"Still in Paris? He leaves her. She did well to send as she did. You will not pay for the posting along the road."
"I will pay for myself--I have a "purse," Weyburn said; and continued, "Oh, my lady; there is Mr. Hampton-Evey to-morrow morning: I promised to stand by him."
"I"ll explain," said Lady Charlotte. "He shall not miss you. If he strips the parson and comes as a man and a servant of the poor, he has nothing to fear. You"ve done? The night before my brother Rowsley"s first duel I sat with him at supper and poured his wine out, and knew what was going to happen, didn"t say a word. No use in talking about feelings. Besides, death is only the other side of the ditch, and one or other of us must go foremost. Now then, good-bye. Empson"s waiting by this time. Mr. Eglett and Leo shall hear the excuses from me. Think of anything you may want, while I count ten."
She held his hand. He wanted her to be friendly to Lady Ormont, but could not vex her at the last moment, touched as he was by her practical kindness.
She pressed his hand and let it go.
CHAPTER XIV. OLD LOVERS NEW FRIENDS
The cottage inhabited by Weyburn"s mother was on the southern hills over London. He reached it late in the afternoon. His mother"s old servant, Martha, spied the roadway at the gate of the small square of garden. Her steady look without welcome told him the scene he would meet beyond the door, and was the dead in her eyes. He dropped from no height; he stood on a level with the blow. His apprehensions on the road had lowered him to meet it.
"Too late, Martha?"
"She"s in heaven, my dear."
"She is lying alone?"
"The London doctor left half an hour back. She"s gone. Slipped, and fell, coming from her room, all the way down. She prayed for grace to see her son. She "ll watch over him, be sure. You "ll not find it lone and cold. A lady sits with it--Lady Ormont, they call her--a very kind lady. My mistress liked her voice. Ever since news of the accident, up to ten at night; and never eats or drinks more than a poor tiny bit of bread-and-b.u.t.ter, with a teacup."
"Weyburn went up-stairs.
Aminta sat close to the bedside in a darkened room. They greeted silently. He saw the white sh.e.l.l of the life that had flown; he took his mother"s hand and kissed it, and knelt, clasping it.
Fear of disturbing his prayer kept Aminta seated. Death was a stranger to him. The still warm, half-cold, nerveless hand smote the fact of things as they were through the prayer for things as we would have them. The vitality of his prayer was the sole light he had. It drew sustainment from the dead hand in his grasp, and cowered down to the earth claiming all we touch. He tried to summon vision of a soaring spirituality; he could not; his understanding and senses were too stricken. He prayed on. His prayer was as a little fountain, not rising high out of earth, and in the clutch of death; but its being it had from death, his love gave it food.
Prayer is power within us to communicate with the desired beyond our thirsts. The goodness of the dear good mother gone was in him for a.s.surance of a breast of goodness to receive her, whatever the nature of the eternal secret may be. The good life gone lives on in the mind; the bad has but a life in the body, and that not lasting,--it extends, dispreads, it worms away, it perishes. Need we more to bid the mind perceive through obstructive flesh the G.o.d who reigns, a devil vanquished? Be certain that it is the pure mind we set to perceive. The G.o.d discerned in thought is another than he of the senses. And let the prayer be as a little fountain. Rising on a spout, from dread of the hollow below, the prayer may be prolonged in words begetting words, and have a pulse of fervour: the spirit of it has fallen after the first jet. That is the delirious energy of our craving, which has no life in our souls. We do not get to any heaven by renouncing the Mother we spring from; and when there is an eternal secret for us, it is befit to believe that Earth knows, to keep near her, even in our utmost aspirations.
Weyburn still knelt. He was warned to quit the formal posture of an exhausted act by the thought, that he had come to reflect upon how he might be useful to his boys in a like calamity.
Having risen, he became aware, that for some time of his kneeling Aminta"s hand had been on his head, and they had raised their souls in unison. It was a soul"s link. They gazed together on the calm, rapt features. They pa.s.sed from the room.
"I cannot thank you," he said.
"Oh no; I have the reason for grat.i.tude," said she. "I have learnt to know and love her, and hope I may imitate when my time is near."
"She.... at the last?"
"Peacefully; no pain. The breath had not left her very long before you came."
"I said I cannot; but I must--
"Do not."
"Not in speech, then."
They went into the tasteful little sitting-room below, where the stillness closed upon them as a consciousness of loss.
"You have comforted her each day," he said.
"It has been my one happiness."
"I could not wish for better than for her to have known you."
"Say that for me. I have gained. She left her last words for you with me. They were love, love... pride in her son: thanks to G.o.d for having been thought worthy to give him birth."
"She was one of the n.o.ble women of earth."
"She was your mother. Let me not speak any more. I think I will now go.
I am rarely given to these--"
The big drops were falling.
"You have not ordered your carriage?"
"It brings me here. I find my way home."
"Alone?"
"I like the independence."
"At night, too!"
"Nothing harmed me. Now it is daylight. A letter arrived for you from High Brent this morning. I forgot to bring it. Yesterday two of your pupils called here. Martha saw them."
Her naming of the old servant familiarly melted him. "You will not bear to hear praise or thanks."
"If I deserved them. I should like you to call on Dr. Buxton; he will tell you more than we can. He drove with me the first day, after I had sent you the local doctor"s report. I had it from the messenger, his a.s.sistant."
Weyburn knew Dr. Buxton"s address. He begged her to stay and take some nourishment; ventured a remark on her wasted look.
"It is poor fare in cottages."
"I have been feeding on better than bread and meat," she said." I should have eaten if I had felt appet.i.te. My looks will recover, such as they are. I hope I have grown out of them; they are a large part of the bondage of women. You would like to see me safe into some conveyance. Go up-stairs for a few minutes; I will wait here."
He obeyed her. Pa.s.sing from the living to the dead, from the dead to the living, they were united in his heart.
Her brevity of tone, and her speech, so practical upon a point of need, under a crisis of distress, reminded him of Lady Charlotte at the time of the groom"s arrival with her letter.
Aminta was in no hurry to drive. She liked walking and looking down on London, she said.
"My friend and schoolmate, Selina Collett, comes to me at Whitsuntide.
We have taken a house on the Upper Thames, above Marlow. You will come and see us, if you can be persuaded to leave your boys. We have a boathouse, and a bathing-plank for divers. The stream is quiet there between rich meadows. It seems to flow as if it thought. I am not poetical; I tell you only my impression. You shall be a great deal by yourself, as men prefer to be."
"As men are forced to be--I beg!" said he. "Division is against my theories."