THE TENANT OF WILDFELL HALL
PART 22
CHAPTER XLVIII
Five or
six days after this Mr. Lawrence paid us the honour of a call; and when he and
I were alone together—which I contrived as soon as possible by bringing him out
to look at my cornstacks—he showed me another letter from his sister. This
one he was quite willing to submit to my longing gaze; he thought, I suppose,
it would do me good. The only answer it gave to my message was this:—
‘Mr.
Markham is at liberty to make such revelations concerning me as he judges
necessary. He will know that I should wish but little to be said on the
subject. I hope he is well; but tell him he must not think of me.’
I can give
you a few extracts from the rest of the letter, for I was permitted to keep
this also—perhaps, as an antidote to all pernicious hopes and fancies.
* * * * *
He is
decidedly better, but very low from the depressing effects of his severe
illness and the strict regimen he is obliged to observe—so opposite to all his
previous habits. It is deplorable to see how completely his past life has
degenerated his once noble constitution, and vitiated the whole system of his
organization. But the doctor says he may now be considered out of danger,
if he will only continue to observe the necessary restrictions. Some
stimulating cordials he must have, but they should be judiciously diluted and
sparingly used; and I find it very difficult to keep him to this. At
first, his extreme dread of death rendered the task an easy one; but in
proportion as he feels his acute suffering abating, and sees the danger
receding, the more intractable he becomes. Now, also, his appetite for
food is beginning to return; and here, too, his long habits of self-indulgence
are greatly against him. I watch and restrain him as well as I can, and
often get bitterly abused for my rigid severity; and sometimes he contrives to
elude my vigilance, and sometimes acts in opposition to my will. But he
is now so completely reconciled to my attendance in general that he is never
satisfied when I am not by his side. I am obliged to be a little stiff
with him sometimes, or he would make a complete slave of me; and I know it
would be unpardonable weakness to give up all other interests for him. I
have the servants to overlook, and my little Arthur to attend to,—and my own
health too, all of which would be entirely neglected were I to satisfy his
exorbitant demands. I do not generally sit up at night, for I think the
nurse who has made it her business is better qualified for such undertakings
than I am;—but still, an unbroken night’s rest is what I but seldom enjoy, and
never can venture to reckon upon; for my patient makes no scruple of calling me
up at an hour when his wants or his fancies require my presence. But he
is manifestly afraid of my displeasure; and if at one time he tries my patience
by his unreasonable exactions, and fretful complaints and reproaches, at
another he depresses me by his abject submission and deprecatory self-abasement
when he fears he has gone too far. But all this I can readily pardon; I know
it is chiefly the result of his enfeebled frame and disordered nerves.
What annoys me the most, is his occasional attempts at affectionate fondness
that I can neither credit nor return; not that I hate him: his sufferings and
my own laborious care have given him some claim to my regard—to my affection
even, if he would only be quiet and sincere, and content to let things remain
as they are; but the more he tries to conciliate me, the more I shrink from him
and from the future.
‘Helen,
what do you mean to do when I get well?’ he asked this morning. ‘Will you
run away again?’
‘It
entirely depends upon your own conduct.’
‘Oh, I’ll
be very good.’
‘But if I
find it necessary to leave you, Arthur, I shall not “run away”: you know I have
your own promise that I may go whenever I please, and take my son with me.’
‘Oh, but
you shall have no cause.’ And then followed a variety of professions,
which I rather coldly checked.
‘Will you
not forgive me, then?’ said he.
‘Yes,—I
have forgiven you: but I know you cannot love me as you once did—and I should
be very sorry if you were to, for I could not pretend to return it: so let us
drop the subject, and never recur to it again. By what I have done for
you, you may judge of what I will do—if it be not incompatible with the higher
duty I owe to my son (higher, because he never forfeited his claims, and
because I hope to do more good to him than I can ever do to you); and if you
wish me to feel kindly towards you, it is deeds not words which must purchase
my affection and esteem.’
His sole
reply to this was a slight grimace, and a scarcely perceptible shrug.
