CHAPTER 56 - THE NEW WOUND, AND THE OLD

No need, O Steerforth, to have said, when we last spoke together,

in that hour which I so little deemed to be our parting-hour - no

need to have said, 'Think of me at my best!' I had done that ever;

and could I change now, looking on this sight!

They brought a hand-bier, and laid him on it, and covered him with

a flag, and took him up and bore him on towards the houses. All

the men who carried him had known him, and gone sailing with him,

and seen him merry and bold. They carried him through the wild

roar, a hush in the midst of all the tumult; and took him to the

cottage where Death was already.

But when they set the bier down on the threshold, they looked at

one another, and at me, and whispered. I knew why. They felt as

if it were not right to lay him down in the same quiet room.

We went into the town, and took our burden to the inn. So soon as

I could at all collect my thoughts, I sent for Joram, and begged

him to provide me a conveyance in which it could be got to London

in the night. I knew that the care of it, and the hard duty of

preparing his mother to receive it, could only rest with me; and I

was anxious to discharge that duty as faithfully as I could.

I chose the night for the journey, that there might be less

curiosity when I left the town. But, although it was nearly

midnight when I came out of the yard in a chaise, followed by what

I had in charge, there were many people waiting. At intervals,

along the town, and even a little way out upon the road, I saw

more: but at length only the bleak night and the open country were

around me, and the ashes of my youthful friendship.

Upon a mellow autumn day, about noon, when the ground was perfumed

by fallen leaves, and many more, in beautiful tints of yellow, red,

and brown, yet hung upon the trees, through which the sun was

shining, I arrived at Highgate. I walked the last mile, thinking

as I went along of what I had to do; and left the carriage that had

followed me all through the night, awaiting orders to advance.

The house, when I came up to it, looked just the same. Not a blind

was raised; no sign of life was in the dull paved court, with its

covered way leading to the disused door. The wind had quite gone

down, and nothing moved.

I had not, at first, the courage to ring at the gate; and when I

did ring, my errand seemed to me to be expressed in the very sound

of the bell. The little parlour-maid came out, with the key in her

hand; and looking earnestly at me as she unlocked the gate, said:

'I beg your pardon, sir. Are you ill?'

'I have been much agitated, and am fatigued.'

'Is anything the matter, sir? - Mr. James? -'

'Hush!' said I. 'Yes, something has happened, that I have to break

to Mrs. Steerforth. She is at home?'

The girl anxiously replied that her mistress was very seldom out

now, even in a carriage; that she kept her room; that she saw no

company, but would see me. Her mistress was up, she said, and Miss

Dartle was with her. What message should she take upstairs?

Giving her a strict charge to be careful of her manner, and only to

carry in my card and say I waited, I sat down in the drawing-room

(which we had now reached) until she should come back. Its former

pleasant air of occupation was gone, and the shutters were half

closed. The harp had not been used for many and many a day. His

picture, as a boy, was there. The cabinet in which his mother had

kept his letters was there. I wondered if she ever read them now;

if she would ever read them more!

The house was so still that I heard the girl's light step upstairs.

On her return, she brought a message, to the effect that Mrs.

Steerforth was an invalid and could not come down; but that if I

would excuse her being in her chamber, she would be glad to see me.

In a few moments I stood before her.

She was in his room; not in her own. I felt, of course, that she

had taken to occupy it, in remembrance of him; and that the many

tokens of his old sports and accomplishments, by which she was

surrounded, remained there, just as he had left them, for the same

reason. She murmured, however, even in her reception of me, that

she was out of her own chamber because its aspect was unsuited to

her infirmity; and with her stately look repelled the least

suspicion of the truth.

At her chair, as usual, was Rosa Dartle. From the first moment of

her dark eyes resting on me, I saw she knew I was the bearer of

evil tidings. The scar sprung into view that instant. She

withdrew herself a step behind the chair, to keep her own face out

of Mrs. Steerforth's observation; and scrutinized me with a

piercing gaze that never faltered, never shrunk.

