Oliverspent a disturbed and sleepless night. He went to bed as a form, one of those things that people do mechanically, and because the cold of the shut-up rooms went to his heart. But he was astir very early, before it was daylight. He had not slept but only dozed, miserably repeating in dreams which that film of half sleep made into mere distortions of his waking thoughts, the circumstances of the past evening, the journey, the leave-taking with Grace, the horror at the end. It was a relief to be fully awake and only have reality to contend with, miserable as that was. Dawn cameslowly stealing, filtering in marred and broken light through the clouds and the rain which had continued through the night. His whole being was concentrated in expectation of a sound at his door. Every moment which passed without a summons encouraged him. He said to himself, ‘It must be all over, all over.’ A dozen times the tension of his great excitement seemed to produce a tingling in the silence which simulated the sound of the bell. But it was nothing, and the cold dawn gradually developed into full but colourless day. He was saying to himself for the hundredth time, ‘It must be all over,’ and feeling for the first time a little ease in his mind as if it might really be so, when suddenly the bell rang. Ah! that was no vibration of excitement in the air; it was the bell, very distinctly, loudly rung, and pealing into the stillness. It rang and echoed into Wentworth’s very heart, the brazen tinkle wounding him like a knife, sosudden, so sharp and keen. There was no one to open the door but himself, no one in the place to do anything for him. He did not move for a moment, finding that he needed time to recover from the sting of that blow, when it was repeated more sharply still, not without impatience. It occurred to him, then, that it might be something else than the messenger of fate—the postman, perhaps—some one who had nothing to do with this tragedy. These hopes, if hopes they could be called, were dissipated, however, when he opened the door. Outside stood a young man in shabby clothes with a face which reminded him of poor Alice at her best. ‘Mother sent me to tell you that Ally’s living and a little better. If you’ll come at eleven, she’ll have the parson there as visits in our street.’
‘If I come at eleven!’ Oliver said, with a gasp.
‘She said you would understand. I don’t know as I do. I think they’d a deal better let you alone. What good can you do her?’
Here seemed a help, an advocate—and Oliver looked at him with an eagerness that was almost supplication. ‘That is what I think,’ he said; ‘what good can I do her? It can only agitate her and hasten the end.’
‘Well,’ said the young man, ‘it’s none of my business. Mother and the rest will have it their own way. But as for hastening the end, that’s the best thing that could happen, for she do nothing but feel bad lingering there. At eleven o’clock: and to look sharp, for the parson will be waiting, mother says. ‘Good-morning!’ the youth said, turning quickly and going off down the stairs. He began to whistle after a few steps, then stopped, briefly, with an oh! of recollection, as if remembering that to whistle was indecorous in the present position of affairs.
Oliver went back to his cold and emptyrooms with a sense that life was over and his heart dead within him. It seemed to fall down to some impossible depths, down to a grave of silence and darkness. He shut the door mechanically, and went back and sat down where he had been sitting before, and stared with blank eyes in front of him into the vacant air. God had not interposed to deliver him. But why, he asked himself, should God have interposed? God had not been consulted or referred to in all this connection—in anything that had passed—and why, unasked, undesired, should He step in now like a heathen god or a tutelary deity to set all right? Oliver did not feel that he could make any appeal even to Him who was all righteousness and purity to help him out of the consequences of his own folly and sin. Oh, yes, it was true many men had done as much whom no judgment overtook, who lived fair before the world, and had no shame put upon them, and forgot that they had ever stepped asidefrom the paths of virtue. He had himself almost forgotten—almost—till contact with a purer life and the gift of it to be his companion, and all the happiness to which he had so little right, had brought compunction to his soul. He remembered now how he had told Grace that he had not been a good man: and how she had stopped him as the father in the parable stopped the Prodigal in his confession—she had stopped him, putting her pure hand upon his lips, throwing her whiteness over him like a mantle. But there had been judgment waiting behind. Justice had been standing watching his futile attempts at escape, with a face immovable, holding her scales. He had been weighed and found—— ah, no one but himself knew how entirely wanting! And now here was the price to pay. He had promised and he could not escape.
After a moment he tried to say to himself that these solemn thoughts wereinappropriate, that after all it was not much of a matter—to please a dying woman, whom he had been supposed to love once—to give her a little pleasure, poor soul! a little poor mimicry of pleasure on the day of her death; where was there a man so hard-hearted that would not do that? And then he had not any time to think; if he were to fulfil this miserable appointment, he must do what was necessary at once. He rose and got his bank-book out of its drawer and looked over it carefully, calculating how much he had. He had gone over the calculation so often, enough for the wedding trip which Grace and he had arranged to make, and in which, at least, he felt that her money must not be touched. He had enough for that and to pay a few little debts, those little foolish things that accumulate without thinking—enough to wind up everything honourably and start fair. He seemed to be tearing the heartout of his breast when he tore out the cheque which he must presently pay for a special licence—a licence! to marry, Heaven help him! to marry: he who was the bridegroom of Grace Goodheart, his name already publicly linked with hers. The horror of these names and words gave him each a new sting and stab; but what were words in comparison with the thing which he was about to do? He set out presently, pale, with his eyes red like those of a midnight reveller, his face haggard with misery, with want of rest and food and sleep, and got a cab and drove to the place where the licence had to be procured. That done, he turned his face again to the monotonous, endless streets, the dismal, shabby quarter where his business was. Finding he had a little time to spare, he dismissed the cab, and walked and lost himself in the fathomless maze, and arrived late at the house. The young woman, Matilda, was standing at the door looking out for him, the youthwho brought the message stood within the area rails, the mother, with the blind a little polled aside in the room above, was looking out too. There was a ray of pleasure and welcome when he appeared.
‘I knew as you’d come,’ cried Matilda, ‘and so did she: but mother was frightened a bit, not knowing you, Ol—Mr. Wentworth like her and me—’ Oliver grew sick as he stepped into the narrow passage. The half-sound of his own name, which she had not ventured to pronounce fully, seemed to open another vista before him. He would be Oliver to this woman, too—a member of the family. He went in, scarcely knowing where he went. In the parlour was the clergyman, who met him severely, saying that he had been kept waiting for nearly half-an-hour.
‘And my time is precious; not like that of an idler.’ He was a severe young man in the High Church uniform, thin and meagrewith overwork and earnestness. ‘I am glad,’ he said, ‘that you have made up your mind to do justice to your victim at the last.’
‘My victim!’ said Oliver.
