him this." She pointed out the verse, "Be as a father to the fatherless, and instead of a husband to their mother; so shalt thou be as the son of the Most High, and He shall love thee more than thy mother doth." "Show him that, and tell him it is his sister Mary's last blessing."

CHAPTER XVIII.

On Thursday morning, Henrietta began to awake from her sound night's rest. Was it a dream that she saw a head between her and the window? She thought it was, and turned to sleep again; but at her movement the head turned, the figure advanced, and Mrs. Geoffrey Langford stood over her.

Henrietta opened her eyes, and gazed upon her without saying a word for some moments; then, as her senses awakened, she half sprung up. "How is mamma? Does she want me? Why?" Her aunt made an effort to speak, but it seemed beyond her power.

"O, aunt, aunt!" cried she, "what is the matter? What has happened?

Speak to me!"

"Henrietta," said her aunt, in a low, calm, but hoa.r.s.e tone, "she bade you bear up for your brother's sake."

"But--but--" said Henrietta, breathlessly; "and she--"

"My dear child, she is at rest."

Henrietta laid her head back, as if completely stunned, and unable to realise what she had heard.

"Tell me," she said, after a few moments.

Her aunt knelt by her and steadily, without a tear, began to speak.

"It was at half-past twelve; she had been asleep some little time very quietly. I was just going to lie down on the sofa, when I thought her face looked different, and stood watching. She woke, said she felt oppressed, and asked me to raise her pillows. While she was leaning against my arm, there was a spasm, a shiver, and she was gone! Yes, we must only think of her as in perfect peace!"

Henrietta lay motionless for some moments, then at last broke out with a sort of anger, "O, why did you not call me?"

"There was not one instant, my dear, and I could not ring, for fear of disturbing Fred. I could not call any one till it was too late."

"O, why was I not there? I would--I would--she must have heard me.

I would not have let her go. O, mamma!" cried Henrietta, almost unconscious of what she said, and bursting into a transport of ungovernable grief; sobbing violently and uttering wild incoherent exclamations. Her aunt tried in vain to soothe her by kind words, but all she said seemed only to add impulse to the torrent; and at last she found herself obliged to wait till the violence of the pa.s.sion had in some degree exhausted itself; and young, strong, and undisciplined as poor Henrietta was, this was not quickly. At last, however, the sobs grew less loud, and the exclamations less vehement. Aunt Geoffrey thought she could be heard, leant down over her, kissed her, and said, "Now we must pray that we may fulfil her last desire; bear it patiently, and try to help your brother."

"Fred, O poor Fred!" and she seemed on the point of another burst of lamentation, but her aunt went on speaking--"I must go to him; he has yet to hear it, and you had better come to him as soon as you are dressed."

"O aunt; I could not bear to see him. It will kill him, I know it will!

O no, no, I cannot, cannot see Fred! O, mamma, mamma!" A fresh fit of weeping succeeded, and Mrs. Langford herself feeling most deeply, was in great doubt and perplexity; she did not like to leave Henrietta in this condition, and yet there was an absolute necessity that she should go to poor Fred, before any chance accident or mischance should reveal the truth.

"I must leave you, my dear," said she, at last. "Think how your dear mother bowed her head to His will. Pray to your Father in Heaven, Who alone can comfort you. I must go to your brother, and when I return, I hope you will be more composed."

The pain of witnessing the pa.s.sionate sorrow of Henrietta was no good preparation for carrying the same tidings to one, whose bodily weakness made it to be feared that he might suffer even more; but Mrs. Geoffrey Langford feared to lose her composure by stopping to reflect, and hastened down from Henrietta's room with a hurried step.

She knocked at Fred's door, and was answered by his voice. As she entered he looked at her with anxious eyes, and before she could speak, said, "I know what you are come to tell me."

"Yes, Fred," said she; "but how?"

"I was sure of it," said Fred. "I knew I should never see her again; and there were sounds this morning. Did not I hear poor Henrietta crying?"

"She has been crying very much," said his aunt.

"Ah! she would never believe it," said Fred. "But after last Sunday--O, no one could look at that face, and think she was to stay here any longer!"

"We could not wish it for her sake," said his aunt, for the first time feeling almost overcome.

"Let me hear how it was," said Frederick, after a pause.

His aunt repeated what she had before told Henrietta, and then he asked quickly, "What did you do? I did not hear you ring."

"No, that was what I was afraid of. I was going to call some one, when I met grandpapa, who was just going up. He came with me, and--and was very kind--then he sent me to lie down; but I could not sleep, and went to wait for Henrietta's waking."

Fred gave a long, deep, heavy sigh, and said, "Poor Henrietta! Is she very much overcome?"

"So much, that I hardly know how to leave her."

"Don't stay with me, then, Aunt Geoffrey. It is very kind in you, but I don't think anything is much good to me." He hid his face as he spoke thus, in a tone of the deepest dejection.

"Nothing but prayer, my dear Fred," said she, gently. "Then I will go to your sister again."

"Thank you." And she had reached the door when he asked, "When does Uncle Geoffrey come?"

"By the four o'clock train," she answered, and moved on.

Frederick hid his head under the clothes, and gave way to a burst of agony, which, silent as it was, was even more intense than his sister's.

O! the blank that life seemed without her look, her voice, her tone! the frightful certainty that he should never see her more! Then it would for a moment seem utterly incredible that she should thus have pa.s.sed away; but then returned the conviction, and he felt as if he could not even exist under it. But this excessive oppression and consciousness of misery seemed chiefly to come upon him when alone. In the presence of another person he could talk in the same quiet matter-of-fact way in which he had already done to his aunt; and the blow itself, sudden as it was, did not affect his health as the first antic.i.p.ation of it had done.