Alice Lauder/Part 2/Chapter 14
CHAPTER XIV.
IT was a very dreary, rainy, windy, south-westerly, and chilly afternoon, some days after the ball; and all the members of Mrs. Damon’s household hugged the fireside as closely as possible, and thanked their stars that they were not obliged to go out of the house in such weather as this. Clare had given up the unequal contest with the draughts from the back-door, and the dark presentiments of bronchitis which haunted her, and had found no place of safety other than her comfortable bed, where, with all the magazines in the house, a packet of English letters, and a variety of patent medicines close at hand, she bade defiance to colds and sore throats from that comfortable coign of vantage. Alice was vainly trying to fight down the depression and self-depreciation that are apt to follow any unwonted excitement, by the aid of afternoon tea and American novels of extra strength, seated beside a kindly but snappy wood fire in the drawing-room. The children wandered aimlessly about, trying to assist Mead in cleaning his silver, or begging biscuits from his wife, who maintained a postal deafness to all their requests as to the making of toffee in the schoolroom. Finally they decided to relieve the tedium by playing all the games of cards and chance which Alice could be induced to join them in; the rattle of the dice and the ghastly dissipation of cards by daylight added a last touch to the desolation of the afternoon.
Just as dusk was closing in, however, the sound of wheels on the gravel was heard; a carriage stopped at the door; there was a ring, a rustle of silk, and Mrs. Austin, beautiful, pale, in velvet and furs, and with some new, inscrutable expression in her eyes, entered the room. She had a letter in her hand, and she advanced slowly without a smile and held it towards Alice.
“I want you to do me a favour, Miss Lauder,” she said in a grave, firm voice, very different to her usual vivid hilarity of tone. “Will you please give this letter to Mr. Campbell, and say good-bye for me? We are going to England by next mail—we must catch the steamer on Thursday. It’s rather sudden—I don’t expect to see him again. You will oblige me very much by doing this for me.”
Alice remained silent, confused and embarrassed, and not knowing how to refuse. They were both standing, and she noticed how much nobler and more stately Lizzie looked in this new mood; she seemed more like a fine antique statue of the Cumæan Sibyl than a modern professional beauty in a velvet gown. Still with the same unsmiling gaze she went on, with the air of a princess making a request, rather than asking a favour: “I cannot explain to you why I desire this so much. Mr. Austin is very busy with our hurried departure; he does not wish me to see our friends, and say good-bye.I should like you to do this for me. I am going to town to-morrow, and may never perhaps return here. I don’t want to see any of these people again. They have been so spiteful—said such horrid things—I hate them all!” She threw her head back, and moved her hand as if to brush off some teasing thoughts.
Little Dulcie stood on the hearthrug with a white kitten under each arm, tightly squeezed as to their necks and very limp as to their furry legs, while their Persian mother mewed imploringly but in vain, agitating her magnificent tail and rubbing herself against the child’s arm. Dulcie’s eyes were too much taken up with the grand lady to notice the sufferings of her friends; and, besides, there was a certain exultation in not being sent out of the room that absorbed all her thoughts in the fear of discovery.
“Oh, you must not mind what they say,” said Alice, finding voice at last, and anxious to be consolatory. “In a little place like this people must talk, or they would die. It’s their only amusement—their opera box—their lending library; you can afford to laugh at their gossip.”
“Yes, I know. I never used to care what they said about me, but now—now I feel so strange; it’s such a sudden step. However, we shall all be going away soon, I suppose. Mr. Campbell will go to India, and you will be leaving the village soon. It’s been a pleasant summer, but now it’s all over. What is that verse—‘The summer is past, the harvest is ended, and we are not saved.’”
“Why do you say that?” said Alice involuntarily, looking at her clear sad countenance.
“Well, good-bye, Miss Lauder; perhaps we shall never meet again, so you will do this for me?” She held the letter again to Alice, who took it silently, and the two women remained for a long moment looking intently at each other. At last Lizzie removed her steady, melancholy gaze, took Alice’s hand for one instant, and then turned away without a word. The carriage wheels grated on the gravel, and had rolled far away before Alice awakened from the trance of mingled feeling that the strange visit produced in her thoughts. . . . . She never met Mrs.Austin again; but some years later, when she was on a visit to some Devonshire cousins, they took her to see the show monument of their little church—a beautiful recumbent statue of a young mother lying on a couch, and clasping an infant lightly in her arms—in the best style of modern art. The pure whiteness of the marble, the lovely features of the sculptured portrait, the “rapture of repose” expressed in the whole figure, fascinated the eye with its melancholy sweetness. There was an expression of angelic calm and happiness on the mother’s marble countenance. Underneath was the name “Elizabeth,” and the dates of birth and of death, and the text—(“chosen by herself as she was departing”)—“And the prophet said unto her, ‘Is it well with thee? Is it well with the child? And she answered, ‘It is well.’”