John Halifax, Gentleman Part 102

We were all still standing at the hall-door. Unresisting, she suffered her husband to take her arm in his and bring her into the study.

"Now--the letter, please! Children, go away; I want to speak to your father. The letter, John?"

Her hand, which she held out, shook much. She tried to unfold the paper--stopped, and looked up piteously.

"It is not to tell me he is not coming home? I can bear anything, you know--but he MUST come."

John only answered, "Read,"--and took firm hold of her hand while she read--as we hold the hand of one undergoing great torture,--which must be undergone, and which no human love can either prepare for, or remove, or alleviate.

The letter, which I saw afterwards, was thus:

"DEAR FATHER AND MOTHER,

"I have disgraced you all. I have been drunk--in a gaming-house. A man insulted me--it was about my father--but you will hear--all the world will hear presently. I struck him--there was something in my hand, and--the man was hurt.

"He may be dead by this time. I don't know.

"I am away to America to-night. I shall never come home any more. G.o.d bless you all.

"GUY HALIFAX.

"P.S. I got my mother's letter to-day. Mother--I was not in my right senses, or I should not have done it. Mother, darling! forget me.

Don't let me have broken your heart."

Alas, he had broken it!

"Never come home any more!-- Never come home any more!"

She repeated this over and over again, vacantly: nothing but these five words.

Nature refused to bear it; or rather, Nature mercifully helped her to bear it. When John took his wife in his arms she was insensible; and remained so, with intervals, for hours.

This was the end of Edwin's wedding-day.

CHAPTER x.x.xVI

Lord Ravenel knew--as all Paris did by this time--the whole story.

Though, as he truly said, he had not seen Guy. The lad was hurried off immediately, for fear of justice: but he had written from s.h.i.+pboard to Lord Ravenel, begging him himself to take the letter and break the news to us at Beechwood.

The man he had struck was not one of Lord Luxmore's set--though it was through some of his "n.o.ble" friends Guy had fallen into his company.

He was an Englishman, lately succeeded to a baronetcy and estate; his name--how we started to hear it, though by Lord Ravenel and by us, for his sake, it was both p.r.o.nounced and listened to, as if none of us had ever heard it before--Sir Gerard Vermilye.

As soon as Ursula recovered, Mr. Halifax and Lord Ravenel went to Paris together. This was necessary, not only to meet justice, but to track the boy--to whose destination we had no clue but the wide world, America. Guy's mother hurried them away--his mother, who rose from her bed, and moved about the house like a ghost--up-stairs and down-stairs--everywhere--excepting in that room, which was now once more locked, and the outer blind drawn down, as if Death himself had taken possession there.

Alas! we learned now that there may be sorrows bitterer even than death.

Mr. Halifax went away. Then followed a long season of torpid gloom--days or weeks, I hardly remember--during which we, living shut up at Beechwood, knew that our name--John's stainless, honourable name--was in everybody's mouth--parrotted abroad in every society--canva.s.sed in every newspaper. We tried, Walter and I, to stop them at first, dreading lest the mother might read in some foul print or other scurrilous tales about her boy; or, as long remained doubtful, learn that he was proclaimed through France and England as a homicide--an a.s.sa.s.sin. But concealments were idle--she would read everything--hear everything--meet everything--even those neighbours who out of curiosity or sympathy called at Beechwood. Not many times, though; they said they could not understand Mrs. Halifax. So, after a while, they all left her alone, except good little Grace Oldtower.

"Come often," I heard her say to this girl, whom she was fond of: they had sat talking a whole morning--idly and pensively; of little things around them, never once referring to things outside. "Come often, though the house is dull. Does it not feel strange, with Mr. Halifax away?"

Ay, this was the change--stranger at first than what had befallen Guy--for that long seemed a thing we could not realise; like a story told of some other family than ours. The present tangible blank was the house with its head and master away.

Curiously enough, but from his domestic habits easily accountable, he had scarcely ever been more than a few days absent from home before. We missed him continually; in his place at the head of the table; in his chair by the fire; his quick ring at the hall bell, when he came up from the mills--his step--his voice--his laugh. The life and soul of the house seemed to have gone out of it from the hour the father went away.

I think in the wonderful workings of things--as we know all things do work together for good--this fact was good for Ursula. It taught her that, in losing Guy, she had not lost all her blessings. It showed her what in the pa.s.sion of her mother-love she might have been tempted to forget--many mothers do--that beyond all maternal duty, is the duty that a woman owes to her husband: beyond all loves, is the love that was hers before any of them were born.

So, gradually, as every day John's letters came,--and she used to watch for them and seize them as if they had been love-letters; as every day she seemed to miss him more, and count more upon his return; referring all decisions, and all little pleasures planned for her, to the time "when your father comes home;"--hope and comfort began to dawn in the heart of the mourning mother.

And when at last John fixed the day of his coming back, I saw Ursula tying up the small bundle of his letters--his letters, of which in all her happy life she had had so few--his tender, comforting, comfortable letters.

