Old Lady Mary - Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant
"Who? little Connie?"
"Of course I mean Miss Vivian, Mrs. Bowyer. Don't you know the village is
all in a tremble about the ghost at the Great House?"
"Oh yes, I know, and it is very strange. I can't help thinking,
doctor,--"
"We had better not discuss that subject. Of course I don't put a moment's
faith in any such nonsense. But girls are full of fancies. I want you to
find out for me whether she has begun to think she sees anything. She
looks like it; and if something isn't done she will soon do so, if not
now."
"Then you do think there is something to see," said Mrs. Bowyer, clasping
her hands; "that has always been my opinion: what so natural--?"
"As that Lady Mary, the greatest old aristocrat in the world, should come
and make private revelations to Betsey Barnes, the under housemaid--?"
said the doctor, with a sardonic grin.
"I don't mean that, doctor; but if she could not rest in her grave, poor
old lady--"
"You think, then, my dear," said the vicar, "that Lady Mary, an old
friend, who was as young in her mind as any of us, lies body and soul in
that old dark hole of a vault?"
"How you talk, Francis! what can a woman say between you horrid men? I
say if she couldn't rest,--wherever she is,--because of leaving Mary
destitute, it would be only natural,--and I should think the more of her
for it," Mrs. Bowyer cried.
The vicar had a gentle professional laugh over the confusion of his
wife's mind. But the doctor took the matter more seriously. "Lady Mary is
safely buried and done with, I am not thinking of her," he said; "but I
am thinking of Mary Vivian's senses, which will not stand this much
longer. Try and find out from her if she sees anything: if she has come
to that, whatever she says we must have her out of there."
But Mrs. Bowyer had nothing to report when this conclave of friends met
again. Mary would not allow that she had seen anything. She grew paler
every day, her eyes grew larger, but she made no confession; and Connie
bloomed and grew, and met no more old ladies upon the stairs.
XII.
The days passed on, and no new event occurred in this little history. It
came to be summer,--balmy and green,--and everything around the old house
was delightful, and its beautiful rooms became more pleasant than ever in
the long days and soft brief nights. Fears of the earl's return and of
the possible end of the Turners' tenancy began to disturb the household,
but no one so much as Mary, who felt herself to cling as she had never
done before to the old house. She had never got over the impression that
a secret presence, revealed to no one else, was continually near her,
though she saw no one. And her health was greatly affected by this
visionary double life.
This was the state of affairs on a certain soft wet day when the family
were all within doors. Connie had exhausted all her means of amusement
in the morning. When the afternoon came, with its long, dull, uneventful
hours, she had nothing better to do than to fling herself upon Miss
Vivian, upon whom she had a special claim. She came to Mary's room,
disturbing the strange quietude of that place, and amused herself looking
over all the trinkets and ornaments that were to be found there, all of
which were associated to Mary with her godmother. Connie tried on the
bracelets and brooches which Mary in her deep mourning had not worn, and
asked a hundred questions. The answer which had to be so often repeated,
"That was given to me by my godmother," at last called forth the child's
remark, "How fond your godmother must have been of you, Miss Vivian! She
seems to have given you everything--"
"Everything!" cried Mary, with a full heart.
"And yet they all say she was not kind enough," said little
Connie,--"what do they mean by that? for you seem to love her very much
still, though she is dead. Can one go on loving people when they are
dead?"
"Oh yes, and better than ever," said Mary; "for often you do not know how
you loved them, or what they were to you, till they are gone away."
Connie gave her governess a hug and said, "Why did not she leave you all
her money, Miss Vivian? everybody says she was wicked and unkind to die
without--"
"My dear," cried Mary, "do not repeat what ignorant people say, because
it is not true."
"But mamma said it, Miss Vivian."
"She does not know, Connie,--you must not say it. I will tell your mamma
she must not say it; for nobody can know so well as I do,--and it is not
true--"
"But they say," cried Connie, "that that is why she can't rest in her
grave. You must have heard. Poor old lady, they say she cannot rest in
her grave, because--"
Mary seized the child in her arms with a pressure that hurt Connie. "You
must not! You must not!" she cried, in a sort of panic. Was she afraid
that some one might hear? She gave Connie a hurried kiss, and turned her
face away, looking out into the vacant room. "It is not true! it is not
true!" she cried, with a great excitement and horror, as if to stay a
wound. "She was always good, and like an angel to me. She is with the
angels. She is with God. She cannot be disturbed by anything--anything!
Oh, let us never say, or think, or imagine--" Mary cried. Her cheeks
burned, her eyes were full of tears. It seemed to her that something of
wonder and anguish and dismay was in the room round her,--as if some
one unseen had heard a bitter reproach, an accusation undeserved, which
must wound to the very heart.
Connie struggled a little in that too tight hold. "Are you frightened,
Miss Vivian? What are you frightened for? No one can hear; and if you
mind it so much, I will never say it again."
"You must never, never say it again. There is nothing I mind so much,"
Mary said.
"Oh," said Connie, with mild surprise. Then, as Mary's hold relaxed, she
put her arms round her beloved companion's neck. "I will tell them all
you don't like it. I will tell them they must not--oh!" cried Connie
again, in a quick astonished voice. She clutched Mary round the neck,
returning the violence of the grasp which had hurt her, and with the
other hand pointed to the door. "The lady! the lady! oh, come and see
where she is going!" Connie cried.
