'I am not mad,--I would to heaven I were!
For then 'tis like I should forget myself:
Oh, if I could, what grief should I forget!
Preach some philosophy to make me mad,
And thou shalt be canonised, cardinal;
For, being not mad, but sensible of grief,
My reasonable part produces reason
How I may be deliver'd of these woes,
And teaches me to kill or hang myself:
If I were mad, I should forget my son;
Or madly think a babe of clouts were he.
I am not mad; too well, too well I feel
The different plague of each calamity.'
In the days that follow, the death of Franky Harborough, which at an
ordinary time would have been the sorrowful main occupation of Peggy's
thoughts, has to retire into the background of her mind. In the
foreground there is room for but one absorbing topic. Prue is decidedly
worse. In an illness such as hers--which is less a definite disease than
a decline all round, a bowing to its final ruin of a building whose
foundations have been sapped for more than a year--there is very often,
for a considerable period, but little change to be noted from day to
day; and then suddenly--no, not suddenly--in a progression rather, as
natural as that from seedtime to harvest, on some morning, at some noon
or night, there is a step down to a lower level of vitality; a
travelling along that lower level, until the time for a new and farther
descent. It would seem impossible that any breath of the chilly fog
outside could have thrust its pestilent way into the atmosphere,
regulated with so passionate a nicety, of Prue's room; and, indeed,
there is no sign of any return of that bronchitis which had been the
ostensible beginning of her illness. Nor is there any very perceptible
aggravation of any one of her symptoms.
The signs of her approaching dissolution are rather negative than
positive. It is only that Miss Prue is going downhill rather quicker
than before--that is all. There is now no longer any question of the oak
settle in the hall. Even the sofa in the dressing-room has been
abandoned. Prue no longer stirs from her bed; but she lies there quite
happily, quite as happy as she was before; for Freddy's gifts are within
as easy reach of her hand, spread on the counterpane before her, as they
were on the table in the adjoining room; and her card with its 365 black
strokes hangs quite as full in her eye, on the wall opposite her bed.
However bad her night may have been, there is always something to look
forward to at dawning, in having it brought to her to put her triumphant
pen through another day.
'I shall be glad when we have got up to forty,' she says to Peggy, with
a faint but cheerful laugh. 'I shall feel quite differently when we have
reached forty: there will be all but a ninth of the time gone then.'
It is a day on which the officious dusk of the winter afternoon--always
in such haste to shoulder away its pale brother--has already settled
down. For sixteen long hours there will be no more glint of light. This
dreary thought is passing through Peggy's mind, as she nods drowsily
over the fire. She is roused from it and from her semi-sleep by hearing
the room-door open cautiously and seeing Sarah making signs--evidently
not intended to be seen by Prue--through the aperture.
In obedience to them, Margaret rises languidly, and goes out upon the
landing.
'What is it?'
'If you please, 'm, there's a lady wishes to speak to you.'
'Oh, Sarah, you know that I can't see any one; why did not you tell her
so?'
'I did tell her so, 'm, but she would not take "No"; she says if she
stays all night she must see you.'
'What does she mean?' cries Peggy, in a voice of astonished indignation;
'who can she be? Who is she?'
'Well, 'm, I really did not recognise her until she spoke--dressed in
deep mourning and that; and she asked me not to mention her name. She
said she was sure you would not see her if I did.'
_Dressed in deep mourning!_ Peggy's legs have been somewhat shaky under
her of late, through long standing upon them. Perhaps that is why she
now catches at the banisters. It has flashed upon her who her visitor
is. What has brought her hither? Why has she come? Has she gone mad?
'Go and sit with Miss Prue, while I am away,' she says to the servant;
and so walks slowly downstairs. Outside the door of the hall she pauses
a moment to pull herself together. She is trembling violently, and her
teeth chatter.
What has brought her here? What can they have to say to each other? She
enters. Beside the table is standing Lady Betty Harborough; for it is
she who is Peggy's visitor. The lamp is lit, and burns brightly, though
nowadays there is never any one to read or work by its gentle glow. A
flourishing fire sings on the hearth; but their joint cheerfulness
serves only to throw up into higher relief the inky gloom of the figure
they illuminate. She makes no movement to go to meet Peggy, but awaits
her coming; and for a moment the two women look at each other in
silence.
As they do so, a doubt--a real, serious doubt flashes across Peggy's
mind, as to whether this is Lady Betty. Coupled with the doubt comes a
darted recollection of the two last occasions on which she has seen her;
the very last of all, sitting under a date-palm in the Hartleys'
conservatory, in the full flush of her _decollete_ beauty and impudent
folly, out of sheer love of mischief, turning the head of a foolish
parish priest; and the time before--oh! that time before--when her own
heart had lain down and died, on that star-strewn night, when through
the gate of the walled garden she had seen her with her arms laced about
John Talbot's neck.
