First Love. Mrs. Loudon
Lord L. could not be prevailed on to see again, even for a moment, Mrs. Montgomery or the children. He lay, day and night, without retiring, on the sofa in his dressing-room, till the funeral was over, and then fled to the continent in a state of mind the most alarming.
Henry, now destined to a naval life, went with him as far as the port where both embarked, though on board different vessels.
Henry, usually so unamiable, had, on the present occasion, greatly endeared himself both to Mrs. Montgomery and Lord L. by the excessive grief he had evinced. Indeed, his countenance appeared haggard, and expressive not only of sorrow, but almost of despair.
Mr. Jackson was the only person who had conducted any thing like business; not only the family, but the very servants, were in consternation; and even the doctor had been quite unable to give the slightest assistance. He, indeed, from the time that Lady L.’s unfavourable symptoms had appeared, had behaved as if seized with sudden insanity; while life remained, he had continued in the sick room, in a state of uncontrollable perturbation; he had drained or tasted every bottle from which the patient had taken medicine; his hand had trembled to that degree, that he had broken almost every thing he had attempted to take up; he had repeated incessantly the word “No, no, no,” beginning with low murmurs, and increasing gradually in quickness and loudness, and again declining into whispers; till, finally, the moment Lady L. had expired, he rushed from the house without hat or cane, and ran till he reached home, while his horse stood in the stables at Lodore.
It was Mr. Jackson too, who had put all the household in mourning, and who had made the arrangements for the funeral: at which, what was remarkable, was the concourse of the poor, and, perhaps, the unpremeditated part taken by our hero in the solemn pageant; for, when the hearse arrived at its destination, and the body was about to be lifted out, poor Edmund, to the astonishment of every one, was discovered lying across the coffin. He had not fainted; for, when brought into the light, he looked all round him vacantly, and, with a sudden movement, hid his face again.
Mrs. Smyth had, it seems, some days before shown him the chamber of death, with all its awful circumstances; and on this morning, when dressing him, she had, inconsiderately, given vent to the petulance which often accompanies sorrow, in the following words:—“And its her ain sel ’at brought ye in aff the cald stanes, boy, and tak the wet rags aff ye, and put the warm clothing on ye, and geed ye bread when ye were hungry, boy; its hersel’ they’re goin’ to carry oot the day, and leave her by hersel’, in the cald church-yard!”
Edmund made no reply; but soon after this he stole from the nursery, and lingered about the halls. Presently the bearers brought out the coffin; he followed at their feet, and when they lifted it into the hearse, he too clambered up unheeded. But here, no sooner was the hearse closed, and the consequent darkness complete, than the situation into which an impulse of grateful affection had led the poor child, proved too much for his strength. A strange sensation of awe, and worse than loneliness, at once silenced the sobs which had hitherto shaken his frame; the tears, which had been streaming over his cheeks, ceased to flow; his forehead became covered with the cold dew of superstitious terror; he was motionless; his very breathing was suspended; while still the wretched consciousness remained, that his little heart was breaking. And had the funeral not arrived at the church door at the moment it did, most probably either life or reason must have yielded to a combination of feelings so overwhelming.
Mr. Jackson also preached the funeral sermon. All he was able to deliver were a few broken sentences of passionate admiration and pathetic regret, mingled with the tender hopes of piety, for the triumphant ones he could not reach.
And now it was painful to witness, even on the outside, the appearance of the late gay Lodore House. All was silent; the very bells were taken off the necks of the sheep that fed on the lawn; no sound was heard, but the uninterrupted murmur of the fall; every window was closed by a blind or shutter; and when any symptom of remaining life was seen, it was, at times, the figure of Mr. Jackson, in deep mourning, both of habit and attitude, leaning against the paling, and looking fixedly at the two little girls, in their little black frocks, walking, one on each side of Edmund, also dressed in black, up and down the gravel before the door, without speaking a word, or deviating from the direct path. If a meal of the children happened to be ready, Mrs. Smyth would come to the door, and preserving silence, beckon them in; then letting them pass her, and following them, look at them, and shake her head mournfully.
CHAPTER XVIII
“Am I indeed the cause of this?”
In one of the streets of Keswick stood an old, gloomy, but respectable house. In this house was a small back parlour, receiving light from a back lane, and surrounded with shelves, covered with bottles and jars; while ranged beneath the shelves were small drawers, on the outsides of which appeared, labelled, the names of every medicine in use. In the midst of this parlour stood a table; on the table stood a number of bottles, with the apparatus for various chemical experiments; and before the table, wrapped in a loose dressing-gown, slippers on his feet, his grey hair uncombed, stood Doctor Dixon. On his face a haggard expression of fear, inverted the lines of harmless mirth which had so often mingled, gleefully, with those of age, on the poor man’s features. His step was uncertain, and his hand trembled, as he selected another and another bottle from a shelf, or another paper from a drawer. His whole frame seemed to have undergone a species of dissolution; and all the infirmities of old age, which he had hitherto, with so much gaiety, warded off, seemed to have been suddenly let in upon him. In short, his heart was broken!
A terrible suspicion had for some days pressed upon his mind; his experiments, his researches, had failed to throw any light upon the subject; he had not dared to communicate his thoughts to any one. He sat down. At length he exclaimed, “I—I, who should have healed, have I destroyed?” Tears came to his relief. “I am an old man,” he said, in a faltering tone, “I cannot live long: would I had died before this had happened!” After a long silence, during which he moved his lips often, and seemed to undergo a powerful inward struggle, he pronounced, with the air of one refusing an importunate request, “Never! never! never!”
The cruel thoughts which so agonized the poor man’s mind were these. From Lady L.’s symptoms, he suspected that her death had been occasioned by poison; every medicine she had taken had been mixed by himself, and here was the distracting thought! Some ingredients in his dispensary must then, he feared, have come to him wrong labelled; and, in mixing these, he must have formed some combination, hitherto unknown in chemistry, which had produced a deadly poison. To decide this point, he made numerous experiments. When every mixture proved wholesome, or at least innocent, and every label seemed rightly placed, he would say to himself. “But, they are dead!” Then, after pausing, and wearying his mind with vain conjectures, he would break forth again: “And the symptoms of both were those of poison, which the babe, doubtless, imbibed with its mother’s milk. And I mixed every medicine myself; my own servant took them over; they lay on the table in Lady L.’s own bedroom, till I, with my own hands, administered them, taking care to see that my own labels were upon them! Yet,” he added, shuddering, “the dregs in one of the bottles had neither exactly the colour, nor exactly the taste, that I should have anticipated.” And whenever this conviction forced itself upon him, he turned cold, and the pulsations of his heart ceased for some seconds.
We have seen the doctor completing the last of his experiments. He had reflected for a short time, in dreadful agitation, whether he were not in duty bound to declare his belief respecting the cause of Lady L.’s death to the family. He had decided that the information could only add to their affliction; while the confession, to himself, would be worse than ten thousand deaths! It was at this conclusion he had arrived, when we heard him exclaim, “Never! never! never!”
He destroyed the whole contents of his dispensary, never more prescribed for any one, or mixed another medicine. All observed a general decay, a total failure both of strength and faculties, in their friend, the good doctor. He never smiled again, nor made another pun; and in a few weeks he died, carrying with him to the grave, the dreadful secret, or rather surmise,