It was about ten o'clock at night. Lankester, who had arrived from
London an hour before, had said good-night to Lady Lucy and Sir James,
and had slipped into Marsham's room. Marsham had barred his door that
evening against both his mother and Sir James. But Lankester was
not excluded.
Off and on and in the intervals of his parliamentary work he had been
staying at Tallyn for some days. A letter from Lady Lucy, in reply to an
inquiry, had brought him down. Oliver had received him with few
words--indeed, with an evident distaste for words; but at the end of the
first day's visit had asked him abruptly, peremptorily even, to
come again.
When he entered Marsham's room he found the invalid asleep under the
influence of morphia. The valet, a young fellow, was noiselessly putting
things straight. Lankester noticed that he looked pale.
"A bad time?" he said, in a whisper, standing beside the carefully
regulated spinal couch on which Marsham was sleeping.
"Awful, sir. He was fair beside himself till we gave him the morphia."
"Is there anybody sitting up?"
"No. He'll be quiet now for six or seven hours. I shall be in the next
room."
The young man spoke wearily. It was clear that the moral strain of what
he had just seen had weighed upon him as much as the fatigue of the
day's attendance.
"Come!" said Lankester, looking at him. "You want a good night. Go to my
room. I'll lie down there." He pointed to Marsham's bedroom, now
appropriated to the valet, while the master, for the sake of space and
cheerfulness, had been moved into the sitting-room. The servant
hesitated, protested, and was at last persuaded, being well aware of
Marsham's liking for this queer, serviceable being.
Lankester took various directions from him, and packed him off. Then,
instead of going to the adjoining room, he chose a chair beside a shaded
lamp, and said to himself that he would sleep by the fire.
Presently the huge house sank into a silence even more profound than
that in which it was now steeped by day. A cold autumn wind blew round
about it. After midnight the wind dropped, and the temperature with it.
The first severe frost laid its grip on forest and down and garden.
Silently the dahlias and the roses died, the leaves shrivelled and
blackened, and a cold and glorious moon rose upon the ruins of
the summer.
Lankester dozed and woke, keeping up the fire, and wrapping himself in
an eider-down, with which the valet had provided him. In the small hours
he walked across the room to look at Marsham. He was lying still and
breathing heavily. His thick fair hair, always slightly gray from the
time he was thirty, had become much grayer of late; the thin handsome
face was drawn and damp, the eyes cavernous, the lips bloodless. Even in
sleep his aspect showed what he had suffered.
Poor, poor old fellow!
Lankester's whole being softened into pity. Yet he had no illusions as
to the man before him--a man of inferior _morale_ and weak will,
incapable, indeed, of the clever brutalities by which the wicked
flourish; incapable also of virtues that must, after all, be tolerably
common, or the world would run much more lamely than it does. Straight,
honorable, unselfish fellows--Lankester knew scores of them, rich and
poor, clever and slow, who could and did pass the tests of life without
flinching; who could produce in any society--as politicians or
green-grocers--an impression of uprightness and power, an effect of
character, that Marsham, for all his ability, had never produced, or, in
the long run, and as he came to be known, had never sustained.
Well, what then? In the man looking down on Marsham not a tinge of
pharisaic condemnation mingled with the strange clearness of his
judgment. What are we all--the best of us? Lankester had not parted,
like the majority of his contemporaries, with the "sense of sin." A
vivid, spiritual imagination, trained for years on prayer and reverie,
showed him the world and human nature--his own first and
foremost--everywhere flecked and stained with evil. For the man of
religion the difference between saint and sinner has never been as sharp
as for the man of the world; it is for the difference between holiness
and sin that he reserves his passion. And the stricken or repentant
sinner is at all times nearer to his heart than the men "who need no
repentance."
