confidence, and respect every where--when she sank suddenly at
the opening of her new life. Nobody could account for it. The
doctors themselves were divided in opinion. Scientifically
speaking, there was no reason why she should die. It was a mere
figure of speech--in no degree satisfactory to any reasonable
mind--to say, as Lady Lundie said, that she had got her
death-blow on the day when her husband deserted her. The one
thing certain was the fact--account for it as you might. In spite
of science (which meant little), in spite of her own courage
(which meant much), the woman dropped at her post and died.
In the latter part of her illness her mind gave way. The friend
of her old school-days, sitting at the bedside, heard her talking
as if she thought herself back again in the cabin of the ship.
The poor soul found the tone, almost the look, that had been lost
for so many years--the tone of the past time when the two girls
had gone their different ways in the world. She said, "we will
meet, darling, with all the old love between us," just as she had
said almost a lifetime since. Before the end her mind rallied.
She surprised the doctor and the nurse by begging them gently to
leave the room. When they had gone she looked at Lady Lundie, and
woke, as it seemed, to consciousness from a dream.
"Blanche," she said, "you will take care of my child?"
"She shall be _my_ child, Anne, when you are gone."
The dying woman paused, and thought for a little. A sudden
trembling seized her.
"Keep it a secret!" she said. "I am afraid for my child."
"Afraid? After what I have promised you?"
She solemnly repeated the words, "I am afraid for my child."
"Why?"
"My Anne is my second self--isn't she?"
"Yes."
"She is as fond of your child as I was of you?"
"Yes."
"She is not called by her father's name--she is called by mine.
She is Anne Silvester as I was. Blanche! _Will she end like Me?_"
The question was put with the laboring breath, with the heavy
accents which tell that death is near. It chilled the living
woman who heard it to the marrow of her bones.
"Don't think that!" she cried, horror-struck. "For God's sake,
don't think that!"
The wildness began to appear again in Anne Silvester's eyes. She
made feebly impatient signs with her hands. Lady Lundie bent over
her, and heard her whisper, "Lift me up."
She lay in her friend's arms; she looked up in her friend's face;
she went back wildly to her fear for her child.
"Don't bring her up like Me! She must be a governess--she must
get her bread. Don't let her act! don't let her sing! don't let
her go on the stage!" She stopped--her voice suddenly recovered
its sweetness of tone--she smiled faintly--she said the old
girlish words once more, in the old girlish way, "Vow it,
Blanche!" Lady Lundie kissed her, and answered, as she had
answered when they parted in the ship, "I vow it, Anne!"
The head sank, never to be lifted more. The last look of life
flickered in the filmy eyes and went out. For a moment afterward
her lips moved. Lady Lundie put her ear close to them, and heard
the dreadful question reiterated, in the same dreadful words:
"She is Anne Silvester--as I was. _Will she end like Me?_"
VI.
Five years passed--and the lives of the three men who had sat at
the dinner-table in the Hampstead villa began, in their altered
aspects, to reveal the progress of time and change.
Mr. Kendrew; Mr. Delamayn; Mr. Vanborough. Let the order in which
they are here named be the order in which their lives are
reviewed, as seen once more after a lapse of five years.
How the husband's friend marked his sense of the husband's
treachery has been told already. How he felt the death of the
deserted wife is still left to tell. Report, which sees the
inmost hearts of men, and delights in turning them outward to the
public view, had always declared that Mr. Kendrew's life had its
secret, and that the secret was a hopeless passion for the
beautiful woman who had married his friend. Not a hint ever
dropped to any living soul, not a word ever spoken to the woman
herself, could be produced in proof of the assertion while the
woman lived. When she died Report started up again more
confidently than ever, and appealed to the man's own conduct as
proof against the man himself.
He attended the funeral--though he was no relation. He took a few
blades of grass from the turf with which they covered her
grave--when he thought that nobody was looking at him. He
disappeared from his club. He traveled. He came back. He admitted
that he was weary of England. He applied for, and obtained, an
appointment in one of the colonies. To what conclusion did all
this point? Was it not plain that his usual course of life had
lost its attraction for him, when the object of his infatuation
had ceased to exist? It might have been so--guesses less likely
have been made at the truth, and have hit the mark. It is, at any
rate, certain that he left England, never to return again.
Another man lost, Report said. Add to that, a man in ten
thousand--and, for once, Report might claim to be right.
Mr. Delamayn comes next.
The rising solicitor was struck off the roll, at his own
request--and entered himself as a student at one of the Inns of
Court. For three years nothing was known of him but that he was
reading hard and keeping his terms. He was called to the Bar. His
late partners in the firm knew they could trust him, and put
business into his hands. In two years he made himself a position
in Court. At the end of the two years he made himself a position
out of Court. He appeared as "Junior" in "a famous case," in
which the honor of a great family, and the title to a great
estate were concerned. His "Senior" fell ill on the eve of the
trial. He conducted the case for the defendant and won it. The
defendant said, "What can I do for you?" Mr. Delamayn answered,
"Put me into Parliament." Being a landed gentleman, the defendant
had only to issue the necessary orders--and behold, Mr. Delamayn
was in Parliament!