But what was the use of any explanation? He began to recognise that in ordinary parlance she was his victim, and that it might be considered an act of justice; and also that to explain to a severe purist, a man burning with the highest canons and sentiments of morality, how such a thing could be without any victim in the matter, or any personal wrong, however hideous the sin, would be an offence the more. He stood by almost stupidly while the young priest, with his keen, clear-cut, Churchman-like face, put on his surplice and prepared himself for the ceremony; then, with a sinking of heart beyond description, followed him up the narrow wooden stairs, which creaked at every step. He said to himself that this was the fiend endowed with every virtue whohad put it in the woman’s head to drag him to his undoing; but so miserable was he that he felt no anger, no resentment against the meddling priest, as men are so apt to do. He recognised that it was no doubt his nature, that he thought it his duty; that to this man he himself was a vile seducer, and that the poor victim upstairs was the confiding, loving girl, whose fame had been ruined and her heart broken! These thoughts were so strangely out of keeping with the facts, and he regarded them with such a dazed impartiality, that when he entered the room in which this dreadful ceremony was to take place, there was a smile upon his lips. But the smile was soon driven away by the sight which now met his eyes. In the soft suffusion of the daylight the dying woman was scarcely so ghastly as by the light of the candle on the night before, but the spectacle she presented was more dreadful than anything that Oliver had been able to conceive. Thedecorations of a bride dressed for her wedding, or, rather, a hideous travesty of those decorations, surrounded the worn and sunken face. Some dreadful artificial flowers—orange blossom, of all things in the world! no idea of the meaning of it being in their minds, but only a grotesque acquaintance with its general use at weddings—were placed in a bristling wreath about her head. The pink ribbon was withdrawn, and bows of ghostly white placed at her throat and hands; and over all there was thrown a veil costly worked with huge flowers, through which the gleaming eyes, the mouth distended with its ghastly smile, showed like a living death.
A cry of horror burst from Oliver in spite of himself; and even the rigid priest was moved.
‘Why did you do her up like that?’ he said, in a sharp tone to Matilda, who stood admiring her handiwork.
The poor creature herself had a look of delighted vanity in her terrible gleamingeyes. The mother had a mirror in her hands, in which she had been displaying her own appearance to the bride. The bride! Oliver turned away and hid his face in his hands.
‘I cannot—I cannot carry out this farce,’ he said.
The curate placed his hand upon Wentworth’s arm. ‘You must,’ he said, with his severe, unpitying voice. ‘Whose fault is it that this is a farce? Stand forward, sir, and give this poor wreck, this creature you have ruined, what compensation you can at the last.’
Oliver raised his eyes to his uncompromising judge with a wonder which paralysed all effort. ‘You are mistaken,’ he said: but to pause now was impossible; he went forward doggedly and placed himself by the bed, and listened with a dull horror, as under a spell, to those words—those words which he had thought of under so different a meaning—words of solemn joy and devotion, wordsthat could only be endured for the sake of the pledge they sanctified. He listened and he took his part like a man in a dream. He had provided no ring, and the ceremony was interrupted till an old, shabby little trinket, set with some discoloured turquoises, was hunted up from a drawer. But it was completed at last, and she was his wife—his wife! She put back the veil with a nervous movement, and inclined her head towards his. Was that necessary, too? Was there to be no end to these exactions? ‘Oliver!’ she cried.
He turned from her, sick to the heart. ‘Take those fooleries away—don’t you see how horrible it is?’ he said to Matilda, and hurried downstairs, flying from the look and the touch of the woman who—oh, Heaven!—was now his wife.
The little priest followed him. He was as severe as ever. ‘You have done something in the way of atonement,’ he said, ‘but if this is how you are to follow itup, I warn you that such an atonement will not be accepted. It must be from the heart.’
Oliver turned upon him. He seemed to be coming to life again after the dismal paralytic fit through which he had passed.
‘Did it ever happen to you,’ he said, ‘to make a mistake?’
The clergyman had begun to take off his surplice. He turned round in the act, and looked at Wentworth. But the question did not daunt him as it would have daunted many men, ‘Possibly,’ he replied, ‘but very seldom, as a man. In discharge of my office I make no mistakes.’
‘You have made one now,’ said the bridegroom. ‘Oh, I do not excuse myself. I know well enough how hideous, how paltry, how miserable it is:—but it was not for me to make atonement. I was no deceiver, no seducer—’
‘You are a man of education and intelligence,’ said the other in his keen, cleartones, ‘and that was an ignorant, foolish girl. Is that not enough—did you ever meet on equal terms? And now you are not on equal terms, for you are well and strong and she is dying—perhaps with only a few hours to live.’
Oliver drew back without a word. It was the argument that had moved him at first, which he had found irresistible. He at the height of happiness, and she dying: but he was not at the height of happiness now. A more miserable man could not be. How was he to explain this day’s work when all was over, when he was free? Was it possible that Grace would understand him, that she would still accept his hand which had been pledged under such different circumstances, which had been given away from her to another, and such another! He could not go back into the room where it had been done, or see the poor creature who was his bride with all that dismal paraphernalia about her. He went out andwalked and walked till his limbs trembled under him. Then he remembered that he had not eaten anything that day. By this time it was afternoon, darkening towards evening, still drizzling, wet and miserable. He got himself some food, a kind of hasty dinner, in the first tavern he came to. And then, strengthened a little and calmed, went back. Perhaps, dreadful hope, it might be all over by the time he had traversed the many streets and had reached again that miserable place of fate.
Itwas a dreadful hope to lie down with at night, and rise up with in the morning—that morning or night might bring him a message to say that all was over, and that he was free. But it was still more dreadful that this message never came. When he saw her next she had rallied, rallied amazingly, the doctor said; but he added that it was only a flicker in the socket—only a question of time—a day or two, perhaps an hour or two. Oliver had revulsions of pity, attended with a loathing which he could scarcely keep under. He had to suffer himself to be drawn towards her, to feel his neck encircled by her arms, to kiss her cheek, to listen to her as long as he couldbear it, while she told him how often she had thought of him; how she had never loved any man but he, how she had felt that she could not die in peace till she had seen him again. It required all his pity for her to strengthen him for these confessions, to enable him to meet that meretricious smile, those ghastly little tricks of fascination which he could remember to have laughed at even in other times. How horrible they were to him now no words could say. He went through the same miserable streets daily till he shuddered at his own errand and at the dreadful hope that was always in his heart in spite of himself, the hope that he might hear that all was over. His mind revolted from his fate with a self-indignation and rage against all that had brought it about, against the wrong done to the most miserable of human creatures by wishing her death, and at himself for the weakness which had brought him into this strait. To live with no desire so strong in himas that this poor girl should die, to make his way to the poor little house that sheltered her day by day, sick with hope that he might hear she was dead—oh! what was this but murder—murder never coming to any execution, but involved in every thought? But afterwards there came upon this unhappy man something more dreadful still, the moment in which a new thought sprang up in him—the thought that it was never to be over, that she was not going to die, that the flicker in the socket of which the doctor had spoken was the filling in of oil to the flame, the rising of new force and life. When this thought came to him, what with the horror of the possibility, and the horror of knowing that he grudged that possibility, and would take life from her if he could, Oliver’s cup seemed full, despair took possession of him. Everything grew dark in heaven and earth. She was going to live, not to die; and what, oh! what, most miserable of men, was he to do?