Moreover, it is in men like Lankester that the ascetic temper common to
all ages and faiths is perpetually reproduced, the temper which makes of
suffering itself a divine and sacred thing--the symbol of a mystery. In
his own pity for this emaciated arrested youth he read the pledge of a
divine sympathy, the secret voice of a God suffering for and with man,
which, in its myriad forms, is the primeval faith of the race. Where a
thinker of another type would have seen mere aimless waste and
mutilation, this evangelical optimist bared the head and bent the knee.
The spot whereon he stood was holy ground, and above this piteous
sleeper heavenly dominations, princedoms, powers, hung in watch.
He sank, indeed, upon his knees beside the sleeper. In the intense and
mystical concentration, which the habit of his life had taught him, the
prayer to which he committed himself took a marvellous range without
ever losing its detail, its poignancy. The pain, moral and physical, of
man--pain of the savage, the slave, the child; the miseries of
innumerable persons he had known, whose stories had been confided to
him, whose fates he had shared; the anguish of irreparable failure, of
missed, untasted joy; agonies brutal or obscure, of nerve and
brain!--his mind and soul surrendered themselves to these impressions,
shook under the storm and scourge of them. His prayer was not his own;
it seemed to be the Spirit wrestling with Itself, and rending his own
weak life.
He drew nearer to Marsham, resting his forehead on the bed. The
firelight threw the shadow of his gaunt kneeling figure on the white
walls. And at last, after the struggle, there seemed to be an
effluence--a descending, invading love--overflowing his own
being--enwrapping the sufferer before him--silencing the clamor of a
weeping world. And the dual mind of the modern, even in Lankester,
wavered between the two explanations: "It is myself," said the critical
intellect, "the intensification and projection of myself." "_It is
God!_" replied the soul.
Marsham, meanwhile, as the morning drew on, and as the veil of morphia
between him and reality grew thinner, was aware of a dream slowly
drifting into consciousness--of an experience that grew more vivid as it
progressed. Some one was in the room; he moved uneasily, lifted his
head, and saw indistinctly a figure in the shadows standing near the
smouldering fire. It was not his servant; and suddenly his dream mingled
with what he saw, and his heart began to throb.
"Ferrier!" he called, under his breath. The figure turned, but in his
blindness and semi-consciousness he did not recognize it.
"I want to speak to you," he said, in the same guarded, half-whispered
voice. "Of course, I had no right to do it, but--"
His voice dropped and his eyelids closed.
Lankester advanced from the fire. He saw Marsham was not really awake,
and he dreaded to rouse him completely, lest it should only be to the
consciousness of pain. He stooped over him gently, and spoke his name.
"Yes," said Marsham, murmuring, without opening his eyes. "There's no
need for you to rub it in. I behaved like a beast, and Barrington--"
The voice became inarticulate again. The prostration and pallor of the
speaker, the feebleness of the tone--nothing could have been more
pitiful. An idea rushed upon Lankester. He again bent over the bed.
"Don't think of it any more," he said. "It's forgotten!"
A slight and ghastly smile showed on Marsham's lip as he lay with closed
eyes. "Forgotten! No, by Jove!" Then, after an uneasy movement, he said,
in a stronger and irritable voice, which seemed to come from another
region of consciousness:
"It would have been better to have burned the paper. One can't get away
from the thing. It--it disturbs me--"
"What paper?" said Lankester, close to the dreamer's ear.
"The _Herald_," said Marsham, impatiently.
"Where is it?"
"In that cabinet by the fire."
"Shall I burn it?"
"Yes--don't bother me!" Evidently he now thought he was speaking to his
valet, and a moan of pain escaped him. Lankester walked over to the
cabinet and opened the top drawer. He saw a folded newspaper lying
within it. After a moment's hesitation he lifted it, and perceived by
the light of the night-lamp that it was the _Herald_ of August 2--the
famous number issued on the morning of Ferrier's death. All the story of
the communicated article and the "Barrington letter" ran through his
mind. He stood debating with himself, shaken by emotion. Then he
deliberately took the paper to the fire, stirred the coals, and, tearing
up the paper, burned it piece by piece.