In the House of Commons the new member and Mr. Vanborough met
again.
They sat on the same bench, and sided with the same party. Mr.
Delamayn noticed that Mr. Vanborough was looking old and worn and
gray. He put a few questions to a well-informed person. The
well-informed person shook his head. Mr. Vanborough was rich; Mr.
Vanborough was well-connected (through his wife); Mr. Van borough
was a sound man in every sense of the word; _but_--nobody liked
him. He had done very well the first year, and there it had
ended. He was undeniably clever, but he produced a disagreeable
impression in the House. He gave splendid entertainments, but he
wasn't popular in society. His party respected him, but when they
had any thing to give they passed him over. He had a temper of
his
own, if the truth must be told; and with nothing against
him--on the contrary, with every thing in his favor--he didn't
make friends. A soured man. At home and abroad, a soured man.
VII.
Five years more passed, dating from the day when the deserted
wife was laid in her grave. It was now the year eighteen hundred
and sixty six.
On a certain day in that year two special items of news appeared
in the papers--the news of an elevation to the peerage, and the
news of a suicide.
Getting on well at the Bar, Mr. Delamayn got on better still in
Parliament. He became one of the prominent men in the House.
Spoke clearly, sensibly, and modestly, and was never too long.
Held the House, where men of higher abilities "bored" it. The
chiefs of his party said openly, "We must do something for
Delamayn," The opportunity offered, and the chiefs kept their
word. Their Solicitor-General was advanced a step, and they put
Delamayn in his place. There was an outcry on the part of the
older members of the Bar. The Ministry answered, "We want a man
who is listened to in the House, and we have got him." The papers
supported the new nomination. A great debate came off, and the
new Solicitor-General justified the Ministry and the papers. His
enemies said, derisively, "He will be Lord Chancellor in a year
or two!" His friends made genial jokes in his domestic circle,
which pointed to the same conclusion. They warned his two sons,
Julius and Geoffrey (then at college), to be careful what
acquaintances they made, as they might find themselves the sons
of a lord at a moment's notice. It really began to look like
something of the sort. Always rising, Mr. Delamayn rose next to
be Attorney-General. About the same time--so true it is that
"nothing succeeds like success"--a childless relative died and
left him a fortune. In the summer of 'sixty-six a Chief Judgeship
fell vacant. The Ministry had made a previous appointment which
had been universally unpopular. They saw their way to supplying
the place of their Attorney-General, and they offered the
judicial appointment to Mr. Delamayn. He preferred remaining in
the House of Commons, and refused to accept it. The Ministry
declined to take No for an answer. They whispered confidentially,
" Will you take it with a peerage?" Mr. Delamayn consulted his
wife, and took it with a peerage. The London _ Gazette_ announced
him to the world as Baron Holchester of Holchester. And the
friends of the family rubbed their hands and said, "What did we
tell you? Here are our two young friends, Julius and Geoffrey,
the sons of a lord!"
And where was Mr. Vanborough all this time? Exactly where we left
him five years since.
He was as rich, or richer, than ever. He was as well-connected as
ever. He was as ambitious as ever. But there it ended. He stood
still in the House; he stood still in society; nobody liked him;
he made no friends. It was all the old story over again, with
this difference, that the soured man was sourer; the gray head,
grayer; and the irritable temper more unendurable than ever. His
wife had her rooms in the house and he had his, and the
confidential servants took care that they never met on the
stairs. They had no children. They only saw each other at their
grand dinners and balls. People ate at their table, and danced on
their floor, and compared notes afterward, and said how dull it
was. Step by step the man who had once been Mr. Vanborough's
lawyer rose, till the peerage received him, and he could rise no
longer; while Mr. Vanborough, on the lower round of the ladder,
looked up, and noted it, with no more chance (rich as he was and
well-connected as he was) of climbing to the House of Lords than
your chance or mine.
The man's career was ended; and on the day when the nomination of
the new peer was announced, the man ended with it.
He laid the newspaper aside without making any remark, and went
out. His carriage set him down, where the green fields still
remain, on the northwest of London, near the foot-path which
leads to Hampstead. He walked alone to the villa where he had
once lived with the woman whom he had so cruelly wronged. New
houses had risen round it, part of the old garden had been sold
and built on. After a moment's hesitation he went to the gate and
rang the bell. He gave the servant his card. The servant's master
knew the name as the name of a man of great wealth, and of a
Member of Parliament. He asked politely to what fortunate
circumstance he owed the honor of that visit. Mr. Vanborough
answered, briefly and simply, "I once lived here; I have
associations with the place with which it is not necessary for me
to trouble you. Will you excuse what must seem to you a very
strange request? I should like to see the dining-room again, if
there is no objection, and if I am disturbing nobody."
