Fated to Be Free Part 60

How far are we right at such times? Most of us have pa.s.sed through them, and how much harder misfortune is to bear when complicated with the bitterness of self-reproach and self-scorn!

It was not dark. John Mortimer remembered that this was Midsummer night.

A few stars were out; the moon, like a little golden keel, had gone down. Quant.i.ties of white roses were out all over the place. He saw them as faint, milky globes of whiteness in the dusk.

There were lights in the opened rooms up-stairs. It was very hot; sometimes he saw the nurses pa.s.sing about. Presently he saw Emily. She was to be one of the watchers that night with Anastasia.

The little creature a day or two after her accident, finding fault with every one about her, and scarcely conscious that her own pain was to blame because they could not please her, had peevishly complained that she wanted Mrs. Nemily. Mrs. Nemily was a kind lady, and could tell her much prettier stories, and not give her such nasty things to drink.

Emily was instantly made aware of this, but when she arrived her little charge was past noticing any one. And yet Emily was full of hope.

Impa.s.sioned and confiding prayer sustained her courage. She had always loved the little one keenly, and desired now with indescribable longing that her father might be spared the anguish of parting with her thus.

Yes, there was Emily; John Mortimer saw her move toward the window, and derived some faint comfort from the knowledge that she would be with Anastasia for the night.

Lovely, pale, and calm, he saw and blessed her, but she could not see him; and as she retired she too was added to the measure of his self-reproaches. He had lost her, and that also he had but himself to thank for; he himself, and no other, was to blame for it all.

He loved her. Oh yes, he had soon found out that he loved her! Fool! to have believed that in the early prime of his life the deepest pa.s.sions of humanity were never to wake up again and a.s.sert themselves, because for the moment they had fallen into a noonday sleep. Fool, doubly fool, to have prided himself on the thought that this was so; and more than all a fool, to have let his scorn of love appear and justify itself to such a woman as Emily. Lovely and loving, what had he asked of her?

which was to be done without the reward of his love. To bring up for him another woman's children, to manage a troublesome household, to let him have leisure and leave to go away from her from time to time, that he might pursue his literary tastes and his political destiny, to be responsible, to be contented, and to be lost, name and ambition, in him and his.

All this had flashed across his mind, and amazed him with his own folly, before he reached the town on the morning that he left her. But that was nothing to the knowledge that so soon followed, the discovery that he loved her. For the first time in his life it seemed to be his part in creation to look up, and not to look down. He wrestled with himself, and fought with all his power against this hopeless pa.s.sion; wondered whether he had done his cause irretrievable mischief by speaking too soon, as well as by speaking amiss; seldom hoped at all, for he had been refused even with indignation; and never was less able to withdraw his thoughts from Emily, even for a moment, than when he felt most strongly that there was no chance for him at all.

Still they went on and on now, his thoughts of her; they gave poignancy to all his other pain. The place, the arbour where he sat, had become familiar to him of late. He had become used to wander and pace the garden at night some time before this accident. Hour after hour, night after night, he had gone over the matter; he had hardly decided to go back to her, and implore her to give him a chance of retrieving his deplored mistake, when she sent him back his ring, and early the next morning was gone.

That was all his own fault, and but for it he now thought he should not have been so un.o.bservant of things about him. Could he, but for such weary nights of sleepless wandering and watching, have let his darling boy drive those young horses, filling the carriage so full of his brothers and sisters that there was no room for any beside him whose hands were strong enough to hold them in? He was not sure. His clearer thought would not consent to admit that he could have foreseen the danger, and yet he had been so accustomed to hold things in hand, and keep them safe and secure, that he could hardly suppose they would not, but for his own state of mind, have been managed better.

It was midnight now; he had no intention of coming indoors, or taking any rest, and his thoughts went on and on. When the misfortune came, it was still his own perturbation of mind, which had worn and fretted him so that he could not meet it as he might have done. This woman, whom he loved as it seemed to him man had never loved before, had taken herself out of his reach, and another man would win her. How could he live out the rest of his days? What should he do?

It was because that trouble, heaped upon the other, had made it hard to give his mind to the situation, that he had not forced himself to take rest, and what sleep he could, instead of wasting his powers in restless watching, till his overwrought faculties and jaded eyes had led him to the fearful moment when he had all but killed his own child.

Emily had scarcely spoken to him since her arrival. All her thoughts were for her little favourite. Perhaps even, she saw little in this fatal carelessness at all out of keeping with his character, as she had lately thought of it. No, his best chances in this life were all brought to an end; the whole thing was irretrievable.

"Is that Valentine?" he asked as some one approached.