After it was done he walked back to Marsham's side. "I have burned the
paper," he said, kneeling down by him.
Marsham, who was breathing lightly with occasional twitchings of the
brow, took no notice. But after a minute he said, in a steady yet
thrilling voice:
"Ferrier!"
Silence.
"Ferrier!" The tone of the repeated word brought the moisture to
Lankester's eyes. He took the dreamer's hand in his, pressing it.
Marsham returned the pressure, first strongly, again more feebly. Then a
wave of narcotic sleep returned upon him, and he seemed to sink into it
profoundly.
* * * * *
Next morning, as Marsham, after his dressing, was lying moody and
exhausted on his pillows, he suddenly said to his servant:
"I want something out of that cabinet by the fire."
"Yes, sir." The man moved toward it obediently.
"Find a newspaper in the top drawer, folded up small--on the right-hand
side."
Richard looked.
"I am sorry, sir, but there is nothing in the drawer at all."
"Nonsense!" said Marsham, angrily. "You've got the wrong drawer!"
The whole cabinet was searched to no purpose. Marsham grew very pale. He
must, of course, have destroyed the paper himself, and his illness had
effaced his memory of the act, as of other things. Yet he could not
shake off an impression of mystery. Twice now, weeks after Ferrier's
death, he seemed to have been in Ferrier's living presence, under
conditions very unlike those of an ordinary dream. He could only remind
himself how easily the brain plays tricks upon a man in his state.
* * * * *
After breakfast, Sir James Chide was admitted. But Oliver was now in the
state of obsession, when the whole being, already conscious of a certain
degree of pain, dreads the approach of a much intenser form--hears it
as the footfall of a beast of prey, drawing nearer room by room, and
can think of nothing else but the suffering it foresees, and the
narcotic which those about him deal out to him so grudgingly, rousing in
him, the while, a secret and silent fury. He answered Sir James in
monosyllables, lying, dressed, upon his sofa, the neuralgic portion of
the spine packed and cushioned from any possible friction, his forehead
drawn and frowning.
Sir James shrank from asking him about himself. But it was useless to
talk of politics; Oliver made no response, and was evidently no longer
abreast even of the newspapers.
"Does your man read you the _Times_?" asked Sir James, noticing that it
lay unopened beside him.
Oliver nodded. "There was a dreadful being my mother found a fortnight
ago. I got rid of him."
He had evidently not strength to be more explicit. But Sir James had
heard from Lady Lucy of the failure of her secretarial attempt.
"I hear they talk of moving you for the winter."
"They talk of it. I shall oppose it."
"I hope not!--for Lady Lucy's sake. She is so hopeful about it, and she
is not fit herself to spend the winter in England."
"My mother must go," said Oliver, closing his eyes.
"She will never leave you."
Marsham made no reply; then, without closing his eyes again, he said,
between his teeth: "What is the use of going from one hell to another
hell--through a third--which is the worst of all?"
"You dread the journey?" said Sir James, gently. "But there are ways and
means."
"No!" Oliver's voice was sudden and loud. "There are none!--that make
any difference."
Sir James was left perplexed, cudgelling his brains as to what to
attempt next. It was Marsham, however, who broke the silence. With his
dimmed sight he looked, at last, intently, at his companion.
"Is--is Miss Mallory still at Beechcote?"
Sir James moved involuntarily.
"Yes, certainly."
"You see a great deal of her?"
"I do--I--" Sir James cleared his throat a little--I look upon her as my
adopted daughter."
"I should like to be remembered to her."
"You shall be," said Sir James, rising. "I will give her your message.
Meanwhile, may I tell Lady Lucy that you feel a little easier
this morning?"
Oliver slowly and sombrely shook his head. Then, however, he made a
visible effort.
"But I want to see her. Will you tell her?"
