“Been a mother--yes. And you?--what about your tenderness--your heart?
We used to wonder that your heart didn’t tell you when you heard her
calling out--screaming--yelling? I beat her, I tell you, I beat her
within an inch of her life, filthy, hateful object that I’d brought
into the world--through you! Pah!”
She flung herself down. Her tone was so piercing, so foreign, so
unknown to him, who had learned to expect every variation in Adelaide,
that he cried, in panic fear merely--
“For God’s sake, keep your head, Adelaide! Don’t go mad now, on top of
it all!”
“Oh, I’m not mad, not a bit of it, can’t you see, you fool? But, no,
you can’t see, you can’t see anything, unless it’s under your nose. It
_was_ under your nose, and you worried and worried, and yet you didn’t
see it! Here you are--Mary’s your own child--and mine! Mine! Yours!
Don’t you remember that night--that night after ‘Tristan’----?”
“No, I remember nothing. Be quiet, now!” He held up his hand, as if to
ward off a blow. “Where is she?”
“My God, _I_ don’t know.”
She fell back. Her pains had begun. He took no notice.
“I’m going to Mary,” he murmured.
She rushed forward, and bolted the door behind him.
* * * * * * *
The doctor and the nurse were still waiting by the body of Mary. Aware
of the portentous visit of Inspector Kelson, Hodgson fancied he might
be of some use. He might do Ensor a good turn in allocating much of
the blame, which the husband was so generously anxious to take on his
own shoulders, on to the wife’s, where it belonged. There were reasons
why she should be better able to bear it than he, the law would be
merciful to her in her then condition.
Hodgson could not fathom her. He was merely an overworked, overdriven
country doctor, riding about daily from one case to another. That the
maladies of the hardy, normal, if worn-out wives of the labouring
classes were of a painful and dreary similarity, and completely
relieved him of the necessity of keeping himself up to date with the
new departures in medicine, was perhaps the reason that he did not
break down from obvious overwork. His old mare who carried her
sleeping master on her back along the same old roads to the same old
cottages to attend to Hodge’s same wife’s seventh baby was as well
preserved as he.
A complicated, abnormal case like Mrs. Ensor’s; circumstances so
dramatic as this affair at High Walls seldom or never came his way.
And events in this house had in the last twenty-four hours succeeded
each other with such a bewildering rapidity that he felt himself
excused from keeping up too rigid an attitude with the nurse, who,
like himself, was humanly and professionally interested, and he
permitted himself a certain relaxation in talking to her.
Nurse Ferrier, on the other hand, having been shut up in High Walls
for many days under the rigorous rule of Adelaide, was enjoying
herself thoroughly. All the while that Ensor was closeted with Mrs.
Ensor she continued freely to develop her physiological views, leaving
the room, only for a moment, to get some white flowers to lay upon the
child’s breast. They heard voices from the next room, and her open,
and his professionally concealed, curiosity was wrought up to the
highest pitch when suddenly these voices ceased, and they heard the
click of a latch and a step in the corridor.…
Then the door of the room they were in was opened with deliberation
and the hero of their surmises and of their sympathy walked into the
room.
He did not really seem to see them, as they observed afterwards,
although he moved his head slightly as he passed the doctor and made
what might pass as a grunt of recognition. His politeness survived in
the overthrow of all his standards and hopes and ambitions. They stood
humbly aside; it was his hour. No one, so far as they knew, had told
him that Mary was dead, but he could not help knowing it when his eyes
had rested for a moment on what lay on the bed.
At a sign from Hodgson, the nurse left the room. The doctor followed
her. The two stood in the corridor outside, looking nervously, now at
that door of the room they had just vacated, now at that which gave
admittance to Mrs. Ensor’s apartments, whence came no sound of
stirring.
Five minutes later, Wald Ensor came out of the bedroom, carrying the
body of the child in his arms very carefully. As he passed his wife’s
door, with his burden, it was opened sharply and as suddenly closed
again. Mrs. Ensor had looked out.
Hodgson and Ferrier followed Ensor downstairs, wondering what he was
going to do, afraid that he had gone suddenly mad and that they would
have to interfere.
But so far he was perfectly quiet, restrained, and measured in his
movements. He walked steadily, balancing what he carried as a nurse
does a baby, down into the hall, where the autumn fire leaped on the
hearth, and the charred logs tinkled as they fell. He went through it
into the portion railed off with screens and arm-chairs, and,
stooping, deposited the corpse of his child on the tiger-skin which
lay spread over the sofa--the old yellow sofa from Portland Place. The
creases were in the skin that his wife had made when she was lying
there only yesterday. Her bag--one of her bags--lay on it, and with a
violent gesture of his occupied hand, Ensor swept it off.
Then, deliberately, as if he were in church, he knelt down beside the
little white-robed form, smoothed the folds of the nightgown his hands
had disarrayed, and half raising her, taking her in his arms, covered
her with kisses long and deep.
He did not lift his head when Gertrude, her apron cast aside, a
puzzling figure with her unaccustomed black surfaces displayed, pushed
open the red baize door, and stood, savagely poised, her bony, floury
arms resting on her hips.…
“Go back!” the doctor said, in a loud whisper.
Gertrude paid no heed. Her dull faithful eyes were raised, fixed on
something she saw at the head of the staircase. It was her mistress
who was even now descending. The nurse darted forward, and in so doing
her dress caught in an accidental nail in one of the screens and made
it fall over the end of the couch. Wald Ensor looked up, he kept hold
of the child’s hand.… Adelaide continued to descend. Gertrude went a
step to meet her, but Adelaide waved her away.…
Then Ensor rose, for Adelaide had reached the bottom of the staircase
and was coming to him, and Mary.… She tottered, but she came on.…
Her husband raised his finger and pointed it at her, and she ceased,
trembling, to advance.… Gertrude strode up to her and held her
shoulder. Her state was obvious--she no longer took pains to conceal
it.
“Listen, all of you!” Ensor was saying, in the same gloomy, intent
voice he had used all day. “I pray to Almighty God that this woman may
never live to bear another child!”
* * * * * * *
He stayed for the inquiry into the death of Mary; he bore himself like
a man. Then he left England, and his wife never saw him again. She
survived the birth of her child, stillborn.