'I am sorry to observe you are in mourning, sir,' said Mrs.

Steerforth.

'I am unhappily a widower,' said I.

'You are very young to know so great a loss,' she returned. 'I am

grieved to hear it. I am grieved to hear it. I hope Time will be

good to you.'

'I hope Time,' said I, looking at her, 'will be good to all of us.

Dear Mrs. Steerforth, we must all trust to that, in our heaviest

misfortunes.'

The earnestness of my manner, and the tears in my eyes, alarmed

her. The whole course of her thoughts appeared to stop, and

change.

I tried to command my voice in gently saying his name, but it

trembled. She repeated it to herself, two or three times, in a low

tone. Then, addressing me, she said, with enforced calmness:

'My son is ill.'

'Very ill.'

'You have seen him?'

'I have.'

'Are you reconciled?'

I could not say Yes, I could not say No. She slightly turned her

head towards the spot where Rosa Dartle had been standing at her

elbow, and in that moment I said, by the motion of my lips, to

Rosa, 'Dead!'

That Mrs. Steerforth might not be induced to look behind her, and

read, plainly written, what she was not yet prepared to know, I met

her look quickly; but I had seen Rosa Dartle throw her hands up in

the air with vehemence of despair and horror, and then clasp them

on her face.

The handsome lady - so like, oh so like! - regarded me with a fixed

look, and put her hand to her forehead. I besought her to be calm,

and prepare herself to bear what I had to tell; but I should rather

have entreated her to weep, for she sat like a stone figure.

'When I was last here,' I faltered, 'Miss Dartle told me he was

sailing here and there. The night before last was a dreadful one

at sea. If he were at sea that night, and near a dangerous coast,

as it is said he was; and if the vessel that was seen should really

be the ship which -'

'Rosa!' said Mrs. Steerforth, 'come to me!'

She came, but with no sympathy or gentleness. Her eyes gleamed

like fire as she confronted his mother, and broke into a frightful

laugh.

'Now,' she said, 'is your pride appeased, you madwoman? Now has he

made atonement to you - with his life! Do you hear? - His life!'

Mrs. Steerforth, fallen back stiffly in her chair, and making no

sound but a moan, cast her eyes upon her with a wide stare.

'Aye!' cried Rosa, smiting herself passionately on the breast,

'look at me! Moan, and groan, and look at me! Look here!' striking

the scar, 'at your dead child's handiwork!'

The moan the mother uttered, from time to time, went to My heart.

Always the same. Always inarticulate and stifled. Always

accompanied with an incapable motion of the head, but with no

change of face. Always proceeding from a rigid mouth and closed

teeth, as if the jaw were locked and the face frozen up in pain.

'Do you remember when he did this?' she proceeded. 'Do you

remember when, in his inheritance of your nature, and in your

pampering of his pride and passion, he did this, and disfigured me

for life? Look at me, marked until I die with his high

displeasure; and moan and groan for what you made him!'

'Miss Dartle,' I entreated her. 'For Heaven's sake -'

'I WILL speak!' she said, turning on me with her lightning eyes.

'Be silent, you! Look at me, I say, proud mother of a proud, false

son! Moan for your nurture of him, moan for your corruption of him,

moan for your loss of him, moan for mine!'

She clenched her hand, and trembled through her spare, worn figure,

as if her passion were killing her by inches.

'You, resent his self-will!' she exclaimed. 'You, injured by his

haughty temper! You, who opposed to both, when your hair was grey,

the qualities which made both when you gave him birth! YOU, who

from his cradle reared him to be what he was, and stunted what he

should have been! Are you rewarded, now, for your years of

trouble?'

'Oh, Miss Dartle, shame! Oh cruel!'

