Miracle Gold: A Novel (Vol. 3 of 3)
"With the greatest pleasure, my dear fellow," said Shaw, grasping the hand of the little man, and displaying his greatest pleasure by allowing his large dancing green-grey eyes to fill up with tears behind his unemotional spectacles.
"That clock would have made my fame. I don't know how the fire arose. I had the clock wound up last night by a mechanical contrivance, and before leaving for Millway I lit the faintest glimmer of gas. Some accident must have happened. Some accident which can now never be explained. I left the window open for the first time last night. I had put up a curtain for the first time last night. If any boy had thrown a stone, and the stone got through the curtain, there is no knowing what it might not do among the machinery; the works were so close and complicated, it might have brought something inflammable within reach of the flame of the gas, for the gas would not be quite out. At all events, the clock is gone. It was getting too much for me. Often of late, when I was away from it, the movements became reversed, and all the works went backwards, and I often thought that kind of thing would injure my brain."
"It was a sure sign injury was beginning, and I think it is a good thing for you the clock is burned," said Shaw soothingly.
"But the shock! The shock you will say, by-and-by, killed me. How, then, do you count the loss of the clock good?"
"I mean if you had told me there was no way of stopping this involuntary reversal of the movement I should have advised you to smash the clock rather than risk the brain."
"And I should have declined to take your advice."
Shaw laughed. "You would not be singular in that. I can get ten people to take my medicines for one who will take my advice."
"What an awful mortality there would be, Shaw, if people took both!"
"There now," said Shaw, with another laugh, "you will do now. You are your old self again. I must run away. I shall see you in an hour or two, and have my tea up here with you. If you want anything, ring."
So Leigh was left alone.
"The clothes," he thought, "of the figure must have in some way or other come in contact with the gas-jet. If they once caught fire the wax would burn-the wax of the head, and then there would be plenty of material for a blaze.
"Ah, me; the clock is gone! Even if that survived, I should not mind. I was so jealous of it. I never let anyone examine it, and the things it could do will not be credited when I am dead, for I often, very often, exaggerated, and even invented, a little.
"Ay, ay, ay, the clock is gone, and the Miracle Gold, too. I am glad I never had anything really to do with it. I am sorry I was not always of the mind I was yesterday-my last day at my bench. All the time I was burying in my own grave my own small capital of life, I was missing the real gold of existence. I sought to build up fame in my clock and in that gold. Fame is for the dead. What are the dead to us? What shall I be when they bury me to myself, who walked in the sunlight and saw the trees and the flowers, and the clouds and the sea, where there were no men to remind me of my own unshapeliness? Nothing. Why should a man care for fame among people he has never seen, among the dim myriads of faces yet to come out of the womb of time, when he could have had an abiding place in the heart's ingle among those whom he knows and whose hands he can touch? What good to us will the voices of the strange men of the hereafter be? What a fool I was to think of buying the applause of strange, unborn men out of gold rent from living men, whose friend I might have been.
"I told Hanbury I was making a dying confession to him. I suppose this is a death-bed repentance. Very well. But I sinned only in thought. In order to show other men I was better than they, I was willing to be worse. Shaw is right. I am much easier here. I feel rested. I feel quiet. I have really done nothing harmful to any man. It will be a relief to get out of this husk. I will try to sleep. My poor old mother! But we cannot be separated long. It is easier to die in a body like this than to live in it."
He was very weak, and life fluttered feebly in his veins. He closed his eyes and ceased to think. The calm that comes with the knowledge that one is near the end was upon him. He did not think, he did not sleep. He lay simply gathering quiet for the great sleep. He was learning how to rest, how to lie still, how to want not, how to wait the sliding aside of the mysterious panel that the flesh keeps shut against the eyes of the spirit while the two are partners in life.
