“I’m not unreasonable,” she answered. “And you know I’m not. You know what you meant—”
“I meant nothing!” cried Crowdie, with sudden energy. “You’ve got an absolutely wrong idea of the whole thing from beginning to end. You began by saying that I stared at her last winter, when I was painting her. Of course I did. Do you expect me to turn my back on my sitter, and imagine a face I can’t see? It’s perfectly absurd. Ilooked at her, and stared at her, just as you’ve seen me stare at Mrs. Brett, who’s young and quite as handsome as your cousin, and at Mrs. Trehearne, who’s old and hideous. You’re out of your mind, I tell you! You’re ill, or something! How in the world am I to paint people if I don’t look at them? As for having sung the other night, I couldn’t help it. It was aunt Maggie’s fault, and Katharine told me not to, when she heard I’d made a promise—”
“I know—the little snake!” exclaimed Hester. “She knew well enough that was the best way—”
“She didn’t know anything of the kind. She spoke perfectly naturally, and merely didn’t want me to displease you—”
“Then why did you do it?” asked Hester, fiercely. “It wasn’t to delight poor dear old mamma, nor to charm four or five men, most of whom you hate—was it? Then it was for Katharine, and for no one else—”
“It was not for Katharine,” answered Crowdie, with emphasis. “It wasn’t for any one of them. I sang to please myself, because I didn’t choose to have them laugh at me, as though I were a boy out of school—”
“You mean that you didn’t choose to let them think that you cared enough for me to give such a promise—to keep your voice for me, instead of singing about in other people’s houses like a mereamateur, who pays for his supper with a song. You were afraid they’d laugh at you if you said you cared for me, and for what I’d asked of you—and you were really afraid, because you didn’t really care. Oh, I know now—I see it all, and I know! You can’t deceive me any longer.”
“I tell you, you’re utterly and entirely mistaken!” cried Crowdie, angrily. “You’re making a mountain out of a mole hill. You’re losing your temper over it, and working yourself into a passion, till you don’t know what’s true and what isn’t. It’s madness in you, and it isn’t fair to me. When have I ever looked at another woman—”
“It had to begin some time—so it’s begun now—in the worst way it could begin, with Katharine Lauderdale!”
“I hate Katharine Lauderdale—her and the sound of her name! How often must I say it before you’ll believe me?”
“Oh—saying it won’t make it true! Do you think I didn’t see your face—just now?”
“I don’t know what you thought you saw—but I know what there was to be seen, and if you weren’t beside yourself with jealousy you wouldn’t have thought twice about it. I never knew what jealousy meant before—”
“And you don’t now. I’m not jealous of her—I hate her. I despise her for trying to steal you from me, but since she’s got you—since you love herso that you’ll lie for her, and be a coward for her, and be angry for her—just as it suits you—oh no, indeed! I’m not jealous of Katharine. That’s quite another thing. Jealous! And you reproach me, and cast it in my teeth, because I say I hate her, when she’s taken everything I cared for in this earth, everything I had! Ah—I could kill her! But I’m not jealous. One must care for oneself to be jealous; one must be wounded, hurt, insulted, to be jealous! Do you think I want you, if you don’t want me? How little you’ve ever understood me!”
She drew herself up, leaning back against the shelf of the mantelpiece, and her lips curled scornfully, though they trembled a little, and she fixed her eyes upon his face with a strange, frightened fierceness, like that of a delicate wild animal driven to bay, but determined to resist. Crowdie met her glance steadily now, leaning with both hands upon the back of the chair between them and bending his body a little, in the attitude of a man who means to speak very earnestly.
“I don’t think any one could understand you now,” he began, in a quiet, but determined tone. “I can’t, I confess. But I know you’re not yourself, and you don’t know what you’re saying. I’m not going to argue as to whether you’re jealous of Katharine Lauderdale, or not. It’s too absurd! You’ve no right to be, at all events—”
“No right!” cried Hester, with a half hysterical laugh. “If ever a woman had a right to be jealous of another—”
“No, you’ve not—not the shadow of a right. You know how I’ve loved you for years—well—you know how, and what sort of love there’s been between us. You’re mad to think that anything I’ve done—”
“That’s all your argument—that I’m mad! You say it again and again, as though it comforted you! Yes—I am mad in one way—I’m mad not to hate you ten thousand times more than I do—and I do hate you—for what you’ve done! You’ve torn up my heart by the roots and thrown it to that wretched girl—you’ve twisted, and wrenched, and broken everything that was tender in me, everything that was for you, and was yours—and it won’t grow again! You’ve taken everything—have I ever refused you anything? You’ve taken it all, and I thought that you’d never had it before, and that for its sake you loved me, because I loved you so—that you’d wear me in your heart, and carry me in your hands, and love me all your life—and for that girl, that creature with her grey eyes—oh, what is it? What has she got that I haven’t, and that makes you love her—what? What?”
She covered her eyes with a desperate gesture, and her voice almost broke as she repeated thelast word. Below her hand her lips trembled, and Crowdie watched them. Then before she looked at him again, he had passed the chair and was trying to take her in his arms. For an instant she struggled with him, holding her face back from him and thrusting him away. But his small white hands had more strength in them than hers.
“Walter—don’t!” she cried, pushing against him with all her might. “Don’t! Don’t!” she repeated.
But in spite of her, he got near to her face, and kissed her on the cheek. She started violently, and then wrenched herself free.
“How dare you?” she exclaimed, angrily, retreating half across the room with the rush of the effort she had made.
Crowdie laughed, not naturally, and not at all musically. There was a curious hoarseness in the tone, and his eyes glittered.
“And how dare you laugh at me?” she asked, moving still further back, towards the door, as he advanced. “Have you no heart, no feeling—no sense? Can’t you understand how it hurts when you touch me?”
“I don’t want to understand anything so foolish,” answered Crowdie, suddenly growing coldly angry again. “If you’re afraid of me—well, I won’t go near you until you see how silly you are. There’s no other word—it’s silly.”
“Silly! When it’s all my life.” Her voice shook. “Oh, Walter, Walter! You’re breaking my heart!”
A passionate sob struggled with the words, and she fell into a chair by the door, covering her face with her hands again. Then came another sob, and the convulsion of her strength as she tried to choke it down, and it broke the barrier and burst out with a wild storm of scalding tears.
Crowdie was a very sensitively organized man in one direction, but singularly hard to move in another. So long as the passions of others appealed to his own, the response was ready and impulsive. But in him mere sympathy was not easily roused. Once freed from self, his faculties were critical, comparative, quick to seek causes and explain their connection with effects. Hester’s words wakened his love, roused his anger, called out his powers of opposition, and touched him to the quick by turns; but her tears said nothing to him at first, except that she was suffering. He was only with her in happiness, never in unhappiness. He stood still for a moment watching her, and asking himself with considerable calmness what was best to be done.
