Rupert Godwin

THE DAY OF DESOLATION.

Bitter, most bitter, was the anguish which awaited Violet and Lionel Westford when they returned from their pleasant little excursion to Winchester.

They had gone forth that morning in all the light-hearted carelessness of youth, pleased with the beauty of the fair world in which they lived, scarcely able to believe that sorrow, deep and lasting sorrow, could exist in so lovely a universe.

But now the blow, the first most cruel blow which crushes out the warm life of youth, had fallen.

Never again could these two bright young creatures feel as they had felt; never again could they almost doubt the existence of sorrow.

The cup of anguish was offered to their young lips—the bitter draught was to be drained to its uttermost dregs.

Violet found her mother lying once more on the bed to which she had been so long a prisoner. The doctor had attended her; but he could do nothing. The miserable woman lay in a stony stupor, with her face turned towards the wall. No passionate sob relieved the anguish of her aching heart. She suffered in silence. It seemed as if her heart was changed to stone.

The surgeon, who had known Violet and Lionel from their childhood, was waiting in the drawing-room, and begged to see them before he left the house. They went to him without delay, and found him seated near a table, with a newspaper in his hand.

“Mamma has had some bad news,” exclaimed Violet, whose face was wet with the tears she had shed at the aspect of her mother’s grief. “O, Mr. Sanderson, I am sure that it is so. This is no common illness. Some one has brought news, bad news, of papa. For pity’s sake, do not torture us by this agony of suspense; let us know the worst.”

“Yes,” said Lionel, with forced calmness, “let us know the worst.”

The surgeon looked at them with sad, compassionate eyes.

“Perhaps it is better so,” he said thoughtfully. “The news that has so affected your poor mother is not of a very certain nature,” he continued, “and may not be so bad as it seems. We can still hope for the best, Miss Westford. Providence is very merciful, and joy sometimes is near at hand when we are in the depths of despair.”

“Tell us the worst,” cried Lionel passionately; “you are trifling with us, Mr. Sanderson.”

The surgeon placed the newspaper in the young man’s hand.

“Read that,” he said, pointing to the marked paragraph respecting the Lily Queen; “and may God grant that it is only a false alarm!”

Lionel read the paragraph—not once only, but three separate times; and a deadly chill crept to his heart as he read. Presently he felt a little hand trembling on his shoulder. He turned and saw Violet’s white face staring blankly at the fatal newspaper.

“O, no; no, no!” she cried piteously; “not lost—not lost! My father—my dear, dear father!”

“Let us hope not, dear Miss Westford,” answered the surgeon, in the most cheering tones he could assume. “These business men are always very quick to take alarm. Let us trust, my dear friends—let us trust in Heaven that all may be well.”

“No,” cried Lionel vehemently, “I will trust no longer. Something tells me that my father is lost. Can I forget my mother’s illness? That illness was caused solely by a presentiment that harm would come to my father upon this voyage. For twenty years she had been a sailor’s wife, yet never before had she felt such a presentiment of evil. I was a presumptuous fool, and I laughed at my mother’s fears. I know now that they were well founded. My father’s ship has been wrecked; she and all her crew have perished.”

The young man was interrupted by a hysterical shriek from Violet, who fell sobbing into his arms.

“You will kill your sister, if you talk like that, Mr. Lionel Westford,” exclaimed the doctor angrily.

Lionel was silent. He carried Violet to her own room; and that night Mr. Sanderson had to attend two patients at the Grange.

As for the young man himself, a terrible despair seemed to have fallen upon him. All through that long miserable night he paced up and down the empty rooms absorbed in melancholy thoughts.

“Why was I not a sailor like him?” he thought. “Why was I not with him in the hour of trial and danger? It might have been my fate to save him, or at the worst to perish with him! I feel myself a base coward when I think of my idle luxurious existence, and remember how my father has hazarded his life to earn the money I have been squandering at University wine-parties and boating excursions. And now that noble life has been lost in the last effort to increase the fortune of his children.”

Miserable and dreary were the days and weeks that succeeded that fatal visit of Rupert Godwin to the Grange.

For a long time Clara Westford and her daughter lay in their darkened rooms, victims to a kind of low fever.

During this weary time Lionel was something more than an ordinary son and brother to the mother and sister he adored.

