"You will never be alone, unprotected, while he is there."
And she tried to smile through the tears she could not always keep back.
Gerard Fane was often with them. He sunk the specialist in the friend,
and not a day passed without a visit from him to the great studio, in
which the sculptor and his wife almost lived.
He was unwearied in his attendance upon the sick man, unwavering in his
attempts to soothe his sufferings. But, in reality, and almost against
his will, the doctor numbered each breath his patient drew, noted with a
furious eagerness each sign of failing vitality, bent his ear to catch
every softest note in the prolonged _diminuendo_ of this human symphony.
When Fane saw Mrs Brune leaning over her husband, touching the damp brow
with her cool, soft fingers, or the dry, parched lips with her soft,
rosy lips, he turned away in a sick fury, and said to himself:--
"He is dying, he is dying. It will soon be over."
For with a desperate love had entered into him a desperate jealousy, and
even while he ministered to Brune he hated him.
And the statue, with blind eyes, observed the drama enacted by those
three people, the two men and the woman, till the curtain fell and one
of the actors made his final exit.
Fane's nerves still played him tricks sometimes. He could not look at
the statue without a shudder; and while Brune imaginatively read into
the marble face love and protection, the doctor saw there menace and
hatred. He came to feel almost jealous of the statue, because Sydney
loved it and fell in with her husband's fancy that his life was fast
ebbing into and vitalising the marble limbs, that his soul would watch
her from the eyes that were now without expression and thought.
When Fane entered the studio, he always involuntarily cast a glance at
the white figure--at first, a glance of shuddering distaste, then, as he
acknowledged to himself his love for Sydney, a glance of defiance, of
challenge.
One evening, after a day of many appointments and much mental stress and
strain, he drove up to Ilbury Road, was admitted, and shown as usual
into the studio. He found it empty. Only the statue greeted him silently
in the soft lamplight, that scarcely accomplished more than the defining
of the gloom.
"My master is upstairs, sir," said the footman. "I will tell him you are
here."
In a moment Sydney entered, with a lagging step and pale cheeks. Without
thinking of the usual polite form of greeting, she said to Fane, "He is
much worse to-day. There is a change in him, a horrible change. Dr Fane,
just now when I was talking to him it seemed to me that he was a long
way off. I caught hold of his hands to reassure myself. I held them. I
heard him speaking, but it was as if his words came from a distance.
What does it mean? He is not--he is not--"
She looked the word he could not speak.
Fane made her sit down.
"I will go to him immediately," he said. "I may be able to do
something."
"Yes, go--do go!" she exclaimed with feverish excitement.
Then suddenly she sprang up, and seizing his hands with hers, she said
in a piercing voice: "You are a great doctor. Surely--surely you can
keep this one life for me a little longer."
As they stood, Fane was facing the statue, which was at her back, and
while she spoke his eyes were drawn from the woman he loved to the
marble thing he senselessly hated. It struck him that a ghastly change
had stolen over it. A sudden flicker of absolute life surely infused it,
quickened it even while she spoke, stole through the limbs one by one,
welled up to the eyes as light pierces from a depth, flowed through all
the marble. A pulse beat in the dead, cold heart. A mind rippled into
the rigid, watching face. There was no absolute movement, and yet there
was the sense of stir. Fane, absorbed in horror, seemed to watch an act
of creation, to see life poured from some invisible and unknown source
into the bodily chamber that had been void and dark.
Motionless he saw the statue dead; motionless he saw the statue live.
He drew his hands from Sydney's. He was too powerfully impressed to
speak, but she looked up into his face, turned, and followed his eyes.
She, too, observed the change, for her lips parted, and a wild
amazement shone in her eyes. Then she touched Fane's arm, and whispered,
rather in awe than in horror, "Go--go to him. See if anything has
happened. I will stay and watch here."
With a hushed tread Fane left the studio, passed through the hall,
ascended the stairs to the sculptor's room. Outside the door he
hesitated for a moment. He was trembling. He heard a clock ticking
within. It sounded very loud, like a hammer beating in his ears. He
pushed the door open at length, and entered. Brune's tall figure was
sitting in an armchair, bowed over a table on which lay an open Art
magazine.
His head lay hidden on his arms, which were crossed.
Fane raised the face and turned it up towards him.
It was the face of a dead man.
He looked at it, and smiled.
Then he stole down again to the studio, where Sydney was still standing.
"Yes?" she said interrogatively, as he entered.
"He is dead," Fane answered.
She only bowed her head, as if in assent. She stood a moment, then she
turned her tearless eyes to him, and said:--
"Why could not you save him?"
"Because I am human," Fane answered.
"And we did not say good-bye," she said.
Fane was strung up. Conflicting feelings found a wild playground in his
soul. His nerves were in a state of abnormal excitement, and something
seemed to let go in him--the something that holds us back, normally,
from mad follies. He suddenly caught Sydney's hand, and in a choked
voice said:--
"He is dead. Think a little of the living."
She looked at him, wondering.
"Think of the living that love you. He neither hates nor loves any more.
Sydney! Sydney!"
As she understood his meaning she wrung her hand out of his, and said,
as one trying to clear the road for reason:--
"You love me, and he bought you to keep him alive. Why, then--"
A sick, white change came over her face.
"Sydney! Sydney!" he said.
"Why, then he bought death from you. Ah!"
She put her hand on the bell, and kept it there till the servant hurried
in.
"Show Dr Fane out," she said. "He will not come here again."
And Fane, seeing the uselessness of protest, ready to strike himself for
his folly, went without a word. Only, as he went, he cast one look at
the statue. Was there not the flicker of a smile in its marble eyes?