"I hope I shall never need to have any more," she said, half-smiling--the faint smile which began to dawn in her poor face, as if she must accustom it to look bright again in time for her husband's coming.

And when the day arrived, she put all the house in trim order, dressed herself in her prettiest gown, sat patient while Maud brushed and curled her hair--how white it had turned of late!--and then waited, with a flush on her cheek--like that of a young girl waiting for her lover--for the sound of carriage-wheels.

All that had to be told about Guy--and it was better news than any one of us had hoped for--John had already told in his letters. When he came back, therefore, he was burthened with no trouble undisclosed--greeted with no anguish of fear or bitter remembrance. As he sprang out of the post-chaise, it was to find his wife standing at the door, and his home smiling for him its brightest welcome. No blessing on earth could be like the blessing of the father's return.

John looked pale, but not paler than might have been expected. Grave, too--but it was a soft seriousness altogether free from the restlessness of keen anxiety. The first shock of this heavy misfortune was over. He had paid all his son's debts; he had, as far as was possible, saved his good name; he had made a safe home for the lad, and heard of his safely reaching it, in the New World. Nothing more was left but to cover over the inevitable grief, and hope that time would blot out the intolerable shame. That since Guy's hand was clear of blood--and, since his recovery, Sir Gerard Vermilye had risen into a positive hero of society--men's minds would gradually lose the impression of a deed committed in heat of youth, and repented of with such bitter atonement.

So the father took his old place, and looked round on the remnant of his children, grave indeed, but not weighed down by incurable suffering. Something, deeper even than the hard time he had recently pa.s.sed through, seemed to have made his home more than ever dear to him. He sat in his arm-chair, never weary of noticing everything pleasant about him, of saying how pretty Beechwood looked, and how delicious it was to be at home. And perpetually, if any chance unlinked it, his hand would return to its clasp of Ursula's; the minute she left her place by his side, his restless "Love, where are you going?" would call her back again. And once, when the children were out of the room, and I, sitting in a dark corner, was probably thought absent likewise, I saw John take his wife's face between his two hands, and look in it--the fondest, most lingering, saddest look!--then fold her tightly to his breast.

"I must never be away from her again. Mine--for as long as I live, mine--MY wife, MY Ursula!"

She took it all naturally, as she had taken every expression of his love these nine-and-twenty years. I left them, standing eye to eye, heart to heart, as if nothing in this world could ever part them.

Next morning was as gay as any of our mornings used to be, for, before breakfast, came Edwin and Louise. And after breakfast, the father and mother and I walked up and down the garden for an hour, talking over the prospects of the young couple. Then the post came--but we had no need to watch for it now. It only brought a letter from Lord Ravenel.

John read it, somewhat more seriously than he had been used to read these letters--which for the last year or so had come often enough--the boys usually quizzing, and Mistress Maud vehemently defending, the delicate small hand-writing, the exquisite paper, the coronetted seal, and the frank in the corner. John liked to have them, and his wife also--she being not indifferent to the fact, confirmed by many other facts, that if there was one man in the world whom Lord Ravenel honoured and admired, it was John Halifax of Beechwood. But this time her pleasure was apparently damped; and when Maud, claiming the letter as usual, spread abroad, delightedly, the news that "her" Lord Ravenel was coming shortly, I imagined this visit was not so welcome as usual to the parents.

Yet still, as many a time before, when Mr. Halifax closed the letter, he sighed, looked sorrowful, saying only, "Poor Lord Ravenel!"

"John," asked his wife, speaking in a whisper, for by tacit consent all public allusion to his doings at Paris was avoided in the family--"did you, by any chance, hear anything of--You know whom I mean?"

"Not one syllable."

"You inquired?" He a.s.sented. "I knew you would. She must be almost an old woman now, or perhaps she is dead. Poor Caroline!"

It was the first time for years and years that this name had been breathed in our household. Involuntarily it carried me back--perhaps others besides me--to the day at Longfield when little Guy had devoted himself to his "pretty lady;" when we first heard that other name, which by a curious conjuncture of circ.u.mstances had since become so fatally familiar, and which would henceforward be like the sound of a death-bell in our family--Gerard Vermilye.

On Lord Ravenel's re-appearance at Beechwood--and he seemed eager and glad to come--I was tempted to wish him away. He never crossed the threshold but his presence brought a shadow over the parents'

looks--and no wonder. The young people were gay and friendly as ever; made him always welcome with us; and he rode over daily from desolate, long-uninhabited Luxmore, where, in all its desolation, he appeared so fond of abiding.

He wanted to take Maud and Walter over there one day, to see some magnificent firs that were being cut down in a wholesale ma.s.sacre, leaving the grand old Hall as bare as a workhouse front. But the father objected; he was clearly determined that all the hospitalities between Luxmore and Beechwood should be on the Beechwood side.

Lord Ravenel apparently perceived this. "Luxmore is not Compiegne," he said to me, with his dreary smile, half-sad, half-cynical. "Mr.

Halifax might indulge me with the society of his children."