CHAPTER VIII.

HARD LINES.

Lying in her darkened chamber, sick almost unto death, was Mrs. Frank Raynor. A baby, a few days old, slept in a cot by the wall. No other child had been born to her, until now, since that season of peril at Eagles' Nest: and just as her life had all but paid the forfeit then, so it had again now. She was in danger still; she, herself, thought dying.

An attentive nurse moved noiselessly about the room. Edina stood near the bed, fanning the poor pale face resting on it. The window was wide open, behind the blind: for the invalid's constant cry throughout the morning had been, "Give me air!"

A light, quick step on the stairs, and Frank entered. He took the fan from Edina's tired hand, and she seized the opportunity to go down to the kitchen, to help Eve with the jelly ordered by Dr. Tymms; a skilful practitioner, who had been in constant attendance. Daisy opened her eyes to look at her husband, and the nurse quitted the room, leaving them together.

"You will soon be about again, my darling," said Frank, in his low, earnest, hopeful tones, that were worth more than gold in a sick chamber. "Tymms assures me you are better this morning."

"I don't want to get about," faintly responded Daisy.

"Not want to get about!" cried Frank, uncertain whether it would be best to treat the remark as a passing fancy arising from weakness, or to inquire farther into it--for everything said by his wife now bore this depressing tenor.

"And you ought to know that I cannot wish it," she resumed.

"But I do not know it, Daisy, my love. I do not know why you should speak so."

"I shall be glad to die."

Frank bent a little lower, putting down the fan. "Daisy, I honestly believe that you will recover; that the turning-point has come and gone. Tymms thinks so. Why, yesterday you could not have talked as you are talking now."

"I know I am dying. And it is so much the better for me."

He put his hand under the pillow, raising it slightly to bring her face nearer his, and spoke very tenderly and persuasively. He knew that she was _not_ dying; that she was, in fact, improving.

"My darling, you are getting better; and will get better. But, were it as you think, Daisy, all the more reason would exist for telling me what you mean, and why you have so long been in this depressed state of mind. Let me know the cause, Daisy."

For a few minutes she did not reply. Frank thought that she was deliberating whether or not she should answer--and he was not mistaken. She closed her eyes again, and he took up the fan.

"I have thought, while lying here, that I should like to tell you before I die," spoke Daisy at last. "But you don't need to be told."

"I do. I do, indeed."

"It is because you no longer love me. Perhaps you never loved me at all. You care for some one else; not for me."

In very astonishment, Frank dropped the fan on the counterpane. "And who is--'some one else'?"

"Oh, you know."

"Daisy, this is a serious charge, and you must answer me. I do not know."

She turned her face towards him, without speaking. Frank waited; he was ransacking his brains.

"_Surely_ you cannot mean Edina!"

A petulant, reproachful movement betrayed her anger. Edina! Who was an angel on earth, and so good to them all!--and older, besides. The tears began to drop slowly from her closed lashes, for she thought he must be trifling with her.

"You will be sorry for it when I am gone, Frank. _Edina!_"

"Who is it, Daisy?"

A flush stole into her white cheeks, and the name was whispered so faintly that Frank scarcely caught it.

"Rosaline Bell!" he repeated, gazing at her in doubt and surprise, for the thought crossed him that her senses might be wandering. "But, Daisy, suppose we speak of this to-morrow instead of now," he added as a measure of precaution. "You----"

"We will speak of it now, or never," she interrupted, as vehemently as any one can speak whose strength is at the lowest ebb. And the sudden anger Frank's words caused her--for she deemed he was acting altogether a deceitful part and dared not speak--nerved her to tell out her grievances more fully than she might otherwise have had courage to do. Frank listened to the accusation with apparent equanimity; to the long line of disloyal conduct he had been indulging in since the early days at Trennach down to the present hour. His simple attempt at refutation made no impression whatever: the belief was too long and firmly rooted in her mind to be quickly dispelled.

"I could have borne any trial better than this," concluded she, with laboured breathing: "all our misfortunes would have been as nothing to me in comparison. Don't say any more, please. Perhaps she will feel some remorse when she hears I am dead."

"We will let it drop now then, Daisy," assented Frank. "But I have had no more thought of Rosaline than of the man in the moon."

"Will you go away now, please, and send the nurse in?"

"What on earth is to be done?" thought Frank, doing as he was ordered. "With this wretched fancy hanging over her, she may never get well; never. Mental worry in these critical cases sometimes means death."

"How is she now?" asked Edina, meeting him on the stairs.

"Just the same."

"She seems so unhappy in mind, Frank," whispered Edina. "Do you know anything about it?"

