Part 14

At that moment the bright sun, which was shining in all its splendour, beamed into the room, and fell strongly upon her flushed countenance.

‘Draw down the blind, my love,’ said Mrs. Harding to her husband. Harding rose and proceeded to the window.

A shriek of horror burst from him—‘She is there!’ exclaimed the agitated man.

‘Who?’ cried his astonished wife.

‘She—she—the horrid she!’

Mrs. Harding ran to the window and beheld, standing on the opposite side of the street, with her eyes fixed attentively on the house—MARTHA, THE GIPSY.

‘Draw down the blind, my love, and come away; pray come away,’ said Mrs. Harding.

Harding drew down the blind.

‘What evil is at hand? What misery is impending?’ sobbed Harding.

A loud scream from his wife, who had returned to the bedside, was the horrid answer to his painful question.

Maria was dead!

Twice of the thrice he had seen this dreadful fiend in human shape; each visitation was (as she had foretold) to surpass the preceding ones in its importance of horror.—What could surpass this?

There, before the afflicted parents, lay their innocent child stretched in the still sleep of death; neither of them believed it true—it seemed like a dreadful dream. Harding was bewildered, and turned from the corpse of his beloved to the window he had just left.—Martha was gone—and he heard her singing a wild and joyous air at the other end of the street.

The servants were summoned—medical aid was called in—but it was all too late! and the wretched parents were doomed to mourn their loved, their lost Maria! George, her fond and affectionate brother, who was at Oxford, hastened from all the academic honours which were awaiting him, to follow to the grave his beloved sister.

The effect upon Frederick Langdale was most dreadful: it was supposed he would never recover from a shock so great, and at the moment so unexpected; for, although the delicacy of her constitution was a perpetual source of uneasiness and solicitude, still the immediate symptoms had taken rather a favourable turn during the last few days of her life, and had re-invigorated the hopes which those who so dearly loved her entertained of her eventual recovery. Of this distressed young man I never indeed heard anything, till about three years after, when I saw it announced in the papers that he was just married to the only daughter of a rich west-country baronet, which event, if wanted to work another proverb here, would afford me a most admirable opportunity of doing so.

The death of poor Maria, and the dread which her father entertained of the third visitation of Martha, made a complete change in the affairs of the family. By the exertion of powerful interest, he obtained an appointment for his son to act as his deputy in the office which he held, and having achieved this desired object, resolved on leaving England for a time, and quitting a neighbourhood in which he must be perpetually exposed to the danger which he was now perfectly convinced was inseparable from his next interview with the weird woman.

George, of course, thus checked in his classical pursuits, left Oxford, and at the early age of nineteen commenced active official life, not certainly in the particular department which his mother had selected for his debût; and it was somewhat observable, that the Langdales, after the death of Maria, not only abstained from frequent intercourse with the Hardings during their stay in England, but that the mighty professions of the purse-proud citizen dwindled by degrees into an absolute forgetfulness of any promise, even conditional, to exert an interest for their son.

Seeing this, Mr. Harding felt that he should act prudentially, by endeavouring to place his son where in the course of time, he might perhaps attain to that situation, from whose honourable revenue he could live like a gentleman, and ‘settle comfortably.’

All the arrangements which the kind father had proposed, being made, the mourning couple proceeded on a lengthened tour of the continent; and it was evident that his spirits mended rapidly, when he felt conscious that his liability to encounter Martha had decreased. The sorrow of mourning was soothed and softened in the common course of nature, and the quiet domesticated couple sat themselves down at Lausanne, ‘the world forgetting, by the world forgot,’ except by their excellent and exemplary son, whose good qualities, it seems, had captivated a remarkable pretty girl, a neighbour of his, whose mother seemed to be equally charmed with the goodness of his income.

There appeared, strange to say, in this love affair, no difficulties to be surmounted, no obstacles to be overcome; and the consent of the Hardings (requested in a letter, which also begged them to be present at the ceremony, if they were willing it should take place,) was presently obtained by George; and at the close of the second year, which had passed since their departure, the parents and son were again assembled in that house, the sight of which recalled to their recollection their unhappy daughter, and her melancholy fate, and which was still associated most painfully in the mind of Mr. Harding with the hated Gipsy.

