"Who spake of Death? Let no one speak of Death.
What should Death do in such a merry house?
With but a wife, a husband, and a friend
To give it greeting?..."
Richard Maule sat up in bed. He had taken a rather larger dose of
chloral than usual the night before, and he had over-slept himself.
'Twixt sleeping and waking he had seemed to hear a number of
extraordinary sounds--they were, however, sounds to which he had become
accustomed, for they were produced by the Paches' motor.
Now his servant was drawing up the blinds, moving about the room with
well-trained, noiseless steps. It seemed to him that the man avoided
looking across at the bed; but when, at last, his persistent glance
caused the servant to look round, nothing could be seen in the other's
impassive face.
"Is it a fine morning, Carver?"
"No, sir--at least, yes, sir. But it's been raining."
"I thought I heard a car drive away a few moments ago, or did I dream
it?"
The man hesitated.
"Yes, sir--perhaps you did, sir. Mr. Wantele had the machine out to go
for the doctor. Mrs. Maule is not very well, sir, and Mr. Wantele
thought he'd better fetch the doctor as quickly as possible."
Carver's voice gained confidence. His master was behaving "very
sensible," and did not seem at all upset. The upsetting part was to be
left to Dr. Mallet.
"I was to say, sir, that the doctor would like to see you."
"Who went for the doctor?" asked Richard Maule suddenly.
"Mr. Wantele himself, sir. I heard him say he thought it would lose less
time for him to go off at once, than to wait and send anyone."
"And did Mr. Wantele bring the doctor back with him?"
"Yes, sir, I think he did--I think they came back together."
There was a knock at the door, and then the murmur of words outside.
"Who's there?" called out Richard Maule in a strong voice. "What's all
that whispering about?" He spoke querulously, as he sometimes did in the
morning.
"It's only I--Mallet!"
The doctor came in. He and Richard Maule were old friends--in fact,
contemporaries. But there was a great difference between the two
men--the one was broad, ruddy, and did not look his years; the other
was the wreck we know.
"I'm sorry to say Mrs. Maule is very ill." The doctor plunged at once
into the business which had brought him. Long experience had taught him
the futility, the cruelty, of "breaking" bad news.
"What's the matter with her? She's always enjoyed remarkably good
health." Richard Maule moved a little in his bed.
"Yes, I should have taken her to be a remarkably healthy woman, though
of course as you know--we both know--she has always been very sleepless.
Almost as if she caught insomnia from you, eh?"
The doctor's courage was beginning to fail him, curiously. It was
strange, it--it was horrible, the hatred, the contempt Richard Maule
felt for his wife.
"Mallet--come here, closer. I believe you are concealing something from
me. If there's bad news I'd rather hear whatever it is from you than
from Dick." Mr. Maule spoke in a hard, rather breathless tone.
"There is something to hear. Your wife last night took an overdose of
chloral----"
The doctor said no word of sympathy. The words would have stuck in his
throat. He knew too well the real relationship of the husband and wife.
Richard Maule would receive plenty of condolences from others. But even
so, to learn suddenly of the death of a human being with whom one has
been associated over long years is always a shock, is always painful.
Richard Maule straightened himself in bed. "An overdose of chloral," he
repeated, "then she's--she's----"
The other bent his head.
"She thought she would outlive me many years."
The doctor looked thoughtfully at his patient. He knew that illness of a
certain type atrophies the memory and the affections, while leaving
unaffected the mind and a certain fierce instinct of self-preservation.
Dr. Mallet was not so much shocked or so much surprised by Richard
Maule's remark as a layman would have been.
Again the bereaved husband spoke, and this time questioningly. "A
peaceful death, Mallet? A happy death?"
"Yes--yes, certainly." Something impelled him to add, "But a terrible
thing when it comes to one so young, so beautiful, as was your wife!"
He compared the stillness, the equanimity, of the man lying before him,
with the awful agitation of Dick Wantele--an agitation so terrible, a
horror so overwhelming, that it had confirmed Dr. Mallet in a theory of
his, a theory formed a good many years ago, and of which he had
sometimes felt ashamed.