'I tell you,' she returned, 'I WILL speak to her. No power on

earth should stop me, while I was standing here! Have I been silent

all these years, and shall I not speak now? I loved him better

than you ever loved him!' turning on her fiercely. 'I could have

loved him, and asked no return. If I had been his wife, I could

have been the slave of his caprices for a word of love a year. I

should have been. Who knows it better than I? You were exacting,

proud, punctilious, selfish. My love would have been devoted -

would have trod your paltry whimpering under foot!'

With flashing eyes, she stamped upon the ground as if she actually

did it.

'Look here!' she said, striking the scar again, with a relentless

hand. 'When he grew into the better understanding of what he had

done, he saw it, and repented of it! I could sing to him, and talk

to him, and show the ardour that I felt in all he did, and attain

with labour to such knowledge as most interested him; and I

attracted him. When he was freshest and truest, he loved me. Yes,

he did! Many a time, when you were put off with a slight word, he

has taken Me to his heart!'

She said it with a taunting pride in the midst of her frenzy - for

it was little less - yet with an eager remembrance of it, in which

the smouldering embers of a gentler feeling kindled for the moment.

'I descended - as I might have known I should, but that he

fascinated me with his boyish courtship - into a doll, a trifle for

the occupation of an idle hour, to be dropped, and taken up, and

trifled with, as the inconstant humour took him. When he grew

weary, I grew weary. As his fancy died out, I would no more have

tried to strengthen any power I had, than I would have married him

on his being forced to take me for his wife. We fell away from one

another without a word. Perhaps you saw it, and were not sorry.

Since then, I have been a mere disfigured piece of furniture

between you both; having no eyes, no ears, no feelings, no

remembrances. Moan? Moan for what you made him; not for your

love. I tell you that the time was, when I loved him better than

you ever did!'

She stood with her bright angry eyes confronting the wide stare,

and the set face; and softened no more, when the moaning was

repeated, than if the face had been a picture.

'Miss Dartle,' said I, 'if you can be so obdurate as not to feel

for this afflicted mother -'

'Who feels for me?' she sharply retorted. 'She has sown this. Let

her moan for the harvest that she reaps today!'

'And if his faults -' I began.

'Faults!' she cried, bursting into passionate tears. 'Who dares

malign him? He had a soul worth millions of the friends to whom he

stooped!'

'No one can have loved him better, no one can hold him in dearer

remembrance than I,' I replied. 'I meant to say, if you have no

compassion for his mother; or if his faults - you have been bitter

on them -'

'It's false,' she cried, tearing her black hair; 'I loved him!'

'- if his faults cannot,' I went on, 'be banished from your

remembrance, in such an hour; look at that figure, even as one you

have never seen before, and render it some help!'

All this time, the figure was unchanged, and looked unchangeable.

Motionless, rigid, staring; moaning in the same dumb way from time

to time, with the same helpless motion of the head; but giving no

other sign of life. Miss Dartle suddenly kneeled down before it,

and began to loosen the dress.

'A curse upon you!' she said, looking round at me, with a mingled

expression of rage and grief. 'It was in an evil hour that you

ever came here! A curse upon you! Go!'

After passing out of the room, I hurried back to ring the bell, the

sooner to alarm the servants. She had then taken the impassive

figure in her arms, and, still upon her knees, was weeping over it,

kissing it, calling to it, rocking it to and fro upon her bosom

like a child, and trying every tender means to rouse the dormant

senses. No longer afraid of leaving her, I noiselessly turned back

again; and alarmed the house as I went out.

Later in the day, I returned, and we laid him in his mother's room.

She was just the same, they told me; Miss Dartle never left her;

doctors were in attendance, many things had been tried; but she lay

like a statue, except for the low sound now and then.

I went through the dreary house, and darkened the windows. The

windows of the chamber where he lay, I darkened last. I lifted up

the leaden hand, and held it to my heart; and all the world seemed

death and silence, broken only by his mother's moaning.

Read next: CHAPTER 57 - THE EMIGRANTS

Read previous: CHAPTER 55 - TEMPEST

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