After Susan Amphlett's disappearance the house in Portland Place was
given over to silence and solitude. Lady Okehampton was at Disbrowe,
where she was on duty as a model grandmother, her daughters liking
their children to spend the early winter in the ancestral home, where
there were Exmoor ponies in abundance, and plenty of clever grooms to
teach the "dear kiddies" to ride, and a superannuated governess of the
"good old soul" or "dear old thing" order, to keep their young minds
from rusting and coach them for their next "exam.," whether in music or
science.
Lady Okehampton was established in her country house till Christmas;
and Claude had turf engagements and shooting engagements enough to
occupy him nearly as long. He had been reluctant to leave his wife;
but once away from the silent house, he had all manner of distractions
to prolong his absence; and while Newmarket was full of life and
anticipations for next year, the house in which he had left Vera was
a place of gloom, that haunted him in troubled dreams and made the
thought of return horrible.
He wrote to her more than once, entreating her to let him take her to
Cannes or Nice. She could have nurses and invalid carriages to make the
journey possible, and her health would be renewed in the sunshine. But
his wife's answer was always to the same effect:
"I am at peace. Let me be."
And then he fell back upon his stables and his racing friends; or his
shooting in Suffolk; or on cards: any thing to stop that horror of
retrospective thought, which had been like a disease with him of late
years.
* * * * *
Vera was at peace. She had no trivial visitors, was not obliged to
listen to futile chatter about other people's affairs. Dr. Tower came
three or four times a week, unwilling to confide so precious a life
to his "watch-dog," the general practitioner, and was cheerful and
sympathetic. She had two hospital nurses now--one always on guard, day
and night. She could no longer maintain her struggle for independence,
for she too often needed a helping arm to support her as she went up
and down the long corridors, or toiled slowly up the spacious staircase
that had once been alive with the finest people in London, but where
now the slender figure in a soft silk gown and white fur boa, with the
nurse in cap and uniform, moved in a ghostly silence.
Father Cyprian Hammond came to see her sometimes, and sat long and
talked delightfully; but he, who was past master in the art of making
proselytes, could get no nearer the mind of this woman than he had got
a year before. Whatever her burden was, she would not open her heart to
him. Whatever her sense of sin, she would not ask him for absolution.
It was in vain that he told her what his Church could do for a
penitent--the ineffable power possessed by that one Holy and Infallible
Church to heal the wounded heart and to bring the strayed lamb back to
the Shepherd's arms.
"Try to think of yourself in the wilderness and that divine Shepherd
seeking for you," said the priest gently.
But Father Cyprian, with all his gifts, could not win her to confide
in him. It was only to Francis Symeon, the spiritualist, that she ever
spoke of the thoughts that filled her mind, as she sat alone in the
room that had been her husband's, dreaming over one of the books he
had loved. Her intimacy with Francis Symeon had grown closer since the
world outside that quiet room had closed upon her for ever, since he
knew and she knew that the transition from the known to the unknown
life was very near. He had told her the story of his own sorrows, the
tragedy of love and death that had made him a mystic and a dreamer,
whose hopes and convictions the world scoffed at.
Life had given him all the things he desired, and last, best gift
of all, the love of a perfect woman, who alone could make that life
complete for himself and for others, lifting him for ever above the
sphere of sensual joys and worthless ambitions. It was she who had
taught him to look beyond the present life, and to consider the beauty
of the world no more than a screen that concealed the glory of diviner
worlds, hidden from them only while they were moving along their
earthly pilgrimage, always looking beyond, always dreaming of something
better.
The day came, without an hour's warning, when he was to be told that
her pilgrimage was nearly done. The after-life was calling her. The
divine companions were beckoning.
All that there had been of high enthusiasm and scorn of life left him
in that moment. He was as weak and helpless as a mother with her only
child, her infant child threatened by death. The dreamer was no more a
dreamer; and only the earthly lover remained, he who was to have been
her husband. He hung upon moments, he listened to every failing breath,
he counted time by her ebbing strength and the opinions of doctors. He
lived only to watch and to listen beside her sofa, or in the curtained
twilight of her sick room, when the pretty garden-parlour was no longer
possible. Wherever she was carried in the vain pursuit of life he went
with her. The time of alternating hope and dread lasted nearly a year.
