CHAPTER XXIV.

DEATH OF MRS. GODFREY.

A missive soon brought M. Bertolot to the trio. He came as secretly as possible, and departed in the same way; not so secretly, however, as to prevent his visit being shortly made known to Alfred Brookbank, who, with the view of making a final breach between Sir Philip and his wife, had set spies to watch the movements of the party. He discovered from the jealousy of the neighbors the intimacy at the Irish cottage, and surmised the attraction which produced these visits, but could make no use of this surmise until his agent recognized in M. Bertolot the French priest who had accompanied the countess to England. The secrecy of the visit told its purport. Alfred now informed Sir Philip, as if he had just made the discovery, that Annie had been in Eugene's company all the time she had been away; that Catholics were their only society, and that a priest visited them in secret, adding that there could be no rational doubt that Lady Conway and her mother were both Catholics.

Sir Philip's indignation was excessive. Without taking time to consider the matter at all, he ordered his carriage and drove post-haste to Estcourt Hall, to which place the family were now summoned in consequence of the increasing weakness of Mrs. Godfrey.

Mrs. Godfrey had been brought there by short stages, and had arrived the night before. Mr. Godfrey and Hester were there to meet her, and to Hester's great joy she was once more pressed lovingly to her mother's heart, who was more than happy to see her children united again in affection. Adelaide was hourly expected; and when Sir Philip made his appearance he was supposed to come in obedience to a similar summons. Mr. Godfrey received him; but Sir Philip's agitation was such that he made no answer to the customary greeting. He looked round the room, and seeing they were alone, he said in a choking voice:

"Is Lady Conway here?"

"She is; she arrived last night."

"And her brother Eugene?"

"Is here also."

"And have they been together all this time? O Mr. Godfrey, how you have deceived me!"

Mr. Godfrey was puzzled. He was constitutionally timid, and certainly was just now in no mood for quarrelling; so he said quietly: "Why, has any harm come of it?"

"Harm! What can be greater harm than that Annie and her mother should both of them be papists?"

"Is it that which frightens you? Be composed, my dear friend; put such thoughts from your mind; Annie has too much sense for that. And my poor wife, she has been a little weak in the head lately, it is true, but she is not given that way in the least degree; besides, I greatly fear she cannot live long; her strength is less than I could have imagined. Come, and see her."

But Sir Philip was absorbed in one idea. "I tell you," said he, "that the mischief is already done; that your wife and mine have both been on their knees to a priest, and that the secrets of both families are already on the way to Rome."

"Impossible!" said Mr. Godfrey.

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"Try," said Sir Philip; "ask the question; if they dare deny it, I will produce the proofs."

Mr. Godfrey laid his hand on the bell-rope. A servant appeared. "Request Mr. Eugene to come to me immediately." The man bowed and disappeared. Eugene soon entered. The door was carefully closed. Sir Philip could scarcely keep himself from springing on him; but Mr. Godfrey stood between them, and said in a hollow voice: "Eugene, answer without circumlocution or disguise, say yes or no, are your mother and sister Annie Catholics?"

"They are."

Mr. Godfrey pointed to the door; he could not speak. Eugene left the room. The two strong men trembled with impotent rage.

"A curse has fallen upon the house," muttered Mr. Godfrey at length, as he paced the room. "Who could have dreamed of this?"

"Mr. Godfrey," said Sir Philip, in tones of thunder, "you will tell your daughter that she never again will enter my doors. Prepare what settlements you please, send them to my lawyer; anything in reason I will consent to, but see her again I will not."

He quitted the house, nor did he ever see his injured wife again.

Scarcely had Sir Philip's carriage driven away when another drove up, containing Adelaide, the young Dowager Duchess of Durimont. She entered the house in a scarcely less agitated state than Sir Philip had left it in; but her excitement proceeded altogether from a different cause. Among Adelaide's numerous faults, want of affection for her mother certainly did not form one. On the contrary, she was accustomed not only to love but to reverence her mother as a very superior woman. Through the sunshine of youth, while enjoying the warmth of a mother's fondness and protection, Adelaide's affections had strengthened without that sentimentality of expression which Mrs. Godfrey would have taught her to repress had she seen it manifested, but they were none the less deep or tender for having hitherto found no occasion, of great display. On the first intimation she had received of her mother's illness, Adelaide had hastened at once to Estcourt Hall, and was with difficulty persuaded by Mr. Godfrey to retire. He feared that Adelaide's presence would but increase the excitement under which Mrs. Godfrey labored, and as the doctor's opinion was to that effect also, Adelaide was compelled, however reluctantly, to yield. They gave her no clew whatever as to the cause of her mother's malady, and though she had a general idea of some unworthy transaction in which Eugene was wronged and Hester enriched, she did not enter into particulars, nor mentally connect the facts with her mother's illness. The only effect it had upon her was to estrange her from Hester, and in a slighter degree from her father also.

