Not Like Other Girls Part 53

"My dear! hate the sight of her own husband, who is given back to her from the dead? Ay, I have much to hear. Why did you never write to us, Herbert? But there! you have all that to explain to her by and by."

"Yes; and you must tell me about the children,--my little Janie," he returned, in a choked voice.

"Ah, the dear angels! But, Herbert, you must be careful. n.o.body speaks of them to Magdalene, unless she does herself. You are impetuous, my dear; and Magdalene--well, she has not been herself since you left her. It is pining, grief, and the dead weight of loss that has ailed her being childless and widowed at once. There, there! just so. We must be tender of her, poor dear! and things will soon come right."

"You need not fear me, Barby. I have learned my lesson at last. If I only get my wife back, you shall see--you shall see how I will make up to her for all I have ever made her suffer! My poor girl! my poor girl!" And then he shaded his face, and was silent.

Phillis had stolen out in the garden, and sat down on a little bench outside, where pa.s.sers-by could not discern her from the road, and where only the sound of their voices reached her faintly. Now and then, chance words fell on her ear,--"Magdalene" over and over again; and "Janie" and "Bertie,"--always in the voice she had so admired. By and by she heard her own name, and rose at once, and found them looking for her.

"Here is my good angel, Barby," observed Mr. Cheyne, as she came up smiling. "Not one girl in a thousand would have acted as bravely and simply as she has done. We are friends for life, Miss Challoner, are we not?" And he stretched out his hand to her, and Phillis laid her own in it.

"I was a bit harsh with you, dearie, was I not?" returned Miss Mewlstone, apologetically: "but there! you were such a child that I thought you had been deceived. But I ought to have known better, craving your pardon, my dear. Now we will just go back to Magdalene; and you must help my stupid old head, for I am fairly crazy at the thought of telling her. Go back into the parlor and lie down, Herbert, for you are terribly exhausted. You must have patience, my man, a wee bit longer, for we must be cautious,--cautious, you see."

"Yes, I must have patience," he responded, rather bitterly. But he went back into the room and watched them until they disappeared into the gates of his own rightful paradise.

Miss Mewlstone was leaning on Phillis's arm. Her gait was still rather feeble, but the girl was talking energetically to her.

"What a spirit she has! just like Magdalene at her age," he thought, "only Magdalene never possessed her even temper. My poor girl! From what Barby says, she has grown hard and bitter with trouble. But it shall be my aim in life to comfort her for all she has been through!"

And then, as he thought of his dead children, and of the empty nursery, he groaned, and threw himself face downward upon the couch.

But a few minutes afterwards he had started up again, unable to rest, and began to pace the room; and then, as though the narrow s.p.a.ce confined him, he continued his restless walk into the garden, and then into the shrubberies of the White House.

"My dear, I am not as young as I was. I feel as if all this were too much for me," sighed Miss Mewlstone, as she pressed her companion's arm. "One needs so much vitality to bear such scenes. I am terrified for Magdalene, she has so little self-control! and to have him given back to her from the dead! I thank G.o.d! but I am afraid, for all that." And a few more quiet tears stole over her cheeks.

"Thinking of it only makes it worse," returned Phillis, feverishly.

She, too, dreaded the ordeal before them; but she was young, and not easily daunted. All the way through the shrubbery she talked on breathlessly, trying to rally her own courage. It was she who entered the drawing-room first, for poor Miss Mewlstone had to efface the signs of her agitation.

Mrs. Cheyne looked up, surprised to see her alone.

"Jeffreys told me you and Miss Mewlstone had gone out together on a little business. What have you done with poor old Barby?" And, as Phillis answered as composedly and demurely as she could, Mrs. Cheyne arched her eyebrows in her old satirical way:

"She is in her room, is she? Never mind answering, if you prefer your own counsel. Your little mysteries are no business of mine. I should have thought the world would have come to an end, though, before Barby had thrown down the third volume of a novel for anything short of a fire. But you and she know best." And, as Phillis flushed and looked confused under her scrutiny, she gave a short laugh and turned away.

It was a relief when Miss Mewlstone came trotting into the room with her cap-strings awry.

"Dear, dear! have we kept you waiting for your tea, Magdalene?" she exclaimed, in a flurried tone, as she bustled up to the table. "Miss Challoner had a little business, and she thought I might help her.

Yes; just so! I have brought her in, for she is tired, poor thing! and I knew she would be welcome."

"It seems to me that you are both tired. You are as hot as though you had walked for miles, Barby. Oh, you have your secrets too. But it is not for me to meddle with mysteries." And then she laughed again, and threw herself back on her couch, with a full understanding of the discomfort of the two people before her.

Phillis saw directly she was in a hard, cynical mood.

"You shall know our business by and by," she said, very quietly. "Dear Miss Mewlstone, I am so thirsty, I must ask you for another cup of tea." But, as Miss Mewlstone took the cup from her, the poor lady's hand shook so with suppressed agitation that the saucer slipped from her grasp, and the next moment the costly china lay in fragments at her feet.

"Dear! dear!--how dreadfully careless of me!" fumed Miss Mewlstone.

