CHAPTER XV

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PIERCE GOES ON A JOURNEY.

That winter was a very quiet and a very sad one. As the days passed we felt the wings of death brooding closer over the house. Little by little Pierce had given up the ways of one who was to live, had given up his bath-chair which was Lady O'Brien's present, and the sofa in Aline's room, and the coming downstairs. We knew now that he would come down no more till he was carried down, and we dreaded the spring that would bring further weakness to our beloved invalid, and the summer that would take him from us.

He liked to get up about noon and lie on a sofa drawn near the fire and have us to talk to him, and as the days turned towards the spring he lay by the window where he could see the cloudiness coming on the bare boughs and Brandon turning bronze and pink in the fresh cold air.

What his room became in those days I never could tell. Whatever had befallen our Pierce out in the world, and he carried the secret with him to the grave, he had saved his soul triumphantly out of it. To see him there dying in the flush of his youth, so resigned, so gentle, so merry even, clutched at our hearts. He prayed incessantly when he was alone or quiet, and in those latter days he came to have visibly the light of God's countenance upon his face. His room was like the cell of a saint to which we went for help, and comfort, and refreshment. Once when Aline and I came out together she suddenly caught at me and began to sob silently against my shoulder, yet in the midst of her anguish she whispered to me:

"Oh, Hilda, I wouldn't keep him if I could! I can see that he is ripe for heaven. And yet, and yet, it breaks my heart to see him so glad to go."

All this put Esther's love affairs greatly out of my mind. Daily she and her godmother drove over to see how Pierce was, and to sit with him a little. When his voice had sunk almost to a whisper he still tried to keep up the old merry banter with the friend who had been so good to him and us, and I have seen the dear old woman respond bravely while the big tears stood in her eyes.

Once when she had had to go away to conceal her emotion, she said to Aline:

"'Tis not tears of sorrow, my dear, I'm giving him, 'tis only that it dazzles my sinful old eyes to have sight of one of God's saints passing. Hush, now, my dear, don't be grudging him his joy. 'Tis for you who love him to be glad for him."

"But he is so young to die," said poor Aline, "and he and I were to have been always together."

"Ah, my child," responded the old woman with a sudden intuition, "you might have lost him more cruelly! Don't you see that he's had some trouble, young as he is, that has just ended his life for him. And kinder so. He wasn't one to grow hard and wicked, nor yet was he one to live carrying a dead heart about with him the rest of his days. Indeed, indeed, God gave him the better part."

"Oh," said Aline, "you think he has had a great sorrow?"

"I am sure of it, child, but maybe it was just through that same sorrow that God gathered him."

"Yet let him keep the rest But keep them with repining restlessness: Let him be rich and weary, that at least, If goodness lead him not, yet weariness May toss him to my breast"--

I said softly from my corner, where they had not seemed to notice me.

Lady O'Brien turned round sharply.

"That's it, Hilda, that's it. Your poetry has said it a thousand times better than I ever could."

Esther, during these visits, would sit on the floor by Pierce, and now and again would lay her cheek to his hand.

"I wish I could tell him, Hilda," she said once, "but I can't trouble him now. If all were well with us it would be another matter, but I must not bring trouble near him. And yet his touch comforts me."

Esther's fears now were mainly concerned with her lover's health. Her experience of Pierce had taught her to look for the signs and tokens of illness, and sometimes she came to me in a paroxysm of terror because she thought Harry De Lacy looked frailer than when last she had seen him, or because she had heard him cough, or noted the transparency of his hand against the light.

He was not an over-frequent visitor at Annagower, not more so than many other gentlemen, and as yet the understanding between him and Esther was not a formal one. She could not, she said, in these sad days, trouble anyone about her affairs, and it was better that he should be very patient and not come too often, nor try to force things to a conclusion.

"If I had him to nurse and feed up and take care of, everything would be well," she used to say; "but now I fear that he will stay at Angry, only to die there. I wish he would go back to Warwickshire and grow strong. I could bear absence, silence, anything, if I had not this dreadful fear."

"Except separation," I suggested.