Alas, unhappy man! words, with him, are so much cheaper than deeds; it was as
if I had said, ‘Pounds, not pence, must buy the article you want.’ And
then he sighed a querulous, self-commiserating sigh, as if in pure regret that
he, the loved and courted of so many worshippers, should be now abandoned to
the mercy of a harsh, exacting, cold-hearted woman like that, and even glad of
what kindness she chose to bestow.
‘It’s a
pity, isn’t it?’ said I; and whether I rightly divined his musings or not, the
observation chimed in with his thoughts, for he answered—‘It can’t be helped,’
with a rueful smile at my penetration.
* * * * *
I have
seen Esther Hargrave twice. She is a charming creature, but her blithe
spirit is almost broken, and her sweet temper almost spoiled, by the still
unremitting persecutions of her mother in behalf of her rejected suitor—not
violent, but wearisome and unremitting like a continual dropping. The
unnatural parent seems determined to make her daughter’s life a burden, if she
will not yield to her desires.
‘Mamma
does all she can,’ said she, ‘to make me feel myself a burden and incumbrance
to the family, and the most ungrateful, selfish, and undutiful daughter that
ever was born; and Walter, too, is as stern and cold and haughty as if he hated
me outright. I believe I should have yielded at once if I had known, from
the beginning, how much resistance would have cost me; but now, for very obstinacy’s
sake, I will stand out!’
‘A bad
motive for a good resolve,’ I answered. ‘But, however, I know you have
better motives, really, for your perseverance: and I counsel you to keep them
still in view.’
‘Trust me
I will. I threaten mamma sometimes that I’ll run away, and disgrace the
family by earning my own livelihood, if she torments me any more; and then that
frightens her a little. But I will do it, in good earnest, if they don’t
mind.’
‘Be quiet
and patient a while,’ said I, ‘and better times will come.’
Poor
girl! I wish somebody that was worthy to possess her would come and take
her away—don’t you, Frederick?
* * * * *
If the
perusal of this letter filled me with dismay for Helen’s future life and mine,
there was one great source of consolation: it was now in my power to clear her
name from every foul aspersion. The Millwards and the Wilsons should see
with their own eyes the bright sun bursting from the cloud—and they should be
scorched and dazzled by its beams;—and my own friends too should see it—they
whose suspicions had been such gall and wormwood to my soul. To effect
this I had only to drop the seed into the ground, and it would soon become a
stately, branching herb: a few words to my mother and sister, I knew, would
suffice to spread the news throughout the whole neighbourhood, without any
further exertion on my part.
Rose was
delighted; and as soon as I had told her all I thought proper—which was all I
affected to know—she flew with alacrity to put on her bonnet and shawl, and
hasten to carry the glad tidings to the Millwards and Wilsons—glad tidings, I
suspect, to none but herself and Mary Millward—that steady, sensible girl,
whose sterling worth had been so quickly perceived and duly valued by the
supposed Mrs. Graham, in spite of her plain outside; and who, on her part, had
been better able to see and appreciate that lady’s true character and qualities
than the brightest genius among them.
As I may
never have occasion to mention her again, I may as well tell you here that she
was at this time privately engaged to Richard Wilson—a secret, I believe, to
every one but themselves. That worthy student was now at Cambridge, where
his most exemplary conduct and his diligent perseverance in the pursuit of
learning carried him safely through, and eventually brought him with
hard-earned honours, and an untarnished reputation, to the close of his
collegiate career. In due time he became Mr. Millward’s first and only
curate—for that gentleman’s declining years forced him at last to acknowledge
that the duties of his extensive parish were a little too much for those
vaunted energies which he was wont to boast over his younger and less active
brethren of the cloth. This was what the patient, faithful lovers had
privately planned and quietly waited for years ago; and in due time they were
united, to the astonishment of the little world they lived in, that had long
since declared them both born to single blessedness; affirming it impossible
that the pale, retiring bookworm should ever summon courage to seek a wife, or
be able to obtain one if he did, and equally impossible that the plain-looking,
plain-dealing, unattractive, unconciliating Miss Millward should ever find a
husband.
