Chapter 31. A Woman's Sympathy

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_ CHAPTER XXXI. A WOMAN'S SYMPATHY

"Midsummer night, not dark, not light.
Dusk all the scented air,
I'll e'en go forth to one I love,
And learn how he doth fare.
O the ring, the ring, my dear, for me,
The ring was a world too fine,
I wish it had sunk in a forty-fathom sea,
Or ever thou mad'st it mine.

"Soft falls the dew, stars tremble through,
Where lone he sits apart,
Would I might steal his grief away
To hide in mine own heart.
Would, would 'twere shut in yon blossom fair,
The sorrow that bows thy head,
Then--I would gather it, to thee unaware,
And break my heart in thy stead.

"That charmed flower, far from thy bower,
I'd bear the long hours through,
Thou should'st forget, and my sad breast
The sorrows twain should rue.
O sad flower, O sad, sad ring to me.
The ring was a world too fine;
And would it had sunk in a forty-fathom sea,
Ere the morn that made it mine."

Ten o'clock on the succeeding night. It seemed an age to John Mortimer since Valentine had met him in the hall, a night and a day that were almost a lifetime had come between; but his thoughts were not confused now. Something awful but fresh, breaking across his distracted mind, had diverted the torrent of his despairing fear lest his child should die through his mistake, and though he had bowed down his head and wept since the unexpected loss of another, those were healing tears, for with them came for a time escape from the rending strain that was breaking him down.

A sudden noise, when all was so quiet, and some one running down the garden, had startled him.

He tried to recall it. Valentine was with him, having just come back from the town, and one of the doctors was coming up; he took him by the hand. Other people were about him before he had time to think. Some of them were in tears. No, it was not Anastasia; he recollected how they kept telling him that it was not Anastasia, and then that they wished him to leave the house, though she was still in such imminent danger--leave the house and go to the inn. He could not receive a new thought suddenly. Why should he go to the inn? He was not anxious about his little Janie; he had not seen her for two or three days, but he could not leave the house now.

And yet he saw that he must do it. He was walking among the others to a carriage in the yard. He believed nothing; it was only as they drove along that he could understand the doctor's words--a change. They had feared that there might be an internal injury; he was to remember that they had mentioned to him some symptoms which should have made him aware of their solicitude. All very slowly, very cautiously said, but till he saw his child he did not believe a word of it.

The little face looked restless and troubled. Dorothea was sitting at her side fanning her. "Dear papa's come," she said, and then the child looked gravely satisfied, and for a long time she seemed to derive a quiet satisfaction from gazing at him. Then, by slow degrees, she fell into a deep sleep. He was so thankful to see it, and yet no one comforted him with any hopeful words. And it must have been a long time, for all the west was orange when some one woke him from an exhausted doze, his first dream since his great misfortune.

All his children were well again. They were all present but Janie. Anastasia was sitting on his knees, rosy and smiling. "Did she know," he seemed to ask her, "what her poor father had done to her?" and while he felt this peace and joy of recovering her, some one touched his arm, and the dream was gone. He started and woke. Janie, yes, little Janie was there. "Do you want me, my darling?" were his first words, before he had quite dismissed the delusive comfort of that dream.

A remarkable, a perfectly indescribable change had come over the little face, it looked so wise. "You'd better kiss me now," she said, with a wistful, quaint composure.

"Yes, my treasure."

"I can't say my prayers to-night, papa," she presently added, "I suppose you'll have to say them for me." And before he could believe that he must part with her she was gone.

Little Janie, his little Janie. As he sat in the dusk that night he repeated her name many, many times, and sometimes added that she was his favourite child, the only one who in character and mind resembled her mother.

She was a quaint, methodical little creature. She had kept an account-book, and he had found it, with all its pretty, and now most pathetic little entries. He had put it in his breast-pocket, and his hand sought it every few minutes as he sat in the long dusk of the midsummer night. This was the first gap in his healthy, beautiful family. He felt it keenly, but a man who has six children left does not break his heart when he has to give one of them back to God.

No; but he was aware that his heart was breaking, and that now and then there came intervals in his sleepless nights and days when he did not feel at all or think at all. Sometimes for a few minutes he could not see. After these intervals of dull, amazed quiescence, when he was stupid and cold even to the heart, there were terrible times when he seemed to rouse himself to almost preternatural consciousness of the things about him, when the despair of the situation roused up like a tiger, and took hold of him and shook him body and mind.

