I
“_It is but giving over of a game,_
_That must be lost._”--Philaster.
“Come, Mrs. Arne--come, my dear, you must not give way like this!
You can’t stand it--you really can’t! Let Miss Kate take you away--now
do!” urged the nurse, with her most motherly of intonations.
“Yes, Alice, Mrs. Joyce is right. Come away--do come away--you are
only making yourself ill. It is all over; you can do nothing! Oh, oh,
do come away!” implored Mrs. Arne’s sister, shivering with excitement
and nervousness.
A few moments ago Dr. Graham had relinquished his hold on the pulse of
Edward Arne with the hopeless movement of the eyebrows that meant--the
end.
The nurse had made the little gesture of resignation that was possibly
a matter of form with her. The young sister-in-law had hidden her face
in her hands. The wife had screamed a scream that had turned them all
hot and cold--and flung herself on the bed over her dead husband.
There she lay; her cries were terrible, her sobs shook her whole body.
The three gazed at her pityingly, not knowing what to do next. The
nurse, folding her hands, looked towards the doctor for directions,
and the doctor drummed with his fingers on the bed-post. The young
girl timidly stroked the shoulder that heaved and writhed under her
touch.
“Go away! Go away!” her sister reiterated continually, in a voice
hoarse with fatigue and passion.
“Leave her alone, Miss Kate,” whispered the nurse at last; “she will
work it off best herself, perhaps.”
She turned down the lamp, as if to draw a veil over the scene. Mrs.
Arne raised herself on her elbow, showing a face stained with tears
and purple with emotion.
“What! Not gone?” she said harshly. “Go away, Kate, go away! It is my
house. I don’t want you, I want no one--I want to speak to my husband.
Will you go away--all of you. Give me an hour, half-an-hour--five
minutes!”
She stretched out her arms imploringly to the doctor.
“Well…” said he, almost to himself.
He signed to the two women to withdraw, and followed them out into the
passage. “Go and get something to eat,” he said peremptorily, “while
you can. We shall have trouble with her presently. I’ll wait in the
dressing-room.”
He glanced at the twisting figure on the bed, shrugged his shoulders,
and passed into the adjoining room, without, however, closing the door
of communication. Sitting down in an arm-chair drawn up to the fire,
he stretched himself and closed his eyes. The professional aspects of
the case of Edward Arne rose up before him in all its interesting
forms of complication.…
* * * * * * *
It was just this professional attitude that Mrs. Arne unconsciously
resented both in the doctor and in the nurse. Through all their
kindness she had realized and resented their scientific interest in
her husband, for to them he had been no more than a curious and
complicated case; and now that the blow had fallen, she regarded them
both in the light of executioners. Her one desire, expressed with all
the shameless sincerity of blind and thoughtless misery, was to be
free of their hateful presence and alone--alone with her dead!
She was weary of the doctor’s subdued manly tones--of the nurse’s
commonplace motherliness, too habitually adapted to the needs of all
to be appreciated by the individual--of the childish consolation of
the young sister, who had never loved, never been married, did not
know what sorrow was! Their expressions of sympathy struck her like
blows, the touch of their hands on her body, as they tried to raise
her, stung her in every nerve.
With a sigh of relief she buried her head in the pillow, pressed her
body more closely against that of her husband, and lay motionless.
Her sobs ceased.
* * * * * * *
The lamp went out with a gurgle. The fire leaped up, and died. She
raised her head and stared about her helplessly, then sinking down
again she put her lips to the ear of the dead man.
“Edward--dear Edward!” she whispered, “why have you left me? Darling,
why have you left me? I can’t stay behind--you know I can’t. I am too
young to be left. It is only a year since you married me. I never
thought it was only for a year. ‘Till death us do part!’ Yes, I know
that’s in it, but nobody ever thinks of that! I never thought of
living without you! I meant to die with you.…
“No--no--I can’t die--I must not--till my baby is born. You will never
see it. Don’t you want to see it? Don’t you? Oh, Edward, speak! Say
something, darling, one word--one little word! Edward! Edward! are you
there? Answer me for God’s sake, answer me!
“Darling, I am so tired of waiting. Oh, think, dearest. There is so
little time. They only gave me half-an-hour. In half-an-hour they will
come and take you away from me--take you where I can’t come to
you--with all my love I can’t come to you! I know the place--I saw it
once. A great lonely place full of graves, and little stunted trees
dripping with dirty London rain… and gas-lamps flaring all round… but
quite, quite dark where the grave is… a long grey stone just like the
rest. How could you stay there?--all alone--all alone--without me?
“Do you remember, Edward, what we once said--that whichever of us died
first should come back to watch over the other, in the spirit? I
promised you, and you promised me. What children we were! Death is not
what we thought. It comforted us to say that then.
“Now, it’s nothing--nothing--worse than nothing! I don’t want your
spirit--I can’t see it--or feel it--I want you, you, your eyes that
looked at me, your mouth that kissed me----”
She raised his arms and clasped them round her neck, and lay there
very still, murmuring, “Oh, hold me, hold me! Love me if you can. Am I
hateful? This is me! These are your arms.…”
The doctor in the next room moved in his chair. The noise awoke her
from her dream of contentment, and she unwound the dead arm from her
neck, and, holding it up by the wrist, considered it ruefully.
“Yes, I can put it round me, but I have to hold it there. It is quite
cold--it doesn’t care. Ah, my dear, you don’t care! You are dead. I
kiss you, but you don’t kiss me. Edward! Edward! Oh, for heaven’s sake
kiss me once. Just once!
“No, no, that won’t do--that’s not enough! that’s nothing! worse than
nothing! I want you back, you, all you.… What shall I do?… I often
pray.… Oh, if there be a God in heaven, and if He ever answered a
prayer, let Him answer mine--my only prayer. I’ll never ask
another--and give you back to me! As you were--as I loved you--as I
adored you! He must listen. He must! My God, my God, he’s mine--he’s
my husband, he’s my lover--give him back to me!”
* * * * * * *
--“Left alone for half-an-hour or more with the corpse! It’s not
right!”
The muttered expression of the nurse’s revolted sense of professional
decency came from the head of the staircase, where she had been
waiting for the last few minutes. The doctor joined her.
“Hush, Mrs. Joyce! I’ll go to her now.”
The door creaked on its hinges as he gently pushed it open and went
in.
“What’s that? What’s that?” screamed Mrs. Arne. “Doctor! Doctor! Don’t
touch me! Either I am dead or he is alive!”
“Do you want to kill yourself, Mrs. Arne?” said Dr. Graham, with
calculated sternness, coming forward; “come away!”
“Not dead! Not dead!” she murmured.
“He is dead, I assure you. Dead and cold an hour ago! Feel!” He took
hold of her, as she lay face downwards, and in so doing he touched the
dead man’s cheek--it was not cold! Instinctively his finger sought a
pulse.
“Stop! Wait!” he cried in his intense excitement. “My dear Mrs. Arne,
control yourself!”
But Mrs. Arne had fainted, and fallen heavily off the bed on the other
side. Her sister, hastily summoned, attended to her, while the man
they had all given over for dead was, with faint gasps and sighs and
reluctant moans, pulled, as it were, hustled and dragged back over the
threshold of life.
* * * * * * *