of rose-trees in its midst. The Frau Karl Druschki, recently acquired,
had only one half-unfolded bloom. He gathered it and gave to her as she
stood beyond the iron rails.
"Only one! How could you pull it for me!" she reproached him.
"Absolutely pure white--quite flawless, you see," he said.
His touch lingered on the flower, for he loved roses; then he put it
into her hand, and she went on her way.
In the bow-windowed front room of Horace Kilbourne's house his wife was
lying on the sofa--semi-paralysed, a drunkard.
"That you, Horry dear?" she said, as, with a gloomy, hopeless face he
looked in upon the unlovely sight.
She raised a frowsy head from its pillow, put a dirty hand to her eyes
to shade them from the sun entering the darkened room by the open door,
smiled fatuously upon her husband.
"Come and haul wifey up, and make me comfy, and give me a cup of tea,"
she invited him.
One side of her was helpless. She was a tall and broadly-made woman,
enormously fat. It required the exertion of all his strength to get her
into the desired position. One leg was like a log, and was lifted as if
it did not belong to her. All the cushions had to be shaken up and
replaced, the coverlet respread on her ice-cold feet.
But Kilbourne was used to such services; if his face was lowering as he
performed them, his fingers were deft.
Tea was set forth with no daintiness upon the untidy, coloured cloth of
the centre-table. He poured out a cup and took it to her. She received
it with a coaxing leer in her eyes, looking up at him.
"Just a drop!" she whispered, in a thickened whine. "Just a teeny drop,
Horry!"
He turned his back on her, without a word in reply, and went to his own
tea. Two of the three rounds set forth of unappetising bread-and-butter
he ate, swallowed a great cup of lukewarm tea. His eyes were fixed
drearily upon the dish of biscuits which also graced the meal. He
counted them idly, wondering for how many afternoons the same six had
done duty for the like occasion.
"One leetle, teeny drop!" his wife said again. "You know tea gives me
indigestion without, Horry. One teeny, weeny one!"
She was allowed by the doctor a certain modicum of whisky in the day,
and the dose, for safety's sake, Kilbourne always administered himself.
"You can have it half now and half when you go to bed at night, if you
like," he said at length, and got up and poured the portion from a
bottle, which he locked away again in the sideboard.
She sighed heavily with anticipation as he held it to her, and he felt
her breath upon his face.
"You've been having brandy?" he said.
"No, Horry, no!"
She shook her head, which was already heavily tremulous, and, seeing
fear lest the precious beverage with which she was now supplied should
be filched from her, buried her face in the cup and gulped it down.
"Where'd you get the brandy?" he persisted; and she began feebly to
cry.
"Naughty Horry, to speak to wifey so! Didn't I promise you and the
doctor I wouldn't touch it? And me left without a penny to buy it with!
And only water the whole day long has passed my lips. I'll take an
oath! I wish I may die to-night, Horry, if I've had a drop!"
He turned from her and rang the bell.
"Where did your mistress get the brandy she has had to-day?" he asked
of the pert, untidy-looking maid-of-all-work who appeared.
"Where'd she get it? Out of the bottle, of course. I fetched it for her
away from the grocer's, right enough," the servant said, with an
impudent face and a tossed-up head.
"I thought I had given you orders never to fetch your mistress anything
of the sort?"
"An' the missus she give me orders to fetch it," the girl said. "'Ow do
I know which I'm to mind, between ye? An' me shut up with 'er all the
day, an' 'er a-badgerin'----"
"Take the tea-things. That will do for the present. Go!" he said.
He walked to the foot of the sofa, and looked long at the huge,
unlovely bulk, once the admired form of his handsome wife, that lay
there.
"You disgrace!" he said.
She whimpered afresh, her mouth shaking, the tears running down her
cheeks unrestrained, like those of a child.
"There's a way to speak to a poor, suffering wife!" she whined. "And my
head like splitting open! You might feel for me a little, Horry. Look
at my poor arm!" With her able hand she moved the disabled one towards
him. "It's quite numb. Rub it, Horry," she pleaded, looking weepingly
up at him. "It's numb, yet it aches right up into my throat. And my
poor tongue--poor wifey's tongue--is like fire! Look at it, hubby."
She opened the tremulous mouth, the great, parched tongue lolled out.
He looked at her, not stirring, with hard eyes.