When she heard that Eugene and Annie were summoned to her mother's side, again she endeavored to share their cares; but Mr. Godfrey was fearful of suffering too great intercourse between Adelaide and Eugene, and used his utmost endeavors to dissuade her. He insisted that the physicians absolutely ordered that none should approach her save those she asked for. The father dreaded the judgment of the daughter when she should know the cause of her mother's trouble. He was accustomed to be looked up to by his children, and shrank from incurring the disapproval of this one in particular; for Adelaide had ever been considered the most talented and the most intellectual of the family. He had a sort of consciousness that to the mother's influence in veiling his foibles from his children's eyes, he owed much of that reverence with which they habitually approached him; and he could but feel that he had made but a poor return for a life of devotedness, when he refused to yield to the first {752} important demand she had ever made him, and that in favor of his own son.

But now Eugene had written to Adelaide to say her mother was calm, and would welcome her. Adelaide entered her father's house pale and trembling, an attendant supporting her.

"Is she still alive?" she whispered, as she saw her father; then, as if fearful he would still oppose her seeing Mrs. Godfrey's, she refused by a gesture to enter the sitting-room, but made her way at once up the broad staircase to the room her mother had ever been wont to occupy. She opened the door, and flinging herself on her knees by the side of the bed, took the pale hand, and, as she kissed it, said, with streaming eyes: "Ah! dear mother, why was I not permitted to come to you before?"

"And who forbade you, my love?"

"My father said the doctors--"

Mrs. Godfrey looked at her husband, who had followed Adelaide into the room; there was surprise and sorrow, but no anger on her countenance. She pressed Adelaide's hand and whispered, "Perhaps he was right, I was unconscious and delirious a long while, my poor child; but now you will stay with me the little time that I remain on earth."

"You feel better to-day, my dear mother," said Annie, hopefully.

"I do, but it cannot last; we must not deceive ourselves. I am glad to see my dear Adelaide, but I cannot talk to her yet."

The effort of saying even so much exhausted her; she lay back, and they watched long hours in silence by her pillow.

Day after day passed away, the loving children surrounding her, and Mr. Godfrey sharing their watch. All traces of excitement had gone, in the solemnity of that watch. Mrs. Godfrey seemed so thoroughly in peace, that that peace seemed to pass into the circle of hearts surrounding her. She became, however, perceptibly weaker everyday. Ten days after Adelaide's arrival she whispered to her one morning: "Tell your father I wish to speak to him."

Adelaide summoned her father. Whatever were the words spoken, they appeared to distress him very much. He gazed at his wife as though in a stupor. She held his hand and faintly whispered, "My last wishes, can you refuse them?" "No," said he, half choked, "he shall be sent for;" and he left her to seek Eugene. That evening a stranger was ushered by Eugene, as it were by stealth, into his mother's room. Annie alone was present. The last sacraments of the church were administered, and the stranger priest passed down the back staircase so secretly that none knew of or suspected his visit save those present and Mr. Godfrey, who had insisted on such secrecy being observed.

Adelaide had at length gathered all the facts concerning her brother being disinherited, and the effect the transaction had produced on Mrs. Godfrey's mind. A great feeling of repulsion for Hester was the consequence, and her manner soon betrayed symptoms of the feelings that swayed her.

"I can never again call her sister," she whispered, half-aloud, one day, in her meditation, by her mother's side; Mrs. Godfrey's eyes opened. "My children, love one another," she said. "Love, for he loved even sinners; forgive, for he forgave those who crucified him." She sank to sleep after pronouncing these words, and when the watchers bent over her to see what prolonged that sleep to so unusual a time, they found that the sweet purified spirit had already winged its way to the mansions of the blessed.

Of all the mourners there, perhaps the grief of Adelaide was the most violent. The feelings of Annie and Eugene were tempered by the hope that their mother was now happier than she had ever been before. Hester's were modified by the deep meditation in which she was plunged by the fact that her mother had received full insight into that faith of which she had caught but a glimpse, and of which {753} she so earnestly desired to know more. But she dared not question Eugene or Annie, for fear of angering her father and her mother! "O mother, pray for me!" was in her heart, and checked the outward demonstration of' her grief.

They were standing round the coffin, those four children, whom she had brought so faithfully through the cares and dangers of childhood! No pride of station had withdrawn her from fulfilling her nursery duties; no sloth, no command of riches had caused her to delegate to hireling hands the cultivation of their infant minds; riches to them had been as an accessory, not, as too often happens, causing a withdrawal of maternal offices. How had they requited her? Oh! happy they who can stand by the bier of those to whom they are bound by duty or by love, and feel no remorse for duty oft neglected.

