Part 132 (1/2)
”Would the little change to Ashlydyat benefit you, Maria? If so, if it would help to give you strength for your voyage, come to us at once. Now don't refuse! It will give us so much pleasure. You do not know how Lord Averil loves and respects you. I think there is no one he respects as he respects you. Let me take you home with me now.”
Maria's eyelashes were wet as she turned them on her. ”Thank you, Cecil, for your kindness: and Lord Averil--will you tell him so for me--I am always thanking in my heart. I wish I could go home with you; I wish I could go with any prospect of it doing me good; but that is over. I shall soon be in a narrower home than this.”
Lady Averil's heart stood still and then bounded on again. ”No, no!
Surely you are mistaken! It cannot be.”
”I have suspected it long, Cecil! but since the last day or two it has become certainty, and even Mr. Snow acknowledges it. About this time yesterday, he was sitting here in the twilight, and I bade him not conceal the truth from me. I told him that I knew it, and did not shrink from it; and therefore it was the height of folly for him to pretend ignorance to me.”
”Oh, Maria! And have you no regret at leaving us? I should think it a dreadful thing if I were going to die.”
”I have been battling with my regrets a long while,” said Maria, bending her head and speaking in low, subdued tones. ”Leaving Meta is the worst.
I know not who will take her, who will protect her: she cannot go with George, without--without a mother!”
”Give her to me,” feverishly broke from the lips of Lady Averil. ”You don't know how dearly I have ever loved that child Maria, she shall never know the want of the good mother she has lost, as far as I can supply your place, if you will let her come to me. It is well that the only child of the G.o.dolphins--and she is the only one--should be reared at Ashlydyat.”
Of all the world, Maria could best have wished Lady Averil to have Meta: and perhaps there had been moments when in her troubled imagination she had hoped it would be so. But she could not close her eyes to its improbabilities.
”You will be having children of your own, Cecil. And there's Lord Averil to be considered!”
”Lord Averil is more than indulgent to me. I believe if I wished to adopt half a dozen children, he would only smile and tell me to prepare a nursery for them. I am quite sure he would like to have Meta.”
”Then--if he will--oh, Cecil, I should die with less regret.”
”Yes, yes, that is settled. He shall call and tell you so.
But--Maria--is your own state so certain? Can nothing be done for you?--nothing be tried?”
”Nothing, as I believe. Mr. Snow cannot find out what is the matter with me. The trouble has been breaking my heart, Cecil: I know of nothing else. And since I grew alarmed about my own state, there has been the thought of Meta. Many a time have I been tempted to wish that I could have her with me in my coffin.”
”Aunt Cecil! Aunt Cecil! How many summer-houses are there to be, Aunt Cecil?”
You need not ask whose interrupting voice it was. Lady Averil lifted the child to her knee, and asked whether she would come and pay her a long, long visit at Ashlydyat. Meta replied by inquiring into the prospect of swings and dolls' houses, and Cecil plunged into promises as munificently as George could have done.
”Should George not be with you?” she whispered, as she bent over Maria before leaving.
”Yes, I am beginning to think he ought to be now. I intend to write to him to-night; but I did not like to disturb him in his preparations. It will be a blow to him.”
”What! does he not know of it?”
”Not yet. He thinks I am getting ready to go out. I _wish_ I could have done so!”
No, not until the unhappy fact was placed beyond all doubt, would Maria disturb her husband. And she did it gently at last. ”I have been unwilling to alarm you, George, and I would not do so now, but that I believe it is all too certain. Will you come down and see what you think of me? Even Mr. Snow fears there is no hope for me now. Oh, if I could but have gone with you! have gone with you to be your ever-loving wife still in that new land!”
Lord Averil came in while she was addressing the letter. Greatly shocked, greatly grieved at what his wife told him, he rose from his dinner-table and walked down. Her husband excepted, there was no one whom Maria would have been so pleased to see as Lord Averil. He had not come so much to tell her that he heartily concurred in his wife's offer with regard to the child, though he did say it--say that she should be done by entirely as though she were his own, and his honest honourable nature shone out of his eyes as he spoke it--as to see whether nothing could be done for herself, to entreat her to have further advice called in.
”Dr. Beale has been here twice,” was her answer. ”He says there is no hope.”
Lord Averil held her hand in his, as he had taken it in greeting; his grave eyes of sympathy were bent with deep concern on her face.
”Cecil thinks the trouble has been too much for you,” he whispered. ”Is it so?”
A streak of hectic came into her cheek. ”Yes, I suppose it is that. Turn to which side I would, there was no comfort, no hope. Throughout it all, I never had a friend, save you, Lord Averil: and you know, and G.o.d knows, what you did for us. I have not recompensed you: I don't see how I could have recompensed you had I lived: but when I am gone, you will be happy in knowing that you took the greatest weight from one who was stricken by the world.”