It is not always easy to judge and decide exactly how far a woman could control herself if she thought it wise to do so, and for that reason the genuineness of her tears often seems doubtful.It would be as fair to doubt that a tortured man suffers if he does not groan in his agony, or because he does.
But although at that moment he felt no sympathy with her, though he loved her in his own way, yet his instinct and experience of women told him that with the tears there must come a change of mood. He went slowly to her side, and though she did not look up he knew that she felt his presence, and would not drive him from her again just then. He bent over her, laying his arm upon her shoulders, and looking at the hands that covered her eyes. He did not speak at once, but waited for her to look up. She was sobbing as though her heart would really break. At last, between the sobs, words began to come at last.
“Oh, Walter, Walter!” she wailed, repeating his name.
“Yes—sweetheart—look at me, dear,” he answered, pressing her to him.
Her head rested against him as she sobbed. Then one hand left her eyes and sought his hand, but was instantly withdrawn again. He found it and brought it, resisting but a little, to his lips. In all such actions he had the gentleness, almost boyish, which some women love so well, and which is so kingly in the very strong—for they say that it is sweeter to be caressed by the hand that could kill, than by one that at its worst and strongest could only scratch.
Presently she uncovered her eyes and looked up to his face, and the sobbing almost stopped. Her cheeks were flushed through their whiteness and were wet, and her eyes were dark and shadowy, but the light in them was not hard. The tide of anger had ebbed as the tears flowed, and its wave was far off.
“Tell me you really love me, dear,” she said, still tearfully.
“Ah, sweet! You know I do—I love you—so! Is that right? Doesn’t it ring true now?” He laughed softly, looking into her face. “When did I ever sing false?”
A shade of returning annoyance passed over her features, as her brow contracted at the allusion to his singing, and though she still allowed her head to rest against his side, her face was turned away once more.
“Don’t speak of singing, dear,” she said, trying to smile, though he could not see whether she did or not.
“No, darling—forgive me. I’ll never speak of it again. I’ll never sing again as long as I live, if you don’t want me to.”
“I didn’t mean that,” she answered. “It’s only now—till I forget. And, Walter, dear—I don’t want you to promise it any more—I’d rather not, really.”
Still she turned away, but he bent over, drawingher closer to him, and he lifted her face with his hand under her chin. The eyelids drooped as she suffered her head to fall back over his arm, and she shut out the sight of his eyes from her own. He murmured soft words in his low voice, in golden tones.
“Darling—precious—sweet one!”
And he repeated the words and others, as her features softened, and her parted lips smiled at his. And still he pressed her to him, and spoke to her, and looked at her with burning eyes. So they might have been reconciled then and there, had Fate willed it. But Fate was there with her little creeping hand full of the tiny mischief that decides between life and death when no one knows.
Fate willed that at that moment Crowdie should be irritated by something in his throat. Just as he was speaking so softly, so sweetly that the exquisite sound almost lulled her to sleep, while the passionate tears still wet her cheek,—just as his face was near hers, he felt it coming, insignificant in itself, ridiculous by reason of the moment at which it came, yet irresistible in its littleness. He struggled against it, and grew conscious of what he was saying, and his voice lost its passionate tenderness. He strove to fight it down, that horrible little tickling spasm just in the vocal chords, for he knew how much it might mean both to her and to him, that her forgiving mood shouldcarry them both to the kiss of peace. But Fate was there, irresistible and little, as surely as though she had stalked gigantic, sword in hand, through the door, to smite them both. In the midst of the very sweetest word of all, it came—the word rang false, he turned his face away and coughed to clear his throat. But the false note had rung.
Hester sprang to her feet, and thrust him from her. To her it had all been false,—the words, the tone, the caresses. How could a man in the earnestness of passion, midway in love’s eloquence, wish to stop—and cough? She did not think nor reason, as she turned upon him in the anguish of her disappointment.
“How could I believe you—even for a moment?” she cried, standing back from him. “Oh, what an actor you are!”
But he had not been acting, save that he had done what his instinct had at first told him was wisest, in beginning to speak to her when she had burst into tears. With the first word, the first caress, with the touch of her, and the sweet, unscented, living air of her, the passion that had truly ruled his faultful life for years took hold of him with strength and main, and rang the leading changes of his being. And then she broke it short.
As he stood up before her, he shook with emotion stronger than hers, such as women rarely feel,and such as even strong men dread. Unconsciously he held out his hands towards her and uttered a half articulate cry, trying once more to catch her in his arms.
“Kiss me—love me—oh, Hester!”
But he met her angry eyes, for she had lost the hand of reality in the labyrinth of her own imaginings and disappointments and jealousies, and she knew no longer the good from the evil, nor the truth from the acted lie.
“No—you’re acting,” she answered, cruelly—trying to be as cruel as the hurt she felt.
And she stared hardly at him. But even as she looked, a deep, purple flush rose in his white cheeks, and overspread his face, even to his forehead, and darkened all his features. And his eyes turned upwards in their sockets, as he fell forward against her, with wet, twisted lips and limp limbs—a hideous sight for woman or man to look upon.
She uttered a low, broken cry as she caught him in her arms, and he dragged her down to the floor by his weight. There he lay, almost black in the face, contorted and stiffened, yet not quite motionless, but far more repulsive by the spasmodic and writhing motion of his body than if he had lain stiff and stark as a dead body.
She had seen him thus once before now, on a winter’s night, upstairs in the studio. She did not know that it was epilepsy. She knelt beside him,horror-struck, now, for a few moments. It seemed worse in the evening glow than it had looked to her before, under the soft, artificial light in the great room.
She only hesitated a few seconds. Then she got a cushion and thrust it under his head, using all her strength to lift him a little with one arm as she did so. But she knew by experience that the unconsciousness would last a long time, and she was glad that it had come at once. On the first occasion the convulsion that preceded it had been horrible. Her own face was drawn with the anguish of intense sympathy, and she felt all the horror of her last cruel words still ringing in her ears.
She did not rise from her knees, but bent over him, and looked at him, seeing himself, as she dreamed him, through the mask of his hideous face. She touched his hands, and tried to draw them out of their contortion, but the in-turned thumbs and stiffened joints were too rigid for her to move. But she lifted his body again, straining her strength till she thought his weight must tear the slight sinews of her arms at the elbow, and she tried to turn his head to a comfortable position on the silken pillow, and stroked his silk-fine hair with gentle hands. As she did her best for him, her throat was parched, and she felt her dry lips cleaving to her teeth, and the sight of her eyes wasalmost failing, being burned out with horror. But no tears came to put out the fire.