It was true, quite true, his carelessness (but then he had been so worn out with watching), his fatal mistake, his heartless mistake (and yet he would almost have given his own life for his children) had brought him down to this slough of despond. There was no hope, the doctors never told him of any, and he knew he could not bear this much longer.

There are times when some of us, left alone to pull out again our past, and look at it in the light of a present, made remorseless and cruel with the energy that comes of pain, are determined to blame ourselves not only for the present misfortune, but to go back and back, and see in everything that has gone wrong with us how, but for our own fault, perversity, cowardice, stupidity, we might have escaped almost all the ills under which we now groan.

How far are we right at such times? Most of us have passed through them, and how much harder misfortune is to bear when complicated with the bitterness of self-reproach and self-scorn!

It was not dark. John Mortimer remembered that this was Midsummer night. A few stars were out; the moon, like a little golden keel, had gone down. Quantities of white roses were out all over the place. He saw them as faint, milky globes of whiteness in the dusk.

There were lights in the opened rooms up-stairs. It was very hot; sometimes he saw the nurses passing about. Presently he saw Emily. She was to be one of the watchers that night with Anastasia.

The little creature a day or two after her accident, finding fault with every one about her, and scarcely conscious that her own pain was to blame because they could not please her, had peevishly complained that she wanted Mrs. Nemily. Mrs. Nemily was a kind lady, and could tell her much prettier stories, and not give her such nasty things to drink.

Emily was instantly made aware of this, but when she arrived her little charge was past noticing any one. And yet Emily was full of hope. Impassioned and confiding prayer sustained her courage. She had always loved the little one keenly, and desired now with indescribable longing that her father might be spared the anguish of parting with her thus.

Yes, there was Emily; John Mortimer saw her move toward the window, and derived some faint comfort from the knowledge that she would be with Anastasia for the night.

Lovely, pale, and calm, he saw and blessed her, but she could not see him; and as she retired she too was added to the measure of his self-reproaches. He had lost her, and that also he had but himself to thank for; he himself, and no other, was to blame for it all.

He loved her. Oh yes, he had soon found out that he loved her! Fool! to have believed that in the early prime of his life the deepest passions of humanity were never to wake up again and assert themselves, because for the moment they had fallen into a noonday sleep. Fool, doubly fool, to have prided himself on the thought that this was so; and more than all a fool, to have let his scorn of love appear and justify itself to such a woman as Emily. Lovely and loving, what had he asked of her? which was to be done without the reward of his love. To bring up for him another woman's children, to manage a troublesome household, to let him have leisure and leave to go away from her from time to time, that he might pursue his literary tastes and his political destiny, to be responsible, to be contented, and to be lost, name and ambition, in him and his.

All this had flashed across his mind, and amazed him with his own folly, before he reached the town on the morning that he left her. But that was nothing to the knowledge that so soon followed, the discovery that he loved her. For the first time in his life it seemed to be his part in creation to look up, and not to look down. He wrestled with himself, and fought with all his power against this hopeless passion; wondered whether he had done his cause irretrievable mischief by speaking too soon, as well as by speaking amiss; seldom hoped at all, for he had been refused even with indignation; and never was less able to withdraw his thoughts from Emily, even for a moment, than when he felt most strongly that there was no chance for him at all.

Still they went on and on now, his thoughts of her; they gave poignancy to all his other pain. The place, the arbour where he sat, had become familiar to him of late. He had become used to wander and pace the garden at night some time before this accident. Hour after hour, night after night, he had gone over the matter; he had hardly decided to go back to her, and implore her to give him a chance of retrieving his deplored mistake, when she sent him back his ring, and early the next morning was gone.

That was all his own fault, and but for it he now thought he should not have been so unobservant of things about him. Could he, but for such weary nights of sleepless wandering and watching, have let his darling boy drive those young horses, filling the carriage so full of his brothers and sisters that there was no room for any beside him whose hands were strong enough to hold them in? He was not sure. His clearer thought would not consent to admit that he could have foreseen the danger, and yet he had been so accustomed to hold things in hand, and keep them safe and secure, that he could hardly suppose they would not, but for his own state of mind, have been managed better.

It was midnight now; he had no intention of coming indoors, or taking any rest, and his thoughts went on and on. When the misfortune came, it was still his own perturbation of mind, which had worn and fretted him so that he could not meet it as he might have done. This woman, whom he loved as it seemed to him man had never loved before, had taken herself out of his reach, and another man would win her. How could he live out the rest of his days? What should he do?

