sister-in-law, and I drew Mark out into the garden. “You ‘re exceedingly
nervous, and Mrs. Ambient is probably right,” I said to him. “Women
know; women should be supreme in such a situation. Trust a mother--a
devoted mother, my dear friend!” With such words as these I tried to
soothe and comfort him, and, marvellous to relate, I succeeded, with the
help of many cigarettes, in making him walk about the garden and talk,
or listen at least to my own ingenious chatter, for nearly an hour.
At the end of this time Miss Ambient returned to us, with a very rapid
step, holding her hand to her heart.
“Go for the doctor, Mark, go for the doctor this moment!”
“Is he dying? Has she killed him?” poor Ambient cried, flinging away his
cigarette.
“I don’t know what she has done! But she’s frightened, and now she wants
the doctor.”
“He told me he would be hanged if he came back!” I felt myself obliged
to announce.
“Precisely--therefore Mark himself must go for him, and not a messenger.
You must see him, and tell him it ‘s to save your child. The trap has
been ordered--it’s ready.”
“To save him? I ‘ll save him, please God!” Ambient cried, bounding with
his great strides across the lawn.
As soon as he had gone I felt that I ought to have volunteered in
his place, and I said as much to Miss Ambient; but she checked me by
grasping my arm quickly, while we heard the wheels of the dog-cart
rattle away from the gate. “He’s off--he’s off--and now I can think! To
get him away--while I think--while I think!”
“While you think of what, Miss Ambient?”
“Of the unspeakable thing that has happened under this roof!”
Her manner was habitually that of such a prophetess of ill that my first
impulse was to believe I must allow here for a great exaggeration.
But in a moment I saw that her emotion was real. “Dolcino _is_ dying
then,--he is dead?”
“It’s too late to save him. His mother has let him die! I tell you that
because you are sympathetic, because you have imagination,” Miss Ambient
was good enough to add, interrupting my expression of horror. “That’s
why you had the idea of making her read Mark’s new book!”
“What has that to do with it? I don’t understand you; your accusation is
monstrous.”
“I see it all; I’m not stupid,” Miss Ambient went on, heedless of the
harshness of my tone. “It was the book that finished her; it was that
decided her!”
“Decided her? Do you mean she has murdered her child?” I demanded,
trembling at my own words.
“She sacrificed him; she determined to do nothing to make him live. Why
else did she lock herself up, why else did she turn away the doctor? The
book gave her a horror; she determined to rescue him,--to prevent him
from ever being touched. He had a crisis at two o’clock in the morning.
I know that from the nurse, who had left her then, but whom, for a short
time, she called back. Dolcino got much worse, but she insisted on the
nurse’s going back to bed, and after that she was alone with him for
hours.”
“Do you pretend that she has no pity, that she’s insane?”
“She held him in her arms, she pressed him to her breast, not to see
him; but she gave him no remedies; she did nothing the doctor ordered.
Everything is there, untouched. She has had the honesty not even to
throw the drugs away!”
I dropped upon the nearest bench, overcome with wonder and agitation,
quite as much at Miss Armbient’s terrible lucidity as at the charge she
made against her sister-in-law. There was an amazing coherency in her
story, and it was dreadful to me to see myself figuring in it as so
proximate a cause.
“You are a very strange woman, and you say strange things.”
“You think it necessary to protest, but you are quite ready to believe
me. You have received an impression of my sister-in-law, you have
guessed of what she is capable.”
I do not feel bound to say what concession, on this point, I made to
Miss Ambient, who went on to relate to me that within the last half-hour
Beatrice had had a revulsion; that she was tremendously frightened at
what she had done; that her fright itself betrayed her; and that she
would now give heaven and earth to save the child. “Let us hope she
will!” I said, looking at my watch and trying to time poor Ambient;
whereupon my companion repeated, in a singular tone, “Let us hope so!”
When I asked her if she herself could do nothing, and whether she ought
not to be with her sister-in-law, she replied, “You had better go and
judge; she is like a wounded tigress!”
I never saw Mrs. Ambient till six months after this, and therefore
cannot pretend to have verified the comparison. At the latter period she
was again the type of the lady. “She’ll treat him better after this,” I
remember Miss Ambient saying, in response to some quick outburst (on my
part) of compassion for her brother. Although I had been in the house
but thirty-six hours, this young lady had treated me with extraordinary
confidence, and there was therefore a certain demand which, as an
intimate, I might make of her. I extracted from her a pledge that she
would never say to her brother what she had just said to me; she would
leave him to form his own theory of his wife’s conduct. She agreed with
me that there was misery enough in the house, without her contributing a
new anguish, and that Mrs. Ambient’s proceedings might be explained, to
her husband’s mind, by the extravagance of a jealous devotion. Poor Mark
came back with the doctor much sooner than we could have hoped, but we
knew, five minutes afterwards, that they arrived too late. Poor little
Dolcino was more exquisitely beautiful in death than he had been in
life. Mrs. Ambient’s grief was frantic; she lost her head and said
strange things. As for Mark’s--but I will not speak of that. _Basta_,
as he used to say. Miss Ambient kept her secret,--I have already had
occasion to say that she had her good points,--but it rankled in her
conscience like a guilty participation, and, I imagine, had something
to do with her retiring ultimately to a Sisterhood. And, _à propos_ of
consciences, the reader is now in a position to judge of my compunction
for my effort to convert Mrs. Ambient. I ought to mention that the
death of her child in some degree converted her. When the new book came
out--it was long delayed--she read it over as a whole, and her husband
told me that a few months before her death,--she failed rapidly
after losing her son, sank into a consumption, and faded away
at Mentone,--during those few supreme weeks she even dipped into
_Beltraffio_.