Her Memory

Chapter I

She lay dying, in the silent summer evening — in the sunlit summer silence that seems alive with sound. The long shadows deepened round her, through the depths of tranquil sunset. The soft shadows, all around her, closing in upon the sunlight of her life. He knew it. He sat beside the bed, his arms fallen between his knees, his face flung forward, intense with straining, as if to draw her back before she slipped away ! During ten short years — a moment — she had filled his life with summer : she had been — she was — his sunrise : his day was young yet, young as hers — God, the day is brief enough, at best : it doesn't end at noon ! There are r clouds enough at best, and mists across the morning- — but, oh God, the sun must run his little course before he sinks into the sea ! — she lay dying, in her early prime of woman hood : the stealthy shadows blackened on the whiteness of the room.

She opened her eyes, and looked at him. ' Anthony,' she said, in a voice like that of a stranger, speaking very low and calm, ' I want you to fetch her, please.' He rose hastily and walked to the window, gazing out, seeing nothing. He rebelled against this inevitable desire of hers, the leave-taking from their only child. And he crept away, with laggard step, to the farther side of the house, and took the child's hand from her toys, and brought her. In the gray death-chamber, by the bed side, the child stood solemn, accustomed of late to sickness, her little face accepting the sadness all around. ' Margaret,' said the father, ' it is little Margaret.' The child wondered : none but her grandmother ever called her ' Margaret.' The dying woman again unclosed her eyes, to more than their natural width. ' Margaret,' she responded : the word sank like an echo in measureless abysms of passion.

He saw, as she lay immovable upon the pillow, he saw all her soul well up towards them : for one moment he felt it blend with his and mingle as never in all their happy years of union — then, a terrible change came over the eyes : they broke : the child trembled under his hand, cried out : the doctor ran in ! the nurse ! — the room seemed full of people, of hideous, unbearable commotion — an immense cloud had fallen between him and the bustle round the bed. He drew back, watching their busy move ments, and the tumult of his impressions, as he watched, seethed down rapidly into a resolve to resist. ' Doctor,' he said, ' what are you doing ?' For the moment nobody answered him. ' You are disturbing us,' he continued angrily. ' Mrs. Stollard wished to speak to me. She had sent for the child.' The doctor turned from the bed, a rough man, uncouth. ' She will never speak to you again, Mr. Stollard,' he said.

The husband made one great stride for ward. ' Liar !' he said, and pushed back the I — meddling physician, not, certainly, intending to hurt him, pushed him back over a stool or a cushion, on to a couch. ' Oh, Mr. Stollard, oh sir, come away !' exclaimed the sick nurse : he bent over the dead woman and suddenly lifted her high in the air. He faced them with his burden enwrapped in clinging linens : he saw, through the twilight, the vulgar, frightened expressions around him ; he saw the child sobbing, half hidden in her nurse's lap. Without a word he passed from them, bearing his burden, through the door, and the long passage, downstairs. The doctor sat up and brushed his arm. ' He knows she's dead,' he said. ' He wouldn't have moved her, if he hadn't known she was dead.'

Chapter II

The husband, erect and slow, directed his steps to a room which had lain unused for the last three weeks, his wife's. As he entered, his arms shook. There were flowers here — great masses — in vases, as usual : the gardener had gone his daily round ; the machinery of the house moved on. The room looked horribly unaltered : he laid down the beautiful burden from his arms, on the familiar couch in the great bay window. And he turned quickly, to double-lock the door. Seven years ago, that time she had sprained her ankle, he had carried her down like this, day by day, for a month. She was very young and lovely then. She was very lovely still. And young. When, at last, he looked up from the musinginto which he had fallen, on the low chair by her side, all shapes in the room were grown indistinct with dusk.