CHAPTER XXXIX
PATIENT AND NURSE
Mrs. Hanbury was greatly shocked by the news her son had given her that day about his relations with Dora. She had a conviction that it would be to John's advantage to be married. She held that, all other things being reasonably taken care of, a young man of twenty-six ought to marry and settle down to face the world in the relations and surroundings which would govern the remainder of his life. There had never been any consideration of John's sowing wild oats. He had always been studious, serious, domestic. He was the very man to marry and, in the cheerful phrase of the story book, live happy ever after.
And where could he find a wife better suited to him than in Curzon Street? Dora had every single quality a most exacting mother could desire in the wife of an only son, and Mrs. Hanbury was anything but an exacting mother. Dora's family was excellent. She was one of the most beautiful girls in London, she was extremely clever, and although she and he did not seem fully in accord in their views of some things, they agreed in the main. She was extremely clever and accomplished, and amiable, and by-and-by she should be rich. In fact, Mrs. Hanbury might have doubled this list without nearly exhausting the advantages possessed by Miss Ashton, and now it was all over between the pair. This really was too bad.
She idolized her son, and thought there were few such good young men in the world; but she was no fool about him. She had watched his growth with yearning interest from infancy to this day. She knew as well, perhaps better than anyone, that he was not perfect. She knew he was too enthusiastic, that sometimes his temper was not to be relied on. She knew he was haughty, and at rare times even scornful. She knew he had no mean estimate of his own merits, and was restive under control. But what were these faults? Surely nothing to affright any gentle and skilful woman from uniting herself with him for life. Most of his faults were those of youth and inexperience. When he was properly launched, and met other men and measured himself against them, much of his haughty self-satisfaction would disappear. Most young men who had anything in them were discontented, for they had only vague premonitions of their powers, and they felt aggrieved that the world would not take them on their own mere word at their own estimate.
What Mr. and Mrs. Ashton would say she could not fancy. Perhaps they would imitate for once the example of younger people, and say nothing at all. They could not, however, help thinking of the matter, and they would be sure to form no favourable estimate of John's conduct in the affair. The rest of the world would be certain to say that John jilted the girl, and anyone who heard the true history of the Hanbury family, just come to light, would say that John kept back in the hope of making a more ambitious marriage.
He was, every one allowed, one of the most promising young men in England, and now the glamour of a throne was around him. All the philosophy in the world would not make him ever again the plain John Hanbury he was in the eyes of people a few days ago, in the eyes of every one outside this house still. Stanislaus II. may have been everything that was weak and contemptible, and been one of the chief reasons why his unfortunate country disappeared from the political map of the world, but John Hanbury was the descendant of King Stanislaus II. of Poland, and if that monarchy had been hereditary and the kingdom still existed, her son would be the legal sovereign, in spite of all the Republicans and revilers in Europe.
She herself set no store by these remote and shadowy kingly honours, but even in her own heart she felt a swelling of pride when she thought that the child she had borne and reared was the descendant of a king. A pretender to the throne of England would be put in a padded room and treated with indulgent humanity. But on the Continent it was not so. Sometimes they put him in prison, and sometimes they put him on the throne he claimed. She knew that her son would no more think of laying stress upon his descent from the Poniatowskis than of asking to be put in that padded room. But others would think of it and set value on it. Exclusive doors might be closed against the clever speaker, plain John Hanbury, son of an English gentleman, who for whim or greed went into trade, when he was rich enough to live without trade; but few doors would be closed against the gifted orator who was straight in descent and of the elder line of the Poniatowskis of Lithuania, and whose great grandfather's grandfather was the last King of Poland.
After all, upon looking more closely at the affair, the discovery was of some value. No one now could think him over ambitious for his years if he offered himself for Parliament. Younger men than he, sons of peers, got into Parliament merely by reason of a birth not nearly so illustrious as his, and with abilities it would be unfair to them to estimate against his.
There was something in it after all.
If now he chose to marry high, whom might he not marry? Putting out of view that corrupt, that forced election to the throne of Poland, he was a Poniatowski, _the_ Poniatowski, and few English families of to-day could show such a pedigree as her son's.
There was certainly no family in England that could refuse an alliance with him on account of birth.
