John Halifax, Gentleman Part 47

Jessop's shoulder.

We had never seen Miss March show fondness, that is, caressing fondness, to any one before. It revealed her in a new light; betraying the depths there were in her nature; infinite depths of softness and of love.

John watched her for a minute; a long, wild, greedy minute, then whispered hoa.r.s.ely to me, "I must go."

We made a hasty adieu, and went out together into the night--the cold, bleak night, all blast and storm.

CHAPTER XVIII

For weeks after then, we went on in our usual way; Ursula March living within a stone's throw of us. She had left her cousin's, and come to reside with Dr. Jessop and his wife.

It was a very hard trial for John.

Neither of us were again invited by Mrs. Jessop. We could not blame her; she held a precious charge, and Norton Bury was a horrible place for gossip. Already tale after tale had gone abroad about Miss March's "ingrat.i.tude" to her relations. Already tongue after tongue had repeated, in every possible form of lying, the anecdote of "young Halifax and the 'squire." Had it been "young Halifax and Miss March,"

I truly believe John could not have borne it.

As it was, though he saw her constantly, it was always by chance--a momentary glimpse at the window, or a pa.s.sing acknowledgment in the street. I knew quite well when he had thus met her, whether he mentioned it or not--knew by the wild, troubled look, which did not wear off for hours.

I watched him closely, day by day, in an agony of doubt and pain.

For, though he said nothing, a great change was creeping over "the lad," as I still fondly called him. His strength, the glory of a young man, was going from him--he was becoming thin, weak, restless-eyed.

That healthy energy and gentle composure, which had been so beautiful in him all his life through, were utterly lost.

"What am I to do with thee, David?" said I to him one evening, when he had come in, looking worse than usual--I knew why; for Ursula and her friend had just pa.s.sed our house taking their pleasant walk in the spring twilight. "Thou art very ill, I fear?"

"Not at all. There is not the least thing the matter with me. Do let me alone."

Two minutes afterwards he begged my pardon for those sharp-spoken words. "It was not THEE that spoke, John," I said.

"No, you are right, it was not I. It was a sort of devil that lodges here:" he touched his breast. "The chamber he lives in is at times a burning h.e.l.l."

He spoke in a low tone of great anguish. What could I answer? Nothing.

We stood at the window, looking idly out. The chestnut trees in the Abbey-yard were budding green: there came that faint, sweet sound of children at play, which one hears as the days begin to lengthen.

"It's a lovely evening," he said.

"John!" I looked him in the face. He could not palm off that kind deceit upon me. "You have heard something about her?"

"I have," he groaned. "She is leaving Norton Bury."

"Thank G.o.d!" I muttered.

John turned fiercely upon me--but only for a moment. "Perhaps I too ought to say, 'Thank G.o.d.' This could not have lasted long, or it would have made me--what I pray His mercy to save me from, or to let me die. Oh, lad, if I could only die."

He bent down over the window-sill, crus.h.i.+ng his forehead on his hands.

"John," I said, in this depth of despair s.n.a.t.c.hing at an equally desperate hope, "what if, instead of keeping this silence, you were to go to her and tell her all?"

"I have thought of that: a n.o.ble thought, worthy of a poor 'prentice lad! Why, two several evenings I have been insane enough to walk to Dr. Jessop's door, which I have never entered, and--mark you well! they have never asked me to enter since that night. But each time ere I knocked my senses came back, and I went home--luckily having made myself neither a fool nor a knave."

There was no answer to this either. Alas! I knew as well as he did, that in the eye of the world's common sense, for a young man not twenty-one, a tradesman's apprentice, to ask the hand of a young gentlewoman, uncertain if she loved him, was most utter folly. Also, for a penniless youth to sue a lady with a fortune, even though it was (the Brithwoods took care to publish the fact) smaller than was at first supposed--would, in the eye of the world's honour, be not very much unlike knavery. There was no help--none!

"David," I groaned, "I would you had never seen her."

