CHAPTER VII.

A SUMMER STORM.

MRS. COLTON entered the drawing-room by the door as Laurence Desmond came in by the window. “I have given you the sparkling Rüdesheimer instead of champagne, Mr. Desmond,” she said, cheerily: “Donner has put it in a basket of rough ice; and Vokes has brought me in the finest peaches I have seen this year, Emily. He is quite proud of them.”

After this came Lucy, pale and grave, but looking the picture of innocence and prettiness, in her white dress, and little sailor hat with ribbon of Oxford blue.

“Not dressed, Emily!” exclaimed Laurence, as he shook hands with Mrs. Jerningham.

The exclamation was purely mechanical. His mind must indeed have been pre-occupied, or he would have noticed the icy coldness of the hand that lay so listlessly in his own.

“I have only my hat to put on. Wilson has seen to the shawls and cloaks, no doubt. I am quite ready.”

Mrs. Jerningham took her hat from the sofa, where she had thrown it an hour before; a very archetype of hats, bordered with the lustrous plumage of a peacock’s breast. Of these glories she had tasted to satiety; all the bliss that millinery can give to the heart of woman had been hers. But there comes a time when even these things seem vanity. To-day the peacock’s plumage might have been dust and ashes, for any pleasure it afforded her.

They went out to the boat. The day was warm to oppressiveness, and Mrs. Jerningham’s attire of the thinnest.

“I hope you have plenty of wraps,” said Laurence; “there’s rather an ugly cloud to windward.”

“Oh yes; Wilson always gives us an infinity of that kind of thing,” Mrs. Jerningham answered, glancing at the bottom of the boat, where lay a heap of shawls and cloaks of the burnous order, just a little less gauzy in texture than the dresses of the two ladies.

“I really am almost afraid of the day,” muttered Lawrence, looking to the south-west, where a stormy darkness brooded over the landscape.

“I am not afraid,” replied Emily; “it is to be our last day, remember, Laurence. Let us have our last day together.”

Something in her tone startled and touched him. He looked at her earnestly, but the proud face gave no sign.

“It shall be as you please,” he said; “but I must not forget that you are not out of the hands of Dr. Leonards, and you have told me he enjoined you to be careful.”

“Oh yes; a physician always says that when he can find nothing else to say.”

There was a little more discussion, and presently the boat shot away, swift as a dart, with the strong sweep of the sculls. They were to land at Chertsey, picnic at St. Ann’s Hill, and come home to Hampton in the evening. Laurence Desmond had the proprietorial mandate in his pocket, that for him and his friends the gates of St. Ann’s should be opened.

Only a few big, splashing drops of rain overtook them between Hampton and Chertsey, and when they landed, the stormy darkness seemed to have vanished from the south-western horizon. Mr. Desmond had made all his arrangements; a fly was in waiting, and in half an hour the little party were wandering in the groves which have been sanctified to history by the fame of Fox.

The picnic was to all appearance a success. The almost feverish gaiety which had distinguished Emily Jerningham of late was especially noticeable in her manner to-day. _Carpe diem_ was the philosophy which sustained her in this bitter crisis. This last day would she snatch. It was her festive supper on the eve of execution. Like that bright band whose laughter echoed in Trophonian caves of grim Bastille, before the dawn that was to witness their slaughter, did Emily Jerningham pour out the sparkling vintage of the Rhineland as a libation upon that altar where she was so soon to sacrifice her selfish love.

The western sky was dark and louring when the revellers left the groves of St. Ann, and were driven back to the boat-builder’s yard, where they had landed.

“I really think it might be better to go back by road,” Laurence said, doubtfully, as he looked at the cloudy horizon. Six o’clock chimed from the tower of Chertsey Church as he spoke. “It will be nearly nine o’clock before I can get you home, you see,” he added; “and if there should be rain----”

“We will endure it without a murmur,” interposed Emily. “I am bent on going back by water.”

“Would Dr. Leonards approve?”

“I will not hold my life on such terms as Dr. Leonards would dictate. We shall have moonlight before we reach Hampton. Come, Laurence, I am quite ready.”

