Mary Marston

"But," she added, "I never was in that room when I was here before, and, the twice I have now been in it, I was too much occupied to take much notice of things about me. Two windows, I know, look down into a quiet little corner of the courtyard, where there is an old pump covered with ivy. I remember no other."

"Is there any way of getting on to the top of that wall from this tower?" asked Joseph.

"Certainly there is. People often walk round the top of those walls. They are more than thick enough for that."

"Are you able to do it?"

"Yes, quite. I have been round them more than once. But I don't like the idea of looking in at a window."

"No more do I, miss; but you must remember, if it is his room, it will only be your eyes going where the whole of you has a right to be; and, if it should not be that room, they have driven you to it: such a necessity will justify it."

"You must be right," answered Mary, and, turning, led the way up the stair of the tower, and through a gap in the wall out upon the top of the great walls.

It was a sultry night. A storm was brooding between heaven and earth. The moon was not yet up, and it was so dark that they had to feel their way along the wall, glad of the protection of a fence of thick ivy on the outer side. Looking down into the court on the one hand, and across the hall to the lawn on the other, they saw no living thing in the light from various windows, and there was little danger of being discovered. In the gable was only the one window for which they were making. Mary went first, as better knowing the path, also as having the better right to look in. Through the window, as she went, she could see the flicker, but not the fire. All at once came a great blaze. It lasted but a moment—long enough, however, to let them see plainly into a small closet, the door of which was partly open.

"That is the room, I do believe," whispered Mary. "There is a closet, but I never was in it."

"If only the window be not bolted!" returned Joseph.

The same instant Mary heard the voice of Mr. Redmain call in a tone of annoyance—"Mary! Mary Marston! I want you. Who is that in the room?—Damn you! who are you?"

"Let me pass you," said Joseph, and, making her hold to the ivy, here spread on to the gable, he got between Mary and the window. The blaze was gone, and the fire was at its old flicker. The window was not bolted. He lifted the sash. A moment and he was in. The next, Mary was beside him.

Something, known to her only as an impulse, induced Mary to go softly to the door of the closet, and peep into the room. She saw Hesper, as she thought, standing—sidewise to the closet—by a chest of drawers invisible from the bed. A candle stood on the farther side of her. She held in one hand the tumbler from which, repeatedly that evening, Mary had given the patient his medicine: into this she was pouring, with an appearance of care, something from a small dark bottle.

With a sudden suspicion of foul play, Mary glided swiftly into the room, and on to where she stood. It was Sepia! She started with a smothered shriek, turned white, and almost dropped the bottle; then, seeing who it was, recovered herself. But such a look as she cast on Mary! such a fire of hate as throbbed out of those great black eyes! Mary thought for a moment she would dart at her. But she turned away, and walked swiftly to the door. Joseph, however, peeping in behind Mary, had caught a glimpse of the bottle and tumbler, also of Sepia's face. Seeing her now retiring with the bottle in her hand, he sprang after her, and, thanks to the fact that she had locked the door, was in time to snatch it from her. She turned like a wild beast, and a terrible oath came hissing as from a feline throat. When, however, she saw, not Mary, but the unknown figure of a powerful man, she turned again to the door and fled. Joseph shut and locked it, and went back to the closet. Mary drew near the bed.

"Where have you been all this time?" asked the patient, querulously; "and who was that went out of the room just now? What's all the hurry about?"

Anxious he should be neither frightened nor annoyed, Mary replied to the first part of his question only.

"I had to go and tell a friend, who was waiting for me, that I shouldn't be home to-night. But here I am now, and I will not leave you again."

"How did the door come to be locked? And who was that went out of the room?"

While he was thus questioning, Joseph crept softly out of the window; and all the rest of the night he lay on the top of the wall under it.

"It was Miss Yolland," answered Mary.

"What business had she in my room?"

"She shall not enter it again while I am here."

"Don't let Mewks in either," he rejoined. "I heard the door unlock and lock again: what did it mean?"

"Wait till to-morrow. Perhaps we shall find out then."

He was silent a little.

"I must get out of this house, Mary," he sighed at length.

