The doctors had come, probed for the bullet, and gone. They had not found
the bullet. The wound was crooked, they said, entering the fleshy part of
the abdomen, ranging upwards in the direction of the heart, then to the
back. The wounded man was still unconscious. There was a chance, so the New
York surgeon told Isabelle,--only they had not been able to locate the
bullet, and the heart was beating feebly. There had been a great loss of
blood. If he had been found earlier, perhaps--they did not know....
Outside on the drive the doctors exchanged glances, low words, and signs.
Accident? But how, the ball ranging upwards like that? He would have to be
on his knees. Well, then, suicide! Had the pistol been found? ... There
need be no scandal--the family was much loved in the village. Accident, of
course. The fellow was always odd, the local practitioner explained to the
city doctor, as he carried his distinguished colleague home in his car for
breakfast. There was that scandal with a woman in Venice. They said it was
all over, but you could never tell about those things....
Upstairs the nurse made ready the room for illness, while Isabelle sat by
the bed, watching her brother. Vickers was still unconscious, scarcely
breathing. The nurse, having tried a number of ways to get her out of the
room, now ignored her, and Isabelle sat in a kind of stupor, waiting for
that Fate which had overtaken her to be worked out. When the gray dawn of
the morning stole into the dark room, the nurse unbolted the shutters and
threw open the window. In the uncertain light Dog Mountain loomed large and
distant. Isabelle turned her head from Vickers's face and watched the
wooded peak as it came nearer and nearer in the deepening light.... It was
this hill that she and Vickers had climbed in the winter morning so long
ago! How wonderful it had been then, life, for them both, with glorious
possibilities of living! She had put forth her hands to grasp them, these
possibilities, one after another, to grasp them for herself. Now they had
come to an end--for both. There was no more to grasp....
When she turned back to the silent form by her side, she saw that Vickers
had opened his eyes. His face was very white and the eyes were buried deep
beneath the eyebrows as of a man long sick, and he lay motionless. But the
eyes had meaning in them; they were the eyes of the living. So brother and
sister looked into each other, thus, and without words, without a murmur,
it was all known between them. She understood! He had thrown his life into
the abyss before her that she might be kept to that vision they had had as
boy and girl. It was not to be for him. But for her!
"Vick!" she whispered, falling on her knees by his side. For reply there
was that steady searching look, which spoke to unknown depths within her.
"Vick!" she moaned. The white lips of the dying man trembled, and a faint
flutter of breath crossed them--but no words. His fingers touched her hair.
When she looked at him again through her tears, the eyes were closed, and
the face bore an austere look of preoccupation, as of one withdrawn from
the business of life.... Afterwards the nurse touched the kneeling woman,
the doctor came, she was led away. She knew that Vickers was dead.
* * * * *
Late that afternoon there came a knock at the door of the room where
Isabelle was, and her husband, hearing no sound, entered. She looked up
wonderingly from the lounge where she lay. She did not know that John was
in the house, that he had been sent for. She was unaware what time had
elapsed since the evening before.
"Isabelle," he said and stopped. She looked at him questioningly. The
irritation that of late his very presence had caused her she was not
conscious of now. All the irritations of life had been suddenly wiped out
in the great fact. As she looked at her husband's grave face, she saw it
with a new sense,--she saw what was behind it, as if she had had the power
given her to read beneath matter. She saw his concern, his real sorrow, his
consideration, the distress for her in the heart of this man, whom she had
thrust out of her life....
"Isabelle," he said very gently, hesitantly. "Tom has come--is
downstairs--wants to see you. He asked me if you would see him for a
moment."
This also did not surprise her. She was silent for a moment, and her
husband said:--
"Do you want to see him?"
"Yes," she replied finally. "I will see him.... I will go down at once."
She rose and stepped towards the door.
