The Romance of Zion Chapel Part 11

Yes, he loved her. She could not doubt that, though there were times when his true words and caresses suddenly seemed to wear a torturing falsity, as she thought of Isabel.

But such feelings she put from her bravely. Jealous of Isabel in the common way she had not been. She herself loved her too well, and soon she was able to talk of her again to Theophil. They had agreed that Isabel should not know what Jenny had seen that night of the recital.

For Jenny could not bear to think of the letters it would mean. "Let that be our secret, dear," she said to Theophil; and thus, when Isabel wrote, she wrote back in her usual way. Theophil and Isabel never wrote to each other. It was no part of their love to deceive Jenny in letters.

Their love was vowed to silence and absence, and in Theophil's life it must be more and more of a starlit background.

So the weeks went by, and the marriage of Theophil and Jenny was now finally fixed for the 12th of February. On second thoughts, as their love grew serene once more, they had decided not to antic.i.p.ate that date, for old Mrs. Talbot's sake; and meanwhile Jenny was admonished by that old mother to make haste and get that flesh on her bones.

The admonition was not without cause, for it presently became noticeable that Jenny was not merely negatively disobeying her old mother in this. Not only was she not growing fatter, but, indeed, she was, for one reason or another, slowly and almost imperceptibly growing thinner. It was not those at home who noticed this first, but outside friends, who, suddenly meeting her, would remark that she wasn't looking half the girl she used to be.

She had already begun to remark it herself, as with her bare arms she would coil up her hair, standing before her mirror; and she thought nothing of it till one day, as she stood there, she noticed a curious expression flash into her face and go again almost before she could mark it. Her face, which had always been round and plump, seemed suddenly to gaze back at her, very narrow and pinched and white, strangely sunken, too, and rigid. It was all a mere flash and gone again, and her real face was presently back once more. But the look filled her with solemn thoughts, in which she was surprised to find a certain comfort, as of a sad wish fulfilling itself.

She spoke to no one of that look, but it must have been the same look that Theophil saw, a few nights after, as she sat listening to him reading in her usual chair. Suddenly, as he looked up at her, he threw down the book, and with concern, almost terror, in his voice, exclaimed, "Good G.o.d, Jenny! are you ill, dear? What is that terrible white look in your face?"

He sprang across and took her hands. The look had gone again before he had finished speaking, but it was a look he was never to forget.

One day Jenny put out her arm, and asked him to feel how thin it was growing.

"It _is_ thin, dear; but you mustn't be anxious. Perhaps you're a trifle run down. You must see the doctor."

Mrs. Talbot did not believe in doctors, and suggested nourishing soups and port wine as a subst.i.tute. These, however, made those dear arms no fatter, they put none of that promised flesh on Jenny's bones. (Why did Theophil rather creep one day as Mrs. Talbot made use of that expression?)

And Jenny was growing tired too. She was not so ready on her feet as she used to be. Small exertions exhausted her. Her breath was not so available for running up and down stairs as it had been.

Then Theophil would have a doctor, who sounded Jenny, and looked a little grave, but finally, rea.s.sured, asked her if she had had a shock,--Jenny smiled rather knowingly, but denied it,--declared her a little run down and in need of bracing and nourishment, prescribed phosphites and steel.

Then Jenny got very wet one day on her way from school, and she began to cough. She had to stay at home, and bed was perhaps the best place for her. So Jenny went to bed, and looked very pretty there, and was quite merry of an evening when Theophil, bringing her flowers,--he was already bringing her flowers,--would draw up the arm-chair by her side, and read to her. Those were very sweet hours, perhaps the sweetest their love had ever known, so cosy and homelike, and yet without fear.

But one evening, when Jenny had been coughing, there was blood on the bosom of her nightdress, and as Theophil saw it, his heart stood still with terror. Jenny grew very white, too, as she saw it, though the awful thought which was behind the still look they gave each other was not quite new to her. Sometimes she might have been heard softly saying over to herself,--

"I am lost, I am changed, I must go farther, where The change shall take me worse, and no one dare Look in my face and see."

Yet although Death's voice calling us from afar may seem all sweetness, his voice coming nearer has a note of dread in it that appals the most death-desirous heart. And in that silence those poor lovers both heard him singing, it seemed not many streets away.

"I must be very ill, dear," said Jenny. "O my love, O my love...!"

Theophil strove with himself to say words with a real ring of the future in them, when this cloud should have pa.s.sed away; and for his sake Jenny pretended to believe them. Yes, this very week he would take her away to bright skies and healing air,--though Jenny felt a little tired at the thought of rising any more from the bed to which she was growing curiously accustomed.

Then there came a new doctor to see Jenny. He was a very clever specialist from a distant town; but for him the business of death had not yet obscured its tragedy,--though words like "tragedy" were not often on his tongue. Consumption was a strong enough word for him.

His heart went out to that little household; and when he saw Jenny, it ached for that young man downstairs. It was more than a professional contempt for the "general pract.i.tioner" that made him silently curse what he called the "death-doctor," as he looked at Jenny, "Jack of all diseases, and master of none."

"Two months ago, a month," he thought, as he listened and listened for a sound of hope that might come to his ear through Jenny's wasted side,--"even a month, and I could have saved her." And yet as he talked to her he was not so sure, after all. He missed something in her voice.

It was the will to live.

"Have you had a shock at any time?" he said.

Jenny was taken by surprise for a moment,--the other doctor had asked her that, too,--and she did not deny it so convincingly as she tried to.