It was because that trouble, heaped upon the other, had made it hard to give his mind to the situation, that he had not forced himself to take rest, and what sleep he could, instead of wasting his powers in restless watching, till his overwrought faculties and jaded eyes had led him to the fearful moment when he had all but killed his own child.

Emily had scarcely spoken to him since her arrival. All her thoughts were for her little favourite. Perhaps even, she saw little in this fatal carelessness at all out of keeping with his character, as she had lately thought of it. No, his best chances in this life were all brought to an end; the whole thing was irretrievable.

"Is that Valentine?" he asked as some one approached.

"Yes, it is past one o'clock. I am going to bed; I suppose you will too."

"No," he answered in the dull inward voice now become habitual with him. "Why should I come in? Val, you know where my will is?"

"Yes," said Valentine, distressed to hear him say it.

"If you and Giles have to act, you will find everything in order."

"What is to be done for him?" thought Valentine. "Oh for a woman to talk to him now!--I cannot." He took to one of the commonplaces of admonition instead: "Dear John, you must try and submit yourself to the will of God."

"You have no need to tell me of that," he answered with the same dimness of speech. "I do not rebel, but I cannot bear it. I mean," he continued, with the calmest tone of conviction, "that this is killing me."

"If only the child might be taken," thought Valentine, "he would get over it. It is the long suspense that distracts him."

"They want you to come in and eat something," he urged, "there is supper spread in the dining-room."

"No, I cannot."

He meant, "I cannot rise from my seat." Valentine supposed him only to say as usual that he could not eat.

"My mind wanders," he presently added, in the same low dull tone; and then repeated what he had said to his old gardener, "But sometimes I find relief in prayer."

Valentine went in rather hastily; he was alarmed not so much at the words as at his own sudden conviction that there was a good deal in them. They might be true. He must find some one to console, to talk to him, some one that could exercise influence over him. He knew of no one but Emily who would be likely to know what to say to him, and he hung about on the stairs, watching for her, hoping she would come out of little Anastasia's room; but all was so quiet, that he hoped the little sufferer might be asleep, and he dared not run the least risk of waking her.

It was now two o'clock.

John Mortimer saw some one holding aside a dark dress, and moving down the rose-covered alley towards him. It was not dark, and yet everything looked dim and confused. The morning star was up, it seemed to tremble more than usual; he knew he should not see it set, it would go out in its place, because the dawn came so early.

He knew it was Emily. "Only one thing could have brought her," he said in his dull tone, and aloud. "The end is come."

But no, she was at his side. Oh what a sweet tone! So clear and thrilling, and not sad.

"The darling is just as usual, and I have brought you some coffee; drink it, dear John, and then come in and take some rest."

"No," he answered in a low tone, husky and despairing.

She made out that he was sitting on the wooden bench his boys had carved for him. It had only been placed there a few days, and was finished with an elbow, on which he was leaning his arm. It was too low to give him much support. She came to his side, the few trembling stars in the sky gave scarcely any light. Standing thus, and looking at the same view that was before him, she saw the lighted windows of the children, Johnnie's, little Bertram's, and Anastasia's. Three or four stars trembling near the horizon were southing fast. One especially bright and flickering was about, it was evident, in a few minutes to set; as far as she could see, John was gazing at it. She hoped he was not linking with it any thought of the little tender life so likely also to set. She spoke to him again in tones of gentle entreaty, "Take this cup, dear John."

"I cannot," he answered.

"Cannot!" she said, and she stooped nearer, but the dimness hid his face.

"No; and something within me seems to be failing."

There was that in the trembling frame and altered voice that impressed her strangely. What was failing? Had the springs of life been so strained by suffering that there was danger lest they should break?

Emily did not know; but everything seemed to change for her at that moment. It was little to her that he should discover her love for him now; but he would not, or, if he did, he was past caring, and he had been almost forgotten by those about him, though his danger was as great as that of any. He had been left to endure alone. She lifted the cup to his lips, and thought of nothing, and felt nothing, but the one supreme desire to console and strengthen.

"She will die, Emily," he found voice enough to say when the cup was empty; "and I cannot survive her."

"Yes, you can; but I hope she will not die, dear John. Why should she live so long, to die after all?"

She leaned toward him, and, putting her arms about him, supported his head on her shoulder, and held it there with her hand. At least that once her love demanded of her that she should draw near. _She_ should not die; perhaps there was a long life before her; perhaps this might be the only moment she might have to look back to, when she had consoled and satisfied her unheeded heart.

"Have you so soon forgotten hope?" she said as she withdrew her arms.

