The door was opened, by a nurse. Everard had not been raving, then! He
was probably in bed?… She formally muttered his name.
The nurse seemed to have been expecting her. Murmuring, “You would
like to see him, Ma’am?” she led the way into the sitting-room, out of
which the bedroom obviously opened. The door was ajar. The nurse did
not stop.…
“But not in there!” Alice stammered.
A strong note of disapprobation pierced in the woman’s voice as she
turned round sharply--
“Why not? He’s dead. You’re not going to faint?”
“Oh, no,” said the poor girl, striving to adjust herself to these new
and unexpected circumstances. Like a proud, plucky automaton she
entered the bedroom, and looked on the form that was faintly outlined
under the sheet, so thin Everard had grown. She had good nerves, and
could always bear shocks well. But an immense, searching pity, a world
of value for the dead man, combined with self-depreciation, filled
her, and she wept silently. Her noble calmness and self-restraint won
the admiration of the nurse, who had been condemning the heartless
creature wholesale for having left her sweetheart to die alone as she
had done.
“What was it, Nurse?” she asked.
“Double pneumonia. Collapse. I telegraphed to you, Miss--you are Miss
Damer, I believe? He objected, but when once he became unable to
speak, I took it upon myself. I thought you would want to be here.”
“Of course. But I have only just got it.”
The nurse accepted the _amende_. She could not realize that Alice was
struggling to form a comment on the apparent inconsistency of a man
sick unto death being able to dine with her, hoping at the same time
that dates would be proved not to fit and all be normally explained.
She stammered something vague as the nurse laid down the covering
sheet, and disclosed the still face, looking, however, no more
emaciated than Alice had seen it in life and no longer ago than last
night.
Alice was painfully aware of the tacit suggestion on the woman’s part
that she should bend down and kiss that waxen mask, and recoiled,
though the nurse had said no word.
“Oh, I can’t kiss anybody dead.… It’s awful of me, Nurse, but I
can’t!”
“Some can’t!” said the nurse resignedly. And this girl was the poor
gentleman’s fiancée, so she had understood?…
She was a little pacified when Alice unfastened the bunch of lilies of
the valley that she was wearing, and laid them on the dead man’s
breast. Then she turned away and dried her eyes. She was a beautiful
creature, the nurse thought, and was conscious that the faulty young
lady was slowly acquiring her sympathies.
“When did he die? When was it?”
“We don’t know exactly, Miss. In these cases---- But he last spoke
about seven.”
“What made you think of sending to me?”
“Because, Miss, for days before, when he was wandering worst, he
talked about you. We gathered, the doctor and I, that he was more or
less engaged to you, Miss, but that you was rather too fond of putting
him off. Said it had been going on for years, and that he was fairly
worn out. So he was, poor man; he hadn’t an ounce of flesh on his
bones to spare----”
“Yes, but----” the girl exclaimed impatiently, “I want to get at the
facts. He died, you say, this morning at seven o’clock?”
“Spoke last at seven o’clock last night, Miss, I said. Died some time
in the night, or, may be, directly after he did speak. At least, part
of him may have died, as ignorant people seem to think. He was hardly
breathing at a little before eight, but the last spark may have held
on longer.”
“I suppose you know, Nurse, that he dined with me last night, at a
quarter-past eight,” said the girl stonily, looking away from the
nurse’s apathetic face, which changed at once, sympathetically;--
“Miss, you’re upset! You took it so calm at first. Have some brandy.
You have had a shock. One understands----”
“He dined with me,” Alice repeated obstinately.
The nurse stared at her, and shrugged her shoulders. Poor girl! She
was evidently one of the outwardly quiet ones, who smother the
symptoms of disturbance, only to feel the shock more keenly. People
take these things in such a variety of ways. The idea of the dinner
party had got fixed in her mind by the shock; she was unable now to
let go the idea of Everard’s keeping his engagement with her. She had
received the telegram all right, of course, there could be no doubt of
it, and some domestic reason had prevented her from responding to the
summons. Or, possibly, that same backwardness and want of interest
which had affected the smooth course of the engagement had been at
work. She hadn’t cared for him much, though she had been persuaded
into giving her word.…
In an even tone, calculated to restore the shattered nerves of the
shaken girl, the nurse remarked--
“Mr. Jenkyns’ sister-in-law, the one that lives in France, will be
here presently, to see about the funeral arrangements. He wanted you
to have all his old china and books, Miss, he used to say so, and
doubtless that will be done.…”
But Alice Damer had gone resolutely across to the bed from which the
two, in the course of conversation, had unconsciously deviated.
She dexterously turned down the sheet, and stooping, performed the
rite of love, the little act of devotion which she had refused him
just before. What was she saying? Mrs. Clarkson observed closely what
she considered one of the curiosities of mental stress.
“I kissed him last night, when he came to me.… So you see, whether I
liked it or not, I did kiss a dead man! And it’s no use minding now,
is it?”
She kissed him repeatedly, with a pale semblance of passion.
The nurse took her arm gently and led her away from the bed, and she
submitted to be placed in a chair.
“Miss, now you’ve done that, you’ll feel better. I should go home if I
were you. Take that hansom outside. It’s the one you came in,
perhaps--and you haven’t paid him?”
Alice signified a negative to this, helplessly, but allowed the nurse
to pin her veil on for her. It hid her tear-stained face a little.
Then the good woman led her downstairs and out on to the pavement.
Sure enough, there was a hansom waiting there, and the nurse hailed
the driver.
Gruffly, he turned round, and stared at them.
“And I say,” he appeared to be remarking, “and I say, who’s going to
pay me my fare?”
“Why, the lady will, of course. Get in, Miss, I’ll hold your dress
away from the wheel.”
But the cabman was not satisfied, nor did he address himself to the
task of resuming his drooping reins. He seemed to have had a shock
too.
“No, I didn’t mean her. Who’s going to pay me three bob for last night
and for waiting ’ere?…”
“That’s no affair of ours,” replied the nurse cheerfully. “You must
take the lady--where to, shall I say, Miss?”
Alice, crouching inside, mumbled the address of her home.
The cabman swore.
“No, I’m damned! You get out. I ain’t a-going near that blasted house
again for nobody! Took a fare from there last night, I did, and drove
him here, and here I may stop till Domesday, I suppose, before I sees
a shilling of his money! ’Tain’t right!…”
He was obviously drunk, but not dangerous, so the nurse thought.
“Come, come!” she expostulated.
Alice, frightened, prepared to get out.
“Oh, what’s the matter?” she moaned.
“Matter! Matter’s this. I drove him here right enough, and pulls up
where he told me--and my gentleman doesn’t get out, seems as if he was
a-going to make a night of it in my cab. Drunk, I says to myself, and
I opens the trap, meaning to take my fare and clear him out, but Lord
bless me--why, there wasn’t no one there!”
“He’d got out, of course,” said Mrs. Clarkson, “while you weren’t
looking.”
“‘Bilked,’ says I. And, thinks I, I’ll just come and wait here till I
sees my gentleman come down those stairs again.”
“You’ll never see him come downstairs again,” said the nurse, with a
flash of inspiration, “except in his coffin! Come, get on! Take the
lady where she wants to go.”
She thought of it all--afterwards… but then nurses see such queer
things! She had taken the cabman’s number.