"She is low and weak at present, you see," answered Frank, evasively. And he passed on.

Frank Raynor lapsed into a review of the past. Of the admiration he had undoubtedly given to Rosaline Bell at Trennach; of the solicitude he had evinced for her (or, rather, for her mother) since their stay in London. Of his constant visits to them: visits paid every three or four days at first; later, daily or twice a day--for poor Mrs. Bell was now near her end. Yes, he did see, looking at the years carefully and dispassionately, that Daisy (her suspicions having been, as she had now confessed, first aroused by the waiting-maid Tabitha) might have fancied she saw sufficient grounds for jealousy. She could not know that his friendship and solicitude for the Bells proceeded from a widely different cause. That clue would never, as he believed, be furnished to her so long as she should live.

"What a blessing it would be if some people were born dumb!" concluded Frank, thinking of Tabitha Float.

The slight symptoms of improvement continued; and at sunset Frank Raynor knew that his wife's condition would bear the carrying out of an idea he had formed. It was yet daylight outside, though the drawn curtains made the room dark, when Daisy was conscious of a sad, beautiful face bending over her, and an entreating voice whose gentle tones told of sadness.

"Don't shrink from me, Mrs. Frank Raynor," whispered Rosaline--for she it was. "I have come to strive to put straight what I hear has been so long crooked."

And the few words she spoke, spoke earnestly and solemnly, brought peace to the unhappy wife's heart. Daisy was too ill to feel much self-reproach then, but it was with some shame she learnt how mistaken she had been.

"Oh, believe me!" concluded Rosaline, "I have never had a wrong thought of Mr. Frank Raynor; nor he one of me. Had we been brother and sister, our intercourse with each other could not have been more open and simple."

"He--he liked you at Trennach, and you liked him," murmured poor Daisy, almost convinced, but repentant and tearful. "People talked about it."

"He liked me as an acquaintance, nothing more," sighed Rosaline, passing over all mention of her own early feelings. "He was fond of talking and laughing with me, and I would talk and laugh back again. I was light-hearted then. But never, I solemnly declare it, did a word of love pass between us. And, in the midst of it, there fell upon me and my mother the terrible grief of my father's unhappy death. I have never laughed since then."

"I have been thinking these past two years that he went to West Street only to see you," sobbed Daisy.

Rosaline shook her head. "He has come entirely for my mother. Without fee, for he will not take it, he has been unremittingly kind and attentive, and has soothed her pains on the way to death. God bless him for it! A few days, and I shall never see him again in this world. But I shall not forget what he has done for us; and God will not forget it either."

"_You_ are not going to die, are you?" cried poor puzzled Daisy.

"I am going out to New Zealand," replied Rosaline. "As soon as I have laid my dear mother in her last home--and Death's shadow is even now upon her--I bid farewell to England for ever. We have relations who are settled near Wellington, and they are waiting to receive me. Were Mr. Raynor a free man and had never possessed any other ties on earth, there could be no question, now or ever, of love between him and me."

Daisy's delicate hand went out to clasp the not less delicate one that rested near her on the bed, and her cheeks took quite a red tinge for her own folly and mistakes in the past. A wonderful liking, fancy, admiration, esteem--she hardly knew what to call it--was springing up in her heart for this sad and beautiful young woman, whom she had so miserably misjudged.

"Forgive me my foolish thoughts," she whispered, quite a painful entreaty in her eyes. "I wish I had known you before: I would have made a friend of you."

"Thank you, thank you!" warmly responded Rosaline. "That is all I came to say; but it is Heaven's truth. I, the unconscious cause of the trouble, am more sorry for it than you can be. Farewell, Mrs. Raynor: for now I must go back to my mother. I shall ever pray for your happiness and your husband's."

"Won't you kiss me?" asked Daisy with a sob. And Rosaline bent over her and kissed her.

"Are you convinced now, Daisy?" questioned Frank, coming into the room when he had seen Rosaline out of the house. "Are you happier?"

All the answer she made was to lie on his arm and cry silently, abjectly murmuring something that he could not hear.

"I thought it best to ask Rosaline to come, as you would not believe me. When I told her of the mischief that was supposed to have been afloat, she was more eager to come than I to send her."

"Forgive me, Frank! Please don't be harsh with me! I am so ashamed of myself; so sorry!"

"It is over now; don't think about it any more," kissing her very fervently.

"I will never be so stupid again," she sobbed. "And--Frank--I think I shall--perhaps--get well now."