The first thing that enlightened him was a change in her phrases when she talked to him of her own devotion, of her longings after him.
‘I knew as it would give me a chance for my life if I could see you once again.’
It had been at first only to die in peace after she had seen him that she proposed. And when his eyes, quickened with this horrible light, began to observe closely, he perceived that she spoke more strongly, that her emaciation was not so great nor her breathing so difficult. She was going to live, not die; and what was to become of him? What was he to do?
All this time—and it went on, gliding day after day, and week after week, he scarcely could tell how—he was receiving letters and calls back, and anxious inquiries and appeals from those he had left behind. Grace wrote to him—first a letter of simple love and anxiety, hopinghis friend was better, anticipating news from him; then more serious, fearing that the illness was grave indeed, that he was absorbed in nursing, but begging for a word; then anxious, alarmed lest something should have happened to him; then with an outburst of feeling, entreating to know what it meant, imploring him only to tell her there was a reason, even if he could not say what that reason was. Then silence. But even this lasted but for a few days. She wrote again to say that she could not believe he had changed, that it was to her incredible; but should it be so, imploring to know from himself that so it was. The dignity and the tenderness, and the high trust and honour which would not permit any pettiness of offence, went to his very heart. He sent her a few miserable lines in reply, imploring her to wait. ‘Some of my sins have found me out,’ he said; ‘the sins I acknowledged to you. But oh! for the love of God, do not abandonme, for then I shall lose my last hope.’
He got from her in return these words, and no more, ‘I will never abandon you unless I have it from your own hand that I must.’ And then no other word.
But Trix plied him with a thousand. What did he mean flying like this from his betrothed and his family and all his prospects? What did he mean, what was his reason, what in the name of all that was foolish was he thinking of? Did he mean to break his word, to give up his engagement, to break all their hearts? What was it? What was it? What was it?
He left her letters at last unopened. He could make no answer to them. He could give no explanation. Every day he had hoped that perhaps—perhaps. And now that his horror had come over him he was less disposed to write than ever. If it should be as, God forgive him, he feared, what was there in storefor him? What should he do? The veins of his eyeballs seemed to fill with blood, and the air grew dark in his sight; a blank, sinking void opened before him; he could perceive only that he must be swallowed up in it, swept beyond sight and knowledge; but for the others who loved him, he did not know how to reveal to them the terrible cause.
During all this time of suspense he was very kind to the woman to whom he had linked himself like the living to the dead. He got her everything she wished for—delicate food, fine wine, all that could afford a little ease to her body or amusement to her mind. Such forms of kindness are appreciated in regions where life is more practical than sentimental. The mother and sister sang his praises. ‘Die! no, he don’t want you to die,’ they said. ‘What would he send you all these nice things for, and feed you up, and get you that water-bed that cost such a deal of money, if hewanted you to die? But you’re that exacting now you’re Mrs. Wentworth.’
‘IamMrs. Wentworth: that’s one thing none can take from me,’ she said.
He heard her as he came up the narrow stair, trying as no one else did to make as little noise as possible, and that wave of loathing which sickened his very soul came over him. How horrible it all was, incredible, impossible, that she should bear that name! that it should be bandied about in a place like this—his mother’s name, his wife’s. Ah! but she, and no other, was his wife. This was the evening when she said to him, ‘I feel I am really getting better, Oliver. I believe I’ll cheat the doctors yet: and it will all be your doing, dear. You’ll take me abroad, and my lungs will come right, and we shall be as happy as the day is long.’
He made no reply, but avoided the hand with which she tried to draw him to her, and asked a few questions of hermother, before he bade her good night. He met the doctor as he was going downstairs, and waited to hear his bulletin. The parish doctor had found his manners, which had only been put aside when there was no need for such vanities: but he was not used to fine words. He said,—
‘That wife of yours is a wonderful woman; it seems as if it might be possible to pull her through after all. She has such pluck and spirit, and that’s half the battle.’
‘You told me,’ said Wentworth, with a sternness which was almost threatening, ‘that there was no hope of recovery.’
‘You don’t seem best pleased with my good news,’ said the doctor, with a laugh. ‘As for hope of recovery, there wasn’t a scrap in her then state. And her life isn’t worth a pinch of snuff even now; but with a husband that can take her abroad to a warm climate and give herevery luxury, why, there is hope for any woman; and I can but say I think it possible that she may pull through. That should be good news for you—but perhaps unexpected,’ he said, with a keen glance.
Wentworth made no reply. He bowed his head slightly, and went out before the doctor, walking out into the darkness and distance with a straight, unobservant abstraction. He never looked to right or left; and went out of his way for nothing, as if he saw nothing in his way. The doctor looking after him observed this idly, as people observe things that don’t concern them. He thought that on the whole it was a very curious incident. He could not think of any motive that could have brought about such a marriage. He wondered a little what the man could be thinking of to do such a thing: a woman who had long lost any signs of prettiness, if she had ever possessed any; poor, uneducated, and of damagedcharacter. Why had he married her? and, having married her, was he disappointed that she did not die? He stood and watched Wentworth till he was out of sight, saying to himself that he should not be surprised if that man were found in the river or on Hampstead Heath some of these days. But it was no concern of his.
