Part 44 (1/2)

She smiled at last and said,

”I am glad you are not going to be my aunt, Miss Vavasor.”

”Thank goodness, no!” cried Miss Vavasor, with a slightly hysterical laugh.

Notwithstanding her educated self-command, she felt cowed before the majesty of Hester, for woman was face to face with woman, and the truth was stronger than the lie. Had she then yielded to the motions within her, she would, and it would have been but the second time in her life, have broken into undignified objurgation. She had to go back to her nephew and confess that she had utterly failed where she had expected, if not an easy victory, yet the more a triumphant one! She had to tell him that his lady was the most peculiar, most unreasonable young woman she had ever had to deal with; and that she was not only unsuited to him, but quite unworthy of him! He would conclude she had managed the matter ill, and said things she ought not to have said! It was very hard that she, who desired only to set things right, looking for no advantage to herself--she who was recognized as a power in her own circle, should have been so ignominiously foiled in the n.o.ble endeavour, having sacrificed herself, to sacrifice also another upon the altar of her beloved earldom! She could not reconcile herself to the thought. It did not occur to her that there was a power here concerned altogether different from any she had before encountered--namely a soul possessed by truth and clad in the armour of righteousness. Of conscience that dealt with the qualities of things, nor cared what had been decreed concerning them by a cla.s.s claiming for itself the apex of the world, she had scarce even a shadowy idea; for never in her life had she herself acted from any insight into primary quality. When therefore she had to do with a girl who did not acknowledge the jurisdiction of the law to which she bowed as supreme, she was out of her element--had got, as it seemed to her, into water too shoal to swim in; whereas, in fact, she had got into water too deep to wade in, and did not know how to swim.

She turned and walked away, attempting a show of dignity, but showing only that Brummagem thing, haughtiness--an adornment the possessor alone does not recognize as a counterfeit. Then Hester turned too, and walked in the opposite direction, feeling that one supposed portion of her history was but an episode, and at an end.

She did not know that, both coming and going, she was attended at a near distance by a tall, portly gentleman of ruddy complexion and military bearing. He had beheld her interview--by no means overheard her conversation--with Miss Vavasor, and had seen with delight the unmistakable symptoms of serious difference which at last appeared, and culminated in their parting. He did not venture to approach her, but when she got into a cab, took a Hansom and followed her to the entrance of the square, where he got down, his heart beating with exultant hope that ”the rascal a.s.s of a n.o.bleman” had been dismissed.

All the time since he came to London with Hester, he had, as far as possible to him, kept guard over her, and had known a good deal more of her goings and comings than she was aware of--this with an unselfishness of devotion that took from him the least suspicion of its being a thing unwarrantable. He was like the dog which, not allowed to accompany his master, follows him at a distance, ready to interfere at any moment when such interference may be desirable. She had let him know that she had found her brother, that he was very ill, and that she was helping to nurse him; but she had not yet summoned him. In severe obedience to orders, therefore, he did not even now call. Next day, however, he found a summons waiting him at his club, and made haste to obey it.

She had thought it better to prepare him for what she was about to ask of him, therefore mentioned in her note that in a day or two she was going to Yrndale with her brother and his wife.

”Whew!” exclaimed the major when he read it, ”wife! this complicates matters! I was sure he had not gone to the dogs--no dog but a cur would receive him--without help!--Marriage and embezzlement! Poor devil! if he were not such a confounded ape I should pity him! But the small-pox and a wife may perhaps do something for him!”

When he reached the house, Hester received him warmly, and at once made her request that he would go down with them. It would be such a relief to her if he would, she said. He expressed entire readiness, but thought she had better not say he was coming, as in the circ.u.mstances he could hardly be welcome. They soon made their arrangements, and he left her yet more confirmed in a respect such as he had never till now felt. And this was the major's share in the good that flowed from Hester's sufferings: the one most deficient thing in him was reverence, and in this he was now having a strong lesson.

CHAPTER XLVIII.

MR. CHRISTOPHER.

On the Sunday evening, the last before she was to leave for Yrndale, Hester had gone to see a poor woman in a house she had not been in before, and was walking up the dismal stair, dark and dirty, when she heard a moaning from a room the door of which was a little open. She peeped in, and saw on a low bed a poor woman, old, yellow, and wrinkled, apparently at the point of death. Her throat was bare, and she saw the muscles of it knotted in the struggle for life.--Is not death the victorious struggle for life?--She was not alone; a man knelt by her bedside, his arm under the pillow to hold her head higher, and his other hand clasping hers.

”The darkness! the darkness!” moaned the woman.

”You feel lonely?” said the voice of the man, low, and broken with sympathy.

”All, all alone,” sighed the woman.

”I can do nothing for you. I can only love you.”

”Yes, yes,” said the woman hopelessly.

”You are slipping away from me, but my master is stronger than me, and can help you yet. He is not far from you though you can't see him. He loves you too, and only wants you to ask him to help you. He can cure death as easy as any other disease.”

No reply came for a moment. Then, moulded of all-but dying breath, came the cry,

”O Christ, save me!”

Then Hester was seized with a sudden impulse: she thought afterwards the feeling of it might be like what men and women of old had when the Spirit of G.o.d came upon them: it seemed she had not intended song when the sounds issuing from her mouth entered her ears. The words she uttered were those and no more, over and over again, which the poor dying woman had just spoken: ”O Christ, save me!” But the song-sounds in which they were lapt and with which they came winged from her lips, seemed the veriest outpouring of her whole soul. They seemed to rise from some eternal deep within her, yet not to be of her making. She was as in the immediate presence of Christ, pleading with him for the consolation and strength which his poor dying creature so sorely needed.

The holy possession lasted but a minute or so, and left her dumb. She turned away, and pa.s.sed up the stair.

”The angels! the angels! I'm going now!” said the woman feebly.

”The angel was praying to Christ for you,” said Christopher. ”--Oh living brother, save our dying sister!”

”O Christ, save me!” she murmured again, and they were her last words.

Christopher laid the body gently back on the pillow. A sigh of relief pa.s.sed from his lips, and he went from the room to give notice of the death. The dead or who would might bury the dead; he must go to the living!