They still
continued to live at the vicarage, the lady dividing her time between her
father, her husband, and their poor parishioners,—and subsequently her rising
family; and now that the Reverend Michael Millward has been gathered to his
fathers, full of years and honours, the Reverend Richard Wilson has succeeded
him to the vicarage of Linden-hope, greatly to the satisfaction of its
inhabitants, who had so long tried and fully proved his merits, and those of
his excellent and well-loved partner.
If you are
interested in the after fate of that lady’s sister, I can only tell you—what
perhaps you have heard from another quarter—that some twelve or thirteen years
ago she relieved the happy couple of her presence by marrying a wealthy
tradesman of L—; and I don’t envy him his bargain. I fear she leads him a
rather uncomfortable life, though, happily, he is too dull to perceive the
extent of his misfortune. I have little enough to do with her myself: we
have not met for many years; but, I am well assured, she has not yet forgotten
or forgiven either her former lover, or the lady whose superior qualities first
opened his eyes to the folly of his boyish attachment.
As for
Richard Wilson’s sister, she, having been wholly unable to recapture Mr.
Lawrence, or obtain any partner rich and elegant enough to suit her ideas of
what the husband of Jane Wilson ought to be, is yet in single
blessedness. Shortly after the death of her mother she withdrew the light
of her presence from Ryecote Farm, finding it impossible any longer to endure
the rough manners and unsophisticated habits of her honest brother Robert and
his worthy wife, or the idea of being identified with such vulgar people in the
eyes of the world, and took lodgings in — the county town, where she lived, and
still lives, I suppose, in a kind of close-fisted, cold, uncomfortable
gentility, doing no good to others, and but little to herself; spending her
days in fancy-work and scandal; referring frequently to her ‘brother the
vicar,’ and her ‘sister, the vicar’s lady,’ but never to her brother the farmer
and her sister the farmer’s wife; seeing as much company as she can without too
much expense, but loving no one and beloved by none—a cold-hearted,
supercilious, keenly, insidiously censorious old maid.
CHAPTER XLIX
Though Mr.
Lawrence’s health was now quite re-established, my visits to Woodford were as
unremitting as ever; though often less protracted than before. We seldom
talked about Mrs. Huntingdon; but yet we never met without mentioning her, for
I never sought his company but with the hope of hearing something about her,
and he never sought mine at all, because he saw me often enough without.
But I always began to talk of other things, and waited first to see if he would
introduce the subject. If he did not, I would casually ask, ‘Have you
heard from your sister lately?’ If he said ‘No,’ the matter was dropped:
if he said ‘Yes,’ I would venture to inquire, ‘How is she?’ but never ‘How is
her husband?’ though I might be burning to know; because I had not the
hypocrisy to profess any anxiety for his recovery, and I had not the face to
express any desire for a contrary result. Had I any such desire?—I fear I
must plead guilty; but since you have heard my confession, you must hear my
justification as well —a few of the excuses, at least, wherewith I sought to
pacify my own accusing conscience.
In the
first place, you see, his life did harm to others, and evidently no good to
himself; and though I wished it to terminate, I would not have hastened its
close if, by the lifting of a finger, I could have done so, or if a spirit had
whispered in my ear that a single effort of the will would be enough,—unless,
indeed, I had the power to exchange him for some other victim of the grave,
whose life might be of service to his race, and whose death would be lamented
by his friends. But was there any harm in wishing that, among the many
thousands whose souls would certainly be required of them before the year was
over, this wretched mortal might be one? I thought not; and therefore I
wished with all my heart that it might please heaven to remove him to a better
world, or if that might not be, still to take him out of this; for if he were
unfit to answer the summons now, after a warning sickness, and with such an
angel by his side, it seemed but too certain that he never would be—that, on
the contrary, returning health would bring returning lust and villainy, and as
he grew more certain of recovery, more accustomed to her generous goodness, his
feelings would become more callous, his heart more flinty and impervious to her
persuasive arguments—but God knew best. Meantime, however, I could not
but be anxious for the result of His decrees; knowing, as I did, that (leaving
myself entirely out of the question), however Helen might feel interested in
her husband’s welfare, however she might deplore his fate, still while he lived
she must be miserable.
