Cobwebs and Cables Part 35

"I must always be Jean Merle," he replied. "Roland Sefton cannot return to life; it is impossible. Let us leave her children at least the tender memory of their mother; I can bear being unknown to them for what remains to me of life. And we do no one any harm, you and I, by keeping this secret."

"No, we wrong no one," she answered. "I have been thinking of it ever since I was sure she was dead, and I counted upon you doing this. It will save Felix and Hilda from bitter sorrow, and it would keep her memory fair and true for them. But you--there will be so much to give up. They will never know that you are their father; for if we do not tell them now, we must never, never betray it. Can you do it?"

"I gave them up long ago," he said; "and if there be any sacrifice I can make for them, what should withhold me, Phebe? G.o.d only knows what an unutterable relief it would be to me if I could lay bare my whole life to the eyes of my fellow-men and henceforth walk in their sight in simple honesty and truthfulness. But that is impossible. Not even you can see my whole life as it has been. I must go softly all my days, bearing my burden of secrecy."

"I too shall have to bear it," she murmured almost inaudibly.

"I shall start at once for Stans," he went on, "and go to Lucerne by the first boat in the morning. You shall give me a telegram to send from there to Canon Pascal, and Felix will be here in less than three days. I must return direct to Riversborough. I must not perform the last duties to the dead; even that is denied to me."

"But Felicita must not be buried here," exclaimed Phebe, her voice faltering, with an accent of horror at the thought of it. A shudder of repugnance ran through him also. Roland Sefton's grave was here, and what would be more natural than to bury Felicita beside it?

"No, no," he cried, "you must save me from that, Phebe. She must be brought home and buried among her own people. Promise to save her and me from that."

"Oh, I promise it," she said; "it shall never be. You shall not have that grief."

"If I stayed here myself," he continued, "it would make it more difficult to take up my life in Riversborough unquestioned and unsuspected. It can only be by a complete separation now that I can effect my purpose. But I can hardly bear to go away, Phebe."

The profound pitifulness of Phebe's heart was stirred to its inmost depths by the sound of his voice and the expression of his hopeless face. She left her seat and drew near to him.

"Come and see her once more," she whispered.

Silently he made a gesture of a.s.sent, and she led the way to the adjoining room. He knew it better than she did; for it was here that he had watched all the night long the death of the stranger who was buried in Roland Sefton's grave. There was little change in it to his eyes. The bare walls and the scanty homely furniture were the same now as then.

There was the glimmer of a little lamp falling on the tranquil figure on the bed. The occupant of this chamber only was different, but oh! the difference to him!

"Do not leave me, Phebe!" he cried, stretching out his hand towards her, as if blind and groping to be led. She stepped noiselessly across the uncarpeted floor and looked down on the face lying on the pillow. The smile that had been upon it in the last moment yet lingered about the mouth, and added an inexpressible gentleness and tenderness to its beauty. The long dark eyelashes shadowed the cheeks, which were suffused with a faint flush. Felicita looked young again, with something of the sweet shy grace of the girl whom he had first seen in this distant mountain village so many years ago. He sank down on his knees, and shut out the sight of her from his despairing eyes. The silent minutes crept slowly away unheeded; he did not stir, or sob, or lift up his bowed face. This kneeling figure at her feet was as rigid and as death-like as the lifeless form lying on the bed; and Phebe grew frightened, yet dared not break in upon his grief. At last a footstep came somewhat noisily up the staircase, and she laid her hand softly on the gray head beneath her.

"Jean Merle," she said, "it is time for us to go."

The sound of this name in Phebe's familiar voice aroused him. She had never called him by it before; and its utterance was marked as a thing irrevocably settled that his life henceforth was to be altogether divorced from that of Roland Sefton. He had come to the last point which connected him with it. When he turned away from this rigid form, in all the awful loveliness of death, he would have cut himself off forever from the past. He laid his hand upon the chilly forehead; but he dared not stoop down to touch the sweet sad face with his lips. With no word of farewell to Phebe, he rushed out into the dense darkness of the night and made his way down the valley, and through the steep forest roads he had traversed only a few hours ago with something like hope dawning in his heart. For in the morning he had known that he should see Felicita again, and there was expectation and a gleam of gladness in that; but to-night his eyes had looked upon her for the last time.

