Russell meant no harm to her master. In the curious confusion which one
passionate feeling brings into an undisciplined mind, she had even
something that might be called affection for Mr. Trevanion, as the
victim of the woman she hated. Something that she called regard for him
was the justification in her own mind of her furious antipathy to his
wife. And after all her excitement and suspense, to be compelled to
witness what seemed to her the triumph of Madam, the quieting down of
all suspicions, and her return, as more than ever indispensable, to the
bedside of her husband, drove the woman almost to madness. How she
lived through the week and executed her various duties, as in ordinary
times, she did not know. The children suffered more or less, but not so
much as might be supposed. For to Russell’s perverted perception the
children were hers more than their mother’s, and she loved them in her
way, while she hated Mrs. Trevanion. Indeed, the absorption of Madam in
the sick-room left them very much in Russell’s influence, and, on the
surface, more evidently attached to her than to the mother of whom they
saw so little. If they suffered from the excitement that disturbed her
temper, as well as other things, it was in a very modified degree, and
they were indulged and caressed by moments, as much as they were hustled
and scolded at others. The nursery-maids, indeed, found Russell
unbearable, and communicated to each other their intention to complain
as soon as Madam could be supposed able to listen to them; if not, to
give notice at once. But they did not tell for very much in the house,
and the nurse concealed successfully enough from all but them the
devouring excitement which was in her. It was the afternoon hour, when
nature is at its lowest, and when excitement and suspense are least
supportable, that Russell found her next opportunity. She had gone
down-stairs, seeking she knew not what--looking for something new--a
little relief to the strain of suspense, when she suddenly saw the door
of the sick-room open and Mrs. Trevanion come out. She did not stop to
ask herself what she was to gain by risking an outbreak of fury from her
master, and of blame and reproach from every side, by intruding upon the
invalid. The temptation was too strong to be resisted. She opened the
door without leaving herself time to think, and went in.
Then terror seized her. Mr. Trevanion was propped up in his bed, a pair
of fiery, twinkling eyes, full of the suspicion and curiosity that were
natural to him, peering out of the skeleton head, which was ghastly with
illness and emaciation. Nothing escaped the fierce vitality of those
eyes. He saw the movement of the door, the sudden apparition of the
excited face, at first so eager and curious, then blanched with terror.
He was himself comparatively at ease, in a moment of vacancy in which
there was neither present suffering enough to occupy him, nor anything
else to amuse his restless soul. “Hallo!” he cried, as soon as he saw
her; “come in--come in. You have got something more to tell me? Faithful
woman--faithful to your master! Come in; there is just time before Madam
comes back to hear what you have to say.”
“I beg your pardon, sir,” said the valet, who had taken Madam’s place,
“but the doctor’s orders is--”
“What do I care for the doctor’s orders? Get out of the way and let
Russell in. Here, woman, you have got news for me. A faithful servant,
who won’t conceal from her master what he ought to know. Out, Jenkins,
and let the woman come in.”
He raised himself up higher in his bed; the keen angles of his knees
seemed to rise to his chin. He waved impatiently his skeleton hands. The
valet made wild signs at the intruder. “Can’t you go away? You’ll kill
him!” he cried in a hoarse whisper. “Come in--come in!” shrieked the
skeleton in the bed, in all the excitement of opposition. Then it was
that Russell, terrified, helpless, distracted, gave that cry which
echoed through all the house, and brought Dr. Beaton rushing from one
side and Mrs. Trevanion from the other. The woman had fallen at the door
of the room in hysterics, as Jane said, a seizure for which all the
attendants, absorbed in a more immediate danger, felt the highest
contempt. She was pushed out of the way, to be succored by the maids,
who had been brought by the cry into the adjacent passage, in high
excitement to know what was going on. But Russell could not throw any
light upon what had happened even when she came to herself. She could
only sob and cry, with starts of nervous panic. She had done nothing,
and yet what had she done? She had not said a word to him, and yet-- It
was soon understood throughout all the house that Mr. Trevanion had
another of his attacks, and that Dr. Beaton did not think he could ever
rally again.