Adelaide was standing on one side at the head of the coffin, rapt in grief, Eugene and Annie were on the other side. Hester at the foot absorbed in intense thought, but tearless and as it seemed to Adelaide not paying homage in her thoughts to that dear mother. "Was she even then dwelling on her own wild schemes?" The thought maddened Adelaide, and forgetting the self-control for which she was usually so remarkable, she in the overmastering impulse of the moment seized Hester's arm, led her to the head of the coffin, and, pointing to the sweet pale face before them, said in a frenzied tone, regardless of the presence of Mr. Godfrey, who just then entered the room: "And did you dare to wring the heart of that most noble woman? Was it for you, whom she loved so dearly, to crush her loving spirit, and then stand by so calmly contemplating her remains? How my heart loathes you!"

"Hush! hush! dear sister," said Eugene tenderly, as he disengaged her clasp from Hester, who fell nearly fainting into her father's arms. "Hush! Adelaide, hush! she bade us love each other; you have misconceived this matter. Come with me, I will explain it"--and he took her to another apartment, and tried to make her understand Hester's intentions of ultimately settling all according to equity, while Mr. Godfrey and Annie did their best, to restore Hester to her usual equanimity.

Mr. Godfrey was so much moved by this affront put upon his darling that he forgot his intention of keeping Mrs. Godfrey's change of religion secret, and in the evening he called Adelaide to his private study, and there explained that the delusions under which her dear mother had labored had no particular reference to Hester, but were caused by religion. "In fact,'" said; Mr. Godfrey, "what she wanted the day you came to summon me to her, was a Catholic priest. Of course I refused her nothing; the priest came that night, but secretly, out of respect to the reputation of the family."

"Was my mother a Catholic?"

"She became one latterly."

"And was it for her religion that you persecuted her?"

"Persecuted her! Why, Adelaide, how dare you apply such words to your father? Your mother was never persecuted; even when out of her mind she had everything she asked for, and as I tell you, a Catholic priest attended her the other evening. Persecuted, indeed!"

Adelaide cared not to pursue a theme which brought her out as her father's accuser, though the impression still remained on her mind that injustice had occasioned the illness and subsequent death of her mother, and this prevented her from recalling the offending words.

The father and daughter parted somewhat coldly that evening, nor were matters much mended by the family consultation held shortly afterward as to what was to become of Annie. Sir Philip's message was now first delivered to her, as Alfred Brookbank had arrived as his agent, with offers of settlement for Mr. Godfrey's approbation.

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"And is Annie not to see her own children again?" asked the duchess, as she gazed on the speechless, the agonized face of her sister.

"So says Sir Philip."

"But have you reasoned with him on the subject? Have you protested against such a monstrous piece of tyranny?"

"It were useless, may it please your grace," interposed the soft low tones of Alfred Brookbank, who was secretly gloating in the agony of his victim. "It were perfectly useless. Sir Philip's hatred of papistry--"

"Please to speak with more respect of the Holy Catholic Church, Mr. Brookbank," interrupted the duchess.

"I beg pardon; I knew not that your grace--"

"It matters not what you knew," haughtily rejoined the duchess. "It behoves every man of common sense, or of common education, to speak respectfully of a faith which for so many centuries has formed the religion not only of the commonalty but of the heroes of the race. The names of Alfred the Great and Charlemagne, of Copernicus and Michael Angelo, with countless others, may weigh a little perhaps against the opinion of so enlightened an individual as Sir Philip Conway."

The withering sarcasm of tone with which this was uttered made Mr. Godfrey bite his lips. He felt at once that he had not lowered her mother in Adelaide's estimation by informing her of that mother's becoming a Catholic; and he began to wonder which would be the next seceder from rationalistic principle. "A curse is fallen upon our house," he again muttered between his teeth.

The conference was necessarily a painful one; but it was with indescribable surprise and emotion that the assembled family heard Mr. Godfrey propose that Annie should take refuge in the convent in which dwelt her friend Euphrasie.

"Why, papa;" whispered Hester, "have you changed your opinion of convents? You used to call them sinks of iniquity. Why do you wish to imprison Annie in one?"

"Hush, my dear," answered her father, in the lowest possible whisper, "all convents are not alike. I happen to know the antecedents of the superioress and of several of the nuns in this one; they are all ladies of high birth, and are altogether above suspicion. They are austere fanatics, that is all. Annie will take no vows, and there she will see the extent of the folly to which religious enthusiasm lays us open. If a twelvemonth's residence among the poor Clares does not set her brain in order, then she is irrecoverably lost to us--we may set her down as incurably insane."

While this little dialogue was going on, Eugene and Adelaide, jointly and severally, were urging Annie to make a home with one or other of themselves, each promising to do the utmost to regain for her the custody of her children; but Annie, while she mournfully thanked them for their kindness, decided that, at least till she had taken time for reflection, she would abide by her father's advice, that is, provided the sisterhood would consent to receive her.

After vainly endeavoring to shake her resolution, the duchess resolved on accompanying her to the north to see whether suitable arrangements could be made for her comfort.