"It was our union," he told Vera. "It was my only marriage. As I sat
day after day with her hand clasped in mine I knew that this was all
I could ever know of marriage or of woman's love. From the day of her
death I had done with the world; and all the rest of my days were given
up to searching for those who had gone--for those who were in her
world, not in mine. I have waited at the door, as your dog waits when
he cannot see you, and as he believes that you are there, on the other
side, so I believe and know that she is near me; and my days have known
no other business or interest than my patient search into the books of
all ages and nations that help the science of the future life, and the
society of those people whom you have met in my rooms, and who think
and feel as I do. I am a rich man, but I only use money for the relief
of distress; and I have allowed myself no luxury or indulgence beyond
my books, and the rooms that are large enough to hold them and me."
* * * * *
The hospital nurse sat in the adjoining room, with the door ajar.
So far, and so far only, was the patient allowed the privilege of
solitude. Someone must be always there, within hearing. When she had a
visitor the door might be shut, but not otherwise.
"There must be something very dreadful the matter with me," she said
when Dr. Tower insisted upon this point.
"No, my dear lady, there is nothing dreadful in a tired heart; but I
don't want you to faint without anybody at hand to look after you."
Vera assured him that she was not likely to faint, and made mock of his
care.
He had been very insistent upon certain points in his treatment, which
he arranged with the general practitioner who had attended her for
minor ailments in earlier days, when she was rarely in need of medical
care. He would not allow her to go up and down stairs any longer. That
ordeal must be at an end until she was stronger. He had the dining-room
made into a bedroom for her use. All the gloomy old pictures and
colossal furniture had been removed, and the walls were hung with
delicate chintz, while the choicest things in her rooms upstairs had
been brought down to make this ground-floor apartment pleasant for
her--a room that smiled as it had never smiled before, even on those
gala nights when a flood of light shone upon the splendour of Georgian
silver, and Venetian glass, and diamonds, and fashionable women.
"You are taking far too much trouble about me," Vera said, when first
she saw this transformation.
"We only want to save you trouble. The ascent to the second floor of
this lofty house is almost Alpine. I wonder you never established an
electric lift."
"I never minded running up and down stairs."
She remembered the first years after her second marriage, the years
of trivial pleasures and hurry and excitement, and with how light a
step she had gone up and down that stately staircase, to give herself
over to her Parisian maid, and to have her smart toilet of the morning
changed for the still smarter clothes of the afternoon, while she
submitted impatiently, with a mind full of worthless things: the
fashion of her gown, the shape of her last new hat. That rush from one
amusement to another--endless hours without pause--had been like the
morphia maniac's needle. It had killed thought.
All that was left of life now was thought, or rather memory; for of
late thought and memory were one.
Her doctors might do what they liked with her, so long as they let her
stay in the silent house, and did not take away her dog.
Since his return from captivity the terrier had hung about her with a
love more devoted even than before their separation. He watched her as
only a dog can watch the creature it loves. He would not let her out
of his sight. He could not forget how he had been kept away from her;
and he lived in fear of another parting. If he were not lying at her
feet, or nestling against the soft folds of her gown, he was sitting at
the door of her room, the door that hid her from him; the cruel door
that kept him from her immediate presence. He lay at her bedroom door
all night, and rushed in, with the first entrance of nurse or maid
in the morning, to greet her with hairy paws upon her coverlet, and
irresistible canine kisses upon her cheek. This was the best love that
remained to her; the love that had no after-thought, and left no sting.
She had provided a friend for him in days when she would be no longer
there. Francis Symeon had promised to take him, and love him, and give
him a happy old age and a gentle sleep when he was weary.
As the winter days shortened she grew perceptibly weaker, and the tired
heart felt as if its work in this world must be nearly done.
Mr. Symeon came every day, and stayed for a long time, a quiet figure
sitting in the low armchair by the wood fire, sometimes in silence that
was restful for the invalid, though she loved to hear him talk; for his
thoughts were not of this narrow life and its trumpery pleasures and
eating cares, but of the land beyond the veil.
"Do you believe they think of us, sometimes, those who have gone
beyond?" Vera asked in her low, sweet voice, as they sat in the winter
gloaming.
"I believe they think of us often--always, if they have loved us much."
