"And yet I know for certain that she was a martyr to podagra all last summer, and could hardly hobble from the Rooms to her chair when she was at the Bath," whispered Lady Bolingbroke to Mrs. Asterley.
They all trooped out into the great oak-panelled hall, and a country dance was arranged in a trice, Durnford and Irene leading, as married lovers, who might be forgiven if they were still silly enough to like dancing with each other. Lavendale and Judith sat in the chimney-corner and looked on. The tall eight-day clock was opposite to them, and he looked up now and then at the hands.
Twenty minutes past twelve.
"We"ve jockeyed the ghost, I think," whispered Bolingbroke to Durnford, in a pause of the dance. "See how much better and brighter Lavendale looks. He was ready to expire of his own sick fancy. To cure that was to cure him."
Never had Lavendale felt happier. Yes, he told himself, he had been deceived by his own imagination. Remorse or unquiet love had conjured up the vision, had evoked the warning. "Twas well if it had won him to repent the past, to think more seriously of the future. The solemn thoughts engendered of that strange experience had confirmed him in his desire to lead a better life. It was well, altogether well with him, as he sat by Judith"s side in the ruddy fire-glow, and watched the moving figures in the dance, the long line of undulating forms, the lifted arms and bended necks, the graceful play of curving throats and slender waists, light talk and laughter blending with the music in _sotto voce_ accompaniment. Even Lady Polwhele looked to advantage in a country dance. She had been taught by a famous French master at a time when dancing was a fine art, and she had all the stately graces and graceful freedoms of the highest school.
Yes, it was a pretty sight, Lavendale thought, a prodigiously pleasant sight; but it all had a dream-like air, as everything seemed to have to-night. Even Judith"s face as he gazed at it had the look of a face in a dream. There was an unreality about all things that he looked upon.
Indeed, nothing in his life had seemed real since that vision and that mystic voice in the winter dusk last night.
Suddenly those tripping figures reeled and rocked as he gazed at them, and then the perspective of the hall seemed to lengthen out into infinite distance, and then a veil of semi-darkness swept over all things, and he staggered to his feet.
"Air, air! I am choking!" he cried hoa.r.s.ely.
That hoa.r.s.e strange cry stopped the dance as by the stroke of an enchanter"s wand. Bolingbroke ran to the hall-door, and threw it wide open. A rush of cold air streamed into the hall, and blew that darkening veil off the picture.
"Thank G.o.d," said Lavendale, "I can breathe again! Pray pardon me, ladies, and go on with your dance," he added courteously; and then, half-leaning upon Bolingbroke, he walked slowly out to the terrace in front of the porch, Judith accompanying him.
Here he sat upon a stone bench, and the cool still night restored all his senses.
"I am well now, my dear friend," he said to Bolingbroke; ""twas only a pa.s.sing faintness. The fumes of the log fire stupefied me."
"And here you will catch a consumption, if you sit in this cold air,"
returned his friend, while Judith hung over him with a white scared face, full of keenest anxiety.
"It is not cold, but if you are afraid of your gout--"
"I am, my dear Lavendale, so I will leave Lady Judith to take care of you for a few minutes--I urgently advise you to stay no longer than that. Are you sure you are quite recovered?"
"Quite recovered. Infinitely happy," murmured Lavendale, in a dreamy voice, with his hand in Judith"s, looking up at her as she stood by his side.
Bolingbroke left them discreetly. To the old intriguer it seemed the most natural thing in the world to leave those two alone together.
"How fond they are of each other!" he said to himself; ""tis a pity poor Lavendale is so marked for death. And yet perhaps he may live long enough for them to get tired of each other; so short a time is sometimes long enough for satiety."
"My beloved, a few minutes ago I thought I was dying," said Lavendale, in a low voice. "Had that deadly swooning come about an hour earlier, I should have said to myself, "This is the stroke of death.""
"Why, dearest love?"
"Because it has been prophesied to me that I should die at midnight."
"Idle prophecy. Midnight is past, and we are here, you and I together, happy in each other"s love," said Judith.
"You are trembling in every limb!"
"It is the cold."
"No, it is not the cold, Judith: your face is full of fear. Do you see death in mine?"
"I see only love, infinite love, the promise of our new life in the glad new year."