"You disgrace!" he said again.
"Aren't you a disgrace to say so, then?" she whimpered. "Who'd believe
you were my husband, calling me disgraces, and things? No one would
think there was any affection between us, going on like that. And me
with one side of me useless, and a fatty heart, as the doctor told me
plainly, and said I was to take the greatest care. And who should take
care of me if my own husband doesn't? And you stand there glaring at
me, and not a kind word to throw at me! And haven't I always been a
true and loving wife to you?"
He looked at her deliberately, with loathing in his eyes.
"You have been the curse of my life!" he said.
Then he left her.
* * * * *
In half an hour the pert maid-of-all-work came in. She was in walking
costume, a string of pearls about her bare throat, a hat-box in her
hand.
"This 'ere's my luggige," she explained. "You can go through it, if you
like, to make sure I 'aven't took none of your rubbige away with me!
I'm a-going, I am! The master he come and give me notice to leave at
the end o' the month, but I don't choose to stay in no sech a place so
long. I've 'ad enough of a tipsy missus, and an' ouse without an atim
o' comfit! I'm a-goin!"
The woman on the sofa, with the inflamed, red face, the bloodshot,
painful-looking eyes, the loose mouth, looked helplessly upon the
maid-of-all-work.
"A little drop of something to quench my thirst before you go!" she
implored. "I can't get up to fetch it for myself, as you know, Maria;
and my throat's swelled up with being so parched."
"And if you die of it, so much the better!" Maria said frankly. But she
went and pumped some water, all the same, and brought it to her, the
glass dimmed in her red, bare hand. "For all I've had to demean myself
to wait on sich as you, I'm a Christian!" she said.
"A leetle drop of the brandy left, Maria?" the woman asked.
"Trust you for that! Not a drop!"
"Drain the bottle and see, Maria."
"You are a one, you are!" the emancipated servant said. "I ha' seen a
sight o' bad 'uns, but never one like you. And if I was th' master, I'd
up and chuck you inter th' street, see if I wouldn't, and git a little
peace in 'is 'ome with a diff'runt woman than you! 'E wouldn't have to
go far, neither, before 'e found one to 'is mind, master wouldn't, an'
so I tell you! An' as for me, I'm done with you, so there!"
The woman looked after her as she bounced to the door, hiccoughing,
holding the now empty glass in her shaking hand. Her brows were knit;
she seemed in her muddled brain to be considering something.
"The girl Grantley promised she'd come to-day," she said. "She promised
she'd bring me something."
"And did so, right enough. But you 'aven't got no memory nor nothin'!"
"Where is it, then, Maria dear? For my poor head's splitting----"
"Why, in th' basket as stan' agin your sofy, where you put it yourself,
for I see ye do it."
Left to herself, the woman put the glass to her lips, sucked from it
the few drops that hung upon its sides, lay with it in her hand,
alternately looking into it and looking into space, lifting it to her
lips again and again.
The machinery of her mind was too far destroyed for it to work in any
suggested groove. It strayed off the line continually into all sorts of
hazy, dim byways.
A disgrace!
She had broken her word to him, often enough, but he had never before
called her that. It was very cruel of him, and not like a husband to
use such a word to his wife, that had ever a loving word for him when
he came home, and was always waiting for him, so obliging and kind. Her
mother would vouch for that--she had often said she had a loving
nature.
Once she had walked unexpectedly into the little sitting-room at home,
and she had heard her mother saying to Horace--"Julia has a very loving
nature." Why didn't her mother come and say kind things to her now? She
was all alone. If her mother came and sat by her side--
She would like, if she could walk there, to get off the sofa and go to
look for her in that little sitting-room, at home. It was so cool in
there always, with the window open to the garden. There was a basket of
violets on the table. She wondered if they were there now. She would
like to put her lips, that were so hot and uncomfortable, down upon
them--
With difficulty she half turned on the sofa with the idea of reaching
them; but remembered as she did so that her mother had been dead for
years and years, and that there were no violets now.
She cried afresh, and held the empty glass to her lips in the hope a
forgotten drop might trickle down upon them.
Her mother had once scolded her--once when Horace had told tales--and
had said that she had broken her heart. But, for all that, she would
not have liked to hear her called a disgrace.
