Читать книгу The Vicar of Wrexhill - Frances Milton Trollope - Страница 8

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Even the stable-boys deemed themselves privileged to sleep later than usual on the day after; and the ploughboy, as he went afield, missed the merry smile of the park dairy-maid, who, like her superiors, seemed to think on such an occasion time was made for very vulgar souls indeed, and that none who had joined in so illustrious a gala, could be expected to recover the full possession of their waking senses for some hours after the usual time.

By slow degrees, however, the different members of the establishment began to stretch themselves and give sign of reviving animation. The housemaids yawningly opened the window-shutters; the footmen crept after them to aid in removing from one room at least the traces of the jubilee, which, like the relics of a lamp that has burnt out, showed but the more unsightly from its past splendour; and at length, to a superficial eye, the breakfast-room looked like the breakfast-room of former years; though a more discriminating glance might have detected girandoles where no such things had ever glittered before, card-tables in the place of work-tables, and flowers, still blooming in situations as little usual to them as a bed of strawberries would have been the day before.

But it was long after these hireling efforts of forced labour had prepared the table for the morning meal, that any one of the favoured sleepers destined to partake of it left his or her downy pillow. … In short … it was past mid-day before the family and their guests began to assemble; and even then many stragglers were still waited for before they appeared, and Mrs. Mowbray and Helen began at length to talk of breaking up the long session, and of giving orders to the butler to take care of all those who should come after.

"It is not very surprising that the Davenports, who never ceased dancing till long after the sun came to look at them," said Helen—"it is not all wonderful that they should sleep late, and I believe Mr. Vivian makes it a principle to be the last on all occasions. But I am quite astonished that papa does not appear: was he asleep, mamma, when you came down this morning?"

"No, Helen, not quite asleep, for he spoke to me. But I think he was very sleepy, for I hardly understood what he said; and as he appeared extremely tired when he went to bed, I told Curtis to darken the room again, and leave him quiet."

Another half-hour brought forth the Davenports and Mr. Vivian; but still Mr. Mowbray did not appear, and Helen, though hitherto she had been quite satisfied by her mother's account of his prolonged slumbers, again began to feel uneasy about him.

"Do you not think, mamma," said she, "that I might venture to go up to him?"

"I see not the least objection to it, Helen; especially as we know, that if it were you who happened to wake him out of the soundest sleep he ever enjoyed, the pleasure of seeing you near him would quite atone for it."

"Very well mamma—then I shall certainly let him sleep no longer now;" and, so saying, Helen left the room.

"Is not Helen Mowbray a charming creature!" said a gentleman who was seated next Miss Torrington, and who, being neither young, handsome, rich, nor noble, felt that he could wound no feelings by expressing his admiration of one young lady to another.

"I will tell you what she is," answered Rosalind warmly: "she is just as much better than every body else in the world, as her sister, there, is more beautiful."

"And you are. … " said the middle-aged gentleman, fixing a pair of very intelligent eyes on her face—"you are. … "

But notwithstanding the look of curiosity with which Miss Torrington listened, the speaker suddenly stopped, for a bell was rung with that sort of sudden and continued vehemence which denotes haste and agitation in the hand that gives it movement.

"That is my father's bell!" said Charles in an accent of alarm; and starting up, he was out of the room in an instant.

Mrs. Mowbray immediately followed him, and for several minutes a sort of heavy silence seemed to have fallen on every individual present—not a word being uttered by any one, and the eyes of all fixing themselves on the face of Fanny, who kept her place as if spell-bound, but with a countenance that expressed a feeling approaching to terror.

"This is not to be borne!" exclaimed Rosalind abruptly. "Excuse us for a moment," she added, addressing those who still remained in the breakfast-room.—"Come with me, Fanny, and let us know the worst at once."

The two girls left the room together; and in a very few minutes afterwards a servant entered, the violent agitation of whose manner announced the news he brought before he spoke it.