"Yes, it is past one o'clock. I am going to bed; I suppose you will too."

"No," he answered in the dull inward voice now become habitual with him.

"Why should I come in? Val, you know where my will is?"

"Yes," said Valentine, distressed to hear him say it.

"If you and Giles have to act, you will find everything in order."

"What is to be done for him?" thought Valentine. "Oh for a woman to talk to him now!--I cannot." He took to one of the commonplaces of admonition instead: "Dear John, you must try and submit yourself to the will of G.o.d."

"You have no need to tell me of that," he answered with the same dimness of speech. "I do not rebel, but I cannot bear it. I mean," he continued, with the calmest tone of conviction, "that this is killing me."

"If only the child might be taken," thought Valentine, "he would get over it. It is the long suspense that distracts him."

"They want you to come in and eat something," he urged, "there is supper spread in the dining-room."

"No, I cannot."

He meant, "I cannot rise from my seat." Valentine supposed him only to say as usual that he could not eat.

"My mind wanders," he presently added, in the same low dull tone; and then repeated what he had said to his old gardener, "But sometimes I find relief in prayer."

Valentine went in rather hastily; he was alarmed not so much at the words as at his own sudden conviction that there was a good deal in them. They might be true. He must find some one to console, to talk to him, some one that could exercise influence over him. He knew of no one but Emily who would be likely to know what to say to him, and he hung about on the stairs, watching for her, hoping she would come out of little Anastasia's room; but all was so quiet, that he hoped the little sufferer might be asleep, and he dared not run the least risk of waking her.

It was now two o'clock.

John Mortimer saw some one holding aside a dark dress, and moving down the rose-covered alley towards him. It was not dark, and yet everything looked dim and confused. The morning star was up, it seemed to tremble more than usual; he knew he should not see it set, it would go out in its place, because the dawn came so early.

He knew it was Emily. "Only one thing could have brought her," he said in his dull tone, and aloud. "The end is come."

But no, she was at his side. Oh what a sweet tone! So clear and thrilling, and not sad.

"The darling is just as usual, and I have brought you some coffee; drink it, dear John, and then come in and take some rest."

"No," he answered in a low tone, husky and despairing.

She made out that he was sitting on the wooden bench his boys had carved for him. It had only been placed there a few days, and was finished with an elbow, on which he was leaning his arm. It was too low to give him much support. She came to his side, the few trembling stars in the sky gave scarcely any light. Standing thus, and looking at the same view that was before him, she saw the lighted windows of the children, Johnnie's, little Bertram's, and Anastasia's. Three or four stars trembling near the horizon were southing fast. One especially bright and flickering was about, it was evident, in a few minutes to set; as far as she could see, John was gazing at it. She hoped he was not linking with it any thought of the little tender life so likely also to set. She spoke to him again in tones of gentle entreaty, "Take this cup, dear John."

"I cannot," he answered.

"Cannot!" she said, and she stooped nearer, but the dimness hid his face.

"No; and something within me seems to be failing."

There was that in the trembling frame and altered voice that impressed her strangely. What was failing? Had the springs of life been so strained by suffering that there was danger lest they should break?

Emily did not know; but everything seemed to change for her at that moment. It was little to her that he should discover her love for him now; but he would not, or, if he did, he was past caring, and he had been almost forgotten by those about him, though his danger was as great as that of any. He had been left to endure alone. She lifted the cup to his lips, and thought of nothing, and felt nothing, but the one supreme desire to console and strengthen.

"She will die, Emily," he found voice enough to say when the cup was empty; "and I cannot survive her."

"Yes, you can; but I hope she will not die, dear John. Why should she live so long, to die after all?"

She leaned toward him, and, putting her arms about him, supported his head on her shoulder, and held it there with her hand. At least that once her love demanded of her that she should draw near. _She_ should not die; perhaps there was a long life before her; perhaps this might be the only moment she might have to look back to, when she had consoled and satisfied her unheeded heart.

"Have you so soon forgotten hope?" she said as she withdrew her arms.

"I thought I had."

"They always say she is not worse; not to be worse is to be better."

"They never say that, and I shall not forgive myself."

"No?" she exclaimed, and sighed. There was, indeed, so little hope, and if the child died, what might not be feared for the father? "That is because, though you seem a reverent and sincere Christian, you do not believe with enough reality that the coming life is so much sweeter, happier, better, than this. Few of us can. If you did, this tragedy could not fold itself down so darkly over your head. You could not bring yourself almost to the point of dying of pity and self-blame, because your child is perhaps to taste immortal happiness the sooner for your deplored mistake. Oh! men and women are different."

"You do not think you could have outlived a misfortune so irreparable?"