Rosaline had said that Death's shadow lay upon her mother even while she was talking with Mrs. Raynor. In just twenty-four hours after that, Death himself came. When the day's sunlight was fading, to give place to the tranquil stars and to the cooler air of night, Mrs. Bell passed peacefully away to her heavenly home. She had been a great sufferer: she and her sufferings were alike at rest now.

It was some two hours later. The attendant women had gone downstairs, and Rosaline was sitting alone, her eyes dry but her heart overwhelmed with its anguish, when Blase Pellet came to make a call of inquiry. He had shown true anxiety for the poor sick woman, and had often brought her little costly dainties; such as choice fruit. And once--it was a positive fact--once when Rosaline was absent, Blase had sat down and read to her from the New Testament.

"Will you see her, Blase?" asked Rosaline, as he stood quiet and silent with the news. "She looks so peaceful."

Blase assented; and they went together into the death-chamber. Very peaceful. Yes: none could look more so.

"Poor old lady!" spoke Blase. "I'm sure I feel very sorry: almost as though it was my own mother. Was she sensible to the last?"

"Quite to the very last; and collected," replied Rosaline, suppressing a sob in her throat. "Mr. Frank Raynor called in the afternoon; and I know he saw that nothing more could be done for her, though he did not say so. She was very still after he left, lying with her eyes closed. When she opened them and saw me, she put up her hand for me to take it. 'I have been thinking about your father and that past trouble, dear,' she said. 'I am going to him: and what has never been cleared here will be made clear there.' They were nearly the last words she spoke."

"It's almost a pity but it had been cleared up for her here," said Blase. "It might have set her uncertainty at rest, don't you see. Sometimes I had three parts of a mind to tell her. She'd have thought a little less of Mr. Frank Raynor if I had told."

Rosaline, standing on one side the bed, cast a steady look on the young man, standing on the other. "Blase," she said, "I think the time has come for me to ask you what you mean. As you well know, it is not your first hint, by many, in regard to what you saw that fatal night at Trennach. I have wanted to set you right; but I was obliged to avoid the subject whilst my mother lived; for had the truth reached her she might have died of it."

"Died of it! Set me right!" repeated Blase, gazing back at Rosaline.

"By the words which you have allowed to escape you from time to time, I gather that you have believed my unfortunate father owed his death to Mr. Frank Raynor."

"So he did," said Blase.

"So he did _not_, Blase. It was I who killed my father."

The assertion seemed to confound him. But for the emotion that Rosaline was struggling with, her impressive tones, and the dead woman lying there, across whom they spoke, Blase might have deemed she was essaying to deceive him, and accorded her no belief.

"Are you doubting my words, Blase?" she asked. "Listen. In going home from Granny Sandon's that night, I took the street way, and saw you standing outside the shop, preparing to shut it up. You nodded to me across the street, and I thought you meant to follow me as soon as you were at liberty. When I was out of your sight, I quickened my pace, and should have been at home before you could have caught me up, but for meeting Clerk Trim's wife. She kept me talking for I cannot tell how long, relating some sad tale about an accident that had happened to her sister at Pendon. I did not like to leave her in the middle of it; but I got away as soon as I could, though I dare say a quarter-of-an-hour had been lost. As I reached the middle of the Plain, I turned and saw some one following me at a distance, and I made no doubt it was you. At that same moment, Mr. Frank Raynor met me, and began telling me of a fight that had taken place between Molly Janes and her husband, and of the woman's injuries, which he had then been attending to. It did not occupy above a minute, but during that time, whilst I was standing, you were advancing. I feared you would catch me up; and I wished Mr. Frank a hurried good-night, and ran across to hide behind the mounds whilst you passed by. He did not understand the motive of my sudden movement, and followed me to ask what was the matter. I told him: I had seen you coming, and I did not want you to join me. When I thought you must have gone by, I stole out to look; and, as I could not see you, thought what good speed you had made, to be already out of sight. It never occurred to me to suppose you had come to the mounds, instead of passing on."

"But I had come to them," interrupted Blase eagerly. "My eyes are keener than most people's, and I knew you both; and I saw you dart across, and Raynor after you. So I followed."

"Well--in very heedlessness, I ran up to the mouth of the shaft, and pretended to be listening for Dan Sandon's ghost. Mr. Raynor seized hold of me; for I was too near the edge, and the least false step might have been fatal. Not a moment had we stood there; not a moment; when a shout, followed by a blow on Mr. Raynor's shoulder, startled us. It was my poor father. He was raising his stick for another blow, when I, in my terror, pushed between him and Mr. Raynor to part them. With all my strength--and a terrified woman possesses strength--I flung them apart, not knowing the mouth of the pit was so near. _I flung my father into it, Blase_."

"Good mercy!" ejaculated Blase.