He sprang to the window-curtains and tore them aside — tore them away, in sudden descents of dark drapery, feverishly anxious to see clearly, to distinguish each feature, to have light all about, full upon her — not this in creasing darkness — light ! And as the remorseless gloom sank faster, he bent close, resting his hot cheek against her cold one, whispering her name. A fold of falling curtain had carried down with it a table full of knick-knacks. He had not remarked the crash, but he noticed that a slip of linen had dropped away from the half bared arm, and he gently drew it up again. He realized nothing, reasoned about nothing, desired, for the moment, nothing, except, perhaps, that the advancing night should pause. When the room had grown quite dark, with sultry summer darkness, he rose to his feet and lio-hted all the candles in a great porcelain chandelier overhead, lighted all the candles in numerous sconces and Dresden ornaments, against the mirrors and shiny hangings, went on lighting candles, that had never burnt in such abundance before — his hand so shaky that he knocked off bits of flowers and leaves from the brittle china — went on multiplying bright reflections, till the little rounded chamber, all pale silk and porcelain, shone, opalescent, like the inside of a shell.

He could draw no blinds, for he had broken the cords : beyond the great window the blue night beat against the blaze. Somebody stealthily tried the door handle. There were steps on the gravel outside, and once came the sound of carriage wheels. Single stars crept forth above the distant wall of trees. A blackbird started its loud call, and stopped. Everything was still, expectant, holding its breath. He only expected nothing, sitting watching in the yellow glare. All through the night he sat thus, watching. The terrified domestics, alone with the sleeping child, whispered and stared at each other. Far adown the country-side shone the radiance from the terrace-window : the servants, peeping round a corner, discussed it under their breath, sore -troubled, de lighted, amazed. The footman, who read books, vaguely mentioned ' funereal pyres ;' the women-servants thrilled responsive ; the under-housemaid slipped upstairs, escorted, to fetch her ear-rings : old nurse brought down her charge, to an improvised bed in the breakfast-room.

They were all of them attached to their employers, within reasonable limits of menial devotion. Their master was an honourable man, a gentleman : they were honestly sorry for him, wondering what changes would come to themselves, primarily nonplussed by this extravagant conduct to-night. ' You must telegraph to Sir Henry,' the doctor had said to the butler, as the two went stealing back from the boudoir door, ' Sir Henry, I suppose, is in London : is he not ?' The butler did not know : Mr. Stollard's elder brother so seldom came to Thurdles, the household hardly cared about his movements. ' But I think,' said the butler, cautiously, 'that Stawell Court is closed.' Stawell Court was the family seat, about seven miles away. ' Well, then, nothing remains but to send for Mrs. Fosby,' said the doctor testily. ' And a natural thing to do, she being the poor dead lady's mother.

But I always prefer to have a man on the scene first. Women are no good, except for crying, a thing anyone can do who is paid for it, as they understand in the East. Good-night !' He turned in the hall-door : ' Do you want me for anything ?' he asked. The butler's family-pride rose within him, though he was not an old family servant. 'I thank you, sir,' he made answer, 'no, I think we can manage, sir.' And he went downstairs, feeling miserably forlorn, and responsible, with that great glare across the gravel road, and the barred door within the house, and all this helpless woe. ' The doctor ain't no gentleman,' he said to the other servants ; ' I shall send a messenger to Mrs. Fosby. You must find me a messenger, John.' The servants detested their mistress's mother, but they would be eager to welcome her now. ' He said as he preferred a man — for to manage things,' said the butler, with a grin.

A shout went up, immediately suppressed. ' She'd manage us alive or dead, 'd Mrs. Fosby,' remarked the unthinking housemaid. ' Lor, Adelaide, how can you !' squeaked cook. All the servants cried out upon Adelaide, who sat down, very red and sniffy, several times repeating she should say any thing she chose. ' It is absurd,' said Mrs. Fosby, on the doorstep next morning, in the clear light of the summer day. All the way up from the town, on whose farther side she lived, suburbanly, she had stared at the wan window that stared down at her. Now, having alighted from the fly, she had cautiously stared under cover of the rhodo dendrons. She could hardly steady her impatient foot, as she listened to Nurse Lintot's lucubrations. 'It is terribly sad, and my child is taken — taken from me :' her lip shook — ' taken from us.

