THE CONFLICT. I. THE joy which Walter Arden hoped to feel in the sight of familiar things, the quiet fields and hills and woodlands, the sober old homesteads and cosy villages between Southampton and London, and even in his own library, was lessened by the state of physical prostration in which he landed from the American liner that brought him from New York. Throughout the homeward pilgrimage by river and sea, by rail and steamer, he had been carefully tended by Alick Mackenzie and Archer Stormont; but the rallying power which he had shown immediately after the healing of his wound had failed mysteriously before the band left Dawson City in the steamer for St. Michael, carrying their fortunes with them in strong iron-bound chests. Mackenzie hoped that restful days on river and sea would have restored his strength; but the listlessness and apathy continued, and he was in weaker health when he landed at Southampton than when he left the gold-fields. The motive power of existence seemed broken; and when his friends had seen him established in his old rooms, with his old servant in attendance upon him, he sank down into a languid endurance of life, caring for nothing, hoping for nothing. Even his books had lost their charm, nor could the old or the new things in literature-neither the book beloved of mankind for two thousand years, nor the book that had taken the town by storm yesterday-bring him relief from the haunting memory of those last months on the Yukon, and the mysterious change in Michael Dartnell's character. His landlady ministered to him with an almost maternal tenderness, employing all the resources of her culinary art to tempt an invalid appetite, but with scant success. Her mourning-gown told him of her sorrow, even before her trembling lips broke into speech. "Oh, sir, there is no one in the little parlour nowthe room that we made só pretty, with your kind help. I keep the door locked, and no one goes there but me, to dust the furniture and air the room. The pretty things are all there; her bust of Byron, and his portrait that Lady Mary gave her, and her books, and the flowervases. I put a few flowers there every Sunday; for, though it may be foolish of me, I can't help thinking that her spirit may haunt the room where she spent so many quiet hours." "Was she long ill?" I "No, sir; I think I may say she was never ill. thank God for that in the midst of my sorrow. She suffered neither sickness nor pain; she just drooped and drooped, all through last autumn, and seemed a shade weaker every day. I had the best of doctors for her, thanks to your kind sister, who came to see her ever so many times, and took her in her own carriage to her own physician; but he didn't pretend he could do anything to lengthen her life. He gave her a prescription, and she took the medicine, and seemed to rally just a little; but she was fading away all the time. Her life was ebbing from her slowly and gently, like the tide going out." "Did her mind seem stronger towards the last?" "No, sir; she was always the same, except that those dreadful thoughts of hell-fire and fiends and the bottomless pit seem to have left her. She was happy in her pretty romantic way, as she used to be before that trouble came upon her. She would talk of Byron, and shed tears over his early death, when he was fighting the Greeks or fighting for the Greeks, was it? Poor child, how she adored his lordship! She had his picture propped up beside her bed in the last days, when she was too weak to hold up her head, and she died in her sleep, without so much as one troubled sigh, with her face turned towards his face; and I wondered if his spirit knew of the love of one simple low-born girl, given to him more than seventy years after they laid him in his grave." "I'm afraid your life must seem sad and empty since your loss, my dear Mrs. Berry," Arden said gently. "Oh, Mr. Arden, I feel as if my heart, and all the hopes I ever had in this life, were locked up with the pictures and books in that little room. If I had only this life to think about-well, I believe I should just walk down to Westminster bridge, in the dead of some dark night, and drop quietly over the parapet. One drowned woman more or less would make no difference in this big city. But I look forward to the life to come, when I shall find my poor ruined girl again among the souls of the redeemed, whose sins are washed white in the blood of the Lamb. I cannot fly in the face of my Creator, Mr. Arden, and forfeit my hope of life eternal, and reunion with my girl." The fervour of her words, and the exalted look in the poor plain face, touched him deeply. Yes, this was the only possible consolation for the bereaved, the sure and certain hope of reunion in the life to come. He remembered Rachel's words, "What could I say to them, how could I comfort them, if I did not believe in the life after death?" Arden called in Carlton House Terrace on the day after his return. He had just strength to get into a hansom and let himself be driven where he wanted to go, looking with uncaring eyes at the houses and the people he passed, and with the dreamlike half-alive feeling of extreme weakness. Disappointment awaited him. Mr. Lorimer was in Central America; Mrs. and Miss Lorimer were at Harrogate. He went back to Jermyn Street feeling that the town was empty of all human interest. Lady Mary Selby called upon him on the following day, "Mrs. Berry told me you were coming home on the Boston," she said; "but I think you might have written to me before you left Klondyke. Only one shabby letter in more than two years!" "I had so little to write about." |