The King's Achievement, Robert Hugh Benson [beginner reading books for adults txt] 📗

for Ralph an hour after she had been taken ill; the pain had seemed to become fiercer as the hours went on; she had died at ten o'clock that night.

Ralph stood there and listened, his head pressed against the high mantelpiece, and his fingers stretching and closing mechanically to supple the stiffened joints.

"Mistress Atherton was with her all the while," said his father; "she asked for her."

Ralph shot a glance sideways, and down again.

"And--" he began.

"Yes; she was shriven and anointed, thank God; she could not receive Viaticum."

Ralph did not know whether he was glad or sorry at that news. It was a proper proceeding at any rate; as proper as the candles and the shroud and the funeral rites. As regards grief, he did not feel it yet; but he was aware of a profound sensation in his soul, as of a bruise.

There was silence for a moment or two; then the wind bellowed suddenly in the chimney, the tall window gave a crack of sound, and the smoke eddied out into the room. Ralph turned round.

"They are with her still," said Sir James; "we can go up presently."

The other shook his head abruptly.

"No," he said, "I will wait until to-morrow. Which is my room?"

"Your old room," said his father. "I have had a truckle-bed set there for your man. Will you find your way? I must stay here for Mistress Atherton."

Ralph nodded sharply, and went out, down the hill.

* * * * *


It was half an hour more before Beatrice appeared; and then Sir James looked up from his chair at the sound of a footstep and saw her coming up the matted floor. Her face was steady and resolute, but there were dark patches under her eyes, for she had not slept for two nights.

Sir James stood up, and held out his hands.

"Ralph has come," he said. "He is gone to his room. Where are the others?"

"The priests are at prayers and Meg too," she said, "It is all ready, sir. You may go up when you please."

"I must say a word first," said Sir James. "Sit down, Mistress Atherton."

He drew forward his chair for her; and himself stood up on the hearth, leaning his head on his hand and looking down into the fire.

"It is this," he said: "May our Lord reward you for what you have done for us."

Beatrice was silent.

"You know she asked my pardon," he said, "when we were left alone together. You do not know what that means. And she gave me her forgiveness for all my folly--"

Beatrice drew a sharp breath in spite of herself.

"We have both sinned," he went on; "we did not understand one another; and I feared we should part so. That we have not, we have to thank you--"

His old voice broke suddenly; and Beatrice heard him draw a long sobbing breath. She knew she ought to speak, but her brain was bewildered with the want of sleep and the long struggle; she could not think of a word to say; she felt herself on the verge of hysteria.

"You have done it all," he said again presently. "She took all that Mr. Carleton said patiently enough, he told me. It is all your work. Mistress Atherton--"

She looked up questioningly with her bright tired eyes.

"Mistress Atherton; may I know what you said to her?"

Beatrice made a great effort and recovered her self-control.

"I answered her questions," she said.

"Questions? Did she ask you of the Faith? Did she speak of me? Am I asking too much?"

Beatrice shook her head. For a moment again she could not speak.

"I am asking what I should not," said the old man.

"No, no," cried the girl, "you have a right to know. Wait, I will tell you--"

Again she broke off, and felt her own breath begin to sob in her throat. She buried her face in her hands a moment.

"God forgive me," said the other. "I--"

"It was about your son Ralph," said Beatrice bravely, though her lips shook.

"She--she asked whether I had ever loved him at all--and--"

"Mistress Beatrice, Mistress Beatrice, I entreat you not to say more."

"And I told her--yes; and, yes--still."


CHAPTER V


THE MUMMERS

It was a strange meeting for Beatrice and Ralph the next morning. She saw him first from the gallery in chapel at mass, kneeling by his father, motionless and upright, and watched him go down the aisle when it was over. She waited a few minutes longer, quieting herself, marshalling her forces, running her attention over each movement or word that might prove unruly in his presence; and then she got up from her knees and went down.

It had been an intolerable pain to tell the dying woman that she loved her son; it tore open the wound again, for she had never yet spoken that secret aloud to any living soul, not even to her own. When the question came, as she knew it would, she had not hesitated an instant as to the answer, and yet the answer had materialised what had been impalpable before.