Mr. Desmond submitted, and placed his fair companions in the boat with all due care. Then, after the preliminary pushing-off, the oars dipped softly in the water, and the boat sped homewards.

Mrs. Jerningham’s gaiety left her with a strange abruptness. She leant back against the cushioned rail of the boat, silent and thoughtful, and with fixed, dreamy eyes.

“You are tired, I fear,” Laurence remarked by and by, wondering at her silence.

“Yes; I am a little tired.”

It would seem as if Lucy too were tired, for she also was silent, and sat watching the changing landscape with a thoughtful gaze. But upon her silence Laurence Desmond made no remark. She had, indeed, been silent and thoughtful all the day, and yet not unhappy. Unhappy!--he loved her! She had been telling herself that fact over and over again, with ever-delightful iteration. He loved her! To know that it was so constituted an all-sufficient happiness.

The water-journey with one pair of sculls between Chertsey and Hampton is a long one, and many are the locks which arrest the swift progress of the voyager, and often echoes the cry of “Lo-o-óck!” over the quiet waters; but so bright and changing is the landscape, so soothing the influence of the atmosphere, that the voyager must be dull indeed who finds the way too long.

The changing banks shifted past Mrs. Jerningham like pictures in a dream. A profound silence had fallen upon the boat. The rower dipped his oars with a measured mechanical motion, and his grave face might have been the countenance of Charon himself, conveying a boatload of shadows to the Rhadamanthine shore. To Emily it seemed as if they were indeed voyagers on some mystic, symbolical river, rather than on the friendly breast of Thames. The end of her life had come. What had she to do but die? All that she held dear--the one sustaining influence of her weak soul, the very keystone of the edifice of her life--this she was to lose. And what then?

Beyond this point she could not look. That a dismal duty, a bitter sacrificial act, must be performed by her, she knew. But that by the doing of that act she might possibly attain peace, consolation, release from a long and harassing bondage, she could not foresee.

“I will give him up,” she said to herself; “soon--to-night. It is like the bitter medicine they made me take sometimes when I was a child. I cannot take it too soon.”

And then she looked at Lucy, and her lip curled ever so little as she scrutinized the fair but not altogether perfect face.

She measured her charms against those of her happier rival, and told herself that all the advantage was on her own side. And yet, and yet--this fair-faced girl was dearer to him, by an infinite degree, than she who had loved him so many years.

While silence still held the voyagers as by a spell, the rain came splashing heavily down, and the perils of the journey began. They had not yet reached Sunbury, and some miles of winding water lay between them and Hampton.

“I am afraid we are in for it,” Laurence said. “We had better land at Sunbury, and get back in a fly.”

Mrs. Jerningham was opposed to this. She declared that she had not the slightest objection to the rain; she was wrapped up to an absurd degree; and she drew her gauzy burnous round her in evidence of the fact, while Lucy adjusted a second cloak of thin scarlet fabric over the gauzy white burnous. Laurence, however, insisted on landing, and did his utmost to procure a vehicle; while the two ladies shivered in a chilly inn-parlour, their garments already damp with the heavy rain. He came back to them in despair. No fly was to be had at Sunbury for love or money. There was a Volunteer ball at Chertsey that very evening, and every vehicle was engaged.

“I had much rather go back in the boat,” said Emily.

“But the doctor said you were to be so careful,” suggested Lucy.

“I do not believe in the doctor. Come, Laurence, it is better to encounter another shower than to wait shivering here for unattainable flies.”

To this Mr. Desmond unwillingly assented. There was a pause in the summer storm--a faint glimmer of watery sunlight low in the cloudy west. The boat seemed the only possible means of getting home.

“If you would stay here all night,” he suggested, “it would be better than running any risk.”

“I could not exist a night in a strange hotel,” replied Mrs. Jerningham, glancing round the bare, bleak-looking room, with a shudder. “Please take us home, Mr. Desmond, if you are not afraid of the rain yourself.”

There seemed no alternative; so Laurence assented to an immediate return to the boat, comforting himself with the hope that the gleam of sunlight was the harbinger of a fine evening. He insisted, however, upon borrowing a thick shawl and a railway rug from the landlady at Sunbury, in case of the worst.

