In the same room one afternoon a fortnight later, Oswyn sat,
absently correcting the draft catalogue of his exhibition, when he
received an intimation, which for some days he had expected--his
friend felt strong enough to see him. He put down his pen, glancing
up inquiringly at the bearer of this message, a young woman in the
neat, depressing garb of a professional nurse; but for answer she
slightly shook her head with the disinterested complacency of the
woman used to sickness, who would encourage no false notions.
"It is only temporary," she said with deliberation. "I fear there
has been no real improvement; the patient is steadily losing
strength. Only he insists on seeing you; and when they are like
that, one must give them what they want. I must beg you to excite
him as little as possible."
Oswyn bowed a dreary assent, and followed her up the obscure
staircase, which creaked sullenly beneath his tread. And he stood
for a few moments in silence, until his eyes were accustomed to the
darkened room, when the nurse had gently closed the door behind him,
leaving him alone with his friend.
He almost believed, at first, that Rainham must be sleeping, he lay
back with such extreme quietness in the large old-fashioned bed. And
seeing him there in that new helplessness, he realized, almost for
the first time, how little there was to say or to hope.
He had never, indeed, been ignorant that his friend's hold on life
was precarious; some such scene as this had often been in his mind
before; only, insensibly, Rainham's own jesting attitude towards his
disabilities had half imposed on him, and made that possibility
appear intangible and remote. But now, in view of the change which
the last fortnight had wrought in him, he could cherish no
illusions; the worst that was possible was all now that one could
expect. He was a charming, generous, clever fellow, and he was
dying; that was a thing one could not get over.
He moved across to the bedside, and Rainham's eyes suddenly opened.
They were immensely large, strangely brilliant; his face had fallen
in, was so white and long and lean, that these tremendous eyes
seemed almost all of the man that was still to be accounted.
Oswyn derived the impression from them that, while his friend's body
had been failing, his mind had never been more vigorous; that,
during these long nights and days, when he had lain so motionless,
in so continued a silence, it had only been because he was thinking
with redoubled intensity.
Presently, as Rainham's lips moved slightly, he drew nearer, and
bent his head over him.
"Don't talk," he said nervously, as Rainham appeared to struggle
with the difficulty of utterance; "don't tire yourself. I've only
come to look at you. Wait until you are a little stronger."
Rainham raised his hand impatiently.
"It won't tire me, and tired or not there are things I must speak
of. Is she in the room--the nurse?"
He spoke slowly, and with a visible effort; but his voice, although
it scarcely rose above a whisper, and seemed shadowy and far away,
was deliberate and distinct. Oswyn shook his head.
"She has given me half an hour; you must not abuse it. I have
promised to keep you quiet. I really believe you are a little
better."
"I am well enough for what I want--to talk to you. After that, I
will be as quiet as you like, for as long as you like. Only I have
been keeping myself for this all these last few days that I have
lain here like a log, listening to the ticking of that merciless
clock. They thought I was sleeping, unconscious, very likely. I have
been collecting myself, thinking immensely, waiting for this."
"I have always been here," said the other simply, "in case you
should send for me. I have been painting Margot. She is a dear
little soul; she misses you sadly."
"It is of her partly that I must speak. I have left all I can to
her. If you will sometimes give her a thought; she is absolutely
without belongings. I don't wish to make it a charge on you, a
burden, only sometimes it has struck me lately that you were
interested in the child, that you liked her, and I have taken the
liberty of making you a sort of guardian. She could live with the
Bullens----"
"Oh, I like her--I like her!" cried Oswyn, with a short laugh. Then
he went on more seriously, half-apologetically, as though the other
might have found his mirth ill-timed: "My dear friend, it is a great
honour, a great pleasure, you give me. I, too, have no belongings,
no interests; this might be a great one. I never thought of it
before, I must admit; but I will adopt her. She shall live with me,
if it's necessary. Only, ah! let us hope still that this may not be
necessary, that it is premature."
