Her Season in Bath Part 24

"I will come down and see him. He shall take this letter to King Street.

He shall wait and bring me an answer. I shall meet no one on the stairs.

Let me pa.s.s you."

Brian Bellis was standing in the entrance-hall, and Griselda went eagerly towards him:

"Have you brought me tidings?"

And Brian replied:

"I have taken Norah home to my aunt's house. I've had a piece of work to do it; but they will keep her till after the funeral. He is to be buried to-morrow afternoon. I thought you would like to know this, madam."

"Yes--yes," Griselda said; "and I will reward you for your care of Norah."

"I want no reward, madam," Brian said quickly. "Have you any commands?--for it is late. The actors at the theatre have subscribed for the burial; but----"

"Not enough--I understand. Follow me upstairs--gently--softly," she said, as she led the way to a small room at the head of the stairs where Graves worked.

Griselda pointed to the door; and then going to her own room on the upper story, she took up the letter she had at last written to Leslie Travers, and the packet of money she had sealed for Graves to take to Crown Alley. When she rejoined Brian, she said:

"I entrust you with these two packets. I had them ready. The money is for the--for my sister. Let her have decent black, and proper mourning; and there are two guineas for the funeral of--her father. But," Griselda said, with a strange pang of self-reproach she could not have defined, as she felt how little the death of her father and her sister's sorrow weighed in the balance against an aching fear and anxiety about Mr.

Travers--"but this letter I want you to put into the hands of Mr. Leslie Travers in King Street. For this--oh! I would reward you in any way that you desire. Bring me an answer back, and I will owe you eternal grat.i.tude. Do you hear?"

Yes, Brian heard. It seemed all but impossible that this tall, beautiful lady should clasp her hands as a suppliant to him. His large, honest eyes sought hers, and the appeal in them touched his boyish heart.

"I will do what you wish, madam, and as quickly as I can."

"Thank you--I thank you, dear boy, with all my heart. Oh, that you may bring back a word to comfort me!--for I am shadowed with the cloud of coming, as well as past, misfortune; and I scarce know how to be patient till the pain of suspense is relieved." Then, laying her hand on Brian's shoulder, she said: "Promise to see Mr. Travers, and put the letter in his hand."

And Brian promised, and kept his promise faithfully.

CHAPTER XVI.

IN THE EARLY MORNING.

Griselda returned to her room to watch the timepiece, and listen for the striking of the Abbey clock, as the slow hours pa.s.sed, and she paced the floor in her restlessness from the fireplace to the window, and then back again from the window to the fire.

About ten o'clock Graves came in with a cup of chocolate, and to tell her that Mr. Cheyne, the doctor, had seen Lady Betty, and p.r.o.nounced her really ill this time. She was to keep in bed, and if not better on the following day, he must let blood from her arm.

"Do you know the doctor, Miss Griselda--this young Doctor Cheyne?"

"I may have spoken to him. Yes, I have seen him; but what is he to me?"

"He asked for you, that's all," said Graves; "how you did, and whether----"

Graves stopped. It was a habit of hers to break off suddenly in her speech, and Griselda scarcely noticed it.

"_Is_ the boy, Brian Bellis, come back?"

"No, Miss Griselda; he won't be here again to-night. I hear he is nephew to the Miss Hoblyns, the mantua-makers, and that they look sharp after him; they would not let him run about the streets at midnight."

"Midnight! It's not midnight! Oh, Graves, I am so tired!"

"Go to bed, and sleep till morning; that is my advice to you, and read a verse in G.o.d's Word to go to sleep on. You'll never know rest till you find it in the Lord, my dear. Let me help you to undress."

"No, I am not going to bed. Promise, Graves, if Brian Bellis comes to the door with a letter you will bring it here. Promise----"

Graves nodded her head in token of a.s.sent, and departed.

There are few troubles, and few anxieties, which do not find a temporary balm in the sleep of youth.

And Griselda, worn out at last, threw herself on her bed, and fell, against her will, into a deep and dreamless slumber.

