All had been done that could be done. Mrs. Barnet was in her own house
under medical hands, but the result was still uncertain. Barnet had
acted as if devotion to his wife were the dominant passion of his
existence. There had been much to decide—whether to attempt restoration
of the apparently lifeless body as it lay on the shore—whether to carry
her to the Harbour Inn—whether to drive with her at once to his own
house. The first course, with no skilled help or appliances near at
hand, had seemed hopeless. The second course would have occupied nearly
as much time as a drive to the town, owing to the intervening ridges of
shingle, and the necessity of crossing the harbour by boat to get to
the house, added to which much time must have elapsed before a doctor
could have arrived down there. By bringing her home in the carriage
some precious moments had slipped by; but she had been laid in her own
bed in seven minutes, a doctor called to her side, and every possible
restorative brought to bear upon her.
At what a tearing pace he had driven up that road, through the yellow
evening sunlight, the shadows flapping irksomely into his eyes as each
wayside object rushed past between him and the west! Tired workmen with
their baskets at their backs had turned on their homeward journey to
wonder at his speed. Halfway between the shore and Port-Bredy town he
had met Charlson, who had been the first surgeon to hear of the
accident. He was accompanied by his assistant in a gig. Barnet had sent
on the latter to the coast in case that Downe’s poor wife should by
that time have been reclaimed from the waves, and had brought Charlson
back with him to the house.
Barnet’s presence was not needed here, and he felt it to be his next
duty to set off at once and find Downe, that no other than himself
might break the news to him.
He was quite sure that no chance had been lost for Mrs. Downe by his
leaving the shore. By the time that Mrs. Barnet had been laid in the
carriage, a much larger group had assembled to lend assistance in
finding her friend, rendering his own help superfluous. But the duty of
breaking the news was made doubly painful by the circumstance that the
catastrophe which had befallen Mrs. Downe was solely the result of her
own and her husband’s loving-kindness towards himself.
He found Downe in his office. When the solicitor comprehended the
intelligence he turned pale, stood up, and remained for a moment
perfectly still, as if bereft of his faculties; then his shoulders
heaved, he pulled out his handkerchief and began to cry like a child.
His sobs might have been heard in the next room. He seemed to have no
idea of going to the shore, or of doing anything; but when Barnet took
him gently by the hand and proposed to start at once, he quietly
acquiesced, neither uttering any further word nor making any effort to
repress his tears.
Barnet accompanied him to the shore, where, finding that no trace had
as yet been seen of Mrs. Downe, and that his stay would be of no avail,
he left Downe with his friends and the young doctor, and once more
hastened back to his own house.
At the door he met Charlson. ‘Well!’ Barnet said.
‘I have just come down,’ said the doctor; ‘we have done everything, but
without result. I sympathize with you in your bereavement.’
Barnet did not much appreciate Charlson’s sympathy, which sounded to
his ears as something of a mockery from the lips of a man who knew what
Charlson knew about their domestic relations. Indeed there seemed an
odd spark in Charlson’s full black eye as he said the words; but that
might have been imaginary.
‘And, Mr. Barnet,’ Charlson resumed, ‘that little matter between us—I
hope to settle it finally in three weeks at least.’
‘Never mind that now,’ said Barnet abruptly. He directed the surgeon to
go to the harbour in case his services might even now be necessary
there: and himself entered the house.
The servants were coming from his wife’s chamber, looking helplessly at
each other and at him. He passed them by and entered the room, where he
stood mutely regarding the bed for a few minutes, after which he walked
into his own dressing-room adjoining, and there paced up and down. In a
minute or two he noticed what a strange and total silence had come over
the upper part of the house; his own movements, muffled as they were by
the carpet, seemed noisy, and his thoughts to disturb the air like
articulate utterances. His eye glanced through the window. Far down the
road to the harbour a roof detained his gaze: out of it rose a red
chimney, and out of the red chimney a curl of smoke, as from a fire
newly kindled. He had often seen such a sight before. In that house
lived Lucy Savile; and the smoke was from the fire which was regularly
lighted at this time to make her tea.
After that he went back to the bedroom, and stood there some time
regarding his wife’s silent form. She was a woman some years older than
himself, but had not by any means overpassed the maturity of good looks
and vigour. Her passionate features, well-defined, firm, and statuesque
in life, were doubly so now: her mouth and brow, beneath her purplish
black hair, showed only too clearly that the turbulency of character
which had made a bear-garden of his house had been no temporary phase
of her existence. While he reflected, he suddenly said to himself, I
wonder if all has been done?