But Mrs. Cheyne made no observation. She only rang the bell, and ordered another cup. But, when the servant had withdrawn, she said, coldly,--

"Your hand is not as steady as usual this evening, Barby;" and somehow the sharp incisive tone cut so keenly that, to Phillis's alarm, Miss Mewlstone became very pale, and then suddenly burst into tears.

"This is too much!" observed Mrs. Cheyne, rising in serious displeasure. She had almost a masculine abhorrence to tears of late years; the very sight of them excited her strangely.

"Miss Challoner may keep her mysteries to herself if she likes, but I insist on knowing what has upset you like this."

"Oh dear! oh, dear!" sobbed the simple woman, wringing her hands helplessly. "This is just too much for me! Poor soul, how am I to tell her?" And then she looked at Phillis in affright at her own words, which revealed so much and so little.

Mrs. Cheyne turned exceedingly pale, and a shadow pa.s.sed over her face.

"'Poor soul!' does she mean me? Is it of me you are speaking, Barby?

Is there something for me to know, that you dread to tell me? Poor soul, indeed!" And then her features contracted and grew pinched. "But you need not be afraid. Is it not the Psalmist who says, 'All thy waves and thy billows have gone over me'? Drowned people have nothing to fear: there is no fresh trouble for them." And her eyes took an awful stony look that terrified Phillis.

"Oh, it is no fresh trouble!" stammered the girl. "People are not tormented like that: they have not to suffer more than they can bear."

But Mrs. Cheyne turned upon her fiercely:

"You are wrong, altogether wrong. I could not bear it, and it drove me mad,--at least as nearly mad as a sane woman could be. I felt my reason shaken; my brain was all aflame, and I cried out to heaven for mercy; and a blank answered me. Barby, if there be fresh trouble, tell me instantly, and at once. What do I care? What is left to me, but a body that will not die, and a brain that will not cease to think? If I could only stop the thoughts! if I could only go down into silence and nothingness! but then I should not find Herbert and the children.

Where are they? I forget!" She stopped, pressed her hands to her brow with a strange bewildered expression; but Miss Mewlstone crept up to her, and touched her timidly.

"My bonnie Magdalene!" she exclaimed; "don't let the ill thoughts come; drive them away, my poor dear. Look at me. Did old Barby ever deceive you? There is no fresh trouble, my pretty. In his own good time the All-Merciful has had mercy!"

Mrs. Cheyne's hand dropped down to her sides, but her brilliant eyes showed no comprehension of her words.

"Why did you frighten me like that?" she repeated, rocking herself to and fro; and her voice had a high, strained tone in it. "There is no trouble, but your face is pale, and there are tears in your eyes; and look how your hand shakes! Miss Challoner--Phillis, what does she mean? Barby, you are a foolish old woman; your wits are gone."

"If they are gone, it is with joy!" she sobbed. "Yes, my precious one!

for sheer joy!" but then she broke down utterly. It was Phillis who came to the rescue.

"Dear Mrs. Cheyne, I think I could tell you best," she began, in her sweet sensible voice, which somehow stilled Mrs. Cheyne's frightful agitation. "There has been some news,--a letter that has been lost, which ought to have arrived months ago. We have heard about it this afternoon." She stopped, for there seemed to be a faint sound of footsteps in the hall below. Could he have followed them? What would be the result of such imprudence? But, as she faltered and hesitated, Mrs. Cheyne gripped her arm with an iron force:

"A letter from Herbert! Did he write to me? oh, my darling! did he write to me before he died? Only one word--one word of forgiveness, and I will say heaven indeed is merciful! Give it to me, Barby! Why do you keep me waiting? Oh, this is blessed, blessed news!" But Miss Mewlstone only clasped her gently in her arms.

"One moment, my dearie! There is more than that. It is not a message from heaven. There is still one living on earth that loves you! Try and follow my meaning," for the perplexed stare had returned again.

"Say to yourself, 'Perhaps, after all, Herbert is not dead. n.o.body saw him die. He may be alive; he may have written to me----" She stopped, for Mrs. Cheyne had suddenly flung up her arms over her head with a hoa.r.s.e cry, that rang through the house:

"Herbert! Herbert! Herbert!"

"I am here,--Magdalene! Magdalene!" A tall figure that had crept unperceived through the open hall door, and had lurked unseen in the shadow of the portiere, suddenly dashed into the room, and took his wife's rigid form into his arms. "Magdalene!--love--wife! It is Herbert! Look up, my darling!--I am here! I am holding you!" But there was no response. Magdalene's face was like the face of the dead.

They took her from him almost by force, for he refused to give her up.

Over and over again they prayed him to leave her to their care, but he seemed like a deaf man that did not hear.

"She is dead! I have killed her; but there is no reason why I should give her up," he had said, with terrible calm in his voice.

"She is not dead!" returned Miss Mewlstone, almost angrily. "She has been like this before; but Jeffreys and I know what to do. Ay, you were always wilful, Herbert; but when it comes to killing your own wife----" And after this he consented to lay her down on her couch.

He watched them with wistful eyes as they tried the usual remedies; but it was long before even the flicker of an eyelid spoke to them of life. At the first sign of returning animation Herbert crept just behind his wife's pillow, where he could see the first unclosing of the drooping lids. When Magdalene opened her eyes at last, they fell full on her husband's face.

Phillis, who was beside her, marvelled at the strange beauty of that rapt look, as she lay and gazed at him.