"Only death could bring that about," said Esther solemnly. "If he were to leave me, and I were to hear nothing from him, I should know that he was dead."

The trouble that was brooding over us seemed to bind us Brandons more closely. The poor boys were always hanging about with wistful faces that spring, wanting to do something to help if they could. They used to come into Pierce's room and sit down with a great parade of not creaking or making noise, and soften their rough young voices to a hoarse whisper as they addressed him. I have seen the old humour flash into Pierce's sunken eyes as he looked at them, humour oddly blent with immense tenderness. Then out of sheer kindness he would send them off fishing or shooting, with an expressed desire for a trout or a quail, for which, when they arrived, he had no appetite.

The twins, too, proved themselves little hearts of gold. They would bring in their treasures from garden and woodland to show to Pierce--early primroses, or a group of tall daffodils, or a mass of wild hyacinths;--such things brought to him by his shy little sisters seemed to give him great pleasure. He would stroke their brown heads and tell them to be very good to Aline, and then would watch them fondly while they sat before the fire, their two heads bent over one book, till he fell asleep.

At Easter Freda came for a week. We thought she would have waited for the end, though that was not a thought we put into words for each other, but it seemed strange that she could not stay by Pierce as long as we kept his precious body on the earth.

Yet she seemed to care as much as any of us, and hardly left Pierce's room during that week.

"I suppose it is the child," Aline said to me as if she would excuse her. "We can't be expected to understand how a mother's heart drags her back to where her child is.

"Yet I should think," I said, "that she might have trusted him to Mrs. Vincent for a while, so that she might stay with Pierce while ... while--"

And here I broke off with a sob and went out of the room.

But I was present when Freda and Pierce said good-bye, at least for the beginning of their parting.

Freda had come in with her hat on, and looked very pale, I noticed, but tearless. She knelt down by Pierce, and I heard her say:

"I have to go, darling. You know, darling, that I must go, though it is breaking my heart to leave you now."

"I know, Freda," he said, "and it has been good to have had you this week. Good-bye, my dearest! When I am gone you will have two instead of one in that distant country."

I saw Freda wring her hands. Then I got up and went out of the room. I thought it best to leave them together.

So Freda went away, and though we said nothing, Aline, I am sure, felt a little chill at her heart against her that she could go. Yet, having seen the trouble in her face, I could not judge her. There must be reasons that we did not know.

But when Lady O'Brien broached the subject I did not know how to answer her.

"I don't want, my dear," she said, "to be prying and impertinent, and I can't think badly of a Brandon; yet, how is it that your sister couldn't stay to see the last of that dear saint, and to be a comfort to poor Aline when the time comes?"

"I do not know, Lady O'Brien," I answered truthfully.

"And why didn't you ask her, my dear?"

Yes; the old lady was right. Why hadn't we asked Freda to solve for us the mystery that had somehow grown up about her. It would have been the simplest thing to do, and might have saved us the wondering pain that was in our hearts when we thought of her.

"It is what we ought to have done, Lady O'Brien," I assented. "But one thing I can assure you of, Freda is not hard-hearted. If you had seen her face as I did, when she said good-bye to Pierce, you would be as sure as I am."

I have always heard that consumptives take it hard to die. Looking back now on those days, I thank God that it was not so with Pierce. He seemed to have foreseen every step of the way, and to be prepared to endure it all joyfully--the night-sweats, and the fevers, and the exhaustion, and the terrible, terrible difficulty of breathing. He never complained, and his only distress seemed to be that it caused pain to those he loved so dearly.

The month of May turned round in a glorious succession of scented days and silver nights. The end was very near now, and Aline was sitting up at nights with Pierce. It was a duty she would yield to no one, and even Oona forbore to press her, for we felt that she could not endure to be away from him a minute longer than she could help, and they were to be together so short a time.

I could not sleep those nights. The moon was so brilliant, and the scent of hawthorn and lilac so ravishing, and all night the corncrake sawed incessantly in the ripening grasses. So I often kept vigil with Aline and Pierce, though they did not know it.