There is no veil to disguise the ruin of Lady Betty's face. Under her
heavy crape bonnet, her hair, uncurled by the damp of the winter night,
hangs in pitiful little tags upon her sunk forehead. There is no trace
of rouge on her pinched cheeks; nor any vestige of black, save that
painted there by agonised vigils, under her hopeless eyes. Her
mouth--that mobile mouth so seldom seen at rest, always either curved
into a smile, or formed into a red pout, or playing some pretty antic or
other--is set like a flint, and around it are drawn lines deeper and
more, many more, than those cut by old age's chisel. Can it be this
forlorn and God-struck creature that she, Peggy, has been hating so long
and so well? Beneath this dual consciousness--the same consciousness
under which Talbot had confusedly laboured once before--beneath the
waning influence of that old hostility, and this new and immeasurable
compassion, Peggy finds it impossible to speak. But her visitor saves
her the trouble.
'I must apologise for intruding upon you at such a time. I know that I
have no right to do so; I should not have taken such a liberty, only
that--that I had a message to give you--a commission from a--a person
who is dead.'
Her voice is perfectly clear and collected, without a quiver in it. It
is only by the slight hesitation before a word here and there that it
could be conjectured that it was not a matter of perfect indifference to
her of which she is speaking. There is such a lump rising in Peggy's
throat, that she could not answer if she were to gain a kingdom by it.
'Perhaps you are aware,' continues the other, quite as collectedly as
before, 'that I have lost my son. He died, after a few days' illness, on
the 3d; and when he was dying, he was very anxious that you should have
_this_,' holding out to Margaret, in a hand that does not shake, the
knife that had been so eagerly urged upon her acceptance by poor little
Franky on his last visit to her. 'He wished me to tell you that it has
five blades; and that though there is a little notch out of one of them,
it does not cut the worse for that.'
Peggy has taken the knife, and is covering it with sad and reverent
kisses.
'God bless him!' she says brokenly. 'God in heaven bless him!'
The tears are raining in a torrent down the face of Franky's friend; but
his mother's eyes are dry.
'Not long before he died,' she resumes, in that awful collected voice,
'he asked me to give it into your hands; that must be my excuse
to-night. I believe you refused it once before. I told him that I
thought you would not refuse it now. He begged you to keep it. He said
he should not want it any more; it was quite true,' her eye wandering
round the room, and speaking as if to herself, as if having forgotten
Peggy's presence--'he will never want anything any more!'
Peggy has lifted her swimming eyes upwards.
'They are in God's hands, and no evil shall touch them!' she says
solemnly.
It is not only the little innocent who has already crossed the flood of
whom she is thinking, but also of that other one in the room upstairs,
whose feet are so fast nearing the ford.
'He was very fond of you, very!' says the mother, her parched eyes
noting with an expression of surprise and envy the agitation of her
companion. 'And he was not one to take a fancy to everybody either; he
had his likes and dislikes. Yes, he was very fond of you; but,' with a
sort of hurry in her tone, 'you did not come before me; no one did that.
Mammy was always first. Last time he was staying at the Manor he wrote
me two little letters; how do you think he signed them?' with a pale,
wild smile: '"Your loving friend." Was not that an odd signature? "Your
loving friend!"'
Peggy's sobs have mastered her so completely, that she can make no
answer beyond that of once again convulsively pressing her poor little
legacy to her quivering lips.
'He suffered a good deal,' continues Betty, with that terrible composure
of hers; 'but he made no fuss about it. He asked me once or twice
whether I could not take away the pain; but when I told him that I could
not, he quite understood. Children are so patient; and he always was a
plucky little chap.'
'You _poor_ woman!' cries Peggy, in a voice almost unintelligible
through her tears. 'Oh, I wish I could do anything for you! Oh, you poor
woman!'
She has caught both Betty's icy hands into her own warm compassionate
clasp. She has clean forgotten that they are the hands of the woman who
has slain her life. She knows only that there is a most miserable
creature struggling in the deep waters beside her, to whom all her large
pitying heart goes out. The other accepts indifferently that strong and
sorrowful clasp, as what would not she so accept?
'You seem to be very kind!' she says, with a sort of stupid wonder.
'And yet, if you come to think of it, we have no great cause to love
each other; you have no great cause to be fond of me.'
'You poor soul!' returns Peggy, looking back, with all the perfect
honesty of her sad eyes, into the other's disfigured face. 'I bear you
no malice for any harm you may have done me; and I have never wittingly
done you any.'
'_Never wittingly done me any!_' repeats Betty, with a dull and dragging
intonation. 'Have not you? There were only two things in the world that
I cared about. You took one of them from me, and now God has taken the
other.'
Peggy lets go her hands in a revulsion of feeling strong beyond the
power of words to express, and steps back a horrified pace or two. Is it
possible, is it conceivable that in this most sacred hour of holy
mother-grief, she can think or speak of her own lawless passion?
'You are shocked!' says Betty, perceiving this movement on the part of
her companion. 'I do not know why you should be. If I were to pretend
that I had always been a good woman, it would not give me back my boy;
and what does anything else matter?'
