Lady Hester Or Ursula's Narrative Part 12

"He always did get some flower like this to bring home to her, you know, she liked them so much."

It was just his one idea that Trevor had told him to take his place to her. We looked doubtfully at each other, but Fulk quietly said, "Yes, you may go." And added, as the boy went off, "It can do no harm to her in the end, poor thing!"

"To her, no; that was not my fear."

There was Alured, almost exactly what Trevor had been when last she saw him, with his bright sweet honest face over the rose, running up the stairs, knocking, and coming in with his boyish, "Good morning, Hester, I do hope you are better;" and bending down with his fresh brotherly kiss on her poor hot forehead, "I've got this rose for you, the bud will be out in a day or two."

If ever there was a modern version of St. Dorothy's roses it was there.

That boy's kiss and his gift touched the place in her heart. She caught him pa.s.sionately in her arms, and held him till he almost lost breath, and then she held him off from her as vehemently.

"Boy--Trevorsham--what do you come to me for?"

"He told me," said Alured, half dismayed. "Besides, you are my sister."

"Sister, indeed! Don't you know we would have killed you?"

"Never mind that," said Alured, with an odd sort of readiness. "You are my sister all the same, and oh--if you would let me try to be a little bit of Trevor to you, though I know I can't--"

"You--who must hate me?"

"No," said he, "I always did like you, Hester; and I've been thinking about you all the half--whenever I thought of him."

And as the tears came into the boy's eyes, the blessed weeping came at last to Hester.

He thought he had done her harm, for she cried till she was absolutely spent, sick, faint and weak as a child.

But she was like a child, and when her head was on the pillow she begged for Trevorsham to wish her good-night. I think she tried to fancy his kiss was Trevor's.

Any way the bitter black despair was gone from that time. She believed in and accepted his kindness like a sort of after glow from Trevor's love. Perhaps it did her the more good that after all he was only a boy, sometimes forgot her, and sometimes hurried after his own concerns, so that there was more excitement in it than if it had been the steady certain tenderness of an older person on which she could reckon.

She certainly cared for no one like Trevorsham. She even came downstairs that she might see him more constantly, and while he was at home, she seemed to think of no one else. But she had softened to us all, and accepted us as her belongings, in a matter-of-course kind of way. Only when he was gone did she one day say in a heavy dreary tone, that she must soon be leaving us.

But I told her, as we had agreed, that she was very far from well enough to go away alone; for indeed, it was true that disease of the lungs had set in, and to send her away to languish and die alone was not to be thought of.

My answer made her look up to me, and say, "I don't see why you should all be so good to me! Do you know how I have hated you?"

I could not help smiling a little at that, it had so little to do with the matter; but I bent down and kissed her, the first time I had ever done so.

"I don't understand it," she said, and then pushing me away suddenly.

"No! you cannot know, that I--I--I was the first to devise mischief against that boy. Perrault would never have thought of it, but for me!

Now, you see whom you are harbouring! Perhaps, you thought it all Perrault's doing."

"No, we did not," I said.

"And you still cherish me! I--who drove you from your home and rank, and came from wishing the death of your darling, to contriving it!"

I told her we knew it. And at last, after a long, long silence, she looked up from her joined hands, and said, "If I may only see my child again, even from the other side of the great gulf, I would be ready for any torment! It would be no torment to me, so I saw him! Do you think I shall be allowed, Ursula?"

How I longed for more power, more words to tell her how infinitely more mercy there was than she thought of! I don't think she took it in then, but the beginning was made, and she turned away no more from what she looked on at first as a means of bringing her to her boy, but by-and-by became even more to her.

Gradually she told how the whole history had come about. She had thought nothing of the discovery of her birth till her boy was born, but from that time the one thought of seeing him in the rank she thought his due had eaten into her heart. She had loved her husband before, but his resistance had chafed her, and gradually she felt it an injustice and cruelty, and her love and respect withered away, till she regarded him as an obstacle. And when she had spent her labour on the voyage, and obtained recognition from her father--behold! Alured's existence deprived her of the prize almost within her grasp.