Lady Lucy, however, was already in the room. Probably she had heard the
message from the open doorway where she often hovered. Oliver held out
his hand to her, and she stooped and kissed him. She asked him a few
low-voiced questions, to which he mostly answered by a shake of the
head. Then she attempted some ordinary conversation, during which it was
very evident that the sick man wished to be left alone.
She and Sir James retreated to her sitting-room, and there Lady Lucy,
sitting helplessly by the fire, brushed away some tears of which she was
only half conscious. Sir James walked up and down, coming at last to a
stop beside her.
"It seems to me this is as much a moral as a physical breakdown. Can
nothing be done to take him out of himself?--give him fresh heart?"
"We have tried everything--suggested everything. But it seems impossible
to rouse him to make an effort."
Sir James resumed his walk--only to come to another stop.
"Do you know--that he just now--sent a message by me to Miss Mallory?"
Lady Lucy started.
"Did he?" she said, faintly, her eyes on the blaze. He came up to her.
"_There_ is a woman who would never have deserted you!--or him!" he
said, in a burst of irrepressible feeling, which would out.
Lady Lucy's glance met his--silently, a little proudly. She said nothing
and presently he took his leave.
* * * * *
The day wore on. A misty sunshine enwrapped the beech woods. The great
trees stood marked here and there by the first fiery summons of the
frost. Their supreme moment was approaching which would strike them,
head to foot, into gold and amber, in a purple air. Lady Lucy took her
drive among them as a duty, but between her and the enchanted woodland
there was a gulf fixed.
She paid a visit to Oliver, trembling, as she always did, lest some
obscure catastrophe, of which she was ever vaguely in dread, should have
developed. But she found him in a rather easier phase, with Lankester,
who had just returned from town, reading aloud to him. She gave them
tea, thinking, as she did so, of the noisy parties gathered so recently,
during the election weeks, round the tea-tables in the hall. And then
she returned to her own room to write some letters.
She looked once more with distaste and weariness at the pile of letters
and notes awaiting her. All the business of the house, the estate, the
village--she was getting an old woman; she was weary of it. And with
sudden bitterness she remembered that she had a daughter, and that
Isabel had never been a real day's help to her in her life. Where was
she now? Campaigning in the north--speaking at a bye-election--lecturing
for the suffrage. Since the accident she had paid two flying visits to
her mother and brother. Oliver had got no help from her--nor her mother;
she was the Mrs. Jellyby of a more hypocritical day. Yet Lady Lucy in
her youth had been a very motherly mother; she could still recall in the
depths of her being the thrill of baby palms pressed "against the circle
of the breast."
She sat down to her task, when the door opened behind her. A footman
came in, saying something which she did not catch. "My letters are not
ready yet"--she threw over her shoulder, irritably, without looking at
him. The door closed. But some one was still in the room. She turned
sharply in astonishment.
"May I disturb you, Lady Lucy?" said a tremulous voice.
She saw a tall and slender woman, in black, bending toward her, with a
willowy appealing grace, and eyes that beseeched. Diana Mallory stood
before her. There was a pause. Then Lady Lucy rose slowly, laid down her
spectacles, and held out her hand.
"It is very kind of you to come and see me," she said, mechanically.
"Will you sit down?"
Diana gazed at her, with the childish short-sighted pucker of the brow
that Lady Lucy remembered well. Then she came closer, still holding Lady
Lucy's hand.
"Sir James thought I might come," she said, breathlessly. "Isn't
there--isn't there anything I might do? I wanted you to let me help
you--like a secretary--won't you? Sir James thought you looked so
tired--and this big place!--I am sure there are things I might do--and
oh! it would make me so happy!"
Now she had her two hands clasping, fondling Lady Lucy's. Her eyes shone
with tears, her mouth trembled.
