Girlhood and Womanhood<br />The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes, Sarah Tytler [books for men to read TXT] 📗

respected, which could have shown him a good example and remonstrated with him with authority—he might have been reclaimed?"

About the middle of summer there came a seasonably rainy period, such as frequently precedes a fine harvest. But Gervase Norgate was so ailing that he could not go out and look at his fields, where the corn in the ear was filling rarely, and the growth of second clover was knee-deep. He was forced to keep the house. He loathed food, and his sleep had become a horror to him. He had fits of deadly sickness and of shaking like an aspen. His only resource, all the life that was left to him, was to be found in his cellar; and even Miles, seeing his master's extremity, brought out and piteously pressed the brandy upon him.

Gervase's cronies had never come about his house since his marriage. There had been something in Diana which had held them at arm's length; and although they had heard and scoffed at her fall, they had not the wit to discern that it clean removed the obstacle to their harbouring about the place as they had done before her reign and abdication. They might come and go now by day and night without feeling themselves too much for Mrs. Gervase Norgate, or being compelled to regard her as a being apart from them. But they did not comprehend the bearing of the common degradation, and they had not returned to their haunt as they might have done.

[Page 331]Gervase had declined into such a state of fractiousness and sullenness, that he was very poor company even for illiterate country-bred men like himself. He was something of a ghastly spectacle, as he sat there, with his glass three-fourths empty, and part of its contents spilt around him, trying to smoke, trying to warm himself, with the soles of his boots burnt from being pressed on the top of the wood fire, his teeth chattering, at intervals, notwithstanding, as he cast furtive, dark glances behind him.

Gervase was alone. Mrs. Gervase was dozing on a drawing-room couch, not troubling to order a fire, though the room was on the ground-floor,—a pleasant room in sunshine, but looking dull and dismal in wet and gloom. She had lain there all the evening, with her hair, tumbled by the posture, fallen down and straying in dim tresses on her shoulders.

Overcome by illness, Gervase at last defied his shrinking from his room and bed, and retired for the night. His uneven footsteps and the closing of his door had not long sounded through the house, which might have been so cheery and was so dreary and silent, when Mrs. Gervase, cold and comfortless, rose and proceeded to the study. She was drawn by the fire and the light, but she was drawn more irresistibly by the subtle, potent odour in the air. She came on like a sleep-walker. She sank down in the chair which her husband had occupied, and stretched out her fine white hand to the decanters which Miles had not removed. She had raised one, and was about to pour its contents into a glass, when a noise at the door startled her, and caused her to hold her arm suspended. Ger[Page 332]vase, returning for the bottle she grasped, stood in the doorway.

Ruined husband and ruined wife confronted each other on their stained hearthstone. His weakness, replaced by failing strength, gathered up and increased tenfold by horror and rage. Her eyes glared defiance, and her presence there, in her white dress, with the crimson spots on each cheek, and the fair hair scattered around her, was a presence of ominous beauty, the hectic beauty of the fall. A feather's weight might have turned the scale whether Gervase should totter forward and deal Diana a deadly blow which should finish the misfortunes of that generation at Ashpound, and brand Ashpound itself with the inhuman mark of an awful crime; or whether he should melt in his misery, weep a man's scalding tears, and bemoan their misery together. Diana's words were the feather's weight: she broke God's unbearable silence, and by God's power and mercy saved both. She cried out, not so much in self-defence, for she was a daring, intrepid woman, as in righteous accusation, "You dare not blame me, for you taught me, you brought me to it."

Through his undone condition he owned the truth of the accusation, and the old spring of manliness in him welled up to protect the woman who spoke the truth and impeached him justly of her ruin as well as his own.

"No, I dare not blame you. We are two miserable sinners, Die." And he let his arms fall on the table and bowed his head over them.

He had spared her, he had not taunted her, and he had not called her Die for many a day before. She put down [Page 333]the decanter and cowered back with a sense of guilt which made her glowing beauty pale, fade, wither, like the sere leaf washed by the heavy tears of a November night's rain.

When Gervase Norgate lifted up his bent head again, all the generosity that had ever looked out of his comely face reappeared in its changed features for a moment. "I have smitten you when you came and tried to cure me, Die. And I cannot cure myself. I believe, before God, if I can get no more drink, I shall go to-night; but I shall go soon, anyhow, no mistake, and I ought to do something to save you, when I brought you to it. So, do you see, Die? here go the drink and me together." And with that he took up the decanters and dashed them, one after the other, on the hearthstone, the wine and brandy running like life-blood in bubbling red streams across the floor. He summoned Miles, and demanded his keys—all the keys of closet and cellar in the house. And when the old man, flustered and scared, did not venture to dispute his will, he caught up the keys, cast them into the white core of the wood-fire, piled the blazing logs upon them, and stamped them down, sending showers flying up the wide chimney.

Then the blaze of passion died away from Gervase's brow, the force of self-devotion ebbed out of him, his unfastened vest and shirt collar did not allow him air enough, and he fell back, gasping and quaking and calling the devils were upon him.