Sad enough, — God knows ! — without this very extraordinary com — plication. Lintot, this scandal must be stopped at once. By-the-by, it was ex travagant of Hawkin to send me a messenger. Stopped at once ! Everybody will be talking in Rusborough. And what will the county say ?' ' The Lord knows, ma'am,' said Lintot sobbing*. ' I do not,' replied Mrs. Fosby emphatically. Without the remotest sense of having said anything incongruous she swept into the hall. Mrs. Fosby was a good woman : it would be a great mistake to imagine she was not. An unlikely mistake, for she possessed a large store of such second-rate virtues as any average community is swift to recognise. Supremely respectable herself, she loved, honoured, and served respectability all the days of her common-place life. She had never done anything that any of her associates deemed wrong.

She belonged to the upper middle class, for her husband had been able to ' retire ' from something substantial in the city ; her religion was the Church of England, and her worship the stratum immediately above her. She had been 'blessed,' as she fully realized, in her only child, Margaret, who had succeeded, with admirable tact, in leaving her mother's feelings unhurt, and her own uninjured, growing up pure and good, without giving or taking offence. Once only there threatened a fateful divergence, when Margaret refused her first suitor, a baronet, on the sands of Llandudno ; but the baronet turned out a Mysterious Musician, and Mrs. Fosby ate humble pie. The girl herself, from whose gold her mother's gilding dropped harmless, unconsciously and innocently conformed in the temple of Rimmon, while busy with her own white thoughts and prayers.

And the god Snob was merciful to her ; or perhaps he is weary of virgin holocausts. Anthony Stollard fell in love with her and she with him. Anthony, who belonged not only to an old county family — everyone in the country does that — but to a family mansion, a baronetcy (Victorian), and a handful of apocryphal pictures. Anthony was the happy possessor of a competency and moderate ill-health. He was the un happy possessor of an artistic temperament, and an adequate talent for painting. Had he been gifted with genius, his fortune would hardly have hampered him ; had he been destitute of means, his art-love could have done him no harm. As it was, he painted, frequently with pains, and his pictures were taken by the Galleries, and the critics said they showed various most admirable qualities, and he gave them away to his friends.

When they married he was twenty-five and she was twenty. In his case, at any rate, there had been love at first sight. Their married life lasted through an almost cloudless decade. During ten years of that time he loved her for her beautiful face, during nine for her beautiful soul. He thought there was no better, fairer woman. He never looked at others. He painted sheep. ' It is absurd,' said Mrs. Fosby, sitting in the breakfast - room beside Margie's dis ordered bed. The old lady was dressed in temporary black, and looked very pale and stately. ' As if we were not miserable enough already without making ourselves ridiculous !' And Mrs. Fosby broke down, weeping womanly tears, for she was a womanly, warm-hearted old lady, and the things she loved best on earth, far better than herself, were her daughter, and the god Snob, and her daughter's husband and child.

So presently, having dried her tears, she asked for ' Margaret,' whom she never gave less than her full appellation. ' If confusion arise,' she would say, ' it is not of my making. My Margaret, according to the invariable rule in my family, was called after her maternal grandmother. "Shorts" and pet names I cannot away with. They stick to one, stupidly, through life. Anthony must do as he pleases, but I refuse to address my own grandchild as " Mops." : The child came in, very serious, with blue marks under her eyes, and that strange, ' unlike ' expression young children's faces so readily assume. She hid away in her grandmother's lap, and they cried together comfortably. For when fifty-nine loves eight with all its heart, be sure that eight loves fifty-nine. Not that the grandmother entirely approved of the grandchild.

It had been the supreme triumph of the dead woman's tact to get her own way in essentials, and to let Anthony have his in unessentials, whilst leaving upon Mrs. Fosby's mind a com placent impression of frequently - followed advice. But there were inevitably matters which Mrs. Fosby would have managed differently — ' oh, very differently indeed !' ' However,' she would honestly declare, ' people know their own minds best.' Certainly she knew hers, and most other people's. ' Religion,' said Mrs. Fosby, ' is ,' and she paused to adjust her knitting. ' Yes, mamma,' replied her daughter ; for Margaret knew that whatever Mrs. Fosby remarked about religion was sure to be correct. ' Essential,' said Mrs. Fosby. ' Yes, mamma,' repeated Margaret fer vently. But ' religion ' is an expression which covers a multitude of sins.