Oliver went home to his chambers, walking all the way. It was a very long way, and when he got there he was very tired, very tired and sick to death. He ate a mouthful of the dinner provided for him, and drank a glass or two of wine, dully, silently, keeping his thoughts, as it were, at bay, not allowing himself to indulge in them. Afterwards he sat down at his writing-table, and wrote a long, a very long letter, which he closed and sealed, getting up to get matches to light his taper, and searching in every corner he could think of for the sealing-wax;though why he should seal it he could not have explained. It was a mark of special solemnity, in keeping with the great crisis and the state of mind in which he was. Afterwards he sat down and thought long and very gravely. He went over the position in every possible point of view. There could not be a more hopeless one. Betrothed to a woman he loved and approved with every faculty of his being, yet married to one whom he did not pretend to love for whom, at the best, he had no feeling above pity—and at the worst—There began to penetrate into his brain, unused to such thoughts, a dull suspicion that he might have been all through the victim of a cheat; but it did not make much difference, and he felt no resentment, nothing but a profound sensation of hopelessness, past help or care. Whether it was deception all through, or whether it was the judgment of God upon him, who had sinned and had not suffered,and had been on the edge of winning, he so unworthy, the best that man can have in this world—it did not seem to matter much. In either case the result was the same—that here he stood with life made impossible to him, with a blank wall before him, and nothing to be done, no way of deliverance nor even of escape. He looked out in that curious blank way over the future, asking himself what it would be his duty to do. It would be his duty to take her away to a warm country, as her doctor had said—to give her all the care that she required, ‘every luxury’—these were the words—and so ensure her recovery. To do anything else would be inhuman. And as for Grace—ah, for Grace! To him she must henceforth be a sacred thing apart. He must not see her, speak to her, lean his heart upon her evermore. That was all ended—ended and over. He had written a long letter to his brother-in-law, telling him all the circumstances. He was nota man who could go on with deceits and false positions, trying miserably to stand between one and another. He might have done that, perhaps, for a time, might have beguiled Grace with letters, and explained by any false excuse his detention in London, his absence from her—but to what good? One day or other it would all have to be disclosed, now that it was evident that this woman was not going to die; however long he might fight it off, the necessity would come at last. And it was better that she should know now, than only at the moment when he should be leaving England with his wife. His wife! Oh, terrible word! Oh, awful, impossible fate!
This sudden realisation of what was before him made his mind start like a restive horse, and he found himself once more before that blank wall. It would be his duty to do it, and he could not do it. He did not trifle with himself nor elude thisquestion any more than he would deceive the woman he loved. He looked out upon what was before him, and he said to himself that he could not do it—he could not pretend to do it. Other men might have the courage to struggle, but not he. There was only the coward’s remedy remaining to him, only the base man’s way—to turn and flee. He had written it all in his letter to Ford, although it seemed to him that when he wrote that letter he had not so clearly perceived that there was only one thing to do. He had bidden his brother-in-law to secure a living somehow for this wretched creature who bore his name, to use the little he would leave for her, and to eke it out—or finally, with the boldness of a man whom earthly motives had ceased to sway, to put this last inconceivable legacy into the hands of Grace.
‘I know she will do it,’ he had said.
He knew she would do it, God bless her! She would understand why of all terrible things he dared to ask that of her; and shewould do it. That was all there could be to arrange before—
Oliver was not of that mind that is the mode of the present moment. He was no doubter. He believed in the canon ‘gainst self-slaughter, as well as in righteousness and judgment to come; but there is something in the unutterable sensations with which a man finds himself thus placed before evils which are too many for him, driven to the last extremity, and unable to move one way or other, which works a strange change upon the mind on this as on other matters of faith. When we are doing any act in our own person, it seems so much less strange to us, so much more natural, than when we contemplate it from the point of view of another man. He did not think either of the sin or of the cowardice. He thought only of the last resort, the last way of escape from that which was intolerable, which was more than man could bear. To describe the way by which a man comes to this point, to entertain the idea of endinghis own life, is impossible. Those who are brought so far seldom survive to tell how it has been. It seemed to Oliver something like the arising and going to the Father of the prodigal. God, it seemed to him, would understand it all; the confusion in his soul, the intolerableness, the impossibility. If anyone else misunderstood, God would understand; and as for the punishment that might follow, he thought that he could take that like a man. No punishment could be equal to this. He would say that he did not mean to avoid punishment, that he was ready for anything, only not this; not the ghastly life which was insupportable, not the falsehood, not the treachery. Suffering, honest suffering—yes!—torments if God thought it worth the trouble—anything except this, which was more than he could bear. His mind was all wrong, confused, stupefied with all that had happened to him, and with the turning upside down of all his purposes, and the bitter ending to what had been a good impulse, surely a good impulse,an impulse of pity without consideration of himself; also with the wretched state in which he had been living, the want of food, the want of sleep, the sense of treachery to all he loved, the union to all he loathed; it was all intolerable, insupportable, turning his brain.
He had a pair of pistols in his room—pretty toys, decorated with silver, wrought in delicate designs—which someone had given to him. He took them down and opened the box and examined them curiously to see how they worked and that all was in order. He looked at the little bullet which could do so much, and weighed it in his hand with a dazed smile, and a kind of strange amusement. So little—and yet in it lay that for which not all the wealth of the world could find an antidote. He charged both weapons with a smile at himself for that too, thinking how very unlikely it was that the two would be wanted, and feeling almost something of the pleasure with which a boy prepares for his first shot, with a half horror, half delight.And then he thought how it would be best to do it. He did not want to disfigure himself unnecessarily, to go through all eternity with a bound-up jaw, like—who was it? Robespierre. This brought a sort of smile upon his face; he knew that it was folly to think of Robespierre; for all eternity—with his face bound up! and yet it amused him to think of the awful, grotesque figure, and to determine that he should not be like that. The temple or behind the ear; that was the better way; and then there would be no disfigurement. The hair would hide it, and Grace would see him and not be horrified—not horrified—only perhaps broken-hearted. But that had to be, any way.
Would he hear the report as sound travels before his senses were all stilled? He heard something, a jar and tinkle, which made him start at the very moment he felt that cold mouth of death. The touch of the pistol and then a jerk of his arm and a clanging world of sound, and then—no more. It disturbed his arm and the steadiness of his touch; and the report followed harmlessly, the bullet going somewhere, he knew not where, leaving him sitting there with the jar of the concussion in the finger which had pulled that trigger. The sound seemed to wake him up like a clap of thunder. He sprang to his feet, flinging the little weapon away with a burning sense of despising himself, of scorn for his intention, scorn for his failure. Was he a coward too, doubly a coward, ready to run away, yet weak enough to be stopped in the act? A sudden heat of shame came over him; he burst into a laugh of scorn, self-ridicule, derision—God in heaven! had he been frightened at the last moment? by what, by his nerves, by a fancied sound, like a child?
What? what? a fancied sound? No; but the commonest, most vulgar noisein the world: the bell at his door, pealing, tingling, jarring, with a repeated and violent summons into the silence of the night.
