Читать книгу Foxglove Manor - Robert Williams Buchanan - Страница 13

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Mr. Santley’s reply was as sincere at the moment it was spoken as it was impulsive. The saner and better part of him rose in sudden sympathy towards this young, confiding girl who had laid her whole being in his hands, to be his treasure or his plaything. He resolved to be faithful to the solemn pledge he had given her, and to cast from him for ever all thought of Mrs. Haldane, and all memory of that passionate episode of the past. He drew Edith’s hand under his arm and held it there. That warm little bit of responsive flesh and blood had still, he felt, a power to thrill through his nature. He bent down and kissed it. For some time their conversation was embarrassed, but gradually all sense of doubt and estrangement vanished, and he was telling her about his visit to the Manor. A pressure was laid upon him to make her such amends as he was able for his coldness during the past week, and he determined to break the spell which Mrs. Haldane’s beauty threw over him by revealing their old friendship to Edith. It was not wise, but under the stress of remorse and a reviving passion men seldom act wisely. Except in the case of a jealous disposition, a woman is always pleased to hear of her lover’s old vaguely cherished love affairs, when there is no possibility of their ever coming to life again. She knows instinctively, even when she is not told so adoringly, that she supersedes all her predecessors and combines all their virtues and charms. He loved this one for her beauty and sweetness, that one for her clear bright intelligence; each in a different way; but her he loves in both the old ways, and in a new way also which she alone could inspire.

“Mrs. Haldane was an old pupil of mine—indeed, a favourite pupil—many years ago; so, naturally, I am much interested in her,” said the vicar in a tentative manner.

The words were a revelation to Edith; they explained to her all her uneasiness and all his change of manner.

“And you find that you still love her a little?” Edith ventured to say in a sad, faltering tone.

“I never said I loved her, my dear,” replied the vicar, with a forced laugh.

“But you did, did you not? She was your favourite pupil.”

How uncomfortably keen-sighted this young person seemed to be, in spite of her soft, endearing ways!

“Would you be a little jealous if I said I did?” he asked, regarding her with a scrutinizing look.

“Jealous! Oh no. Why should I? Is she not married? And am I not really and truly your little wife?”

He pressed her hand gently for answer.

“And when you saw her again last Sunday, and saw how beautiful she was,” Edith continued, “you felt sorry that you had lost her—just a little regretful, did you not?”

The vicar hesitated, and then did the most foolish thing a man can do in such circumstances—confessed the truth.

“You will not be vexed, darling, if I say that I did feel regret?”

“You loved her very much?”

“She was my first love.” replied the vicar. “But you must remember it was years ago. Long before I knew you; when I was quite a young man.”

“And was she very fond of you?” Edith went on quietly.

“I used to think she was.”

“But she was not true to you?”

“I do not blame her. I do not think it was her fault. Her people were wealthy, and I was poor, a poor teacher.”

“And it was this made you so cold and hard to me all last week?”

Mr. Santley did not answer at once.

It would be brutal to say yes, and he dared not hazard a denial.

“Oh, Charles, she never loved you as I have.”

“Never, never,” replied the vicar hurriedly; and a flush rose to his face.

“When you meet her, when you see her again,” said Edith, grasping his arm with earnest emphasis, “will you remember that? Promise me.”

“I will never forget it,” said the vicar in a low voice.

He did not see Mrs. Haldane again, however, during the week. On the following Sunday his eyes wandered only for a moment towards the Manor pew, and he perceived that she was alone. When he met her after the service his manner was constrained, but she appeared not to notice it. She spoke again of the parish work, and told him that in a day or two she would drive over and accompany him on some of his calls. He looked forward with uneasiness and self-distrust to her cooperation in his daily work. There was an irresistible something, a magical atmosphere, an invisible radiation of the enticing about this woman. Her large glowing black eyes seemed to fasten upon his soul and draw it beyond his control. Her starry smile intoxicated and maddened him. Beside her, Edith was but a weak, delicate child, with a child’s clinging attachment, a child’s credulity and trust, a child’s little gusts of passion. His lost love was a woman—such a woman as men in old times would have perished for as a queen, would have worshipped as a goddess—such a woman, he fancied, as that Naomi whose beauty has been the mysterious tradition of five thousand years.