CHAPTER XXVI.

IN LUCERNE.

Phebe found herself alone, with the burden of Jean Merle's secret resting on her unshared. It depended upon her sagacity and tact whether he should escape being connected in a mysterious manner with the sad event that had just transpired in Engelberg. The footstep she had heard on the stairs was that of the landlady, who had gone into the salon and had thus missed seeing Jean Merle as he left the house. Phebe met her in the doorway.

"I have sent a message by the guide who brought me here," she said in slowly p.r.o.nounced French; "he is gone to Lucerne, and he will telegraph to England for me."

"Is he gone--Jean Merle?" asked the landlady.

"Certainly, yes," answered Phebe; "he is gone to Lucerne."

"Will he return, then?" inquired the landlady.

"No, I suppose not," she replied; "he has done all he had to do for me.

He will telegraph to England, and our friends will come to us immediately. Good-night, Madame."

"Good-night, Mademoiselle," was the response. "May you sleep well!"

But sleep was far away from Phebe's agitated brain that night. She felt herself alone in a strange land, with a great grief and a terrible secret oppressing her. As the night wore on a feverish dread took possession of her that she should be unable to prevent Felicita's burial beside Roland Sefton's grave. Even Felix would decide that it ought to be so. As soon as the dawn came she rose and went out into the icy freshness of the morning air, blowing down from the snow-fields and the glaciers around her.

The village was beginning to arouse itself. The Abbey bells were ringing, and at the sound of them, calling the laborers to a new day's toil, here and there a shutter was thrown back or a door was opened, and light volumes of gray wood-smoke stole upwards into the still air. There was a breath of serenity and peace in this early hour which soothed Phebe's fevered brain, as she slowly sauntered on with the purpose of finding the cemetery, where the granite cross stood over the grave that had occupied so much of her thoughts since she had heard of Roland Sefton's death. She reached it at last and stood motionless before it, looking back through all the years in which she had mourned with Roland's mother his untimely death. He whom she had mourned for was not lying here; but did not his life hold deeper cause for grief than his death ever had? Standing there, so far from home, in the quiet morning, with this grave at her feet, she answered to herself a question which had been troubling her for many months. Yes, it was a right thing to do, on the whole, to keep this secret--Felicita's secret as well as Roland's--forever locked in her own heart. There was concealment in it closely verging, as it must always do, on deception. Phebe's whole nature revolted against concealment. She loved to live her life out in the eye of day. But the story of Roland Sefton's crime, and the penance done for it, in its completeness could never be given to the world; it must always result in some measure in misleading the judgment of those most interested in it. There was little to be gained and much to be sacrificed by its disclosure. Felicita's death seemed to give a new weight to every reason for keeping the secret; and it was safe in her keeping and Mr. Clifford's: when a few years were gone it would be hers alone. The cross most heavy for her to bear she must carry, hidden from every eye; but she could bear it faithfully, even unto death.

As her lips whispered the last three words, giving to her resolution a definite form and utterance, a shadow beside her own fell upon the cross. She turned quickly and met the kindly inquisitive gaze of the mountain cure who had led Felicita to this spot yesterday. He had been among the first who followed Jean Merle as he carried her lifeless form through the village street; and he had run to the monastery to seek what medical aid could be had there. The incident was one of great interest to him. Phebe's frank yet sorrowful face, turned to him with its expression of ready sympathy with any fellow-creature, won from the young priest the cordial friendliness that everywhere greeted her. He stood bareheaded before her, as he had done before Felicita, but he spoke to her in a tone of more familiar intercourse.