But the mind of an intelligent medical man who has enjoyed for many
years a large family practice becomes like one of those old manuals for
the use of confessors. His mind perforce becomes a store-house of
strange sins, of troubled, abnormal happenings, which belong, from the
point of view of the happy and the sane, to a fifth dimension,
unimagined, unimaginable. The wise physician, like the wise confessor,
does not allow his mind to dwell on these things, but he does not make
the mistake of telling himself--as so many of us do--that they are not
there. The doctor had formed a suspicion, which had now become a
certainty. Yet he was surprised by Richard Maule's next words.
"It must have been an awful shock to Dick, Mallet. He was thrown so much
more with Athena than I could be of late years, though to be sure she
was a great deal away."
He waited a moment, and as the doctor made no comment, "Although they
didn't pull it off well together, still for my sake they both kept up a
kind of armed truce, eh, Mallet?" He looked searchingly at the other
man. "I am telling you nothing you do not know."
The other nodded gravely.
"Where's Dick now?" Mr. Maule asked abruptly; and the doctor saw that
the thin hand holding the coverlet shook a little.
"I sent him off to get Ricketts. I thought it better to give him
something to do; for as you say, as you have guessed, he was very much
over-wrought and upset. Of course Ricketts can do nothing, but I
thought he had better be sent for. And to tell you the truth, I wanted
to give Dick a job."
"Has anyone told General Lingard, Mallet?"
"No. He went out for a walk before breakfast--an odd thing to do, but it
seems he generally does go out every morning. They're expecting him in
in a few minutes. Would you like me to tell him?"
"I should be grateful if you would. And after you've told him, Mallet, I
should like to see him--just for a few moments. My poor wife was very
fond of him. You know he's engaged to Jane Oglander?"
"Yes. Dick told me. But I understood it was a secret?"
"Yes--yes, so it is."
* * * * *
"Mrs. Maule? Dead? An overdose of chloral?"
Lingard repeated what the doctor had just said very quietly, but he
stammered out the words, and his face had gone an ashen grey colour.
They were in the dining-room. Breakfast had only been laid for two.
Dr. Mallet was surprised, that is as far as anything of this kind could
surprise him.
Here was a man used to facing death, and to seeing death dealt out to
others--nay, he had doubtless in his time dealt out death to many. And
yet now this famous soldier was unmanned--yes, unmanned was the word, by
what was, after all, not a very unusual accident.
"Yes, it's a terrible thing," the doctor said briefly, "a terrible
thing!"
Lingard walked over to the sideboard. He poured himself out some brandy,
and drank it.
"You must forgive me. I had a touch of fever yesterday--jungle fever,"
he said. "Your news has given me a great shock."
"Yes, yes. Naturally."
"Will you tell me again? I don't quite understand."
He had come back and now stood facing Dr. Mallet. His face was set,
expressionless, but he kept on opening and closing his right hand with a
nervous movement.
"It happened, as these things always do, in the most simple way in the
world. I had a similar case six months ago. Poor Mrs. Maule took an
overdose of chloral last night. When her husband first became ill in
Italy many years ago, she had a very anxious time, and had to supervise,
so I understand, very inadequate nurses. Her anxiety, and the strain
generally, brought on insomnia, and the doctors there--very wrongly from
my point of view--gave her chloral. It is a most insidious drug, as you
probably know, General Lingard. She and Mr. Maule have both taken it for
years."
"Then there is no doubt as to its having been an accident?" Lingard's
voice sank in a whisper.
"No doubt at all," said the doctor emphatically, "I never saw a woman
who, taking all things into consideration, enjoyed life more than did
Mrs. Maule. The thought of suicide is out of the question. The maid who
saw her the last thing tells me that she hadn't seen her so well or
happy--gay was the word the Frenchwoman used--for many months. Before
she went to bed, she wrote a letter addressed to Miss Oglander at the
Small Farm which she gave orders should be taken over there this
morning. It went by hand nearly a couple of hours before the sad truth
was discovered."
"And then they sent for you at once?"
Lingard felt as if he was in an evil dream. He could not bring himself
to believe, to face the fact that Athena was dead--gone, for ever, out
of his life, out of all their lives.
"Yes. Mr. Wantele came and fetched me without losing a moment," said the
doctor gravely. "But of course I saw at once that there was nothing to
be done. I have, however, sent for a colleague of mine. Mr. Wantele,
who, as you can easily imagine, is very much--well, upset, went off to
fetch him. I wonder they're not back yet."