"When the doctor comes, we shall see," said Mary.

"What! is the doctor coming? I am glad of that. Who sent for him?"

"I don't know; I only heard he was coming."

"But your lawyer, Mary—what's his name?—will be here first: we'll talk the thing over with him, and take his advice. I feel better, and shall go to sleep again."

All night long Mary sat by him and watched. Not a step, so far as she knew, came near the door; certainly not a hand was laid upon the lock. Mr. Redmain slept soundly, and in the morning was beyond a doubt better.

But Mary could not think of leaving him until Mr. Brett came. At Mr. Redmain's request she rang the bell. Mewks made his appearance, with the face of a ghost. His master told him to bring his breakfast.

"And see, Mewks," he added, in a tone of gentleness that terrified the man, so unaccustomed was he to such from the mouth of his master—"see that there is enough for Miss Marston as well. She has had nothing all night. Don't let my lady have any trouble with it.—Stop," he cried, as Mewks was going, "I won't have you touch it either; I am fastidious this morning. Tell the young woman they call Jemima to come here to Miss Marston."

Mewks slunk away. Jemima came, and Mr. Redmain ordered her to get breakfast for himself and Mary. It was done speedily, and Mary remained in the sick-chamber until the lawyer arrived.

CHAPTER LV.

DISAPPEARANCE

"I am afraid I must ask you to leave us now, Miss Marston," said Mr. Brett, seated with pen, ink, and paper, to receive his new client's instructions.

"No," said Mr. Redmain; "she must stay where she is. I fancy something happened last night which she has got to tell us about."

"Ah! What was that?" asked Mr. Brett, facing round on her.

Mary began her story with the incident of her having been pursued by some one, and rescued by the blacksmith, whom she told her listeners she had known in London. Then she narrated all that had happened the night before, from first to last, not forgetting the flame that lighted the closet as they approached the window.

"Just let me see those memoranda," said Mr. Brett to Mr. Redmain, rising, and looking for the paper where he had left it the day before.

"It was of that paper I was this moment thinking," answered Mr. Redmain.

"It is not here!" said Mr. Brett.

"I thought as much! The fool! There was a thousand pounds there for her! I didn't want to drive her to despair: a dying man must mind what he is about. Ring the bell and see what Mewks has to say to it."

Mewks came, in evident anxiety.

I will not record his examination. Mr. Brett took it for granted he had deliberately and intentionally shut out Mary, and Mewks did not attempt to deny it, protesting he believed she was boring his master. The grin on that master's face at hearing this was not very pleasant to behold. When examined as to the missing paper, he swore by all that was holy he knew nothing about it.

Mr. Brett next requested the presence of Miss Yolland. She was nowhere to be found. The place was searched throughout, but there was no trace of her.

When the doctor arrived, the bottle Joseph had taken from her was examined, and its contents discovered.

Lady Malice was grievously hurt at the examination she found had been going on.

"Have I not nursed you like my own brother, Mr. Redmain?" she said.

"You may be glad you have escaped a coroner's inquest in your house, Lady Margaret!" said Mr. Brett.

"For me," said Mr. Redmain, "I have not many days left me, but somehow a fellow does like to have his own!"

Hesper sought Mary, and kissed her with some appearance of gratitude. She saw what a horrible suspicion, perhaps even accusation, she had saved her from. The behavior and disappearance of Sepia seemed to give her little trouble.

Mr. Brett got enough out of Mewks to show the necessity of his dismissal, and the doctor sent from London a man fit to take his place.

Almost every evening, until he left Durnmelling, Mary went to see Mr. Redmain. She read to him, and tried to teach him, as one might an unchildlike child. And something did seem to be getting into, or waking up in, him. The man had never before in the least submitted; but now it looked as if the watching spirit of life were feeling through the dust-heap of his evil judgments, low thoughts, and bad life, to find the thing that spirit had made, lying buried somewhere in the frightful tumulus: when the two met and joined, then would the man be saved; God and he would be together. Sometimes he would utter the strangest things—such as if all the old evil modes of thinking and feeling were in full operation again; and sometimes for days Mary would not have an idea what was going on in him. When suffering, he would occasionally break into fierce and evil language, then be suddenly silent. God and Satan were striving for the man, and victory would be with him with whom the man should side.