The Abbey clock had struck eleven when Graves, softly opening the door, found the fire low, and the candles burned out; while on the bed lay Griselda, dressed, but with the coverlet drawn over her under the canopy of the old-fas.h.i.+oned tent-bed, which was the bed then commonly in use for rooms which were not s.p.a.cious enough to receive a stately four-poster.

Graves had a small tin candlestick in one hand, and a letter. She carefully s.h.i.+elded the light, and, looking down at the sleeping girl, murmured:

"I cannot wake her. I will leave the letter on the bed; she will see it in the morning the first thing--better she should not see it till then.

I promised to bring it, but I did not promise to rouse her if she was asleep. Poor child! Poor dear! May the Lord pity her and draw her to Himself!"

Graves moved gently about the room, and put the tinder-box near the candlestick, and then softly closed the door, and went downstairs to sit by the side of the fractious invalid, who declared she could not be left for a moment, and who kept her patient handmaiden awake for hours, till at last she, too, sunk into a heavy sleep.

Never a night pa.s.ses but in the silent watches some hearts are aching, some sick and weary ones are tossing in their uneasy beds, some suffering ones are racked with pain, either of body or mind! Our own turn must surely come; but till it does come, we are so slow to realize that for us, too, the night that should hush us to repose, and bring on its wings the angel of sleep for our refres.h.i.+ng, will bring instead sorrowful vigils by the dying, mourning for the dead, or cruel and biting anxiety for the living, so that tears are our meat, as we cry, "Where is now our G.o.d?"

Griselda slept on, and it was in the chill of the early morning before the dawn that she awoke.

She started up, and at first could not remember what had happened. It was quite dark, and she sprang from the bed, and, groping for the tinder-box, struck a spark, and lighted a candle.

She was still scarcely awake, and it was only by slow degrees that she recalled how the evening before she had waited, and waited in vain, for a letter--his letter! an answer to hers--in which in a few words she had told him of her father, and asked him to release her from her promise if so he pleased. Then she had asked if his silence since the letter she had written two days before, meant that he desired her to think no more of him. Only to _know_, and not to be kept in uncertainty, she craved for a reply--she begged for it--by the hand of Brian Bellis, who had brought this, her last appeal.

"No answer, no answer!" she exclaimed; "and hark! that is the clock striking--three--four. No answer--it is all over!" And as the words escaped her lips she saw lying on the floor a letter, which had fallen from the bed when she had sprung from it.

She picked it up, and became quiet and like herself at once. She saw by the address it was from Leslie Travers, for in the corner was written: "By the hand of Brian Bellis."

The tall candle cast its light on the sheet of Bath post, which had been carefully sealed, and threw a halo round the young head which bent over it.

"I have received no message from you"--so the letter began--"but, dearest love, sweetheart, could you dream that any circ.u.mstance could alter my love for you? Nay, Griselda, I will not permit such a possibility to enter my head, or wake a sorrowful echo in my heart.

"My only love, I am yours till death--and death may be near! I go to-morrow to meet the man on Claverton Down who has first persecuted you with his suit, and then, rejected, has vilely slandered you. I gave him the lie, and he has challenged me to fight, and as a man of honour I cannot draw back. If I live--I live for you; if I die--I die for you. I would there were any other way whereby I could vindicate your honour and my own. I am no coward, nor do I fear death; but I think these duels are a remnant of barbarism, meet for the old Romans, perchance, over whose buried city we move day by day, but unworthy of men who call themselves by the name of Christ.

"My love, when you read this letter, be not too much dismayed.

"When the dawn breaks over the city, we shall have met--that base man and I--and it may be that I shall fall under his more practised hand. If it is so, I commend you, in a letter, to my poor mother. You will weep together, and you shall have a home with her, and you will be united in sorrow. The child--your sister--shall be her care, as she would have been mine.

"I have made my last will and testament--duly attested; and in that you are mentioned as if you had been my wife.