The "strange requests" of rich men are of the nature of
"privileged communications," for this excellent reason, that they
are sure not to be requests for money. Mr. Vanborough was shown
into the dining-room. The master of the house, secretly
wondering, watched him.
He walked straight to a certain spot on the carpet, not far from
the window that led into the garden, and nearly opposite the
door. On that spot he stood silently, with his head on his
breast--thinking. Was it _there_ he had seen her for the last
time, on the day when he left the room forever? Yes; it was
there. After a minute or so he roused himself, but in a dreamy,
absent manner. He said it was a pretty place, and expressed his
thanks, and looked back before the door closed, and then went his
way again. His carriage picked him up where it had set him down.
He drove to the residence of the new Lord Holchester, and left a
card for him. Then he went home. Arrived at his house, his
secretary reminded him that he had an appointment in ten minutes'
time. He thanked the secretary in the same dreamy, absent manner
in which he had thanked the owner of the villa, and went into his
dressing-room. The person with whom he had made the appointment
came, and the secretary sent the valet up stairs to knock at the
door. There was no answer. On trying the lock it proved to be
turned inside. They broke open the door, and saw him lying on the
sofa. They went close to look--and found him dead by his own
hand.
VIII.
Drawing fast to its close, the Prologue reverts to the two
girls--and tells, in a few words, how the years passed with Anne
and Blanche.
Lady Lundie more than redeemed the solemn pledge that she had
given to her friend. Preserved from every temptation which might
lure her into a longing to follow her mother's career; trained
for a teacher's life, with all the arts and all the advantages
that money could procure, Anne's first and only essays as a
governess were made, under Lady Lundie's own roof, on Lady
Lundie's own child. The difference in the ages of the
girls--seven years--the love between them, which seemed, as time
went on, to grow with their growth, favored the trial of the
experiment. In the double relation of teacher and friend to
little Blanche, the girlhood of Anne Silvester the younger passed
safely, happily, uneventfully, in the modest sanctuary of home.
Who could imagine a contrast more complete than the contrast
between her early life and her mother's? Who could see any thing
but a death-bed delusion in the terrible question which had
tortured the mother's last moments: "Will she end like Me?"
But two events of importance occurred in the quiet family circle
during the lapse of years which is now under review. In eighteen
hundred and fifty-eight the household was enlivened by the
arrival of Sir Thomas Lundie. In eighteen hundred and sixty-five
the household was broken up by the return of Sir Thomas to India,
accompanied by his wife.
Lady Lundie's health had b een failing for some time previously.
The medical men, consulted on the case, agreed that a sea-voyage
was the one change needful to restore their patient's wasted
strength--exactly at the time, as it happened, when Sir Thomas
was due again in India. For his wife's sake, he agreed to defer
his return, by taking the sea-voyage with her. The one difficulty
to get over was the difficulty of leaving Blanche and Anne behind
in England.
Appealed to on this point, the doctors had declared that at
Blanche's critical time of life they could not sanction her going
to India with her mother. At the same time, near and dear
relatives came forward, who were ready and anxious to give
Blanche and her governess a home--Sir Thomas, on his side,
engaging to bring his wife back in a year and a half, or, at
most, in two years' time. Assailed in all directions, Lady
Lundie's natural unwillingness to leave the girls was overruled.
She consented to the parting--with a mind secretly depressed, and
secretly doubtful of the future.
At the last moment she drew Anne Silvester on one side, out of
hearing of the rest. Anne was then a young woman of twenty-two,
and Blanche a girl of fifteen.
"My dear," she said, simply, "I must tell _you_ what I can not
tell Sir Thomas, and what I am afraid to tell Blanche. I am going
away, with a mind that misgives me. I am persuaded I shall not
live to return to England; and, when I am dead, I believe my
husband will marry again. Years ago your mother was uneasy, on
her death-bed, about _your_ future. I am uneasy, now, about
Blanche's future. I promised my dear dead friend that you should
be like my own child to me--and it quieted her mind. Quiet my
mind, Anne, before I go. Whatever happens in years to
come--promise me to be always, what you are now, a sister to
Blanche."
She held out her hand for the last time. With a full heart Anne
Silvester kissed it, and gave the promise.
IX.
In two months from that time one of the forebodings which had
weighed on Lady Lundie's mind was fulfilled. She died on the
voyage, and was buried at sea.
In a year more the second misgiving was confirmed. Sir Thomas
Lundie married again. He brought his second wife to England
toward the close of eighteen hundred and sixty six.
Time, in the new household, promised to pass as quietly as in the
old. Sir Thomas remembered and respected the trust which his
first wife had placed in Anne. The second Lady Lundie, wisely
guiding her conduct in this matter by the conduct of her husband,
left things as she found them in the new house. At the opening of
eighteen hundred and sixty-seven the relations between Anne and
Blanche were relations of sisterly sympathy and sisterly love.
The prospect in the future was as fair as a prospect could be.
At this date, of the persons concerned in the tragedy of twelve
years since at the Hampstead villa, three were dead; and one was
self-exiled in a foreign land. There now remained living Anne and