For half a mile the faint streak of sunshine lighted the voyagers, and then the worst came; the floodgates of the sky were opened, and a summer deluge descended upon the quiet river. Mr. Desmond packed his two charges in the borrowed wraps, and sculled with a desperate vigour.

“It’s most unlucky,” he said; “there’s nothing for it between this and home.”

The rain fell in torrents and without ceasing, until the lights of Hampton shone upon them, blotted and blurred by the storm. Long peals of thunder grumbled in the distance; vivid lightnings lit the pale faces of the women; while Mr. Desmond pulled steadily on, lifting the boat over a broad sweep of water with every swoop of his sculls.

One of the voyagers in that boat took a kind of pleasure in the storm. To Emily Jerningham this splashing of rain and sonorous pealing of thunder seemed better than the summer twilight, the calm June sky, and glassy water--that outward peace which had so jarred upon the tempest within.

“Oh, if we could go on through storm and rain to the end! if we could drift out of this earthly river into the thick darkness of the great ocean!” she said to herself; “if the tangled skein of life could be severed with one stroke of the witch’s scissors! But we have to unravel the skein with our own weary fingers, and lay the threads smoothly out before we dare say our work is done, and lie down beside it to die.”

They were at River Lawn by this time, drenched to the skin, despite the borrowed wraps. Mrs. Jerningham’s butler was waiting at the top of the landing-stage with umbrellas, and within there were fires burning and warm garments ready for the drenched travellers. Wilson took forcible possession of her dripping mistress in the hall.

“Oh, mum, with your cough!” she exclaimed, in tones of horror; while Mrs. Colton assisted in drawing off the pulpy mass of limp gauze that had been such airy silken fabric in the morning.

“Never mind my cough, Wilson,” said Mrs. Jerningham, impatiently. “Pray see to Lucy, aunt; she was less protected by the railway-rug than I. Good-night, Laurence, since I suppose I shall not be allowed to appear again this evening. Mr. Desmond will stop here to-night of course, aunt; will you see that he has a warm room, and that he drinks brandy-and-water, and that kind of thing? Let me see you to-morrow, please, Laurence; good-night.”

After this Mrs. Jerningham consented to be carried off by the devoted Wilson, who did all she could to undo the mischief done by that watery voyage from Sunbury.

More than one dweller beneath the pretty, fantastic roof of that river-side villa lay wakeful and restless throughout the summer night, listening to the pattering of the rain, the sobbing gusts of wind among the trees, and at daybreak the shrill clamour of distant farmyards. Three there were in that house for whom life’s journey seemed to lie through the thick wilderness--a wilderness unlighted by sun, moon, or stars; pathless, painful obscurity.

In the breakfast-room that morning there was no sign of Mrs. Jerningham. Wilson sent to say that her mistress had slept very little, and was altogether too ill to rise; and on this Mrs. Colton repaired to her niece’s room, leaving Lucy and Laurence alone together at the breakfast-table, sorely embarrassed to find themselves so left.

Lucy looked down at her plate, and to all appearance became absorbed in a profound meditation upon the pattern of the china. Laurence cut open the _Times_, and made a conventional remark upon the previous night’s debate, concerning the subject whereof Lucy knew about as much as she knew of lunar volcanoes.

Mrs. Colton returned very quickly, much alarmed by her niece’s condition. She sent a messenger for the local doctor immediately, while Lucy ran away from the breakfast-table to see if she could be of any use to the invalid.

“I trust Emily is not much the worse for last night’s business,” said Laurence, alarmed by Mrs. Colton’s evident anxiety.

“I fear it has done her great harm,” replied the matron; “her cough is very trying, and she is in a high fever. I hope Mr. Canterham will come at once.”

“I will wait to see him, and then run up to town for Dr. Leonards,” said Laurence.

The local doctor came speedily. He looked very grave when he returned from his patient’s room. He confessed that there was fever, and some danger of inflammation.

“I will bring down Dr. Leonards,” said Laurence.

