Old Lady Mary

"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.