"Oh, you must--you must!" she cried, suddenly; "don't let's remember
anything but that we were friends--that you were so kind to me--you and
Mr. Oliver--in the spring. I can't bear sitting there at Beechcote doing
nothing--amusing myself--when you--and Mr. Oliver--"
She stopped, forcing back the tears that would drive their way up,
studying in dismay the lined and dwindled face before her. Lady Lucy
colored deeply. During the months which had elapsed since the broken
engagement, she, even in her remote and hostile distance, had become
fully aware of the singular prestige, the homage of a whole district's
admiration and tenderness, which had gathered round Diana. She had
resented the prestige and the homage, as telling against Oliver,
unfairly. Yet as she looked at her visitor she felt the breath of their
ascendency. Tender courage and self-control--the woman, where the girl
had been--a nature steadied and ennobled--these facts and victories
spoke from Diana's face, her touch; they gave even something of
maternity to her maiden youth.
"You come to a sad house," said Lady Lucy, holding her away a little.
"I know." The voice was quivering and sweet. "But he will recover--of
course he'll recover!"
Lady Lucy shook her head.
"He seems to have no will to recover."
Then her limbs failed her. She sank into a chair by the fire, and there
was Diana on a stool at her feet--timidly daring--dropping soft caresses
on the hand she held, drawing out the tragic history of the preceding
weeks, bringing, indeed, to this sad and failing mother what she had
perforce done without till now--that electric sympathy of women with
each other which is the natural relief and sustenance of the sex.
Lady Lucy forgot her letters--forgot, in her mind-weariness, all the
agitating facts about this girl that she had once so vividly remembered.
She had not the strength to battle and hold aloof. Who now could talk of
marrying or giving in marriage? They met under a shadow of death; the
situation between them reduced to bare elemental things.
"You'll stay and dine with me?" she said at last, feebly. "We'll send
you home. The carriages have nothing to do. And"--she straightened
herself--"you must see Oliver. He will know that you are here."
Diana said nothing. Lady Lucy rose and left the room. Diana leaned her
head against the chair in which the older lady had been sitting, and
covered her eyes. Her whole being was gathered into the moment
of waiting.
Lady Lucy returned and beckoned. Once more Diana found herself hurrying
along the ugly, interminable corridors with which she had been so
familiar in the spring. The house had never seemed to her so forlorn.
They paused at an open door, guarded by a screen.
"Go in, please," said Lady Lucy, making room for her to pass.
Diana entered, shaken with inward fear. She passed the screen, and there
beyond it was an invalid couch--a man lying on it--and a hand held
out to her.
That shrunken and wasted being the Oliver Marsham of two months before!
Her heart beat against her breast. Surely she was looking at the
irreparable! Her high courage wavered and sank.
* * * * *
But Marsham did not perceive it. He saw, as in a cloud, the lovely oval
of the face, the fringed eyes, the bending form.
"Will you sit down?" he said, hoarsely.
She took a chair beside him, still holding his hand. It seemed as though
she were struck dumb by what she saw. He inquired if she was at
Beechcote.
"Yes." Her head drooped. "But I want Lady Lucy to let me come and stay
here--a little."
"No one ought to stay here," he said, abruptly, two spots of feverish
color appearing on his cheeks. "Sir James would advise you not. So
do I."
She looked up softly.
"Your mother is so tired; she wants help. Won't you let me?"
Their eyes met. His hand trembled violently in hers.
"Why did you come?" he said, suddenly, breathing fast.
She found no words, only tears. She had relinquished his hand, but he
stretched it out again and touched her bent head.
"There's no time left," he said, impatiently, "to--to fence in. Look
here! I can't stand this pain many minutes more." He moved with a
stifled groan. "They'll give me morphia--it's the only thing. But I want
you to know. I was engaged to Alicia Drake--after--we broke it off. And
I never loved her--not for a moment--and she knew it. Then, as soon as
this happened she left us. There was poetic justice, wasn't it? Who can
blame her? I don't. I want you to know--what sort of a fellow I am."
Diana had recovered her strength. She raised his hand, and leaned her
face upon it.
"Let me stay," she repeated--"let me stay!"