"Madame, pardon," he said, "but you are in grief, and I would offer you my condolence. Behold! to me the lady who died yesterday spoke her last words--here, on this spot. She said not a word afterwards to any human creature. I come to communicate them to you. There is but little to tell."

It was so little that Phebe felt greatly disappointed; though her eyes grew blind with tears as she thought of Felicita standing here before this deceptive cross and calling herself of all women the most miserable. The cross itself had had no message of peace to her troubled heart. "Most miserable," repeated Phebe to herself, looking back upon yesterday with a vain yearning that she had been there to tell Felicita that she shared her misery, and could help her to bear it.

"And now," continued the cure, "can I be of any service to Madame? You are alone; and there are a few formalities to observe. It will be some days before your friends can arrive. Command me, then, if I can be of any service."

"Can you help me to get away," she asked, in a tone of eager anxiety, "down to Lucerne as quickly as possible? I have telegraphed to Madame's son, and he will come immediately. Of course, I know in England when a sudden death occurs there are inquiries made; and it is right and necessary. But you see Madame died of a heart disease."

"Without doubt," he interrupted; "she was ill here, and I followed her down the village, and saw her enter Jean Merle's hut. I was about to enter, for she had been there a long time, when you appeared with your guide and went in. In a minute there was a cry, and I saw Jean Merle bearing the poor lady out into the daylight and you following them.

Without doubt she died from natural causes."

"There are formalities to observe," said Phebe earnestly, "and they take much time. But I must leave Engelberg to-morrow, or the next day at the latest, taking her with me. Can you help me to do this?"

"But you will bury Madame here?" answered the cure, who felt deeply what interest would attach to another English grave in the village burial-ground; "she told me yesterday Roland Sefton was her relative, and there will be many difficulties and great expenditure in taking her away from this place."

"Yes," answered Phebe, "but Madame belongs to a great family in England; she was the daughter of Baron Riversborough, and she must be buried among her own people. You shall telegraph to the consul at Geneva, and he will say she must be buried among her own people, not here. It does not signify about the expenditure."

"Ah! that makes it more easy," replied the cure, "and if Madame is of an ill.u.s.trious family--I was about to return to my parish this morning; but I will stay and arrange matters for you. This is my native place, and I know all the people. If I cannot do everything, the abbot and the brethren will. Be tranquil; you shall leave Engelberg as early as possible."

It was impossible for Phebe to telegraph to England her intention of returning immediately to Lucerne; for Felix must have set off already, and would be on his way to the far-off valley among the Swiss mountains, where he believed his father's grave lay, and where his mother had met her death. Phebe's heart was wrung for him, as she thought of the overwhelming and instantaneous shock it would be to him and Hilda, who did not even know that their mother had left home; but her dread lest he should judge it right to lay his mother beside this grave, which had possessed so large a share in his thoughts. .h.i.therto, compelled her to hasten her departure before he could arrive, even at the risk of missing him on the way. The few formalities to be observed seemed complicated and tedious; but at last they were ended. The friendly priest accompanied her on her sorrowful return down the rough mountain-roads, preceded by the litter bearing Felicita's coffin; and at every hamlet they pa.s.sed through he left minute instructions that a young English gentleman travelling up to Engelberg was to be informed of the little funeral cavalcade that was gone down to Lucerne.

Down the green valley, and through the solemn forests, Phebe followed the rustic litter on foot with the priest beside her, now and then reciting a prayer in a low tone. When they reached Grafenort carriages were in waiting to convey them as far as the Lake. It was only a week since she and Felicita had started on their secret and disastrous journey, and now her face was set homewards, with no companion save this coffin, which she followed with so heavy a spirit. She had come up the valley as Jean Merle had done, with vague, dim hopes, stretching vainly forward to some impossible good that might come to him when he and Felicita stood face to face once again. But now all was over.

