"HE WILL NEVER FORGIVE"
I was walking away when a man touched me. Some one had seen me come from
the doctor's office a few minutes before. Of course this meant detention
till the coroner should arrive. I quarreled with the circumstances but
felt forced to submit. Happily Jupp now came to the front and I was able
to send him to New York to keep that watch over Mrs. Carew, without
which I could not have rested quiet an hour. One great element of danger
was removed most remarkably, if not providentially, from the path I had
marked out for myself; but there still remained that of this woman's
possible impulses under her great determination to keep Gwendolen in her
own care. But with Jupp to watch the dock, and a man in plain clothes at
the door of the small hotel she was at present bound for, I thought I
might remain in Yonkers contentedly the whole day.
It was not, however, till late the next afternoon that I found myself
again in Homewood. I had heard from Jupp. The steamer had sailed, but
without two passengers who had been booked for the voyage. Mrs. Carew
and the child were still at the address she had given me. All looked
well in that direction; but what was the aspect of affairs in Homewood?
I trembled in some anticipation of what these many hours of bitter
thought might have effected in Mrs. Ocumpaugh. Evidently nothing to
lessen the gloom into which the whole household had now fallen. Miss
Porter, who came in haste to greet me, wore the careworn look of a long
and unrelieved vigil. I was not astonished when she told me that she had
not slept a wink.
"How could I," she asked, "when Mrs. Ocumpaugh did not close her eyes?
She did not even lie down, but sat all night in an arm-chair which she
had wheeled into Gwendolen's room, staring like one who sees nothing out
into the night through the window which overlooks the river. This
morning we can not make her speak. Her eyes are dry with fever; only now
and then she utters a little moan. The doctor says she will not live to
see her husband, unless something comes to rouse her. But the papers
give no news, and all the attempts of the police end in nothing. You saw
what a dismal failure their last attempt was. The child on which they
counted proved to be both red-haired and pock-marked. Gwendolen appears
to be lost, lost."
In spite of the despair thus expressed my way seemed to open a little.
"I think I can break Mrs. Ocumpaugh's dangerous apathy if you will let
me see her again. Will you let me try?"
"The nurse--we have a nurse now--will not consent, I fear."
"Then telephone to the doctor. Tell him I am the only man who can do
anything for Mrs. Ocumpaugh. This will not be an exaggeration."
"Wait! I will get his order. I do not know why I have so much confidence
in you."
In another fifteen minutes she came to lead me to Mrs. Ocumpaugh.
I entered without knocking; they told me to. She was seated, as they
said, in a large chair, but with no ease to herself; for she was not
even leaning against its back, but sat with body strained forward and
eyes fixed on the ripple of the great river where, from what she had
intimated to me in our last interview, she probably saw her grave. There
was a miniature in her hand, but I saw at first glance that it was not
the face of Gwendolen over which her fingers closed so spasmodically. It
was her husband's portrait which she held, and it was his face, aroused
and full of denunciation, which she evidently saw in her fancy as I drew
nearer her in my efforts to attract her attention; for a shiver suddenly
contracted her lovely features and she threw her arms out as if to ward
from herself something which she had no power to meet. In doing this her
head turned slightly and she saw me.
Instantly the spell under which she sat frozen yielded to a recognition
of something besides her own terrible brooding. She let her arms drop,
and the lips which had not spoken that morning moved slightly. I waited
respectfully. I saw that in another moment she would speak.
"You have come," she panted out at last, "to hear my decision. It is
too soon. The steamer has twenty-four hours yet before it can make port.
I have not finished weighing my life against the good opinion of him I
live for." Then faintly--"Mrs. Carew has gone."
"To New York," I finished.
"No farther than that?" she asked anxiously. "She has not sailed?"
"I did not see how it was compatible with my duty to let her."
Mrs. Ocumpaugh's whole form collapsed; the dangerous apathy was creeping
over her again. "You are deciding for me,"--she spoke very faintly--"you
and Doctor Pool."
Should I tell her that Doctor Pool was dead? No, not yet. I wanted her
to choose the noble course for Mr. Ocumpaugh's sake--yes, and for her
own.
"No," I ventured to rejoin. "You are the only one who can settle your
own fate. The word must come from you. I am only trying to make it
possible for you to meet your husband without any additional wrong to
blunt his possible forgiveness."
"Oh, he will never forgive--and I have lost all."
And the set look returned in its full force.