Chapter 23

Not dead yet!

Though the bloody Muscovite spearmen thought they had left a corpse behind them, and though the surgeons who examined him decided that he could not survive the night, the obstinate vitality in Royston Keene still lingered on, refusing to yield to wounds that might have drained the life out of three strong men. It seemed as if some strange doom were upon him, such as was laid on the Black Slave in the _Arabian Nights_, loved by the enchantress-queen; or a Durindarte in the old romance, where the tortured spirit, enthralled by potent spells, was withheld for a season from departure, though its tenement was all shattered and ruined. His case from the first was utterly hopeless; and his bodily helplessness at times almost resembled catalepsy; yet his faculties were quite clear. He could recognize his friends, and talk with them quite composedly; cry or complaint never once issued from those rigid lips. They sent him down to Scutari at last, not with any hope of his recovery, but wishing to insure him all available comforts in his dying moments. It was a rough passage (even on invalids the cruel Euxine had little mercy) this, and the pain of transport through the few hundred yards that were between the vessel and the hospital almost exhausted the dregs of Royston's strength. When they laid him down on the bed allotted to him, in a small room of the main ward, of which he was to be the sole tenant, none of the surgeons could have told if they were dealing with life or death. Work was so heavy on their hands at that dreadful season, that they could not devote more than a certain space of precious time to any one patient; so after trying all means and appliances of recovery in vain, they left Keene for a while in his swoon. It seemed as if he would never open his eyes again. They unclosed slowly at last, still dim with the deathly faintness; his head was dizzy and confused; and in his ears there was a dull, droning sound, like the murmur of a distant sea. As objects and sounds assumed more distinctness, he became aware of the figure of a woman sitting on the ground by the side of his couch--her head buried in her hands--rocking herself ever to and fro, and never pausing in her low, heart-broken wail. If old tales speak truth, such a figure might be seen in dark corners of haunted houses; and such a wail might echo at dead of night through chambers conscious of some fearful crime. Instinct more than reason revealed to Royston the truth.

The lips that under the thrusts of Russian lances, and through all subsequent tortures, had guarded so jealously the secret of his agony, could not repress a groan as they syllabled the name of--Cecil Tresilyan.

It was so. The brilliant beauty who for two seasons had ruled the world in which she moved so imperiously--insatiate of conquest, and defying rivalry--the delicate _aristocrate_ who from her childhood had been used to every imaginable luxury, and had appreciated them all--was found again, here, in the gray robe of a Sister of Charity, content to endure real, bitter hardships, and to witness daily sights from which womanhood, with all its bravery, must needs recoil. The motives that had urged her to such a step would be hard indeed to define. The same weariness and impatience of inaction that have been alluded to in the case of Royston Keene may have had much to do with it; to this, perhaps, was added a feeling of wild remorse, seeking to vent itself in self-torturing penance, such as impelled kings and conquerors in old days to don the palmer's gown, and macerate their bodies by fast and scourge; there may have been, too, some vague, unacknowledged longing to seize the last chance of seeing her lost love once again. Might she not tend _him_ as she nursed the other wounded, without adding to the weight of her sin? If she ever entertained such an idea, her punishment may well have atoned for her offense, when she came suddenly and unprepared into that sick-chamber, and looked upon the mangled wreck lying senseless there.

Royston spoke first. "What brought you here?" If it was possible that he could feel any thing like terror, surely the hollow, tremulous voice betrayed it then.

Cecil Tresilyan sprang to her feet as if an electric shock had moved her, and stood gazing at him with her great, desolate, tearless eyes; all her misery could not make them hard or haggard, nor dispel their marvelous enchantment. Royston marked the impulse that would have drawn her to his side; and threw out one weak hand to warn her off; with the other he tried to cover his own scarred, ghastly face. "Don't come near me," he muttered; "I can't bear it." Her woman's instinct fathomed his meaning instantly: he thought that even _she_ must shrink from him. She laughed out loud (for her brain was almost turning) as she knelt down and raised his head on her arm, and smoothed his matted hair, and kissed the death-damp from his forehead, murmuring between the caresses, "You dare not keep me from you. Do you think that _I_ fear you, my own--my own!"

The glory of a great triumph--grand, even if sinful--lighted up the face of the dying man; and intense passion made even his voice strong and steady. "I believe this is better than the paradise we dreamed of in the island of the Greek Sea."

Without a moment's pause the sweet, sad voice replied, "Yes, it is better. _Then_ I should have died first, and hopelessly. _Now_ there is no guilt between us that may not be forgiven."

Silence lasted till Royston gathered energy to speak again.

"You remember the glove? See--I have not parted with it yet." He drew from his breast a case of steel links hung round his neck by a chain: it held Cecil's gauntlet--stained and stiffened with his blood. That was the treasure he would not resign when he lay on the ground, waiting for the Russian lances. "You did not think that I should forget you, because I never answered your letter?"

As had happened once before, a portion of his fortitude and self-command seemed transfused into Cecil Tresilyan. She spoke quite steadily now.

