St. Martin's Eve: A Novel

The dull sombre light of a November afternoon was rapidly giving place to twilight. The day had been wet and cold; and the sodden leaves that strewed the park of one of England's fair domains did not contribute to the cheerfulness of the scene. The mansion belonging to it stood on a gentle eminence, well open to view, and looking boldly down on its lands: a long but not high house of red brick, with many windows; a cheerful house, rising behind a wide and gently sloping lawn, which on this ungenial day gave out as wretched an appearance as did all else of outward nature.

But if the weather was rendering the demesne desolate, it seemed not to affect the house itself. Lights were gleaming from many of its numerous windows, were passing from room to room, from passage to passage; and fires added their red glow to the general brightness. A spectator might have said that some unusual excitement or gaiety was going on there. Excitement in that house there indeed was, but of gaiety none; for grim Death was about to pay it a visit: not to call any waiting for him in weary old age, but to snatch away the young and lovely.

Had you entered the hall, so bright with light, what would have struck you most was the hushed, unusual silence. Nearly all the servants of the establishment were gathered there; but so still were they, so motionless in their repose, that it had something unnatural about it. They stood in small groups, for the most part only half showing themselves, and gazing towards a closed dining-room, sorrow and consternation imprinted on their faces. Two physicians, almost as hushed in manner just now as the servants themselves, were partaking of refreshment within it. The butler himself waited on them; and as he came out and crossed the hall with noiseless tread, he repeated an ominous opinion he had heard hinted at. One of the women-servants, her tears streaming, started up the broad, carpeted staircase with impulsive but soft footfalls, and a younger girl, looking frightened to death, followed her. They stole along the corridor to the right, and halted at a door there. Why, or for what purpose, they could not have told, since they might not presume to enter the chamber; for their lady was lying there at the point of doom.

A handsome, spacious bed-chamber, opening into a dressing-room, but the door was almost closed between them now. Over the dressing-room fire was a tall, upright, middle-aged woman, more intelligent and respectable-looking than are some of her class. She wore a clean print gown, and a close white cap shaded a cheerful countenance. The fire shone full on her brown eyes, and on the tears that glistened in them. Strange sight! for the continuous scenes of sickness, sometimes of death, in which these hired nurses' lives are passed, tend to render them callous to outward emotion.

Pacing the carpet slowly and sadly, his eyes cast down in thought, was a little man of ruddy complexion, sharp, thin features, and hair going grey with years. It was Mr. Pym, the family medical attendant. His hands were clasped behind him, as he walked, and his gaze, worn and anxious, was never lifted from the ground.

"This will make the second case we have lost this year," suddenly observed the woman, whose name was Dade, in whispered tones. "What can make it so unlucky a year?"

The surgeon gave no answer. Perhaps he did not like the "we" in her remark. But he knew that his duty was always performed to the very utmost of his skill and power; that it had been so in the two cases to which she alluded; and his conscience, so far, was at peace before God.

"There are no further means that can be tried?" resumed the nurse, using the words as an assertion, more than a question, and she glanced towards the partially-open door connecting the two apartments.

"None," was the conclusive reply. "She is sinking rapidly."

A long pause. The nurse stood motionless, the surgeon pursued his slow and noiseless tread. Suddenly he stopped and turned his head, speaking in quick tones.

"Where's the baby, Mrs. Dade?"

"He's in the cradle, sir, by her side. She looked as if she wanted him left there."

And then the doctor remembered, and paced on as before. He had spoken in momentary forgetfulness.

The silence within the sick chamber was as great and more painful: the moments of bustle and anxiety had passed away. The fire in the grate had burnt down to embers; a pale light was emitted from the shaded lamp; the air was redolent, almost to faintness, of perfume. Essences had been sprinkled about in profusion, as if they would make pleasant the way to death! The heavy blue velvet curtains were drawn back from the bed; and, lying there, was a form young and fair, with a pale, exhausted face. Everything in the chamber spoke of wealth, comfort, luxury: but not all the wealth and luxury of the whole world combined, had they been brought together, could have arrested the fast-fleeting spirit already on its wing. On the far side of the bed stood a pretty cradle, ornamented with blue silk and lace: the little child so quietly and unconsciously sleeping in it, had seen the light but yesterday.

Leaning over the bed was a young man bowed down with grief, of attractive features and gentlemanly bearing. Not long had they been man and wife; but a year at most; and now it was hard to part; doubly hard with this new tie which had been born to them. Yet they both knew it must be so, and he had thrown his arm lightly across her, and laid his cheek, wet with tears, against hers, vainly wishing, perhaps half hoping, that his heart's bitter prayers might avail to renew her life. The silence between them had been long and agonizing: each heart was aching with painful thoughts; yet it seemed in that last hour as if they could not give them utterance. May Heaven shed its balm on all such partings!