A
fortnight passed away, and my inquiries were always answered in the
negative. At length a welcome ‘yes’ drew from me the second
question. Lawrence divined my anxious thoughts, and appreciated my
reserve. I feared, at first, he was going to torture me by unsatisfactory
replies, and either leave me quite in the dark concerning what I wanted to
know, or force me to drag the information out of him, morsel by morsel, by
direct inquiries. ‘And serve you right,’ you will say; but he was more
merciful; and in a little while he put his sister’s letter into my hand.
I silently read it, and restored it to him without comment or remark.
This mode of procedure suited him so well, that thereafter he always pursued
the plan of showing me her letters at once, when ‘inquired’ after her, if there
were any to show—it was so much less trouble than to tell me their contents;
and I received such confidences so quietly and discreetly that he was never
induced to discontinue them.
But I
devoured those precious letters with my eyes, and never let them go till their
contents were stamped upon my mind; and when I got home, the most important
passages were entered in my diary among the remarkable events of the day.
The first
of these communications brought intelligence of a serious relapse in Mr.
Huntingdon’s illness, entirely the result of his own infatuation in persisting
in the indulgence of his appetite for stimulating drink. In vain had she
remonstrated, in vain she had mingled his wine with water: her arguments and
entreaties were a nuisance, her interference was an insult so intolerable that,
at length, on finding she had covertly diluted the pale port that was brought
him, he threw the bottle out of the window, swearing he would not be cheated
like a baby, ordered the butler, on pain of instant dismissal, to bring a
bottle of the strongest wine in the cellar, and affirming that he should have
been well long ago if he had been let to have his own way, but she wanted to
keep him weak in order that she might have him under her thumb—but, by the Lord
Harry, he would have no more humbug—seized a glass in one hand and the bottle
in the other, and never rested till he had drunk it dry. Alarming
symptoms were the immediate result of this ‘imprudence,’ as she mildly termed
it—symptoms which had rather increased than diminished since; and this was the
cause of her delay in writing to her brother. Every former feature of his
malady had returned with augmented virulence: the slight external wound, half
healed, had broken out afresh; internal inflammation had taken place, which
might terminate fatally if not soon removed. Of course, the wretched
sufferer’s temper was not improved by this calamity—in fact, I suspect it was
well nigh insupportable, though his kind nurse did not complain; but she said
she had been obliged at last to give her son in charge to Esther Hargrave, as
her presence was so constantly required in the sick-room that she could not
possibly attend to him herself; and though the child had begged to be allowed
to continue with her there, and to help her to nurse his papa, and though she
had no doubt he would have been very good and quiet, she could not think of
subjecting his young and tender feelings to the sight of so much suffering, or
of allowing him to witness his father’s impatience, or hear the dreadful
language he was wont to use in his paroxysms of pain or irritation.
The latter
(continued she) most deeply regrets the step that has occasioned his relapse;
but, as usual, he throws the blame upon me. If I had reasoned with him
like a rational creature, he says, it never would have happened; but to be
treated like a baby or a fool was enough to put any man past his patience, and
drive him to assert his independence even at the sacrifice of his own
interest. He forgets how often I had reasoned him ‘past his patience’
before. He appears to be sensible of his danger; but nothing can induce
him to behold it in the proper light. The other night, while I was
waiting on him, and just as I had brought him a draught to assuage his burning
thirst, he observed, with a return of his former sarcastic bitterness, ‘Yes,
you’re mighty attentive now! I suppose there’s nothing you wouldn’t do
for me now?’
‘You
know,’ said I, a little surprised at his manner, ‘that I am willing to do
anything I can to relieve you.’
‘Yes, now,
my immaculate angel; but when once you have secured your reward, and find
yourself safe in heaven, and me howling in hell-fire, catch you lifting a
finger to serve me then! No, you’ll look complacently on, and not so much
as dip the tip of your finger in water to cool my tongue!’
‘If so, it
will be because of the great gulf over which I cannot pass; and if I could look
complacently on in such a case, it would be only from the assurance that you
were being purified from your sins, and fitted to enjoy the happiness I
felt.—But are you determined, Arthur, that I shall not meet you in heaven?’
‘Humph!
What should I do there, I should like to know?’