"How could I misjudge your silence, when I begged you not to write? I have been very miserable, thinking how angry you would be; and yet I could not help what I did. But I never fancied you had forgotten me. Forgetting is not so easy. Now tell me about yourself. I have heard of that glorious charge. But those terrible wounds--how you must have suffered!"

Out of the dim, glazing eyes flashed for one moment a gleam of soldierly pride. "Yes, we rode straight, on the twenty-fifth--I among the rest. I suppose I have suffered some pain, but that is all past and gone. I am sensible of nothing but the great happiness of holding your little hand once more. See--I can hold it without shame, for my fingers have not pressed those of any woman alive since we parted."

She saw how the utterance of those few words told upon him, and refrained from the delight of listening longer to the voice that was still to her inexpressibly dear. So she checked him fondly when he would have gone on speaking. Yet the silence that ensued was first broken by Cecil.

"My own! I fear--I fear that you are in great danger. How long we may _both_ have to suffer, God alone can tell. But will you not see a clergyman? He might help you though I am weak and powerless."

A shadow of the old sardonic scorn swept across Keene's emaciated face, and passed away as suddenly.

"It is somewhat late for any help that priests can bring. Besides, I can not dwell now on any of my past sins, save one. All my thoughts are taken up with the wrong that I have done to you."

This was true. If there were reproachful phantoms that had a right to haunt Royston's death-bed, the living presence kept them all at bay.

Cecil's eyes had never been more eloquent than they were then, but they spoke of nothing but despair.

"Ah, heaven! can not you see that all _I_ have to forgive has been forgiven long ago? What is to become of me if you die hardened in your sin? Must I live on, _hoping_ that we are parted forever? If you are pitiless to your own soul, have mercy, at least, upon me!"

All Royston's former crimes seemed to him venial by comparison, as he witnessed the misery and abasement of the glorious creature on whom he had brought such sorrow, if not shame. The remorse that a strong will and hard heart had stifled so long found voice at last in three muttered words--"God forgive me!" A very niggardly and inadequate expression of contrition--was it not?--conceded to a life whose sins outnumbered its years. Yet the slight thread of hope drawn therefrom has been able since to hold back Cecil Tresilyan from the abyss of utter desperation. She forbore to press him farther then, seeing his increasing weakness, and trusting, perhaps, that a more favorable opportunity would come.

Indeed, there were a thousand things to be said about the past, in which both had borne a part, and the future, in which only one could share; but Royston had estimated rightly the extent of his remaining physical resources; and when he found how each syllable exhausted him, he became as chary of words as a miser of his gold. His right hand still grasped hers firmly; and her delicate cheek was pillowed on his shoulder; the fingers of his other hand played gently with a long, glossy chestnut tress that had escaped from the prison of the close cap she wore. So they remained, for a long time--no sound passing between them, beyond half-formed whispers of endearment: no one came in to molest them: there was work enough and to spare, that night, for all in Scutari. The thought of interruption never crossed Cecil's mind for an instant. Always careless and defiant of conventionality, or the world's opinion, she was tenfold more reckless now. Her head was bent down, and her eyes closed; so that she could not see how the hollows deepened on her lover's face; nor how the pallor of his cheek darkened rapidly to an ashen-gray. But inward warnings of approaching dissolution spoke plainly enough to Royston Keene. He knew what he had to do.

He raised her head from where it rested, and said, so gently, "If my time is short, there is the more reason that I should be loth to lose you, even for an hour. But you must have rest; and I feel as if I could sleep. Do not try to persuade me; but leave me now. When you think hereafter of this evening, remember what my last words were. _I loved you best of all._ Darling--wish me good-night; and come to see me early to-morrow."

He guessed, full well, how long that night would last, and what sight would meet Cecil on the morrow; but he was resolute to spare her one additional pang, and so endured alone the whole burden of the parting agony. His whole life had been full of deeds of reckless daring; but, in good truth, this achievement was its very crown of courage.

Now, as heretofore, Cecil was incapable of resisting any one of his expressed wishes or commands; besides this, physical exhaustion was beginning to overcome her; and she, too, felt that it was time to go. She leaned down, without speaking, and their lips met in a long, passionate kiss. So little of vitality lingered in Royston's, that they remained still icy-cold under the pressure of these ripe, red roses.

"I will come again, early," she whimpered.

The last relics of a strength that _had_ been superhuman passed into the lingering pressure of the hand that bade her tenderly farewell. Half an hour later the surgeon came to Royston Keene. All that night, shrieks and groans, and other sounds through which human agony finds a vent, had been ringing in his ears, till they were weary of the din; but the silence of that chamber struck the visitor yet more painfully. He looked for a second gravely at the motionless figure; and laid his ear against the lips; no breath issued thence that would have stirred a feather; then he drew very gently the sheet over the dead man's face,--a quiet, steadfast face,--that even in the death-throe had retained its proud, placid calm.