At last she rose to her feet, steadying herself against the chair in which she had last sat, for she was dizzy with pain and with bending down. She gazed at him an instant; then turned and went and closed the open windows, and pulled down the shades and drew the thick curtains together. After that, groping, she found matches and lit one candle, and set it so that the light should not fall upon his eyes, if by any chance their conscious sight returned. Then she looked at him once more and left the room, softly closing the door behind her, and turning the key with infinite pains, lest any servant in the house should hear the sound. She took the key with her and went upstairs.
Katharinewas sincerely distressed by the result of her interview with Hester, and she walked slowly homeward, thinking it all over and asking herself whether she had left undone anything which she ought to have done. But as she thought, it was always the last scene which rose before her eyes, and she saw distinctly before her Hester’s white face staring at her through the open doorway. There was a great satisfaction in feeling sure that she had been wholly innocent in the matter of Crowdie’s kissing her hand; yet felt that the resentment Hester had shown on re-entering the room had not been anything different in its essential nature from the coldness she had already shown when Katharine had spoken of renewing their friendship. But the young girl could not understand either, though the supposition that Hester must be jealous of her thrust itself upon her forcibly.
Ralston helped her. He had asked for her at the house in Clinton Place, and having been told that she was still out, he had hung about the neighbourhood in the hope of meeting her, andhad been at last rewarded by seeing her coming towards him from the other side of Fifth Avenue. In a moment they met.
“Oh, I’m so glad to see you, Jack, dear!” she cried as she took his hand. “I’ve got such lots to tell you!”
“So have I,” answered Ralston. “Where shall we go? Should you like to walk?”
“Yes—in some quiet place, where we can talk, and not meet people, and not be run over too often.”
“All right,” answered John. “Let’s go west. There are lots of quiet streets on that side, and it’s awfully respectable. The worst that can happen to us will be to meet Teddy Van De Water looking after his tenants, or Russell Vanbrugh going to administer consolation to the relations of his favourite criminal. Something’s happened, Katharine,” he added suddenly, as they turned westward, and the strong evening light illuminated her features through her veil. “I can see it in your face.”
“Yes,” answered Katharine. “I want to tell you. I’ve had such a time with Hester! You don’t know!”
“Tell me all about it.”
They walked along, and Katharine told her story with all the details she could remember, doing her best to make clear to him what was by no meansclear to herself. When she had finished, she looked at John interrogatively.
“That fellow Crowdie’s a brute!” he exclaimed, with energy.
“Well—I don’t like him, you know. But was it so very bad? Tell me, Jack—you’re my natural protector.” She laughed happily. “It’s your business to tell me what’s right and what’s wrong. Was it so very bad of him to kiss my glove after he’d buttoned it? I almost boxed his ears at the time—I was so angry! But I want to be fair. Was it exactly—wrong? I wish you’d tell me.”
“Wrong? No; it wasn’t exactly wrong.” Ralston paused thoughtfully. “Kissing women’s hands is one of those relative things,” he continued. “It’s right in one part of the world, it’s indifferent in another, and it’s positively the wrong thing to do somewhere else—whatever it’s meant to mean. We don’t do that sort of thing much over here. As he did it, I suppose it was simply the wrong thing to do. At least, I want to suppose so, but I can’t. The man’s half in love with you, you know.”
“Oh, nonsense, Jack! It’s only because we dislike him so. If ever a man was in love with his wife, he is.”
“Yes, I know,” answered Ralston, in the same thoughtful tone. “That’s quite true. But itdoesn’t prevent him from being half in love with lots of other women at the same time. It’s not the same thing. Oh, yes! he loves Hester. She’s quite mad about him, of course. We all know that, in the family. But Crowdie’s peculiar—and it’s not a nice peculiarity, either. One sees it in his manner somehow, and in his eyes. I can’t exactly explain it to you. He admires every woman who’s beautiful, and it’s a little more than admiration. He has a way with him which we men don’t like. And when he does such things as he did to-day there’s always a suggestion of something disagreeable in his way of doing them, so that if they’re not positively wrong, they’re not positively innocent. They’re on the ragged edge between the two, as Frank Miner says.”
“I think it’s more in the way he looks at one than in anything else,” said Katharine. “He has such a horrid mouth! But it’s absurd to say that he’s in love with me, Jack.”
“Oh, no, it’s not! That night at aunt Maggie’s, when he sang, you know—it was for you and nobody else. What a queer evening that was, by the way! There were five of us men there, all in love with you in one way or another.”
“Jack! It’s positively ridiculous! The idea of such a thing!”
“Not at all. There was Ham, in the first place. You admit that he’s one, don’t you?”
“I suppose I must, since he proposed,” answered Katharine, reluctantly, and turning her face away.
“And you’re not going to deny Archie Wingfield?” Ralston tried to see her eyes. “I’m sure he’s offered himself.”
Katharine said nothing, but John saw through her veil and was sure that a little colour rose in her face.
“Of course!” he said. “That’s two of them. And Crowdie’s three. I count him. And you mustn’t forget me. I’m what they call in love with you, I suppose. That’s four.”
Katharine smiled, and glanced at him, looking away again immediately.
“At least,” she said, “you’ll leave me dear old Mr. Griggs—”
“Griggs!” laughed Ralston. “He’s the worst of the lot. He’s madly, fearfully, desperately, fantastically in love with you.”
“Jack! What do you mean?” Katharine laughed, but her face expressed genuine surprise. “Not that I should mind,” she added. “Dear old man! I’m so fond of him!”
“Well—he returns your fondness with interest. He makes no secret of it to anybody, because he’s old, or says he is,—but he’s old like an old wolf. I like him, too. He goes about saying that you’re his ideal of beauty and cleverness and soul—and good taste. Oh, Griggs!” He laughed again.“He’s quite off his head about you! He’ll put you into one of his books if you’re not careful. I should like to see your father’s expression if he did.”
“Don’t be a goose, Jack!” suggested Katharine, by way of good advice. “Of course, I understand what a dear old silly idiot you are, you know. But don’t talk such nonsense to other people. They’ll laugh at you.”
“No, I’m not going to. I let Griggs do the talking, and people laugh at him. But there’s nothing silly in it, as a matter of fact. Everybody loves you—except some of the people who should. And I must say, with the exception of Crowdie, we were a very presentable lot the other night. And even Crowdie—well, he’s a celebrity, if he’s nothing else, and that counts for something with some women. I say, Katharine—are you and Hester going to quarrel for the rest of your lives?”