“I think it would be wise to do so,” replied the Hampton surgeon, wondering who this gentleman was who took so decided a part.

Mr. Desmond lost no time in carrying out his intention; and Dr. Leonards arrived at River Lawn at four o’clock that afternoon, accompanied by Laurence, who could not rest in London.

“I warned Mrs. Jerningham of her danger,” said the physician, gravely.

“Indeed? I never heard that there was any cause for alarm. Did you make her understand as much?”

“I spoke as plainly as one dares speak to a patient, and I begged her to let me talk to her aunt. But she forbade this, and promised to take all possible care.”

“And she has taken no care. Great God, it is a kind of suicide!”

The passionate exclamation startled the doctor, and he looked at Laurence, wondering what relationship he bore to the lady of whom they had been speaking. Laurence saw the wondering look, and divined its meaning.

“I have known Mrs. Jerningham for many years,” he said. “Her father was one of my oldest and closest friends. It was at my instigation that she consulted you, but I had no idea there was danger.”

There was no more said. Dr. Leonards saw the patient, and conversed with the Hampton surgeon. That there was danger he made no attempt to deny, when closely questioned by Mrs. Colton, who was half-distracted by this sudden calamity. He did not indeed say that the case was hopeless, but his manner was by no means hopeful.

“The cough has been obstinately neglected for months,” he said; “and the maid tells me there has been frequent spitting of blood.”

“And it has all been hidden from me,” cried Mrs. Colton; “how cruel--how cruel!”

“Yes, it is sad that there should have been such concealment. I was very angry with the maid; but she told me she dared not disobey her mistress. I cannot conceal from you that there has been great mischief done.”

This interview took place in the drawing-room, while Mr. Desmond paced to and fro the lawn, outside the open windows, anguish-stricken.

This sudden peril to the woman he had loved--to whom he was so closely bound by a tie so binding, so intangible--came upon him as an overwhelming calamity. A sense of guilt, remorse unspeakable, smote his heart. He had grown weary of his bondage; yet the possibility of his freedom appalled him. There was grief, there was horror in the thought of liberty so regained. In this hour of Emily Jerningham’s peril, the man who had loved her forgot everything except that she had been dear to him. The old tenderness was re-awakened in his breast. He forgot her jealousies, her sneers, her caprices, her fretfulness,--everything but the one alarming fact of her illness.

He intercepted Dr. Leonards, and obtained from him a clearer statement than the physician had cared to make to Mrs. Colton. The great man admitted that the symptoms were as bad as they could be.

“I shall see Mrs. Jerningham again to-morrow,” he said. “If we can get her safely through this crisis, and send her to a warmer climate for the autumn, we may patch her up. But a permanent cure is quite out of the question; _that_ was hopeless from the first.”

“From the first? From the time of her first visit to you?”

“Yes.”

Laurence went back to London sorely distressed. The remorseful sense of shortcoming that oppresses the mourner in every earthly severance weighed heavily upon him. Few and infrequent had been the reproaches that had escaped his lips; but in his heart he had often rebelled against Emily Jerningham’s tyranny. And she had loved him only too dearly; her jealousy, her despotism, had been alike the evidence of that too-exacting affection. Could he be so ungrateful as to revolt against so tender a tyranny, so flattering a despotism?

He had rebelled; he had found his chains almost intolerable; and he could not forgive himself this secret treason.

For a fortnight he went to and fro between London and River Lawn, neglecting everything, except the indispensable work of his paper, for these daily journeys; but in all those fourteen days he saw neither the invalid nor her faithful nurse, Lucy Alford. He heard from the doctors that Miss Alford’s fidelity was beyond all praise, and from Mrs. Colton he also heard of Lucy’s devotion. For a week the patient continued in extreme danger, then there came a happy change,--nature rallied. At the end of the fortnight the Hampton doctor was triumphant, the London physician gravely satisfied. Mrs. Jerningham was able to come down to the drawing-room, to take a slow turn once a day on the sunlit strip of lawn before the windows, to eat a few mouthfuls of chicken or jelly, with some faint show of appetite. It was settled that she and her aunt should go to Madeira for the autumn and winter, and for the immediate benefit of the sea-voyage, as soon as she could well be moved.