Theyhad all been disturbed by it beyond expression; by his absence, by his silence, his sudden, strange departure which, natural enough at the minute, appeared now, in the light of subsequent events, so extraordinary, which now looked like a flight, but—from what? From happiness, from well-being, from everything that the heart of man could desire. Mr. Ford was a person of a very sturdy mind, not given to fancies like his wife, but after a fortnight had passed he was almost more anxious than she was. He questioned her closely as to Oliver’s past life. Had she ever heard of any entanglement?
‘There must be some one who has aclaim upon him, who would expose him to Grace, if not worse,’ he said; at which Trix was naturally indignant.
‘You men have such bad imaginations,’ she cried. ‘How should he have any entanglements? He has been fond of Grace since—since—’
‘Since he saw her here six months ago, Trix.’
Trix grew very red, and the tears came into her eyes. ‘You mean, Tom, that Oliver, that—that my brother got fond of Grace only when—’
‘I don’t mean anything of the sort,’ said Tom Ford, ‘it is women who have bad imaginations, though, perhaps, in a different way. I mean that he had forgotten all about her. But when he saw her again, and saw how nice she was—for she is a very nice woman, poor thing! far too nice to be made a wreck of for the sake of some baggage—’
‘Tom! you have taken leave of your senses, I think.’
‘My dear, you know well enough, just as well as I do, that Oliver hasn’t been immaculate. But why the deuce didn’t he have the courage to tell the truth? Why didn’t he speak to you, or me, if it comes to that? If he had made a clean breast of it—’
‘We don’t know yet that there is anything to make a clean breast of,’ said Trix, beginning to cry. And she put on her bonnet in a disturbed way and went over to Grace for comfort, who might be supposed to want comfort more than she did. Grace was very pale, but composed, and met her friend with a smile.
‘I don’t know anything,’ she said, ‘but he asks me to wait, and I mean to wait. Why should we condemn him? There must be a reason, and when he can he will tell us. It is not out of mere wantonness he is staying away.’
They had all given up tacitly thepretence about the sick friend. That had been dismissed at a quite early date; the reality that was in it being beyond any guesses they could make.
‘Oh, Grace, you are the best of us all! You are the one that is the worst treated, and you are the most kind.’
‘Trix, we don’t know that there is any ill-treatment at all,’ said Grace. She was very subdued, very pale. It almost overcame her composure altogether when a servant came in with a large packet, one of the many wedding presents that were arriving daily. ‘I have not the heart to open them,’ she said, leaning her head upon Trix’s shoulder, who flew to her with instant comprehension: ‘and yet I want to open them that nobody may suppose—Look,’ she said, pointing to a table covered with glittering spoils. ‘Look at all that, and the congratulations that come with them. And to think that I don’t know, I don’t know even—’
‘Oh, Grace, all will be well, all will be well! long before that.’
Grace did not say anything, but she shook her head. ‘He does not even say that all will be well; he says only—wait. But I will wait,’ she said, composing herself. Trix did not get much comfort out of this visit. She went home indignant, angry beyond telling with her brother, though she could not bear that her husband should give utterance and emphasis to her fears. And for some days after the talk of those two people was of nothing but Oliver and what his meaning could be. Mrs. Ford sent off a long and eloquent letter to him the night after these discussions, but received no answer to that any more than to her former letters. And Ford, too, wrote one, which was very much more serious. Ford, who never wrote a letter except on business, leaving everything else to his wife. Ford put before his brother-in-law indeed the business view of the matter. He hadcome under certain engagements, did he intend or not to fulfil them? He told Oliver that his conduct was mere madness, that it was against all his interests, that he was destroying his own credit and cutting his own throat. What did he mean by it? but adding that whatever he meant, which was his own concern, he ought not to lose a moment in coming back, and doing what he could to repair the fearful mistake he was making. The letter was curt and business-like, but very much in earnest. Oliver had come by that time to a condition of mind in which arguments of that or any other kind were of no avail. He never read this letter; did he not know everything that could be said to him? had he not said it all and twenty times more to himself?
After this appeal, however, and that much more eloquent, certainly more lengthy, one of Trix’s, silence fell again, and the days so anxiously watched at every post for letters passed on andbrought nothing. The excitement, the tension, the fear of suspense grew hourly. As yet they had managed to keep it to themselves. Nobody knew, unless it might be the servants, who know everything. Grace was the best in this effort; she replied with so composed a look, so steady a smile to the many curious questions addressed to her as to Mr. Wentworth’s long absence, that curiosity was baffled. Trix did not know how she could do it. She herself grew red, the tears came to her eyes when she was questioned, in spite of herself. It was always on the cards that she might break down altogether, and take some sympathetic visitor into her confidence. She was like her brother, not of so steady a soul as Grace, and this was to her insupportable, as his more terrible anguish was to him.
It was from Tom Ford, however, the man without nerves, the cool-headed, mercantile person whom Trix had so oftenstormed at as unsensitive and hard to move, that the touch of impatience came. He said one day at breakfast suddenly, without warning, ‘I think, Trix, if there is no word to-day, I shall run up to town and see with my own eyes what Oliver is up to. We cannot let this go on.’
‘Run up to town to-day? Tom, you have heard something; you know more than we do—’
‘Nothing of the sort: but I feel a responsibility. He is your brother, and that poor girl met him in our house. I must see what it means. I can’t let it run on like this. She has no brother to stand up for her. I want to know what the fellow means.’
‘Tom, you must not go and bully Oliver. He would never stand that, even when he was a boy.’
‘I have no intention of bullying him. I want to know what he means,’ Mr. Ford repeated doggedly. And then Trix, what with fear lest his interference should beresented, what with eagerness to solve the mystery, insisted on going too; to which her husband did not object, having foreseen it. She went out immediately and told Grace. The sense of being about to do something is a great matter to a woman who in most emergencies of her life is compelled to wait while others do what is to be done. Action restores trust to her, and a sense that all must come right.
‘Tom and I are going. Tom has business of his own, and he takes this opportunity: and he thinks I may as well go too, and then this mystery will be cleared up. I shall telegraph to you at once, the moment I have seen him, Grace.’
Grace was greatly startled by this sudden resolution, though she said very little. But when they started by the afternoon train, she was there at the station to meet them.
