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Red Pottage by Mary Cholmondeley

M >> Mary Cholmondeley >> Red Pottage




The doctor's brougham, coming at full speed, drew up suddenly at the
door.

"There he is at last," said the Bishop, and before the bell could be
rung he opened the door.

A figure was already on the threshold, but it was not Dr. Brown. It was
Dick.

"Where is Dr. Brown?" said Rachel and the Bishop simultaneously, looking
at the doctor's well-known brougham and smoking horses.

"He asked me to come," said Dick, measuring Rachel with his eye. Then he
did as he would be done by, and added, slowly: "He was kept. He was on
his way here from Wilderleigh, where one of the servants is ill, and as
I was dining there he offered me a lift back. And when we were passing
that farm near the wood a man stopped us. He said there had been an
accident--some one nearly drowned. I went, too. It turned out to be
Scarlett. Dr. Brown remained with him, and sent me to take you to him."

"Is he dead?" asked Rachel, her eyes never leaving Dick's face.

"No, but he is very ill."

"I will come now."

The chaplain came slowly across the hall, laden with books and papers.

"Let Canon Sebright know at once that I cannot take part in the
service," said the Bishop, sharply; and he hurried down the steps after
Rachel, and got into the carriage with her. Dick turned up the collar of
his fur coat, and climbed up beside the coachman.

The carriage turned warily, and then set off at a great pace.

The cathedral loomed up suddenly, all aglow with light within. Out into
the night came the dirge of the organ for the dying year.

The Bishop kept his eyes fixed on the pane. The houses were left behind.
They were in the country.

"Who is that?" said Rachel, suddenly, as a long shadow ran beside them
along the white hedgerow.

"It is only Dick. There is a rise in the ground here, and he is running
to ease the horses."

There was a long silence.

"I believe he did it on purpose," said Rachel, at last. "I forsook him
in his great need, and now he has forsaken me."

"He would never forsake you, Rachel."

"Not knowingly," she said. "I did it knowing. That is the difference
between him and me."

She did not speak again.

For a lifetime, as it seemed to the Bishop, the carriage swayed from
side to side of the white road. At last, when he had given up all hope,
it turned into a field and jolted heavily over the frozen ruts. Then it
came to a stand-still.

Rachel was out of the carriage before Dick could get off the box.

She looked at him without speaking, and he led the way swiftly through
the silent wood under the moon. The Bishop followed.

The keeper's cottage had a dim yellow glimmer in it. Man's little light
looked like a kind of darkness in the great white, all-pervading
splendor of the night. The cottage door was open. Dr. Brown was looking
out.

Rachel went up to him.

"Where is he?" she said.

He tried to speak; he tried to hold her gently back while he explained
something. But he saw she was past explanation, blind and deaf except
for one voice, one face.

"Where is he?" she repeated, shaking her head impatiently.

"Here," said the doctor, and he led her through the kitchen. A man and
woman rose up from the fireside as she came in. He opened the door into
the little parlor.

On the floor on a mattress lay a tall figure. The head, supported on a
pillow, was turned towards the door, the wide eyes were fixed on the
candle on the table. The lips moved continually. The hands were picking
at the blankets.

For the first moment Rachel did not know him. How could this be Hugh?
How could these blank, unrecognizing eyes be Hugh's eyes, which had
never until now met hers without love?

But it was he. Yes, it was he. She traced the likeness as we do in a
man's son to the man himself.

She fell on her knees beside him and took the wandering hands and kissed
them.

He looked at her, through her, with those bright, unseeing eyes, and the
burning hands escaped from hers back to their weary work.

Dick, whose eyes had followed Rachel, turned away biting his lip, and
sat down in a corner of the kitchen. The keeper and his wife had slipped
away into the little scullery.

The Bishop went up to Dick and put his arm round his shoulders. Two
tears of pain were standing in Dick's hawk-eyes. He had seen Rachel kiss
Hugh's hands. He ground his heel against the brick floor.

The Bishop understood, and understood, too, the sudden revulsion of
feeling.

"Poor chap!" said Dick, huskily. "It's frightful hard luck on him to
have to go just when she was to have married him. If it had been me I
could not have borne it; but then I would have taken care I was not
drowned. I'd have seen to that. But it's frightful hard luck on him, all
the same."