"I had a friend whom I offended, cruelly, dreadfully," she said
slowly, as if with an effort, "and he died before I had even begun to
be sorry. And when he was dead and I knew that his spirit was there,
among the shadows, near me, I was afraid, horribly afraid. I could
only think of his anger, never of the possibility of his forgiveness.
For a long, long time I was afraid that I should see him. I could
imagine the dreadful anger in his face. His face and form were always
there, in the background of my life; and I was afraid of being alone,
afraid of silence and darkness and all lonely places; so I gave myself
up to society, and the amusements and distractions of brainless
people, without ever really caring for them--only to escape thought.
But I could not stop my brain from thinking. Thought went on like a
relentless iron mill grinding, grinding, grinding the same dead husks
by day and night; and the friend whose love I had wounded was always
there. And then there came a time when I sickened of everything upon
earth--society, splendour, music, pictures, even mountains and lakes
and forests, and all the beauty of the world. All things had become
loathsome, and I wandered about with a restless spirit in my brain that
would not leave me in peace. Then, slowly, slowly, the faint, sweet
sense of peace came back--the angry face was gone--and the face that
looked at me out of the shadows was only sad--and then the time came
when I felt that the dead had changed towards me in that dim world
you have taught me to understand, and that there was pardon and pity
in the great heart I had wounded; and one day the burden was lifted
from my soul, and I knew that I was forgiven. Now tell me, my kind
friend, was this hallucination, was it just the outcome of my brooding
thoughts, dwelling perpetually upon the same subject, or was the spirit
of my dead friend really in touch with mine? Was it by his strong will
reaching across the barrier of death that the assurance of forgiveness
had come to my soul, or was I the dupe of my own imagination, my own
longing for pardon?"
"No, you were not deceived. It is for such as you that the veil is
sometimes lifted, the creatures in whom mind is more than flesh, the
elect of human clay. I told you as much as that years ago when you
first talked to me of the world we all believe in, we who meet together
and wait for the voices out of the shadows, the wisdom and the faith
that cannot die, the voices of the influencing minds. No, my sweet
friend, have neither fear nor doubt. The sense of pity and pardon that
has come into your soul is a message from the friend you loved.
"Would the happy spirit descend
From the realms of light or song,
Should I fear to greet my friend
Or to say 'Forgive the wrong'?
Believe that you are forgiven; you can know no more than that until
you have passed the river, until the gate of a happier world has been
opened."
"And then I shall be with him again, where they neither marry nor are
given in marriage, but where they are as the angels of God in heaven?"
"That is the reunion to which we all look forward; that is the faith
that looks through death."
There was a long interval of silence, and then she said slowly:
"If I could see him with these bodily eyes, see him as I see you
looking at me in the firelight, I should be sure that the dream is not
a dream."
"You have been privileged to understand the mind of your dead friend;
to know that he is near you. That should be enough. Only to the rarest
natures is it given to see. You questioned me about this possibility
of vision once before; and I told you that I had known of one instance
when the eyes of the living beheld the dead, in the last moments of
earthly life."
"I do not think those moments are far off for me, my friend," Vera said
softly.
Francis Symeon, in whose philosophy death was emancipation, did not
say the kind of thing that Susan Amphlett would have said in the
circumstances. She no doubt would have told Vera that she was talking
nonsense, and that she was "going to get quite, quite well, and live
for years and years and years, and have a real good time."
Mr. Symeon took her attenuated hand in his friendly grasp, and sat by
her for some time in silence before he bade her his calm adieu, patted
the dog, nestling against her knees, and went quietly out of the room
and out of the house. He did not think that he would ever again be
sitting in the firelight in that room, hearing the low sad voice. He
knew that he had shut the door upon a life that was measured by moments.
Three days after that Vera was unwontedly restless. There had been a
long telegram from her husband in the morning, announcing his return
for that night. He had finished all his business with his trainer,
engaged the jockeys who were to ride for him next year, and he was
coming back to London--he did not say "coming home"--heartily sick of
Newmarket, and his Suffolk shooting, and the friends who had been with
him.
"Why do we do these things and call them pleasures?" He ended the
message with that question, as with a moral.
"Poor Claude!" sighed his wife, as she folded the thin slips of paper
and laid them among her books; and then she thought:
"How much happier for him if he had stayed with the Benedictines!"
