The Shadow of Ashlydyat Part 133

Mr. Snow paused in surprise, and the truth flashed into his mind--that Mr. Hastings was as yet in ignorance of Maria's danger: flashed with pain. Of course it was his duty to enlighten him, and he would rather have been spared the task. "When did you see her last?" he inquired.

"The day Mrs. Hastings left. I have not been well enough to go out much since. And I dare say Maria has been busy."

"I am sorry then to have to tell you that she has not been busy; that she has not been well enough to be busy. She is much worse."

There was a significance in the tone that spoke to the father more effectually than any words could have done. He was silent for a full minute, and then he rose from his chair and walked once up and down the room before he turned to Mr. Snow.

"The full truth, Snow? Tell it me."

"Well--the truth is, that hope is over. That she will not very long be here. I had no suspicion that you knew it not."

"I knew nothing of it. When I and her mother were with her last: it was, I tell you, the day Mrs. Hastings left: Maria was talking of going back to London with her husband the next time he came down to Prior's Ash. I thought her looking better that morning; she had quite a colour; was in good spirits. When did you see her?"

"Now. I went up there before I came down to you. She grows worse and worse every hour. Lord Averil telegraphed for George G.o.dolphin last night."

"And I have not been informed of this!" burst forth the Rector. "My daughter dying--for I infer no less--and I to be left in ignorance of the truth!"

"Understand one thing, Mr. Hastings--that until this morning we saw no fear of _immediate_ danger. Lord Averil says he suspected it last night; I did not see her yesterday in the after-part of the day. I have known some few cases precisely similar to Mrs. George G.o.dolphin's; where danger and death seem to have come on suddenly together."

"And what is her disease?"

The surgeon threw up his arms. "_I_ don't know--unless the trouble has fretted her into her grave. Were I not a doctor, I might say she had died of a broken heart, but the faculty don't recognize such a thing."

Half an hour afterwards, the Reverend Mr. Hastings was bending over his daughter's dying bed. A dying bed, it too surely looked; and if Mr.

Hastings had indulged a gleam of hope, the first glance at Maria's countenance dispelled it. She lay wrapped in a shawl, the lace border of her nightcap shading her delicate face and its smooth brown hair, her eyes larger and softer and sweeter than of yore.

They were alone together. He held her hand in his, he gently laid his other hand on her white and wasted brow. "Child! child! why did you not send to me?"

"I did not know I was so ill, papa," she panted. "I seem to have grown so much worse this last night. But I am better than I was an hour ago."

"Maria," he gravely said, "are you aware that you are in a state of danger?--that death may come to you."

"Yes, papa, I know it. I have seen it coming a long while: only I was not quite sure."

"And my dear child, are you----" Mr. Hastings paused. He paused and bit his lips, gathering firmness to suppress the emotion that was rising.

His calling made him familiar with death-bed scenes; but Maria was his own child, and nature will a.s.sert her supremacy. A minute or two and he was himself again: not a man living was more given to reticence in the matter of his own feelings than the Rector of All Souls': he could not _bear_ to betray emotion in the sight of his fellow-men.

"Are you prepared for death, Maria? Can you look upon it without terror?"

"I think I am," she murmured. "I feel that I am going to G.o.d. Oh, papa, forgive, forgive me!" she exclaimed, bursting into tears of emotion, as she raised her hands to him in the moment's excitement. "The trouble has been too much for me; I could not shake it off. All the sorrow that has been brought upon you through us, I think of it always: my heart aches with thinking of it. Oh, papa, forgive me before I die! It was not my fault; indeed, I did not know of it. Papa"--and the sobs became painfully hysterical, and Mr. Hastings strove in vain to check them--"I would have sacrificed my life to bring good to you and my dear mamma: I would have _sold_ myself, to keep this ill from you!"

"Child, hus.h.!.+ There has been nothing to forgive to _you_. In the first moment of the smart, if I cast an unkind thought to you, it did not last; it was gone almost as soon as it came. My dear child, you have ever been my loving and dutiful daughter. Maria, shall I tell it you?--I know not why, but I have loved you better than any of my other children."

She had raised herself from the pillow, and was clasping his hand to her bosom, sobbing over it. Few daughters have loved a father as Maria had loved and venerated hers. The Rector's face was preternaturally pale and calm, the effect of his powerfully suppressed emotion.