“In the meantime I have a little business to arrange,” said Mrs. Jerningham.

“Let the business wait till next spring, my dear Emily,” pleaded Mrs. Colton.

“I think not, auntie,” the invalid answered, with a mournful smile.

On the following day she wrote her husband a brief note, which was addressed to Park Lane, and forwarded thence to Greenlands. The letter ran thus:

“DEAR MR. JERNINGHAM,--I have been very ill, and my doctors insist on my spending the autumn abroad. As there is always in such cases a risk of one’s not returning, I should like much to see you before I go. Please come to Hampton at your earliest convenience, and oblige yours faithfully,

E. J.”

Having despatched this letter, Mrs. Jerningham abandoned herself to the delight of a long, quiet afternoon with Mr. Desmond, who was to see her that day for the first time since her illness.

He found her much changed; but the change had only increased her beauty. An almost supernal delicacy of tint and spirituality of expression characterized the thin face, the large, luminous eyes. The first sight of that loveliness, which was not of this earth, sent a sharp anguish to his heart. It cost him a struggle to return the invalid’s greeting with a cheerful countenance, and to speak hopefully of her improved health.

“I shall never forgive myself that water-journey,” he said.

“You have no cause to reproach yourself with that. It was I who obstinately faced the danger from first to last. But the doctors say the water-journey was only my culminating imprudence.”

She changed the subject after this, and begged that no one would talk to her of her health. Laurence was surprised to find her so serene, so cheerful, so thoughtful of others, and forgetful of her own weakness. Never had she appeared to him more beautiful, never so estimable. Her manner to Lucy was peculiarly kind and tender.

“You can never know what this dear girl has been to me!” she said, holding Lucy’s hand in both her own as she praised her. “In those long, miserable nights of delirium--I was delirious every night for more than a week, Laurence--I used to see her kind, pitying face watching me; and there was comfort in it when I was at the worst. Wilson was very good, and Aunt Fanny all that is kind and devoted; but this dear child seems to have been created to comfort the sick.”

“I used to nurse poor papa when he was ill,” the girl answered, simply. “He was often delirious--much worse than you, Mrs. Jerningham; and he used to want to throw himself out of the window, or to kill himself with his razors. And then he would grow angry, and say that flies were tormenting him, and try to catch them,--when there were no flies, you know. It was very dreadful.”

By and by Mrs. Jerningham asked to be left alone with her friend.

“I want to ask Mr. Desmond’s advice about business affairs, auntie,” she said. “He knows as much law as most lawyers, you know.”

Mrs. Colton discreetly withdrew, accompanied by Lucy.

“It is nearly ended, Laurence,” said Mrs. Jerningham, when they were gone. She looked up at Mr. Desmond with a tender, earnest look, and held out her wasted hand. He took the pale, semi-transparent hand and raised it to his lips.

“What is nearly ended, my dear Emily?” he asked, gently.

“Your bondage.”

“God forbid, if that means that I am to lose you.”

“Yes, Laurence, that is inevitable. I doubt if the knot could ever have been disentangled; but it can be cut. Death makes an easy end of many difficulties; and I think nothing less than death could have ended our perplexities. I am not going to preach a sermon, dear friend. I only want you to understand that my doom is sealed, and that I know it is so, and am not altogether sorry.”

“Oh, Emily, what a bitter reproof to me!”

“No, Laurence, a reproof to myself. My own short-sighted selfishness has been the cause of all our sufferings; for we have suffered acutely, both of us. I had no right to absorb your life; no right to hinder you from forming ties without which the most prosperous life seems blank and dreary; no right to stand between you and a home. But it is all over. I am drifting out of the troubled sea into a quiet harbour, and I can afford to be, not generous, but just.”

“Emily!”

