Arrived at the house, Fulvia was met almost at once by a servant, who
told her that her husband was very ill and in severe pain.
‘I will go to him,’ she said in a perfectly unmoved voice, and when the
servant had gone she closed her eyes for a moment, as if to shut out
what was immediately around her.
In truth, she needed all the strength that lay in her nature to give
her the courage, coming from the interviews she had just had, to
encounter what she knew lay before her.
Marchmont, as an invalid, was not agreeable to talk with. Tortured
with pain, to which he brought no sort of self-control or resolution
to endure, his incessant cry was for morphia or chloral to drown his
sufferings, and although utterly dependent on the kindness of those
about him for help, for relief, and for attention, he never attempted
to conciliate any one of them, but, losing all sense of decency, would
shriek at them all manner of accusations--that they wished for his
death, and had endeavoured to compass it; that they had purposely
given him something to put him into this state of torture; everything,
in short, that a good man who is being martyred could possibly throw
at a set of miscreants who were taking advantage of his weakness to
murder him was hurled by Marchmont at the heads of his attendants, who,
if they had spoken out their minds, would have told him that only
self-control on their parts prevented them from doing what he accused
them of, and so getting rid of him for ever.
If the attack lasted only a short time, perhaps the nurse and servants
would hold out without bursting into open rebellion; if it endured
long, Fulvia generally found herself left at the end of it in almost
sole attendance. The servants were free: they did not receive their
wages and render their services in order to be abused and maltreated;
but a wife must surely succour her husband, must be devoted to
him in sickness and in health. Very faithfully, very coldly, very
determinedly, had she, so far, performed her duty. The attack this
time was an even worse one than usual. Mr. Brownrigg became uneasy,
and at last said to Fulvia that further advice would be desirable.
The invalid, he plainly intimated, besides being so very ill, was so
captious and dissatisfied that he, Mr. Brownrigg, would be glad that
his treatment should have the approval of a high authority. Fulvia at
once agreed--anything that Mr. Brownrigg thought desirable. She would
beg him to telegraph to Sir Simon Sykes, the specialist whom Marchmont
had already seen. They arranged this, and Mr. Brownrigg rode away. Then
Fulvia went to Marchmont, and told him what had been settled. At first
he seemed satisfied, then suddenly, with a vicious snarl, exclaimed:
‘It’s all rubbish. He’ll want at least two hundred guineas for taking
such a journey here and back to London.’
‘Quite, I should say,’ replied his wife coldly. ‘And what difference
can it make to you if he wanted five hundred guineas?’
‘Trust a beggar to be apt at spending other people’s money,’ was the
gracious retort.
Fulvia did not speak. She slightly shrugged her shoulders, without any
perceptible change of countenance, only her whole aspect expressed a
supreme disdain, which Marchmont himself saw. Absorbed, however, in the
wrongs which were being done to him and his money, he proceeded, after
a glance at her:
‘And he’ll sit here for ten minutes, and tell us nothing that we
didn’t know before, and then he’ll go away, and jabber with you in the
drawing-room. You are all in league against me--every one of you.’
‘Do you think we should find it very difficult to dispose of you if
we were?’ she asked, with icy contempt. ‘As you do not wish to have
Sir Simon, I will send a man after Mr. Brownrigg, and ask him not to
telegraph.’
‘Do if you dare!’ almost shrieked Marchmont. ‘I’m ill, I dare say, but
I have the use of my brains yet, and I know what I am doing. You want
to leave me in the hands of this wretched village ignoramus, so that I
may get partial recovery, and then you will be satisfied.’
‘You credit me with complicated motives. I am quite sure of this,
that if you don’t behave more civilly to the “village ignoramus,” as
you call him, he will refuse to come near you any more; and you will
have to trust me alone as your physician. Of course no man, not to
mention a gentleman, will stand being spoken to as if he were a thief
and an impostor. I really think you had better try to understand that
thoroughly.’
Marchmont subsided a little. There was nothing he feared so much as
being left alone with his illness; rather than suffer that, he would
have grovelled before the meanest apothecary and would have implored
him not to leave him to his fate.
