"AND YOU COULD DO THIS, FELIX BRAND!"
The June afternoon was glowing with sunshine and all the world was
clothed in the sumptuous beauty of spring at its highest tide.
Henrietta Marne looked about her as she walked slowly up the street
toward her home with a heart more at ease than she had known for many
weeks. For she had that day secured a position at a salary equal to
that she was receiving from Felix Brand and was to begin work in it as
soon as the time should expire for which she had already given him
notice.
"Difficulties always disappear as soon as you tackle them in real
earnest," she was saying to herself as she smiled in pleasure of the
green world all about her and of the satisfaction that glowed in her
own breast. "Everything is coming out all right. When Hugh Gordon
comes back he'll be pleased to find that I've acted on his advice. I'm
sorry, awfully sorry, about Mr. Brand--it was so delightful working
for him at first, and for a long time--but if he will act like this,
what can he expect?"
Glancing upward at the windows of her mother's room as she entered her
gate she was surprised not to see there a loving face on the watch for
her coming. She opened the front door and the silence of the house
struck her heart with a chill of apprehension.
"Mother! Bella!" she called, a flutter of alarm in her tones. "Where
are you?"
"Miss Harry! Miss Harry!" came Delia's voice in response. "Do come
here, quick, quick!"
She rushed to the dining room and saw her sister stretched upon the
lounge and Delia kneeling beside her. On the floor was an empty bottle
bearing a death's head and cross-bones and "strychnine" upon its
label. She herself had bought it on their physician's prescription, as
a tonic for Mrs. Marne, only a few days before.
"What is it, Delia? Did she take that poison?" gasped Henrietta.
"Yes'm, she took it, the whole bottle full. I heard her scream in the
hall an' soon she come flyin' in here, an' she snatched up that bottle
an' swallowed all them pills before I knew what she was doin'. Then
she tumbled down an' I grabbed her an' stuck me finger down her
throat. She fought me and tried to push me away, but I wouldn't an' I
kep' on stickin' me finger way down an' after a while she spewed it
all up. Oh, the dear an' lovely darlin', an' her so merry an' happy
all the time! She won't die now, will she, Miss Harry?"
Henrietta had hastily mixed an emetic and together they forced it down
her throat.
"I hope she won't, Delia--I hope you've saved her. But we must have a
doctor now, at once. Run, Delia, and send the first person you can
find as fast as he can go for a doctor to come immediately--say it's a
case of life and death."
Delia rushed away and Henrietta, though her heart was full of anxiety
about her mother, hovered over Isabella, who lay with closed eyes and
ghastly face, moaning but seemingly unconscious.
Presently, fearful of what the silence of the house might mean with
regard to its other occupant, she left her sister and hurried
upstairs. There she found Mrs. Marne unconscious on the floor. But she
knew what should be done and met the crisis with quick and capable
action. And in a few moments more she heard in the hall below the
voice of their own physician, whom the maid had luckily encountered
nearby upon the street.
But scarcely had she supported Mrs. Marne to her bed when a shriek in
Delia's voice, followed by the cry of "Doctor! Miss Harry! Come
quick!" sent her on flying feet down the stairs again. Isabella, whom
she had thought unconscious, had risen and tottered to the kitchen.
There the maid, rushing on from the empty dining-room, had found her
beside the sink with a bottle of carbolic acid upraised, ready to pour
down her throat. Delia had struck it from her hand barely in time to
save her from all but a chance burn upon her cheek.
"She must have had some sudden and very serious shock," said the
physician later, as he and Henrietta stood beside the bed where
Isabella lay, at last sleeping quietly but moaning in her slumber.
"Her second attempt to kill herself shows how profound it must have
been. But she will come through all right now, I think, though her
recovery will perhaps be slow. What she will need more than anything
else will be to talk, and as soon as it is prudent you must persuade
her to confide in you and tell you the whole story of whatever it was
that led her to take this violent measure. Her nature is one that
needs sympathy and support, now far more than ever, and the sooner she
can be led to pour out all her trouble the sooner she will be able to
get her grip on life again. But of course you'll keep all the
knowledge of it that you can away from your mother. You'll have to use
your own discretion about that. She's had a pretty severe shock, too,
and, though she was getting on so well, it's likely to set her back a
good deal."