She wished her husband would come in and put her to bed. He would have
to do it alone to-night, as Maria was gone. Or perhaps old Susan would
come and help. Old Susan had carried her up to bed quite easily, last
night--when she was a child. No sticks, nor bother of people pushing
and dragging--had carried her up as light as a feather, and popped her
into her cool, soft bed, and tucked her up--
"Susan!" she called. "Susan!" And opened her aching eyes to look for
her; and cried again when she remembered why the old servant could not
come, and that she was not a child again any more.
A disgrace!
It wasn't a nice thing to say to such a good wife, and she so
afflicted! He had another name for her when she used to walk about like
other people--like the girl Grantley, for instance, that her husband
always came home from school with. She used to go to meet Horry,
herself, in those days, and go down to the river in the evening with
him, and sit on one of the chairs beneath the trees to watch the boats.
To watch the boats! How they glided along--gently, gently! It made you
sleepy to look at them. She was in one herself now, rocking, rocking;
and the sun was going down behind the trees; and a lot more boats, more
and more, all rocking; and the sound of the oars, and the water lapping
at the sides. She would like to put her hand in the river. It looked so
cool--so cool!
The hand dropped heavily at her side, the glass broke; and she was on
her sofa still, not in a boat at all; and it was the girl Grantley who
sat by the river with Horry.
The girl Grantley! Where was that she had brought? The basket into
which she had dropped it was easily within her reach. Here was the
parcel, fastened as chemists' parcels are fastened. She shook it, and a
gleam came into her eyes. Liquid! Something to drink, to moisten her
burning tongue and swollen throat. No matter what--
* * * * *
Down by the river, on the broad path beneath the trees, where half the
population of the place repaired in the summer evenings, the girl
Grantley walked with her brother, and by their side walked Horace
Kilbourne.
Presently the brother stopped to speak to a friend, and the girl and
the other man walked on--walked through the crowds of people to where
the crowds grew less, and on still, till there was comparative
solitude.
Only the girl talked, telling him of her day's work--of what it had
brought her of pleasure, of what had gone amiss. She had the habit of
talking out her heart to him, bringing him all her difficulties and
distresses.
"It rests me as nothing else does," she told him, when he had listened
to the end, and said what had to be said. "And you? Have you nothing to
tell me?" she asked him.
"Nothing," he said.
She glanced sideways and upwards at him as he towered above her,
walking with drooping head.
"Something has happened," she said softly. "Can't you tell me? It
helps, to tell a friend."
"It is nothing to which I am not well used," he said. "The same old
wretched story. I have never told it in so many words. I am too ashamed
to tell. You know it, well enough. Who is there that does not know?"
She turned on him a face that startled him, who knew it well, and had
learnt by heart, he thought, its many changes.
"Why do you not kill her?" she said.
"Sh-sh-sh!" he whispered, surprised and reproving.
Her vivid face was aflame with passion; almost, it seemed, with hate.
"It would be no crime," she said. "Do you think God wants His world so
cumbered? Why should your life, other people's lives, be destroyed? Are
you to bear a burden like that for ever?"
"Sh-sh-sh!" he whispered again.
He put a hand upon her arm, and gently turned her with him. They began
to retrace their steps.
"I was right never to speak to you about it before," he said presently.
"Mutual confidences are for happy people, Kate. Men burthened with
great sorrows know them to be incommunicable. Forgive me that I for a
moment forgot."
Her passion had died away as quickly as it had blazed forth. She heard
him in silence, a sob in her throat.
Soon they were back in the perambulating crowd, chattering, laughing,
listening to the band upon the river. The broad stream was filled with
boats, in which charmingly-dressed women indolently reclined on
bright-hued cushions. The occupants propelled themselves by means of
lazy hands laid upon the sides of neighbouring boats. Be-flannelled
men, and boys in their slim canoes, slipped here and there among them.
The music mingled harmoniously with the light dip of the paddles, the
soft lapping of the water, the murmuring voices. The sweet scent of
hay, freshly cut in the meadows across the river, was in the air, the
peace of the midsummer evening over all.
Such a happy, prosperous throng; such a concord of sweet sounds and
scents and sights! One man and woman, at least, looked on,
sorrowful-eyed, bitterness within their hearts.
"I am sorry if I shocked you," Kate Grantley said at length. "I thought
if we two spoke together--even of that--face to face----"
"It is impossible," he said. "There are troubles in which no friend can
help, Kate. The friend that is dearest to me in life cannot help me in
mine."
