His answer was in the pressure.
"Ill?"
"No longer."
"Oh! Dartrey." Matilda Pridden caught her fast.
"I can walk, dear," Nesta said.
Dartrey mentioned her father.
She understood: "I am thinking of him."
The words of her mother: "At peace when the night is over," rang. Along the ga.s.sy pa.s.sages of the back of the theatre, the sound coming from an applausive audience was as much a thunder as rage would have been. It was as void of human meaning as a sea.
CHAPTER XLII. THE LAST
In the still dark hour of that April morning, the Rev. Septimus Barmby was roused by Mr. Peridon, with a scribbled message from Victor, which he deciphered by candlelight held close to the sheet of paper, between short inquiries and communications, losing more and more the sense of it as his intelligence became aware of what dread blow had befallen the stricken man. He was bidden come to fulfil his promise instantly. He remembered the bearing of the promise. Mr. Peridon"s hurried explanatory narrative made the request terrific, out of tragically lamentable. A semblance of obedience had to be put on, and the act of dressing aided it. Mr. Barmby prayed at heart for guidance further.
The two gentlemen drove Westward, speaking little; they had the dry sob in the throat.
"Miss Radnor?" Mr. Barmby asked.
"She is shattered; she holds up; she would not break down."
"I can conceive her to possess high courage."
"She has her friend Mademoiselle de Seilles."
Mr. Barmby remained humbly silent. Affectionate deep regrets moved him to say: "A loss irreparable. We have but one voice of sorrow. And how sudden! The dear lady had no suffering, I trust."
"She fell into the arms of Mr. Durance. She died in his arms. She was unconscious, he says. I left her straining for breath. She said "Victor"; she tried to smile:--I understood I was not to alarm him."
"And he too late!"
"He was too late, by some minutes."
"At least I may comfort. Miss Radnor must be a blessing to him."
"They cannot meet. Her presence excites him."
That radiant home of all hospitality seemed opening on from darker chambers to the deadly dark. The immorality in the moral situation could not be forgotten by one who was professionally a moralist. But an incorruptible beauty in the woman"s character claimed to plead for her memory. Even the rigorous in defence of righteous laws are softened by a sinner"s death to hear excuses, and may own a relationship, haply perceive the faint nimbus of the saint. Death among us proves us to be still not so far from the Nature saying at every avenue to the mind: "Earth makes all sweet."
Mr. Durance had prophesied a wailful end ever to the carol of Optimists!
Yet it is not the black view which is the right view. There is one between: the path adopted by Septimus Barmby:--if he could but induce his brethren to enter on it! The dreadful teaching of circ.u.mstances might help to the persuading of a fair young woman, under his direction... having her hand disengaged. Mr. Barmby started himself in the dream of his uninterred pa.s.sion for the maiden: he chased it, seized it, hurled it hence, as a present sacrilege:--constantly, and at the pitch of our highest devotion to serve, are we a.s.sailed by the tempter!
Is it, that the love of woman is our weakness? For if so, then would a celibate clergy have grant of immunity. But, alas, it is not so with them! We have to deplore the hearing of reports too credible. Again we are pushed to contemplate woman as the mysterious obstruction to the perfect purity of soul. Nor is there a refuge in asceticism. No more devilish nourisher of pride do we find than in pain voluntarily embraced. And strangely, at the time when our hearts are pledged to thoughts upon others, they are led by woman to glance revolving upon ourself, our vile self! Mr. Barmby clutched it by the neck.
Light now, as of a strong memory of day along the street, a.s.sisted him to forget himself at the sight of the inanimate houses of this London, all revealed in a quietness not less immobile than tombstones of an unending cemetery, with its last ghost laid. Did men but know it!--The habitual necessity to ama.s.s matter for the weekly sermon, set him noting his meditative exclamations, the n.o.ble army of plat.i.tudes under haloes, of good use to men: justifiably turned over in his mind for their good.
He had to think, that this act of the justifying of the act reproached him with a lack of due emotion, in sympathy with agonized friends truly dear. Drawing near the hospitable house, his official and a cordial emotion united, as we see sorrowful c.r.a.pe-wreathed countenances. His heart struck heavily when the house was visible.
Could it be the very house? The look of it belied the tale inside. But that threw a ghostliness on the look.