Then there is silence for a minute or two. It is broken by Betty.
'When you had taken him from me, why did you send him away again?' she
asks abruptly.
For a moment it seems as if all the blood in Peggy's body had sprung to
her brain, and was hammering at her temples, and dinning in her ears in
a surge of passionate indignation. But at sight of the stricken face
before her, her anger dies down again.
'I could not say anything harsh to you to-night,' she replies gently;
'but you must know that you are the last person who has any right to ask
that question.'
'I know it,' replies Betty, with a stony indifference; 'any right, or
any need either, since I know the answer. Do not I know that you were in
the walled garden on that night last June? Did not I see you as I ran
past? I knew what you would think, and I knew, too, that I could trust
to him not to undeceive you.'
Peggy is trembling like a leaf. Must she bear it? Does Christian charity
command her to endure this ruthless, purposeless tearing open of her
scarcely cicatrised wound?
'There was no question of undeceiving,' she says brokenly, yet with
dignity. 'I did not trust to hearsay--I should not have been likely to
do that; but I could not distrust the evidence of my own eyes.'
Betty's sunken look is fixed on the girl's quivering features.
'It was a pity for your own peace of mind,' she says slowly, 'that you
did not come a moment earlier, or stay a moment or two later! You would
have seen then how much the evidence of your own eyes was worth. It
would have saved you a good deal of pain; for I suppose you have taken
it to heart--you look as if you had. I thought that you looked as if you
had when I saw you at the Hartleys' party the other night. _The other
night_'--putting up her hand to her head with a confused look--'was it
the other night! or a year ago? or when?'
Margaret's heart has begun to beat so suffocatingly fast that she can
hardly draw her breath. What is Betty saying? What is she implying? Is
it--is it----
'I suppose,' continues Lady Betty, in the same level, even, absolutely
colourless voice as before, 'that you thought we met by appointment?
Poor man!' with a catch that is almost like the echo of a ghost's laugh
in her voice; 'if you had seen his face when he first caught sight of
me, I think you would have exonerated him from that accusation. What do
you suppose that he was doing when I came upon him? Why, kissing the
spot of ground that he fancied your feet might have touched! I suppose
that that was what sent me mad! There was a time, you know, when he used
to kiss the print of _my_ feet. Yes, I suppose it was that, though it
seems odd now. If I had known how differently things would look from the
other side of my Franky's grave, how little I should have cared!'
The oppression on Margaret's breathing is heavier than ever--the
thundering of her heart more deafening; but she _must_ master them--she
_must_ speak.
'But I _saw_!' she cries, gasping; 'I _saw_!'
'You saw my arms round his neck,' returns the other, in that terrible
level voice of hers, out of which despair seems to have pressed all
modulation, not a shade of colour tinging her livid face as she makes
the admission. 'I know that you did. Do you wonder that I can own it? If
you only knew of how infinitely little consequence it seems to me now,
you would not wonder. Yes, you saw my arms round his neck; but do you
suppose that it was by his will or consent that they were there? Poor
man!' with the same ghastly spectre of a laugh as before; 'if he is as
innocent of all other crimes at the Day of Reckoning as he is of that,
he will come off easily indeed.'
Is Peggy's breath going to stop altogether? Is her heart resolved to
break altogether out of its prison in the agony of its springing? She
presses her clenched hand hard upon it. It _must_ let her listen. It
_must not_--must not burst in two until she has heard--heard to the end.
'I wish you to understand,' goes on Betty, relentlessly pursuing her
confession, 'that it was I--I--who forced my last good-bye against his
will--oh, most against his will--upon him! I knew that it was good-bye;
he had not left me much doubt upon that head. I knew that his one wish
was to be rid of me--to hear no more of me--to have done with me for
this and all other worlds; and so, as I tell you, I thrust my last
good-bye upon him, and you saw it, and misunderstood, as how should not
you? I do not know whether you will believe me--it matters little to me
whether you do or not.'
Her hopeless voice dies away on the air, and her sunk look wanders
aimlessly round the room. Peggy is reeling as she stands. Is it the fog
from outside which has come in and is misting her eyes? She puts up her
hand stupidly to them, as if to wipe it away.
'I--I--I--am sure you are speaking truth,' she says, in an almost
unintelligible broken whisper; 'but as yet--as yet--I--I--cannot take it
in.'
'I would be quick about it if I were you,' answers the other stonily. 'I
would not waste any more time. You have wasted five months already; and
we are none of us allowed much time to enjoy ourselves in. We none of us
keep our good things long. Any one would have thought that I might have
kept my Franky a little, would not they? He was only six. Did you know
that he was only six? Many people took him for seven; he was so big for
his age. What, crying again? Well, I do not much wonder; he was a very
loving little fellow, was not he? and had a great fancy for you. He
prized that knife almost more than anything he possessed, and yet he was
determined that you should have it. You will take care of it, will not
you? Good-bye!'