XIX

Emily awoke shivering; the fire had gone out, the room was in darkness, and

the house seemed strange and lonely. She rang the bell, and asked the

servant if he had seen Mr. Price. Mr. Price had gone out late in the

afternoon, and had not come in. Where was Mrs. Bentley? Mrs. Bentley had

gone out earlier in the afternoon, and had not come in.

She suspected the truth at once. They had gone to London to be married. The

servant lighted a candle, made up the fire, and asked if she would wait

dinner. Emily made no answer, but sat still, her eyes fixed, looking into

space. The man lingered at the door. At that moment her little dog bounded

into the room, and, in a paroxysm of delight, jumped on his mistress's lap.

She took him in her arms and kissed him, and this somewhat reassured the

alarmed servant, who then thought it was no more than one of Miss Emily's

queer ways. Dandy licked his mistress's face, and rubbed his rough head

against her shoulder. He seemed more than usually affectionate that

evening. Suddenly she caught him up in her arms, and kissed him

passionately. 'Not even for your sake, dearest Dandy, can I bear with it

any longer! We are all very selfish, and it is selfish of me to leave you,

but I cannot help it.' Then a doubt crossed her mind, and she raised her

head and listened to it. It seemed difficult to believe that he had told

her a falsehood--cruel, wicked falsehood--he who had been so kind. And

yet---- Ah! yes, she knew well enough that it was all true; something told

her so. The lancinating pain of doubt passed away, and she remained

thinking of the impossibility of bearing any longer with the life.

An hour passed, and the servant came with the news that Mr. Price and Mrs.

Bentley had gone to London; they had taken the half-past five train. 'Yes,'

she said, 'I know they have.' Her voice was calm. There was a strange

hollow ring in it, and the servant wondered. A few minutes after, dinner

was announced; and to escape observation and comment she went into the

dining-room, tasted the soup, and took a slice of mutton on her plate. She

could not eat it. She gave it to Dandy. It was the last time she should

feed him. How hungry he was! She hoped he would not care to eat it; he

would not if he knew she was going to leave him.

In the drawing-room he insisted on being nursed; and alone, amid the faded

furniture, watched over by the old portraits, her pale face fixed and her

pale hands clasping her beloved dog, she sat thinking, brooding over the

unhappiness, the incurable unhappiness, of her little life. She was

absorbed in self, and did not rail against Hubert, or even Julia. Their

personalities had somehow dropped out of her mind, and merely represented

forces against which she found herself unable any longer to contend. Nor

was she surprised at what had happened. There had always been in her some

prescience of her fate. She and unhappiness had always seemed so

inseparable, that she had never found it difficult to believe that this

last misfortune would befall her. She had thought it over, and had decided

that it would be unendurable to live any longer, and had borne many a

terrible insomnia so that she might collect sufficient chloral to take her

out of her misery; and now, as she sat thinking, she remembered that she

had never, never been happy. Oh! the miserable evenings she used to spend,

when a child, between her father and mother, who could not agree--why, she

never understood. But she used to have to listen to her mother addressing

insulting speeches to her father in a calm, even voice that nothing could

alter; and, though both were dead and years divided her from that time, the

memory survived, and she could see it all again--that room, the very paper

on the wall, and her father being gradually worked up into a frenzy.

When she was left an orphan, Mr. Burnett had adopted her, and she

remembered the joy of coming to Ashwood. She had thought to find happiness

there; but there, as at home, fate had gone against her, and she was hardly

eighteen when Mr. Burnett had asked her to marry him. She had loved that

old man, but he had not loved her; for when she had refused to marry him he

had broken all his promises and left her penniless, careless of what might

become of her. Then she had given her whole heart to Julia, and Julia, too,

had deceived her. And had she not loved Hubert?--no one would ever know how

much; she did not know herself,--and had he not lied to her? Oh, it was

very cruel to deceive a poor little girl in this heartless way! There was

no heart in the world, that was it--and she was all heart; and her heart

had been trampled on ever since she could remember. And when they came back

they would revenge themselves upon her--insult her with their happiness;

perhaps insist on sending her away.

Dandy drowsed on her lap. The servant brought in the tea, and when he

returned to the kitchen he said he had never seen any one look so

ghost-like as Miss Emily. The clock ticked loudly in the silence of the old

room, the hands moving slowly towards ten. She waited for the hour to

strike; it was then that she usually went to bed. Her thoughts moved as in

a nightmare; and paramount in this chaotic mass of sensation was an acute

sense of the deception that had been practised on her; with the

consciousness, now firm and unalterable, that it had become impossible for

her to live. When the clock struck she got up from her chair, and the

movement seemed to react on her brain; her thoughts unclouded, and she went

up-stairs thinking clearly of her love of this old house. The old gentleman

in the red coat, his hand on his sword, looked on her benignly; and the

lady playing the spinet smiled as sweetly as was her wont. Emily held up

the candle to the picture of the windmill. She had always loved that

picture, and the sad thought came that she should never see it again.

Dandy, who had galloped up-stairs, stood looking through the banisters,

wagging his tail.