Early one afternoon, about the middle of the week, the vicar was just about to set out on his customary round of visitation, when Mrs. Haldane’s pony-carriage drove up to the gate. He assisted her to alight, and returned with her to the house.

Miss Santley, who had been as sensitive to the change in her brother as Edith herself, regarded Mrs. Haldane with little favour. She was ready to acknowledge that it was very good and kind of the mistress of Foxglove Manor to interest herself in the wants and suffering of the parish, but she entertained grave misgivings as to the prudence of her brother and this old pupil of his being thrown too frequently together. She was just a little formal and reserved with her visitor, who announced her intention of going with the vicar to this sick-call he had spoken of.

“You will have to walk, however,” said Mr. Santley, “as the cottage is some little distance across the fields.”

“I came prepared for walking,” she replied, with a laugh. “James can put up at the village till our return.”

“Will you do us the favour of taking tea with us?” asked Miss Santley, “You will, require it, if my brother takes you his usual round.”

“Thank you, I shall be very glad. If James calls for me at—what time shall I say?—six, will that be soon enough?” The coachman received his instructions, and Mr. Santley and Mrs. Haldane set out on their first combined mission. They traversed half a dozen fields, and came in sight of a small cluster of cottages lying low in a green hollow. A narrow lane ran past them to Omberley in one direction and to the high-road in another. Half a dozen poplars grew in a line along the lane, and the cottages were surrounded by small gardens, filled with fruit trees.

“What a picturesque little spot!” exclaimed Mrs. Haldane. “I think nothing looks so pretty as an English cottage with its white walls and tiled roof peering out from a cluster of apple; and pear trees.”

“Pretty enough, but damp!” replied the vicar. “In wet weather they are in a perfect quagmire. Ah, listen!”

They were now very near the houses, and the sound to which Mr. Santley called her attention was the voice of a man crying out in great pain.

“What can it be?” asked Mrs. Haldane, with a look of alarm.

“It is the poor fellow we are going to see. He was knocked down and run over by a cart about two years ago. His spine has been injured, and the doctors can do nothing for him. He is quite helpless, and has been bedridden all that time.”

“Poor creature! what a dreadful thing it must be to suffer like that!”

“Sometimes for weeks together he feels no pain. Then he is suddenly seized by the most fearful torture, and you can hear his cries for a great distance.”

As they approached the cottage the man’s voice grew louder, and they could distinguish his words: “Oh, what shall I do? Oh, who’ll tell me what to do?”

Mrs. Haldane shuddered. In that green, peaceful, picturesque spot that persistent reiteration of the man’s agony was horrible.

“Will you come in?” asked the vicar doubtfully.

His companion signed her assent, and Mr. Santley knocked gently at the door. In a few seconds some one was heard coming down the staircase, and a little gray-haired, gray-faced woman, dressed in black, came to the door and curtsied to her visitors.

“Mansfield is very bad again to-day?” said the vicar.

“Ay, this be one of his bad days, sir. He have been that bad since Sunday, I haven’t known what to do with him.”

The voice of the sick man suddenly ceased, and he appeared to be listening.

“Who’s there?” he shrieked out, after a pause. “Jennie; blast you! who’s there?”

“He be raving mad, ma’am!” said Mrs. Mansfield, apologetically. “He don’t know what he is saying.”

“Jennie, you damned little varmint——”

“Hush, John, it be the parson!” his wife called up the staircase.

“To hell with the parson! Oh, what shall I do? Oh, who’ll tell me what to do?”

“I’ll go up to him, sir, and tell him you’re here. He be very bad to-day, poor soul! Will it please you to walk in, ma’am?”

The little woman went upstairs, and her entrance to the sick-room was greeted with a volley of foul curses screamed out in furious rage. Gradually, however, the access of passion was exhausted, and the man was again heard repeating his hopeless appeal for relief.

