It was not to be expected that Flora, though shocked by the sudden event, should deeply lament the death of her sister-in-law. As Sir Amery observed, Emma had passed the life of a zoophyte, with this difference, that the ocean anemone clings to something beyond self, be it only a rock or a seaweed. Lady Legrange wore black velvet instead of violet, clasped a bracelet of jet round her wrist, and, except for these reminders, might almost have forgotten that such a being as Emma Vernon had ever existed.
It was about a month after the death of her sister-in-law, on a dull morning in the beginning of March, that Flora sat alone in her boudoir, arranging some early primroses and violets. Sir Amery had been absent for two or three days on a visit to a nobleman in the country, but was expected home in the evening. As it was the birth-day of his wife, Flora felt sure that he would not fail to return.
"None of these are worth preserving," she said to herself as she put aside the fading flowers; "how soon they have lost their fragrance, and all their beauty is gone! Poor flowers--this heated room, the smoky atmosphere of London, has made them quickly wither; they would have bloomed longer on their own green bank!" Flora sighed as her mind pursued the train of association called up. "How I once delighted at this season to find the first violets in the copse, and carry them home to my mother! How bright and cheerful all things looked to me then; there was a freshness of enjoyment which, I suppose, only belongs to youth--yet I am but twenty-two years old to-day! There are no garlands now hanging on my myrtle; I wonder if the plant is living still! My mother will not forget the anniversary; she will have thought of her Flora in her prayers! I made so sure of a letter to-day;" and Flora stood pensively looking at the fading blossoms, when the door unclosed, and a servant entering, announced a well-known name.
"Mr. Ward--can it be! Oh, how good in you," commenced Flora, hastening with unaffected delight to greet her old friend; but the aspect of the venerable clergyman, as he kindly but gravely returned her greeting, awoke a feeling of alarm in the bosom of Lady Legrange.
"You bring bad tidings--my mother!" she exclaimed, still grasping the hand of the old man, and looking up anxiously into his face.
"Mrs. Vernon is not so well as we all wish her to be," replied Mr. Ward, quietly but sadly meeting the daughter's earnest gaze.
"She wished you to come to me--?"
"She does not know of my coming, but I thought it best to let you hear all, and an interview is so much more satisfactory than a letter--"
"Oh, tell me all!" cried Flora in agony. "My mother--is she very--is she dangerously ill?"
Mr. Ward broke to the daughter, as gently as he could, that, in the preceding night, Mrs. Vernon had been suddenly and alarmingly attacked by a malady which threatened her life. He did not say--it was unnecessary that he should say what Flora too surely divined--that the overtaxed powers of her mother's frame were at length giving way; that her exertions during the illness of the children had, it was feared, irreparably injured herself; and that it was very doubtful whether, on his return to Wingsdale, he would find the sufferer yet alive.
Flora could not hesitate now; even the fear of displeasing her husband was swallowed up in a more terrible fear. She wrote a few hurried lines for Sir Amery to receive on his arrival, hastily made her slight preparations for the journey, and under the escort of her kind old friend, and accompanied by her maid, with a very heavy heart she set out for the home of her much-loved parent.
The journey by railroad occupied about three hours; long, painful hours were they to Flora. She could not but contrast this return to Laurel Bank with her last. Then, indeed, she had not been without anxiety, and even a shadow of self-reproach, but the prevailing feeling of her heart had been all-absorbing happiness. She loved and was beloved again, and might have expressed herself in the language of the great poet--
"Come what sorrow may, It cannot countervail the exchange of joy Which one short moment gives me in his sight."
But her fair bud of hope had not blossomed into happiness. God had given her her heart's desire, but withal sent leanness into her soul. Flora had learned by experience the hollowness of mere human felicity. "He builds too low who builds beneath the skies." And the change in the appearance of nature harmonized with the alteration in Flora's feelings. On that last journey to Laurel Bank she had beheld earth laughing in the sunlight, and decked in all the beauty of summer. The breeze had waved the broad fields of golden corn, and rustled in the luxuriant foliage of the groves; the gardens had been gay with a thousand flowers, and the wild rose had bloomed in the green hedge. Now, the trees reared their bare dark branches aloft, for the season was a late one; and Winter, driven from his throne for a few sunshiny days, was returning with increasing force to chase back the approaching Spring. From the gray lowering sky above the snow-flakes were beginning to fall, and, before Flora reached the place of her destination, a brooding storm was wrapping the world in premature night.
The snow was driving fast into her face, as Flora hurried up the gravel walk which her footsteps had trodden so often. She opened the door without ringing, for in that quiet retreat bolts and bars were deemed unnecessary. The entrance to the dining-room was open; she heard voices within, and paused an instant to glean from their tone the information which she longed but dreaded to receive.
"No, Emmie, you must not make a noise,"--it was the voice of Johnny that spoke; "don't you know dear grandmamma is ill? Come, sit here quietly, and I'll tell you a little story."