‘I think I will go, too,’ she said. ‘Youknow I have a great deal of—shopping to do.’ And not a word was said by which a stranger could have divined that this was an expedition, not of shopping, but of outraged love and despair. They arrived late with a sort of understanding that nothing could be done that night. But when the ladies had been settled in their hotel, Mr. Ford went out to take, as he said, a walk. He went through the gloomy streets; through the Strand, with all its noise and crowd, to the Temple, where Oliver’s chambers were. He had not told his wife even where he was going. He thought there might be something to learn which it would be better these women should not hear; and perhaps he thought, too, that it would be a triumph, without their aid, to lead the wanderer back. He went all that long way on foot, thinking within himself that the later he was the more likely he was to find Oliver, and turning over in his mind what he should say. He wouldrepresent to him the folly of his behaviour, the madness of throwing thus his best hopes away. Ford was very anxious, more anxious than he would have confessed to anyone. He did not, indeed, think of such a possibility as that which had really happened; but his mind was prepared for some complication, some entanglement that had to be got rid of; perhaps even some tie made in earlier years which Oliver believed himself to have got rid of, and which had come to life again, as such things will. Who could tell? He might have married and have thought his wife was dead, and have been roused out of his happiness by the terrible news that this was not true. Such a thing is not uncommon in fiction, for instance; and Mr. Ford, like many busy men, was a great novel reader. He was ready even, terrible though it would be, to hear that this was the cause of his brother-in-law’s disappearance. But, perhaps, he hoped, it might be something not so bad as that.
He was a long time gone, so long, that Trix got alarmed, and in her uneasiness burst into Grace’s room, who was going to rest, to wait with what patience she might for the morning, which, she said to herself, must end all suspense. Her self-restraint was sadly broken by the irruption into her room of Trix in all her fever of alarm.
‘Where do you think he can have gone? Oh, what do you think can have happened to him?—such dreadful things happen in London,’ Mrs. Ford cried, rising gradually into higher and higher excitement. She thought of garroters; of roughs who might have followed him along the Embankment (though she scarcely knew where that was), and already her imagination figured him lying on the pavement senseless, perhaps unconscious, unable to tell anyone where to carry him.
‘The only address that would be found upon him would be our address at home, and if they telegraphed there, and then telegraphed here, how much time must be lost? And it is too late even to telegraph,’ she cried, as these miserable anticipations gained upon her. But what could two women do in a London hotel? They could not go out with a lantern and search for his body about the streets, and they did not even know where or in what direction he had gone. ‘He has gone to find your brother,’ Grace suggested once; but Trix would not hear of this. ‘Never,’ she said, ‘without letting me know.’
At last, when it was long past midnight, a hansom drove up to the hotel, and Mr. Ford appeared, exceedingly pale and with an air of great agitation and distress. He told them that Oliver had been very ill: that he would have to leave England, to get into a milder climate. He would not be more explicit; a milder climate and to get out of England, that was all he would say. He had a letter in his hand which he had been reading as best he could by the lamplight as he drove back, and by thedying candles in Wentworth’s room, into which he had forced his way. He told his wife as soon as they were alone that he had found on Oliver’s desk this long letter addressed to himself, and gave her an outline of the story, which brought out such a shriek from Trix, as sounded through the partition and startled Grace once more in the solitude of her room, to which she had returned. She appeared between the husband and wife a minute after in her white dressing gown, white as the gown she wore.
‘There is something you have not told me. Tell me what it is,’ she said. It had been a momentary relief to her to know that Oliver was ill. If that was so, everything might be explained; but—And now she heard that there was something more.
‘Oh, Grace, go to bed; oh, go to bed. We don’t know ourselves yet. To-morrow morning, the very first thing, after you have had a night’s rest—’
‘I cannot rest to-night,’ she said, with parched lips, ‘until I know. There is nothing that cannot be borne,’ she added, a moment afterwards, ‘except not to know.’
They made a curious contrast. Trix all flushed with excitement and distress, her voice choked with tears, her eyes overflowing; and she who was even more concerned, she who believed herself to be Oliver Wentworth’s bride, in that breathless silence of suspense, afraid to make a sound, to waste a word, lest perhaps she should miss some recollection, some indication of what to her was life or death.
‘I have something here to read, if you think you can bear it. It is not good news.’
‘Oh, Tom, for the love of Heaven, don’t! Grace, go to your room, dear! Oh, go to bed, and I’ll come—I’ll come and tell you as soon as we know.’
‘It is Oliver’s hand,’ said Grace. ‘I can bear whatever he has written. But let mehear it at once, for this suspense is more than I can bear.’
‘Grace—Grace!—’
But Mr. Ford interrupted his wife. He saw that Grace was not to be put off any longer, and indeed was capable of nothing but knowing the truth. He brought the easiest chair for her, with that pathetic instinct which makes us so careful of the bodies of those whose hearts we are about to crush. She made no opposition. She would have done anything—anything, so long as it brought her nearer the end. Ford had the discrimination to see this, and that the only thing she could not bear was delay. He began at once to read the letter, of which he had already told the chief facts to his wife. The two candles flickered, placed together on the mantelpiece, and drearily doubled in the mirror behind, while the bare hotel room, with its big bed and wardrobes, formed an indistinct, cold background. Mr. Ford stood by the mantelpiece, and read slowly, in a voice of whichhe had not always command. Trix behind him, sobbing, crying, exclaiming, unable to restrain herself, moved up and down, sometimes stopping to look over his shoulder, sometimes throwing for a moment herself into a seat. In the centre, the white figure of Grace, all white, motionless, sat rigid, scarcely breathing. Grace was prepared for everything. Except a start and shiver when she heard of the marriage, she scarcely made a sign from beginning to end. The others were distracted, even in their own horror and pity, by an anxious desire to know how she would take it. But Grace was disturbed by no such secondary feelings. At that point her hands, which had been lying in her lap, closed in a convulsive clasp, but save this she made no sign, listening to every word till the end. Even after the end, it was some time before she moved or spoke. Then she pointed to it, and said faintly, ‘It is a letter—is he—has he gone away?’
‘You have heard all this. I must tellyou more—I must tell you all I know,’ said Ford. He was much agitated, his lips quivering, his voice now and then failing altogether. ‘I believe,’ he said, struggling to get out the words, ‘that the noise I made at his door saved his life, that he had thought for a moment of putting an end to everything; there was a pistol on the floor.’
She rose to her feet with a quick, sudden cry, ‘That! That!’ and clutched for support at the mantelpiece, against which Mr. Ford was leaning, and where there seemed to rise in the mirror a pale, white ghost, facing the darker figure.
‘Oliver,’ she cried, ‘Oliver! tell me everything. That is his last word, and he is dead!’
‘No, no, no—oh, no!’ came in Trix’s voice from behind.
Ford took her hands from their clutch on the marble, and put her back into her chair. All he was afraid of was that she might faint, or die, perhaps, in their hands.