‘Indeed, I
cannot tell; and I fear it is too certain that your tastes and feelings must be
widely altered before you can have any enjoyment there. But do you prefer
sinking, without an effort, into the state of torment you picture to yourself?’
‘Oh, it’s
all a fable,’ said he, contemptuously.
‘Are you
sure, Arthur? are you quite sure? Because, if there is any doubt, and if
you should find yourself mistaken after all, when it is too late to turn—’
‘It would
be rather awkward, to be sure,’ said he; ‘but don’t bother me now—I’m not going
to die yet. I can’t and won’t,’ he added vehemently, as if suddenly
struck with the appalling aspect of that terrible event. ‘Helen, you must
save me!’ And he earnestly seized my hand, and looked into my face with such
imploring eagerness that my heart bled for him, and I could not speak for
tears.
* * * * *
The next
letter brought intelligence that the malady was fast increasing; and the poor
sufferer’s horror of death was still more distressing than his impatience of
bodily pain. All his friends had not forsaken him; for Mr. Hattersley,
hearing of his danger, had come to see him from his distant home in the
north. His wife had accompanied him, as much for the pleasure of seeing
her dear friend, from whom she had been parted so long, as to visit her mother
and sister.
Mrs.
Huntingdon expressed herself glad to see Milicent once more, and pleased to
behold her so happy and well. She is now at the Grove, continued the
letter, but she often calls to see me. Mr. Hattersley spends much of his
time at Arthur’s bed-side. With more good feeling than I gave him credit
for, he evinces considerable sympathy for his unhappy friend, and is far more
willing than able to comfort him. Sometimes he tries to joke and laugh
with him, but that will not do; sometimes he endeavours to cheer him with talk
about old times, and this at one time may serve to divert the sufferer from his
own sad thoughts; at another, it will only plunge him into deeper melancholy
than before; and then Hattersley is confounded, and knows not what to say,
unless it be a timid suggestion that the clergyman might be sent for. But
Arthur will never consent to that: he knows he has rejected the clergyman’s
well-meant admonitions with scoffing levity at other times, and cannot dream of
turning to him for consolation now.
Mr.
Hattersley sometimes offers his services instead of mine, but Arthur will not
let me go: that strange whim still increases, as his strength declines—the
fancy to have me always by his side. I hardly ever leave him, except to
go into the next room, where I sometimes snatch an hour or so of sleep when he
is quiet; but even then the door is left ajar, that he may know me to be within
call. I am with him now, while I write, and I fear my occupation annoys
him; though I frequently break off to attend to him, and though Mr. Hattersley
is also by his side. That gentleman came, as he said, to beg a holiday
for me, that I might have a run in the park, this fine frosty morning, with
Milicent and Esther and little Arthur, whom he had driven over to see me.
Our poor invalid evidently felt it a heartless proposition, and would have felt
it still more heartless in me to accede to it. I therefore said I would
only go and speak to them a minute, and then come back. I did but
exchange a few words with them, just outside the portico, inhaling the fresh,
bracing air as I stood, and then, resisting the earnest and eloquent entreaties
of all three to stay a little longer, and join them in a walk round the garden,
I tore myself away and returned to my patient. I had not been absent five
minutes, but he reproached me bitterly for my levity and neglect. His
friend espoused my cause.
‘Nay, nay,
Huntingdon,’ said he, ‘you’re too hard upon her; she must have food and sleep,
and a mouthful of fresh air now and then, or she can’t stand it, I tell
you. Look at her, man! she’s worn to a shadow already.’
‘What are
her sufferings to mine?’ said the poor invalid. ‘You don’t grudge me
these attentions, do you, Helen?’
‘No,
Arthur, if I could really serve you by them. I would give my life to save
you, if I might.’
‘Would
you, indeed? No!’
‘Most
willingly I would.’
‘Ah!
that’s because you think yourself more fit to die!’
There was
a painful pause. He was evidently plunged in gloomy reflections; but
while I pondered for something to say that might benefit without alarming him,
Hattersley, whose mind had been pursuing almost the same course, broke silence
with, ‘I say, Huntingdon, I would send for a parson of some sort: if you didn’t
like the vicar, you know, you could have his curate, or somebody else.’
