A Country Gentleman and His Family · Chapter 8 (2/2)

“Only for the hour, I hope. It is supposed to be too much for me to go.” Here she smiled, with a nervous movement of her face. “Nothing is too much for me. You know a little about it, but not all. Do you remember him when we were married, Mrs. Warrender? I recollect you were one of the first people I saw.”

This sudden plunge into the subject for which she was least prepared⁠—for all her ideas of condolence had been driven out of her mind by the young woman’s demeanour, the open window, the cheerful and commonplace air of the room⁠—confused Mrs. Warrender greatly. “I remember Lord Markland almost all his life,” she said.

“Here is the miniature of him that was done for me before we were married,” said Lady Markland, rising hurriedly, and bringing it from the table. “Look at it; did you ever see a more hopeful face? He was so fresh; he was so full of spirits. Who could have thought there was any canker in that face?”

“There was not then,” said the elder woman, looking through a mist of natural tears⁠—the tears of that profound regret for a life lost which are more bitter, almost, than personal sorrow⁠—at the miniature. She remembered him so well, and how everybody thought all would come right with the poor young fellow when he was so happily married and had a home.

“Ah, but there was!⁠—nobody told me; though if all the world had told me it would not have made any difference. Mrs. Warrender, he is like that now. Everything else is gone. He looks as he did at twenty, as good and as pure. What do you think it means? Does it mean anything? Or is there only some physical interpretation of it, as these horrible men say?”

“My dear,” said Mrs. Warrender, quite subdued, “they say it means that all is pardoned, and that they have entered into peace.”

“Peace,” she said. “I was afraid you were going to say rest; and he who had never laboured wanted no rest. Peace⁠—where the wicked cease from troubling, is that what you mean? He had no time to repent.”

“My dear⁠—oh, I am not clear, I can’t tell you; but who can tell what was in his mind between the time he saw his danger and the blow that stunned him? If my boy had done everything against me, and all in a moment turned and called to me, would I refuse him? And is not God,” cried one mother to the other, taking her hands, “better than we?”

It was she who had come to be the comforter who wept, tears streaming down her cheeks. The other held her hands, and looked in her face with dry feverish eyes. “Your boy,” she said slowly, “he is good and kind⁠—he is good and kind. Will my boy be like him? Or do you think there is an inheritance in that as in other things?”