"My master … my poor master is dead!" were the words he uttered; and their effect upon a party assembled for an occasion of so much festivity, and who had so lately parted with their kind and happy host in perfect health, may be easily imagined.

One single word in reply to the eager chorus of inquiry told the manner of his death—

"Apoplexy!"

The scene which followed was what such an event must necessarily produce. No single creature present, except one pretty portionless young lady who thought it very likely that Mr. Charles might now fall in love with her, could by possibility be benefited by the death of the amiable man who had just breathed his last, and it is therefore probable that the universal expression of regret was sincere in quality, though its quantity might have been somewhat preternaturally increased by the circumstances in which the parties were relatively placed when the awful event was made known. Several tears were shed, and some glasses of cold water called for, while the carriages were getting ready; the gentlemen all looked grave, and many of the ladies pale; but in less than half an hour they had all left the house, not one of them, as it happened, being on terms of sufficient intimacy with the family to justify their offering to remain at such a moment.

It is easy enough to dismiss from the scene persons whose feelings were so slightly interested in it; but far different would be the task were I to attempt painting the heartfelt anguish of those who remained. Mr. Mowbray had been so deeply yet so tranquilly loved by every member of his family—his intercourse with them had been so uniformly that of constant endearment, unchequered by any mixture of rough temper or unreasonable caprice, that their love for him was so natural and inevitable, that they had never reasoned upon it, or were fully aware of its intensity, till the dreadful moment in which they learned that they had lost him for ever.

The feelings of Mrs. Mowbray for many hours amounted to agony; for till a medical gentleman who examined the body at length succeeded in convincing her that she was mistaken, she felt persuaded that her beloved husband owed his death to her neglect, and that if, when she mistook his unintelligible speech for sleepiness, she had discovered his condition, and caused him to be bled, his precious life might have been saved. It was evident, however, from many circumstances, that the seizure was of a nature not to be baffled or parried by art; and the relief this conviction at length afforded the widow was so great, that her having first formed a contrary opinion was perhaps a blessing to her.

The grief of Charles was that of a young, ardent, and most affectionate spirit; but his mother and his sisters now seemed to hang upon him wholly, and the Being who alone can read all hearts only knew how deep was the sorrow he felt. The young Fanny, stealing away to her chamber, threw herself, in an agony of tears, upon her bed, and, forgotten in the general dismay that had fallen upon all, wept herself into a sleep that lasted till she awakened on the following morning to a renewed sense of sorrow which came over her like the dreadful memory of some frightful dream.

But of all those whom poor Mowbray had left to deplore his loss, it was Helen—his darling Helen—who unquestionably felt it the most profoundly. His love for her had all that is most touching in partiality, without one atom of the injustice which renders such a feeling criminal; and its effect upon her loving and enthusiastic temper was stronger than any words can describe.

Miss Torrington was perhaps beyond any other member of the family aware of this, and the tenderest pity for the silent, suffering Helen took possession of her. She was in truth a looker-on upon the melancholy scene, and as such, was more qualified to judge how sorrow worked in each of them than any other could be. Her residence in the family, though sufficient to impress her with the kindest feelings towards its chief, and the deepest impression of his worth, had hardly been long enough to awaken thoroughly her affections towards him, and she wept more in pity for those around her than from any personal feeling of grief for the loss she had herself sustained. To soothe poor Helen, to lead her thoughts even for a moment from the subject that engrossed them, and to keep her as much as possible from gazing in vain tenderness and hopeless agony upon the body of her father, became the sole occupation of Rosalind during the dreadful interval between the real loss of the beloved being to whom the soul of his child still fondly clung, and the apparently more final separation still which took place when all that was left of him was borne from the house.

Helen made little apparent return to all these tender cares, but she was fully conscious of them. She felt that Rosalind read her heart, and knew how to pity her; and the conviction turned liking into love, of that enduring kind which such hearts as Helen's alone know how to give.