And the pity of it! The poor white thing lying like a shot dove,
bleeding, and the dreadful blood flowing over the red tiles....
Mr Hare was kneeling by his daughter when John, rushing forth, stopped
and stood aghast.
"What is this? Say--speak, speak man, speak; how did this happen?"
"I cannot say, I do not know; she did not seem to know me; she ran away.
Oh my God, I do not understand; she seemed as if afraid of me, and she
threw herself out of the window. But she is not dead ..."
The word rang out in the silence, ruthlessly brutal in its significance.
Mr Hare looked up, his face a symbol of agony. "Oh, dead, how can you
speak so ..."
John felt his being sink and fade like a breath, and then, conscious of
nothing, he helped to lift Kitty from the tiles. But it was her father
who carried her upstairs. The blood flowed from the terrible wound in
the head. Dripped. The walls were stained. When she was laid upon the
bed, the pillow was crimson; and the maid-servant coming in, strove to
staunch the wound with towels. Kitty did not move.
Both men knew there was no hope. The maid-servant retired, and she did
not close the door, nor did she ask if the doctor should be sent for.
One man held the bed rail, looking at his dead daughter; the other sat
by the window. That one was John Norton. His brain was empty, everything
was far away. He saw things moving, moving, but they were all so far
away. He could not re-knit himself with the weft of life; the thread
that had made him part of it had been snapped, and he was left
struggling in space. He knew that Kitty had thrown herself out of the
window and was dead. The word shocked him a little, but there was no
sense of realisation to meet it. She had walked with him on the hills,
she had accompanied him as far as the burgh; she had waved her hand to
him before they walked quite out of each other's sight. They had been
speaking of Italy ... of Italy where they would have spent their
honeymoon. Now she was dead! There would be no honeymoon, no wife. How
unreal, how impossible it all did seem, and yet it was real, yes, real
enough. There she lay dead; here is her room, and there is her
book-case; there are the photographs of the Miss Austins, here is the
fuchsia with the pendent blossoms falling, and her canary is singing.
John glanced at the cage, and the song went to his brain, and he was
horrified, for there was no grief in his heart.
Had he not loved her? Yes, he was sure of that; then why was there no
burning grief nor any tears? He envied the hard-sobbing father's grief,
the father who, prostrate by the bedside, held his dead daughter's hand,
and showed a face wild with fear--a face on which was printed so deeply
the terror of the soul's emotion, that John felt a supernatural awe
creep upon him; felt that his presence was a sort of sacrilege. He crept
downstairs. He went into the drawing-room, and looked about for the
place he had last seen her in. There it was.... There. But his eyes
wandered from the place, for it was there he had seen the startled face,
the half mad face which he had seen afterwards at the window, quite mad.
On that sofa she usually sat; how often had he seen her sitting there!
And now he would not see her any more. And only three days ago she had
been sitting in the basket chair. How well he remembered her words, her
laughter, and now ... now; was it possible he never would hear her laugh
again? How frail a thing is human life, how shadow-like; one moment it
is here, the next it is gone. Here is her work-basket; and here the very
ball of wool which he had held for her to wind; and here is a novel
which she had lent to him, and which he had forgotten to take away. He
would never read it now; or perhaps he should read it in memory of her,
of her whom yesterday he parted with on the hills,--her little puritan
look, her external girlishness, her golden brown hair and the sudden
laugh so characteristic of her.... She had lent him this book--she who
was now but clay; she who was to have been his wife. His wife! The
thought struck him. Now he would never have a wife. What was there for
him to do? To turn his house into a Gothic monastery, and himself into a
monk. Very horrible and very bitter in its sheer grotesqueness was the
thought. It was as if in one moment he saw the whole of his life
summarised in a single symbol, and understood its vanity and its folly.
Ah, there was nothing for him, no wife, no life.... The tears welled up
in his eyes; the shock which in its suddenness had frozen his heart,
began to thaw, and grief fell like a penetrating rain.
