"Cameron, Cameron," cried the wine-merchant, "Adelais is failing and sickening every day. Every day she grows whiter and sadder and more silent. Don"t tell me it"s for love of Maurice! It"s not possible such a woman as she is can love anybody in vain!
She"s an angel on earth, your sister Adelais!"
Then because the old man was kindly and wise and white-headed, Philip told him all that Adelais had said, and how he had promised to take her home with him, and had come unknown to any one to ask before they went whether or not there was any hope for her of the love on which she had so set her heart.
And when Philip was gone the old gentleman called his elder son, Stephen, and asked him--but warily, lest he should betray Adelais-- how Maurice bore himself in Stephen"s presence when they were alone together and chanced to speak of her, and if Stephen knew or guessed anything of what was in his mind towards her. Then the young man understood for the first time all the blindness of his eyes and the dulness of his heart; and the pain and the desolation and the hopelessness of his life that was to be, rose up before him, and he knew that from thenceforth the glory and the light of it were put out for ever.
"Father," he said, "I know nothing whatever of all this. Is it your wish then that these two should marry?"
"It is my wish, Stephen, and the wish also of our friend Philip himself. Maurice could not take with him to India a sweeter or a worthier wife than Adelais Cameron."
"And does she wish it too?" he asked again. "Tell me, father, for I have guessed already." He lifted his eyes to the old man"s face as he spoke, and perceived at once the sudden confusion arid surprise that his words had caused there, yet he said no more, but waited still for a reply.
"My dear boy," said the old gentleman at last, "if you have guessed anything, that is enough; say no more about it, but let it rest with yourself. I have never yet deceived either of my sons. But when Maurice comes home again you can help us very much, for you can question him on the matter more naturally than I could do, and no doubt he will tell you his mind about it, as you say he always does about everything, but with me he might be reserved and bewildered perhaps. Ask him, my boy, but keep your guesses to yourself."
"Father," cried Stephen, pressing his hands together in agony as though his heart were between them, and he would fain crush it into dust and destroy it for ever; "tell me, if I am to do this, does Adelais love my brother?"
"If I tell you at all, boy," said the wine-merchant, "I shall tell you the truth; can you hold your peace like a man of discretion?"
"I have kept other secrets, father," he answered, "I can keep this."
Then his father told him.
Early in May, Adelais Cameron went to the Devonshire sea-coast with her brother and her aunt, and they stayed there together a long while. But the accounts that came from week to week to Kensington were none of the best, for Adelais had borne the long journey but ill, and her strength did not return.
Then came the summer and the vacation-time, and Maurice Gray was home again, full to the brim of schemes for his future life, and busy all day with head and hands over his preparations for leaving England in the autumn. But when Stephen talked to him of Adelais, and told him she was gone to the sea-side, Maurice only laughed and answered lightly, that she was a sweet lovable girl, and that he grieved to hear of her illness; no doubt the southern breezes would bring back the color to her cheeks, and he should hear before he had been long gone that she was quite well and strong again.
At least he hoped so.
"Then, Maurice, you don"t care to see her once more before you sail?
You don"t want to say goodbye?"
"O well, if she"s here, of course, but that"s another thing; I wouldn"t for worlds have her come back to Kensington just to bid me goodbye. And really you know, Steenie, I"ve too much to do just now to be running about and saying farewells everywhere. The time that"s left me now to be at home with you and my father is none too long. What is Adelais Cameron to me, when all my world is here?"
"Maurice," said Stephen again, in a voice that sounded strained and hard, like the voice of an old man trying to be young; "you"re a dear affectionate fellow, and as things are, perhaps this is all very well. But supposing Adelais loved you, and my father and-- and--everybody else you know, wished her to be your wife, how would you feel towards her then? Supposing, Maurice--only for the sake of supposing, of course."
"What a strange fellow you are, Steenie! Why, supposing as you say, such a very wild improbable circ.u.mstance were to occur, I should be heartily sorry for poor Adelais! Only imagine me with such a wife as she would make! Why I wouldn"t have so transparent, white- skinned a beauty about my house all day for a mine of gold! I should be seized with lunacy before long, through mere contemplation of her very unearthliness, and be goaded into fancying her a picture, and hanging her up framed and glazed over my drawing-room mantelpiece!
No, no, I"ll leave Miss Cameron for you, you"re just her style, I take it; but as for me, I never thought of marrying yet, Steenie, for I never yet had the luck or ill-luck to fall in love, and certainly you"ll allow that n.o.body ought to think of marriage until he"s really in love. So I"ll wish you all success, old boy, and mind you write and tell me how the wooing gets on!"
O Maurice! Maurice!
Then, by-and-by, the young officer sailed, and Adelais heard of his going, and her heart died within her for greatness of sorrow and pain, yet still she held her peace, and lived her life in patience.
And so for two whole years they kept her by the sea, hoping against hope, and whispering those idle convictions that affection always suggests, about the worst being over now, and the time of convalescence being always tedious and unpromising. But in the third year, when the autumn days grew darker, and the sun set redder in the sea, and people began to talk again of Christmas, Adelais called her brother one evening and said:--
"Philip, I have been here very long, and I know that nothing more on earth can ever make me well again now. You will not refuse me the last request I shall make you, Phil? Take me back to the old house at Kensington, that I may see dear old Mr. Gray, and my friend Stephen, once more; and you, Phil, stay with me and Auntie there until I die, for it won"t be very long now, and I want to see you near me to the last."