For some time it remained doubtful whether this attack was not, after all, going to be the last: the doctor himself was doubtful, and, having no reason to think his death would be a great grief in the house, did not hesitate much to express his doubt. And, indeed, it caused no gloom. For there was little love in the attentions the Mortimers paid him; and in what other hope could Hesper have married, than that one day she would be free, with a freedom informed with power, the power of money! But to the mother's suggestions as to possible changes in the future, the daughter never responded: she had no thought of plans in common with her.

Strange rumors came abroad. Godfrey Wardour heard something of them, and laughed them to scorn. There was a conspiracy in that house to ruin the character of the loveliest woman in creation! But when a week after week passed, and he heard nothing of or from her, he became anxious, and at last lowered his pride so far as to call on Mary, under the pretense of buying something in the shop.

His troubled look filled her with sympathy, but she could not help being glad afresh that he had escaped the snares laid for him. He looked at her searchingly, and at last murmured a request that she would allow him to have a little conversation with her.

She led the way to her parlor, closed the door, and asked him to take a seat. But Godfrey was too proud or too agitated to sit.

"You will be surprised to see me on such an errand, Miss Marston!" he said.

"I do not yet know your errand," replied Mary; "but I may not be so much surprised as you think."

"Do not imagine," said Godfrey, stiffly, "that I believe a word of the contemptible reports in circulation. I come only to ask you to tell me the real nature of the accusations brought against Miss Yolland: your name is, of course, coupled with them."

"Mr. Wardour," said Mary, "if I thought you would believe what I told yon, I would willingly do as you ask me. As it is, allow me to refer you to Mr. Brett, the lawyer, whom I dare say you know."

Happily, the character of Mr. Brett was well known in Testbridge and all the country round; and from him Godfrey Wardour learned what sent him traveling on the Continent again—not in the hope of finding Sepia. What became of her, none of her family ever learned.

Some time after, it came out that the same night on which the presence of Joseph rescued Mary from her pursuer, a man speaking with a foreign accent went to one of the surgeons in Testbridge to have his shoulder set, which he said had been dislocated by a fall. When Joseph heard it, he smiled, and thought he knew what it meant.

Hesper was no sooner in London, than she wrote to Mary, inviting her to go and visit her. But Mary answered she could no more leave home, and must content herself with the hope of seeing Mrs. Redmain when she came to Durnmelling.

So long as her husband lived, the time for that did not again arrive; but when Mary went to London, she always called on her, and generally saw Mr. Redmain. But they never had any more talk about the things Mary loved most. That he continued to think of those things, she had one ground of hoping, namely, the kindness with which he invariably received her, and the altogether gentler manner he wore as often and as long as she saw him. Whether the change was caused by something better than physical decay, who knows save him who can use even decay for redemption? He lived two years more, and died rather suddenly. After his death, and that of her father, which followed soon, Hesper went again to Durnmelling, and behaved better to her mother than before. Mary sometimes saw her, and a flicker of genuine friendship began to appear on Hesper's part.

Mr. Turnbull was soon driving what he called a roaring trade. He bought and sold a great deal more than Mary, but she had business sufficient to employ her days, and leave her nights free, and bring her and Letty enough to live on as comfortably as they desired—with not a little over, to use, when occasion was, for others, and something to lay by for the time of lengthening shadows.

Turnbull seemed to hare taken a lesson from his late narrow escape, for he gave up the worst of his speculations, and confined himself to "genuine business-principles "—the more contentedly that, all Marston folly swept from his path, he was free to his own interpretation of the phrase. He grew a rich man, and died happy—so his friends said, and said as they saw. Mrs. Turnbull left Testbridge, and went to live in a small county-town where she was unknown. There she was regarded as the widow of an officer in her Majesty's service, and, as there was no one within a couple of hundred miles to support an assertion to the contrary, she did not think it worth her while to make one: was not the supposed brevet a truer index to her consciousness of herself than the actual ticket by ill luck attached to her—Widow of a linen-draper?

