Cobwebs and Cables Part 36

"You need tell me no more, dear Phebe," he replied; "G.o.d bless you in the keeping of their secret!"

CHAPTER XXVII.

HIS OWN CHILDREN.

The tidings of Felicita's death spread rapidly in England, and the circ.u.mstances attending it, its suddenness, and the fact that it had occurred at the same place that her husband had perished by accident many years before, gave it more than ordinary interest and excited more than ordinary publicity. It was a good deal talked of in literary circles, and in the fas.h.i.+onable clique to which she belonged through her relations.h.i.+p with the Riversford family. There were the usual kindly notices of her life and works in the daily papers; and her publisher seized the occasion to advertise her books more largely. But it was in Riversborough that the deepest impression was made, and the keenest curiosity aroused by the story of her death, obscure in some of its details, but full of romantic interest to her old towns-people, who were thus recalled to the circ.u.mstances attending Roland Sefton's disappearance and subsequent death. The funeral also was to be in the immediate neighborhood, in the church where all the Riversfords had been buried time out of mind, long before a t.i.tle had been conferred on the head of the house. It appeared quite right that Felicita should be buried beside her own people; and every one who could get away from business went down to the little country churchyard to be present at the funeral.

But Phebe was not there: when she reached London she was so worn out with fatigue and agitation that she was compelled to remain at home, brooding over what she had come through. And Jean Merle had not trusted himself to look into the open grave, about to close over all that remained of the woman he had so pa.s.sionately loved. The tolling of the minute-bell, which began early in the day and struck its deep knell through the tardy hours till late in the evening, smote upon his ear and heart every time the solemn tone sounded through the quiet hours. He was left alone in his old home, for Mr. Clifford was gone as one of the mourners to follow Felicita to the grave; and all the servants had asked to be present at the funeral. There was nothing to demand his attention or to distract his thoughts. The house was as silent as if it had been the house of death and he himself but a phantom in it.

Though he had been six months in the house, he had never yet been in Felicita's study--that quiet room shut out from the noise both of the street and the household, which he had set apart and prepared for her when she was coming, stepping down a little from her own level to be his wife. It was dismantled, he knew; her books were gone, and all the costly decorative fittings he had chosen with so much joyous anxiety.

But the panelled doors which he had worked at with his own hands were there, and the window, with its delicately tinted lattice-frames, through which the sun had shone in daintily upon her at her desk. He went slowly up the long staircase, pausing now and then lost in thought; and standing, at last before the door, which he had never opened without asking permission to enter in, he hesitated for many minutes before he went in.

An empty room, swept clean of everything which made it a living habitation. The suns.h.i.+ne fell in pencils of colored light upon the bare walls and uncarpeted floor. It bore no trace of any occupant; yet to him it seemed but yesterday that he had been in here, listening to the low tones of Felicita's sweet voice, and gazing with silent pride on her beautiful face. There had been unmeasured pa.s.sion and ambition in his love for her, which had fatally changed his whole life. But he knew now that he had failed in winning her love and in making her happy; and the secret dissatisfaction she had felt in her ill-considered marriage had been fatal both to her and to him. The restless eagerness it had developed in him to gain a position that could content her, had been a seed of worldliness, which had borne deadly fruit. He opened the cas.e.m.e.nt, and looked out on the familiar landscape, on which her eyes had so often rested--eyes that were closed forever. The past, so keenly present to him this moment, was in reality altogether dead and buried.

She had ceased to be his wife years ago, when she had accepted the sacrifice he proposed to her of his very existence. That old life was blotted out; and he had no right to mourn openly for the dead, who was being laid in the grave of her fathers at this hour. His children were counting themselves orphans, and it was not in his power to comfort them. He knelt down at the open window, and rested his bowed head on the window-sill. The empty room behind him was but a symbol of his own empty lot, swept clean of all its affections and aspirations. Two thirds of his term of years were already spent; and he found himself bereft and dispossessed of all that makes life worth having--all except the power of service. Even at this late hour a voice within him called to him, "Go work to-day in my vineyard." It was not too late to serve G.o.d who had forgiven him and mankind whom he had wronged. There was time to make some atonement; to work out some redemption for his fellow-men. To Roland Sefton had arisen a vision of a public and honorable career, cheered on by applause of men and crowned with popularity and renown for all he might achieve. But Jean Merle must toil in silence and difficulty, amid rebuffs and discouragements, and do humble service which would remain unrecognized and unthanked. Yet there was work to do, if it were no more than cheering the last days of an old man, or teaching a cla.s.s of the most ignorant of his townsfolk in a night school. He rose from his knees after a while, and left the room, closing the door as softly as he had been used to do when afraid of any noise grating on his wife's sensitive brain. It seemed to him like the closing up of the vault where she was buried. She was gone from him forever, and there was nothing left but to forget the past if that were possible.