“I’m afraid so,—at least, we shan’t quarrel exactly. But we can never be just as we were.”
“I’m rather glad,” said Ralston. “I never believed much in that friendship between you two.”
“Oh, Jack! We loved each other so dearly! And it was so nice—we told each other everything, you know.”
“Yes—but you’ve outgrown each other.”
Katharine looked at him quickly, in surprise.
“That’s exactly what Hester said to-day,” she answered. “It seemed to me to be such nonsense.”
“Well—you have, and she’s quite right if she says so. That sort of school-girlish friendship doesn’t amount to anything when you begin to grow up. I’ve seen lots of them in society. They always break up as soon as one of the two marries and has other things to think about. Besides, between you and Hester, there’s Crowdie. It’s perfectly clear from what you’ve told me that she’s jealous. If you’re not careful she’ll try and do you some mischief or other. She’s jealous, and she has a streak of cruelty in her. She’ll make you suffer somehow—trust the ingenuity of a woman like that! She’d burn her most intimate friend at a slow fire for Crowdie any day.”
“Well—isn’t she right?” asked Katharine. “I would, for you, I’m sure—if it would do you any good.”
“It wouldn’t,” laughed Ralston. “Those cases don’t arise nowadays. Sometimes one wishes they might. We’ve all got a lot of cruelty and romance in us somewhere. We all believe in the immutability of the affections, more or less.”
“Don’t laugh, Jack!” said Katharine. “Love has nothing to do with friendship. Besides, you and I aren’t like other people. We’re always going to care—just as we always have. We’re faithful people, you and I.”
“Yes. I think we are.” He spoke quietly, as though from a long and familiar conviction.
A short silence followed, and they walked along side by side in the soft evening air, so close that their elbows touched, as they kept step together—a mode of courtship not usually practised by their kind, and which they would have been ashamed of in a more frequented quarter of the city. They would probably have noticed it unfavourably in another couple, and would have set the pair down as a dry-goods clerk and a shopgirl. But when the ‘stiff and proud’ Four Hundred are very much in love, and when they are quite sure that none of the remaining Three Hundred and Ninety-eight are looking, they behave precisely like human beings, which is really to their credit, though they would be so much ashamed to have it generally known.
“But then, we’re married, you know,” said Katharine, as though she had solved a difficult problem.
Ralston glanced at the face he loved and smiled happily.
“There’s a good deal besides that,” he said. “There are a great many things that tie us together. You’ve made a man of me. That’s one thing. But for you, I don’t know where I should have been now—in a bad way, I fancy.”
“No, you wouldn’t,” protested Katharine. “Aman who can do the things you’ve done doesn’t come to grief.”
“It isn’t anything I’ve done,” Ralston answered. “It’s what you’ve made me feel. If I’ve done anything at all, it’s been for your sake. You know that as well as I do. And if there were big things to be done, it would be the same.”
“You’ve done the biggest thing that any man can do. You don’t need to have me tell you that.”
“Oh—about reforming my ways, you mean?” He affected to laugh. “That wasn’t anything. You made it nice and easy.”
“Especially when I didn’t believe in you, and treated you like a brute,” said Katharine, with an expression of pain at the recollection. “Don’t talk about it, Jack. I’ve never forgiven myself—I never shall.”
“But it was so nice when it was over!” This time the little laugh was genuine. “I’d go through it all again, just to see your face when you found out that you’d been mistaken—and afterwards, when we sat behind the piano at the Van De Waters’—do you remember? Oh, yes! I’d like to have it all over again.”
“Jack—you’re an angel, dear! But don’t talk about that night. I suppose, though, that those things have helped to bind us together and make us more each other’s. Yes—of course they have. And then—we’re such good friends, you know.Doesn’t that make a difference? I’m sure there are people who care very much, but who are never good friends. Look at papa and my mother. They’re like that. They’re not at all good friends. They never tell each other anything if they can help it. But they care all the same. We could never be like that together, could we? Jack—where does friendship end and love begin?”
“What a beautiful question!” exclaimed Ralston, very much amused. “Of all the impossible ones to answer!”
“I know it is. I’ve often wondered about it. You know, I can’t at all remember when I began to care for you in this way. Can you? It must have been ever so long ago, before we ever said anything—because, when we did, it seemed quite natural, you know. And it always grows. It goes on growing like a thing that’s planted in good earth and that has lots of life in it and is going to last forever. But it really does grow. I know that I’m ever so much more glad to see you when we meet now than I was a month ago. If it goes on like this I don’t know where it’s going to end. Hester and her husband won’t be anywhere, compared with us, will they?”
“They’re not, as it is. They’re quite different. When they’re old, they’ll quarrel—if not sooner.”
“Oh, Jack—I don’t believe it’s quite fair to say that!”
“Well—wait and see. We’re warranted to wear, you and I. They’re not. There’s no staying power in that sort of thing. Not but what they’re in earnest. Even Crowdie is, though he’s half in love with you, at the same time.”
“I wish you wouldn’t keep saying that,” said Katharine. “It makes me feel so uncomfortable when we meet. Besides, it’s absurd, as I told you. A man can’t be madly in love with his wife and care for any one else at the same time.”
“That depends on the man—and the way of caring,” answered Ralston. “Crowdie’s a brute. I hate him. The only thing I can’t understand about Griggs is his liking for the man. It’s incomprehensible to me.”
“I don’t think Mr. Griggs really likes him,” said Katharine. “There’s a mystery about it. But I’m almost sure he doesn’t really like him. I believe he thinks he’s responsible for Crowdie in some way. They knew each other long ago.”
“Nobody knows much about Crowdie’s antecedents, anyway. I never could understand the match.”
“Oh—it’s easily understood. They fell in love with each other. Of course he would have been delighted to marry her, if he hadn’t cared a straw for her, for the sake of the social position and all that. Then he had a sister—at least, people said so, but nobody ever saw her that I know of—somewhere in New Jersey. She didn’t come to the wedding, I know, for I was Hester’s bridesmaid. Charlotte and I were the only two.”
“She didn’t come to the wedding because she was dead,” said Ralston. “That’s an awfully good reason.”
“I didn’t know. I’ve often wondered about her, but I didn’t like to ask questions. One doesn’t you know, about people who don’t turn up. They always are dead, or something—and then one feels so uncomfortable.”
“Yes,” answered Ralston, as though meditating on the fact. “At all events,” he continued, “nobody ever knew much about Crowdie, nor where he came from. So I don’t exactly see how Griggs could be responsible for him. But, as you say, there’s a mystery about it all—so there is about Griggs, for that matter.”