George carried on the business; and, when Mary and he happened to pass in the street, they nodded to each other.

Letty was diligent in business, but it never got into her heart. She continued to be much liked, and in the shop was delightful. If she ever had another offer of marriage, the fact remained unknown. She lived to be a sweet, gracious little old lady—and often forgot that she was a widow, but never that she was a wife. All the days of her appointed time she waited till her change should come, and she should find her Tom on the other side, looking out for her, as he had said he would. Her mother-in-law could not help dying; but she never "forgave" her—for what, nobody knew.

After a year or so, Mrs. Wardour began to take a little notice of her again; but she never asked her to Thornwick until she found herself dying. Perhaps she then remembered a certain petition in the Lord's prayer. But will it not be rather a dreadful thing for some people if they are forgiven as they forgive?

Old Mr. Duppa died, and a young man came to minister to his congregation who thought the baptism of the spirit of more importance than the most correct of opinions concerning even the baptizing spirit. From him Mary found she could learn, and would be much to blame if she did not learn. From him Letty also heard what increased her desire to be worth something before she went to rejoin Tom.

Joseph Jasper became once more Mary's pupil. She was now no more content with her little cottage piano, but had an instrument of quite another capacity on which to accompany the violin of the blacksmith.

To him trade came in steadily, and before long he had to build a larger shoeing-shed. From a wide neighborhood horses were brought him to be shod, cart-wheels to be tired, axles to be mended, plowshares to be sharpened, and all sorts of odd jobs to be done. He soon found it necessary to make arrangement with a carpenter and wheelwright to work on his premises. Before two years were over, he was what people call a flourishing man, and laying by a little money.

"But," he said to Mary, "I can't go on like this, you know, miss. I don't want money. It must be meant to do something with, and I must find out what that something is."

CHAPTER LVI.

A CATASTROPHE

One winter evening, as soon as his work was over for the day, Joseph locked the door of his smithy, washed himself well, put on clean clothes, and, taking his violin, set out for Testbridge: Mary was expecting him to tea. It was the afternoon of a holiday, and she had closed early.

Was there ever a happier man than Joseph that night as he strode along the footpath? A day of invigorating and manly toil behind him, folded up in the sense of work accomplished; a clear sky overhead, beginning to breed stars; the pale amber hope of to-morrow's sunrise low down in the west; a frosty air around him, challenging to the surface the glow of the forge which his day's labor had stored in his body; his heart and brain at rest with his father in heaven; his precious violin under his arm; before him the welcoming parlor, where two sweet women waited his coming, one of them the brightest angel, in or out of heaven, to him; and the prospect of a long evening of torrent-music between them—who, I repeat, could have been more blessed, heart, and soul, and body, than Joseph Jasper? His being was like an all-sided lens concentrating all joys in the one heart of his consciousness. God only knows how blessed he could make us if we would but let him! He pressed his violin-case to his heart, as if it were a living thing that could know that he loved it.

Before he reached the town, the stars were out, and the last of the sunset had faded away. Earth was gone, and heaven was all. Joseph was now a reader, and read geology and astronomy: "I've got to do with them all!" he said to himself, looking up. "There lie the fields of my future, when this chain of gravity is unbound from my feet! Blessed am I here now, my God, and blessed shall I be there then."

When he reached the suburbs, the light of homes was shining through curtains of all colors. "Every nest has its own birds," said Joseph; "every heart its own joys!" Just then, he was in no mood to think of the sorrows. But the sorrows are sickly things and die, while the joys are strong divine children, and shall live for evermore.

When he reached the streets, all the shops he passed were closed, except the beer-shops and the chemists'. "The nettle and the dock!" said Joseph.

When he reached Mary's shop, he turned into the court to the kitchen-door. "Through the kitchen to the parlor!" he said. "Through the smithy to the presence-chamber! O my God—through the mud of me, up to thy righteousness!"

He was in a mood for music—was he not? One might imagine the violin under his arm was possessed by an angel, and, ignoring his ears, was playing straight into his heart!