"I suppose he was taking a short cut across the ice."

"Yes," said Dick, "and he got in where any one who knew the look of ice
would have known he would be sure to get in. The keeper watched him
cross the ice. It was some time before they could get near him to get
him out, and it seems there is some injury."

Dr. Brown came slowly out, half closing the parlor door behind him.

"I can do nothing more," he said. "If he lived he would have brain
fever. But he is dying."

"Does he know her?"

"No. He may know her at the last, but it is doubtful. I can do nothing,
and I am wanted elsewhere."

"I will stop," said the Bishop.

"Shall I take you back?" said Dr. Brown, looking at Dick. But Dick shook
his head.

"I might be of use to her," he said, when the doctor had gone.

So the two men who loved Rachel sat in impotent compassion in the little
kitchen through the interminable hours of the night. At long intervals
the Bishop went quietly into the parlor, but apparently he was not
wanted there. Once he went out and got a fresh candle, and put it into
the tin candlestick, and set it among the china ornaments on wool-work
mats.

Hugh lay quite still now with his eyes half closed. His hands lay
passive in Rachel's. The restless fever of movement was passed. She
almost wished it back, so far, so far was his life ebbing away from
hers.

"Hughie," she whispered to him over and over again. "I love you. Do not
leave me."

But he muttered continually to himself and took no heed of her.

At last she gave up the hopeless task of making him hear, and listened
intently. She could make no sense of what he said. The few words she
could catch were repeated a hundred times amid an unintelligible murmur.
The boat, and Loftus, and her own name--and Crack. Who was Crack? She
remembered the little dog which had been drowned. And the lips which
were so soon to be silent talked on incoherently while Rachel's heart
broke for a word.

The night was wearing very thin. The darkness before the dawn, the
deathly chill before the dawn were here. Through the low uncurtained
window Rachel could see the first wan light of the new day and the new
year.

Perhaps he would know her with the daylight.

The new day came up out of the white east in a great peace, pale as
Christ newly risen from the dead, with the splendor of God's love upon
Him.

A great peace and light stole together into the little room.

Hugh stirred, and Rachel saw a change pass over his pinched, sunken
face.

"It was the only way to reach her," he said, slowly and distinctly; "the
only way. I shall get through, and I shall find her upon the other side,
as I did before. It is very cold, but I shall get through. I am nearly
through now."

He sat up, and looked directly at her. He seemed suddenly freed,
released. A boyish look that she had never seen came into his face, a
look which remained in Rachel's heart while she lived.

Would he know her?

The pure light was upon his face, more beautiful than she had ever seen
it. He looked at her with tender love and trust shining in his eyes, and
laughed softly.

"I have found you," he said, stretching out his arms towards her. "I
lost you, I don't remember how, but I came to you through the water. I
knew I should find you, my Rachel, my sweet wife."

He was past the place of our poor human forgiveness. He might have
cared for it earlier, but he did not want it now. He had forgotten that
he had any need of it, for the former things had passed away. Love only
remained.

She took him in her arms. She held him to her heart.

"I knew you would," he said, smiling at her. "I knew it. We will never
part again."

And with a sigh of perfect happiness he turned wholly to her, his closed
eyes against her breast.




CONCLUSION


It was autumn once more. The brambles were red in the hollow below
Warpington Vicarage. Abel was gathering the apples in the orchard.

Mr. and Mrs. Gresley were sitting together in the shade of the new
porch, contemplating a triumphal arch which they had just erected across
the road. "Long life and happiness" was the original motto inscribed
thereon.

Mrs. Gresley, in an alarming new hat, sank back exhausted in her
garden-chair.

"The Pratts are having six arches, all done with electric-light designs
of hearts with their crest on the top," she said. "They are to be lit up
at nine o'clock. Mr. Pratt said he did not mind any expense on such an
occasion. He said it made an epoch in the life of the county."

"Well," said Mr. Gresley, "I lead too busy a life to be always poking my
nose into other people's affairs, but I certainly never did expect that
Lady Newhaven would have married Algy Pratt."