“Oh, no! Mr. Griggs is all right. There’s nothing mysterious about him. He was born abroad, that’s all, and I believe he was awfully poor as a boy—a sort of orphan lying about loose on the world, you know. But he’s got a lot of tremendously proper relations in Rhode Island. He goes to see some of them now and then. He’s told me.”
“Well—it’s very queer about Crowdie, anyhow,” said Ralston, thoughtfully. “But there’s something I wanted to talk to you about, dear,”he continued after a little pause. “It’s about our marriage certificate. You know we’re living in danger of an explosion at any moment. That thing is tucked away somewhere amongst poor uncle Robert’s papers. We’ve spoken of it once or twice, you know. They’re going through everything, and sooner or later it’s sure to turn up. It’s just as well to be prepared beforehand. I don’t know what will happen if we tell your father now, but he’s got to be told, and it’s my place to do it.”
“No, Jack,” answered Katharine. “It’s my place. I made you do it—I’ve never made up my mind whether it was the wisest thing we could do, or whether it was a piece of egregious folly. Suppose that we had quarrelled after it was done. We should have been bound all our lives by a mere ceremony.”
“But we knew we shouldn’t,” protested Ralston.
“Nobody knows anything,” said Katharine, wisely. “We know now, because we know each other so much better. But I made you take a tremendous risk, and you didn’t want to do it at all—”
“It wasn’t on account of the risk—”
“No—of course it wasn’t. But you’re quite right now. That thing may turn up any day. I shall go to papa this very evening and tell him that we’re married. It’s the only sensible thing to do.”
“Indeed, you shan’t do that!” cried Ralston, anxiously. “You know him—”
“Shan’t?” repeated Katharine, looking up into his face and smiling. “I will if I please,” she said with a little laugh.
“Will you?” asked John, meeting her eyes with an expression of determination, but smiling, too, in spite of himself.
“Of course!” answered Katharine, promptly. “Especially as I think it’s a matter of duty. Of course I’ll do it—this very evening!”
“Don’t!” said Ralston. “There’ll be a row.”
“Not half such a row as if you try to do it,” observed Katharine. “You’ll have each other by the throat in five minutes.”
“Oh, no, we shan’t. We’re very good friends now. I don’t see why there should be any trouble at all. He wants us to marry. He said so in his letter, and he’s taken a sort of paternal air of late, when I come to the house. Besides, haven’t you noticed the way in which he turns his back on us when we sit down to talk? If that doesn’t mean consent—well, he won’t have the trouble of a wedding, that’s all, nor the expense, either. He ought to be glad, if he’s logical.”
“I don’t think he’d mind the expense so much now,” said Katharine, with perfect gravity. “I think he’s getting used to the idea of spending a little more, now that we’re to be so rich. He wastalking about having a butler, last night. Fancy! But I do wish those administrators, or whatever you call them, would hurry up and give us something. We’re awfully hard up, my mother and I. We’ve had to get such a lot of clothes, and I’m frightened to death about it. I’m sure the bills will come in before the estate’s settled, and then papa will take the roof off, as you always say—he’ll be so angry! But I don’t think he’ll make such a fuss about our marriage.”
“No—that’s just what I say. That’s why I want to tell him myself.”
“Jack!” cried Katharine, reproachfully. “You just said there’d be a row if I went to him about it.”
“Well—I think I can manage him better,” said Ralston. “You and he are used to fighting every day as a matter of habit, so that you’re sure to go at each other on the smallest provocation. But with him and me, it’s been a sort of rare amusement—the kind of thing one keeps for Sundays, and we don’t like it so much. Besides, since you say that he won’t be so angry after all, why shouldn’t I?”
“Exactly. And I say, why shouldn’t I?—for the same reason. I shall just say that we got married because we were afraid we should never get his consent, but that since he’s given it frankly,—he did in that letter,—we’ve agreed to tell.”
“That’s just what I should say,” answered Ralston. “Those are the very words I had in my mind.”
“Of course they are. Don’t we always think alike? But I want to tell him. I’d much rather.”
“So would I—much rather. It will end in our going together. That’s probably the most sensible thing we can do. There’ll be a certain grim surprise, and then the correct paternal blessing, and the luncheon or dinner, according to the time of day.”
“It will be dinner, if we go home and do it now,” said Katharine, thoughtfully.
“Come on! Let’s go!” answered Ralston. “There’s no time like the present for doing this sort of thing. Where are we? Oh—South Fifth Avenue’s over there to the left. That’s the shortest way, round that corner and then straight up.”
They turned and walked in the direction he indicated, both silent for a while as they thought of what was before them, and the final telling of the secret they had kept so long.
“You don’t know how glad I shall be when everybody knows,” said Katharine after a time, as they paused at a crossing to let a van pass by.
“Not half so glad as I shall be,” answered Ralston. “But it couldn’t be helped. I know it’s been hateful to have this secret—well, not exactlyhanging over us, but to have it a part of us all this time. Still—I don’t see when we could have announced it. There’s been one thing after another to make it impossible, and somehow we’ve got used to it. They say there’s nothing like having a secret in common to make two people fall in love with each other. It seems to me it’s true.”
“We didn’t need it, dear,” said Katharine, softly, as they began to cross the street.
“No—not exactly.” Ralston laughed. “But it hasn’t made it any worse, at all events. But what moments we’ve had. Do you remember when they began to talk about secret marriages that night?”
“Don’t I!” laughed Katharine. “I thought I should have gone through the floor! How well you behaved, Jack! I expected that you’d break out every minute and fall upon poor cousin Ham. But you didn’t. As for me, I got scarlet, and I don’t often blush, do I? Dark people don’t. Well—it’s all over now.”
“Not till we’ve had our talk out with your father. We can’t be quite sure of what will happen till then.”
“No—but he can’t unmarry us, can he? So what can he do? He can say that he’ll disinherit me. That’s the worst he could possibly do, and what difference would it make? You’re going to be one of the rich, rich, rich men, Jack—withever so many millions more than you can possibly spend on onions and honey—like the wayward old man of Kilkenny, you know. Besides, papa will not be angry at all. He’ll simply dance with delight. I believe he’s secretly afraid that we’re cheating him, because we never speak of ever announcing our engagement. He thinks we’re revenging ourselves now, and each means to marry somebody else, and he’s in fits lest he should lose you for a son-in-law. Isn’t it fun?”
“Yes—your beloved father in fits, as you call it—and dancing with delight—it doesn’t lack the comic element. But it looks so simple now, just to go and tell him, and be done with it. Why haven’t we done it before?”