And now vicious people would say he had been guilty, of the intolerable meanness of giving up Dora Ashton either in order that he might satisfy his ambition by a more distinguished marriage, or that he might be the freer to direct his public career towards some lofty goal. She knew her son too well to fancy for a moment any such unworthy thought could find a home in his breast; but all the world did not know him as she did, and no one would believe that the breaking-off came from Dora and the cause of it arose before the discovery of Stanislaus' secret English marriage.
When the doctor made his second visit, he pronounced Edith Grace progressing favourably. She was then fully conscious, but pitifully weak. There was not, the doctor said, the least cause for uneasiness so long as the patient was kept quite free from excitement, from even noise. A rude and racking noise might induce another period of semi-insensibility. Quiet, quiet, quiet was the watchword, and so he went away.
Mrs. Grace had protested against a hired nurse. She herself should sit up at night, and in the daytime the child would need no attendance. Mrs. Grace had, however, to go back to their lodgings to fetch some things needed, and to intimate that they were not returning for the present. Mrs. Hanbury volunteered to sit in Edith's room while the old woman was away. Protests were raised against this, but the hostess carried her point. "I told you," she said, with a smile, "that I am very positive. Let this be proof and a specimen."
So the old lady hastened off, and Mrs. Hanbury sat down to watch at the bedside of the young girl. Speaking was strictly forbidden. Mrs. Hanbury took a book to beguile the time, and sat with her face to the patient, so that she could see that all was right by merely lifting her eyes.
The young girl lay perfectly still, with her long dark hair spread out upon the pillow for coolness, and her white face lying in the midst of it as white as the linen of the sheet. Her breathing was very faint, the slight heaving of her breast barely moving the light counterpane. The lips were slightly open, and the eyes closed.
Edith was too weary and too weak to think. Before she had the fainting fit or attack of weakness (she had not quite fainted), she heard the story of the dwarfs misfortunes in a confused way through that sound of plashing water. She was quite content now to lie secure here without thought, in so far as thought is the result of voluntary mental act or the subject of successive processes. But the whole time she kept saying to herself in a way that did not weary her, "How strange that Leigh should lose everything and I gain so much, and that both should be lying ill, all in so short a time!" This went on in her mind over and over again, more like the sound of a melody that does not distress one and may be listened to or not at will, than an inherent suggestion of the brain. It was the result of the last strong effort of the brain at memory blending with the first awakening to full consciousness. "How strange that Leigh should lose everything and I gain so much, and that both should be lying ill in so short a time!"
Mrs. Hanbury raised her eyes from her book and gazed at the pallid face in the sea of dark hair. "She might be asleep or dead. How exquisitely beautiful she is, and how like Dora. How very like Dora, but she is more beautiful even than Dora. Dora owes a great deal to her trace of colour and her animation. This face is the most lovely one I ever saw, I think. How gentle she looks! I wonder was Kate Grace that Poniatowski married like her. If so I do not wonder. Who could help loving so exquisite a creature as this?"
Both of the girl's hands were stretched outside the counterpane.
Mrs. Hanbury leaned forward, bent and kissed the one near her, kissed it ever so lightly.
The lids of the girl trembled slightly but did not open.
Mrs. Hanbury drew back afraid. She had perhaps awakened her.
Gradually something began to shine at the end of the long lashes, and a tear rolled down the sweet young pale face.
"Have I awakened you?"
"No. I was awake."
"Are you in pain?"
"No. Oh, no!
"You are weeping."
"That," she moved slightly the hand Mrs. Hanbury had kissed, "that made me, oh, so happy."
"Thank you, dear."
No more words were uttered, but when Mrs. Hanbury looked down upon her book her own eyes were full.
The touch of the lips upon that hand had brought more quiet into the girl's heart than all the muffling in the house or the whispered orders to the servants or the doctor's drugs.
"She believed I was asleep and she kissed my hand," thought the girl. No quiet such as this had ever entered her bosom before.