As he went lingeringly down the staircase, which would henceforth be trodden seldom if ever by him, he heard the ringing of the house-bell, which announced the return of Mr. Clifford and of Felix and Hilda, who were coming to stay the night in their old home, before returning to London on the morrow. He hastened down to open the door and help them to alight from their carriage. It was the first time he had been thus brought into close contact with them; but this must happen often in the future, and he must learn to meet them as strangers, and to be looked upon by them as little more than a hired servant.

But the sight of Hilda's sad young face, so pale and tear-stained, and the expression of deep grief that Felix wore, tried him sorely. What would he not have given to be able to take this girl into his arms and soothe her, and to comfort his son with comfort none but a father can give? He stood outside the sphere of their sorrows, looking on them with the eyes of a stranger; and the pain of seeing them so near yet so far away from him was unutterable. The time might come when Jean Merle could see them, and talk with them calmly as a friend, ready to serve them to the utmost of his power; when there might be something of pleasure in gaining their friends.h.i.+p and confidence. But so long as they were mourning bitterly for their mother and could not conceal the sharpness of their grief, the sight of them was a torture to him. It was a relief to him and to Mr. Clifford when they left Riversborough the next morning.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

AN EMIGRATION SCHEME.

Several months pa.s.sed away, bringing no visitor to Riversborough, except Phebe, who came down two or three times to see Mr. Clifford, whose favorite she was. But Phebe never spoke of the past to Jean Merle. Since they had determined what to do, it seemed wiser to her not to look back so as to embitter the present. Jean Merle was gradually gaining a footing in the town as Mr. Clifford's representative, and was in many ways filling a post very few could fill. Now and then, some of the elder townsmen, who had been contemporary with Roland Sefton, remarked upon the resemblance between Jean Merle and their old comrade; but this was satisfactorily accounted for by his relations.h.i.+p to Madame Sefton: for Roland, they said, had always had a good deal of the foreigner about him, much more than this quiet, melancholy, self-effacing man, who never pushed himself forward, or courted attention, yet was always ready with a good sound shrewd opinion if he was asked for it. It had been a lucky thing for old Clifford that such a man had been found to take care of him and his affairs in his extreme old age.

Felix had gone back to his curacy, under Canon Pascal, in the parish where he had spent his boyhood and where he was safe against any attack upon his father's memory. But in spite of being able to see Alice every day, and of enjoying Canon Pascal's constant companions.h.i.+p, he was ill at ease, and Phebe was dissatisfied. This was exactly the life Felicita had dreaded for him, an easy, half-occupied life in a small parish, where there was little active employment for either mind or body. The thought of it troubled and haunted Phebe. The magnificent physical strength and active energy of Felix, and the strong bent to heroic effort and Christian devotion given to him in his earliest years, were thrown away in this tranquil English village, where there was clearly no scope for heroism. How was it that Canon Pascal could not see it? His curacy was a post to be occupied by some feebler man than Felix; a man whose powers were only equal to the quiet work of carrying on the labors begun by his rector. Besides, Felix would have recovered from the shock of his mother's sudden death if his time and faculties had been more fully occupied. She must give words to her discontent, and urge Canon Pascal to banish him from a spot where he was leading too dull a life.

Canon Pascal had been in residence at Westminster for some weeks, and was about to return to his rectory, when Phebe went down to the Abbey one day, bent upon putting her decision into action. The bitterness of the early spring had come again; and strong easterly gales were blowing steadily day after day, bringing disease and death to those who were feeble and ailing, yet not more surely than the fogs of the city had done. It had been a long and gloomy winter, and in this second month of the year the death rates were high. As Phebe pa.s.sed through the Abbey on her way to his home in the cloisters, she saw Canon Pascal standing still, with his head thrown back and his eyes uplifted to the n.o.ble arches supporting the roof. He did not notice her till her clear, pleasant voice addressed him.

"Ah, Phebe!" he exclaimed, a swift smile transforming his grave, marked face, "my dear, I was just asking myself how I could bear to say farewell to all this."

He glanced round him with an expression of unutterable love and pride and of keen regret. The Abbey had grown dearer to him than any spot on earth; and as he paced down the long aisle he lingered as if every step he took was full of pain.

"Bid farewell to it!" repeated Phebe; "but why?"