‘No; none
of them can benefit me if she can’t,’ was the answer. And the tears
gushed from his eyes as he earnestly exclaimed, ‘Oh, Helen, if I had listened
to you, it never would have come to this! and if I had heard you long ago—oh,
God! how different it would have been!’
‘Hear me
now, then, Arthur,’ said I, gently pressing his hand.
‘It’s too
late now,’ said he despondingly. And after that another paroxysm of pain
came on; and then his mind began to wander, and we feared his death was
approaching: but an opiate was administered: his sufferings began to abate, he
gradually became more composed, and at length sank into a kind of
slumber. He has been quieter since; and now Hattersley has left him,
expressing a hope that he shall find him better when he calls to-morrow.
‘Perhaps I
may recover,’ he replied; ‘who knows? This may have been the
crisis. What do you think, Helen?’ Unwilling to depress him, I gave
the most cheering answer I could, but still recommended him to prepare for the
possibility of what I inly feared was but too certain. But he was
determined to hope. Shortly after he relapsed into a kind of doze, but
now he groans again.
There is a
change. Suddenly he called me to his side, with such a strange, excited
manner, that I feared he was delirious, but he was not. ‘That was the
crisis, Helen!’ said he, delightedly. ‘I had an infernal pain here—it is
quite gone now. I never was so easy since the fall—quite gone, by
heaven!’ and he clasped and kissed my hand in the very fulness of his heart;
but finding I did not participate in his joy, he quickly flung it from him, and
bitterly cursed my coldness and insensibility. How could I reply? Kneeling
beside him, I took his hand and fondly pressed it to my lips—for the first time
since our separation—and told him, as well as tears would let me speak, that it
was not that that kept me silent: it was the fear that this sudden cessation of
pain was not so favourable a symptom as he supposed. I immediately sent
for the doctor: we are now anxiously awaiting him. I will tell you what
he says. There is still the same freedom from pain, the same deadness to
all sensation where the suffering was most acute.
My worst
fears are realised: mortification has commenced. The doctor has told him
there is no hope. No words can describe his anguish. I can write no
more.
* * * * *
The next
was still more distressing in the tenor of its contents. The sufferer was
fast approaching dissolution—dragged almost to the verge of that awful chasm he
trembled to contemplate, from which no agony of prayers or tears could save
him. Nothing could comfort him now; Hattersley’s rough attempts at
consolation were utterly in vain. The world was nothing to him: life and
all its interests, its petty cares and transient pleasures, were a cruel
mockery. To talk of the past was to torture him with vain remorse; to
refer to the future was to increase his anguish; and yet to be silent was to
leave him a prey to his own regrets and apprehensions. Often he dwelt
with shuddering minuteness on the fate of his perishing clay—the slow,
piecemeal dissolution already invading his frame: the shroud, the coffin, the
dark, lonely grave, and all the horrors of corruption.
‘If I
try,’ said his afflicted wife, ‘to divert him from these things—to raise his
thoughts to higher themes, it is no better:—“Worse and worse!” he groans.
“If there be really life beyond the tomb, and judgment after death, how can I
face it?”—I cannot do him any good; he will neither be enlightened, nor roused,
nor comforted by anything I say; and yet he clings to me with unrelenting
pertinacity—with a kind of childish desperation, as if I could save him from
the fate he dreads. He keeps me night and day beside him. He is
holding my left hand now, while I write; he has held it thus for hours:
sometimes quietly, with his pale face upturned to mine: sometimes clutching my
arm with violence—the big drops starting from his forehead at the thoughts of
what he sees, or thinks he sees, before him. If I withdraw my hand for a
moment it distresses him.
‘“Stay
with me, Helen,” he says; “let me hold you so: it seems as if harm could not
reach me while you are here. But death will come—it is coming now—fast,
fast!—and—oh, if I could believe there was nothing after!”
‘“Don’t
try to believe it, Arthur; there is joy and glory after, if you will but try to
reach it!”
‘“What,
for me?” he said, with something like a laugh. “Are we not to be judged
according to the deeds done in the body? Where’s the use of a
probationary existence, if a man may spend it as he pleases, just contrary to
God’s decrees, and then go to heaven with the best—if the vilest sinner may win
the reward of the holiest saint, by merely saying, “I repent!””’