So they brought her back again to the old house, next door to the wine merchant"s, and they carried her over the threshold, because she was too weak to walk now, and laid her on the old sofa in the old place by the window, for she would have it, and Philip Cameron did her bidding in everything. And that same evening, Stephen Gray came in to see her, and they met as old friends meet who have been long parted, and sat and talked together until past sunset. But at length Adelais asked him for news of Maurice, what he was doing, and how he was, and when they heard from him last, and what he thought of India and of the new life there, and his companions, and the climate, and the customs of the place; for she never guessed that Stephen knew of her hopeless love. But Stephen turned away his face and answered her briefly, that his brother was well and prosperous, and wrote home constantly. How could he tell her that Maurice had already found himself a rich handsome wife in India?
Chapter III.
Soon after these things, old Mr Gray fell ill of a violent cold, which attacked him suddenly one afternoon on his return from his office. It was Christmas weather then, and the cold and the frost of the season were unusually keen, so that the physician, whom Stephen called in to see his father, looked very grave and dubious; and before many days of his patient"s illness were past, he asked the young man whether there were any brothers or sisters of his, whom the merchant might wish to see. Stephen"s heart beat fast when he heard the ominous question, for he understood what tidings the grave tone and the strange inquiry were meant to break to him, and knew well that the physician who spoke was one of the wisest and most skillful in London. But he answered as calmly as he could, and talked of Maurice, and of the boy"s fondness for his father, and added, that if there were really imminent danger, he should like his brother to be called home, because he was sure Maurice would wish it; but that otherwise the voyage was tedious and the need unimportant.
"Let him be sent for," said the physician. "There is just time."
So Stephen wrote to his brother, and bade him leave his wife with her parents in India, and come home quickly, if he would see his father again, for the time was short, and in those days the only way open to Maurice was the long circuitous sea-route.
Maurice arrived only three days before the old man"s death. He had not left his wife behind him, as Stephen suggested, for she loved her husband too dearly to be parted from him, and Maurice brought her with him to his father"s house.
From her place on the sofa by the window, Adelais Cameron looked wearily out, watching for the coming of the one she loved most upon earth. And at last the coach drew up at the old gentleman"s gate, and she saw Maurice dismount from the box-seat by the driver and open the coach door to hand out a handsome lady, with dark hair and bright glowing eyes.
"Who is that?" she asked of the maid, who was arranging the tea-table beside her.
"Don"t you know, Miss?" said the girl, surprised at the inquiry.
"That"s Mrs Maurice, the rich young lady he married in India a year ago; I was told all about it by the cook at Mr. Gray"s, ever-so- long ago."
But as the words were spoken, Stephen entered the room with a message for Philip Cameron, and overheard both the question and the answer.
Adelais turned towards him and said, "Stephen, you never told me that Maurice had a wife."
The next week they buried the old wine merchant very quietly and simply. Only three mourners attended the funeral,--Stephen and Maurice and Philip Cameron; but Adelais, looking down on them from her cas.e.m.e.nt corner, as the coffin was carried forth from the house, laid her golden head on her aunt"s bosom and cried, "Auntie, auntie, I never thought to live so long as this! Why must those always die who are needed most, while such as I live on from year to year?
I fancied I had only a few weeks left me upon earth when we came back to Kensington, and yet here I am still!"
Then after a little while the brothers parted once more; Maurice and his wife went back to India, and Stephen was left alone, sole successor to his father"s business, and master of the old house.
But Adelais Cameron still lived on, like the shadow of her former self, fading in the sunset of her womanhood, the beauty sapped out from her white death-like face, and the glitter of youth and the sweetness of hope quenched for ever in the depths of her luminous eyes.
Then when the days of mourning were over, Stephen came again to Adelais, to renew the wooing of old times; for he said to himself, "Now that Maurice is married, and my father dead, she may pity me, seeing me so lone and desolate; and I may comfort her for the past, and make her amends with my love, for the pain and the bitterness that are gone by."
But when he knelt alone by the couch whereon Adelais lay, and held her white blue-veined hands in his and told his errand, she turned her face from him and wept sore, as women weep over the dead.
"Adelais, O Adelais," he cried in his despair, "Why will you refuse me always? Don"t you see my heart is breaking for love of you?
Come home with me and be my wife at last!"
But she made answer very sadly and slowly:--
"Stephen, ought the living and the dead to wed with one another?
G.o.d forbid that you in your youth and manhood should take to wife such a death-like thing as I! Four years I have lain like this waiting for the messenger to fetch me away, and now that at last he is near at hand, shall I array myself in a bridal veil for a face-cloth, and trailing skirts of silk or satin for a shroud?
Dear Stephen, don"t talk to me any more about this,--we are brother and sister still,--let nothing on earth break the sweetness of the bond between us."
"Not so, Adelais," cried he, pa.s.sionately; "you cannot, you must not die yet! You do not know what love can do, you do not know that love is stronger than death, and that where there is love like mine death dare not come! There is nothing in all the world that I will not do for your sake, nothing that I will leave undone to save you, nothing that shall be too hard a condition for me to perform, so that I may keep you with me still. Live, live my darling, my beloved, and be my wife! Give me the right to take you with me, my sweet; let us go together to Madeira, to Malta, to Sicily, where the land is full of life, and the skies are warm, and the atmosphere clear and pure. There is health there, Adelais, and youth, and air to breathe such as one cannot find in this dull, misty, heavy northern climate, and there you will grow well again, and we will think no more about death and sickness. O my darling, my darling, for G.o.d"s sake refuse me no longer!"
She laid her thin transparent palm wearily over her left side, and turned her calm eyes on the pa.s.sionate straining face beside her.
"There is that here," she said, pressing her wounded heart more tightly, "that I know already for the touch of the messenger"s hand.
Already I count the time of my sojourn here, not by weeks nor even by days,--the end has come so very, very near at last. How do I know but that even now that messenger of whom I speak may be standing in our presence,--even now, while you kneel here by my side and talk to me of life and youth and health?"