"For a series of whys," he answered; "first and foremost, because the doctors tell me, and I believe it, that my dear wife's days are numbered if she stays another year in this climate. All our days are numbered by G.o.d, I know; but man can number them also, if he pleases, and make them longer or shorter by his obedience or disobedience. Secondly, Phebe, our sons have gone on before us as pioneers, and they send us piteous accounts of the spiritual needs of the colonists and the native populations out yonder. I preach often on the evils of over-population and its danger to our country, and I prescribe emigration to most of the young people I come across. Why should not I, even I, take up the standard and cry 'Follow me'? We should leave England with sad hearts, it is true, but for her good and for the good of unborn generations, who shall create a second England under other skies. And last, but not altogether least, the colonial bishopric is vacant, and has been offered to me. If I accept it I shall save the life most precious to me, and find another home in the midst of my children and grand-children."

"And Felix?" cried Phebe.

"What could be better for Felix than to come with us?" he asked; "there he will meet with the work he was born for, the work he is fretting his soul for. He will be at last a gallant soldier of the Cross, unhampered by any dread of his father's sin rising up against him. And we could never part with Alice--her mother and I. You would be the last to say No to that, Phebe?"

"Oh, yes!" she answered, with tears standing in her eyes, "Felix must go with you."

"And Hilda, too," he went on; "for what would become of Hilda alone here, with her only brother settled at the antipodes? And here we shall want Phebe Marlowe's influence with old Mr. Clifford, who might prevent his ward from quitting England. I am counting also on Phebe herself, as my pearl of deaconesses, with no vow to bind her, if the happiness and fuller life of marriage opened before her. Still, to secure all these benefits I must give up all this."

He paused for a minute or two, looking back up the narrow side aisle, and then, as if he could not tear himself away, he retraced his steps slowly and lingeringly; and Phebe caught the glistening of tears in his eyes.

"Never to see it again," he murmured, "or if I see it, not to belong to it! To have no more right here than any other stranger! It feels like a home to me, dear Phebe. I have had solemn glimpses of G.o.d here, as if it were indeed the gate of heaven. To the last hour of my life, wherever I go, my soul will cleave to these walls. But I shall give it up."

"Yes," she said, sighing, "but there is no bitterness of repentance to you in giving it up."

"How sadly you spoke that," he went on, "as if a woman like you could know the bitterness of repentance! You have only looked at it through other men's eyes. Yes, we shall go. Felix and Hilda and you are free to leave Mr. Clifford, now he is so admirably cared for by this Jean Merle.

I like all that I hear of him, though I never saw him; surely it was a blessing from G.o.d that Madame Sefton's poor kinsman was brought to the old man. Could we not leave him safely in Merle's charge?"

"Quite safely," she answered.

"I have a scheme for a new settlement in my head," he continued, "a settlement of our own, and we will invite emigrants to it. I can reckon on a few who will joyfully follow our lead, and it will not seem a strange land if we carry those whom we love with us. This hour even I have made up my mind to accept this bishopric. Go on, dear Phebe, and tell my wife. I must stay here alone a little longer."

But Phebe did not hasten with these tidings through the cloisters. She walked to and fro, pondering them and finding in them a solution of many difficulties. For Felix it would be well, and it was not to be expected that Alice would leave her invalid mother to remain behind in England as a curate's wife. Hilda, too, what could be better or happier for her than to go with those who looked upon her as a daughter, who would take Alice's place as soon as she was gone into a home of her own? There was little to keep them in England. She could not refuse to let them go.

But herself? The strong strain of faithfulness in Phebe's nature knitted her as closely with the past as with the present; and with some touch of pathetic clinging to the past which the present cannot possess. She could not separate herself from it. The little home where she was born, and the sterile fields surrounding it, with the wide moors encircling them, were as dear to her as the Abbey was to Canon Pascal. In no other place did she feel herself so truly at home. If she cut herself adrift from it and all the subtly woven web of memories belonging to it, she fancied she might pine away of home-sickness in a foreign land. There was Mr. Clifford too, who depended so utterly upon her promise to be near him when he was dying, and to hold his hand in hers as he went down into the deep chill waters of death. And Jean Merle, whose terrible secret she shared, and would be the only one to share it when Mr.

Clifford was gone. How was it possible for her to separate herself from these two? She loved Felix and Hilda with all the might of her unselfish heart; but Felix had Alice, and by and by Hilda would give herself to some one who would claim most of her affection. She was not necessary to either of them. But if she went away she must leave a blank, too dreary to be thought of, in the clouded lives of Mr. Clifford and poor Merle.

For their sakes she must refuse to leave England.

CHAPTER XXIX.

FAREWELL.