The other held up a thin hand deprecatingly.
"Ah, don't let us fence with the truth. I have always seen it
coming, and why should I lie about it, now that it is come? When one
is as tired as I am, there is only one other thing which
happens--one dies. You don't suppose I should have sent for you like
this if it hadn't been so?"
He lay very still for a moment or two with his eyes closed, as if
the effort which speech cost him was considerable. At last he said
abruptly:
"There are things you should know; she is Lightmark's child."
Oswyn had seated himself on a low chair by the bed; he kept his head
averted, as does a priest who hears confessions; and he gazed with
absent eyes at the fire which burned sulkily, at the row of
medicine-bottles on the mantelpiece, at all the dreary paraphernalia
of a sick-room.
"Yes, she is Lightmark's child," continued Rainham; "and the mother
was that girl whom we found two years ago--do you remember?--the
night of your first visit here outside the gates. She called herself
Mrs. Crichton. It's a miserable story; I only discovered it quite
recently."
Oswyn drew in a deep breath, which sounded like a sigh in the
strangely still room.
It did not so much suggest surprise as the indefinable relief which
a man feels when accident permits him to express cognizance of some
fact of which he has long been inwardly assured.
"I knew that long ago," he said at last. "I suspected it when I
first saw the girl; but I said nothing to you at the time; perhaps I
was wrong. Afterwards, when we knew each other better, there seemed
no occasion; I had almost forgotten the episode."
"Yes," went on the other faintly; "we have all made mistakes--I more
than most folk, perhaps."
Then he asked suddenly:
"Had you any motive, any reason for your suspicion?"
"It was the name Crichton--the man's pseudonym on the _Outcry_. It
flashed across me then that she was after Lightmark. He was just
severing his connection with the paper. He had always kept it very
close, and I dare say I was one of the few persons who were in the
secret. That is why, at the bottom of his heart, he is afraid of
me--afraid that I shall bring it up. It's the one thing he is
ashamed of."
"I see, I see," cried Rainham wearily; "the wretched fellow!"
"Dear man, why should we think of him?" broke in Oswyn; "he isn't
worth it. Now of all seasons can't we find a topic less unsavoury?"
"You don't understand," continued Rainham, after a slight pause in
his thin, far-away voice. "I am not thinking of him, or only
indirectly. I have found him out, and I should be content enough to
forget him if it were possible. Only, unfortunately, he happens to
be inextricably entangled with all that is most sacred, most
important to me. It is of his wife--Mrs. Lightmark: do you know
her?--that I think."
Oswyn shook his head.
"I know her only by sight, as we all do; she is very beautiful."
"I don't mind telling you that I have considered her a great
deal--yes, immensely. I should not speak of it--of her--unless I
were dying; but, after all, when one is dying, there are things one
may say. I have held my peace so long. And since I have been lying
here I have had time to ponder it, to have thought it all out. It
seems to me that simply for her sake someone should know
before--before the occasion passes--just the plain truth. Of course,
Sylvester by rights ought to be the man, only I can't ask him to
come to me--there are reasons; and, besides, he is an ass."
"Yes, he is an ass," admitted Oswyn simply; "that is reason enough."
And just then there flashed into his mind the one notable occasion
on which the barrister had run across him, his intriguing letter and
the ineffectual visit which had followed it--ineffectual as he had
supposed, but which might nevertheless, he reflected now, have had
its results, ironical and inopportune enough. It was a memory of no
importance, and yet it seemed just then to be the last of a long
train of small lights that led to a whole torch of illumination, in
which the existence of little Margot and her quaint juxtaposition
with his friend, which in his general easy attitude towards the
fantastic he had not troubled to investigate, was amply and
generously justified. He turned round suddenly, caught his friend's
thin hand, which he held.
"Ah, don't trouble to explain, to make me understand," he murmured.
"It's enough that I understand you have done something very fine,
that you are the most generous of men."