With Mrs. Fosby it meant learning all the Bible stories (especially those of the Old Testament) and serving the great god Snob. Morally, it meant trying not to wish that Sir Henry might die a bachelor. 'It is the truth of religion which chiefly appeals to mamma,' declared Margaret. Her husband smiled. ' Yes,' he said, 'just as its beauty appeals to me, and its goodness to you. There you have our three characters, combined in the three attributes. It is the story of the Ring. To your mother religion means devils, to me it means angels, to you ' He paused. ' Just human creatures looking up to God,' she said. He bent to kiss her. ' And, looking out of human creatures, God,' he said. But Mrs. Fosby had no patience with what she called ' theories.' ' On the most sacred subjects,' said Mrs. Fosby, ' to my own granddaughter, my lips are sealed.

Not for worlds would I intrude upon her mother's task. Still, Margaret, when the child insisted upon splashing my new silk dress, I was compelled to refer to a possible visit from the bogey-man.' ' Did she cry ?' questioned Margaret anxiously. ' She did not. I am bound to confess she informed me the bogey - man was there already. It appears that, according to Anthony, / am the bogey-man I' Anthony, however, always stoutly main tained that here was a misconception on somebody's part, and, as he liked his mother in-the-law, on the whole, and was both good tempered and honest, he deserves to be taken at his word. He undertook, as a sort of amende honorable, to show Mrs. Fosby how carefully Margie was instructed in what the lady pleasantly denominated ' Bible Lessons.' An occasion soon pre sented itself.

On a Sunday afternoon, dull, sluggish, suggestive of three o'clock tea, Margie, aged four and a half, sat on the drawing-room carpet, be-starched and be ribboned, playing with marbles. These latter were removed when Mrs. Fosby drove up, and a Noah's Ark had been substituted, and Margie's tears had been dried, by the time that grandmamma entered and kissed her. With grandmamma was the terrible Miss Murcham, grandmamma's spinster friend, a lady possessed of every virtue that is most honoured in the breach — one of those people who never drive or do anything else on the Sabbath unless they want to. Miss Murcham, sweetly interested in Margie, took up a nondescript effigy from the floor. ' And this,' she said insinuatingly, ' is Mrs. Noah's tortoise-shell cat.' ' Moo — moo — cow,' said Margie fiercely, snatching the animal away. 'A cow, is it?' The spinster reddened. ' But what a very little one !

It can't be much more than a calf, Margie — an orange calf!' ' Calfs is orange,' said Margie, conten tiously. ' She is thinking of the Bible picture-book,' interposed Anthony prettily : ' the Golden Calf, you know, Miss Murcham. It is very yellow in the picture. Margie, tell grandma all about the naughty Calf ' Toby bited it right through,' said Margie. 'And Jimmy squealed.' ' What ?' exclaimed Mrs. Fosby. 'There is some mistake,' remarked Anthony gravely. ' Mops is referring to the little boy's leg that was bitten two days ago by the stable-dog.' ' Yes, bited it in its leg and it squealed,' repeated Margie. ' There is no connection between the two subjects,' said grandmamma tartly — ' no con nection at all. And I cannot comprehend Anthony's fondness for ferocious, not to say murderous, brutes.

Sometimes, indeed, I cannot but realize that I come here in danger of my life. ' ' Oh, poor Toby's been shot,' said Anthony. ' They were afraid he was going mad, so they shot him to make sure, and that may happen to anyone — now, mayn't it ? Look here, grandmamma, Mops knows a lot out of the Bible, don't you, Mops, dear ? Give her the picture-book, Margaret ; let her tell about the pictures.' Both parents bent fondly over their darling. ' It is Anthony's idea, you remember,' said Margaret proudly ; ' the engravings are taken from celebrated pictures. Now, Margie, tell grandmamma, what is the little boy doing with the lamb ?' But Margie, seated in front of the great volume on the floor, all starch and blue ribbons and obstinacy, refused, after the 2 — ignominious incident concerning the calf, to utter a word. ' These are Popish pictures, my dear,' said Miss Murcham. ' It does seem a pity,' assented Mrs. Fosby sadly, 'that all the Italian painters should have been Roman Catholics.