"Isabelle!" Her husband's voice broke. Still standing with one hand on the
knob of the door, he took from his pocket with the other a small pistol,
and held it towards her on the palm of his hand. "Isabelle," he said, "this
was in the river--near where they found him!"
She looked at it calmly. It was that little gold and ivory chased toy which
she remembered Tom had used one afternoon to shoot the magnolia blossoms
with. She remembered it well. It was broken open, and a cartridge half
protruded from the breach.
"I thought you should know," Lane added.
"Yes," Isabelle whispered. "I know. I knew! ... But I will go down and see
him."
Her husband replaced the pistol in his pocket and opened the door for her.
* * * * *
Cairy was waiting before the fireplace in the library, nervously pacing to
and fro across the rug. Would she see him? How much did she know? How much
did they all know? How much would she forgive? ... These questions had
racked him every hour since in a spasm of nervous terror he had flung the
pistol over the bushes and heard it splash in the river, and with one
terrified look at the wounded man, whom he had dragged into the thicket,
had got himself in some unremembered fashion to the junction in time for
the express. These and other considerations--what story should he
tell?--had racked him all through the evening, which he had been obliged to
spend with the actress, answering her silly objections to this and that in
his play. Then during the night it became clear to him that he must return
to the Farm in the morning as he had planned, as if nothing had happened.
His story would be that Vickers had turned back before they reached the
junction, and had borrowed his pistol to shoot at woodchucks.... Would
Isabelle believe this? She _must_ believe it! ... It took courage to walk
up to the familiar house, but he must see her. It was the only way. And he
had been steadying himself for his part ever since he had left the city.
When Isabelle entered the room, she closed the door behind her and stood
with her back against it for support. She wore the same white dress that
she had had on when Cairy and Vickers had left her, not having changed it
for tea. It had across the breast a small red stain,--the stain of her
brother's blood. Cairy reached out his hands and started towards her,
crying:--
"Isabelle! Isabelle! how awful! Isabelle,--I--" She raised her arm as if to
forbid him to advance, and he stood still, his words dying on his lips.
Looking at him out of her weary eyes, Isabelle seemed to see through the
man, with that same curious insight that had come when she had read the
truth in her brother's eyes; the same insight that had enabled her to see
the kindness and the pity beneath her husband's impassive gravity. So now
she knew what he was going to say, the lie he would try to tell her. It was
as if she knew every secret corner of the man's soul, had known it always
really, and had merely veiled her eyes to him wilfully. Now the veil had
been torn aside. Had Vickers given her this power to see into the heart of
things, for always, so that the truths behind the veil she made should
never be hid?
'Why does he try to lie to me?' she seemed to ask herself. 'It is so weak
to lie in this world where all becomes known.' She merely gazed at him in
wonder, seeing the deformed soul of the deformed body, eaten by egotism and
passions. And this last--cowardice! And he was the man she had loved! That
she had been ready to die for, to throw away all for, even the happiness of
others! ... It was all strangely dead. A body stood there before her in its
nakedness.
"What do you want?" she demanded almost indifferently.
"I had to see you!" He had forgotten his story, his emotion,--everything
beneath that piercing stare, which stripped him to the bone.
"Haven't you--a word--" he muttered.
Her eyes cried: 'I know. I know! I know ALL--even as those who are dead
know.'
"Nothing!" she said.
"Isabelle!" he cried, and moved nearer. But the warning hand stopped him
again, and the empty voice said, "Nothing!"
Then he saw that it was all ended between them, that this brother's blood,
which stained her breast, lay forever between them, could not be crossed by
any human will. And more, that the verity of life itself lay like a
blinding light between them, revealing him and her and their love. It was
dead, that love which they had thought was sacred and eternal, in the clear
light of truth.
Without a word he walked to the open window and stepped into the garden,
and his footstep on the gravel died away. Then Isabelle went back to the
dead body in her room above.
On the terrace Lane was sitting beside his little girl, the father talking
in low tones to the child, explaining what is death.
PART SIX