or Mrs. Tod’s reasoning, was successful; we received a message to the effect that Miss March would not refuse our “kindness.” So we vacated; and all that long Sunday we sat in the parlour lately our neighbour’s, heard the rain come down, and the church bells ring; the wind blowing autumn gales, and shaking all the windows, even that of the room overhead. It sounded awful THERE. We were very glad the poor young orphan was away.
On the Monday morning we heard going up-stairs the heavy footsteps that every one at some time or other has shuddered at; then the hammering. Mrs. Tod came in, and told us that no one — not even his daughter — could be allowed to look at what had been “poor Mr. March,” any more. All with him was ended.
“The funeral is to be soon. I wonder what she will do then, poor thing!”
John made me no answer.
“Is she left well provided for, do you think?”
“It is impossible to say.”
His answers were terse and brief enough, but I could not help talking about the poor young creature, and wondering if she had any relative or friend to come to her in this sad time.
“She said — do you remember, when she was crying — that she had not a friend in the wide world?”
And this fact, which he expressed with a sort of triumph, seemed to afford the greatest possible comfort to John.
But all our speculations were set at rest by a request brought this moment by Mrs. Tod — that Mr. Halifax would go with her to speak to Miss March.
“I! only I?” said John, starting.
“Only you, sir. She wants somebody to speak to about the funeral — and I said, ‘There be Mr. Halifax, Miss March, the kindest gentleman’; and she said, ‘if it wouldn’t trouble him to come —’”
“Tell her I am coming.”
When, after some time, he returned, he was very serious.
“Wait a minute, Phineas, and you shall hear; I feel confused, rather. It is so strange, her trusting me thus. I wish I could help her more.”
Then he told me all that had passed — how he and Mrs. Tod had conjointly arranged the hasty funeral — how brave and composed she had been — that poor child, all alone!
“Has she indeed no one to help her?”
“No one. She might send for Mr. Brithwood, but he was not friendly with her father; she said she had rather ask this ‘kindness’ of me, because her father had liked me, and thought I resembled their Walter, who died.”
“Poor Mr. March! — perhaps he is with Walter, now. But, John, can you do all that is necessary for her? You are very young.”
“She does not seem to feel that. She treats me as if I were a man of forty. Do I look so old and grave, Phineas?”
“Sometimes. And about the funeral?”
“It will be very simple. She is determined to go herself. She wishes to have no one besides Mrs. Tod, you, and me.”
“Where is he to be buried?”
“In the little churchyard close by, which you and I have looked at many a time. Ah, Phineas, we did not think how soon we should be laying our dead there.”
“Not OUR dead, thank God!”
But the next minute I understood. “OUR dead”— the involuntary admission of that sole feeling, which makes one, erewhile a stranger, say to, or think of another —“All thine are mine, and mine are thine, henceforward and for ever.”
I watched John as he stood by the fire; his thoughtful brow and firm-set lips contradicting the youthfulness of his looks. Few as were his years, he had learnt much in them. He was at heart a man, ready and able to design and carry out a man’s work in the world. And in his whole aspect was such grave purity, such honest truth, that no wonder, young as they both were, and little as she knew of him, this poor orphan should not have feared to trust him entirely. And there is nothing that binds heart to heart, of lovers or friends, so quickly and so safely, as to trust and be trusted in time of trouble.
“Did she tell you any more, John? Anything of her circumstances?”
“No. But from something Mrs. Tod let fall, I fear”— and he vainly tried to disguise his extreme satisfaction —“that she will be left with little or nothing.”
“Poor Miss March!”
“Why call her poor? She is not a woman to be pitied, but to be honoured. You would have thought so, had you seen her this morning. So gentle — so wise — so brave. Phineas,”— and I could see his lips tremble —“that was the kind of woman Solomon meant, when he said, ‘Her price was above rubies.’”
“I think so too. I doubt not that when she marries Ursula March will be ‘a crown to her husband.’”
My words, or the half sigh that accompanied them — I could not help it — seemed to startle John, but he made no remark. Nor did we recur to the subject again that day.
Two days after, our little company followed the coffin out of the woodbine porch — where we had last said good-bye to poor Mr. March — across the few yards of common, to the churchyard, scarcely larger than a cottage garden, where, at long intervals, the few Enderley dead were laid.
A small procession — the daughter first, supported by good Mrs. Tod, then John Halifax and I. So we buried him — the stranger who, at this time, and henceforth, seemed even, as John had expressed it, “our dead,” our own.
We followed the orphan home. She had walked firmly, and stood by the grave-side motionless, her hood drawn over her face. But when we came back to Rose Cottage door, and she gave a quick, startled glance up at the familiar window, we saw Mrs. Tod take her, unresisting, into her motherly arms — then we knew how it would be.
“Come away,” said John, in a smothered voice — and we came away.
All that day we sat in our parlour — Mr. March’s parlour that had been — where, through the no longer darkened casement, the unwonted sun poured in. We tried to settle to our ordinary ways, and feel as if this were like all other days — our old sunshiny days at Enderley. But it would not do. Some imperceptible but great change had taken place. It seemed a year since that Saturday afternoon, when we were drinking tea so merrily under the apple-tree in the field.
We heard no more from Miss March that day. The next, we received a message of thanks for our “kindness.” She had given way at last, Mrs. Tod said, and kept her chamber, not seriously ill, but in spirit thoroughly broken down. For three days more, when I went to meet John returning from Norton Bury, I could see that his first glance, as he rode up between the chestnut trees, was to the window of the room that had been mine. I always told him, without his asking, whatever Mrs. Tod had told me about her state; he used to listen, generally in silence, and then speak of something else. He hardly ever mentioned Miss March’s name.
On the fourth morning, I happened to ask him if he had told my father what had occurred here?
“No.”
I looked surprised.
“Did you wish me to tell him? I will, if you like, Phineas.”
“Oh, no. He takes little interest in strangers.”
Soon after, as he lingered about the parlour, John said:
“Probably I may be late to-night. After business hours I want to have a little talk with your father.”
He stood irresolutely by the fire. I knew by his countenance that there was something on his mind.
“David.”
“Ay, lad.”
“Will you not tell me first what you