After the outburst, they heard his friend again interruptingly: ‘You keep that tongue of yours from wagging, as it did when you got round the old widow woman for her money, Simmy!’
Victor leaned forward. Simeon towered. He bellowed
‘And you keep that tongue of yours from committing incest on a lie!’
It was like a lightning-flash in the theatre. The man went under. Simeon flowed. Conscience reproached him with the little he had done for Victor, and he had now his congenial opportunity.
Up in the box, the powers of the orator were not so cordially esteemed. To Matilda Pridden, his tales were barely decently the flesh and the devil smothering a holy occasion to penetrate and exhort. Dartrey sat rigid, as with the checked impatience for a leap. Nesta looked at Louise when some one was perceived on the stage bending to her father: It was Mr. Peridon; he never once raised his face. Apparently he was not intelligible or audible but the next moment Victor sprang erect. Dartrey quitted the box. Nesta beheld her father uttering hurried words to right and left. He passed from sight, Mr. Peridon with him; and Dartrey did not return.
Nesta felt her father’s absence as light gone: his eyes rayed light. Besides she had the anticipation of a speech from him, that would win Matilda Pridden. She fancied Simeon Fenellan to be rather under the spell of the hilarity he roused. A gentleman behind him spoke in his ear; and Simeon, instead of ceasing, resumed his flow. Matilda Pridden’s gaze on him and the people was painful to behold: Nesta saw her mind. She set herself to study a popular assembly. It could be serious to the call of better leadership, she believed. Her father had been telling her of late of a faith he had in the English, that they (or so her intelligence translated his remarks) had power to rise to spiritual ascendancy, and be once more the Islanders heading the world of a new epoch abjuring materialism—some such idea; very quickening to her, as it would be to this earnest young woman worshipped by Skepsey. Her father’s absence and the continued shouts of laughter, the insatiable thirst for fun, darkened her in her desire to have the soul of the good working sister refreshed. They had talked together; not much: enough for each to see at either’s breast the wells from the founts of life.
The box-door opened, Dartrey came in. He took her hand. She stood-up to his look. He said to Matilda Pridden: ‘Come with us; she will need you.’
‘Speak it,’ said Nesta.
He said to the other: ‘She has courage.’
‘I could trust to her,’ Matilda Pridden replied.
Nesta read his eyes. ‘Mother?’
His answer was in the pressure.
‘Ill?’
‘No longer.’
‘Oh! Dartrey.’ Matilda Pridden caught her fast.
‘I can walk, dear,’ Nesta said.
Dartrey mentioned her father.
She understood: ‘I am thinking of him.’
The words of her mother: ‘At peace when the night is over,’ rang. Along the gassy passages of the back of the theatre, the sound coming from an applausive audience was as much a thunder as rage would have been. It was as void of human meaning as a sea.
CHAPTER XLII. THE LAST
In the still dark hour of that April morning, the Rev. Septimus Barmby was roused by Mr. Peridon, with a scribbled message from Victor, which he deciphered by candlelight held close to the sheet of paper, between short inquiries and communications, losing more and more the sense of it as his intelligence became aware of what dread blow had befallen the stricken man. He was bidden come to fulfil his promise instantly. He remembered the bearing of the promise. Mr. Peridon’s hurried explanatory narrative made the request terrific, out of tragically lamentable. A semblance of obedience had to be put on, and the act of dressing aided it. Mr. Barmby prayed at heart for guidance further.
The two gentlemen drove Westward, speaking little; they had the dry sob in the throat.
‘Miss Radnor?’ Mr. Barmby asked.
‘She is shattered; she holds up; she would not break down.’
‘I can conceive her to possess high courage.’
‘She has her friend Mademoiselle de Seilles.’
Mr. Barmby remained humbly silent. Affectionate deep regrets moved him to say: ‘A loss irreparable. We have but one voice of sorrow. And how sudden! The dear lady had no suffering, I trust.’
‘She fell into the arms of Mr. Durance. She died in his arms. She was unconscious, he says. I left her straining for breath. She said “Victor”; she tried to smile:—I understood I was not to alarm him.’
‘And he too late!’
‘He was too late, by some minutes.’
‘At least I may comfort. Miss Radnor must be a blessing to him.’
‘They cannot meet. Her presence excites him.’
That radiant home of all hospitality seemed opening on from darker chambers to the deadly dark. The immorality in the moral situation could not be forgotten by one who was professionally a moralist. But an incorruptible beauty in the woman’s character claimed to plead for her memory. Even the rigorous in defence of righteous laws are softened by a sinner’s death to hear excuses, and may own a relationship, haply perceive the faint nimbus of the saint. Death among us proves us to be still not so far from the Nature saying at every avenue to the mind: ‘Earth makes all sweet.’
Mr. Durance had prophesied a wailful end ever to the carol of Optimists! Yet it is not the black view which is the right view. There is one between: the path adopted by Septimus Barmby:—if he could but induce his brethren to enter on it! The dreadful teaching of circumstances might help to the persuading of a fair young woman, under his direction… having her hand disengaged. Mr. Barmby started himself in the dream of his uninterred passion for the maiden: he chased it, seized it, hurled it hence, as a present sacrilege:—constantly, and at the pitch of our highest devotion to serve, are we assailed by the tempter! Is it, that the love of woman is our weakness? For if so, then would a celibate clergy have grant of immunity. But, alas, it is not so with them! We have to deplore the hearing of reports too credible. Again we are pushed to contemplate woman as the mysterious obstruction to the perfect purity of soul. Nor is there a refuge in asceticism. No more devilish nourisher of pride do we find than in pain voluntarily embraced. And strangely, at the time when our hearts are pledged to thoughts upon others, they are led by woman to glance revolving upon ourself, our vile self! Mr. Barmby clutched it by the neck.
Light now, as of a strong memory of day along the street, assisted him to forget himself at the sight of the inanimate houses of this London, all revealed in a quietness not less immobile than tombstones of an unending cemetery, with its last ghost laid. Did men but know it!—The habitual necessity to amass matter for the weekly sermon, set him noting his meditative exclamations, the noble army of platitudes under haloes, of good use to men: justifiably turned over in his mind for their good. He had to think, that this act of the justifying of the act reproached him with a lack of due emotion, in sympathy with agonized friends truly dear. Drawing near the hospitable house, his official and a cordial emotion united, as we see sorrowful crape-wreathed countenances. His heart struck heavily when the house was visible.
Could it be the very house? The look of it belied the tale inside. But that threw a ghostliness on the look.
Some one was pacing up and down. They greeted Dudley Sowerby. His ability to speak was tasked. They gathered, that mademoiselle and ‘a Miss Pridden’ were sitting with Nesta, and that their services in a crisis had been precious. At such times, one of them reflected, woman has indeed her place: when life’s battle waxes red. Her soul must be capable of mounting to the level of the man’s, then? It is a lesson!
Dudley said he was waiting for Dr. Themison to come forth. He could not tear himself from sight of the house.
The door opened to Dr. Themison departing, Colney Durance and Simeon Fenellan bare-headed. Colney showed a face with stains of the lashing of tears.