Night after night when the hired nurses had grown weary of their task—when the servants of the household, sincerely as they were attached to their mistress and her daughter, had from mere exhaustion been compelled to abandon their watch, the devotion of the young man still sustained him. There was something wonderful in this patient self-abnegation in one who, until the day of calamity, had seemed so light-hearted and frivolous.

Lionel Westford’s task was not confined to watching in the sick-room. He made many journeys to London during that weary time. Again and again he visited every place where there was any hope of obtaining tidings of the missing vessel; but no good news rewarded his patience, and before the time of his mother’s recovery he had learned the worst.

A fragment of the lost vessel had been found floating near a rocky coast—a fragment which bore the name of the Lily Queen.

With a broken heart Lionel Westford returned to the Grange. Bitter as this loss was to him, the thought of his mother’s anguish was almost a deeper grief.

He returned to her, and watched once more by her sick-bed. This time he could watch and tend her day after day, night after night. He had no longer need to leave her, for he knew the worst.

At last, after the long intervals of stupor and delirium were past, Clara Westford was pronounced well enough to be removed from her bed to a chair near the fire.

The windows were closed. Without all was dark and dreary. The trees were leafless; and the December wind sighed mournfully amongst the bare branches. The sky was of a dull iron grey—no glimmer of sunshine relieved its coldness.

But Clara Westford’s room was no comfortless apartment, even in the depth of winter. Voluminous curtains half shrouded the windows, and the invalid was propped up by pillows in a luxurious easy-chair, that had been wheeled close to the low fireplace of polished steel, in which the red flames were reflected with a cheerful dancing motion that was very pleasant to see. The broad marble mantelpiece was crowded with valuable Oriental china, rare old Japanese monsters, and curious specimens of crackle, brought home by the Captain for the gratification of the wife to please whom had been the chief delight of his existence. A portrait of Harley Westford smiled with the sailor’s own bright genial smile above the chimney-piece; and a tapestry screen, of Violet’s workmanship, protected the invalid from the heat of the fire.

Clara had not been seated long in that comfortable chimney-corner when the door was opened, and Lionel came into the apartment, half-leading, half-carrying, his sister. Violet had also risen to-day from her sick-bed, but not for the first time. Her illness had not been quite so long nor so severe as that of her mother, and she had been the first to rise.

But she was still very feeble, and in her loose white robes she looked wan and phantom-like. She was no longer the brilliant sunny-haired girl who had fascinated the young painter at the Winchester ball.

“Violet,” exclaimed Mrs. Westford, “how pale and changed you are! O, my darling girl, you too have been ill?”

“Yes, dear mother.”

“And I was never told of your illness!” murmured Clara, reproachfully.

“Why should you have been made more wretched by any such knowledge, dear mother?” said Lionel. “Violet has been taken care of.”

“Yes, indeed, dear Lionel,” exclaimed the girl, lifting her eyes with a grateful glance to her brother’s face; for she knew that during that bitter time Lionel had been the good genius of the household.

“My poor Violet,” murmured the mother, clasping her daughter’s hand with quiet tenderness,—“my poor Violet, the sunshine of life has been clouded very early for you. I have had twenty years of unsullied brightness, but for you the storm-cloud has come very soon. My poor children—my beloved children!”

The mother laid her weary head on her son’s shoulder. Lionel drew his arm round her with a caressing gesture. Violet had sunk upon a low ottoman at her mother’s feet; and, grouped thus, the three were silent for some moments.

Lionel was pale as death. The dreaded question would be asked presently, and the answer must be given.

He wondered that his mother had not questioned him long before this.

Alas for her broken heart, the reason of her silence was her instinctive consciousness that all hope was past. If there had been joyful tidings, her son would have only too gladly imparted them. And then Clara Westford had watched the young man’s face, and she had seen the traces of despair imprinted there only too plainly. She clasped the strong hand that was supporting her feeble frame.

“Lionel,” she murmured, “why do you try to hide the truth from me? Do you think I cannot understand my children’s looks, and read my sorrows in their sad faces? There is no news of your father!”

“No, mother; there is no news of—my father.”

“But there is news,” gasped Clara, “of his ship!”

“Only the saddest tidings,” exclaimed the young man, sinking on his knees beside his mother’s chair. “O, mother—mother! for our sakes try to endure this calamity. Look up, dear mother, and be comforted. Remember, we have only you.”

Those last words told all. Clara Westford knew that she was a widow.