He looked at her steadily, holding her eyes with his own, for a space;
then left her and went on his way.
He went into his house, the door of which stood open to the night.
In the airless, bow-windowed room, upon the untidy sofa where he had
left her, his wife was lying dead.
PART II
No inquest was held on Horace Kilbourne's wife. The doctor had attended
her almost daily. For years her husband had been warned her heart was
in such a condition that she might die suddenly, at any moment. She had
so died. Except that it was a happy release for herself, and for her
husband--that over-tired, good, and patient man--one of Heaven's
mercies, there was nothing to be said. Unless Kilbourne himself, in
remembrance of other days, and in the tenderness of his heart, shed a
tear for her, there was not a soul to weep for drunken Julia Kilbourne.
Although, to the best of his ability, he had lived retired from all
society, and in his sensitiveness to his wife's shame had kept, as well
as he could, her history to himself, it was well known in the town.
There was none who knew who did not respect and pity him. Kind hands
were eagerly put out to him. At last he, who had shrunk from going to
other men's houses because he could not ask them to his own, was free
to do so.
It was a little disappointing that he repulsed all such advances.
The only adverse criticism which had been passed on him had been that,
a heavily burthened man, he had not known how to conceal his
misfortune, but had carried about with him a face as miserable as his
history. That his face would now bear witness to his new-found delight
of liberty was confidently expected.
It was strange that, instead of the looked-for lightening of gloom,
there was, if possible, in his bearing, his wife being safely dead and
buried, an increase of melancholy.
Kate Grantley, who thought she knew him better than the rest, was not
surprised that the little letter she wrote him on the first news of Mrs
Kilbourne's death remained unanswered. The words her pen had written
had come warm from a heart realising the shock, the bewilderment, from
which it was inevitable that he must suffer. But it was a letter which
it would have been painful to him to answer, perhaps. He had known that
she would understand.
She would not be hurt that he ceased to linger for her at the hour they
both came out of school. Often she walked to the street which held her
home and his, with his tall figure a dozen yards in front of her. She
would not hurry a step to overtake him. All in good time. She no more
doubted him--she no more doubted that in due time he would ask her to
be his wife--than she doubted what her answer would be when he did so.
Between them there had been no vulgar philandering; no word of what
might have been, what yet might be, had passed their lips. Yet, deep in
their hearts was guarded an unspoken compact which--she would have
staked her life on it--neither would betray.
But she was unpleasantly startled, coming face to face with him one
day, he walking down his garden path, which she was passing, to find
that he did not even purpose to speak to her. Pretending to fumble at
the lock of the gate, he hung back until she was well in front.
Later on, the pair had encountered in a shop. She had put out a hand to
him, and he had taken it. But there had been hesitation, almost
reluctance, on his part, and it seemed to her that he had looked at her
with intolerable reproach in his eyes.
She was haunted by the remembrance. Was it possible that his wife's
death could have been really a grief to him? Such a grief as that? Or
was the lonely life he was leading, coming upon the shock of finding
the woman dead, telling upon him physically and mentally?
"Go and ask Mr Kilbourne in to supper to-night!" she commanded her
brother. She lived with him in another little bow-windowed house, with
a purple clematis over the bow-window, a crimson rambler over the door,
and about it the same air of sweetness, of neatness, of wholesomeness
its mistress wore. "He is looking ill and wretched. Try to bring him
in."
"I have asked him every day of my life. He won't come," the brother
said. "He gets out of my way when he can," he added. "He does not seem
to wish to be friendly any more."
She looked at him in silence, considering the statement. Kilbourne's
punctiliousness was exaggerated, but she thought she understood it. It
was delicacy carried to an extreme, perhaps, but she was proud to think
it was characteristic of him.
"I don't see why he need be afraid of being civil to me, for all that,"
the brother said, almost as if she had spoken.
The next time Kate Grantley had an opportunity of looking in
Kilbourne's face she was painfully struck by his appearance. The man
was thinner, more worn, years older. His head seemed to droop beneath a
heavier burthen than of yore; he walked as if his feet were shod with
lead.