For days Isabella lay in her bed, like a broken, withered flower,
weeping much and asking between her sobs why they had not let her die.
But at last her sister's love and tender, persistent effort broke
through the wrappings of grief and shame that had kept her bound in
silence and in Henrietta's arms she sobbed out the pitiful tale that
had come to so tragic an ending.
"Oh, Harry," she said, "I can't understand why this awful thing should
have happened when I meant no harm at all. I can't see yet that there
was anything wrong in my going out with Mr. Brand now and then. It
wasn't many times, you know, and always he had some business errand
and just stopped for me to give me a little pleasure and to have some
company himself. I suppose he liked to have me go with him because I
was always jolly and kept him in good spirits. For I did notice,
Harry, that when he came he always seemed rather blue and anxious, and
then, after we had been out for a while and I had laughed and
chattered a lot, he would be more cheerful and by the time we would
get back he would seem quite himself again.
"Since I have been lying here and thinking and thinking, Harry, dear,"
she stopped and hid her face and a shiver of shame passed over her
body. Henrietta's arms tightened about her and she whispered
soothing, loving words. "I've been thinking, dear," Isabella went on
brokenly, "that perhaps that was why he always stopped somewhere and
ordered a bottle of champagne. Because it did put me in such gay
spirits and, I suppose, made me more lively and just that much better
company. And that, I guess, was what he wanted. I never drank but
little, never more than a glass or two, and I couldn't see any harm in
it, though you did think I oughtn't. Sometimes I held back and asked
him if he thought I'd better, and he always laughed at me and urged me
on and made it seem silly in me to have scruples.
"But that last day--" again she stopped and broke into a passion of
sobbing that took all of Henrietta's loving sympathy and tenderness to
soothe. "You asked me not to go again," she went on after a while in
trembling tones, "and when he came mother, too, thought I'd better
not. Oh, Harry, how I wish I had heeded you and refused to go! I could
have made some excuse, and then--Oh, Harry, Harry, I don't want to
live any longer!"
"There, there, darling!" soothed her sister. "Try to control yourself
and tell me all that happened. I'm sure it couldn't have been anything
so very bad. Tell me all about it, dear, and then you'll feel better."
"Mr. Brand seemed so different from what he used to be," she presently
went on, "and I began to understand what you told us about the change
in him. I was just a little afraid after we started, he seemed to be
in such an ugly temper and, oh, Harry, what a bad man he looks now!
I begged him to bring me home again after a little while, but he
wouldn't and said his business was too important to be put aside for
my whims.
"I was a little frightened and a good deal anxious and so of course I
wasn't as gay as usual, and that seemed to make him angry. Then he
said we'd stop and have some wine and I thought perhaps it would be
best to humor him and then maybe I could persuade him to bring me
home. I meant not to drink more than a glass, but he made me--perhaps
he thought it would make me more lively. Anyway, he was so rough in
his manner and looks and there was such an angry gleam in his eyes
that I was too frightened not to do what he told me to. And by the
time we got home I was--oh, Harry, I can't say it--and Warren met
me as I came in and saw--and he said--an awful thing--and rushed
away--and it's all over, Harry--I can never see him again--it's all
over."
"Don't think that, yet, Bella, dear. I'll write to him and explain it
all, and he'll know it wasn't your fault. He won't blame you. He's too
kind-hearted and good not to see that it was hasty of him to act as he
did."
"That won't matter, Harry. I'd like him to know that I'm not the kind
of woman he seemed to think. But I could never, never look him in the
face again after--that--after what he saw and said. I'd always think
he was thinking of it. It's all over, Harry, it's all over."
When at last Henrietta had soothed her sister to sleep she stood
beside the bed looking down at Isabella's grief-stricken face and
listening to the sobs that now and then convulsed her throat.
"And you could do this, Felix Brand!" she said bitterly. "You, that we
thought so noble and good! Hugh Gordon is right--you are a wicked man,
and if you are the one he meant you don't deserve to live!"