"I thought I had."

"They always say she is not worse; not to be worse is to be better."

"They never say that, and I shall not forgive myself."

"No?" she exclaimed, and sighed. There was, indeed, so little hope, and if the child died, what might not be feared for the father? "That is because, though you seem a reverent and sincere Christian, you do not believe with enough reality that the coming life is so much sweeter, happier, better, than this. Few of us can. If you did, this tragedy could not fold itself down so darkly over your head. You could not bring yourself almost to the point of dying of pity and self-blame, because your child is perhaps to taste immortal happiness the sooner for your deplored mistake. Oh! men and women are different."

"You do not think you could have outlived a misfortune so irreparable?"

"I do think so. And yet this is sad; sometimes I cannot bear to think of it. Often I can find in my heart to wish that I might have handed that glass in your stead. Even if it had broken my heart, I stand alone; no other lives depend on me for well-being, and perhaps for well-doing. Cannot you think of this, dear John, and try to bear it and overlive it for their sakes? Look, day begins to dawn, and the morning star flickers. Come in; cannot you rise?"

"I suppose not; I have tried. You will not go?"

"Yes; I may be wanted."

"You have no resentments, Emily?"

"Oh no," she answered, understanding him.

"Then give me one kiss."

"Yes." She stooped again toward him and gave it. "You are going to live, John, and serve and love God, and even thank Him in the end, whatever happens."

"You are helping me to live," he answered.

It seemed impossible to him to say a single word more, and she went back towards the house again, moving more quickly as she drew near, because the sound of wheels was audible. As for him, he watched in the solemn dawn her retiring figure with unutterable regret. His other despair, who had talked to him of hope and consoled him with a simple directness of tender humanity, given him a kiss because he asked it. He had often wanted a woman's caressing affection before, and gone without it. It promised nothing, he thought; he perceived that it was the extremity she saw in the situation that had prompted it. When she next met him she would not, he knew, be ashamed of her kiss. If she thought about it, she would be aware that he understood her, and would not presume on it.

The spots of milky whiteness resolved themselves again into blush roses; hundreds and hundreds of them scented the air. Overhead hung long wreaths of honeysuckle; colours began to show themselves; purple iris and tree peony started out in detached patches from the shade; birds began to be restless; here and there one fluttered forth with a few sudden, imperfect notes; and the cold curd-like creases in the sky took on faint lines of gold. And there was Emily--Emily coming down the garden again, and Giles Brandon with her. Something in both their faces gave him courage to speak.

"St. George, you are not come merely to help me in. I heard wheels."

Emily had moved a step forward; it was light enough now to show her face distinctly. The doctors had both paid a visit; they came together, she told him.

"It was very good of them; they are more than considerate," he answered, sure that the news could not be bad.

"They both saw Anastasia, and they agreed that there was a decided improvement."

"I thank God."

With the aid of hope and a strong arm he managed to get up and stagger towards the house; but having once reached his room, it was several days before he could leave it or rise, though every message told of slow improvement.

A strange week followed the return of hope. The weeds in the garden began to take courage after long persecution, while Mr. Swan might frequently be seen reading aloud by Johnnie's bedside, sometimes the Bible, sometimes the newspaper, Master A.J. Mortimer deriving in his intervals of ease a grave satisfaction from the old man's peculiar style and his quaint remarks.

"I'm allers a comfort to them boys," Swan was heard to remark in the middle of the night, when Valentine, who was refreshing himself with a short walk in the dark, chanced to be near him as he came on with his wife.

"And how do you get on, Maria?"

"Why, things seem going wrong, somehow. There's that new nurse feels herself unwell, and the jelly's melted, and Miss Christie was cross."

"That's awkward; but they're trifles. When the mud's up to your neck, you needn't trouble yourself because you've lost your pattens. You want a night's rest, my dear."

"Ay, I do; and don't you worrit, Swan, over Matthew being so _ugly_ with you."

"Certainly not," said Swan. "He's turned more civil too. Said he to me this morning, 'Misfortunes in this life is what we all hev to expect. They ought not to surprise us,' said he; 'they never surprise me, nor nothing does.' It's true too. And he's allers for making a sensible observation, as he thinks (that shows what a fool he is). No, if he was to meet a man with three heads, he wouldn't own as he was surprised; he'd merely say, 'You must find this here dispensation very expensive in hats.'" _

Read next: Chapter 32. Mr. Brandon Is Made The Subject Of An Honourable Comparison

Read previous: Chapter 30. A Chapter Of Troubles

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