CHAPTER XL
THE TWO PATIENTS
Day followed day in Chester Square, bringing slowly, almost imperceptibly, health and strength back to the exquisite form of Edith Grace. The spirituality lent by illness still more refined the delicate beauty of the girl, and when the colour came back to the lips, and the cheeks lost their pallor she seemed more like a being new-born of heaven to earth than a mortal of our homely race.
At the end of a week she was still restricted to her room, although allowed to sit up. The fear was not so much of physical weakness as of mental excitement. There was now no need to watch her by night. She seemed in perfect health, in that cool seraphic health of man before the Fall.
And what a change had taken place in the young girl's spirit! Her grandmother had told her that Mrs. Hanbury had insisted on making good the loss they had sustained in the failure of the bank, and more beside.
"I am very rich," said Mrs. Hanbury, "for a woman, I have only a life interest in most of the money my late husband left, and on my death it all goes to John. But I have never spent anything like my income, and John has an income of his own since he came of age. It is not that I will listen to no refusal, but I will hear no objection. I put it to you in this way: Do you suppose if my husband were making his will at this moment and knew of the misfortune which had come upon you and the child, he would insert no provision for you in his will? And do you mean to say that I am to have no regard to what I know would be his wish if he were alive? Remember, you represent the English side of his house. The child is the last of the English side, as John is the last of the Polish side. So let me hear no more of the matter. John has a sufficient income. I have large savings with which I do nothing. Am I to give my savings to an hospital or a charity or to the people of my husband, who left the money?"
Then Mrs. Grace told Edith that Mrs. Hanbury had taken a great liking to her.
"She always calls you 'the child' when she speaks of you, and indeed it seems to me she cares for you nearly as much as if you were her own daughter. She told me she never had a sister or a daughter, and that she barely remembers her own mother, and that all her married life she prayed for a girl-baby, but it was not given to her. And now that she has found you, dear, and me, she says she is not going to be lonely for womenfolk ever again, for although we are not of her own blood we are of John's, and we are the nearest people in the world to her except her brother, Sir Edward Preston. She says she has a right to us, that she found us, and means to insist upon her right by keeping us to herself."
And all this helped to make the quiet greater in the girl and helped to heal her.
Then the old woman told Edith that Mrs. Hanbury wondered if she were like that Grace of more than a hundred years back. She said this at dinner one day, and there and then Mr. Hanbury conceived the notion of trying to find out if, in that great portrait-painting age, any portrait had been painted of the beautiful Kate Grace who had fascinated the king. Mrs. Grace always spoke of Poniatowski as though he were a king while he lived in England in the days of George II.
The young man hunted all London to find out a portrait, and behold in one of the great houses within a mile of where she lay, a house at which Mr. Hanbury had often visited, was a portrait of "Mrs. Hanbury and child," believed to be one of the Hanbury-Williams family. Mr. John Hanbury had gone to see the portrait, and came back saying one would fancy it was a portrait of Edy herself, only it was not nearly so beautiful as Edy.
This all helped to cheer and heal the girl greatly. The notion that this Mr. John Hanbury had gone to a great house to see the portrait of her relative, the beautiful Kate Grace, that married the man afterwards a king, opened up fields for speculation and regions of dreams so different from those possible when she was fronting decaying fortune in Miss Graham's, at Streatham, or face to face with poverty in Grimsby Street, that it was enough to pour vital strength into veins less young and naturally healthy.
She now breathed an atmosphere of refinement and wealth. Her mind was no longer tortured by the thought of having to face uncongenial duties among strange people. She had all her life denied herself friendships, because she could not hope for friends in the class of people whom she would care to know.
Now all this was changed, as by a magician's wand. If in the old days she might have had the assurance of Mrs. Hanbury's friendship, she would have allowed her heart to go out to her, for Mrs. Hanbury, although she was rich, did not think of money as those girls Edith met at Streatham. The girls she met were, first of all, the daughters of rich fathers, and then they were people of importance next. Mrs. Hanbury was, first of all, intensely human. She was a woman first of all, and a generous, kind-hearted, large-natured, sympathetic woman. As her son had said of her, the greatest-hearted woman in the world. Princes and peasants were, to her mind, men, before anything else.