The charm, however, had, no doubt, been broken. In the two past years, Martha was probably either dead or gone from the neighbourhood. Gypsies were a wandering tribe—and why should she be an exception to a general rule?—and thus Mrs. Harding checked the rising apprehensions and renewed uneasiness of her husband; and so well did she succeed, that when the wedding-day came, and the bells rang, and the favours fluttered in the air, his countenance was lighted up with smiles, and he kissed the glowing cheek of his new daughter-in-law with warmth, and something like happiness.

The wedding took place at that season of the year when friends and families meet jovially and harmoniously, when all little bickerings are forgotten, and when, by a general feeling founded upon religion, and perpetuated by the memory of the blessings granted to the world by the Almighty, an universal amnesty is proclaimed; when the cheerful fire, and teeming board, announce that Christmas is come, and mirth and gratulation are the order of the day.

It unfortunately happened, however, that to the account of Miss Wilkinson’s marriage with George Harding, I am not permitted, in truth, to add, that they left town in a travelling carriage and four, to spend the honeymoon. Three or four days permitted absence from his office, alone, were devoted to the celebration of the nuptials, and it was agreed that the whole party, together with the younger branches of the Wilkinson’s, their cousins and second cousins, etc., should meet on twelfth-night to celebrate, in a juvenile party, the return of the bride and bridegroom to their home.

When the night came, it was delightful to see the happy faces of the smiling youngsters: it was a pleasure to behold them pleased—a participation in which, since the highest amongst us, and the most accomplished prince in Europe, annually evinces the gratification he feels in such sights, I am by no means disposed to disclaim. And merry was the jest, and gaily did the evening pass; and Mr. Harding, surrounded by his youthful guests, smiled, and for a season forgot his care; yet, as he glanced around the room, he could not suppress a sigh, when he recollected, that in that very room his darling Maria had entertained her little parties on the anniversary of the same day in former years.

Supper was announced early, and the gay throng bounded down stairs to the parlour, where an abundance of the luxuries of middle life crowded the board. In the centre appeared the great object of the feast—a huge twelfth-cake; and gilded kings and queens stood lingering over circles of scarlet sweet-meats, and hearts of sugar lay enshrined with warlike trophies of the same material.

Many and deep were the wounds the mighty heap received, and every guest watched with a deep anxiety the coming portion, relatively to the glittering splendour with which its frosted surface was adorned. Character cards, illustrated with pithy mottoes, and smart sayings, were distributed; and by one of those little frauds which, in such societies, are always tolerated, Mr. Harding was announced as king, and the new bride as queen; and there was such charming joking, and such harmless merriment abounding, that he looked to his wife with an expression of content, which she had often, but vainly, sought to find upon his countenance, since the death of his dear child.

Supper concluded, the clock struck twelve, and the elders looked as if it were time for the young ones to depart. One half-hour’s grace was begged for by the ‘King,’ and granted; and Mrs. George Harding on this night was to sing them a song about ‘poor old maidens’—an ancient quaintness, which, by custom and usage ever since she was a little child, she had annually ‘performed’ upon this anniversary; and, accordingly, the promise being claimed, silence was obtained, and she, with all that show of tucker-heaving diffidence which is so becoming in a pretty plump downy-cheeked girl, prepared to commence the venerable chaunt, when a noise resembling that produceable by the falling of an eight-and-forty pound shot, echoed through the house. It appeared to descend from the very top of the building, down each flight of stairs rapidly and violently. It passed the room in which they were sitting, and rolled its impetuous course downwards to the basement. As it seemed to leave the hall, the parlour door was forced open, as if by a rude gust of wind, and stood ajar.

All the children were in a moment on their feet, huddled close to their respective mothers in groups. Mrs. Harding rose and rang the bell to inquire the meaning of the uproar. Her daughter-in-law, pale as ashes, looked at George; but there was one of the party who moved not, who stirred not; it was the elder Harding, whose eyes first fixed steadfastly on the half-opened door, slowly followed the course of the wall of the apartment to the fire-place;—there they rested.