“Oh—we couldn’t. It wouldn’t have been safe until the will was settled. He was really dreadfully nervous all that time. I never saw him in such a state before. It really wouldn’t have been safe. No—this is our first chance. We might have spoken a day or two ago, of course, but not much sooner.”
“No—we couldn’t,” said Ralston. “But I’m glad—oh, tremendously glad that it’s coming at last.”
“And then—Jack,” said Katharine, with some hesitation, “after we’ve spoken, you know—what are we going to do?”
“You and I? Why, get married, of course—I mean—as if we were getting married. There won’t be any people nor any cake, nor any gorgeous dress for you—poor dear! But we shall have to pretend, I suppose—go off with your mother and my mother, and as many more mothers as we can pick up, to make us perfectly respectable, and then we shall come back married, and choose a house to live in. That’s the first thing, you know. My mother will never hear of our living with her, now that there’s to be lots of money. She’s much too wise for that. Relations-in-law are just bones for husband and wife to fight over. But of course my mother will come very often.”
“And my mother,” said Katharine.
“Yes—your mother, too,” assented Ralston. “Naturally, they’ll both come. So long as they don’t live with us, we shan’t mind.”
“But you’re very fond of your mother, Jack, aren’t you?” asked Katharine.
“Of course I am. We’re more like brother and sister than anything else. You see, we’ve always been together so much.”
“And yet you’d rather not have her live with us?”
“Certainly not. And she wouldn’t wish to.”
“It’s strange,” said Katharine, thoughtfully. “I don’t think I should mind having my mother with us. She’d be such a comfort when you were down town, you know.”
“Yes,” answered Ralston, in a doubtful tone.“I couldn’t take my mother down town to comfort me at Beman’s, could I?”
“What an absurd idea! But, Jack,—shall you still go to Beman’s? You can’t, you know. Everybody would laugh at you. A man with forty millions or so, doing clerk’s work in a bank! It’s ridiculous!”
“No doubt! But what am I to do with myself? What do people like that do? I can’t hang about the clubs all day.”
“You can stay at home and talk to me,” said Katharine. “We can tell each other how much nicer it is than when we had to meet in Washington Square in the early morning—when I had to put red ribbons in my window—do you remember? It’s only three or four weeks ago, but it seems years.”
“It does, indeed. What tight places we’ve been through together since your father refused to hear of me as a son-in-law! Holloa! There goes Ham Bright! What in the world can he be doing down here at this time of day?”
Bright was walking towards them, as quickly as it was natural for him to walk, with his long, heavy stride.
“It’s of no use to run away—he’s seen us,” said Katharine.
“He looks in a better humour than I’ve seen him lately,” answered John in a low voice, as they approached Bright.
They met and stood still a moment on the pavement. Even under his great disappointment Hamilton Bright had never shown the least ill-temper, though he had avoided the Lauderdales and the Ralstons as much as possible, and had managed so that he scarcely ever saw John at the bank except from a distance. But he had been very gloomy of late. Now, however, as Ralston had said, he looked more cheerful.
“Going down town again?” asked John. “Not that I come from Boston, you know, Ham—but when one meets a man going down South Fifth Avenue at half past five in the afternoon, one’s naturally curious. What’s up?”
“Oh—nothing. I was just going as far as Grand Street about a house I’ve bought there. Did you know they’d found the other will?”
“Found the other will?” repeated Ralston, in the utmost surprise. “Well—what sort of a will is it? Will it be good?”
“I’m so glad!” exclaimed Katharine, thoughtlessly.
Bright fixed his clear, blue eyes on her with considerable curiosity, and hesitated an instant before he spoke.
“Of course!” he exclaimed. “They always said you knew what was in it, cousin Katharine.”
“Did they? I don’t know how they knew that I did,” she answered. “But I’m glad it’s found, all the same.”
“Are you? Well—I hope it’s all right. Of course nobody knows what’s in it. Allen wants to collect the family at your house to-morrow morning to hear it read. It seems to me it might have been managed to-night, but he said there wasn’t time to send round. I think cousin Alexander objected, too. He wants all the family. Will you tell your mother, Jack? Eleven o’clock at Clinton Place. Write a note to Beman to say why you don’t turn up at the bank.”
“All right,” answered John, gravely. “I hope it will be all right, Ham, old man,” he added, putting out his hand as Bright showed signs of being in a hurry.
“Thank you, Jack,” answered the latter, heartily. “Not that you and I shall ever quarrel about money. Good-bye, cousin Katharine.”
And he went on and left them to pursue their way in the opposite direction. They walked slowly, and looked into one another’s eyes.
“I thought he’d burned it,” said Ralston at last, in a tone of wonder.
“So did I,” answered Katharine. “Jack,” she continued, after a slight pause, “it won’t do to go and see papa now. Not till the will’s been read to-morrow. You don’t know what a state of mind he’ll be in until he’s heard it—and then—then I’m afraid it will be worse than ever.”
“Yes—let me see—how was it? You andCharlotte and I are to have everything, and pay half the income to the parents. Isn’t that it?”
“That’s it. And there’s a million set aside for the Brights. But Heaven only knows what that dreadful court will do this time!”
“I don’t much care,” answered Ralston. “But all the settling up will be suspended again for ever so long. You’ll never get the money to pay for your new frock, dear, with all your millions!”
“Oh, Jack—really? I’m frightened to death about those bills!”
“I was only laughing at you,” said John, laughing himself. “Besides, as I’m really your husband, I’m responsible for your dressmaker’s bills in the eye of the law. But, I confess, I begin to wonder whether any of us will ever see any of that money.”
Longafter midnight Hester Crowdie sat beside her sleeping husband, watching him with unwinking eyes. The soft, coloured light was shaded so that no ray could fall upon his face to disturb his rest, as he lay back upon the yielding pillow, sleeping very soundly. The house was still, but the servants were not all gone to bed, for Hester was anxious. At any moment she might need to send for a doctor. But she sat watching the unconscious man alone.
His eyes were closed, and his face was flushed. He breathed very heavily, though she did not quite realize it; for the sound of his breathing had increased very gradually during many hours, from having been at first quite inaudible until it filled her ears with a steady, rhythmic roar, loud and regular as the noise of a blacksmith’s bellows. But she was scarcely conscious of it, because she had watched so long.
Hour after hour she had sat beside him, hardly changing her position, and never leaving the room. To her the house seemed still, and only now and then the echo of the steam horns reached her ears,made musical by the distance, as it floated from the far river across the dozing city.
