No Name, Wilkie Collins [reading the story of the TXT] 📗

The marked caution of the lawyer’s reply dwelt uneasily on Miss Garth’s mind, until the long-expected event of the day recalled all her thoughts to her one absorbing anxiety on Mrs. Vanstone’s account.

Early in the evening the physician from London arrived. He watched long by the bedside of the suffering woman; he remained longer still in consultation with his medical brethren; he went back again to the sickroom, before Miss Garth could prevail on him to communicate to her the opinion at which he had arrived.

When he called out into the antechamber for the second time, he silently took a chair by her side. She looked in his face; and the last faint hope died in her before he opened his lips.

“I must speak the hard truth,” he said, gently. “All that can be done has been done. The next four-and-twenty hours, at most, will end your suspense. If Nature makes no effort in that time⁠—I grieve to say it⁠—you must prepare yourself for the worst.”

Those words said all: they were prophetic of the end.

The night passed; and she lived through it. The next day came; and she lingered on till the clock pointed to five. At that hour the tidings of her husband’s death had dealt the mortal blow. When the hour came round again, the mercy of God let her go to him in the better world. Her daughters were kneeling at the bedside as her spirit passed away. She left them unconscious of their presence; mercifully and happily insensible to the pang of the last farewell.

Her child survived her till the evening was on the wane and the sunset was dim in the quiet western heaven. As the darkness came, the light of the frail little life⁠—faint and feeble from the first⁠—flickered and went out. All that was earthly of mother and child lay, that night, on the same bed. The Angel of Death had done his awful bidding; and the two sisters were left alone in the world.

Earlier than usual on the morning of Thursday, the twenty-third of July, Mr. Clare appeared at the door of his cottage, and stepped out into the little strip of garden attached to his residence.

After he had taken a few turns backward and forward, alone, he was joined by a spare, quiet, gray-haired man, whose personal appearance was totally devoid of marked character of any kind; whose inexpressive face and conventionally-quiet manner presented nothing that attracted approval and nothing that inspired dislike. This was Mr. Pendril⁠—this was the man on whose lips hung the future of the orphans at Combe-Raven.

“The time is getting on,” he said, looking toward the shrubbery, as he joined Mr. Clare.

“My appointment with Miss Garth is for eleven o’clock: it only wants ten minutes of the hour.”

“Are you to see her alone?” asked Mr. Clare.

“I left Miss Garth to decide⁠—after warning her, first of all, that the circumstances I am compelled to disclose are of a very serious nature.”

“And has she decided?”

“She writes me word that she mentioned my appointment, and repeated the warning I had given her to both the daughters. The elder of the two shrinks⁠—and who can wonder at it?⁠—from any discussion connected with the future which requires her presence so soon as the day after the funeral. The younger one appears to have expressed no opinion on the subject. As I understand it, she suffers herself to be passively guided by her sister’s example. My interview, therefore, will take place with Miss Garth alone⁠—and it is a very great relief to me to know it.”

He spoke the last words with more emphasis and energy than seemed habitual to him. Mr. Clare stopped, and looked at his guest attentively.

“You are almost as old as I am, sir,” he said. “Has all your long experience as a lawyer not hardened you yet?”

“I never knew how little it had hardened me,” replied Mr. Pendril, quietly, “until I returned from London yesterday to attend the funeral. I was not warned that the daughters had resolved on following their parents to the grave. I think their presence made the closing scene of this dreadful calamity doubly painful, and doubly touching. You saw how the great concourse of people were moved by it⁠—and they were in ignorance of the truth; they knew nothing of the cruel necessity which takes me to the house this morning. The sense of that necessity⁠—and the sight of those poor girls at the time when I felt my hard duty toward them most painfully⁠—shook me, as a man of my years and my way of life is not often shaken by any distress in the present or any suspense in the future. I have not recovered it this morning: I hardly feel sure of myself yet.”

“A man’s composure⁠—when he is a man like you⁠—comes with the necessity for it,” said Mr. Clare. “You must have had duties to perform as trying in their way as the duty that lies before you this morning.”

Mr. Pendril shook his head. “Many duties as serious; many stories more romantic. No duty so trying, no story so hopeless, as this.”

With those words they parted. Mr. Pendril left the garden for the shrubbery path which led to Combe-Raven. Mr. Clare returned to the cottage.

On reaching the passage, he looked through the open door of his little parlor and saw Frank sitting there in idle wretchedness, with his head resting wearily on his hand.

“I have had an answer from your employers in London,” said Mr. Clare. “In consideration of what has happened, they will allow the offer they made you to stand over for another month.”

Frank changed color, and rose nervously from his chair.

“Are my prospects altered?” he asked. “Are Mr. Vanstone’s plans for me not to be carried out? He told Magdalen his will had provided for her. She repeated his words to me; she said I ought to know all that his goodness and generosity had done for both of us. How can his death make a change? Has anything happened?”

“Wait till Mr. Pendril