Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, December 1878

"Nothing from Godfrey Hammond?" she asked after a pause.

"No. I'll ask at my father's as I go by. He will either come or we shall hear, unless he is out."

"Of course," the old lady answered. "Godfrey Hammond would not fail me. And now good-bye, Harry, till you bring Percival."

She went away as swiftly and lightly as she had come a minute before, and left Hardwicke standing on the turf under the apple trees gazing up at the open casement. A June morning, sun shining, soft winds blowing, a young lover under his lady's window: it should have been a perfect poem. And the lady within lay crushed and maimed, dying in the very heart of her June!

Hardwicke let himself out through the little wicket-gate, and went back to the Latimer Arms. He entered the bedroom without disturbing Archie, who lay with his sunburnt face on the white pillow, smiling in his sleep. He could not find it in his heart to arouse him. The boy's lips parted, he murmured a word or two, and seemed to sink into a yet deeper slumber. Hardwicke went softly out, gave the landlady directions about breakfast, and returned, watch in hand. "I suppose I must," he said to himself.

But he stopped short. Carroll stirred, stretched himself, his eyes were half open: evidently his waking was a pleasant one. But suddenly the unfamiliar aspect of the room attracted his attention: he looked eagerly round, a shadow swept across his face, and he turned and saw Hardwicke. "It's true!" he said, and flung out his arms in a paroxysm of despair.

Harry walked to the window and leant out. Presently a voice behind him asked, "Have you been to the farm, Mr. Hardwicke?"

"Yes," said Harry. "But there is no news. She passed a tolerably quiet night: there is no change."

"I've been asleep," said Archie after a pause. "I never thought I should sleep." He looked ashamed of having done so.

"It would have been strange if you hadn't: you were worn out."

"My watch has run down," the other continued. "What is the time?"

"Twenty minutes past seven. I want to speak to you, Carroll. I think you had better go home."

"Home? To Fordborough? To Raymond?"

"No. Really home, to your own people. You can write to your cousin. You don't want to go back to him?"

Archie shook his head. Then a sudden sense of injustice to Fothergill prompted him to say, "Ray was never hard on me before."

"You mustn't think about that," Hardwicke replied. "People don't weigh their words at such times. But, Carroll, you can do nothing here—less than nothing. You'll be better away. Give me your address, and I'll write any news there is. Look sharp now, and you can go into Fordborough with me and catch the up train."

As they drove through the green lanes, along which they had passed the day before, Archie looked right and left, recalling the incidents of that earlier drive. Already he was better, possessing his sorrow with greater keenness and fulness than at first, but not so miserably possessed by it. Hardly a word was spoken till they stood on the platform and a far-off puff of white showed the coming train. Then he said, "I shall never forget your kindness, Mr. Hardwicke. If ever there's anything I can do—"

"You'll do it," said Harry with a smile.

"That I will! And you'll write?"

Hardwicke answered "Yes." He knew too well what it was he promised to write to say a word more.

It was a relief to him when Carroll was gone and he could pace the platform and watch for the London train. He looked through the open doorway, and saw his dog-cart waiting in the road and the horse tossing his head impatiently in the sunshine. Through all his anxiety—or rather side by side with his anxiety—he was conscious of a current of interest in all manner of trivial things. He thought of the price he had given for the horse five months before, and of Latimer's opinion of his bargain. He noticed the station-master in the distance, and remembered that some one had said he drank. He watched a row of small birds sitting on the telegraph-wires just outside the station, and all at once the London train came gliding rapidly and unexpectedly out of the cutting close by, and was there.

A hurried rush along the line of carriages, with his heart sinking lower at every step, a despairing glance round, and he perceived the man he came to meet walking off at the farther end of the platform. He came up with him as he stopped to speak to a porter.

"Ah! I am in time, then?" said Percival when he looked round in reply to Hardwicke's hurried greeting.

"Yes, thank God! I promised to drive you over to Ashendale at once."

Percival nodded, and took his place without a word. Not till they were fairly started on their journey did he turn to his companion. "How did it happen?" he asked.