"No!" he said, with emphasis. "You should only stay if I might tell
you--I am a miserable creature--but I love you! And I may be a miserable
creature--in Chide's opinion--everybody's. But I am not quite such a
cur as that."
"Oliver!" She slipped to her knees. "Oliver! don't send me away!" All
her being spoke in the words. Her dark head sank upon his shoulder, he
felt her fresh cheek against his. With a cry he pressed her to him.
"I am dying--and--I--I am weak," he said, incoherently. He raised her
hand as it lay across his breast and kissed it. Then he dropped it
despairingly.
"The awful thing is that when the pain comes I care about nothing--not
even you--_nothing_. And it's coming now. Go!--dearest. Good-night.
To-morrow!--Call my servant." And as she fled she heard a sound of
anguish that was like a sword in her own heart.
His servant hurried to him; in the passage outside Diana found Lady
Lucy. They went back to the sitting-room together.
"The morphia will ease him," said Lady Lucy, with painful composure,
putting her arm round the girl's shoulders. "Did he tell you he
was dying?"
Diana nodded, unable to speak.
"It may be so. But the doctors don't agree." Then with a manner that
recalled old days: "May I ask--I don't know that I have the right--what
he said to you?"
She had withdrawn her arm, and the two confronted each other.
"Perhaps you won't allow it," said Diana, piteously. "He said I might
only stay, if--if he might tell me--he loved me."
"Allow it?" said Lady Lucy, vaguely--"allow it?"
She fell into her chair, and Diana looked down upon her, hanging on the
next word.
Lady Lucy made various movements as though to speak, which came to
nothing.
"I have no one--but him," she said at last, with pathetic irrelevance.
"No one. Isabel--"
Her voice failed her. Diana held out her hands, the tears running down
her cheeks. "Dear Lady Lucy, let me! I am yours--and Oliver's."
"It will, perhaps, be only a few weeks--or months--and then he will be
taken from us."
"But give me the right to those weeks. You wouldn't--you wouldn't
separate us now!"
Lady Lucy suddenly broke down. Diana clung to her with tears, and in
that hour she became as a daughter to the woman who had sentenced her
youth. Lady Lucy asked no pardon in words, to Diana's infinite relief;
but the surrender of weakness and sorrow was complete. "Sir James will
forbid it," she said at last, when she had recovered her calm.
"No one shall forbid it!" said Diana, rising with a smile. "Now, may I
answer some of those letters for you?"
* * * * *
For some weeks after this Diana went backward and forward daily, or
almost daily, between Beechcote and Tallyn. Then she migrated to Tallyn
altogether, and Muriel Colwood with her. Before and after that migration
wisdom had been justified of her children in the person of the doctor.
Hugh Roughsedge's leave had been prolonged, owing to a slight but
troublesome wound in the arm, of which he had made nothing on coming
home. No wound could have been more opportune--more friendly to the
doctor's craving for a daughter-in-law. It kept the Captain at
Beechcote, but it did not prevent him from coming over every Sunday to
Tallyn to bring flowers or letters, or news from the village; and it was
positively benefited by such mild exercise as a man may take, in company
with a little round-eyed woman, feather-light and active, yet in
relation to Diana, like a tethered dove, that can only take short
flights. Only here it was a tether self-imposed and of the heart.
There was no direct wooing, however, and for weeks their talk was all of
Diana. Then the Captain's arm got well, and Nigeria called. But Muriel
would not have allowed him to say a word before departure had it not
been for Diana--and the doctor--who were suddenly found to have entered,
in regard to this matter, upon a league and covenant not to be resisted.
Whether the doctor opened Diana's eyes need not be inquired; it is
certain that if, all the while, in Oliver's room, she and Lady Lucy had
not been wrestling hour by hour with death--or worse--Diana would have
wanted no one to open them. When she did understand, there was no
opposing her. She pleaded--not without tears--to be given the happiness
of knowing they were pledged, and her Muriel safe in harbor. So
Roughsedge had his say; a quiet engagement began its course in the
world; Brookshire as yet knew nothing; and the doctor triumphed
over Patricia.