‘He is not dead, so far as I know. Hehas gone away. How could he meet you? Oh, Grace, what can we say to you, Trix and I? It is our fault! My poor girl, cry or something. Don’t look like that. You must put him out of your thoughts.’
She shook herself free of him with impatience. ‘I am asking you about Oliver,’ she said. ‘Oliver! Where is he? Have you left him, with no one near him, no one to comfort him? Trix, are you going to him, or shall I?’
The husband and wife looked at each other in dismay. Mrs. Ford stilled in a moment her sobs and exclamations, not knowing what to reply.
‘You are nearest him in blood, but I am nearest in—’ Grace paused for a moment. ‘He will want to know that I—understand,’ she said slowly, as if speaking to herself.
‘He has no right to know anything about you,’ Ford said roughly, in the agitation of his mind. ‘You must think no more of him, Grace. He has no claim upon you. This miserable marriage—’
‘Marriage,’ she said, again rising, resisting his attempt to support her. ‘You think a woman has no idea but marriage. What is that to me? I have been fearing I knew not what—and now my mind is relieved, I understand. It is not that I forgive him,’ she added, after a moment, with an indescribable look of tender pride and dignity, ‘I approve. You may blame him if you will—I approve. And if he should die, I accept his legacy. I thank God he had that trust in me, and that he did what was right. Though it should kill us both, what does that matter? He has done only what was right, and I approve!’
Thiswas how she took it, as the young priest had taken it, as an atonement, as a duty. Instead of the despair they had expected, she was excited and inspired as people are who die for a great cause. She did not and would not take into account all that made Oliver’s strange sacrifice a thing without justice, without dignity—a mere hideous postscript to a mere vulgar sin, repented of indeed, but not made less vulgar and hideous even by repentance. Fortunately for Grace, nothing of this entered her mind. He had made atonement, he had righted a wrong at the cost of his own happiness. To be sure, it was at the cost of hers also, but in her exaltation she neverthought of that. What she did mourn over was that he should not have told her; that he had suffered bitterly and cruelly, and had been driven to the uttermost despair rather than tell her; that he should have thought her incapable of the same sacrifice as he was making, less noble than himself. This hurt her in passing, but she had not time to think more of it. In the meantime he must be comforted, reassured, cared for. He must know that she understood him, that she—yes, she who was the victim, who had to bear the penalty—approved. She was inspired with strength and courage to do this. She was no victim—she was a martyr, sharing his martyrdom for the sake of what was right.
I need scarcely say that the Fords no more understood her than if she had been speaking a foreign language. They gazed at her with horror and bewilderment. They asked each other, had she not loved him after all? That a woman who loved him could have so accepted this revelation was tothem incredible. Mr. Ford was almost angry with her in the disappointment with which he saw this extraordinary and un-looked-for effect. He said stiffly, that he was very glad that she could take it so philosophically—more than poor Oliver had done—but that as for comforting or helping him that was impossible. For Oliver had disappeared, and, so far as was known, might be heard of no more. How he had got out of his chambers, his anxious brother-in-law did not know; he supposed it must have been at the moment when, receiving no answer to his summons, he had gone to seek for help to break open the door. On his return the door had been found open, the rooms empty, the letter on the table, the pistol lying on the floor; but of Oliver no sign; and that was all that anyone knew.
It was evident, at least, that nothing could be done till next day. And Grace withdrew from the troubled pair, who did not understand her any more than they knew howto deal with the horrible crisis altogether. She went slowly, steadily to her own room, not trembling and sick at heart as when she had come. The suspense was over—now she knew everything. Her heart was in so strange an exaltation, that for the moment she seemed to feel no pain. It seemed to her as if Oliver and she were martyrs about to come out upon some scaffold hand in hand, and for the righting of wrong and the redeeming of the lost to die. Such a crisis has an intoxication peculiar to itself. She did not sleep all night, but lay down and thought over everything. The worst was that he had not told her. If he had but trusted in her, it was she who should have stood by him all along, and taken his part and justified him before the world.
She met Mrs. Ford in the morning as she left her room, putting a stop to all those attempts to make an invalid of her, and treat her as if she were ill, which is the common expedient of the lookers-on in cases of grief or mentalsuffering. Her face was pale but not without colour, very clear, like a sky after rain; the eyes limpid and large, as if they had increased in size somehow during the night.
‘When you have had your breakfast,’ she said, with a smile,—‘I have ordered it for you—then there are several things I wish you to do—for me—’
‘Grace!’ Mrs. Ford was astonished by her look, and felt herself taken by surprise. ‘You—you don’t mean—shopping?’ she asked, almost mysteriously, confounded by her friend’s calm.
Grace gave her a reproachful look. ‘I have ordered a carriage, too,’ she said, taking no notice of the suggestion. ‘Tell me when you are ready.’
Mrs. Ford, looking with guilty countenance at her watch, went quickly to the table at which her husband was seated, eating a hurried, but not at all an insufficient, breakfast.
‘I don’t know what she means,’ Mr.Ford said. ‘She has ordered a feast. There’s half a dozen things. No, no more; don’t bring any more. Trix, I’m going off to the Temple, of course, at once, and if I can find out anything or get any trace of where he has gone, I’ll telegraph. Mind what I told you last night. You must try and get her sent home.’
‘She is going to do her—shopping,’ said Trix. To tell the truth, she did not herself believe this, but it was the first thing that occurred to her to say.
‘HerSHOPPING!’ Mr. Ford panted forth, with a great burst of agitated laughter. ‘Great Heavens, you don’t say so! Her shopping! What a fool I have been to put myself out about her. You women will do your shopping on the Day of Judgment.’
Trix thought it was perhaps better to let him go away with this idea; it would leave him, she felt, more free. And when Grace joined her with her bonnet on,and disclosed her design, Mrs. Ford was startled for the moment, but yielded without much difficulty. They drove away in the soft morning, when even the London streets look like spring, miles away through the interminable streets, until at last they came to that one among so many others where the pavement was worn by Oliver’s weary feet, where he had gone with his heart bleeding, so that it was strange he had left no trace. It seemed to both the women as if he had left traces of these painful steps, as if the sky darkened when they got there, and the air began to moan with coming storm. It did so, it was true, but not because of Oliver. A sudden April shower (though it was in May) fell in a quick discharge of glittering drops as they drove up to the house. Not to the door—for already a cab was standing which blocked the way: but the cab was not all. A little crowd, excited and tumultuous, had gathered round the steps, some pushingin to the very threshold of the open door. It did not seem wonderful to the ladies that the crowd should be here. It seemed of a piece with all the rest. A thing so extraordinary and out of nature had happened, it was nothing strange if the common people about raised a wonder over it, as everyone who knew must do. They forgot that this affair was interesting only to themselves, and that nobody here was aware of their existence. They made their way with heavy hearts to the edge of the crowd.