"Mr. Frank Raynor leaped forward to save him, and nearly lost his own life in consequence; it was an even touch whether he followed my father, or whether he could balance himself backwards. I grasped his coat, and I believe--he believes--that that alone saved him."

"I saw the scuffle," gasped Blase. "I could have taken my oath that it was Raynor who pushed your father in."

"I am telling the truth in the presence of my dead mother and before Heaven," spoke Rosaline, lifting her hands in solemnity. "Do you doubt it, Blase Pellet?"

"No--no; I can't, I don't," confessed Blase. "Moonlight's deceptive. And the wind was rushing along like mad between my eyes and the shaft."

"I only meant to part them," wailed Rosaline. "And but that my poor father was unsteady in his gait that night, he need not have fallen. It is true I pushed him close to the brink, and there he tottered, in his unsteadiness, for the space of a second, and fell backwards: his lameness made him awkward at the best of times. A stronger man, sure of his feet, need not and would not have fallen in. But oh, Blase, that's no excuse for me! It does not lessen my guilt or my misery one iota. It was I who killed him: I, I!"

"Has Mr. Raynor known this all along?" asked Blase, whose faculties for the moment were somewhat confused.

Rosaline looked at him in surprise. "_Known it?_ Why, he was an actor in it. Ah, Blase, you have been holding Mr. Raynor guilty in your suspicious heart; he knows you have; and he has been keeping the secret out of compassion for me, bearing your ill thoughts in patient silence. All these four years he has been dreading that you would bring the accusation against him publicly. It has been in your heart; I know it has; to accuse him of my father's murder."

"No, not really," said Blase, knitting his brows. "I should never have done it. I only wanted him to think I should."

"And, see you not what it would have involved? I honestly believe that Frank Raynor would never have cleared himself at my expense, whatever charge you might have brought, but he feared that I should speak and clear him. As I should have done. And that confession would have gone well-nigh to kill my poor mother. For my sake Mr. Raynor has borne all this; borne with you; and done what lay in his power to ward off exposure."

"He always favoured you," spoke Blase in crestfallen tones.

"Not for the sake of _that_ has he done it," quickly returned Rosaline. "He takes his share of blame for that night's work; and _will_ take it, although blame does not attach to him. Had he gone straight home as I bade him, and not followed me to the mounds, it would not have happened, he says; so he reproaches himself. And, so far, that is true. It was a dreadful thing for both of us, Blase."

"I wish it had been him instead of you," retorted Blase.

"It might have been better, far better, had I spoken at the time--or allowed Mr. Raynor to speak. To have told the whole truth--that I had done it, though not intentionally; and that my poor father was lying where he was--dead. But I did not; I was too frightened, too bewildered, too full of horror: in short, I believe I was out of my senses. And, as I did not confess at the time, I could not do so afterwards. Mr. Raynor would have given the alarm at the moment, but for me: later, when I in my remorse and distress would have confessed, he said it must not be. And I see that he was right."

Blase could only nod acquiescence to this: but his nod was a sullen one.

"You know that our old clergyman at Trennach, Mr. Pine, was in London last Easter and came here to see my mother," resumed Rosaline. "I privately asked him to let me have half-an-hour alone with him, and he said I might call on him at his lodgings. I went; and I told him what I have now told you, Blase; and at my request he got a lawyer there, who drew up this statement of mine in due form, and I swore to its truth and signed it in their presence. A copy of this, sealed and attested, has been handed to Mr. Raynor; Mr. Pine keeps another copy. I do not suppose they will ever have to be used; but there the deeds are, in case of need. It was right that some guarantee of the truth should be given to secure Mr. Raynor, as I was intending to go to the other end of the world."

"It sounds altogether like a tale," cried Blase.

"A very hideous one."

"And as to your going to the end of the world, Rosaline, you know that you need not do it. I am well off, now my father's dead, and----"

She held up her hand warningly. "Blase, _you_ know that this is a forbidden subject. I shall never, never marry in this world: and, of all men in it, the two whom I would least marry are you and Mr. Raynor. He takes a share of that night's blame; you may take at least an equal share: for, had you not persisted in following me from Trennach, when you knew it would be distasteful to me, I should have had no need to seek refuge in the mounds, and the calamity could not have occurred. Never speak to me of marriage again, Blase."

"It's very hard lines," grumbled Blase.

"And are not my lines hard?--and have not Mr. Frank Raynor's been hard?" she asked with emotion. "But, oh, Blase," she softly added, "let us remember, to our consolation, that these 'hard lines' are only sent to us in mercy. Without them, and the discipline they bring, we might never seek to gain heaven."