The moment she got into her room she wrote the following note: 'I have

taken an overdose of chloral. My life was too miserable to be borne any

longer. I forgive those who have caused my unhappiness, and I hope they

will forgive me any unhappiness I have caused them.' They were nothing to

her now; they were beyond her hate, and the only pang she felt was parting

with her beloved Dandy. There he stood looking at her, standing on the edge

of the bed, waiting for her to cover him up and put him to sleep in his own

corner. 'Yes, Dandy, in a moment, dear--have patience.' She looked round

the little room, and, remembering all that she had suffered there, thought

that the walls must be saturated with grief, like a sponge.

It was a common thing at that time for her to stand before the glass and

address such words as these to herself: 'My poor girl, how I pity you, how

I pity you!' And now, looking at herself very sadly, she said, 'My poor

girl, I shall never pity you any more!' Having hung up her dress, she

fetched a chair and took various doses of chloral out of the hollow top of

her wardrobe, where she had hidden things all her life--sweets, novels,

fireworks. They more than half-filled the tumbler; and, looking at the

sticky, white liquid, she thought with repugnance of drinking so much of

it. But, wanting to make quite sure of death, she resolved to take it all,

and she undressed quickly. She was very cold when she got into bed. Then a

thought struck her, and she got out of bed to add a postscript to her

letter. 'I have only one request to make. I hope Dandy will always be taken

care of.' Surprised that she had not wrapped him up and told him he was to

go to sleep, the dog stood on the edge of the bed, watching her so

earnestly that she wondered if he knew what she was going to do. 'No, you

don't know, dear--do you? If you did, you wouldn't let me do it; you'd bark

the house down, I know you would, my own darling.' Clasping him to her

breast, she smothered him with kisses, then put him away in his corner,

covering him over for the night.

She felt neither grief nor fear. Through much suffering, thought and

sensation were, to a great extent, dead in her; and, in a sort of emotive

numbness, she laid her candlestick in its usual place on the chair by her

bedside; and, sitting up in bed, her night-dress carefully buttoned,

holding the tumbler half-filled with chloral, she tried to take a

dispassionate survey of her life. She thought of what she had endured, and

what she would have to endure if she did not take it. Then she felt she

must go, and without hesitation drank off the chloral. She placed the

tumbler by the candlestick, and lay down, remembering vaguely that a long

time ago she had decided that suicide was not wrong in itself. The last

thing she remembered was the clock striking eleven.

For half an hour she slept like stone. Then her eyes opened, and they told

of sickness now in motion within her. And, strangely enough, through the

overpowering nausea rising from her stomach to her brain, the thought that

she was not going to die appeared perfectly clear, and with it a sense of

disappointment; she would have to begin it all over again. It was with

great difficulty that she struck a match and lighted a candle. It seemed

impossible to get up. At last she managed to slip her legs out of bed, and

found she could stand, and through the various assaults of retching she

thought of the letter: it must be destroyed; and, leaning in the corner

against the wall and the wardrobe, she tried to recover herself. A dull,

deep sleep was pressing on her brain, and she thought she would never be

able to cross the room to where the letter was. Dandy looked out of his

rug; she caught sight of his bright eyes.

On cold and shaky feet she attempted to make her way towards the letter;

but the room heaved up at her, and, fearing she should fall, and knowing if

she did that she would not be able to regain her feet, she clung to the

toilette-table. She must destroy that letter: if it were found, they would

watch her; and, however impossible her life might become, she would not be

able to escape from it. This consideration gave her strength for a final

effort. She tore the letter into very small pieces, and then, clinging to a

chair, strove to grasp the rail of the bed; but the bed rolled worse than

any ship. Making a supreme effort, she got in; and then, neither dreams nor

waking thoughts, but oblivion complete. Hours and hours passed, and when

she opened her eyes her maid stood over the bed, looking at her.

'Oh, miss, you looked so tired and ill that I didn't wake you. You do seem

poorly, miss. It is nearly two o'clock. Should you like to sleep a little

longer, or shall I bring you up some breakfast?'

'No, no, no, thank you. I couldn't touch anything. I'm feeling wretched;

but I'll get up.'

The maid tried to dissuade her; but Emily got out of bed, and allowed

herself to be dressed. She was very weak--so weak that she could hardly

stand up at the washstand; and the maid had to sponge her face and neck.

But when she had drunk a cup of tea and eaten a little piece of toast, she

said she felt better, and was able to walk into the drawing-room. She

thought no more of death, nor of her troubles; thought drowned in her; and

in a passive, torpid state she sat looking into the fire till dinner-time,

hardly caring to bestow a casual caress on Dandy, who seemed conscious of

his mistress's neglect, for, in his sly, coaxing way, he sometimes came and

rubbed himself against her feet. She went into the dining-room, and the

servant was glad to see that she finished her soup, and, though she hardly

tasted it, she finished a wing of a chicken, and also the glass of wine

which the man pressed upon her. Half an hour after, when he brought out the

tea, he found her sitting on her habitual chair nursing her dog, and

staring into the fire so drearily that her look frightened him, and he

hesitated before he gave her the letter which had just come up from the

town; but it was marked 'Immediate.'