“Hear me patiently, dear. I will not talk of these things again. I know where your heart has been given, and what a pure unselfish love you have, almost unconsciously, won for yourself. I knew of that innocent love months ago; but I only knew your sentiments on the day of our Chertsey picnic. I was in the fernery when you told Lucy your secret. Yes, Laurence, I listened. It was a contemptible act, of course; but I was too desperate to consider that. I heard all you said--all. I heard enough to know your devotion, your generosity; to hate my own selfishness. All that day I felt myself the vilest of creatures. I knew that it was my duty to set you free; but I shrank, with a miserable cowardly shrinking, from the sacrifice. I knew that for you and me together there could be no such thing as happiness, either in the present or the future; but I was capable of chaining you to my wretchedness rather than of seeing you happy with another. All that is most base and selfish in my nature was in the ascendant that day. No words can tell how I struggled with my wickedness. I was not strong enough to vanquish it. I knew that it was my duty to surrender every claim upon you; but I could not bring myself to face that duty. From the maze of my perplexities, extrication seemed impossible. Happily for all of us, Providence has given me a means of escape. I may keep you my prisoner to the end of my life, Laurence, and yet be guilty of no supreme selfishness, for my days are numbered.”

“My dear Emily, why imagine this?”

“I know it, Laurence. I did not need to read it in the faces of my doctors, as I have read it. For a long time I have felt a sense of age creeping upon me; a weariness of life, which is not natural to a woman of thirty. Death has approached me very slowly, but his hold is so much the more sure. Comfort me as much as you like, Laurence, but do not delude me. I know that I have a very short time to spend upon this earth; let me spend some of it with you.”

“I will be your slave, dear.”

“And when I am gone you will forget how sorely I have tried you? You will remember me with tenderness? Yes, I know you will. And your young wife shall be no loser by my friendship, Laurence. I have the power to will away some of the money settled on me by Mr. Jerningham, and I shall divide it between my aunt and Lucy. My aunt has a very good income of her own, you know, and needs nothing from me, except as a proof of my affection for her. Your young wife shall not come to you dowerless, Laurence! Your wife! How sweet that word ‘wife’ can sound! I can fancy you in your home. You will not marry _very_ soon after I am gone, Laurence?”

“My dearest,” cried Laurence, with a sob, “do you think old ties are so easily broken? No, Emily, the love I have borne for you is a part of my manhood. It cannot be put away. That innocent girl, with her tender homelike sweetness, stole my heart before I was aware it could change; but she cannot blot out the past. If ever she is my wife, I shall love her dearly and faithfully, and a home shared with her will be very pleasant to me; but in the sacred corner of my heart must for ever remain the image of my first love. Men do not forget these things, Emily; nor is the second love the same as the first; and the man who outlives the faith of his youth feels that ‘there hath passed away a glory from the earth.’”

“You will remember me, and there will be some regret in the remembrance. I ask no more of Fate. Oh, Laurence, we have had some happy hours together! Try to remember those. My life within the past year or two has been a long disease. Try to forget how I have worried you with my causeless jealousies, my selfish exactions.”

Very tender and reassuring were the words which Laurence Desmond spoke to his first love after this. An almost extinguished affection revives in such an hour as this. As the candle of life burns brightest at the close, so too Love’s torch has its expiring splendour, and flames anew before we turn it down for ever.

When Lucy and Mrs. Colton returned from their walk they found the invalid unusually cheerful. The voyage to Madeira was discussed, and Emily talked with delight of that distant island. Mr. Desmond was well up in the topography of the remote settlement, and planned everything in the pleasantest manner for the avoidance of fatigue to the invalid.

“I wish Potter were more used to travelling,” said Mrs. Colton, of the River Lawn butler. “We shall have to take him with us, I think; but he will be quite lost among Spaniards and Portuguese, and I don’t know how he will be able to arrange affairs for us with regard to hotel accommodation, and so on.”

“I will relieve Potter from all responsibility upon that question,” said Mr. Desmond.

“You!” cried Emily.

“Yes, if you will permit me to be your escort. I spent a week in Madeira when I was on my Spanish wanderings.”

“And you will leave London and your literary work in order to make our journey pleasant for us?”

“I would hazard more important interests than those I have at stake.”

Mrs. Jerningham’s eyes grew dim, and she had no words in which to thank the faithful slave from whom a few months before she would have haughtily demanded such allegiance, and bitterly resented its refusal.