Hardwicke gave him a brief account of the accident. He listened eagerly, and then, just saying "It's very dreadful," he was silent again. But it was the silence of a man intent on his errand, leaning slightly forward as if drawn by a powerful attraction, and with eyes fixed on the point where he would first see the ruins of Ashendale Priory above the trees. Hardwicke did not venture to speak to him. As the man whom Sissy Langton loved, Percival Thorne was to him the first of men, but, considered from Hardwicke's own point of view, he was a fellow with whom he had little or nothing in common—a man who quoted poetry and saw all manner of things in pictures and ruins, who went out of his way to think about politics, and was neither Conservative nor Radical when all was done—a man who rather disliked dogs and took no interest in horses. Hardwicke did not want to speak about dogs, horses or politics then, but the consciousness of their want of sympathy was in his mind.

As they drove through the village they caught a passing glimpse of a brougham. "Ha! Brackenhill," said Thorne, looking after it. They dashed round a corner and pulled up in front of the farmhouse. Hardwicke took no pains to spare the noise of their arrival. He knew very well that the sound of wheels would be music to Sissy's ears.

A tall, slim figure, which even on that June morning had the air of being wrapped up, passed and repassed in the hall within. As the two young men came up the path Horace appeared in the porch. Even at that moment the change which a year had wrought in him startled Percival. He was a mere shadow. He had looked ill before, but now he looked as if he were dying.

"She will not see me," he said to Hardwicke. His voice was that of a confirmed invalid, a mixture of complaint and helplessness. He ignored his cousin.

"She will see you now that Percival has come," said Mrs. Middleton, advancing from the background. "She will see you together."

And she led the way. Horace went in second, and Percival last, yet he was the first to meet the gaze of those waiting eyes. The young men stood side by side, looking down at the delicate face on the pillow. It was pale, and seemed smaller than usual in the midst of the loosened waves of hair. On one side of the forehead there was a dark mark, half wound, half bruise—a mere nothing but for its terrible suggestiveness. But the clear eyes and the gentle little mouth were unchanged. Horace said "Oh, Sissy!" and Sissy said "Percival." He could not speak, but stooped and kissed the little hand which lay passively on the coverlet.

"Whisper," said Sissy. He bent over her. "Have you forgiven him?" she asked.

"Yes." The mere thought of enmity was horrible to him as he looked into Sissy's eyes with that spectral Horace by his side.

"Are you sure? Quite?"

"Before God and you, Sissy."

"Tell him so, Percival."

He stood up and turned to his cousin. "Horace!" he said, and held out his hand. The other put a thin hot hand into it.—"See here, Sissy," said Percival, "we are friends."

"Yes, we're friends," Horace repeated. "Has it vexed you, Sissy? I thought you didn't care about me. I'm sorry, dear—I'm very sorry."

Aunt Harriet, standing by, laid her hand on his arm. She had held aloof for that long year, feeling that he was in the wrong. He had not acted as a Thorne should, and he could never be the same to her as in old days. But she had wanted her boy, nevertheless, right or wrong, and since Percival had pardoned him, and since it was partly Godfrey's hardness that had driven him into deceit, and since he was so ill, and since—and since—she loved him, she drew his head down to her and kissed him. Horace was weak, and he had to turn his face away and wipe his eyes. But, relinquishing Percival's hand, he held Aunt Harriet's.

Percival stooped again, in obedience to a sign from Sissy. "Ask him to forgive me," she said.

"He knows nothing, dear."

"Ask him for me."

"Horace," said Percival, "Sissy wants your forgiveness."

"I've nothing to forgive," said Horace. "It is I who ought to ask to be forgiven. It was hard on me when first you came to Brackenhill, Percy, but it has been harder on you since. I hardly know what I said or did on that day: I thought you'd been plotting against me."

"No, no," said Sissy—"not he."

"No, but I did think so.—Since then I've felt that, anyhow, it was not fair. I suppose I was too proud to say so, or hardly knew how, especially as the wrong is past mending. But I do ask your pardon now."

"You have it," said Percival. "We didn't understand each other very well."

"But I never blamed you, Sissy—never, for one moment. I wasn't so bad as that. I've watched for you now and then in Fordborough streets, just to get a glimpse as you went by. I thought it was you who would never forgive me, because of Percival."

"He has forgiven," said Sissy. But her eyes still sought Percival's.

