John Halifax, Gentleman Part 82

"What would you like, then?"

"Only to lie here, this Sunday evening, among you all."

He asked her if she would like him to read aloud? as he generally did on Sunday evenings.

"Yes, please; and Guy will come and sit quiet on the bed beside me and listen. That will be pleasant. Guy was always very good to his sister--always."

"I don't know that," said Guy, in a conscience-stricken tone. "But I mean to be when I grow a big man--that I do."

No one answered. John opened the large Book--the Book he had taught all his children to long for and to love--and read out of it their favourite history of Joseph and his brethren. The mother sat by him at the fireside, rocking Maud softly on her knees. Edwin and Walter settled themselves on the hearth-rug, with great eyes intently fixed on their father. From behind him the candle-light fell softly down on the motionless figure in the bed, whose hand he held, and whose face he every now and then turned to look at--then, satisfied, continued to read.

In the reading his voice had a fatherly, flowing calm--as Jacob's might have had, when "the children were tender," and he gathered them all round him under the palm-trees of Succoth--years before he cried unto the Lord that bitter cry--(which John hurried over as he read)--"IF I AM BEREAVED OF MY CHILDREN, I AM BEREAVED."

For an hour, nearly, we all sat thus--with the wind coming up the valley, howling in the beech-wood, and shaking the cas.e.m.e.nt as it pa.s.sed outside. Within, the only sound was the father's voice. This ceased at last; he shut the Bible, and put it aside. The group--that last perfect household picture--was broken up. It melted away into things of the past, and became only a picture, for evermore.

"Now, boys--it is full time to say good-night. There, go and kiss your sister."

"Which?" said Edwin, in his funny way. "We've got two now; and I don't know which is the biggest baby."

"I'll thrash you if you say that again," cried Guy. "Which, indeed?

Maud is but the baby. Muriel will be always 'sister.'"

"Sister" faintly laughed, as she answered his fond kiss--Guy was often thought to be her favourite brother.

"Now, off with you, boys; and go down-stairs quietly--mind, I say quietly."

They obeyed--that is, as literally as boy-nature can obey such an admonition. But an hour after I heard Guy and Edwin arguing vociferously in the dark, on the respective merits and future treatment of their two sisters, Muriel and Maud.

John and I sat up late together that night. He could not rest--even though he told me he had left the mother and her two daughters as cosy as a nest of wood-pigeons. We listened to the wild night, till it had almost howled itself away; then our fire went out, and we came and sat over the last f.a.ggot in Mrs. Tod's kitchen--the old Debateable Land.

We began talking of the long-ago time, and not of this time at all.

The vivid present--never out of either mind for an instant--we in our conversation did not touch upon, by at least ten years. Nor did we give expression to a thought which strongly oppressed me, and which I once or twice fancied I could detect in John likewise--how very like this night seemed to the night when Mr. March died; the same silentness in the house--the same windy whirl without--the same blaze of the wood-fire on the same kitchen ceiling.

More than once I could almost have deluded myself that I heard the faint moans and footsteps over-head--that the staircase door would open, and we should see there Miss March, in her white gown, and her pale, steadfast look.

"I think the mother seemed very well and calm to-night," I said, hesitatingly, as we were retiring.

"She is. G.o.d help her--and us all!"

"He will."

This was all we said.

He went up-stairs the last thing, and brought down word that mother and children were all sound asleep.

"I think I may leave them until daylight to-morrow. And now, Uncle Phineas, go you to bed, for you look as tired as tired can be."

I went to bed; but all night long I had disturbed dreams, in which I pictured over and over again, first the night when Mr. March died--then the night at Longfield, when the little white ghost had crossed by my bed's foot, into the room where Mary Baines' dead boy lay. And continually, towards morning, I fancied I heard through my window, which faced the church, the faint, distant sound of the organ, as when Muriel used to play it.

Long before it was light I rose. As I pa.s.sed the boy's room Guy called out to me:

"Halloa! Uncle Phineas, is it a fine morning?--for I want to go down into the wood and get a lot of beech-nuts and fir-cones for sister.

It's her birthday to-day, you know."

It WAS, for her. But for us--Oh, Muriel, our darling--darling child!

Let me hasten over the story of that morning, for my old heart quails before it still.

John went early to the room up-stairs. It was very still. Ursula lay calmly asleep, with baby Maud in her bosom; on her other side, with eyes wide open to the daylight, lay--that which for more than ten years we had been used to call "blind Muriel." She saw, now.

The same day at evening we three were sitting in the parlour; we elders only--it was past the children's bed-time. Grief had spent itself dry; we were all very quiet. Even Ursula, when she came in from fetching the boys' candle, as had always been her custom, and though afterwards I thought I had heard her going up-stairs, likewise from habit,--where there was no need to bid any mother's good-night now--even Ursula sat in the rocking-chair, nursing Maud, and trying to still her crying with a little foolish baby-tune that had descended as a family lullaby from one to the other of the whole five--how sad it sounded!

John--who sat at the table, shading the light from his eyes, an open book lying before him, of which he never turned one page--looked up at her.

"Love, you must not tire yourself. Give me the child."

"No, no! Let me keep my baby--she comforts me so." And the mother burst into uncontrollable weeping.

John shut his book and came to her. He supported her on his bosom, saying a soothing word or two at intervals, or when the paroxysm of her anguish was beyond all bounds supporting her silently till it had gone by; never once letting her feel that, bitter as her sorrow was, his was heavier than hers.

Thus, during the whole of the day, had he been the stay and consolation of the household. For himself--the father's grief was altogether dumb.

At last Mrs. Halifax became more composed. She sat beside her husband, her hand in his, neither speaking, but gazing, as it were, into the face of this their great sorrow, and from thence up to the face of G.o.d.

They felt that He could help them to bear it; ay, or anything else that it was His will to send--if they might thus bear it, together.

We all three sat thus, and there had not been a sound in the parlour for ever so long, when Mrs. Tod opened the door and beckoned me.

"He will come in--he's crazy-like, poor fellow! He has only just heard--"

She broke off with a sob. Lord Ravenel pushed her aside and stood at the door. We had not seen him since the day of that innocent jest about his "falling in love" with Muriel. Seeing us all so quiet, and the parlour looking as it always did when he used to come of evenings--the young man drew back, amazed.

"It is not true! No, it could not be true!" he muttered.

"It is true," said the father. "Come in."

The mother held out her hand to him. "Yes, come in. You were very fond of--"

Ah! that name!--now nothing but a name! For a little while we all wept sore.

Then we told him--it was Ursula who did it chiefly--all particulars about our darling. She told him, but calmly, as became one on whom had fallen the utmost sorrow and crowning consecration of motherhood--that of yielding up her child, a portion of her own being, to the corruption of the grave--of resigning the life which out of her own life had been created, unto the Creator of all.

Surely, distinct and peculiar from every other grief, every other renunciation, must be that of a woman who is thus chosen to give her very flesh and blood, the fruit of her own womb, unto the Lord!

This dignity, this sanct.i.ty, seemed gradually to fall upon the mourning mother, as she talked about her lost one; repeating often--"I tell you this, because you were so fond of Muriel."

He listened silently. At length he said, "I want to see Muriel."