Part 13 (1/2)
CHAPTER IX. -- HE DEPARTETH IN DARKNESS.
”COME in! I want to talk to you!” said Mrs. Aylett, beckoning Mabel into her chamber, from the door of which she had hailed her. ”Sit down, my poor girl! You are white as a sheet with fatigue. I cannot see why you should have been suffered to know anything about this very disagreeable occurrence. And Emmeline has been telling me that Mrs. Sutton actually let you go up into that Arctic room.”
”It was my choice. Aunt Rachel went along to carry the light and to keep me company. She would have dissuaded me from the enterprise if she could,” responded Mabel, sinking into the low, cus.h.i.+oned chair before the fire, which the mistress of the luxurious apartment had just wheeled forward for her, and confessing to herself, for the first time, that she was chilly and very tired.
”But where were the servants, my dear? Surely you are not required, in your brother's house, to perform such menial services as taking food and medicine to a sick vagrant.”
”Winston had forbidden them to go near the room. I wish I had gone up earlier. I might have been the means of saving a life which, however worthless it may seem to us, must be of value to some one.”
”Is he so far gone?”
The inquiry was hoa.r.s.ely whispered, and the speaker leaned back in her fauteuil, a spark of fierce eagerness in her dilated eyes, Mabel, in her own anxiety, did not consider overstrained solicitude in behalf of a disreputable stranger. She had more sympathy with it than with the relapse into apparent nonchalance that succeeded her repet.i.tion of the doctor's report.
”He does not think the unfortunate wretch will revive, even temporarily, then?” commented the lady, conventionally compa.s.sionate, playing with her ringed fingers, turning her diamond solitaire in various directions to catch the firelight. ”How unlucky he should have strayed upon our grounds! Was he on his way to the village?”
”Who can say? Not he, a.s.suredly. He has not spoken a coherent word. Dr.
Ritchie thinks he will never be conscious again.”
”I am afraid the event will mar our holiday gayeties to some extent, stranger though he is!” deplored the hostess. ”Some people are superst.i.tious about such things. His must have been the spectral visage I saw at the window. I was sure it was that of a white man although Winston tried, to persuade me to the contrary.”
”It is dreadful!” e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Mabel energetically. ”He, poor homeless wayfarer, peris.h.i.+ng with cold and want in the very light of our summer-like rooms; getting his only glimpse of the fires that would have brought back vitality to his freezing body through closed windows! Then to be hunted down by dogs, and locked up by more unfeeling men, as if he were a ravenous beast, instead of a suffering fellow-mortal! I shall always feel as if I were, in some measure, chargeable with his death--should he die. Heaven forgive us our selfish thoughtlessness, our criminal disregard of our brother's life!”
”I understood you to say there was no hope!” interrupted Mrs. Aylett.
”So Dr. Ritchie declares. But I cannot bear to believe it!”
She pressed her fingers upon her eyeb.a.l.l.s as if she would exclude some horrid vision.
”My dear sister! your nerves have been cruelly tried. To-morrow, you will see this matter--and everything else--through a different medium.
As for the object of your amiable pity, he is, without doubt, some low, dissipated creature, of whom the world will be well rid.”
”I am not certain of that. There are traces of something like refinement and gentle breeding about him in all his squalor and unconsciousness.
I noticed his hands particularly. They are slender and long, and his features in youth and health must have been handsome. Dr. Ritchie thought the same. Who can tell that his wife is not mourning his absence to-night, as the fondest woman under this roof would regret her husband's disappearance? And she may never learn when and how he died--never visit his grave!”
”I have lived in this wicked world longer than you have, my sweet Mabel; so you must not quarrel with me if these fancy pictures do not move me as they do your guileless heart,” said Mrs. Aylett, the sinister shadow of a mocking smile playing about her mouth. ”Nor must you be offended with me for suggesting as a pendant to your crayon sketch of widowhood and desolation the probability that the decease of a drunken thief or beggar cannot be a serious bereavement, even to his nearest of kin.
Women who are beaten and trampled under foot by those who should be their comfort and protection are generally relieved when they take to vagrancy as a profession. It may be that this man's wife, if she were cognizant of his condition, would not lift a finger, or take a step to prolong his life for one hour. Such things have been.”
”More shame to human nature that they have!” was the impetuous rejoinder. ”In every true woman's heart there must be tender memories of buried loves, let their death have been natural or violent.”
”So says your gentler nature. There are women--and I believe they are in the majority in this crooked lower sphere--in whose hearts the monument to departed affection--when love is indeed no more--is a hatred that can never die. But we have wandered an immense distance from the unlucky chicken-thief or burglar overhead. Dr. Ritchie's sudden and ostentatious attack of philanthropy will hardly beguile him into watching over his charge--a guardian angel in dress-coat and white silk neck-tie--until morning?”
”Mammy is to relieve him so soon as he is convinced that human skill can do nothing for his relief,” said Mabel very gravely.
Her sister-in-law's high spirits and jocular tone jarred upon her most disagreeably, but she tried to bear in mind in what dissimilar circ.u.mstances they had pa.s.sed the last hour. If Clara appeared unfeeling, and her remarks were distinguished by less taste than was customary in one so thoroughly bred, it was because the exhilaration of the evening was yet upon her, and she had not seen the death's-head p.r.o.ne upon the pillows in the cheerless attic. Thoughts of poverty and dying beds were unseemly in this apartment when the very warmth and fragrance of the air told of fostering and sheltering love. The heavy curtains did not sway in the blast that hurled its whole fury against the windows; the furniture was handsome, and in perfect harmony with the dark, yet glowing hues of the carpet, and with the tinted walls. A tall dressing mirror let into a recess reflected the picture, brilliant with firelight that colored the shadows themselves; lengthened into a deep perspective the apparent extent of the chamber and showed, like a fine old painting, the central figure in the vista.
Mrs. Aylett had exchanged her evening dress for a cashmere wrapper, the dark-blue ground of which was enlivened by a Grecian pattern of gold and scarlet; her unbound hair draped her shoulders, and framed her arch face, as she threaded the bronze ripples with her fingers. She looked contented, restful, complacent in herself and her belongings--one whom Time had touched lovingly as he swept by, and whom sorrow had forgotten.