Chapter XV: Those Left to Weep

The discovery of Mrs. Vyner's flight was nearly coincident with the announcement of Cecil's suicide. Poor Vyner was like a madman. He reproached himself for having spoken so harshly to his wife, for having driven her to this desperate act, and thus causing her ruin. Had he been more patient, more tolerant! She was so young, so giddy, so impulsive, he ought to have had more consideration for her!

It was quite clear to Vyner's mind that he had behaved very brutally, and that his wife was an injured innocent.

In the midst of this grief, there came the horrible intelligence of Cecil's end. There again Vyner reproached himself. Why did he allow Blanche to marry that unhappy young man? On second thoughts, "he had never allowed it"; but yet it was he who encouraged Cecil--who invited him to his seat--who pressed him to stay!

In vain did Captain Heath remonstrate with him on this point; Vyner was at that moment in a remorseful, self-reproachful spirit, which no arguments could alter. He left everything to Captain Heath's management, with the helplessness of weak men, and sat desolate in his study, wringing his hands, taking ounces of snuff, and overwhelming himself with unnecessary reproaches.

Blanche, in a brain fever, was removed to her father's, where she was watched by the miserable old man, as if he had been the cause of her sorrow. Violet was sent for from her uncle's, and established herself once more in the house. Now her step-mother was gone, she could devote herself to her father.

Blanche's return to consciousness was unhappily also a return to that fierce sorrow which nothing but time could assuage. She was only induced to live by the reflection that her child needed her care. But what a prospect was it for her! How could she ever smile again! How could she ever cease to weep for her kind, affectionate, erring, but beloved Cecil!

It is the intensity of all passion which makes us think it must be eternal; and it is this very intensity which makes it so short-lived. In a few months Blanche occasionally smiled; her grief began to take less the shape of a thing present, and more that of a thing past; it was less of a sensation, and more of a reverie.

At first the image of her husband was a ghastly image of dishonour and early wreck; his face wore the stern keen look of suspicion which had agitated her when last she saw him alive; or else it wore the placidity of the corpse which she had last beheld. Behind that ghastly image stood the background of their happy early days of marriage, so shortlived, yet so exquisite!

In time the ghastliness faded away, and round the image of her husband, there was a sort of halo--the background gradually invaded the foreground, till at last the picture had no more melancholy in it than there is in some sweet sunset over a quiet sea. The tears she shed were no longer bitter: they were the sweet and pensive tears shed by that melancholy which finds pleasure in its own indulgence.

Grief had lost its pang. Her mind, familiarized with her loss, no longer dwelt upon the painful, but on the beautiful side of the past. Her child was there to keep alive the affectionate remembrance of its father, without suggesting the idea of the moody, irritable, ungenerous husband, which Cecil had at the last become.

Like a child crying itself to sleep--passing from sorrow into quiet breathing--her grief had passed into pensiveness. Cecil's image was as a star smiling down upon her from heaven: round it were clustered quiet, happy thoughts, not the less happy because shadowed with a seriousness which _had been_ grief.