A settled desire for the poor baby's death was the consequence, kept up by the continued reports of his danger. Till that time she had prayed.

Then a sense that Heaven was unjust to her and her boy filled her with grim rebellion, and she prayed no more; and Perrault, by his constant return to the subject and speculations on it, kept her mind on it far more.

But Alured lived, and every time she saw him she half hated him, half loved him; hated him as standing in her son's light, loved him because she could not help loving Trevor's shadow.

That day, when Emily met them--it had been a sudden impulse--Alured had been talking to her about his plans for Trevor's birthday; and, as he spoke of that street, the wild thought came over her how easily a fever might yet sweep him away. And yet she says, all down the street, she was trying to persuade herself to forget Emily's warning, and to disbelieve in the infection. After all, she thought, even if she had not met Emily, she should have made some excuse for turning back, such a pitiful thought came of the fair, fresh face flushing and dying.

But it was prevented, only it left fruits; for Perrault had heard what pa.s.sed between her and Trevorsham. "Did you take him to the shop?" he asked. And when she mentioned Miss Deerhurst's reminder, he said, "Ah!

that game wants skill and coolness to carry it out."

She says that was almost all that pa.s.sed in so many words; but from that time she never doubted that Perrault would take any opportunity of occasioning danger to Trevorsham; and, strange to say, she lived in a continued agony, half of hope, half of terror and grief and pity, her longing for Trevor's promotion, balanced by the thought of the grief he would suffer for his friend. Any time those five years she told me she thought that had she seen Perrault hurting him, she should have rushed between to save him; and yet in other moods, when she planned for her son, she would herself have done anything to sweep Alured from his path.

And the frequent discussion with Perrault of plans depending on the possession of the Trevorsham property, kept the consciousness of his purpose before her, and as debt and desperation grew, she was more and more sure of it.

That last day, when Trevor had been driven away, lamenting his inability to go out duck shooting, Perrault had quietly said in the late evening, "I shall take a turn in the salt marshes to-night--opportunities may offer."

The wretch! Fulk thinks he said so to implicate her.

At any rate it left her shuddering with dread and remorse, yet half triumphant at the notion of putting an end to Fulk's power over the estate, and of installing her son as heir of Trevorsham.

She had no fears for him, she trusted to his lame foot to detain him, and said to herself that if it was to be, he would be spared the sight.

She was growing jealous of his love for Alured and of us, and had a fierce glad hope of getting him more to herself.

And then! oh! poor Hester!

No wonder her desire was to be

Anywhere, anywhere, Out of the world.

But out of all the anguish, the remorse, the despair, repentance grew at last. Love seemed to open the heart to it. The sense of infinite redeeming love penetrated at last, and trust in pardon, and with pardon came peace. Peace grew on her, through increasing self-condemnation, and bearing her up as the bodily powers failed more and more.

There is little more to say. She was a dear and precious charge to us, and as she grew weaker, she also became more cheerful! and even that terrible, broken-hearted sense of bereavement calmed.

She found out about Jaquetta and Arthur, and took great interest in his arrangements for getting a partnership at Shinglebay.

"And Hester," said Jaquetta, "it is so lucky for me that I came down from being a fine lady. I might never have known Arthur; and if I had, what an absurd creature I should have been as a poor man's wife!"

As to the Deerhursts, the mother sent a servant once or twice to inquire, but never came herself to see her dear friend; and Miss Prior took care to tell us that there were horrid whispers about, that Hester had known, and if not, Mrs. Deerhurst could not have on her visiting list the wife of a man with a warrant out against him! She thought it very unfeeling in us to harbour her.

But Emily came. Hester had a great longing to thank her for checking her on that walk to the scarlet-fever place, and asked Jaquetta one day to write to her and beg her to come to see a dying woman.

Emily showed the note to her mother, and did not ask leave. The white doe had become a much more valiant animal.

Hester had liked Emily even while Emily shrank from her, and she now realized what she had inflicted upon her and Fulk.