When Cecil Tresilyan saw that same sight the next morning, she did not scream or faint. Neither then nor afterward did she prove herself unworthy of her haughty lover, by demonstrating or parading her sorrows. Many others besides her have taken for their motto, "The heart knoweth its own bitterness;" and have carried it out to the end unflinchingly. Verily, they have their reward. If there is little comfort on this side the grave, and only vague hope beyond it, it is something to escape condolence. We follow her fortunes no farther. It is needless to give all the details of the hospital service which occupied her till the conclusion of the war set her free; and we will not seek to penetrate into the retreat in the Far West where she is dwelling still. The gray manor-house guards its secrets well, though it has witnessed in its time sorrows and sins that might have wrung a voice from granite. Conscious of many broken hearts and blasted hopes, is the home of the Tresilyans of Tresilyan.

I confess to a certain regret, as that graceful figure vanishes from the stage that never was worthy of her queen-like presence. Was it in dream-land that I saw the original of the character and face that I have endeavored, thus roughly, to portray? Perhaps so. But there are visions so near akin to realities, that one's brain grows dizzy in trying to disentangle the two.

It is unfortunate that the void created by any man's death is by no means proportionate to his intrinsic merits. So it happened that the loss of Royston Keene was felt more than he deserved. Far and wide over the surface of the world's sea the circles spread from the spot where his life went down. He was missed not only by his old comrades in arms: men who scarcely knew him by sight spared some regret to the favorite hero of the Light Dragoons. Mark Waring, in the loneliness of his dreary chambers, gnashed his teeth in bitterness of envy; for he guessed _who_ would be the chief mourner. Arnaud de Châteaumesnil's remark was characteristic. Hearing that his old opponent had fallen in the front of the battle, he struck his hand impatiently on his own crippled limbs, muttering--"Sang-dieu! Il avait toujours la main heureuse." Harry Molyneux can not trust his voice to speak of him yet; and other beautiful eyes besides _La Mignonne's_ were dim with tears when they read a certain death-gazette. Truly, "great men have fallen in Israel," and saints have departed in the plentitude of sanctity, without winning such wealth of regrets as was lavished on the grave of that strong sinner. Only two women alive--and these he had never wronged--rejoiced over the news unfeignedly--Bessie Danvers and his own wife.

Shall we pass judgment on Royston Keene? He had erred so often and heavily that even the intercession of a penitent who never kneels before Heaven without mingling his name in her prayers must probably be unavailing. Yet will we not cast the stone. All temptations, of course, can be resisted, and ought to be overcome. But there are men born with so peculiar a temperament, and who seem to have been so completely under the dominion of circumstances, that they might well be supposed to have been raised up for a warning. How far are such to be held accountable? Let us refrain from this subject, remembering how grave and learned theologians, earnest opponents of Predestinarianism, have been reduced to the extreme of perplexity when confronted with the ensample of Pharaoh.

It would neither be pleasant nor profitable to pry into the secrets of the black darkness that lies beyond Royston's death-bed; in it few would be able to distinguish the faintest glimmer of light. But we have no more authority to fix limits to the long-suffering of Omnipotence, than we have to dispute the justice of its revenge. Let us stand aside, and hope

That Heaven may yet have more mercy than man On such a bold rider's soul.

A strange doctrine, that; savoring perhaps of heterodoxy, and perilous to be adopted by such as can not fathom it thoroughly. But if there be no germ of truth therein, it were better for some of us that we had never been born.

THE END.

Transcriber's notes: Obvious spelling/typographical and punctuation errors have been corrected after careful comparison with other occurrences within the text and consultation of external sources.

p6: "take it out of the human race" corrected to "take it out on the human race"

p6: "would'nt" corrected to "wouldn't"

p7: "dreamland" occurs here only; "dream-land" occurs on p66 only, not at a linebreak; both retained

p12: "Caramba" is clear and occurs only once in the book; "Coramba" occurs once and with equal clarity on p59; both retained

p14: "to his strid ," corrected to "to his stride,"

p15: "esprit de corps" occurs here only; "esprit du corps" also occurs once (p31); both retained

p21: archaic spelling "ladye" fits the context, so retained

p26: added closing quote mark to "burying."

p33: "vôtre" corrected to "votre"

p34: "propriètaire" corrected to "propriétaire"

p36: "dejà" corrected to "déjà"

p36: "on est sur de" corrected to "on est sûr de"

p42: "pic-nic" occurs here and on p43, not at a linebreak; "picnic" occurs on p45 and p47; both retained

p44: in the first verse quoted by Royston, "pikemen's" is an apparent misquotation for "pikeman's", and "scatheless" may be a typo for "scathless"

p46: "missionery" corrected to "missionary"

p46: "innuendoes" retained as archaic spelling

p47: "tranquillity" retained as archaic spelling

p62: "partez-seul" corrected to "partez seul"

p62: "betise" corrected to "bêtise"

p62: "vegeance" corrected to "vengeance"

The following obscure English words used by the author need no correction

p32: "tulwar" is a variant spelling of "talwar", a kind of Indian sabre

p33: "glozing" means explaining away/glossing over

p39: "teind" is a tithe

p44: "pursy" means short-winded

p46: to "aby" means to pay the penalty

p46: to "lanch" means to throw or let fly