That afternoon an answer came from Sir Simon to say he would come on
the following afternoon. Fulvia had promised Hans to meet him on the
morning of that day, but she sent him a note to say:
‘I cannot leave the house this morning, nor at all till evening. But I
must see you before I try to sleep to-night. I have much to explain to
you. All scruples have disappeared. I cannot live in this any longer.
Meet me after nine, at the same place. I will come and will tell you
what I have arranged.’
The day wore on. She scarcely left Marchmont’s side, sitting near him,
ministering to him during the hours in which the nurse was to take
her rest; looking at him every now and then, with a strange, sombre
light in her eyes, the inner glow of all the suppressed passion and
wrong, and injustice and wretchedness, which for five years had been
accumulating in her heart--the only light which can be given by the
eyes which belong to a ruined life. All the day she was saying to
herself, with fixed, immovable resolution:
‘Only this day more--then an end of it. I will wait till it is over.
I will see this man, who will tell me just what they have all told
me--the same wretched platitudes, meaning nothing; trying to cover
up the one word, “hopeless,” trying to conceal the fact that it is
death coming on. It has begun--it will be a long time before it is
over, and I will not wait all that time. To-night, oh, Dio mio! to
leave the house, and never to return to it--never, never! Never to
see this thing again, nor to hear his voice, nor to feel the shudder
which comes whenever I go near him. I will tell Hans everything when
I meet him to-night. Then I shall make him take me to the inn in the
village, and leave me there till to-morrow. I won’t go to Minna--oh
no, impossible! I would not pollute--no, pollute is not the word: it
is remaining here which is pollution. I would not deceive her--that is
it. I would not tell her one thing while all the time I was meaning to
do quite another. That is a sort of pollution--yes, it is the kind at
which I have never yet arrived. I will stay at the inn till to-morrow
morning, and then he will come for me, and we will go away together. I
shall make no secret of it. He can do as he likes. He may tell them
or not. It is nothing to me now. My life has been so ruined that, if
I am to keep my friends who have never gone through this fire, I must
live in undying misery and inward degradation. If I choose happiness
and freedom, I must lose all my friends. Some lucky people can keep
both. I have tried the one thing, and as long as there was nothing else
I could just live in it--only just. But now ... one may be good when
one does wrong sometimes. I can see that very plainly. One may be doing
everything that is right and proper, and at the same time be a very bad
person.
‘Wrong and right--what is wrong, and what is right? Because I was sold
shamefully when I could not help myself, and could see no way out of
it, does that deprive me of the power of judging, when I am older and
have had much experience? Who is to settle for us, if not ourselves?
Oh, how wrong I was not to go away with Beppo--to run away, when he
said he would take me with him! Now people will all say I have done
wrong, but I will live rightly. It is quite right. I am not afraid. I
wonder why I stay here now? Oh, it is better, I think. I will go on
till night--till I have said good-night to him. He will expect to see
me again in the morning, and time will pass, and I shall not be there.
I shall not take any notice of him at all. It is not necessary. He may
wonder and inquire and speculate, and say what he pleases. He may learn
all his humiliation in public, for aught I care. It does not matter ...
what time is it now, I wonder? Lunch-time, nearly. Then there is the
afternoon, and it will be almost evening when the doctor comes, and--he
will stay all night, I suppose.
‘Well, I will give orders that all is to be ready for him. I shall dine
with him, and talk to him, in that awful room, which is just like a
sepulchre. The servants will be about, behind our chairs, waiting upon
us, just as usual. The doctor will think me a very charming woman, and
will be quite pleased to talk to me. We shall not mention him’--she
cast a side-glance towards Marchmont, who, under the influence of a
morphia injection, was now lying still, with eyes closed and yellowish,
waxy-looking face, like a dead man. ‘We shall both know that there
is no need to say anything; talking about unpleasant subjects is not
appetising. Nothing will make any difference. In his heart the doctor
will say to himself: “I wonder what she married him for--money, I
suppose. He must have been a horror when she first met him. Women will
do anything to get money and money’s worth.”