"Look here, Horace," he said. "There was a misunderstanding you knew nothing of, and Sissy feels that she might have cleared it up. It was cleared up at last, but I think it altered my grandfather's manner to you for a time. If you wish to know the whole I will tell you. But since it is all over and done with, and did not really do you any harm, if you like best"—he looked steadily at Horace—"that we should forgive and forget on both sides, we will bury the past here to-day."

"Yes, yes," said Horace. "Sissy may have made a mistake, but she never meant me any harm, I know."

"Don't! don't! Oh, Horace, I did, but I am sorry."

"God knows I forgive you, whatever it was," he said.

"Kiss me, Horace."

He stooped and kissed her, as he had kissed her many a time when she was his little pet and playmate. She kissed him back again, and smiled: "Good-bye, Horry!"

Mrs. Middleton interposed. "This will be too much for her," she said.—"Percival, she wants you, I see: be careful." And she drew Horace gently away.

Percival sat down by the bedside. Presently Sarah came in and went to the farther end of the room, waiting in case she should be wanted. Sissy was going to speak once, but Percival stopped her: "Lie still a little while, dear: I'm not going away."

She lay still, looking up at this Percival for whom she had watched and waited through the dreary night, and who had come to her with the morning. And he, as he sat by her side, was thinking how at that time the day before he was in the office at Brenthill. He could hardly believe that less than twenty-four hours had given him the assurance of Judith's love and brought him to Sissy's deathbed. He was in a strangely exalted state of mind. His face was calm as if cast in bronze, but a crowd of thoughts and feelings contended for the mastery beneath it. He had eaten nothing since the night before, and had not slept, but his excitement sustained him.

He met Sissy's eyes and smiled tenderly. How was it that he had frightened her in old days? Could he ever have been cruel to one so delicate and clinging? Yet he must have been, since he had driven away her love. She was afraid of him: she had begged to be free. Well, the past was past, but at least no word nor look of his should frighten or grieve the poor child now.

After a time she spoke: "You have worked too hard. Isn't it that you wanted to do something great?"

"That isn't at all likely," said Percival with a melancholy smile. "I'm all right, Sissy."

"No, you are pale. You wanted to surprise us. Oh, I guessed! Godfrey Hammond didn't tell me. I should have been glad if I could have waited to see it."

"Don't talk so," he entreated. "There will be nothing to see."

"You mustn't work too hard—promise," she whispered.

"No, dear, I won't."

"Percival, will you be good to me?"

"If I can I will indeed. What can I do?"

"I want you to have my money. It is my own, and I have nobody." Sissy remembered the terrible mistake she had once made, and wanted an assurance from his own lips that her gift was accepted.

Percival hesitated for a moment, and even the moment's hesitation alarmed her. It was true, as she said, that she had nobody, and her words opened a golden gateway before Judith and himself. Should he tell her of that double joy and double gratitude? He believed that she would be glad, but it seemed selfish and horrible to talk of love and marriage by that bedside. "I wish you might live to need it all yourself, dear," he answered, and laid his hand softly on hers. The strip of embroidery caught his eye. "What's this?" he said in blank surprise. "And your thimble! Sissy, you mustn't bother yourself about this work now." He would have drawn it gently away.

The fingers closed on it suddenly, and the weak voice panted: "No, Percival. It's mine. That was before we were engaged: you spoilt my other."

"O God!" he said. In a moment all came back to him. He remembered the summer day at Brackenhill—Sissy and he upon the terrace—the work-box upset and the thimble crushed beneath his foot. He remembered her pretty reproaches and their laughter over her enforced idleness. He remembered how he rode into Fordborough and bought that little gold thimble—the first present he ever made her. All his gifts during their brief engagement had been scrupulously returned, but this, as she had said, was given before. And she was dying with it in her hand! She had loved him from first to last.

"Percival, you will take my money?" she pleaded, fearing some incomprehensible scruple.

"For God's sake, Sissy! I must think a moment." He buried his face in his hands.

"Oh, you are cruel!" she whispered.

How could he think? Sissy loved him—had always loved him. It was all plain to him now. He had been blind, and he had come back to find out the truth the day after he had pledged himself to Judith Lisle!

"Don't be unkind to me, Percival: I can't bear it, dear."

