Part 28 (1/2)

”She ought to do many things that she does not do. She ought to have sent Ethel from the house, as I told her, the instant the disorder appeared in it. Not she. She kept her in her insane selfishness: and now I hope she's satisfied with her work. When alarming symptoms showed themselves in Ethel, on the fourth day of her illness, I think it was, I said to my lady, 'It is strange what can be keeping Mr. G.o.dolphin!'

'Oh,' said she, 'I did not write to him.' 'Not write!' I answered: and I fear I used an ugly word to my lady's face. 'I'll write at once,'

returned she humbly. 'Of course,' cried I, 'when the steed's stolen we shut the stable-door.' It's the way of the world.”

Another pause. ”I would have given anything to take Ethel from the house at the time; to take her from the town,” observed Thomas G.o.dolphin in a low tone. ”I said so then. But it could not be.”

”I should have done it, in your place,” said Mr. Snow. ”If my lady had said no, I'd have carried her off in the face of it. Not married, you say? Rubbis.h.!.+ Every one knows she'd have been safe with you. And you would have been married as soon as was convenient. What are forms and ceremonies and carping tongues, in comparison with a girl's life? A life, precious as was Ethel's!”

Thomas G.o.dolphin leaned his forehead in his hand, lost in retrospect.

Oh, that he _had_ taken her! that he had set at nought what he had then bowed to, the _convenances_ of society! She might have been by his side now, in health and life, to bless him! Doubting words interrupted the train of thought.

”And yet I don't know,” the surgeon was repeating, in a dreamy manner.

”What is to be, will be. We look back, all of us, and say, 'If I had acted thus, if I had done the other, so and so would not have happened; events would have turned out differently.' But who is to be sure of it?

Had you taken Ethel out of harm's way--as we might have thought it--there's no telling but she'd have had the fever just the same: her blood might have become infected before she left the house. There's no knowing, Mr. G.o.dolphin.”

”True. Good evening, Snow.”

He turned suddenly and hastily to the outer door, but the surgeon caught him before he pa.s.sed its threshold, and touched his arm to detain him.

They stood there in the obscurity, their faces shaded in the dark night.

”She left you a parting word, Mr. G.o.dolphin.”

”Ah?”

”An hour before she died she was calm and sensible, though fearfully weak. Lady Sarah had gone to her favourite, and I was alone with Ethel.

'Has he not come yet?' she asked me, opening her eyes. 'My dear,' I said, 'he could not come; he was never written for.' For I knew she alluded to you, and was determined to tell her the truth, dying though she was. 'What shall I say to him for you?' I continued. She put up her hand to motion my face nearer hers, for her voice was growing faint.

'Tell him, with my dear love, not to grieve,' she whispered, between her panting breath. 'Tell him that I have gone on before.' I think they were almost the last words she spoke.”

Thomas G.o.dolphin leaned against the modest post of the surgery door, and eagerly drank in the words. Then he wrung the doctor's hand, and departed, hurrying along the street as one who shrank from observation: for he did not care, just then, to encounter the gaze of his fellow-men.

Coming with a quick step up the side street, in which the entrance to the surgery was situated, was the Reverend Mr. Hastings. He stopped to accost the surgeon.

”Was that Mr. G.o.dolphin?”

”Ay. This is a blow for him.”

Mr. Hastings's voice insensibly shrank to a whisper. ”Maria tells me that he did not know of Ethel's death or illness. Until they arrived here to-night, they thought it was Sarah Anne who died. He went up to Lady Sarah's after the train came in, thinking so.”

”Lady Sarah's a fool,” was the complimentary rejoinder of Mr. Snow.

”She is, in some things,” warmly a.s.sented the Rector. ”The telegraphic message she despatched to Scotland, telling of the death, was so obscurely worded as to cause them to a.s.sume that it alluded to Sarah Anne.”

”Ah well! she's only heaping burdens on her conscience,” rejoined Mr.

Snow in a philosophic tone. ”She has lost Ethel through want of care (as I firmly believe) in not keeping her out of the way of infection; she prevented their last meeting, through not writing to him; she----”

”He could not have saved her, had he been here,” interrupted Mr.

Hastings.