The thought was led up to by his having fancied that his wife’s
features lacked in its complete form the expression which he had been
accustomed to associate with the faces of those whose spirits have fled
for ever. The effacement of life was not so marked but that, entering
uninformed, he might have supposed her sleeping. Her complexion was
that seen in the numerous faded portraits by Sir Joshua Reynolds; it
was pallid in comparison with life, but there was visible on a close
inspection the remnant of what had once been a flush; the keeping
between the cheeks and the hollows of the face being thus preserved,
although positive colour was gone. Long orange rays of evening sun
stole in through chinks in the blind, striking on the large mirror, and
being thence reflected upon the crimson hangings and woodwork of the
heavy bedstead, so that the general tone of light was remarkably warm;
and it was probable that something might be due to this circumstance.
Still the fact impressed him as strange. Charlson had been gone more
than a quarter of an hour: could it be possible that he had left too
soon, and that his attempts to restore her had operated so sluggishly
as only now to have made themselves felt? Barnet laid his hand upon her
chest, and fancied that ever and anon a faint flutter of palpitation,
gentle as that of a butterfly’s wing, disturbed the stillness
there—ceasing for a time, then struggling to go on, then breaking down
in weakness and ceasing again.
Barnet’s mother had been an active practitioner of the healing art
among her poorer neighbours, and her inspirations had all been derived
from an octavo volume of Domestic Medicine, which at this moment was
lying, as it had lain for many years, on a shelf in Barnet’s
dressing-room. He hastily fetched it, and there read under the head
‘Drowning:’-
‘Exertions for the recovery of any person who has not been immersed for
a longer period than half-an-hour should be continued for at least four
hours, as there have been many cases in which returning life has made
itself visible even after a longer interval.
‘Should, however, a weak action of any of the organs show itself when
the case seems almost hopeless, our efforts must be redoubled; the
feeble spark in this case requires to be solicited; it will certainly
disappear under a relaxation of labour.’
Barnet looked at his watch; it was now barely two hours and a half from
the time when he had first heard of the accident. He threw aside the
book and turned quickly to reach a stimulant which had previously been
used. Pulling up the blind for more light, his eye glanced out of the
window. There he saw that red chimney still smoking cheerily, and that
roof, and through the roof that somebody. His mechanical movements
stopped, his hand remained on the blind-cord, and he seemed to become
breathless, as if he had suddenly found himself treading a high rope.
While he stood a sparrow lighted on the windowsill, saw him, and flew
away. Next a man and a dog walked over one of the green hills which
bulged above the roofs of the town. But Barnet took no notice.
We may wonder what were the exact images that passed through his mind
during those minutes of gazing upon Lucy Savile’s house, the sparrow,
the man and the dog, and Lucy Savile’s house again. There are honest
men who will not admit to their thoughts, even as idle hypotheses,
views of the future that assume as done a deed which they would recoil
from doing; and there are other honest men for whom morality ends at
the surface of their own heads, who will deliberate what the first will
not so much as suppose. Barnet had a wife whose pretence distracted his
home; she now lay as in death; by merely doing nothing—by letting the
intelligence which had gone forth to the world lie undisturbed—he would
effect such a deliverance for himself as he had never hoped for, and
open up an opportunity of which till now he had never dreamed. Whether
the conjuncture had arisen through any unscrupulous, ill-considered
impulse of Charlson to help out of a strait the friend who was so kind
as never to press him for what was due could not be told; there was
nothing to prove it; and it was a question which could never be asked.
The triangular situation—himself—his wife—Lucy Savile—was the one clear
thing.
From Barnet’s actions we may infer that he _supposed_ such and such a
result, for a moment, but did not deliberate. He withdrew his hazel
eyes from the scene without, calmly turned, rang the bell for
assistance, and vigorously exerted himself to learn if life still
lingered in that motionless frame. In a short time another surgeon was
in attendance; and then Barnet’s surmise proved to be true. The slow
life timidly heaved again; but much care and patience were needed to
catch and retain it, and a considerable period elapsed before it could
be said with certainty that Mrs. Barnet lived. When this was the case,
and there was no further room for doubt, Barnet left the chamber. The
blue evening smoke from Lucy’s chimney had died down to an
imperceptible stream, and as he walked about downstairs he murmured to
himself, ‘My wife was dead, and she is alive again.’
It was not so with Downe. After three hours’ immersion his wife’s body
had been recovered, life, of course, being quite extinct. Barnet on
descending, went straight to his friend’s house, and there learned the
result. Downe was helpless in his wild grief, occasionally even
hysterical. Barnet said little, but finding that some guiding hand was
necessary in the sorrow-stricken household, took upon him to supervise
and manage till Downe should be in a state of mind to do so for
himself.