Old Miles wrung his hands, and shouted "Help," and cried the Master was dying, was dead.

[Page 334]But Diana pushed the old servant aside, put her arms round Gervase, and raised him on her breast, telling him, "Do not think of dying for me, Gervase; I am not worthy. You must not die, I will not have you die. Oh, God! spare him till I kneel at his feet and beg him to forgive all my disdainful pity, and we repent together."

Gervase Norgate did not die that night: it might have been easier for him if he had, for he lay, sat, walked in the sunshine deadly sick for months. When men like him are saved, it is only as by fire, by letting a part of the penal fire pass over them, and enduring, as David did, the pains of hell.

But all the time Die did not leave him. Night and day she stood by him, renouncing her own sin for ever. She shared vicariously its revolting anguish and agonizing fruits, in his pangs. And the woman learned to love the man as she would have learned to love a child whom she had tended every hour for what looked like a lifetime, whom she had brought back from a horrible disease and from the brink of the grave, to whose recovery she had given herself body and soul, in a way she had never dreamt of when she first undertook the task. She had lulled him to sleep as with cradle songs, she had fed him with her hands, ministered to him with her spirit. She learned to love him exceedingly.

Other summer suns shone on Ashpound. Gervase and Diana had come back from a lengthened sojourn abroad. Gervase, going on a visit to his faithful old Aunt Tabby, looked behind him, to say, half-shamefacedly, half-yearningly, "I wish you would come with me, Die; I do not [Page 335]think I can pay the visit without you." And she exclaimed, with a little laugh, beneath which ran an undercurrent of feeling, still and deep, "Ah! you see you cannot do without me, sir." And he rejoined, laughing too, but a little wistfully, "I wish I could flatter myself that you could not do without me, madam."

She assured him, with a sudden sedateness which hid itself shyly on his breast, "Of course I could not do without you to save me from being a pillar of salt, to make me a loving, happy woman."

"God help you, happy Die!"

"Yes, Gervase; it is those who have been tried that can be trusted, and I have been in the deep pit, and all clogged with the mire along with you, and He who brought us out will not suffer us to fall back and be lost after all."

The neighbours about Ashpound were slow to discover, as erring men and women are always slow to discover, that God is more merciful than they, and that he can bring good out of evil, light out of darkness; but they discovered it at last, and, after a probation, took Mr. and Mrs. Gervase Norgate back into society and its esteem and regard, and the family at Ashpound became eventually as well considered, and as much sought after in friendship and marriage, as any family among the southern moors, long after John Fitzwilliam Baring had dressed for dinner, and taken a fit with a cue in his hand.

As for Aunt Tabby and old Miles, they said, "All's well that ends well." But old Miles stood out stubbornly, "That it is not a many carts afore the horses as comes in [Page 336]at the journey's end, and it ain't dootiful-like in them when they does do it, though I'm content." And Aunt Tabby argued, "It is shockingly against morality to conclude that her fall—and who'd have thought a strong woman like her would fall?—has been for his rising again."

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[Page 337]

MISS WEST'S CHRISTMAS ADVENTURE. I.

MISS WEST, I will thank you to see that the school-books and the school-work are in their proper places, and the school-room locked for the holidays."

The speaker, Miss Sandys, was the proprietor of Carter Hill School, and Miss West was the governess. The season was Christmas, and the children, without an exception, had departed rejoicing.

With a sense of liberty as keen as the children's, but with a glee of a decidedly soberer kind, Miss West executed the commission, and then took her place beside her superior at the parlour-fire.

Miss Sandys was quite an elderly woman. She was over fifty, and had grown grey in the service. Her features, even in her prime, had been gaunt, like the rest of her person. But she had mellowed with age, and had become what the Germans call charakteristisch, and what we may term original and sagacious. She dressed well—[Page 338]that is, soberly and substantially—in soft wools or strong silks, as she possibly did not find it easy to do in her youth. She was stately, if somewhat stiff, in her deportment. At present she felt intoxicated at the prospect of enjoying for ten days the irresponsibility of private life.

Miss West had not by any means attained the Indian summer of Miss Sandys; she was still in the more trying transition stage. In spite of the shady hollows in the cheeks, and the haggard lines about the mouth, she was a young woman yet. Indeed, had it not been for those hollows and lines, she would have been pretty—as she was when the clear cheeks had no wanness in their paleness, but were round and soft; when the straight mouth pouted ever so little, and the sharp eyes were bright, and the fine dark hair was profuse instead of scanty. But she laid no claim to prettiness now, and dressed as plainly as feminine propriety would allow.

As she sat in the linen and drugget-covered parlour, which was a drawing-room when in full-dress, she could not help a half-conscious restraint creeping over her. But this was not because Miss Sandys was an ogress, rather because she herself had grown semi-professional even in holiday trim. She looked into the compressed fire in the high, old-fashioned grate, and wondered how she would pass the coming idle week. She had spent a good many