"Then she lives--thank God!" exclaimed Flora to herself, hastening with noiseless footstep up the stairs. In that house she required no guide.
She proceeded straight towards the chamber of her mother, her heart palpitating fast. As she reached it the door unclosed softly, very softly, and Mrs. Vernon's maid appeared with the doctor.
"Miss Flora!" exclaimed the old servant in a subdued tone of surprise.
The doctor glanced sternly at her, and raised his finger, then advanced silently to Lady Legrange.
"Is she--is she--?" Flora could not finish the sentence.
"My dear lady, she is in God's hands; He may raise her yet. Everything that can be done shall be done; but I cannot conceal from you that I entertain serious apprehensions." He spoke in tones too low to be heard in the chamber of the invalid.
"But I may go to her--nurse her--"
"Pardon me," replied the medical man, courteously but firmly interposing, "our patient is in a very critical state; the pleasure of seeing you after so long an absence would cause a degree of excitement which might be attended with fatal consequences."
Flora said nothing, but pressed her hand against her heart; she felt as though it would break.
"Ann is most watchful and attentive," pursued the doctor, feeling for Flora's evident distress, "and Miss Lyddie will not quit the room for a moment."
"Lyddie!" thought the miserable daughter, with a sharper pang of envy than her gentle bosom had ever before known; "and she may sit and watch where I dare not enter; she may look on that loved face which I have come so far to see; she is the comfort, and I--and I--!" Flora leaned down her head upon her clasped hands and tried to stifle her sobs.
A miserable night was that for Lady Legrange--the most miserable which she had ever known. The cold became more and more piercing, yet no entreaties could induce her either to go to rest or to seek the comfort of a fire in one of the rooms below. She had a chair brought for her to the door of her mother's room, and there she sat, trembling and shivering, counting every stroke of the clock which at intervals--oh! how long and weary--told the lapse of time. She heard the wind shaking the casements, as though fiercely demanding entrance, and shrieking aloft in the chimneys with a wild and wailing noise; and sometimes her painfully strained ear could catch sounds from the sick-room--a light step, a soft rustle, a low voice, or, terrible to hear, the faint moans which told of irrepressible suffering. Flora also, as morning drew nigh, heard words, words from the lips of her parent, words which reason guided no longer--but not one word which it could have pained piety to hear. The unconscious sufferer uttered prayers for mercy, for pardon--prayers for those who were dear to her heart. Flora wept as she heard her own name repeated again and again in unconscious supplications. It seemed as though that which had been the habit of a life remained now as an instinct; the mind might be darkened, reason might have fled, but love and piety lingered yet in their accustomed home, the last to leave the sanctuary which had enshrined them so long. To apply to a nobler subject the beautiful simile of Moore--
"Like a vase in which roses have once been distilled, You may break, you may ruin the vase if you will, But the scent of the roses will hang round it still."
And Flora also prayed; she besought the Lord with a fervour and depth of feeling beyond any which she ever before had known. Her whole soul was poured out in prayer. Her self-righteousness crushed in the dust, she felt herself now to be a sinner indeed, and she came to the Friend of sinners with a broken and contrite heart. She implored the life of her mother; she besought the Almighty to grant her an opportunity of being once more a comfort and blessing to that cherished parent--of repaying some portion, some little portion, of the deep debt of love which she owed to her. She prayed for herself, for grace and for strength--alas! she had proved her own sinfulness and weakness. She had been weighed in the balance and found wanting; and it was almost with a sensation of despair that Flora now contemplated the difficulties of her position--difficulties which had been of her own seeking, and which, however lightly she had once regarded them, now appeared almost insuperable. If heavenly love drew her onward and upward, she knew too well that earthly love would act as a clog on her soul. The partner whom she had chosen would never aid her weakness in the struggle against worldliness--rather would he side with the enemy. He would never warm the coldness of her devotion by the fervour of his own; his prayers and hers would never rise together to the throne of their Father in heaven. Flora's soul was full of anguish for her idolized Amery. If it was grief to think that her mother's gentle spirit might be now on the wing from this world of sorrow, what was it to think that the spirit of her husband might never rise, to the bliss of the world which is to come! If affection shrinks from the death of the body, it shudders over the death of the soul. Separation in time is to the loving heart a trial almost too painful to contemplate; what then must be separation throughout eternity--the sole parting which is indeed for ever!
The only time that Flora quitted the door of her mother's apartment was when she sought that which had once been her favourite sitting-room, to procure writing materials with which to pen a letter to her husband. The fast flowing tears which dimmed her eyes and blotted her page hardly suffered her to complete it. The letter gave a vivid and touching picture of all the emotions which were agitating her mind. Sorrow, contrition, tenderness, were expressed in the unstudied language of the heart. Flora told him whom she dared not deem a Christian how a Christian could die. She dwelt on her mother's piety; she left her husband to draw the inferences which she longed to place before him in such a light as might strike conviction even on his prejudiced soul. She wept and she prayed over the letter, but the darkness before her was scarcely illumined by one ray of hope.