Chapter XIX: Epilogue

All through the rest of the summer weather, till the leaves change from green to red and yellow, and the sturdy oaks, slow to bud and last to succumb to Time the destroyer, have put on their russet livery, Sibyl lies in the chief bedchamber at Cheswold Grange sick nigh unto death. She has broken down utterly now that the struggle is over, now that all storms are ended and her frail bark safe in harbour. There is no violent illness, no raging fever of brain or body, only an extreme prostration, which for a long time baffles the skill of an intelligent physician and a careful family doctor.

She lies in the bright pretty bedroom, with its old paneled walls painted pale pink and cream colour, its needlework pictures, its quaint furniture, and many relics of a departed generation. There is a wide window opposite her bed that extends from ceiling to floor, and through this she listlessly contemplates the fair landscape, the smiling garden, the autumnal glory of the park. She suffers little pain, except such weariness as attends extreme prostration. She is at peace, and even declares herself happy.

‘I have lived long enough, Alex,’ she says one day when her strength has ebbed to the lowest point compatible with life, and the doctors have begun to despair of the efficacy of the pharmacopeia in this particular case. Alexis, deeply moved, sits by her bed, and holds her feeble hand in the dim autumn twilight. ‘I am content for my earthly race to finish here. You have forgiven me. That is enough.’

‘But have you no thought of me, Sibyl? Is it kind to talk like that?’

‘Dear Alex, you have been more than good to me, but I have not forgotten what you said that evening of our meeting in the old room at Mrs. Bonny’s. “Love is dead,” you told me.’

‘That was said under the influence of anger, Sibyl. I thought it was true, but sorrow soon fastened the old knot again. Sorrow and peril reunited us, Sibyl.’

‘And do you really love me? I know that you have forgiven me, but are you sure you love me still?’

‘Very sure,--as much and as truly as I ever loved you in old Kensington Gardens, under the elms, when I told the Hazleton children fairy tales, and my life and yours seemed as sweet a fairy tale as any of those old nursery stories, and as sure of a blissful ending.’

‘Oh, Alex, is that the truth?’

‘As I live, darling.’

‘Then I think I shall make an effort and get well,’ replies Sibyl, with a sigh of utter contentment. ‘I have been willing to glide gently out of life, believing that, however good you were to me, I could never hope to win more than your forgiveness; but now I shall try very hard to get well.’

She keeps her word. Whether her illness has reached its natural turning-point--the tide of life flowing back to its source,--or whether the ardent desire of the patient to live helps the work of recovery, the medical men can not say. But from this time there is a change. Slowly but surely health and youth come back to the pale wan face. The lovely eyes lose their glassy lustre, and grow bright with happy thoughts; faint gleams of carnation flit like the shadow of a sunset cloud over the marble pallor, then linger, and warm the pallid cheek into life and beauty.

‘Your love has won me back from the grave, Alex,’ whispers Sibyl, four or five weeks after that talk in the twilight, when the family doctor--that very Mr. Skalpel who attended Alexis after his accident--has declared that Mrs. Secretan’s recovery is absolutely marvellous.

When Sibyl is out of danger, Richard Plowden, who has been a faithful friend and comforter throughout this time of trouble, and has acted as Trot’s chief nurse and playmate into the bargain, departs somewhat abruptly upon a journey, the business and destination whereof he does not reveal to his dear friend Alexis.

‘It’s a little bit of a trip I’ve been meditating for a longish time,’ he says; ‘I’ll tell you all about it when I come back. I think I shall start to-morrow.’

‘You’ll write to us while you’re away, of course Dick?’

‘Well, yes, if I can manage it,’ replies Mr. Plowden, with rather a sheepish air; ‘but you mustn’t be alarmed if you don’t hear from me. I shall be moving about from place to place, you see, and I may be out of the way of post offices--off the beaten track, you know.’

‘Good gracious!’ exclaims Alexis, ‘are you going to the centre of Africa? Is my modest geographer coming out as a second Sir Samuel Baker?’

Alexis is too much occupied with his wife’s recovery just now to be very curious about his friend. He thinks Dick’s movements are somewhat eccentric, and that is all.

‘Perhaps he objects to my being here,’ says Sibyl, who has learned to think very humbly of herself of late.

‘Object to you, Sibyl! Why you must know that he is absolutely devoted to you, and has been almost as anxious as I was during your illness. He was prejudiced against you before he saw you, out of affection for me, poor fellow, thinking that I had been hardly used; but when once you came back to love and duty he was your slave.’