Michael Angelo, I have been told, was a Protestant ; but, really, to judge by his paintings, an Italian Protestant might as well be a Papist as not.' Margaret smiled ; but Anthony impatiently turned over a number of pages. 'Now, here,' he said — 'here are the parables. Tell grandmamma what the old man is doing, Mops.' Silence. Contemplation. ' Where had the young man been, Mops ? Why was he coming home ? When his father ran down from the top of the house, what did he say ?' More silence. Deeper contemplation. ' Now, Margie, you are very naughty. You know perfectly well. He put a beautiful coat on his back, and then he put rings on his fingers ' ' And bells on his toes,' said Margie, suddenly finding voice. But Mrs. Fosby was by no means so foolish a woman as the careless generalizer would like to think.

When Anthony — in his happy days a bit of a teaze — informed her how Margie, having hiccoughed in the midst of her evening address to the Almighty, had paused and courteously interposed, ' I beg your pardon,' before proceeding, Mrs. Fosby had merely answered : ' The child is a gentlewoman born,' which shows her to have been sufficiently discriminating in her own peculiar sphere. Nor did she remember with any particular annoyance the scene between herself and Margie on a day when the child had been sent across to amuse her — she being confined to the house with a cold — and a desultory thunderstorm had abnormally protracted the visit. ' You mustn't be afraid of the thunder, Margie ; it's the angels talking' Far from reassured by this view, Margie hid away close under the sofa cushions. Presently, however, grandmamma sneezed several times consecutively.

Margie drew forth her head, half timidly, and watched. ' And is the showers the angels sneezing, gran'ma ?' Into this little circle, full of mutual love, and the human diversities which quicken love, came the Ano;el of Death and cut the string that held all the links together. ' Gather up the fragments,' He said in passing. And one poor human being, on his knees in the dust, holding together the severed ends that crumbled under his fret ting, cried back that the chain still held.

Chapter III

It was very early in the morning — the morning of the day after — when he threw open the boudoir door, and stood listening. The deserted corridor was full of the awakening sunlight, cool and golden, with a hundred glinting suggestions of glories to come. He drew the door to and locked it carefully on the outside. Then he hastened down the solemn stillness with the step of a man who has taken a great resolve. He went up straight to the nursery. Both rooms were deserted ; bars of light fell be tween the shutters : from the inner chamber the child's cot had been removed, leaving an immense forlornness behind it. The dis covery came home to him with a shock — a sensation of something having happened, a ■•4 change. Something that other people knew. They were acting, the outsiders. Life moved. On the stairs a frightened undermaid met him, and sank away, white, from his white face, into the dusk.

He asked calmly enough where the child was. In the breakfast-room ? He went there, dully surprised. All curtains were already drawn back — here at the back of the house — the room was as full of light and brightness as possible. Nurse Lintot sat droning a fairy tale. Close up against the woman's arm lay little Margaret, still in her cot, white-garmented, attentive. ' And the King said to the golden-haired Princess : But why is your name Mis fortune ?' The father stood in the doorway ; Nurse Lintot dropped her book. ' Papa !' cried little Margaret. There was a glad note in her voice ; he caught it, and for the first time a sob rose to his throat. 'Come,' he said, beckoning, 'I want you to come at once.' She crept out of bed, obedient, and took his hand. ' Put something on her feet,' he said gently, and led her away slippered, bare -legged.

Nurse Lintot, shaking against the doorpost, watched them down the solemn sunlit corridor in the shadow of the awakening day. She saw them enter the room together — that room ! — and its door closed heavily upon her heart. Against the door, which her father had once more locked behind them, the child hung back, open-eyed. There was a fascina tion in the unfamiliar aspect of the long familiar room. Her glance fell on the shreds of china scattered here and there. ' Oh,' she exclaimed, ' mamma's beautiful chandelier !' Her father took no notice ; he was staring with a terrified, terrifying look at the couch by the window — her eyes followed his — on which mamma so often lay. And mamma lay there now, with face unveiled, upturned to the light — mamma, of whom they had been telling her all yesterday — Nurse Lintot, Grandmamma Fosby, everyone — that she had gone to live with the angels, gone to heaven (above the sky), gone to live with God, gone, gone, that she would never see her again, at least never unless she was very good ; she must always be a good little girl now, and comfort her poor father, and then, perhaps, if she died (which only other children do), etcetera. ' Mamma !' she cried out, regardless for the moment of the awe which had filled her, re gardless of possible disturbance, of sickness, or sleep, of all things except her mother's face.