On a fine spring night New York is rarely asleep before two o’clock. It dozes, as it were, turning, half awake, from time to time, and speaking drowsily in its deep voice, like a strong man very tired, but still conscious. It breathes, too, sometimes, as Crowdie was breathing, very heavily, especially in the nights that come after days of passion and struggling; and the breathing of a great city at night is not like any other sound on earth.
Hester was conscious that all was not well with the man she loved, though he had slept so long. She rose, and moved uneasily about the room. She was very pale, and there were dark shadows in her pallor, the shadows that fear’s giant wraith casts upon the human face when death is stalking up and down, up and down, outside the door, waiting to see whether he may take the little life that falls as a crumb from the table of the master, or whether he must go away again to his own place, out of sight.
But Hester did not know that he was there, as she rose and crossed the room and came back to stand at the foot of the bed, gazing at Crowdie’s face. She was anxious and uneasy, though she had watched him once before in the same way. But at that first time she had not done what shehad done now, with feverish haste, thinking only of helping him.
All at once she shivered, and she turned to see whether the window were not open. But it was closely shut. It was as though something very cold had been laid upon her. She stared about, nervously, and the pupils of her eyes grew very large, with a frightened look. She laid both hands upon the foot of the bedstead, and grasped it with all her strength, bending forwards and staring at Crowdie’s face, and the chill thrilled very strangely across her shoulders and all through her, so that she felt it in her elbows and in her heels. She glanced over her shoulder into the softly shadowed corner farthest from the bed; for she was sure that something was there, in the room, a bodily presence, which she must presently see. The chill ran through her again and again, cold as ice, but with a painful pricking.
She looked at Crowdie again and saw that his eyes were no longer tightly closed. The lids were a little raised, and she could see the edge of the dark iris, and the white below it and on each side of it. He had moved a little just as she had turned to look into the corner. He ought not to have moved, she thought, without reason. It was as though a dead man had moved, she thought. And again the chill came. She was sure that the window must be open, but she could not lookround. Suddenly she remembered how when she had been a little girl she had been taken to be photographed, and the man had put a cold iron thing behind her head that seemed to hold her with two frozen fingers just behind her ears. She felt the frozen fingers now, in the same places, and they were pressing her head down. For a moment everything swam with her, and then it all passed. The iron hand was gone—the window was shut—there was nothing in the corner.
But instantly the terrible, stertorous breathing rent her ears. It had gone on for hours. The servants could hear it downstairs. The bedstead trembled with it under her hands. But she had not been conscious of it. The unnatural thing that had touched her—the thing that had come in through the window and that had stood in the corner—it had unsealed her hearing. She heard now, and fearfully.
With one slender arm under the pillow she raised him, for she thought that he might breathe more easily if his head were higher. His laboured breath deafened her, and she could feel it through her sleeve upon her other arm. Desperately she hastened to arrange the pillows. But the dreadful sound roared at her like the flames of a great fire. In sudden and overwhelming terror she left him as he was, half uncovered, and ran to the door, calling wildly for help, again and again, down into thedimly-lighted staircase. Then she came back in a new terror, lest her screams should have waked him. But he slept on. In the movement of the pillow as she had withdrawn her arm, his head had fallen on one side. His eyes were half open, and the breath was rough and choking.
She had never known how heavy a man’s head was. Her small, bloodless hands made an effort to turn him—then some one was with her, helping her, anxiously and clumsily.
“Not so! Not that way!” she whispered, hoarsely, with drawn, dry lips, and her little hands touched the servant’s rough ones with uncertain direction, in haste and fear.
Then he breathed more easily, and she herself drew breath. But she had been terrified, and she sent for old Doctor Routh, and sat down in her old place to wait and watch until he should come. It was better now. The coming of the servant had broken the loneliness, and there was life in the air again, instead of death. Her heart fluttered still, like a wild bird tired out with beating its wings against the bars. But there was no chill, and presently the heart rested. He was better. She was quite sure that he was better. The rough breathing would cease presently, he would sleep till morning, and then he would waken and be himself again, just as though nothing had happened. Now that the fear was gone, she rose and went to thewindow and let the shade run up so that she could see the stars. They had a soft and sleepy look, like children’s eyes at bed-time. The musical echo of the horns came to her from the river. In the old Colonnade House opposite and to the right, a single window was lighted high up. Perhaps some one was ill up there—all alone. Then the city moved in its dozing rest, with a subdued thumping, rumbling noise that lasted a few seconds. Perhaps there was a fire far away, and the engines and the hook-and-ladder carts were racing away from the lumbering water-tank down one of the quiet eastern avenues. The light in the window of the Colonnade House went out suddenly—no one was ill there—it had only been some one sitting up late. Hester missed the light, and the great long building looked black against the dim sky, and the stars blinked more sleepily. She drew the shade down again and turned back into the room.
She started. Crowdie had seemed better when she had left his side for a moment. It had eased him to move his head. But now he was worse again, and the room almost shook with the noise of his breathing. It was as though he were inhaling water that choked him and gurgled in his throat and nostrils. She was frightened again, and ran to his side. She took her little handkerchief which lay on the small table at her elbow, and passed it delicately over his mouth. Her hand trembled assoon as she had done it, and the handkerchief fell upon the woollen blanket, and gently unfolded itself a little after it had fallen. It caught the light and seemed to be alive, as though it had taken some of the sleeping man’s life from him. She started again, and seized it to crumple it and thrust it away, with something between fear and impatience in her movement, and she bent over her husband’s face once more, and realized where her real fear was, as she tenderly smoothed his fair hair and softly touched his temples.
There was nothing to be done but to wait, and she waited, not patiently. Sometimes the noise of his breathing hurt her, and she pressed her hand to her side, and hid her eyes for a moment. The dismal minutes that would not go by, nor make way for one another, dragged on through a long half-hour, and more. Then there was a rumbling of wheels on the cobble stones, and she was at the window in an instant, flattening her face against the glass as she tried to look northward, whence the sound should come. It was Routh’s carriage. That was a certainty, even before she caught sight of the yellow glare of the lamps, moving fan-like along the broad way. It was not likely that any other carriage should stray into the loneliness of Lafayette Place at that time of night. The carriage stopped. Hester saw a man get out, and heard the clap of the door of the brougham as it was sharplyclosed behind him. Immediately she was at the door, her hand on the handle, but her eyes turned anxiously upon Crowdie’s face. The steps came up the stairs, and she looked out. It was Doctor Routh himself, for she had sent a very urgent message.
Without going upon the landing, she stretched out her hand and almost dragged him into the room, for somehow her terror increased to a frenzy as she saw him, and she felt that her heart could not go on beating long enough for him to speak. Her face was very grave, but she was only conscious of his deep violet-blue eyes that glanced at her keenly as he passed her. He had half guessed what was the matter, for the terrible breathing could be heard on the stairs.
