'There is no happiness on earth for him who has not accomplished his task.'
'Shall we be happy? I wonder. We have both suffered,' she said, 'we are
both tired of suffering, and it is only right that we should be happy.'
'Yes, we shall be happy, I will be happy. It shall be my pleasure to attend
to you, to give you all your desire. But you said just now that you had
suffered. I have told you my past. Tell me yours. I know nothing except
that you were unhappily married.'
'There is little else to know; a woman's life is not adventurous, like a
man's. I have not known the excitement of "first nights," nor the striving
and the craving for an artistic ideal. My life has been essentially a
woman's life,--suppression of self and monotonous duty, varied by
heart-breaking misfortune. I married when I was very young; before I had
even begun to think about life I found---- But why distress these hours
with painful memories?'
'It is pleasant to look back on the troubles we have passed through.'
'Well, I learnt in one year the meaning of three terrible words--poverty,
neglect, and cruelty. In the second year of my marriage my husband died of
drink, and I was left a widow at twenty, entirely penniless. I went to live
with my sister, and she was so poor that I had to support myself by giving
music-lessons. You think you know the meaning of poverty: you may; but you
do not know what a young woman who wants to earn her bread honestly has to
put up with, trudging through wet and cold, mile after mile, to give a
lesson, paid for at the rate of one-and-sixpence or two shillings an hour.'
Julia took her eyes from her husband's face, and looked dreamily into the
fire. Then, raising her face from the flame, she looked around with the air
of one seeking for some topic of conversation. At that moment she caught
sight of the corner of a letter lying on the mantelpiece. Reaching forth
her hand, she took it. It was addressed to her husband.
'Here is a letter for you, Hubert.... Why, it comes from Ashwood. Yes, and
it is in the hand-writing of one of the servants. Oh, it is Black's
writing! It may be about Emily. Something may have happened to her. Open it
quickly.'
'That is not probable. Nothing can have happened to her.'
'Look and see. Be quick!'
Hubert opened the letter, and he had not read three lines when Julia's face
caught expression from his, which had become overcast.
'It is bad news, I know. Something has happened. What is it? Don't keep me
waiting. The suspense is worse than the truth.'
'It is very awful, Julia. Don't give way.'
'Tell me what it is. Is she dead?
'Yes; she is dead.' Julia got up from her husband's knees and stood by the
mantelpiece, leaning upon it. 'It is more than mere death.'
'What do you mean? She killed herself--is that it?'
'Yes; she drowned herself the night before last in the lake.'
'Oh, it is too horrible! Then we have murdered her. Our unpardonable
selfishness! I cannot bear it!' Her eyes closed and her lips trembled.
Hubert caught her in his arms, laid her on the chair, and, fetching some
water in a tumbler, sprinkled her face; then he held it to her lips; she
drank a little, and revived. 'I'm not going to faint. Tell me--tell me when
the unfortunate child----'
'They don't know exactly. She was in the drawing-room at tea-time, and the
drawing-room was empty when Black went round three-quarters of an hour
after to lock up. He thought she had gone to her room. It was the gardener
who brought in the news in the morning about nine.'
'Oh, good God!'
'Black says he noticed that she looked very depressed the day before, but
he thought she was looking better when he brought in the tea.'
'It was then she got my letter. Does Black say anything about giving her a
letter?'
'Yes, that is to say----'
'I knew it! I knew it!' said Julia; and her eyes were wild with grief, and
she rocked herself to and fro. 'It was that letter that drove her to it. It
was most ill-advised. I told you so. You should have written. She would
have borne the news better had it come from you. My instinct told me so,
but I let myself be persuaded. I told you how it would happen. I told you.
You can't say I didn't. Oh! why did you persuade me--why--why--why?'
'Julia dear, we are not responsible. We were in nowise bound to sacrifice
our happiness to her----'
'Don't say a word! I say we were bound. Life can never be the same to me
again.'
Hubert did not answer. Nothing he could say would be of the slightest
avail, and he feared to say anything that might draw from her expressions
which she would afterwards regret. He had never seen her moved like this,
nor did he believe her capable of such agitation, and the contrast of her
present with her usual demeanour made it the more impressive.
'Oh,' she said, leaning forward and looking at him fixedly, 'take this
nightmare off my brain, or I shall go mad! It isn't true; it cannot be
true. But--oh! yes, it's true enough.'