Beenie let him in, and took him up to the parlor. Mary came half-way to meet him. The pressure as of heaven's atmosphere fell around him, calming and elevating. He stepped across the floor, still, stately, and free. He laid down his violin, and seated himself where Mary told him, in her father's arm-chair by the fire. Gentle nothings with a down of rainbows were talked until tea was over, and then without a word they set to their music—Mary and Joseph, with their own hearts and Letty for their audience.

They had not gone far on the way to fairyland, however, when Beenie called Letty from the room, to speak to a friend and customer, who had come from the country on a sudden necessity for something from the shop. Letty, finding herself not quite equal to the emergency, came in her turn to call Mary: she went as quietly as if she were leaving a tiresome visitor. The music was broken, and Joseph left alone with the dumb instruments.

But in his hands solitude and a violin were sure to marry in music. He began to play, forgot himself utterly, and, when the customer had gone away satisfied, and the ladies returned to the parlor, there he stood with his eyes closed, playing on, nor knowing they were beside him. They sat down, and listened in silence.

Mary had not listened long before she found herself strangely moved. Her heart seemed to swell up into her throat, and it was all she could do to keep from weeping. A little longer and she was compelled to yield, and the silent tears flowed freely. Letty, too, was overcome—more than ever she had been by music. She was not so open to its influences as Mary, but her eyes were full, and she sat thinking of her Tom, far in the regions that are none the less true that we can not see them.

A mood had taken shape in the mind of the blacksmith, and wandered from its home, seeking another country. It is not the ghosts of evil deeds that alone take shape, and go forth to wander the earth. Let but a mood be strong enough, and the soul, clothing itself in that mood as with a garment, can walk abroad and haunt the world. Thus, in a garment of mood whose color and texture was music, did the soul of Joseph Jasper that evening, like a homeless ghost, come knocking at the door of Mary Marston. It was the very being of the man, praying for admittance, even as little Abel might have crept up to the gate from which his mother had been driven, and, seeing nothing of the angel with the flaming sword, knocked and knocked, entreating to be let in, pleading that all was not right with the world in which he found himself. And there Mary saw Joseph stand, thinking himself alone with his violin; and the violin was his mediator with her, and was pleading and pleading for the admittance of its master. It prayed, it wept, it implored. It cried aloud that eternity was very long, and like a great palace without a quiet room. "Gorgeous is the glory," it sang; "white are the garments, and lovely are the faces of the holy; they look upon me gently and sweetly, but pitifully, for they know that I am alone—yet not alone, for I love. Oh, rather a thousand-fold let me love and be alone, than be content and joyous with them all, free of this pang which tells me of a bliss yet more complete, fulfilling the gladness of heaven!"

All the time Joseph knew nothing of where his soul was; for he thought Mary was in the shop, and beyond the hearing of his pleader. Nor was this exactly the shape the thing took to the consciousness of the musician. He seemed to himself to be standing alone in a starry and moonlit night, among roses, and sweet-peas, and apple-blossoms—for the soul cares little for the seasons, and will make its own month out of many. On the bough of an apple-tree, in the fair moonlight, sat a nightingale, swaying to and fro like one mad with the wine of his own music, singing as if he wanted to break his heart and have done, for the delight was too much for mortal creature to endure. And the song of the bird grew the prayer of a man in the brain and heart of the musician, and thence burst, through the open fountain of the violin, and worked what it could work, in the world of forces. "I love thee! I love thee! I love thee!" cried the violin; and the worship was entreaty that knew not itself. On and on it went, ever beginning ere it ended, as if it could never come to a close; and the two sat listening as if they cared but to hear, and would listen for ever—listening as if, when the sound ceased, all would be at an end, and chaos come again.

Ah, do not blame, thou who lovest God, and fearest the love of the human! Hast thou yet to learn that the love of the human is love, is divine, is but a lower form of a part of the love of God? When thou lovest man, or woman, or child, yea, or even dog, aright, then wilt thou no longer need that I tell thee how God and his Christ would not be content with each other alone in the glories even of the eternal original love, because they could create more love. For that more love, together they suffered and patiently waited. He that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how shall he love God whom he hath not seen?