During this time Sir James Chide watched the development of a situation
he had not been able to change with a strange mixture of revolt and
sympathy. Sometimes he looked beyond the tragedy which he thought
inevitable to a recovered and normal life for Diana; sometimes he felt a
dismal certainty that when Oliver had left her, that recovered life
could only shape itself to ascetic and self-renouncing ends. Had she
belonged to his own church, she would no doubt have become a
"religious"; and he would have felt it the natural solution. Outside the
Catholic Church, the same need takes shape--he thought--in forms less
suited to a woman's weakness, less conducive to her dignity.
All through he resented the sacrifice of a being so noble, true, and
tender to a love, in his eyes, so unfitting and derogatory. Not all the
pathos of suffering could blunt his sense of Marsham's inferiority, or
make him think it "worth while."
Then, looking deeper, he saw the mother in the child; and in Diana's
devotion, mysterious influences, flowing from her mother's fate--from
the agony, the sin, the last tremulous hope, and piteous submission of
Juliet Sparling. He perceived that in this broken, tortured happiness to
which Diana had given herself there was some sustaining or consoling
element that nothing more normal or more earthly would have brought her;
he guessed at spiritual currents and forces linking the dead with the
living, and at a soul heroically calm among them, sending forth rays
into the darkness. His religion, which was sincere, enabled him to
understand her; his affection, his infinite delicacy of feeling,
helped her.
Meanwhile, Diana and Lankester became the sustaining angels of a
stricken house. But not all their tenderness and their pity could, in
the end, do much for the two sufferers they tried to comfort. In
Oliver's case the spinal pain and disorganization increased, the
blindness also; Lady Lucy became steadily feebler and more decrepit. At
last all life was centred on one hope--the coming of a great French
specialist, a disciple of Charcot's, recommended by the English
Ambassador in Paris, who was an old friend and kinsman of Lady Lucy.
But before he arrived Diana took a resolution. She went very early one
morning to see Sir James Chide. He was afterward closeted with Lady
Lucy, and he went up to town the following day on Diana's business. The
upshot of it all was that on the morning of New Year's Eve a marriage
was celebrated in Oliver Marsham's room by the Rector of Tallyn and Mr.
Lavery. It was a wedding which, to all who witnessed it, was among the
most heart-rending experiences of life. Oliver, practically blind, could
not see his bride, and only morphia enabled him to go through it. Mrs.
Fotheringham was to have been present; but there was a feminist congress
in Paris, and she was detained at the last moment. The French specialist
came. He made a careful examination, but would give no decided opinion.
He was to stay a week at Tallyn in order to watch the case, and he
reserved his judgment. Meanwhile he gave certain directions as to local
treatment, and he asked that a new drug might be tried during the night
instead of the second dose of morphia usually given. The hearts of all
in charge of the invalid sank as they foresaw the inevitable struggle.
In the evening the new doctor paid a second visit to his patient. Diana
saw him afterward alone. He was evidently touched by the situation in
the house, and, cautious as he was, allowed himself a few guarded
sentences throwing light on the doubt--which was in effect a hope--in
his own mind.
"Madame, it is a very difficult case. The emaciation, the weakness, the
nerve depression--even if there were no organic disease--are alone
enough to threaten life. The morphia is, of course, a contributing
cause. The question before us is: Have we here a case of irreparable
disease caused by the blow, or a case of nervous shock producing all the
symptoms of disease--pain, blindness, emaciation--but ultimately
curable? That is what we have to solve."
Diana's eyes implored him.
"Give him hope," she said, with intensity. "For weeks--months--he has
never allowed himself a moment's hope."
The doctor reflected.
"We will do what we can," he said, slowly. "Meanwhile,
cheerfulness!--all the cheerfulness possible."