I used to sit on the top step of the stairs from the great hall of Brandon, round the gallery of which many doors open. One at the stair-head opened into Pierce's room, and sitting there huddled in my dressing-gown I could hear his laboured breathing, and sometimes the soft murmur of Aline's voice as she spoke to him, or her quiet movements as she went to and fro in the room.

I sat there sometimes till well into the dawn. Over my head the great hall window held the east, and through its colours the sunrise came magnificently.

I was sitting there one night with my head in my hands, and the moonlight was casting black lozenges on to the floor. Everything was quiet in Pierce's room, save only the struggle for breath that went on incessantly. Suddenly there rang through the night outside the cry of a woman. It began thin as an Æolian harp, and swelled to a full chord of passionate lamentation. It came from without, but it seemed to ring through the old house and beat against the rafters of the high roof overhead.

I sprang to my feet terrified, and with a wild impulse to fly anywhere for human companionship, but my fear of disturbing the dying and the mourner kept me still.

Again the wild cry rang out, more piercing and heart-broken. I looked at the sick-room door, expecting Aline to appear, but all was quiet.

The third time it rang, and now it was close by me, close against the great window. I lifted my eyes in fascinated terror, and for a moment the moonlight was blotted out. Something like the wings of a great bird, or the trailing veil of a woman, passed slowly across the panes. Then I fell, huddled up, with my head against the upper step.

When I came to myself I was lying on my own bed, and Oona was bathing my head with something sharp and aromatic. The gray dawn was filling the room like a tide.

"Oh, Oona!" I cried; "what was it? Did you hear it, the dreadful thing?"

"Whisht, my lamb! I heard her. Many's the time I've heard her these sorrowful months. But she's not dreadful, my jewel. She loves every one of ye, and 'tis because her heart's breaking for the trouble in the family that she cries like that."

"They didn't hear, Oona?" I asked, with a new fear.

"Not a sound. Master Pierce was asleep when I went in, an' Miss Aline, poor lamb, was sound off, with her head against his hand. She's wore out, sure she is. I didn't disturb her. 'Sleep, my honey,' I said, for I knew she'd need all her strength for the trouble that's so close at hand. Why, when I found you in your white gown I thought 'twas you was the banshee, Miss Hilda, darling. There, never be afraid of her. Sure she loves every hair of your heads."

In the afternoon of the next day Pierce died. All through the day he had been dozing quietly, with his hand lying in Aline's, while incessantly she dried his face with a handkerchief. We were all in the room, including Esther, who had been sent for, all huddled about miserably, some of us weeping, and the boys manfully trying to keep the tears out of sight.

Now and again Oona would steal into the room, and bring one or another away for food. It was terrible waiting there for the end, with nothing to do but wait. At every least sound Pierce would start, and open his eyes, and then would sink off again into a stupor.

We were troubled about Aline, who had eaten nothing. After all it was Hugh who persuaded her. He brought some nourishing jelly to her, and when she shook her head, he was not to be put off like the rest of us.

"Pierce said last night that he gave you to me to take care of," said the poor boy huskily, and as he said it Pierce opened his eyes and smiled at him.

"You are the head of the house," he said slowly. "You will be what I failed in being."

Then he closed his eyes, and Aline allowed herself to be fed by spoonfuls with the jelly.

About three o'clock in the afternoon Pierce seemed to rally. He looked round at us all with calm seeing eyes, and seemed to know us quite well. His lethargy had passed away for the moment. He turned to Aline, and looked at her with great tenderness.

"I wish you would find out Desmond," he said, "and let him know that I loved him at the last, and that I knew he was right, and thanked him."

"I will do it, Pierce," said Aline.

"I wanted to say more," he said, "but I am too tired to think."

Then he smiled on us all round, and fell asleep smiling. We thought he would have died in that sleep, but he did not. The clock in the stable-yard had just struck five when he opened his eyes, full and wide, and gazed upwards.

"_Remember me_," he cried, "_when Thou art come into Thy kingdom._"

And then a film seemed to settle on the brightness, and the light slowly faded out.

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