‘“But if
you sincerely repent—”
‘“I can’t
repent; I only fear.”
‘“You only
regret the past for its consequences to yourself?”
‘“Just
so—except that I’m sorry to have wronged you, Nell, because you’re so good to
me.”
‘“Think of
the goodness of God, and you cannot but be grieved to have offended Him.”
‘“What is
God?—I cannot see Him or hear Him.—God is only an idea.”
‘“God is
Infinite Wisdom, and Power, and Goodness—and Love; but if this
idea is too vast for your human faculties—if your mind loses itself in its
overwhelming infinitude, fix it on Him who condescended to take our nature upon
Him, who was raised to heaven even in His glorified human body, in whom the
fulness of the Godhead shines.”
‘But he
only shook his head and sighed. Then, in another paroxysm of shuddering
horror, he tightened his grasp on my hand and arm, and, groaning and lamenting,
still clung to me with that wild, desperate earnestness so harrowing to my
soul, because I know I cannot help him. I did my best to soothe and
comfort him.
‘“Death is
so terrible,” he cried, “I cannot bear it! You don’t know, Helen—you
can’t imagine what it is, because you haven’t it before you! and when I’m
buried, you’ll return to your old ways and be as happy as ever, and all the
world will go on just as busy and merry as if I had never been; while I—”
He burst into tears.
‘“You
needn’t let that distress you,” I said; “we shall all follow you soon enough.”
‘“I wish
to God I could take you with me now!” he exclaimed: “you should plead for me.”
‘“No man
can deliver his brother, nor make agreement unto God for him,” I replied: “it
cost more to redeem their souls—it cost the blood of an incarnate God, perfect
and sinless in Himself, to redeem us from the bondage of the evil one:—let Him
plead for you.”
‘But I
seem to speak in vain. He does not now, as formerly, laugh these blessed
truths to scorn: but still he cannot trust, or will not comprehend them.
He cannot linger long. He suffers dreadfully, and so do those that wait
upon him. But I will not harass you with further details: I have said
enough, I think, to convince you that I did well to go to him.’
* * * * *
Poor, poor
Helen! dreadful indeed her trials must have been! And I could do nothing
to lessen them—nay, it almost seemed as if I had brought them upon her myself
by my own secret desires; and whether I looked at her husband’s sufferings or
her own, it seemed almost like a judgment upon myself for having cherished such
a wish.
The next
day but one there came another letter. That too was put into my hands
without a remark, and these are its contents:—
Dec. 5th.
He is gone
at last. I sat beside him all night, with my hand fast locked in his,
watching the changes of his features and listening to his failing breath.
He had been silent a long time, and I thought he would never speak again, when
he murmured, faintly but distinctly,—‘Pray for me, Helen!’
‘I do pray
for you, every hour and every minute, Arthur; but you must pray for yourself.’
His lips
moved, but emitted no sound;—then his looks became unsettled; and, from the
incoherent, half-uttered words that escaped him from time to time, supposing
him to be now unconscious, I gently disengaged my hand from his, intending to
steal away for a breath of air, for I was almost ready to faint; but a
convulsive movement of the fingers, and a faintly whispered ‘Don’t leave me!’
immediately recalled me: I took his hand again, and held it till he was no
more—and then I fainted. It was not grief; it was exhaustion, that, till
then, I had been enabled successfully to combat. Oh, Frederick! none can
imagine the miseries, bodily and mental, of that death-bed! How could I
endure to think that that poor trembling soul was hurried away to everlasting
torment? it would drive me mad. But, thank God, I have hope—not only from
a vague dependence on the possibility that penitence and pardon might have
reached him at the last, but from the blessed confidence that, through whatever
purging fires the erring spirit may be doomed to pass—whatever fate awaits
it—still it is not lost, and God, who hateth nothing that He hath made, will bless
it in the end!
His body
will be consigned on Thursday to that dark grave he so much dreaded; but the
coffin must be closed as soon as possible. If you will attend the
funeral, come quickly, for I need help.
Helen
Huntingdon.
To be continued