Diana's faint, obedient smile, as she rose to leave the room, touched
him afresh. Just married, he understood. These are the things that
women do!
As he opened the door for her he said, with some hesitation: "You have,
perhaps, heard of some of the curious effects that a railway collision
produces. A man who has been in a collision and received a blow suffers
afterward great pain, loss of walking power, impairment of vision, and
so forth. The man's suffering is real--the man himself perfectly
sincere--his doctor diagnoses incurable injury--the jury awards him
damages. Yet, in a certain number of instances, the man recovers. Have
we here an aggravated form of the same thing? _Ah, madame, courage!_"
For in the doorway he saw her fall back against the lintel for support.
The hope that he infused tested her physically more severely than the
agonies of the preceding weeks. But almost immediately she controlled
herself, smiled at him again, and went.
That night various changes were made at Tallyn. Diana's maid unpacked,
in the room communicating with Marsham's; and Diana, pale and composed,
made a new arrangement with Oliver's male nurse. She was to take the
nursing of the first part of the night, and he was to relieve her at
three in the morning. To her would fall the administration of the
new medicine.
* * * * *
At eleven o'clock all was still in the house. Diana opened the door of
Oliver's room with a beating heart. She wore a dressing-gown of some
white stuff; her black hair, released from the combs of the day, was
loosely rolled up, and curled round her neck and temples. She came in
with a gentle deliberate step; it was but a few hours since the ceremony
of the morning, but the tranformation in her was instinctive and
complete. To-night she was the wife--alone with her husband.
She saw that he was not asleep, and she went and knelt down beside him.
"Oliver, darling!"
He passed his hand over her hair.
"I have been waiting for you--it is our wedding night."
She hid her face against him.
"Oh! you angel!" he murmured to her--"angel of consolation! When I am
gone, say to yourself: 'I drew him out of the pit, and helped him to
die'; say 'he suffered, and I forgave him everything'; say 'he was my
husband, and I carried him on my heart--so.'" He moved toward her. She
put her arms under his head and drew him to her breast, stooping over
him and kissing him.
So the first part of the night went by, he very much under the influence
of morphia and not in pain; murmured words passing at intervals between
them, the outward signs of an inward and ineffable bond. Often, as she
sat motionless beside him, the thought of her mother stirred in her
heart--father, mother, husband--close, close all of them--"closer than
hands and feet"--one with her and one with God.
About two o'clock she gave him the new drug, he piteously consenting for
her sake. Then in a mortal terror she resumed her place beside him. In a
few minutes surely the pain, the leaping hungry pain would be upon him,
and she must see him wrestle with it defenceless. She sat holding her
breath, all existence gathered into fear.
But the minutes passed. She felt the tension of his hand relax. He went
to sleep so gently that in her infinite relief she too dropped into
sleep, her head beside his, the black hair mingling with the gray on the
same pillow.
The servant coming in, as he had been told, looked at them in
astonishment, and stole away again.
An hour or so later Oliver woke.
"I have had no morphia, and I am not in pain. My God! what does it
mean?"
Trembling, he put out his hand. Yes!--Diana was there--asleep in her
chair. His _wife_!
His touch roused her, and as she bent over him he saw her dimly in the
dim light--her black hair, her white dress.
"You can bring that old French fellow here whenever you like," he said,
holding her. Then, faintly, his eyes closed: "This is New Year's Day."
Once more Diana's kisses fell "on the tired heart like rain"; and when
she left him he lay still, wrapped in a tangle of thought which his
weakness could not unravel. Presently he dropped again into sleep.
Diana too slept, the sleep of a young exhaustion; and when she woke up,
it was to find her being flooded with an upholding, enkindling joy, she
knew not how or whence. She threw open the window to the frosty dawn,
thinking of the year before and her first arrival at Beechcote. And
there, in the eastern sky--no radiant planet--but a twinkling star, in
an ethereal blue; and from the valley below, dim joyous sounds of bells.