"Judith," he murmured, leaning his head against her bosom as she leant over him, "I know not if I am happy or miserable; I know only that I am with you: past and future are lost in darkness. But indeed you are shivering. You are not cold, are you, love? It is such a lovely night, so still, so calm."
It was one of those exquisite nights which come sometimes in mid-winter.
Not a breath of wind stirred the light leaf.a.ge of the shrubs, or waved the pine-tops yonder. A light fall of snow had whitened the garden-walks, but left the shrubberies untouched. The moon was at the full, and every line and every leaf showed clear in that silver light.
The distant landscape glimmered in a luminous haze, deepening to purple as it touched the horizon; while here and there in the valley a glint of brighter silver showed where the river wound among low hills and dusky islets towards the busier world beyond.
Suddenly, silver sweet in the moonlight and the silence, came the musical fall of a peal of bells--joy-bells from the distant tower of Flamestead Church--joy-bells ringing in the new year.
"My G.o.d!" cried Lavendale, "the clocks were wrong!"
He gazed at Judith with wide distended eyes, and the ghastly pallor on his face took a more livid hue.
"Beloved, my mother"s ghost spoke truth," he said: "death calls me with the stroke of midnight. Beloved, beloved, never, never, never to be mine! But O, "tis more blessed than all I have known of life to die here--thus."
His head was on her breast, her arms were wreathed round him, supporting that heavy brow, on which the death-dews were gathering. Yes, it was death. The cord, worn to attenuation long ago, had snapped at last; the last sands of that wasted life had run out; and just when life seemed worth living, death called the repentant sinner from the arms of love.
From the earthly love to love beyond, from the known to the unknown. In that swift, sudden pa.s.sage from life to death, he had been less of an infidel than in the active life behind him. It had seemed to him that a gate opened into the dim distance of eternity; that he stretched out his arms to some one or to something that called and beckoned; that he went not to outer darkness and extinction, but to a new existence. Yet the wrench was scarce less bitter, since it parted him from the woman he loved.
Friendly hands carried that lifeless form into the old house, and laid the dead Lord Lavendale upon the bed where his father had lain before him in the same funeral solemnity. Curtains and blinds were drawn in all the windows; the guests, who had been so merry at the feast on New Year"s Eve, hurried off on New Year"s morning as fast as coach-horses could be got to carry them away; and the year began at Lavendale Manor in the shadow of mourning. Only Herrick and Irene stayed in the darkened house, and watched and prayed in the death-chamber.
And so the house of Lavendale expired with its last representative. Name and race vanished suddenly from the eyes of men like a ship that founders at sea.
Deeper yet drew the death shadows on Lavendale Manor House, for on the morning of Lord Lavendale"s funeral the old Venetian chemist was found cold and stark beside his furnace, the elixir of life, the universal panacea, simmering in the crucible beside him, and his attenuated fingers clasping one of those antique guides to immortality, fraught with the wisdom of old Arabia, which had been his solace and delight.
The shock of his friend and patron"s death had accelerated the inevitable end. The lamp of life, nursed in solitude, economised by habits of exceptional temperance, had burned to the last drop of oil, and the discoverer, baulked in all his searching after the supernatural, had yet succeeded in living to his hundred and eleventh year.
Three years afterwards, and Herrick and Irene were living with their two children at Lavendale Manor, and the fences that parted manor and court had been thrown down, and the two estates were as one, the old squire having settled Fairmile Court and all its belongings upon his adopted daughter, whose husband was to a.s.sume the name of Bosworth in addition to his own, and to sign himself Durnford-Bosworth henceforward. Time is the best of all peace-makers, and after nursing his wrath for a year or two Roland Bosworth had discovered that the orphan he had picked up on Flamestead Common was dearer to him than resentment or wounded pride.
Perhaps he was all the better pleased to endow the changeling since Mr.
Topsparkle"s magnificent bequest had made her independent of his bounty.
To Lavendale Manor every New Year"s Eve comes a pensive lady to pa.s.s sad hours in solitude and silence and pious prayers and meditations in those rooms which were once so full of mirth. Alone she paces the terrace in moonlight or in darkness: alone she keeps her midnight vigil, and prays and weeps upon that stone bench where her lover died.
Irene and her husband respect the mourner"s solitude, and in their pity for an inconsolable grief they scarce lament the change in that beautiful face which is but too prophetic of doom. Not again will that widowed heart ache at the sound of New Year joy-bells, for their merry peal will ring above her grave.
THE END.