For about a month nothing is heard of Richard Plowden, and Alexis is beginning to feel somewhat uneasy about his friend’s fate, when he receives a letter, in Dick’s neat hand, posted at Cannes.

‘My dear friend,’ writes Richard, ‘when I left you and Mrs.
Secretan so abruptly I was departing upon so daring and so
wild an expedition, that I felt too much ashamed of my own
audacity to tell you my errand. I came to the south of France
to discover whether there was any hope of my ever winning, by
long years of patient devotion, the dearest and best, purest,
and most unselfish of women. You had told me to hope in the day
of my despondency, and I had hoped, although I scorned myself
for my foolishness in hoping. At last I told myself that it was
worse than foolish to go on hoping and dreaming. I must “put
it to the test, and win or lose,” as the old song says. So I
came here, found my sweetest Linda working industriously at her
art, pensive, but not altogether unhappy. She was delighted
to see me--not for my own sake, you may be sure, but because
I could tell her all about Trot. How I have blessed that dear
child! She was never tired of hearing me talk of him. I spent
all my evenings at her aunt’s house--such a dear old lady, the
aunt--talking about Trot, and a little about art and science,
and literature, and my own small views and ambitions. What happy
evenings they were!

‘Well, Alex, I am too proud of her--too ashamed of my own
unworthiness, to tell you much more. I can only say that God
has been very good to me--that I am more blessed than ever I
hoped to be--that if I had been born in the dear old fairy times
which I have told Trot so much about that I have grown almost
to believe in them myself--if I had been the special favourite
of some omnipotent good fairy, and had had a talking bird, and
Fortunatus’s purse, and an invisible cap, and a flying carpet,
and the princess with the golden locks for my bride, I could not
have been one whit happier than I am, or more astonished at my
own happiness.

‘I am in such a state of surprise that I am doubtful of my own
identity, and hardly feel sure that I have any right to sign
myself--your faithful friend, DICK PLOWDEN.’

* * * * *

Very happy are Alexis and his wife one sunny morning early in December, when Sibyl, leaning on her husband’s arm, and with Trot at her side, makes her first round of the Cheswold domain.

The hoar-frost whitens the lawn and meadows; yet there are late roses still blooming on the wall. Alexis insists upon his wife seeing everything--hothouses, stables, piggeries even--and Sibyl inspects and admires rapturously enough to content an exacting lord of the manor.

‘It is all lovely!’ she exclaims; ‘and what is best of all, the place suits you, Alex, and you suit the place to perfection. You seem to have been made for a country squire. How strange it is to know that Providence held _this_ in store for you in that bitter time at Mrs. Bonny’s! While I was waiting for a dead man’s shoes, you, who never cringed to any man, or courted any inheritance, have been blest by Fortune.’

THE END.

LONDON:
J. AND W. RIDER, PRINTERS,
BARTHOLOMEW CLOSE.

Transcriber’s Notes

Obvious typographical errors and punctuation errors have been silently corrected after careful comparison with other occurrences within the three volumes of this work and consultation of external sources. Some hyphens in words have been silently removed when a predominant preference was found in the original work. Except for those changes noted below, original spellings in the text and inconsistent or archaic usage have been retained.

Page 13: “need no recompence” replaced with “need no recompense”.

Page 72: “lived century” replaced with “lived a century”.

Page 113: “post-mortem examintaion” replaced with “post-mortem
examination”.

Page 134: “thestep-ladder” replaced with “the step-ladder”.

Page 138: “trembles alittle” replaced with “trembles a little”.

Page 157: “head and salt” replaced with “bread and salt”.

Page 163: “form a will” replaced with “form of a will”.

Page 178: “told me black” replaced with “told me a black”.

Page 247: “stil moving about” replaced with “still moving about”.

Page 254: “shrew dlittle” replaced with “shrewd little”.

Page 263: “before the murler” replaced with “before the murder”.

Page 263: “urned upon that” replaced with “turned upon that”.

Page 298: “Coach and Ho rses” replaced with “Coach and Horses”.

Page 301: “that gentlemen” replaced with “that gentleman”.

Page 320: “ns everything relating” replaced with “us everything
relating”.

Page 336: “old panelled walls” replaced with “old paneled walls”.

Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.

New original cover art included with this eBook is granted to the public domain.