"O, that's all right," said the doctor aloud to Jenny and her mother, who stood by, though inwardly he said, "I see. That's the reason;" and again he said, "I'm afraid you mustn't get up just yet. That chest of yours has to be taken care of, but you needn't be anxious. In a month or six weeks you'll be all right again."

"Only a month or six weeks," said Jenny, with a sinking voice. She meant--was that all that was left to her of life and love?

Downstairs Theophil stood waiting with a beating heart. He sprang to the door and drew the doctor into his room. The doctor laid a kind hand upon his arm, and there was a look in his face that made Theophil's heart die within him.

"You mean she is going to die?" he said with fearful calmness. "_You mean that?_"

"My poor fellow, G.o.d knows what I would give to deny it."

"She--is--going--to--die--_to die!_ It is impossible! Not Jenny!" and between that exclamation and his first stunned cry it seemed as though bells had been tolling a thousand years. It seemed as though he had been sitting there as in a cave since the beginning of time, saying over and over to himself, "Jenny is going to die."

There was a decanter on the sideboard. The doctor poured some spirit into a gla.s.s. "Drink this," he said. Theophil drank it raw, as though it had been water; and presently a certain illusive hope began to stir like an opening rose in his brain, and when the doctor had gone he turned to that decanter again. Perhaps if he drank enough he would find that Jenny was not to die, after all. At all events, the spirit gave him nerve, which else he could not have found, to go and sit by Jenny once more. It helped him even to be gay, so that Jenny said to herself, "The doctor has not told him that I am going to die."

"The doctor said I shall be better in a month or six weeks," she said aloud, and tried to look as though she were happy.

"Didn't I say so, dearie?" said old Mrs. Talbot, whom, curiously, love made blind instead of prophet-sighted.

"Yes; and then we'll go together to those blue skies and that bright air," said Theophil.

"Yes, dear," said Jenny, closing her eyes wearily.

Presently she opened them again, and said, "Won't you read something to me, Theophil?"

"What shall I read, dear?"

"Something amusing, love. 'Alice in the Looking-Gla.s.s,' eh? It's such a long time since we read that. Don't you remember how once long ago we could never get the Walrus and the Carpenter out of our heads?"

So Theophil read the hallowed nonsense once again, struck with the fantastic incongruity of the moment. Even the dying have to go on living, and must be treated like living folks,--for a little while longer; and, though they are slipping away, slipping away, under your very eyes, there are merciful hours when you forget that they are dying.

You read to them, talk to them, gossip about neighbours,--they are going to die, and yet they are quite interested in Mrs. Smith's new baby,--you laugh together over little jokes in the newspapers, and then suddenly the bell of your thoughts goes tolling: "They are going to die--have you forgotten they are going to die?--Think! there is so much to say before they go--O, think of it all--miss nothing, watch their faces every moment of the day--for soon you shall torture yourself in vain to remember just that curve of the mouth, that droop of the chin. Ask them everything now--tell them all--delay not--take farewell of that voice, that laugh, those living eyes--for they--are going to die."

Death was kind as long as he might be to Jenny's face, so that for some days old Mrs. Talbot still failed to see his shadowy mark there; but at last she knew what Jenny and Theophil had both striven to hide from her and from each other.

"My poor little girl, my poor boy!" she said over and over to herself from that time, but she did not cry or break down.

It was a pathetic sign of what was coming, that she now allowed Theophil sometimes to be Jenny's nurse through the night hours. There was to be no bridal bed for these lovers, but thus the tender quiet hours of the night were theirs even in so sad a fashion.

One night, in the haunted hushed middle of it, the old mother had softly pushed open the door to ask if all went well, and in a whisper Theophil had a.s.sured her. A night-light gave an uncanny shadow-breeding light in the room. Jenny was sleeping peacefully, her tired ivory face, with her dark elf-locks falling about it, framed on the pillow. Theophil raised himself softly in his chair and looked at her. She would sleep some while yet. Then from sheer weariness--grief's best friend--he too fell into a light sleep. From this he was awakened with a start. Jenny was sitting up and bending over him. With her dark hair hanging about her face, and in that light, there was something weird and unearthly about her, as though she were already dead and had risen in her shroud.

Something of a shiver went through him, as she put her thin arms round his neck and clutched him in a sudden agony of longing. All the strength of her poor little body seemed to pa.s.s into that kiss, so eager, so convulsive. "Jenny dear, it will make you so ill; lie down, little girl"--and Jenny fell back on her pillow exhausted and coughing, and with eyes unearthly bright.

"Theophil," she said suddenly, in that startling way sick people have, "you know that I am going to die!"

He could not answer, his voice would have choked in sobs. He leaned his head close to Jenny and pressed her hand, and in spite of himself two great tears fell upon Jenny's cheek.

But Jenny was curiously calm. There was almost a note of scolding in her voice, as she said, "It's no use crying, Theophil--it's got to be borne."

She was already growing strangely wise, and a little removed from earth.

The first fears of her dark journey were pa.s.sing, as she was more and more sinking among the shadows. In moments there seemed to be something almost trivial in earthly grief. But there was still one earthly joy, one earthly pride, of which her soul began to conceive the desire. It had come with the thought of her grave that one day took her, less with fear, than of a new home to which she would presently be going. In her fancy she had seen her name: "_Jenny Talbot, the beloved daughter of John and Jane Talbot, aged twenty-one years_" and it had struck her that the name was wrong.

Talbot? that was not her name. This was not the legend of her days. The world would be all wrong about her if it only read that in after days.

No, her tomb could only bear one inscription--and what sweetness amid all the bitterness of death there was to say it over and over again to herself: "_Jenny Londonderry, the beloved wife of Theophilus Londonderry, aged twenty-one years_."