We learn to suffer as we learn to love, and it is not to-day, nor yet
to-morrow, but in weeks and months to come, and by slow degrees, that
John Norton will understand the irreparableness of his loss. There is a
man upstairs who crouches like stone by his dead daughter's side; he is
motionless and pale as the dead, he is as great in his grief as an
expression of grief by Michael Angelo. The hours pass, he is unconscious
of them; he sees not the light dying on the sea, he hears not the
trilling of the canary. He knows of nothing but his dead child, and
that the world would be nothing to give to have her speak to him once
again. His is the humblest and the worthiest sorrow, but such sorrow
cannot affect John Norton. He has dreamed too much and reflected too
much on the meaning of life; his suffering is too original in himself,
too self-centred, and at the same time too much, based on the inherent
misery of existence, to allow him to project himself into and suffer
with any individual grief, no matter how nearly it might be allied
to him and to his personal interest. He knew his weakness in this
direction, and now he gladly welcomed the coming of grief, for indeed
he had felt not a little shocked at the aridness of his heart, and
frightened lest his eyes should remain dry even to the end.
Suddenly he remembered that the Miss Austins had said that they would
call to-morrow early for Kitty, to take her to Leywood to lunch.... They
were going to have some tennis in the afternoon. He too was expected
there. They must be told what had occurred. It would be terrible if they
came calling for Kitty under her window, and she lying dead! This slight
incident in the tragedy wrung his heart, and the effort of putting the
facts upon paper brought the truth home to him, and lured and led him to
see down the lifelong range of consequences. The doctor too, he thought,
must be warned of what had happened. And with the letter telling the sad
story in his hand, and illimitable sorrow in his soul, he went out in
the evening air. It was just such an evening as yester evening--a little
softer, a little lovelier, perhaps; earth, sea, and sky appeared like an
exquisite vision upon whose lips there is fragrance, yet in whose eyes a
glow of passion still survives.
The beauty of the last hour of light is upon that crescent of sea, and
the ships loll upon the long strand, the tapering masts and slacking
ropes vanish upon the pallid sky. There is the old town, dusty, and
dreamy, and brown, with neglected wharfs and quays; there is the new
town, vulgar and fresh with green paint and trees, and looking hungrily
on the broad lands of the Squire, the broad lands and the rich woods
which rise up the hill side to the barn on the limit of the downs. How
beautiful the great green woods look as they sweep up a small expanse of
the downs, like a wave over a slope of sand. And there is a house with
red gables where the girls are still on the tennis lawn. John walked
through the town; he told the doctor he must go at once to the rectory.
He walked to Leywood and left his letter with the lodge-keeper; and
then, as if led by a strange fascination, he passed through the farm
gate and set out to return home across the hills.
"She was here with me yesterday; how beautiful she looked, and how
graceful were her laughter and speech," he said, turning suddenly and
looking down on the landscape; on the massy trees contrasting with the
walls of the town, the spine-like bridge crossing the marshy shore, the
sails of the mill turning over the crest of the hill. The night was
falling fast, as a blue veil it hung down over the sea, but the deep
pure sky seemed in one spot to grow clear, and suddenly the pale moon
shone and shimmered upon the sea. The landscape gained in loveliness,
the sheep seemed like phantoms, the solitary barns like monsters of the
night. And the hills were like giants sleeping, and the long outlines
were prolonged far away into the depths and mistiness of space. Turning
again and looking through a vista in the hills, John could see Brighton,
a pale cloud of fire, set by the moon-illumined sea, and nearer was
Southwick, grown into separate lines of light, that wandered into and
lost themselves among the outlying hollows of the hills; and below him
and in front of him Shoreham lay, a blaze of living fire, a thousand
lights; lights everywhere save in one gloomy spot, and there John knew
that his beloved was lying dead. And further away, past the shadowy
marshy shores, was Worthing, the palest of nebulae in these earthly
constellations; and overhead the stars of heaven shone as if in pitiless
disdain. The blown hawthorn bush that stands by the burgh leaned out, a
ship sailed slowly across the rays of the moon. Yesterday they parted
here in the glad golden sunlight, parted for ever, for ever.
"Yesterday I had all things--a sweet wife and happy youthful days to
look forward to. To-day I have nothing; all my hopes are shattered, all
my illusions have fallen. So is it always with him who places his trust
in life. Ah, life, life, what hast thou for giving save cruel deceptions
and miserable wrongs? Ah, why did I leave my life of contemplation and
prayer to enter into that of desire.... Ah, I knew, well I knew there
was no happiness save in calm and contemplation. Ah, well I knew; and
she is gone, gone, gone!"