"Ada and Selina say Algy and she have been attached for years: that is
why the wedding is so soon--only nine months--and she is to keep her
title, and they are going to live at Westhope. I told Ada and Selina I
hoped they did not expect too much from the marriage, for sometimes
people who did were disappointed, but they only laughed and said Vi had
promised Algy to take them out next season."

"We seem to live in an atmosphere of weddings," said Mr. Gresley.
"First, Dr. Brown and Fraeulein, and now Algy Pratt and Lady Newhaven."

"I was so dreadfully afraid that Fraeulein might think our arch was put
up for her, and presume upon it," said Mrs. Gresley, "that I thought it
better to send her a little note, just to welcome her cordially, and
tell her how busy we were about the Pratt festivities, and what a
_coincidence_ it was her arriving on the same day. I told her I would
send down the children to spend the morning with her to-morrow. I knew
that would please her, and it is Miss Baker's day in Southminster with
her aunt, and I shall really be too busy to see after them. In some ways
I don't like Miss Baker as much as Fraeulein. She is paid just the same,
but she does much less, and she is really quite short sometimes if I ask
her to do any little thing for me, like copying out that church music."

"Hester used to do it," said Mr. Gresley.

"Miss Brown told me she had heard from Hester, and that she and Miss
West are still in India. And they mean to go to Australia and New
Zealand, and come home next spring."

"Was Hester well?"

"Quite well. You know, James, I always told you that hers was not a
genuine illness. That was why they would not let us see her. It was only
hysteria, which girls get when they are disappointed at not marrying,
and are not so young as they were. Directly poor Mr. Scarlett died,
Hester left her room, and devoted herself to Miss West, and Dr. Brown
said it was the saving of her. But for my part I always thought Hester
took in Dr. Brown and the Bishop about that illness."

"I should not wonder if Hester married Dick Vernon," said Mr. Gresley.
"It is rather marked, their going to Australia when he went back there
only a few months ago. If she had consulted me I should have advised her
not to follow him up."

A burst of cheering, echoed by piercing howls from Boulou locked up in
the empty nursery.

"I hope Miss Baker has put the children in a good place. She is sure to
be in a good one herself," said Mrs. Gresley, as she and her husband
took up their position by the gate.

More cheering! A sudden flourish of trumpets and a trombone from the
volunteer band at the corner, of which Mr. Pratt was colonel.

A clatter of four white horses and an open carriage. A fleeting vision
of Captain Pratt, white waistcoat, smile, teeth, eye-glass, hat waved in
lavender-kid hand! A fleeting vision of a lovely woman in white, with a
wonderful white-feathered hat, and a large diamond heart, possibly a
love token from Captain Pratt, hanging on a long diamond chain, bowing
and smiling beside her elaborate bridegroom.

In a moment they were passed, and a report of cannon and field-artillery
showed that the east lodge of Warpington Towers had been reached, and
the solemn joy of the Pratts was finding adequate expression.

"She looked rather frightened," said Mrs. Gresley.

"Such a magnificent reception is alarming to a gentle, retiring nature,"
said Mr. Gresley.

More cheering! this time much more enthusiastic than the last--louder,
deafening.

Dr. Brown's dog-cart came slowly in sight, accompanied by a crowd.

"They have taken out the horse and are dragging them up," said Mrs.
Gresley, in astonishment. "Look at Dr. Brown waving his hat, and
Fraeulein bowing in that silly way. Well, I only hope her head won't be
turned by the arches and everything. She will find my note directly she
gets in. Really, James! two brides and bridegrooms in one day! It is
like the end of a novel."




POSTSCRIPT


We turn the pages of the Book of Life with impatient hands. And if we
shut up the book at a sad page we say, hastily, "Life is sad." But it is
not so. There are other pages waiting to be turned. I, who have copied
out one little chapter of the lives of Rachel and Hester, cannot see
plainly, but I catch glimpses of those other pages. I seem to see Rachel
with children round her, and Dick not far off, and the old light
rekindled in Hester's eyes. For Hope and Love and Enthusiasm never die.
We think in youth that we bury them in the graveyards of our hearts, but
the grass never yet grew over them. How, then, can life be sad, when
they walk beside us always in the growing light towards the Perfect Day.

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