But it was more difficult than Phebe antic.i.p.ated to resist the urgent entreaties of Felix and Hilda not to sever the bond that had existed between them so long. Her devotion to them in the past had made them feel secure of its continuance, and to quit England, leaving her behind, seemed impossible. But Mr. Clifford's reiterated supplications that she would not forsake him in his old age drew her as powerfully the other way. Scarcely a day pa.s.sed without a few lines, written by his own feeble and shaking hand, reaching her, beseeching and demanding of her a solemn promise to stay in England as long as he lived. Jean Merle said nothing, even when she went down to visit them, urged by Canon Pascal to set before Mr. Clifford the strong reasons there were for her to accompany the party of emigrants; but Phebe knew that Jean Merle's life, with its unshared memories and secrets, would be still more dreary if she went away. After she had seen these two she wavered no more.

It was a larger party of emigrants than any one had foreseen; for it was no sooner known that Canon Pascal was leaving England as a colonial Bishop, than many men and women came forward anxious to go out and found new homes under his auspices. He was a well-known advocate of emigration, and it was rightly deemed a singular advantage to have him as a leader as well as their spiritual chief. Canon Pascal threw himself into the movement with ardor, and the five months elapsing before he set sail were filled with incessant claims upon his time and thought, while all about him were drawn into the strong current of his work. Phebe was occupied from early morning till late at night, and a few hours of deep sleep, which gave her no time for thinking of her own future, was all the rest she could command. Even Felix, who had scarcely shaken off the depression caused by his mother's sudden death, found a fresh fountain-head of energy and gladness in sharing Canon Pascal's new career, and in the immediate prospect of marrying Alice.

For in addition to all the other constant calls upon her, Phebe was plunged into the preparations needed for this marriage, which was to take place before they left England. There was no longer any reason to defer it for lack of means, as Felix had inherited his share of his mother's settlement. But Phebe drew largely on her own resources to send out for them the complete furnis.h.i.+ng of a home as full of comfort, and as far as possible, as full of real beauty, as their Ess.e.x rectory had been. She almost stripped her studio of the sketches and the finished pictures which Felix and Hilda had admired, sighing sometimes, and smiling sometimes, as they vanished from her sight into the packing cases, for the times that were gone by, and for the pleasant surprise that would greet them, in that far-off land, when their eyes fell upon the old favorites from home.

Felix and Hilda spent a few days at Riversborough with Mr. Clifford, but Phebe would not go with them, in spite of their earnest desire; and Jean Merle, their kinsman, was absent, only coming home the night before they bade their last farewell to their birth-place. He appeared to them a very silent and melancholy man, keeping himself quite in the background, and unwilling to talk much about his own country and his relations.h.i.+p with their grandmother's family. But they had not time to pay much attention to him; the engrossing interest of spending the few last hours amid these familiar places, so often and so fondly to be remembered in the coming years, made them less regardful of this stranger, who was watching them with undivided and despairing interest. No word or look escaped him, as he accompanied them from room to room, and about the garden walks, unable to keep himself away from this unspeakable torture.

Mr. Clifford wept, as old men weep, when they bade him good-by; but Felix was astonished by the fixed and mournful expression of inward anguish in Jean Merle's eyes, as he held his hand in a grasp that would not let him go.

"I may never see you again," he said, "but I shall hear of you."

"Yes," answered Felix, "we shall write frequently to Mr. Clifford, and you will answer our letters for him."

"G.o.d bless you!" said Jean Merle. "G.o.d grant that you may be a truer and a happier man than your father was."

Felix started. This man, then, knew of his father's crime; probably knew more of it than he did. But there was no time to question him now; and what good would it do to hear more than he knew already? Hilda was standing near to him waiting to say good-by, and Jean Merle, turning to her, took her into his arms, and pressed her closely to his heart. A sudden impulse prompted her to put her arm round his neck as she had done round old Mr. Clifford's, and to lift up her face for his kiss. He held her in his embrace for a few moments, and then, without another word spoken to them, he left them and they saw him no more. The marriage was celebrated a few days after this visit, and not long before the time fixed for the Bishop and his large band of emigrants to sail. Under these circ.u.mstances the ceremony was a quiet one. The old rectory was in disorder, littered with packing cases, and upset from cellar to garret.

Even when the wedding was over both Phebe and Hilda were too busy for sentimental indulgence. The few remaining days were flying swiftly past them all, and keeping them in constant fear that there would not be time enough for all that had to be done.

But the last morning came, when Phebe found herself standing amid those who were so dear to her on the landing-stage, with but a few minutes more before they parted from her for years, if not forever. Bishop Pascal was already gone on board the steamer standing out in the river, where the greater number of emigrants had a.s.sembled. But Felix and Alice and Hilda lingered about Phebe till the last moment. Yet they said but little to one another; what could they say which would tell half the love or half the sorrow they felt? Phebe's heart was full. How gladly would she have gone out with these dear children, even if she left behind her her little birth-place on the hills, if it had not been for Mr. Clifford and Jean Merle!