We suffer differently indeed, but we suffer equally. The death of his
sweetheart forces one man to reflect anew on the slightness of life's
pleasures and the depth of life's griefs. In the peaceful valley of
natural instincts and affections he had slept for a while, now he awoke
on one of the high peaks lit with the rays of intense consciousness,
and he cried aloud, and withdrew in terror at a too vivid realisation of
self. The other man wept for the daughter that had gone out of his life,
wept for her pretty face and cheerful laughter, wept for her love, wept
for the years he would live without her. We know which sorrow is the
manliest, which appeals to our sympathy, but who can measure the depth
of John Norton's suffering? It was as vast as the night, cold as the
stream of moonlit sea.
He did not arrive home till late, and having told his mother what had
happened, he instantly retired to his room. Dreams followed him. The
hills were in his dreams. There were enemies there; he was often pursued
by savages, and he often saw Kitty captured; nor could he ever evade
their wandering vigilance and release her. Again and again he awoke, and
remembered that she was dead.
Next morning John and Mrs Norton drove to the rectory, and without
asking for Mr Hare, they went up to _her_ room. The windows were open,
and Annie and Mary Austin sat by the bedside watching. The blood had
been washed out of the beautiful hair, and she lay very white and fair
amid the roses her friends had brought her. She lay as she had lain in
one of her terrible dreams--quite still, the slender body covered by a
sheet, moulding it with sculptured delight and love. From the feet the
linen curved and marked the inflections of the knees; there were long
flowing folds, low-lying like the wash of retiring water; the rounded
shoulders, the neck, the calm and bloodless face, the little nose, and
the beautiful drawing of the nostrils, the extraordinary waxen pallor,
the eyelids laid like rose leaves upon the eyes that death has closed
for ever. Within the arm, in the pale hand extended, a great Eucharis
lily had been laid, its carved blossoms bloomed in unchanging stillness,
and the whole scene was like a sad dream in the whitest marble.
Candles were burning, and the soft smell of wax mixed with the perfume
of the roses. For there were roses everywhere--great snowy bouquets, and
long lines of scattered blossoms, and single roses there and here, and
petals fallen and falling were as tears shed for the beautiful dead, and
the white flowerage vied with the pallor and the immaculate stillness of
the dead.
The calm chastity, the lonely loveliness, so sweetly removed from taint
of passion, struck John with all the emotion of art. He reproached
himself for having dreamed of her rather as a wife than as a sister, and
then all art and all conscience went down as a broken wreck in the wild
washing sea of deep human love: he knelt by her bedside, and sobbed
piteously, a man whose life is broken.
When they next saw her she was in her coffin. It was almost full of
white blossoms--jasmine, Eucharis lilies, white roses, and in the midst
of the flowers you saw the hands folded, and the face was veiled with
some delicate filmy handkerchief.
For the funeral there were crosses and wreaths of white flowers, roses
and stephanotis. And the Austin girls and their cousins who had come
from Brighton and Worthing carried loose flowers. How black and sad, how
homely and humble they seemed. Down the short drive, through the iron
gate, through the farm gate, the bearers staggering a little under the
weight of lead, the little cortège passed two by two. A broken-hearted
lover, a grief-stricken father, and a dozen sweet girls, their eyes and
cheeks streaming with tears. Kitty, their girl-friend was dead, dead,
dead! The words rang in their hearts in answer to the mournful tolling
of the bell. The little by-way along which they went, the little green
path leading over the hill, under trees shot through and through with
the whiteness of summer seas, was strewn with blossoms fallen from the
bier and the dolent fingers of the weeping girls.
The old church was all in white; great lilies in vases, wreaths of
stephanotis; and, above all, roses--great garlands of white roses had
been woven, and they hung along and across. A blossom fell, a sob
sounded in the stillness; and how trivial it all seemed, and how
impotent to assuage the bitter burning of human sorrow: how paltry and
circumscribed the old grey church, with its little graveyard full of
forgotten griefs and aspirations! This hour of beautiful sorrow and
roses, how long will it be remembered? The coffin sinks out of sight,
out of sight for ever, a snow-drift of delicate bloom descending into
the earth.