Part 20 (1/2)
”Oh, _will_ you, Cousin Wyvis?”
She turned an eager, sparkling face upon him. It occurred to him, almost for the first time, to admire her. With that light in her eye, that color in her cheek, Janetta was almost beautiful. He smiled.
”I shall be only too glad of an excuse,” he said, with more simplicity and earnestness than she had as yet distinguished in his voice. ”And then--you will come again?”
”I will--gladly.”
”Shake hands on it after your English fas.h.i.+on,” he said, stopping short, and holding out his own hand. ”I have been so long abroad that I almost forget the way. But it is a sign of friendliness, is it not?”
Janetta turned and laid her hand in his with a look of bright and trustful confidence. Somehow it made Wyvis Brand feel himself unworthy.
He said almost nothing more until they parted at Mr. Colwyn's door.
CHAPTER XIII.
SHADOWS.
But Janetta had not much chance of keeping her promise for some time to come. She was alarmed to find, on her return home that evening, that her father had come in sick and s.h.i.+vering, with all the symptoms of a violent cold, followed shortly by high fever. He had caught a chill during a long drive undertaken in order to see a motherless child who had been suddenly taken ill, and in whose case he took a great interest.
The child rapidly recovered, but Mr. Colwyn's illness had a serious termination. Pleurisy came on, and made such rapid inroads upon his strength that in a very few days his recovery was p.r.o.nounced impossible.
Gradually growing weaker and weaker, he was not able even to give counsel or direction to his family, and could only whisper to Janetta, who was his devoted nurse, a few words about ”taking care” of the rest.
”I will always do my very best for them, father; you may be sure of that,” said Janetta, earnestly. The look of anxious pain in his eyes gave her the strength to speak firmly--she must set his mind at ease at any cost.
”My faithful Janet,” she heard him whisper; and then he spoke no more.
With his hand still clasped in hers he died in the early morning of a chill October day, and the world of Beaminster knew him no more.
The world seemed sadly changed for Janetta when her father had gone forth from it; and yet it was not she who made the greatest demonstration of mourning. Mrs. Colwyn pa.s.sed from one hysterical fit into another, and Nora sobbed herself ill; but Janetta went about her duties with a calm and settled gravity, a sober tearlessness, which caused her stepmother to dub her cold and heartless half a dozen times a day. As a matter of fact the girl felt as if her heart were breaking, but there was no one but herself to bear any of the commonplace little burdens of daily life which are so hard to carry in the time of trouble; and but for her thoughtful presence of mind the whole house would have degenerated into a state of chaos. She wrote necessary letters, made arrangements for the sad offices which were all that could be rendered to her father now, interviewed the dressmaker, and ordered meals for the children. It was to her that the servants and tradespeople came for orders; it was she who kept her mother's room quiet, and nursed Nora, and provided necessary occupation for the awed and bewildered children.
”You don't seem to feel it a bit, Janetta,” Mrs. Colwyn said to her on the day before the funeral. ”And I'm sure you were always your father's favorite. He never cared half so much for any of the children as he did for you, and now you can't even give him a tributary tear.”
Mrs. Colwyn was fond of stilted expressions, and the thought of ”a tributary tear” seemed so incongruous to Janetta when compared with her own deep grief, that--much to Mrs. Colwyn's horror--she burst into an agitated little laugh, as nervous people sometimes do on the most solemn occasions.
”To laugh when your father is lying dead in the house!” e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Mrs.
Colwyn, with awful emphasis. ”And you that he thought so loving and dutiful----!”
Then poor Janetta collapsed. She was worn out with watching and working, and from nervous laughter she pa.s.sed to tears so heart-broken and so exhausting that Mrs. Colwyn never again dared to accuse her openly of insensibility. And perhaps it was a good thing for Janetta that she did break down in this way. The doctor who had attended her father was growing very uneasy about her. He had not been deceived by her apparent calmness. Her white face and dark-ringed eyes had told him all that Janetta could not say. ”A good thing too!” he muttered when, on a subsequent call, Tiny told him, with rather a look of consternation, that her sister ”had been crying.” ”A good thing too! If she had not cried she would have had a nervous fever before long, and then what would become of you all?”
During these dark days Janetta was inexpressibly touched by the marks of sympathy that reached her from all sides. Country people trudged long distances into town that they might gaze once more on the worn face of the man who had often a.s.suaged not only physical but mental pain, and had been as ready to help and comfort as to prescribe. Townsfolk sent flowers for the dead and dainties for the living; but better than all their gifts was the regret that they expressed for the death of a man whom everyone liked and respected. Mr. Colwyn's practice, though never very lucrative, had been an exceedingly large one; and only when he had pa.s.sed away did his townsfolk seem to appreciate him at his true worth.
In the sad absorption of mind which followed upon his death, Janetta almost forgot her cousins, the Brands. But when the funeral took place, and she went with her brother Joe to the grave, as she insisted upon doing in spite of her stepmother's tearful remonstrances, it was a sort of relief and satisfaction to her to see that both Wyvis and Cuthbert Brand were present. They were her kinsmen, after all, and it was right for them to be there. It made her feel momentarily stronger to know of their presence in the church.
But at the grave she forgot them utterly. The beautiful and consoling words of the Burial Service fell almost unheeded on her ear. She could only think of the blank that was made in her life by the absence of that loving voice, that tender sympathy, which had never failed her once. ”My faithful Janet!” he had called her. There was no one to call her ”my faithful Janet” now.
She was shaken by a storm of silent sobs as these thoughts came over her. She made scarcely a sound, but her figure was swayed by the tempest as if it would have fallen. Joe, the young brother, who could as yet scarcely realize the magnitude of the loss which he had sustained, glanced at her uneasily; but it was not he, but Wyvis Brand, who suddenly made a step forward and gave her--just in time--the support of his strong arm. The movement checked her and recalled her to herself.
Her weeping grew less violent, and although strong shudders still shook her frame, she was able to walk quietly from the grave to the carriage-door, and to shake hands with Wyvis Brand with some attempt at calmness of demeanor.
He came to the house a few days after the funeral, but Janetta happened to be out, and Mrs. Colwyn refused to see him. Possibly he thought that some slight lurked within this refusal, for he did not come again, and a visit at a later date from Mrs. Brand was so entirely embarra.s.sing and unsatisfactory that Janetta could hardly wish for its repet.i.tion. Mrs.
Colwyn, in the deepest of widow's weeds, with a white handkerchief in her hand, was yet not too much overcome by grief to show that she esteemed herself far more respectable than Mrs. Brand, and could ”set her down,” if necessary; while poor Mrs. Brand, evidently comprehending the reason of Mrs. Colwyn's bridlings and tossings, was nervous and flurried, sat on the edge of a chair, and looked--poor, helpless, elderly woman--as if she had never entered a drawing-room before.