‘Is there anything wrong? What is the matter?’ Trix asked of one of the throng.
‘They say as she’s dying, ma’am,’ said the woman to whom she spoke.
‘Ah, poor thing!’ cried another, anxious to give information. The crowd turned its attention at once to the two ladies.
‘Just a-going to take her first drive out,’ said one. ‘All in the grand fur cloak he gave her.’
‘A man as grudged her nothing.’
‘It’s like on the stage,’ said another. ‘Ladies, a rich gentleman, and grudged her nothing. And she’s never got time to enjoy it. Oh, she’s never got time to enjoy it!’
These voices ran altogether, confusing each other. They conveyed little meaning to the minds of the two ladies, who heard imperfectly, and did not understand.
Grace was the one who pushed through the crowd. ‘Let us pass, please. We have come to see someone,’ she said, clutching Trix’s dress with her hand.
‘Oh, is that the doctor? Stand back and let the doctor pass,’ said a voice from within the door of the little parlour. The speaker came out as she spoke. She was the mother, with a pale and frightened face surmounted by a bonnet gay with ribbons and flowers. ‘Oh, ladies, I cannot speak to you now! Oh, if it’s anything about the dressmaking, Matilda willcome to you to-morrow. We’re in great trouble now. Oh, doctor, doctor, here you are at last!’
Then a man brushed past, hurrying in. Grace followed, not knowing what she did. She never forgot the scene she saw. In an arm-chair, the only one in the room, sat propped up a young woman wrapped in a fur cloak, with a white bonnet covered with flowers. Her eyes were half open; her jaws had dropped. Another young woman, apparently her sister, stood stroking her softly, calling to her: ‘Oh, wake up, Ally!—oh, wake up!—there’s the carriage at the door, and here—here’s the doctor come to see you.’ Through the sound of this frightened, half-weeping voice came the sharp, clear tones of the doctor: ‘How long has she been like this? Lay her down—lay her down anywhere. Yes, on the floor, if there’s nowhere else. Silence, silence, woman! Can’t you see—’
There was an interval of quiet, andthen the voice of the mother, ‘I’ll get a mattress in a moment. She can’t lie there on the floor, her that’s been taken such care of. Doctor! is it a faint? is it a faint? is it—’
Another moment of awful suspense, the silence tingling, creeping; the voices of the little crowd sounding like echoes far off. Then the doctor rose from where he had been kneeling on the floor.
‘Why did you let her do this?’ he said, sternly, ‘I warned you she must not do it.’
‘Oh, doctor, her heart was set upon it—and such a beautiful morning, and her new, beautiful fur cloak as she couldn’t catch cold in. Doctor, why don’t you do something?Doctor!’ cried the mother, seizing him by the arm.
He shook her off. He was rough in his impatience. ‘Can’t you see,’ he said, ‘that there is nothing to be done? Take off that horrible finery; the poor girl is dead.’
‘The poor girl is dead.’ Grace thought it was her own voice that repeated those awful words. They went to her heart with a shock, making her giddy and faint. Her voice sounded through the confused cries of the woman about that prostrate figure. ‘Dead!’ The doctor turned to her, as if it was she to whom explanations were due.
‘I warned them,’ he said, ‘that her life hung on a thread. I told them she must make no exertion. I knew very well how it would be. The wonder is that she has lasted so long,’ he added, after that momentary excitement sinking into professional calm. ‘No, no, there’s nothing to be done. Can’t you see that for yourself?’
‘And the cab at the door to take her for her airing!’ cried the mother, in shrill tones of distraction. ‘Oh, doctor, give her something! The brandy, where is the brandy, Matilda? I’ve seen her as far gone—’
‘You have never seen her like this before. She is dead,’ said the doctor, in the unceremonious tones in which he addressed such patients. ‘You had better get a sofa or something to lay her on, poor thing! nothing can hurt her now; and send and let her husband know.’ He followed Grace out into the passage, where she had withdrawn, unable to bear that awful sight.
‘It is a strange story. I don’t understand it. Sounds like a novel,’ he said. ‘I don’t think he’ll be very sorry. He’ll bear it better than most—though he only married her about three weeks ago. It was the strangest thing I ever heard of. A gentleman—no doubt of that. What he could ever have to say to a girl like her, God knows. But he suddenly appeared on the scene when she was at the last gasp, and married her. I had given her up; but afterwards she made a surprising rally. Even I was taken in. I thought that she might still pull through.But you see I was mistaken,’ he added cheerfully.
Grace stood and leaned against the wall. Everything swam in her eyes, and all the sounds, the voices of the women lamenting within, the cries and questions without, the sharp, clear sentences of the doctor, all mingled in a strange confusion like sounds in a dream. In the midst of all this tumult came the voice of Trix calling to her to come out into the open air, and a touch on her arm, which she felt to be that of the doctor, leading her away. She made a great effort and recovered herself. ‘We want to know,’ she said, faintly, grasping at Trix’s hand. ‘We came to see—we belong to Mr. Wentworth,’ and then with a rush of gathering energy her sight came back to her, and she saw the face of the man who stood, curious yet indifferent, between her and the chamber of death.
‘Ah, the husband!’ he said.
‘We came—to see her: is it truly,truly—? He has been ill, and we have to act for him. We have—his authority. Trix, speak for me! Is it—? Is that—?’ There came a strange, convulsive movement in her throat, like sobbing, beyond her control. She could not articulate any more.
‘I am his sister,’ said Mrs. Ford; ‘is it true?—is the woman—dead? Oh! it’s dreadful to be glad, I know. If you are the doctor, tell us, for Heaven’s sake! Is she dead—is it she—the woman—’
‘The poor girl,’ said Grace, softly; ‘the poor, poor girl!’
This she said over and over again to herself as they drove away. She made no reply to the questions, the remarks, the thanksgivings of her companions. They drove straight to the Temple in direct contradiction of Mr. Ford’s orders, and went up into the chambers where Oliver had suffered so much, from which he had escaped in the half delirium of his despair. Mr. Ford was there, still inquiring vaguely,endeavouring to find some clue. He met the ladies, as was natural, with suppressed rage, asking what they wanted there; but the news they brought was sufficient even in his eyes to excuse their appearance, though even that threw no light upon the other question, which now became the most important: where Oliver had gone.