As she had looked down from the gallery this morning she knew that she hated, in theory, every detail of his outlook on life; he was brutal, insincere; he had lied to her; he was living on the fruits of sacrilege; he had outraged every human tie he possessed; and yet she loved every hair of his dark head, every movement of his strong hands. It was that that had broken down the mother's reserve; she had been beaten by the girl's insolence, as a dog is beaten into respect; she had only one thing that she had not been able to forgive, and that was that this girl had tossed aside her son's love; then the question had been asked and answered; and the work had been done. The dying woman had surrendered wholly to the superior personality; and had obeyed like a child.

* * * * *


She had a sense of terrible guilt as she went downstairs into the passage that opened on the court; the fact that she had put into words what had lain in her heart, made her fancy that the secret was written on her face. Then again she drove the imagination down by sheer will; she knew that she had won back her self-control, and could trust her own discretion.

Their greeting was that of two acquaintances. There was not the tremor of an eyelid of either, or a note in either voice, that betrayed that their relations had once been different. Ralph thanked her courteously for her attention to his mother; and she made a proper reply. Then they all sat down to breakfast.

Then Margaret had to be attended to, for she was half-wild with remorse; she declared to Beatrice when they went upstairs together that she had been a wicked daughter, that she had resented her mother's words again and again, had behaved insolently, and so forth. Beatrice took her in her arms.

"My dear," she said, "indeed you must leave all that now. Come and see her; she is at peace, and you must be."

The bedroom where Lady Torridon had died was arranged as a chapelle ardente; the great bed had been moved out into the centre of the room. Six tall candlesticks with escutcheons and yellow tapers formed a slender mystical wall of fire and light about it; the windows were draped a couple of kneeling desks were set at the foot of the bed. Chris was kneeling at one beside his father as they went in, and Mary Maxwell, who had arrived a few hours before death had taken place, was by herself in a corner.

Beatrice drew Margaret to the second desk, pushed the book to her, and knelt by her. There lay the body of the strange, fierce, lonely woman, with her beautiful hands crossed, pale as wax, with a crucifix between them; and those great black eyebrows beyond, below which lay the double reverse curve of the lashes. It seemed as if she was watching them both, as her manner had been in life, with a tranquil cynicism.

And was she at peace, thought Beatrice, as she had told her daughter just now? Was it possible to believe that that stormy, vicious spirit had been quieted so suddenly? And yet that would be no greater miracle than that which death had wrought to the body. If the one was so still, why not the other? At least she had asked pardon of her husband for those years of alienation; she had demanded the sacraments of the Church!

Beatrice bowed her head, and prayed for the departed soul.

* * * * *


She was disturbed by the soft opening of a door, and lifted her eyes to see Ralph stand a moment by the head of the bed, before he sank on his knees. She could watch every detail of his face in the candlelight; his thin tight lips, his heavy eyebrows so like his mother's, his curved nostrils, the clean sharp line of his jaw.

She found herself analysing his processes of thought. His mother had been the one member of his family with whom he had had sympathy; they understood one another, these two bitter souls, as no one else did, except perhaps Beatrice herself. How aloof they had stood from all ordinary affections; how keen must have been their dual loneliness! And what did this snapped thread mean to him now? To what, in his opinion, did the broken end lead that had passed out from the visible world to the invisible? Did he think that all was over, and that the one soul that had understood his own had passed like a candle flame into the dark? And she too--was she crying for her son, a thin soundless sobbing in the world beyond sight? Above all, did he understand how alone he was now--how utterly, eternally alone, unless he turned his course?

A great well of pity broke up and surged in her heart, flooding her eyes with tears, as she looked at the living son and the dead mother; and she dropped her head on her hands again, and prayed for his soul as well as for hers.

* * * * *


It was a very strange atmosphere in the house during the day or two that passed before the funeral. The household met at meals and in the parlour and chapel, but seldom at other times. Ralph was almost invisible; and silent when he appeared. There were no explanations on either side; he behaved