‘After dinner I shall say that I am going to see my husband; that I am
very tired, and shall not see him again to-night; that he is to ask
for everything he wants, and that I have given orders that he is to be
attended to. Then we shall shake hands, and I shall leave him in the
dining-room with the dessert and the wine. Then I shall come back here,
and shall make inquiries, and shall speak to the nurse, and shall say,
to her more than to him, “Well, I hope you will have a good-night.” I
shall then look round as one does before one leaves a room in which
someone is ill, and I shall repeat, “Good-night,” and shall go....
In ten minutes more I shall be on the path to the pond, breathing.’
She suddenly lifted her arms above her head, and stretched them out
wide and high, as if to take in a deep draught of air, then heaved
a huge sigh, and slowly let them fall again. The sigh was repeated,
and her face looked worn, and almost desperate. Almost mechanically
her thoughts went on, and with none of the excited hope which had
heretofore floated them through her mind: ‘I shall breathe--oh, to
breathe again, after being stifled for five years!’
She sat motionless again, until a servant came and told her that lunch
was ready. Marchmont was still sleeping or stupefied. She went away,
leaving the nurse, who had just come in, to take her place. In the
dining-room she dismissed the servant who was in waiting, and sat
down alone in the immense, rather light, cold room, at a great table
spread with snowy linen and glittering with silver and glass. There was
perhaps no need for her to endure this solitary, cold, and comfortless
splendour; but it is happy people who think of comforts and who arrange
pleasant places in which to eat and drink and chat, not those whose
lives are spoiled by a great wrong, so that they have no energy to
attend to such trifles.
She took something on her plate, but found she could not eat it.
‘Am I excited, feverish? How ridiculous’ she thought, shrugging her
shoulders and realizing for the first time that her lips were dry and
her mouth parched. She took a draught of water, and sat looking at the
untasted food, and thinking of quite other things.
‘How hungry I used to be once! How delicious everything tasted! How
well I remember one day when Beppo took me! We walked--we could not
afford carriages, not even a little carriage for a franc, to the
gate--we walked on to the Appian Way. How beautiful it was! It was a
spring morning. How the larks sang! how the little flowers gleamed
in the grass, and the lizards ran in and out of the crevices of the
tombs! and how the aqueducts marched away over the campagna towards the
hills--those hills! How many things he told me! I put my arm through
his, and we went on, sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly, looking at
things and talking about them till we got past Casale Rotondo. There I
grew impatient, and said it was time to have our lunch. We sat down by
the roadside and ate. What had we? Each a hard-boiled egg and some of
the household bread, without any butter; an orange or two, and a little
bottle of red wine, with a tin cup from which to drink it. When it
was done I was still hungry, and said so. He looked at me suddenly--I
remember it well--with a cloud on his face.
‘“Ma che! why did you not speak?” he said. “I would have given you
mine.”
‘How I laughed! I was a mere child, and I thought a man like Beppo,
so strong and so big compared with me, must be much more in need of
food than I. Then he told me, I remember, how people like me, who were
growing still and to whom all the world was new, needed so much more
nourishment and so much oftener than those who were quite grown up and
established, and who were not surprised at anything any more--like him.
I said, “How could being surprised make one hungry?” and I told him he
was silly. He said, “Wait, my child. By the time you are ready to tell
me that you understand what I say, I shall be dead; but I think, if you
come to my grave and tell it to me there, I shall hear it.” Oh, how
awfully sad were the things he sometimes said--all mixed with curious,
funny observations at the same time! For the rest of our excursion he
kept regretting every now and then that I had not had the other egg,
and at the first little shop within the gate, as we returned, he bought
me a _panino_ with butter. It was very good.’
Fulvia had forgotten in her reminiscences the meal that actually stood
before her. She had scarcely tasted food, but rose suddenly from the
table, and very soon went back to her charge.
Presently he awoke from his drugged sleep to fresh pain, fresh fury, to
ever more exacting demands and wilder accusations. The hours dragged
on until about six o’clock, when a servant came and told her that Sir
Simon Sykes had arrived, and was in the library with Mr. Brownrigg.
She went towards the room slowly, saying to herself, as if it were not
really clear in her own mind:
‘It is coming nearer now, much nearer. There are not many hours more.
Six o’clock, seven, eight, nine; in three hours I shall be free.’
She lifted her eyes towards the open hall door; the sunshine streamed
in. All without was light and bright and warm. That was freedom.
She opened the library door and went into the room.