Suddenly she understood — completely. God had heard her unceasing prayers of yesterday — for God hears little children's prayers — and had sent back from His far away, angel filled heaven the mother she had cried for till Nurse told her it was naughty to cry. She no longer observed the torn hangings in heaps on the floor, the sprinklings of rose leaves from the gutted candlesticks, the dazzle of the naked windows against the streaming; sun— her g-lance flashed to her father, standing expectant. ' Mamma !' ' Yes, yes, yes,' he said, finding passionate utterance. ' That's what I want you to do, Margie. That's what I fetched you for. Think of it, she can't hear me, Margie. She can't hear me. She won't hear me. I don't know which. I've been calling to her for hours — for hours ! I couldn't tell how long : it doesn't matter.

She'd have heard me by this time, if she could, I think. But she'll hear you, Margie : I want you to call her and wake her. Hush, you needn't call very loud, not for other people to hear, you know. She used to hear you when you were a tiny baby, and when I said nothing had moved, she used to guess you wanted her : she couldn't possibly have heard. She'll hear you now, and wake, and answer. Margaret! Margaret ! Oh my God — Margaret ! Come here, Margie, come closer ! Whisper in your mother's ear !' The child drew near, trembling. She stood by the couch, and, as she leant forward, her yellow curls, in the crystal sunlight, mingled with the dead woman's darker locks. ' Mamma,' she whispered, under her father's eager gaze, ' mamma !' A groan broke from the wretched watcher. ' She doesn't hear you,' he exclaimed, ' Oh Margie, you must call louder, too !' He sank down beside her and together they murmured against the impassive cheek, that one dear, unanswered word.

His voice rose to a wail of disappointment ; the child burst into tears. A long, dead silence ensued in the flower and sun filled room. Outside, a chaffinch broke into carolling : for a moment the still air seemed to ring with a rejoicing that deepened immediately into unendurable pain. The widower rose to his feet and kissed his little daughter. ' Little one, you must for give me,' he said, 'come away!' He threw open the door. His wife's mother stood in the corridor, hurriedly summoned from a sleepless pillow, irresolute, white to the lips. ' She is dead,' exclaimed Anthony, and threw himself on her breast. He had scarcely calmed down, when his brother came forward and held out a sympa thetic hand. ' He'll be all right after this, and a good thing too,' thought the brother. For Henry Stollard took life simply, and always behaved as everyone would expect him to behave.

A transparent nature himself, upright and sensible, he thought everybody else was sensible and transparent too. At the sound of his voice, the younger brother turned round, disengaging himself, and stood, apparently collected. 'Oh, Henry, is that you?' he said, 'how are you ? It was very kind of you to come.' Then he looked away and desired Lintot to get Miss Margie ready for going out at once. Mrs. Fosby, interposing, said some thing about dressmakers and parcels, and not leaving the house. — 'Oh, what does it matter ?' he answered quite gently. ' We can get what she wants for her anywhere. Black clothes I suppose you mean — mamma ?' And he strode down the passage, thoughtfully brushing his crumpled sleeve. His brother followed him. 'Anthony,' said Sir Henry, ' I wish you would listen to me for just one minute.

There are some unavoidable arrangements.' Anthony stopped. ' Yes, of course,' he said, ' I understand what you mean, quite well. I wish you would see to all that for me, Henry. You could not do me a greater service. To me it is all a matter of supreme indifference.' ' All ?' ' All.' ' But, Anthony, the responsibility ! I should be so vexed, if there were anything you would wish done differently !' Anthony interrupted him with a weary gesture. ' There is nothing I should wish done differently,' he said, ' because, you see, there is nothing I should wish done at all. I am going away at once with Margie, for good. This is no place for her or for me. Do as you like in everything. I shall be so glad. You are sure to act right, Henry. You always know what your duty is, and you always do it. I mean ' He hesitated, flushed, imagin ing he had said something unkind. 'I'm so glad you think so,' said Henry warmly. ' I shall be delighted — I mean, I am willing to do whatever I can for you.