This was a revelation to Dora, who had always heard men measured by the establishment they kept up, and the society in which they moved. There had been only one retreat for her from feeling belittled in the presence of these plutocrats. She would set all store by pedigree, and make no friends. A beggar may have a pedigree equal to a Hapsburg, and a peasant who has no friends, and goes into no society, cannot have his poverty impressed upon him from without, however bitterly he may suffer from within.
And this Mrs. Hanbury, who was so kind and gentle, and who had manifested such an interest in her, belonged to a class of society in which no girl she ever met at Miss Graham's moved, in which any girl she had ever met there would give anything she possessed to move. Mrs. Hanbury's father had been a baronet, and her forefathers before him as far as baronets reached back into history, and her father's family had been county people, back to the Conquest, if not beyond it.
And Mr. Hanbury, who was the son of this woman, had a pedigree more illustrious still, a pedigree going back no one knew how far. The family had been ennobled for centuries, and in the eighteenth century one of them had sat on the throne of Poland, a crowned king.
She was now under the roof of these people, not as the humble paid companion of Mrs. Hanbury, which would have been the greatest height of her hope a week ago, not as an acquaintance to whom Mrs. Hanbury had taken a liking, but as a relative, as a distant relative of this house, as one of this family!
Oh, it was such a relief, such a deliverance to be lifted out of that vulgar and squalid life, to be away from that odious necessity for going among strange and dull people as a hired servant! There was no tale in all the Arabian Nights equal to this for wonders, and all this was true, and referred to her!
Youth, and a mind to which are opening new and delightful vistas, are more help to the doctor when dealing with a patient who is only overworn than even quiet, and day by day, to the joy of all who came near her, Edith Grace gained strength. The old stateliness which had made her schoolfellows say she ought to be a queen, had faded, and left scarcely a trace behind. There was no need to wear an air of reserve, when there was nothing to be guarded against. She was Mrs. Hanbury's relative, and to be reserved now would seem to be elated or vain. There was no longer fear of anyone disputing her position. There was no longer any danger of exasperating familiarity. She was acknowledged by Mrs. Hanbury and Mr. Hanbury, who would be a nobleman in Poland, and whose forefather had been a king.
She did not try or desire to look into the future, her own future. The present was too blessed a deliverance to be put aside. Up to this there had been no delightful present in her life, and she was loath to go beyond the immediate peace.
While the young girl was slowly but surely mending in Chester Square, the invalid under the care of Dr. Shaw, of Barnes Street, not very far off, was slowly yielding to the summons he had received. The kind-hearted and energetic doctor saw no reason to alter his original opinion of the case. The end was approaching, and not very far off. On the fifth day after the morning examination, Shaw said, "You arranged everything with the solicitor? There is nothing on your mind, my dear friend?"
"I understand," said Leigh. "How long have I?"
"Oh, I only wanted to know if your mind was at rest. Anxiety is always to be avoided."
"I tell you, Shaw, I understand. How long do you think this will last?"
"My dear fellow, if all your affairs are in order, and your mind is quite free, your chance is improved, you know. That only stands to reason."
"I am sorry I cannot go to Eltham. But that cannot be helped now. She, poor thing, will notice little change, for I have not been with her much of late. Shaw, the last time I was there I promised her a daughter-in-law, and straight-backed grandchildren, and soon she will not have even a cripple son! Poor old woman. Well! well! But, Shaw, send to Chester Square for my friend, Mr. John Hanbury, the man who brought me here, you know. I want to see him alone, privately. He is the only person who knows all my affairs." There was a flicker of the old boasting spirit in the way he gave Hanbury's name and address, and spoke of him as his friend.
Hanbury came at once.
"I sent for you because I have something on my mind; and, as you are the only man who knows all the secret of Mystery Gold, and my deputy winder, I want you to do me a service. Will you?"
"Any thing that an honest and honourable man may do, I will do for you with pleasure, if I can possibly," said Hanbury, shocked and subdued by the change in the clock-maker's appearance.