There was a long silence between the two men.
Dr. Mallet looked at the famous soldier with interest and curiosity.
General Lingard was a remarkable-looking man apart from his reputation.
But there were lines on his seamed face that told of strain--an older
strain than that induced by the shocking news which had just been told
him. He had now pulled himself together; he was doubtless annoyed with
himself for having been so terribly affected. But Mrs. Maule possessed a
very compelling, vivid personality--even the doctor could not yet think
of her as anything but living.
"I'm afraid, General Lingard, that I must prepare you for a rather
painful ordeal. Mr. Maule wishes to see you, and if possible at once."
The other made an involuntary movement of recoil.
"To see me?" he repeated. "Why should he wish to see me?" And then he
added hurriedly, "But of course I'll go and see him. He and--and Mrs.
Maule"--he brought out her name with an effort--"have both been most
kind to me, though our acquaintance has been short."
Again there was a pause. And then Lingard said abruptly, "Well--shall I
go up and see him now? I--I suppose you will come with me?" If
restrained, there was no less an appeal in his hushed voice.
"I'll just go up with you, and then I'm afraid I shall have to leave you
with him. Perhaps I ought to tell you that Mr. Maule took the news very
quietly, General Lingard. He's in a sad state--a sad state. A man in
that condition does not take things to heart in the same way that we
who are hale and strong do."
As they passed along the corridor, a housemaid was engaged in drawing
down the blinds, and it was into a darkened room that Lingard was
introduced by the doctor.
Richard Maule did not rise to receive the condolences of his guest. He
was up and in his dressing-gown, and he sat huddled in a deep invalid
chair. To Lingard's eyes he looked pitifully broken.
Various feelings--anger, contemptuous pity, and an unwilling respect for
the man who had, only the day before, made up his mind to face the
greatest humiliation open to manhood--all these jostled one another in
the soldier's mind as he stood staring down at his host.
Their hands just touched--Lingard's icy cold, Richard Maule's burning
hot.
"Thank you, thank you, General Lingard. I felt sure that I should have
your sympathy."
There was an odd gleam in the stricken man's eyes, but the other, intent
on preserving his own self-command, saw nothing of it.
"Do sit down. Yes, it's a strange, a most strange thing. She was always
so strong, so well. Poor Athena! Thanks to you in a great measure, her
last weeks of life were very bright and happy."
He looked furtively at Lingard. The man was taking his punishment like a
Stoic. But bah! what were his sufferings to those which Maule himself
had endured eight years before?
"I've troubled you to come to me," he continued, "not so much to receive
your kind sympathy, as to speak to you of Jane--of Jane Oglander. She
was, as you know, my poor wife's best friend--and in a very real sense.
This will be a most terrible shock to her. She would naturally receive
the news better from you than from anyone else, and I really asked to
see you that I might beg you to go at once, as soon as possible, over to
the Small Farm. Thanks to my good friend Dr. Mallet, we have managed to
establish a cordon round the house. But of course the truth will be
known very shortly in the village--if, indeed, it is not known there
yet."
Lingard rose from the chair on which he had reluctantly sat down in
obedience to his host's wish.
"Yes," he said in a low, firm voice. "I will certainly do as you wish. I
know how truly, how devotedly, Jane and Mrs. Maule loved one another."
"It would be idle for me to pretend to you, General Lingard, now that
you have formed part of our household for nearly a month, that my poor
wife and I were on close or sympathetic terms--" The other made a sudden
restless movement. "It is, however, a comfort to me to feel that last
night, for the first time for many years--" he was looking narrowly at
his victim, and Lingard fell into the trap.
"I know--I know," he exclaimed hastily. "It must be a comfort to you
now, Mr. Maule, to feel that you--that you--" he stopped awkwardly.
Richard Maule smiled a curious smile, and Lingard felt inexpressibly
shamed, humiliated. But what was this Richard Maule was saying?
"Ah, so she told you! Strange--strange are the ways of the modern woman,
General Lingard. But I suppose that to Athena you and Jane Oglander were
as good as husband and wife. She thought that what she could say without
impropriety to the one she could say to the other. Well, I won't keep
you now. I should be sorry indeed if Jane heard what has happened from
anyone but yourself."