“How do they live?” asked Mrs. Haldane, glancing about the small but scrupulously clean room in which she stood. “Have they any grown-up children?”

“No, only their two selves. She is the bread-winner. She does knitting and sewing, and the neighbours, who are very kind to her, assist her with her garden and do her many little kindnesses.”

“Poor woman! And she has endured this horrible infliction for two years!”

“If you please, sir, you can come up now,” said Mrs. Mansfield from the top of the stairs.

The vicar went up, and Mrs. Haldane followed him. They entered a pretty large whitewashed bedroom, with raftered roof and a four-post bedstead in the centre of the room. Though meagrely furnished, everything was spotlessly clean and tidy. On the bed lay a great gaunt man, panting and moaning, with his large filmy blue eyes turned up to the roof. He was far above the common stature, and his huge wasted frame, only half hidden by the bedclothes, was piteous to look at. His large venerable head, covered with thin, long white hair, filled one with surprise and regretful admiration. His face was thin and colourless, and a fringe of white beard gave it a still more deathly appearance. One could scarcely believe that the wreck before him was a common labourer. It seemed rather such a spectacle as Beatrice Cenci might have looked on had her father died cursing on his bed.

“Here’s parson come to see thee, and a lady wi’ him,” said Mrs. Mansfield, raising her husband’s head.

He looked at them with his glazed blue eyes, made prominent with pain, and his moaning grew louder, till they could again distinguish the constant cry for release from pain: “Oh, what shall I do? Oh, who’ll tell me what to do?”

“Try to think of God, and pray to Him for help,” said the vicar, bending over the suffering man.

“Oh, I have prayed and prayed and prayed,” he replied querulously; “but it does no good.”

“He were praying all day yesterday and singing hymns,” said Mrs. Mans-held. “I don’t know what’s gotten hold of him to-day, but he have been dreadful. And he were ever such a pious, God-fearing man. It fair breaks my heart to hear him swearing like that. But God will not count it against him, for he’s been clean beside himself.”

“Well, let me hear you pray now, Mansfield,” said the vicar. “Turn your heart and your mind to God, and He will comfort you.”

“O God,” said the sick man, with the obedient simplicity of a child, “I turn my heart and my mind to Thee; do Thou comfort me and take me to Thyself. O Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God and Saviour of mankind, do Thou remember me in Thy paradise. Look down upon me, O Lord, a miserable offender, and spare Thou them which confess their faults and are truly penitent.”

With a strange light on his white, wasted face, with his gaunt hands folded on the counterpane before him, the old man sat up in bed and prayed in the same loud voice of pain and semi-delirium. A wild, inconceivable, interminable prayer; for long after they had left the house, old Mansfield could be heard some hundreds of yards away, screaming to God for mercy and consolation.

“We had better leave him praying,” said the vicar softly; “and when he begins cursing and swearing again, Mrs. Mansfield, just kneel down and pray in a loud voice beside him. It will suggest a new current to his thoughts.”

“God won’t count his cursing against him, sir, will he?” asked the little woman. “He were ever a sober Christian man till this misery came on him.”

“No, no,” said the vicar; “God judges the heart, not the tongue of delirium.”

“How old is your husband?” inquired Mrs. Haldane.

“He be eighty-one come Martinmas, ma’am.”

“Poor old man! And you do sewing and knitting, do you not?”

“Yes, ma’am, what he lets me do. He be main fractious whiles.”

“And have you plenty to go on with at present?”

“I have what’ll keep me busy for a fortnight yet.”

“I will see you again before then. I hope your husband will soon be better.”

“There be no hope of that, ma’am. The only betterness for him ‘ll be when God takes him.”

“I know you will be able to find a use for this,” said Mrs. Haldane in a whisper, as they went, out of the house. “Goodbye for the present.”

“Oh, ma’am! God bless you!” said Mrs. Mansfield, the tears springing into her eyes as she looked at the gold coin in her hand.