* * * * *
The days wore on, such slow days. The nurses were more and more
attentive, horribly attentive. There were three of them now. Two were
always about her, while the third slept. She had left off asking
questions. Dr. Tower came every morning, and sat with her quietly for a
quarter of an hour, and patted and praised her dog, and told her scraps
of the day's news, and was kind; but she heard him without interest, as
if without understanding. She had what Susie called her mermaid gaze,
as one who saw only things far away, across a vast ocean. She never
questioned him now, and made no allusion to the third young woman in
uniform, who had come upon the scene so quietly that she looked like a
double of one of the others, a trick of the optic nerves rather than
another person.
She had the nurses almost always near her; and that other sentinel, the
terrier, was there always. There was no "almost" where his affection
was concerned. As she grew weaker and moved with feebler steps he moved
nearer her. She talked to him sometimes, to the nurses never, though
she was gracious to them in her mute fashion, and understood that they
liked her and were sorry for her.
One quiet, grey evening, the closing in of a day that had been
curiously mild for an English December--a day that brought back the
still, sad atmosphere of mid-winter at San Marco--she had an unusual
respite from her watchers. It was tea-time, and they were sitting
longer than usual over the low fire in the room beyond the library,
with the door ajar--no lights switched on, no sound of laughter or loud
voices--just two well-behaved young women whispering together in the
firelight.
She was alone, moving slowly along the corridor. She had been wandering
about for some time, with a restlessness that had increased in a
painful degree of late, the dog creeping close against her skirt,
until, all in a moment, when she bent down to speak to him, he slunk
away from her and crawled under the dark archway that opened into the
deeper darkness of the hall, as Vera entered through the open door of
the library.
* * * * *
At last it had come--the thing she had been waiting for. It was no
surprise when the dream she had been dreaming night after night became
a reality. A shiver ran through her, as if the warm blood in her
veins had turned to ice-cold water; but it was awe, not horror, that
thrilled her. Night after night she had awakened from a vision of Mario
Provana, from the sound of his voice, the touch of his hand, the glad,
vivid sense that all that was past was a dream, that he was alive,
and that she belonged to him and him only, as before the coming of
trouble. She had awakened night after night, in the faint flicker of
the shrouded lamp, when the room was full of shadows. She had awakened
to disappointment and desolation. That had been the surprise--not this.
There was neither doubt nor wonder now, as she stood on the threshold
of the dim room, and saw Provana sitting by the hearth in the chair
where he used to sit, calm, motionless, like a statue of domestic
peace, the creator and defender of the home, the master, sitting silent
by the hearth-fire that wedded love had made sacred. The dull red of
that fading fire, and the pale grey of evening outside the uncurtained
windows, made the only light in the room; but there was light enough
for her to see every line in the face, the face of power, where every
line told of force, unalterable purpose, indomitable courage.
The grey eyes looked at her, steel bright under the projecting brow.
Kind eyes, that told her of his love, a love that Fate could not change
nor diminish. Not Death, not Sin!
For these first moments she believed he had come back to her, that
he had escaped the bonds of Death. She did not ask what miracle had
brought him there, but she believed in his miraculous return. The blood
ran swift and warm in her veins again. Her heart beat with a passionate
joy. She stretched out her arms to him, trying to speak fond words of
welcome; but her tremulous lips could give no sound. The muscles of her
throat seemed paralysed.
She was yearning to tell him of her love--that she had sinned and
repented; that he was the first--must always be the first--in her
affection.
Her limbs failed her with a sudden collapse, and she sank on her knees
by a large, high-backed arm-chair that stood near the door, and clung
to the arm of it, with both her hands, struggling against the numbness
that was creeping over her senses. She kept her eyes upon the face--the
face of all her dreams, of all her sorrow--the face she had loved and
regretted. For moments her widely opened eyes gazed steadily--then cold
drops broke out upon her forehead, her limbs shook, and her eyelids
drooped--only for an instant.
She lifted them, and he was gone. There was nothing but the empty
chair--his chair in the quiet domestic evenings, before Mario Provana's
house became the fashion, before the Disbrowes gave the law to his
wife's existence.
That was the last she saw before the lifting of the veil.