Several months, in which she had had no word with him, had gone by
since his wife's death. At this rate, before he dared to stretch out a
hand to gather for himself the happiness ready to bloom for him, he
would be dead! She thought she saw that the man, lonely, sensitive, to
a fault, was passing his days in brooding melancholy, in unmerited
self-reproach. He had had more than enough of sadness in his life. For
an idea, a stupid convention of other folks' manufacture, and not worth
respecting, he should have no more. He should not be allowed to take
his own path, to push her on one side again.
Once resolved on any course, she was a very practical young person,
alert to take the opportunity the moment gave.
She overtook him determinedly, one afternoon, as he walked ahead of her
from school, as usual. The holidays, during which neither had left
home, were over; the summer was over, the winter term well begun.
"Mr Kilbourne, will you come into No. 6 for one minute to-day?" she
said. "I particularly wish to speak to you."
He had been ready enough to go there in the old days, with or without
pretext; now he had the look of a man called on to do a thing at which
his soul sickened.
"If you will excuse me----" he said.
But Kate was resolute.
"I cannot excuse you. You must come at once," she said.
She had assumed the little air of authority over him which in her he
had found to be so pleasant. With a look upon his face as if he were
going to his execution, he obeyed.
For many weeks she had gone about, the words she meant to speak to him,
of encouragement, of comradeship, upon her lips; the chance to use them
had never come. Now she would not use them, but would speak to him as
if there had been no hiatus in their communion, as if no tragedy had
come between.
She faced him as they entered the bright little sitting-room, of
exquisite neatness, and sweet with flowers, which had ever seemed such
a haven of rest to him.
"Have you seen Alick?" she began. "Have you heard that they have
promoted him, and that he is to be sent to the Paris branch?" (Alick
was a clerk in one of the banks.)
He had not heard.
"He'll be pleased. It's what he wished for, isn't it?" he asked, not
looking at her, gazing before him with lack-lustre eyes.
Her heart sank as, seeing him close at hand, she noted the change in
him. Although, with his slouching gait and loose-hung limbs and hanging
head, he had never been a smart-looking man, he had yet been one
possessed of great personal nicety; in that matter--in the shipwreck of
his life--being careful not to let himself go. But now there was about
him a look of neglect, making to ache with pity the heart of the woman
who observed it.
Alick was pleased, she admitted, with sinking spirit. "But it is about
myself I want to ask your advice," she went on.
He glanced at her quickly with his deep, sad eyes, and glanced away
again.
"Shall I throw up what I am doing here, and go with Alick? It is this I
want to ask you. My brother could share lodgings with a friend he has
there. He does not really want me; but I used to wish for Paris--long
ago, before we met, you and I. I might meet with a good appointment
there. It is a chance for me. Help me to make up my mind. Shall I go?"
There fell a complete silence between them.
She sat on the music-stool, her back to the open piano, a pretty,
slight girl, with a dark and resolute little face. It confronted the
gloomy one before it now with an expression progressing from
expectation to surprise, to irritation, in its gaze. On her part, she
determined not to say another word to bridge the pause; but it seemed
that the silence would never be broken.
At length he slowly lifted his eyes to hers.
"I think, perhaps, it would be better for you to go," he said.
She sprang up from the stool, turned to the piano, began sorting, with
quick, nervous fingers, the music there.
"You think so? Very well; I'll go, then," she said. "I only wanted to
hear what you would think of it."
He had risen with an air of relief and picked up his hat. He looked in
silence for a minute at her straight back in its trim Norfolk jacket,
at her thick braids of black hair beneath the plain straw hat.
"Of course you know best what you wish," he said hesitatingly.
She placed the freshly arranged music with an air of decision on the
piano.
"I know very well what I wish, thank you," she said.
There was another silence.
"Is that all?" he asked her.
"Quite all. Except"--she turned round upon him and showed him that the
dark skin of her face had whitened, that her eyes were hurt and
angry--"except that Alick has to go next week. I suppose I ought to
give a term's notice; but also, if I don't, I suppose they'll do
without it--I shall be ready to go with him. We shall be busy till we
start. I may not see you to speak to again--this will be our good-bye."
"Is that so?" he said.
She could hardly believe her ears; she held her breath in the cruelty
of the surprise, and set her teeth to help her to bear the pain.
"Ours has been a long friendship," she said, striving to steady her
voice. "Two years--seeing each other every day. Strange, isn't it, how
things come to an end?"
"Except some things which are endless," he said.
She took heart of grace at that.