'Like you, Julia, I am overwhelmed; but we can do nothing.'
'Do nothing!' she cried; 'do nothing! We can do nothing but pray for
her--we who sacrificed her.' And she slipped on her knees and burst into a
passionate fit of weeping.
'The best thing that could have happened,' thought Hubert; and his thought
said, clearly and precisely, 'Yes; it is awful, shocking, cruel beyond
measure!'
The fire was sinking, and he built it up quietly, ashamed of this proof of
his regard for physical comfort, and hoping it would pass unnoticed. His
pain expressed itself less vehemently than Julia's; but for all that his
mind ached. He remembered how he had taken everything from her--fortune,
happiness, and now life itself. It was an appalling tragedy--one of those
senseless cruelties which we find nature constantly inventing. A thought
revealed an unexpected analogy between him and his victim. In both lives
there had been a supreme desire, and both had failed. 'Hers was the better
part,' he said bitterly. 'Those whose souls are burdened with desire that
may not be gratified had better fling the load aside. They are fools who
carry it on to the end.... If it were not for Julia----'
Then he sought to determine what were his exact feelings. He knew he was
infinitely sorry for poor Emily; but he could not stir himself into a
paroxysm of grief, and, ashamed of his inability to express his feelings,
he looked at Julia, who still wept.
'No doubt,' he thought, 'women have keener feelings than we have.'
At that moment Julia got up from her knees. She had brushed away her tears.
Her face was shaken with grief.
'My heart is breaking,' she said. 'This is too cruel--too cruel! And on my
wedding night.'
Their eyes met; and, divining each other's thought, each felt ashamed, and
Julia said--
'Oh, what am I saying? This dreadful selfishness, from which we cannot
escape, that is with us even in such a moment as this! That poor child gone
to her death, and yet amid it all we must think of ourselves.'
'My dear Julia, we cannot escape from our human nature; but, for all that,
our grief is sincere. We can do nothing. Do not grieve like that.'
'And why not? She was my best friend. How have I repaid her? Alas! as woman
always repays woman for kindness done. The old story. I cannot forgive
myself. No, no! do not kiss me! I cannot bear it. Leave me. I can see
nothing but Emily's reproachful face.' She covered her face in her hands
and sobbed again.
The same scenes repeated themselves over and over again. The same fits of
passionate grief; the same moment of calm, when words impregnated with self
dropped from their lips. The same nervous sense that something of the dead
girl stood between them. And still they sat by the fire, weary with sorrow,
recrimination, long regret, and pain. They could grieve no more; and before
dawn sleep pressed upon their eyelids, and at the end of a long silence he
dozed--a pale, transparent sleep, through which the realities of life
appeared almost as plainly as before. Suddenly he awoke, and he shivered in
the chill room. The fire was sinking; dawn divided the window-curtains. He
looked at his wife. She seemed to him very beautiful as she slept, her face
turned a little on one side, and again he asked himself if he loved her.
Then, going to the window, he drew the curtains softly, so as not to awaken
her; and as he stood watching a thin discoloured day breaking over the
roofs, it again seemed to him that Emily's suicide was the better part.
'Those who do not perform their task in life are never happy.' The words
drilled themselves into his brain with relentless insistency. He felt a
terrible emptiness within him which he could not fill. He looked at his
wife and quailed a little at the thought that had suddenly come upon him.
She was something like himself--that was why he had married her. We are
attracted by what is like ourselves. Emily's passion might have stirred
him. Now he would have to settle down to live with Julia, and their similar
natures would grow more and more like one another. Then, turning on his
thoughts, he dismissed them. They were the morbid feverish fancies of an
exceptional, of a terrible night. He opened the window quietly so as not to
awaken his wife. And in the melancholy greyness of the dawn he looked down
into the street and wondered what the end would be.
He did not think that he would live long. Disappointed men--those who have
failed in their ambition--do not live to make old bones. There were men
like him in every profession--the arts are crowded with them. He had met
barristers and soldiers and clergy-men, just like himself. One hears of
their deaths--failure of the heart's action, paralysis of the brain, a
hundred other medical causes--but the real cause is, lack of appreciation.
He would hang on for another few years, no doubt; during that time he must
try to make his wife happy. His duty was now to be a good husband, at all
events, there was that.
His wife lay asleep in the arm-chair, and fearing she might catch cold, he
came into the room closing the window very gently behind him.