"Hus.h.!.+--not a word like that. If you heard all I hear of her--daily--hourly--her unselfishness, her energy, her generous, warm heart! It is blessedness even to have known her. She is an angel--no, better than that, a woman! I did not want her for a saint in a shrine--I wanted her as a help-meet, to walk with me in my daily life, to comfort me, strengthen me, make me pure and good. I could be a good man if I had her for my wife. Now--"

He rose, and walked rapidly up and down. His looks were becoming altogether wild.

"Come, Phineas, suppose we go to meet her up the road--as I meet her almost every day. Sometimes she merely bends and smiles, sometimes she holds out her little hand, and 'hopes I am quite well!' And then they pa.s.s on, and I stand gaping and staring after them like an idiot.

There--look--there they are now."

Ay! walking leisurely along the other side of the road--talking and smiling to one another, in their own merry, familiar way, were Mrs.

Jessop and Miss March.

They were not thinking of us, not the least. Only just ere they pa.s.sed our house Ursula turned slightly round, and looked behind; a quiet, maidenly look, with the smile still lingering on her mouth. She saw nothing, and no one; for John had pulled me from the window, and placed himself out of sight. So, turning back again, she went on her way.

They both disappeared.

"Now, Phineas, it is all ended."

"What do you mean?"

"I have looked on her for the last time."

"Nay--she is not going yet."

"But I am--fleeing from the devil and his angels. Hurrah, Phineas, lad! We'll have a merry night. To-morrow I am away to Bristol, to set sail for America."

He wrung my hands with a long, loud, half-mad laugh; and then dropped heavily on a chair.

A few hours after, he was lying on my bed, struck down by the first real sickness he had ever known. It was apparently a low agueish fever, which had been much about Norton Bury since the famine of last year. At least, so Jael said; and she was a wise doctoress, and had cured many. He would have no one else to attend him--seemed terrified at the mere mention of Dr. Jessop. I opposed him not at first, for well I knew, whatever the proximate cause of his sickness might be, its root was in that mental pang which no doctors could cure. So I trusted to the blessed quiet of a sick-room--often so healing to misery--to Jael's nursing, and his brother's love.

After a few days we called in a physician--a stranger from Coltham--who p.r.o.nounced it to be this Norton Bury fever, caught through living, as he still persisted in doing, in his old attic, in that unhealthy alley where was Sally Watkins's house. It must have been coming on, the doctor said, for a long time; but it had no doubt now reached its crisis. He would be better soon.

But he did not get better. Days slid into weeks, and still he lay there, never complaining, scarcely appearing to suffer, except from the wasting of the fever; yet when I spoke of recovery he "turned his face unto the wall"--weary of living.

Once, when he had lain thus a whole morning, hardly speaking a word, I began to feel growing palpable the truth which day by day I had thrust behind me as some intangible, impossible dread--that ere now people had died of mere soul-sickness, without any bodily disease. I took up his poor hand that lay on the counterpane;--once, at Enderley, he had regretted its somewhat coa.r.s.e strength: now Ursula's own was not thinner or whiter. He drew it back.

"Oh, Phineas, lad, don't touch me--only let me rest."

The weak, querulous voice--that awful longing for rest! What if, despite all the physician's a.s.surances, he might be sinking, sinking--my friend, my hope, my pride, all my comfort in this life--pa.s.sing from it and from me into another, where, let me call never so wildly, he could not answer me any more, nor come back to me any more.

Oh, G.o.d of mercy! if I were to be left in this world without my brother!

I had many a time thought over the leaving him, going quietly away when it should please the Giver of all breath to recall mine, falling asleep, encompa.s.sed and sustained by his love until the last; then, a burden no longer, leaving him to work out a glorious life, whose rich web should include and bring to beautiful perfection all the poor broken threads in mine. But now, if this should be all vain, if he should go from me, not I from him--I slid down to the ground, to my knees, and the dumb cry of my agony went up on high.

How could I save him?