Some one was pacing up and down. They greeted Dudley Sowerby. His ability to speak was tasked. They gathered, that mademoiselle and "a Miss Pridden" were sitting with Nesta, and that their services in a crisis had been precious. At such times, one of them reflected, woman has indeed her place: when life"s battle waxes red. Her soul must be capable of mounting to the level of the man"s, then? It is a lesson!
Dudley said he was waiting for Dr. Themison to come forth. He could not tear himself from sight of the house.
The door opened to Dr. Themison departing, Colney Durance and Simeon Fenellan bare-headed. Colney showed a face with stains of the lashing of tears.
Dr. Themison gave his final counsels. "Her father must not see her. For him, it may have to be a specialist. We will hope the best. Mr. Dartrey Fenellan stays beside him:--good. As to the ceremony he calls for, a form of it might soothe:--any soothing possible! No music. I will return in a few hours."
He went on foot.
Mr. Barmby begged advice from Colney and Simeon concerning the message he had received--the ceremony requiring his official presidency. Neither of them replied. They breathed the morning air, they gave out long-drawn sighs of relief, looking on the trees of the park.
A man came along the pavement, working slow legs hurriedly. Simeon ran down to him.
"Humour, as much as you can," Colney said to Mr. Barmby. "Let him imagine."
"Miss Radnor?"
"Not to speak of her."
"The daughter he so loves?"
Mr. Barmby"s tender inquisitiveness was unanswered. Were they inducing him to mollify a madman? But was it possible to a.s.sociate the idea of madness with Mr. Radnor?
Simeon ran back. "Jarniman," he remarked. "It"s over!"
"Now!" Colney"s shoulders expressed the comment. "Well, now, Mr. Barmby, you can do the part desired. Come in. It"s morning!" He stared at the sky.
All except Dudley pa.s.sed in.
Mr. Barmby wanted more advice, his dilemma being acute. It was moderated, though not more than moderated, when he was informed of the death of Mrs. Burman Radnor; an event that occurred, according to Jarniman"s report, forty-five minutes after Skepsey had a second time called for information of it at the house in Regent"s Park--five hours and a half, as Colney made his calculation, after the death of Nataly.
He was urged by some spur of senseless irony to verify the calculation and correct it in the minutes.
Dudley crossed the road. No sign of the awful interior was on any of the windows of the house either to deepen awe or relieve. They were blank as eyeb.a.l.l.s of the mindless. He shivered. Death is our common cloak; but Calamity individualizes, to set the unwounded speculating whether indeed a stricken man, who has become the cause of woeful trouble, may not be pointing a moral. Pacing on the Park side of the house, he saw Skepsey drive up and leap out with a gentleman, Mr. Radnor"s lawyer. Could it be, that there was no Will written? Could a Will be executed now? The moral was more forcibly suggested. Dudley beheld this Mr. Victor Radnor successful up all the main steps, persuasive, popular, brightest of the elect of Fortune, felled to the ground within an hour, he and all his house! And if at once to pa.s.s beneath the ground, the blow would have seemed merciful for him. Or if, instead of chattering a mixture of the rational and the monstrous, he had been heard to rave like the utterly distraught. Recollection of some of the things he shouted, was an anguish: A notion came into the poor man, that he was the dead one of the two, and he cried out: "Cremation? No, Colney"s right, it robs us of our last laugh. I lie as I fall." He "had a confession for his Nataly, for her only, for no one else." He had "an Idea." His begging of Dudley to listen without any punctilio (putting a vulgar oath before it), was the sole piece of unreasonableness in the explanation of the idea: and that was not much wilder than the stuff Dudley had read from reports of Radical speeches. He told Dudley he thought him too young to be "best man to a widower about to be married," and that Barmby was "coming all haste to do the business, because of no time to spare."
Dudley knew but the half, and he did not envy Dartrey Fenellan his task of watching over the wreck of a splendid intelligence, humouring and restraining. According to the rumours, Mr. Radnor had not shown the symptoms before the appearance of his daughter. For awhile he hung, and then fell, like an icicle. Nesta came with a cry for her father. He rose: Dartrey was by. Hugged fast in iron muscles, the unhappy creature raved of his being a caged lion. These things Dudley had heard in the house.
There are scenes of life proper to the grave-cloth.
Nataly"s dead body was her advocate with her family, with friends, with the world. Victor had more need of a covering shroud to keep calamity respected. Earth makes all sweet: and we, when the privilege is granted us, do well to treat the terribly stricken as if they had entered to the bosom of earth.
That night"s infinite sadness was concentrated upon Nesta. She had need of her strength of mind and body.