"It has been too much for me, papa. I have thought of your trouble, of the discomforts of your home, of the blighted prospects of my brothers, feeling that it was our work. I thought of it always, more perhaps than of other things: and I could not battle with the pain it brought, and it has killed me. But, papa, I am resigned to go: I know that I shall be better off. Before these troubles came, I had not learned to think of G.o.d, and I should have been afraid to die."

"It is through tribulation that we must enter the Kingdom," interrupted the calm, earnest voice of the clergyman. "It must come to us here in some shape or other, my child; and I do not see that it matters how, or when, or through whom it does come, if it takes us to a better world.

You have had your share of it: but G.o.d is a just and merciful Judge, and if He has given you a full share of sorrow, He will deal out to you His full recompense."

"Yes," she gently said, "I am going to G.o.d. Will you pray for me, papa?--that He will pardon me and take me for Christ's sake. Oh, papa!

it seems--it seems when we get near death as if the other world were so very near to this! It seems such a little span of time that I shall have to wait for you all before you come to me. Will you give my dear love to mamma if I should not live to see her, and say how I have loved her: say that I have only gone on first; that I shall be there ready for her.

Papa, I dare say G.o.d will let me be ever waiting and looking for you."

Mr. Hastings turned to search for a Book of Common Prayer. He saw Maria's on her dressing-table--one which he had given her on her marriage, and written her name in--and he opened it at the "Visitation of the Sick." He looked searchingly at her face as he returned: surely the signs of death were already gathering there!

"The last Sacrament, Maria?" he whispered. "When shall I come?"

"This evening," she answered. "George will be here then."

The Reverend Mr Hastings bent his eyebrows with a frown, as if he thought---- But no matter. "At eight o'clock, then," he said to Maria, as he laid the book upon the bed and knelt down before it. Maria lay back on her pillow, and clasping her hands upon the shawl which covered her bosom, closed her eyes to listen.

It was strange that even then, as he was in the very act of kneeling, certain words which he had spoken to Maria years ago, should flash vividly into the Rector's mind--words which had referred to the death of Ethel Grame.

"The time may come, Maria--we none of us know what is before us--when some of you young ones who are left, may wish you had died as she has.

Many a one, battling for very existence with the world's carking cares, wails out a vain wish that he had been taken from the evil to come."

Had the gift of prevision been on the Rector of All Souls' when he spoke those words to Maria Hastings? Poor child! lying there now on her early death-bed; with her broken heart! The world's carking cares had surely done their work on Maria G.o.dolphin!

CHAPTER VI.

A CROWD OF MEMORIES.

If it were not for mismanagement, how smoothly things might go on! That telegraphic despatch which Lord Averil had deemed it well to send, and which had not been sent any too soon, did not reach George G.o.dolphin for hours and hours, through mismanagement at his lodgings.

It was afternoon when he reached Prior's Ash. The first person he saw at the station was Lord Averil. That n.o.bleman, wondering at George's non-appearance, believing that Maria was getting nearer to death with every hour, had come to the conclusion that by some mischance his message had miscarried; and he had now gone to the station to send another. Lord Averil linked his arm within George's, and they walked rapidly away through the snow that lay on the path.

Yes, he linked his arm within George G.o.dolphin's who had so very nearly been held up to the virtuous British public as a candidate for a free pa.s.sage to Australia. Somehow, George had slipped through that danger, and was a gentleman still: moreover, he was Lord Averil's brother-in-law, and it was the earnest wish of that n.o.bleman that society should forget the little mistake in George's life as heartily as he did. He explained as he walked along: Maria had got rapidly worse all at once: it was only within a few hours that immediate danger had shown itself.

George could not understand it. He had left his wife, ill certainly, but not, as he believed, seriously so; he had supposed her to be busy in preparations for the voyage: and now to be told that she was dying! If this was so, why had Maria not sent for him before?

Lord Averil explained. No one seemed to have known of the danger.

"Snow must have known it," remonstrated George.

"I think not. I was talking to him to-day, and he expressed his surprise at the disorder having suddenly increased in this rapid manner."

"What _is_ the disorder?" asked George. "My wife had no disorder--except weakness."

"I suppose that is it--weakness."

"But weakness does not kill!"

"Yes, it does, sometimes."