Rainham was silent for a moment: he had no longer the physical
capacity of smiling; but there was a gleam of the old humour in his
eyes, as he replied:
"Only the most fortunate--in my friends; they are so clever, they
see things so quickly. You make this very easy."
Oswyn did not shift for a while from his position: he was touched,
moved more deeply than he showed; and there was a trace of emotion
in his voice--of something which resembled envy.
"The happy woman! It is she who ought to know, to understand."
"It is for that I wished to tell you," went on Rainham faintly,
"that she might know some day, that there might be just one person
who could give her the truth in its season. Yes! I wanted her to be
always in ignorance of what she had made of her life, of the kind of
man she has married. She was such a child; it seemed too pitiful. It
was for that I did it, damned myself in her eyes, to give her a
little longer--a sort of respite. Very likely I made a mistake!
Those things can't be concealed for ever, and the longer the
illusion lasts, the more bitter the awakening. Only if it might
serve her later, in her darkest hour, as a sort of after-thought, it
won't have been quite vain. That is how I see it now: I want her to
know immensely--to know that she has always been unspeakably dear to
me. Ah, don't mistake me! It's not for myself, it's not yet; I shall
have done with life, done with love, by that time. When one is as
tired as I am, death seems very good; only it hasn't those things.
Nothing can make any difference to me; I am thinking of her, that
some day or other it will be for her benefit to understand, to
remember----"
"To remember?"
"Yes, to remember," repeated Rainham quietly, "that her unhappiness
has its compensation; if she has been bitterly wronged, she has also
been fervently loved."
The other said nothing for a long time, simply considered the
situation which Rainham's words, and still more even than anything
that he had said, the things that he had not said, had strikingly
revealed to him, leaving him, at the last, in a state of mingled
emotions over which, perhaps, awe predominated.
At last he remarked abruptly:
"It _is_ you who are fortunate; you are so nearly done with it all;
you've such a long rest before you." Then he added with a new
solemnity: "You may trust me, Rainham. When it is seasonable, Mrs.
Lightmark shall know the truth. Perhaps she will come to me for it--
Heaven knows!--stranger things have happened. You have my hand upon
it; I think you are right."
"Right? You mean that it wasn't a mistake, a _bêtise_?"
"_Felix culpa_! If it was a mistake it was a very fine one."
"Ah! I don't regret it," said Rainham, "only----"
"Only it was a mistake to suppose that life was to be arranged. That
was all I meant. Yes; I don't believe in much, but I believe in
necessity. You can't get over it yourself, and you can't--no, not
for all your goodwill, your generosity--get over it for another.
There are simply inevitable results of irrevocable causes, and no
place for repentance or restitution. And yet you help her, not as
you meant to, and not now; but ah, you help her!"
"So long as I do that----" murmured Rainham, with a deep inhalation,
closing his eyes wearily, in a manner which revealed how severely
the intimate strain of conversation had told upon him.
Oswyn waited a little longer, in half expectation of his further
utterance; but Rainham made no sign, lay quite motionless and
hushed, his hands clasped outside of the counterpane as if already
in the imitation of death; then the other rose and made a quiet
exit, imagining that his friend slept, or would soon sleep.
And yet actually, in spite of the extreme physical weariness which
had gradually stolen over him, dulling his senses, so that he was
hardly conscious of Oswyn's departure, or of the subdued entrance of
the nurse, who had been discreetly waiting for it, Rainham's mind
was still keenly vigilant; and it was in the relief of a certain new
lucidity, an almost hieratic calm, that he reviewed that recent
interview, in which he had so deliberately unburdened himself. It
seemed as if, in his great weakness, the ache of his old desire, his
fever of longing, bad suddenly left him, giving place (as though the
literal wasting away of his body had really given freer access to
that pure spirit, its prisoner), to a love now altogether purged of
passion, and become strangely tolerable and sweet.