Mary felt as if the child in her vehemence lifted her from her seat. She
had no sense that her own limbs or her own will carried her, in the
impetuous rush with which Connie flew. The blood mounted to her head. She
felt a heat and throbbing as if her spine were on fire. Connie holding by
her skirts, pushing her on, went along the corridor to the other door,
now deserted, of Lady Mary's room. "There, there! don't you see her? She
is going in!" the child cried, and rushed on, clinging to Mary, dragging
her on, her light hair streaming, her little white dress waving.
Lady Mary's room was unoccupied and cold,--cold, though it was summer,
with the chill that rests in uninhabited apartments. The blinds were
drawn down over the windows; a sort of blank whiteness, greyness, was in
the place, which no one ever entered. The child rushed on with eager
gestures, crying, "Look! look!" turning her lively head from side to
side. Mary, in a still and passive expectation, seeing nothing, looking
mechanically to where Connie told her to look, moving like a creature
in a dream, against her will, followed. There was nothing to be seen. The
blank, the vacancy, went to her heart. She no longer thought of Connie
or her vision. She felt the emptiness with a desolation such as she had
never felt before. She loosed her arm with something like impatience from
the child's close clasp. For months she had not entered the room which
was associated with so much of her life. Connie and her cries and
warnings passed from her mind like the stir of a bird or a fly. Mary felt
herself alone with her dead, alone with her life, with all that had been
and that never could be again. Slowly, without knowing what she did, she
sank upon her knees. She raised her face in the blank of desolation about
her to the unseen heaven. Unseen! unseen! whatever we may do. God above
us, and those who have gone from us, and He who has taken them, who has
redeemed them, who is ours and theirs, our only hope,--but all unseen,
unseen, concealed as much by the blue skies as by the dull blank of that
roof. Her heart ached and cried into the unknown. "O God," she cried, "I
do not know where she is, but Thou art everywhere. O God, let her know
that I have never blamed her, never wished it otherwise, never ceased to
love her, and thank her, and bless her. God! God!" cried Mary, with a
great and urgent cry, as if it were a man's name. She knelt there for a
moment before her senses failed her, her eyes shining as if they would
burst from their sockets, her lips dropping apart, her countenance like
marble.
XIII.
"And _she_ was standing there all the time," said Connie, crying and
telling her little tale after Mary had been carried away,--"standing with
her hand upon that cabinet, looking and looking, oh, as if she wanted to
say something and couldn't. Why couldn't she, mamma? Oh, Mr. Bowyer, why
couldn't she, if she wanted so much? Why wouldn't God let her speak?"
XIV.
Mary had a long illness, and hovered on the verge of death. She said a
great deal in her wanderings about some one who had looked at her. "For a
moment, a moment," she would cry; "only a moment! and I had so much to
say." But as she got better, nothing was said to her about this face she
had seen. And perhaps it was only the suggestion of some feverish dream.
She was taken away, and was a long time getting up her strength; and in
the meantime the Turners insisted that the chains should be thoroughly
seen to, which were not all in a perfect state. And the earl coming to
see the place, took a fancy to it, and determined to keep it in his own
hands. He was a friendly person, and his ideas of decoration were quite
different from those of his grandmother. He gave away a great deal of
her old furniture, and sold the rest.
Among the articles given away was the Italian cabinet, which the vicar
had always had a fancy for; and naturally it had not been in the vicarage
a day, before the boys insisted on finding out the way of opening the
secret drawer. And there the paper was found, in the most natural way,
without any trouble or mystery at all.
XV.
They all gathered to see the wanderer coming back. She was not as she had
been when she went away. Her face, which had been so easy, was worn with
trouble; her eyes were deep with things unspeakable. Pity and knowledge
were in the lines, which time had not made. It was a great event in that
place to see one come back who did not come by the common way. She was
received by the great officer who had given her permission to go, and her
companions who had received her at the first all came forward, wondering,
to hear what she had to say; because it only occurs to those wanderers
who have gone back to earth of their own will, to return when they have
accomplished what they wished, or it is judged above that there is
nothing possible more. Accordingly, the question was on all their lips,
"You have set the wrong right,--you have done what you desired?"
"Oh," she said, stretching out her hands, "how well one is in one's own
place! how blessed to be at home! I have seen the trouble and sorrow in
the earth till my heart is sore, and sometimes I have been near to die."
"But that is impossible," said the man who had loved her.
"If it had not been impossible, I should have died," she said. "I have
stood among people who loved me, and they have not seen me nor known me,
nor heard my cry. I have been outcast from all life, for I belonged to
none. I have longed for you all, and my heart has failed me. Oh how
lonely it is in the world, when you are a wanderer, and can be known of
none--"
"You were warned," said he who was in authority, "that it was more bitter
than death." "What is death?" she said; and no one made any reply.
Neither did any one venture to ask her again whether she had been
successful in her mission. But at last, when the warmth of her appointed
home had melted the ice about her heart, she smiled once more and spoke.
"The little children knew me. They were not afraid of me; they held out
their arms. And God's dear and innocent creatures--" She wept a few
tears, which were sweet after the ice tears she had shed upon the earth.
And then some one, more bold than the rest, asked again, "And did you
accomplish what you wished?"
She had come to herself by this time, and the dark lines were melting
from her face. "I am forgiven," she said, with a low cry of happiness.
"She whom I wronged, loves me and blessed me; and we saw each other face
to face. I know nothing more."
"There is no more," said all together. For everything is included in
pardon and love.