He raised his face and pushed his hair from his brow as he looked at her, for she had moved restlessly, as if in sudden pain. It was not pain of body: of that she was free in this, the passing: but pain of mind. An anxious care, one of the many she must leave on earth, was pressing upon that lady's brain.

"When the months and the years go by," she murmured, breaking the silence, and clasping her hands in feeble supplication to him, "and you think of another wife, oh choose, one that will be a mother to my child. Be not allured by beauty, be not tempted by wealth, be not ensnared by specious deceit; but take one who will be to him the loving mother that I would have been. Some one whom you know well and can trust. Not a stranger, not a----"

"I shall never marry again," he interrupted in impassioned tones, when his first surprise allowed him to speak. "You, my first and only love, shall be the sole wife ever taken to my bosom. Never shall another woman usurp your place. And here I swear----"

"Hush! hush!" she panted, laying her hand upon his lips to stay the incautious words. "It were cruel of me to exact such a promise from you: and it would be useless for you to make it, for you would never keep it, save with self-upbraiding. The remembrance of this scene will pass away; the remembrance of me will pass; and then you will ask yourself why should your life be condemned to solitude. No, no. To remain faithful to the dead is not in man's nature."

He thought in his own heart, honestly thought it then, that her opinion was a mistaken one, and he marvelled that she should so speak. He felt as sure as he could feel of anything in this world, that he should prove a living refutation of it. Dying though she was, partially oblivious already to earth and earth's interests, she yet saw clearer into human nature than he.

"Yet oh, forget me not wholly!" she whispered. "Let there be brief moments when the remembrance of me shall return to you; when you will dwell upon me as having been the one you once best loved on earth!"

Another deep silence from words, for he could not answer: his sobs were choking him; the pulses of his anguished heart were beating wildly. She spoke not from exhaustion; and several minutes passed on.

"What will you have, him named?" he asked abruptly, pointing towards the cradle.

"Call him Benjamin," she replied, after a minute's thought, and she spoke now with difficulty. "He cost Rachel her life, as this child has cost mine. And oh, may he be to you the solace that Benjamin was to old Jacob; and may you love and cherish this child as he did his!"

Her voice gradually failed her, a spasm smote her features, and she lay more heavily on the pillow. Her husband raised her: he clasped her fluttering heart to his; he wildly kissed her pallid face. But that face was losing its look of consciousness, and no tenderness could arrest the departing spirit. In a paroxysm of alarm: as if, now that the moment had come, it took him by surprise, a thing that had not been looked for: he cried out to the medical man in the adjoining chamber.

Mr. Pym came in, followed by the nurse. He gave one glance at the bed, and then whispered the woman to summon the physicians. He knew their presence would be utterly useless, but at such times man deems it well to fulfil these outward forms.

They hastened up the stairs. They remained but a few minutes in the room, and then left it; soon left the house. The better part of that lovely lady had quitted it before they did.

And it was only the previous day that the joy-bells had rung out in the adjacent village on account of the birth! Only this same morning that the local newspaper, wet from the press, had given forth the festal news to the world!

"On the 10th inst., at Alnwick Hall, the wife of George Carleton St. John, Esquire, of a son and heir."

And the journal went its way, as journals do go their way, into many a neighbouring home, whose inmates made their comments on the one piece of news that was of more interest to them than all the rest, and congratulated each other on the birth of Alnwick's heir, little conscious of the tragedy that was supervening upon it.

Amongst the houses to which the journal penetrated was one on the other side the village of Alnwick. A small, unpretending dwelling, this house, standing a little away from the highroad, but a pretty place withal, hidden amidst its surrounding shrubs and trees. It was called "The Cottage." Its mistress had named it so with a sort of affectation of humility, for it was superior to a cottage, even to an elegant one.

Lying back in a lounging chair, in one of the pretty sitting-rooms, where she had just thrown herself, not from illness but from fatigue, was the owner of the house, when the newspaper was taken in. A woman of nearly fifty years, but looking a great deal younger, with her still bright blue eyes and her auburn hair. She was a widow; a widow for the second time. Barely twenty years of age when her first husband, Mr. Norris, died, she had soon espoused another, Colonel Darling. In ten years after that she was a widow again, and had remained so. She chose to retain the name of Norris, without any right to it, and her cards were printed "Mrs. Norris Darling," so that people, especially strangers, hardly knew by which to address her, and sometimes called her Norris and sometimes Darling. The fact is, Mrs. Darling was a little given to pretension, as ladies will be, when conscious of a want of dignity in themselves or their surroundings. She had been packing things all the morning; she, her maid, and two of her daughters; for they were summoned from home unexpectedly; and she was falling into a doze when the footman entered.