A boat was ready at Stans, and here the friendly cure bade her farewell, leaving her to go on her way alone. And now it seemed to Phebe, more than ever before, that she had been living and acting for a long while in a painful dream. Her usually clear and tranquil soul was troubled and bewildered as she sat in the boat at the head of Felicita's coffin, with her dear face so near to her, yet hidden from her eyes. All around her lay the Lake, with a fine rapid ripple on the silvery blue of its waters, as the rowers, with measured and rhythmical strokes of their oars, carried the boat's sad freight on towards Lucerne. The evening sun was s.h.i.+ning aslant down the wooded slopes of the lower hills, and dark blue shadows gathered where its rays no longer penetrated. That half-consciousness, common to all of us, that she had gone through this pa.s.sage in her life before, and that this sorrow had already had its counterpart in some other state of existence, took possession of her; and with it came a feeling of resigning herself to fate. She was worn out with anxiety and grief. What would come might come. She could exert herself no longer.

As they drew near to Lucerne, the clangor of military music and the merry pealing of bells rang across the water, jarring upon her faint and sorrowful heart. Some fete was going on, and all the populace was active. Banners floated from all the windows, and a gay procession was parading along the quay, marching under the echoing roof of the long wooden bridge which crossed the green torrent of the river. Numberless little boats were darting to and fro on the smooth surface of the Lake, and through them all her own, bearing Felicita's coffin, sped swiftly on its way to the landing-stage, on which, as if standing there amid the hubbub to receive it, her sad eyes saw Canon Pascal and Felix.

They had but just reached Lucerne, and were waiting for the next steamer starting to Stans, when Felix had caught sight of the boat afar off, with its long, narrow burden, covered by a black pall; and as it drew nearer he had distinguished Phebe sitting beside it alone. Until this moment it had seemed absolutely incredible that his mother could be dead, though the telegram to Canon Pascal had said so distinctly. There must be some mistake, he had constantly reiterated as they hurried through France to Lucerne; Phebe had been frightened, and in her terror had misled herself and them. No wonder his mother should be ill--dangerously so, after the fatigue and agitation of a journey to Engelberg; but she could not be dead. Phebe had had no opportunity of telegraphing again; for they had set off at once, and from Basle they had brought on with them an eminent physician. So confident was Felix in his a.s.severations that Canon Pascal himself had begun to hope that he was right, and but that the steamer was about to start in a few minutes, they would have hired a boat to carry them on to Stans, in order to lose no time in taking medical aid to Felicita.

But as Felix stood there, only dimly conscious of the scene about them, the sight of the boat bringing Phebe to the sh.o.r.e with the covered coffin beside her, extinguished in his heart the last glimmering of the hope which had been little more than a natural recoil from despair. He was not taken by surprise, or hurried into any vehemence of grief. A cold stupor, which made him almost insensible to his loss, crept over him. Sorrow would a.s.sert itself by and by; but now he felt dull and torpid. When the coffin was lifted out of the boat, by bearers who were waiting at the landing-stage for the purpose, he took up his post immediately behind it, as if it were already the funeral procession carrying his mother to the grave; and with all the din and tumult of the streets sounding in his ears, he followed unquestioningly wherever it might go. Why it was there, or why his mother's coffin was there, he did not ask; he only knew that she was there.

"My poor Phebe," said Canon Pascal, as they followed closely behind him, "why did you start homewards? Would it not have been best to bury her at Engelberg, beside her husband? Did not Felicita forgive him, even in her death?"

"No, no, it was not that," answered Phebe; "she forgave him, but I could not bear to leave her there. I was with her just as she died; but she had gone up to Engelberg alone, and I followed her, only too late. She never spoke to me or looked at me. I could not leave Felicita in Engelberg," she added excitedly; "it has been a fatal place to her."

"Is there anything we must not know?" he inquired.

"Yes," she said, turning to him her pale and quivering face, "I have a secret to keep all my life long. But the evil of it is spent now. It seems to me as if it is a sin no longer; all the selfishness is gone out of it, and Felix and Hilda were as clear of it as Alice herself; if I could tell you all, you would say so too."