Without hesitation he took the shade from the light, and held the little lamp close to Crowdie’s face. He raised first one eyelid and then the other. The pupils were enormously dilated. Then he felt the pulse, listened to the heart, and shook his head almost imperceptibly. A moment later he was scratching words hastily in his note-book.
“Why didn’t you send word that it was morphia?” he asked, sharply, without looking up. “Send that by the carriage, and tell them to be quick!” He thrust the note into her hands and almost pushed her from the room. “Make haste! I must have the things at once!” he called after her as she flew downstairs.
Then he tried such means as he had at hand, though he knew how useless they must be, doing everything possible to rouse the man from the poisoned sleep. He smiled grimly at his own folly, and laid the head upon its pillow again. Hester was in the room in a moment.
“It’s morphia,” he said, “and he’s had an overdose. How did he come to get it? Who gave it to him?”
“I did,” answered Hester, in a clear voice, and her lips were white. “Will he die?” she whispered, with sudden horror.
She almost sprang at Routh as she asked the question, grasping his arm in both her hands.
“I don’t know,” he answered, slowly. “I’ll try to bring him round. Control yourself, Mrs. Crowdie. This isn’t the time for crying. Tell me what happened.”
She told him something, brokenly, her memory half gone from fear—how something had happened to distress him, and he had turned red and fallen, twisted and unconscious—she did not know what she told him.
“Has it ever happened before?” asked Routh, who was holding her hands to quiet her, while she moved her feet nervously.
It had happened once, she told him, on a winter’s evening when they had been alone. She could say that much, and then her eyes were drawn to Crowdie’s face, and to the horror of it, as a bent spring flies back to its own line when released. Routh pressed her hand.
“Look at me, please,” he said, authoritatively. “We can’t do anything for him till my things come. Tell me why you gave him morphia.”
She had thought it was the right thing. Her husband had told her that he had formerly taken a great deal of it. He had suffered great pain when he had been younger, from an accident, and had fallen into the habit that kills. But before they had been married he had given it up—for her sake.
Her eyes turned to him again. She snatched her hands from Routh’s and pressed them desperately to her ears to keep out the sound of his breathing. But Routh drew her away and made her look at him again.
And these attacks came from having given up morphia, she told him. Crowdie had said so. He had told her that, of course, a dose of the poison would stop one of them, but that he was determined not to begin taking it again. It would ruin his life and hers if he did. The attacks gave him no pain, he had said. He did not remember afterwards what had happened to him. But of course they were bad for him, and might come more frequently. He had been terribly distressed. It had seemed to be breaking his heart, because it mustgive her pain. He had made her promise never to give him morphia when he was unconscious. He was determined not to fall back into the habit of it.
“Then why did you do it?” asked Routh, scrutinizing her pale face and frightened eyes.
She had imagined that it would save him pain, though he had told her that he recollected nothing of his sensations after the attack was past.
“He was all stiff and twisted!” she cried, in broken tones. “His hands were all twisted—his eyes turned up.”
“But where did you get the morphia?” asked the physician, holding her before him, kindly, but so that she had to face him.
“He had it,” she said. “I made him show it to me once. He kept it in a drawer with the little instrument for it. He showed me how to pinch the skin and prick it—it was so easy! There was the mixture in a bottle—the cork wouldn’t come out—I did it with a hairpin—”
“How much did you give him?” enquired the doctor, bringing her back to her story, as her mind groped, terror-struck amongst its details.
“Why—the little syringe full—wasn’t that right?” She saw the despair of life in his eyes. “Oh, God! My God!” she shrieked, breaking from his hands. “I’ve killed him!”
“I’m afraid you have,” said Routh, but underhis breath, and she could not have heard him speak.
She threw herself wildly upon her husband’s breast, clutching him with her small white hands, lifting herself upon them, staring into his face, and then shrieking as she fell forwards again, her hands tearing at her own thick brown hair. Routh knew that Crowdie could not be disturbed. He stood back from the bedside and watched her with far-seeing, dreaming eyes, while the first fever of despair burned itself out in a raving delirium. He had seen such sights many times in his life, but he remembered nothing more terrible than the grief of this woman who had killed her husband by a hideous mistake, thinking to save him pain, thinking it well to break a promise he had taken of her for his safety, and which she had believed had been only for his self-respect.
Crowdie was past saving. Routh did all that his science could do, trying in turn every known means of breaking the death sleep, trying to hem in the life before it was quite gone out, that the very least breath of it might be imprisoned in the body. But it was of no use. The poison was in the veins, in the brain, the subtle spirit of the opium devil distilled to an invisible enemy. The little hand of Fate, that had been so small and noiseless a few hours earlier, spread, gigantic, and grasped Science by the throat and shook her off. Therewas not anything to be done. And Hester twisted her hands, and moaned and shrieked, and beat her breast, like a woman mad, as indeed she was.
Routh had understood. Crowdie was an epileptic. He had perhaps believed himself cured when he had married his wife, and had been horrified by the first attack. He loved her, and he would naturally wish to hide from her the secret of his life. The general feeling about epilepsy is not like what is felt for any other human weakness. An epileptic is hardly regarded as a natural being, and the belief that the disease is hereditary brands it with an especial horror. It had been ingenious on Crowdie’s part to invent the story about the morphia, and to carry it out and impress it on her by showing her the instrument and the bottle of poison. It was possible that there might have been some foundation of truth in the tale. He might have had the implements from a physician. But Routh, who had known him long, was convinced, for many reasons, that he had never been a victim to the habit of using the drug regularly. It had been very ingenious of the poor man. Hester could hardly have known anything of the after effects of breaking off such a habit, still less was it probable that she should know much about epilepsy, and trusting him as she did, it was natural that she should never have reported what he had told her to any one who might have explained the truth.The only mistake he had made had been in not throwing away the poison, and refilling the bottle with pure water. He had miscalculated the anxiety she would feel to relieve him, if he ever had an attack again. The mistake had cost him his life.
Towards morning the house in Lafayette Place was very still again, though there were lights in the windows, and the shadows of people moving about within passed and repassed upon the shades. Only the policeman on his beat, looking up eastward and seeing the dawn in the sky and glancing at the windows, knew that there had been trouble in the house during the night, and guessed that for a day or two the blinds would not be raised. But all the great city began to breathe again, turning in its sleep, and waking drowsily in the cool spring dawning to begin its daily life of work and play and passion, unconscious of such trifles as the loss of a man, or the madness of a frantic woman’s grief.