How could he stab her to the heart by a refusal of that which he so sorely needed? How could he tell her of his engagement? How could he keep silence, and take her money to spend it with Judith?

"Say 'Yes,' Percival. It is mine. Why not? why not?"

He spoke through his clasped hands: "One moment more."

"I shall never ask you anything again," she whispered. "Oh, Percival, be good to me!"

He raised his head and looked earnestly at her. He must be true, happen what might.

"Sissy, God knows I thank you for your goodness. I sha'n't forget it, living or dying. If only you might be spared—"

"No, no. Say 'Yes,' Percival."

"I will say 'Yes' if, when I have done, you wish it still. But it must be 'Yes' for some one besides myself. Dear, don't give it to me to make amends in any way. You have not wronged me, Sissy. Don't give it to me, dear, unless you give it to Judith Lisle."

As he spoke he looked into her eyes. Their sweet entreaty gave place to a flash of pained reproach, as if they said "So soon?" Then the light in them wavered and went out. Percival sprang up. "Help! she has fainted!"

Sarah hurried from her post by the window, and the sound of quick footsteps brought back Mrs. Middleton. The young man stood aside, dismayed. "She isn't dead?" he said in a low voice.

Aunt Harriet did not heed him. A horrible moment passed, during which he felt himself a murderer. Then Sissy moaned and turned her face a little to the wall.

"Go now: she cannot speak to you," said Mrs. Middleton.

"I can't. Only one more word!"

"What do you mean? What have you done? You may wait outside, and I will call you. She cannot bear any more now: do you want to kill her outright?"

He went. There was a wide window-seat in the passage, and he dropped down upon it, utterly worn out and wretched. "What have I done?" he asked himself. "What made me do it? She loved me, and I have been a brute to her. If I had been a devil, could I have tortured her more?"

Presently Mrs. Middleton came to him: "She cannot see you now, but she is better."

He looked up at her as he sat: "Aunt Harriet, I meant it for the best. Say what you like: I was a brute, I suppose, but I thought I was doing right."

"What do you mean?" Her tone was gentler: she detected the misery in his.

Percival took her hand and laid it on his forehead. "You can't think I meant to be cruel to our Sissy," he said. "You will let me speak to her?"

She softly pushed back his hair. After all, he was the man Sissy loved. "What was it?" she asked: "what did you do?"

He looked down. "I'm going to marry Miss Lisle," he said.

She started away from him: "You told her that? God forgive you, Percival!"

"I should have been a liar if I hadn't."

"Couldn't you let her die in peace? It is such a little while! Couldn't you have waited till she was in her grave?"

"Will she see me? Just one word, Aunt Harriet." And yet while he pleaded he did not know what the one word was that he would say. Only he felt that he must see her once more.

"Not now," said Mrs. Middleton. "My poor darling shall not be tortured any more. Later, if she wishes it, but not now. She could not bear it."

"But you will ask her to see me later?" he entreated. "I must see her."

"What is she to you? She is all the world to me, and she shall be left in peace. It is all that I can do for her now. You have been cruel to her always—always. She has been breaking her heart for you: she lived through last night with the hope of your coming. Oh, Percival, God knows I wish we had never called you away from Miss Lisle!"

"Don't say that."

"Go back to her," said Aunt Harriet, "and leave my darling to me. We were happy at Brackenhill till you came there."

He sprang to his feet: "Aunt Harriet! have some mercy! You know I would die if it could make Sissy any happier."

"And Miss Lisle?" she said.

He turned away with a groan, and, leaning against the wall, put his hand over his eyes. Mrs. Middleton hesitated a moment, but her haste to return to Sissy triumphed over any relenting feelings, and she left him, pausing only at the door to make sure of her calmness.

Noon came and passed. Sissy had spoken once to bid them take the needlework away. "I've done with it," she said. Otherwise she was silent, and only looked at them with gentle, apathetic eyes when they spoke to her. Dr. Grey came and went again. On his way out he noticed Percival, looked keenly at him, but said nothing.

