A Country Gentleman and His Family

any), which was the reason of his delay. The rest was very easily explained: everybody had said to him that “some accident” would happen one day or other with the horses he insisted on driving, and the prophecy had been fulfilled. Such prophecies are always fulfilled. Lady Markland was very quiet, accepting that extraordinary revolution in her life with a look of marble, and words that betrayed nothing. Was she brokenhearted? was she only stunned by the suddenness, the awe, of such a catastrophe? The boy clung to her, yet without a tear, pale and silent, but never, even when the words were said that all was over, breaking forth into any childish outburst. He sat on the floor in her shadow, even when she was watching by the deathbed, never left her, keeping always a hold upon her arm, her hand, or her dress. Mrs. Warrender would have taken him away, and put him to bed⁠—it was so bad for him; but the boy opposed a steady resistance, and Lady Markland put down her hand to him, not seeing how wrong it was to indulge him, all the ladies said. After this, of course nothing could be done, and he remained with her through all that followed. What followed was strange enough to have afforded a scene for a tragedy. Lady Markland asked to speak to Warrender, who had retired, leaving his mother, as was natural, to manage everything. He came to her at the door of the room which had so suddenly, with its bare, unused look, in the darkness of a few flickering candles, become a sort of presence chamber filled with the solemnity of dying. Her little figure, so neat and orderly, an embodiment of the settled peace and calm of life having nothing to do with tragedies, with the child close pressed against her side, his pale face looking as hers did, pale too and stony⁠—never altogether passed from the memory of the man who came, reluctant, almost afraid, to hear what she had to say to him. It was like a picture against the darkness of the room⁠—a darkness both physical and moral, which centred in the curtained gloom behind, about which two shadowy figures were busy. Often and with very different sentiments he saw this group again, but never wholly forgot it, or had it effaced from the depths of his memory.

“Mr. Warrender,” she said, in a voice which was very low, yet he thought might have been heard all over the house, “I want you to help me.”

“Whatever I can do,” he began, with some fervour, for he was young, and his heart was touched.

“I want,” she continued, “to carry him home at once. I know it will not be easy, but it is night, and all is quiet. You are a man; you will know better how it can be done. Manage it for me.”

Warrender was entirely unprepared for such a commission. “There will be great difficulties, dear Lady Markland,” he said. “It is a long way. I am sure my mother would not wish you to think of her. This is a house of death. Let him stay.”

She gave him a sort of smile, a softening of her stony face, and put out her hand to him. “Do it for me,” she said. She was not at all moved by his objections⁠—perhaps she did not even hear them; but when she had thus repeated her command, as a queen might have done, she turned back into the room, and sat down, to wait, it seemed, until that command should be accomplished. Warrender went away with a most perplexed and troubled mind. He was half pleased, underneath all, that she should have sent for him and charged him with this office, but bewildered with the extraordinary commission, and not knowing what to do.

“What is it, Theo? What did she want with you?” his sisters cried, in subdued voices, but eager to know everything about Lady Markland, who had been as the stars in the sky to them a little while before.

He told them in a few words, and they filled the air with whispered exclamations. “How odd, how strange; oh, how unusual, Theo! People will say it is our doing. They will say, How dreadful of the Warrenders! Oh, tell her you can’t do it! How could you do it, in the middle of the night!”

“That is just what I don’t know,” Warrender rejoined.

“Mr. Theo,” said the old man, who was not dignified with the name of butler, “the lady is quite right. I can’t tell you how it’s to be done, but gardener, he is a very handy man, and he will know. The middle of the night⁠—that’s just what makes it easy, young ladies; and instead o’ watching and waiting, the ’holl of us ’ull get to bed.”

“That is all you’re thinking of, Joseph.”

“Well, it’s a deal, sir, after all that’s been going on in this house,” Joseph said, with an aggrieved air. He had to provide supper, which was a thing unknown at the Warren, after all the trouble that everyone had been put to. He was himself of opinion that to be kept up beyond your usual hours, and subjected to unexpected fatigues, made a “bit of supper” needful even for the uncomfortable and incomprehensible people whom he called the quality. They were a poorish lot, and he had a mild contempt for them, and to get them supper was a hardship; still, it was his own suggestion, and he was bound to carry it out.

It is unnecessary to enter into all Warrender’s perplexities and all the expedients that were suggested. At last the handy gardener and himself hit upon a plan by which Lady Markland’s wishes could be carried out. She sat still in the gloomy room where her husband lay dead, waiting till they should be ready; doubting nothing, as little disturbed by any difficulty as if it had been the simplest commission in the