Henry Hardwicke's desire to be useful had prompted him to station himself on the road a short distance from the farm, at the turning from the village. There he stopped people coming to inquire, and gave the latest intelligence. It was weary work, lounging there by the wayside, but he hoped he was serving Sissy Langton to the last. He could not even have a cigar to help to pass the time, for he had an idea that Mrs. Middleton disliked the smell of smoke. He stared at the trees and the sky, drew letters in the dust with the end of a stick, stirred up a small ants' nest, examined the structure of a dog-rose or two and some buttercups, and compared the flavors of different kinds of leaves. He came forward as Dr. Grey went by. The doctor stopped to tell him that Miss Langton was certainly weaker. "But she may linger some hours yet," he added; and he was going on his way when a thought seemed to strike him. "Are you staying at the farm?" he asked.

"No: they've enough without me. I'm at the little public-house close by."

"Going there for some luncheon?"

Hardwicke supposed so.

"Can't you get young Thorne to go with you? He looks utterly exhausted."

Hardwicke went off on his mission, but he could not persuade him to stir. "All right!" he said at last: "then I shall bring you something to eat here." Percival agreed to that compromise, and owned afterward that he felt better for the food he had taken.

The slow hours of the afternoon went wearily by. The rector of Fordborough came; Dr. Grey came again; Mrs. Latimer passed two or three times. The sky began to grow red toward the west once more, and the cawing rooks flew homeward, past the window where Percival sat waiting vainly for the summons which did not come.

Hardwicke, released from his self-imposed duty, came to see if Percival would go with him for half an hour or so to the Latimer Arms. "I've got a kind of tea-dinner," he said—"chops and that sort of thing. You'd better have some." But it was of no use. So when he came back to the house the good-natured fellow brought some more provisions, and begged Lucy Greenwell to make some tea, which he carried up.

"Where are you going to spend the night?" asked Harry, coming up again when he had taken away the cup and plate.

"Here," said Percival. He sat with his hands clasped behind his head and one leg drawn up on the seat. His face was sharply defined against the square of sunset sky.

Hardwicke stood with his hands in his pockets, looking down at him. "But you can't sleep here," he said.

"That doesn't matter much. Sleeping or waking, here I stay."

A sudden hope flashed in his eyes, for the door of Sissy's room opened, and, closing it behind her, Mrs. Middleton came out and looked up and down the passage. But she called "Harry" in a low voice, and Percival leant back again.

Harry went. Mrs. Middleton had moved a little farther away, and stood with her back toward Percival and one hand pressed against the wall to steady herself. Her first question was an unexpected one: "Isn't the wind getting up?" Her eyes were frightened and her voice betrayed her anxiety.

"I don't know—not much, I think." He was taken by surprise, and hesitated a little.

"It is: tell me the truth."

"I am—I will," he stammered. "I haven't thought about it. There is a pleasant little breeze, such as often comes in the evening. I don't really think there's any more."

"It isn't rising, then?"

"Wait a minute," said Hardwicke, and hurried off. He did not in the least understand his errand, but it was enough for him that Mrs. Middleton wanted to know. If she had asked him the depth of water in the well or the number of trees on the Priory farm, he would have rushed away with the same eagerness to satisfy her. His voice was heard in the porch, alternating with deeper and less carefully restrained tones. Then there was a sound of steps on the gravel-path. Presently he came back. Mrs. Middleton's attitude was unchanged, except that she had drawn a little closer to the wall. But though she had never looked over her shoulder, she was uneasily conscious of the young man half sitting, half lying in the window-seat behind her.

"Greenwell says it won't be anything," Hardwicke announced. "The glass has been slowly going up all day yesterday and to-day, and it is rising still. He believes we have got a real change in the weather, and that it will keep fine for some time."

"Thank God!" said Mrs. Middleton. "Do you think I'm very mad?"

"Not I," Harry answered in a "theirs-not-to-reason-why" manner.

"A week or two ago," she said, "my poor darling was talking about dying, as you young folks will talk, and she said she hoped she should not die in the night, when the wind was howling round the house. A bitter winter night would be worst of all, she said. It won't be that but I fancied the wind was getting up, and it frightened me to think how one would hear it moaning in this old place. It is only a fancy, of course, but she might have thought of it again lying there."

Hardwicke could not have put it into words, but the fancy came to him too of Sissy's soul flying out into the windy waste of air.

"Of course it is nothing—it is nonsense," said Mrs. Middleton. "But if it might be, as she said, when it is warm and light!—if it might be!" She stopped with a catching in her voice.