The room where the patient lay was very large and open. It had once been
the billiard-room of the house, and had been prepared for him when it
was found no longer expedient that he should go up and down even the
easy, luxuriously carpeted stairs of Highcourt. There was one large
window filling almost one side of the room, without curtains or even
blind, and which was now thrown open to admit the air fully. The door,
too, was open, and the draught of fresh, cold, wintry air blowing
through made it more like a hillside than a room in a sheltered house.
Notwithstanding this, Mrs. Trevanion stood by the bed, waving a large
fan, to get more air into the panting and struggling lungs. On the other
side of the bed the doctor stood, with the bony wrist of the patient in
his warm, living grasp. It seemed to be Death in person with whom these
anxious ministrants were struggling, rather than a dying man. Other
figures flitted about in the background, Jane bringing, with noiseless
understanding, according to the signs the doctor made to her, the things
he wanted--now a spoonful of stimulant, now water to moisten his lips.
Dead silence reigned in the room; the wind blew through, fluttering a
bit of paper on the table; the slight beat of the fan kept a vibration
in the air. Into this terrible scene Rosalind stole trembling, and after
her her uncle; they shivered with the chill blast which swept over the
others unnoticed, and still more with the sight of the gasping and
struggle. Rosalind, unused to suffering, hid her face in her hands. She
could do nothing. Jane, who knew what was wanted, was of more use than
she. She stood timidly at the foot of the bed, now looking up for a
moment at what she could see of her dying father, now at the figure of
his wife against the light, never intermitting for a moment her
dreadful, monotonous exercise. Mr. Trevanion was seated almost upright
in the midst of his pillows, laboring in that last terrible struggle for
breath, for death, not for life.
He had cried out at first in broken gasps for “The woman--the woman!
She’s got something--to tell me. Something more--to tell me. I’ll hear
it-- I’ll he-ar it-- I’ll know--everything!” he now shrieked, waving his
skeleton arms to keep them away, and struggling to rise. But these
efforts soon gave way to the helplessness of nature. His cries soon sank
into a hoarse moaning, his struggles to an occasional wave with his arms
towards the door, an appeal with his eyes to the doctor, who stood over
him inexorable. Every agitating movement had dropped before Rosalind
came in into the one grand effort for breath. That was all that was left
him in this world to struggle for. A man of so many passions, who had
got everything he had set his heart on in life: a little breath now,
which the November breeze, the winnowing of the air by the great fan,
every aid that could be used, could not bring to his panting lungs. Who
can describe the moment when nurses and watchers, and children and
lovers stand thus awed and silent, seeing the struggle turn into a fight
for death--not against it: feeling their own hearts turn, and their
prayers, to that which hitherto they have been resisting with all that
love and skill and patience can do? Nature is strong at such a time. Few
remember that the central figure has been an unkind husband, a careless
father; they remember only that he is going away from them into darkness
unfathomable, which they can never penetrate till they follow; that he
is theirs, but soon will be theirs no more.
Then there occurred a little pause; for the first moment Dr. Beaton,
with a lifted finger and eyes suddenly turned upon the others, was about
to say, “All is over,” when a faintly renewed throb of the dying pulse
under his finger contradicted him. There was a dead calm for a few
moments, and then a faint rally. The feverish, eager eyes, starting out
of their sockets, seemed to calm, and glance with something like a dim
perception at John Trevanion and Rosalind, who approached. Rosalind,
entirely overcome by emotion and the terrible excitement of witnessing
such an event, dropped down on her knees by the bedside, where with a
slight flickering of the eyelids her father’s look seemed to follow her.
But in the act that look was arrested by the form of his wife, standing
always in the same position, waving the fan, sending wafts of air to
him, the last and only thing he now wanted. His eyes steadied then with
a certain meaning in them--a last gleam which gradually strengthened. He
looked at her fixedly, with what in a person less exhausted would have
been a wave of the hand towards her. Then there was a faint movement of
the lips. “John!” was it perhaps? or “Look!” Then the words became more
audible. “She’s--good nurse--faithful-- Air!--stands--hours--but--”
Then the look softened a little, the voice grew stronger;
“I’m--almost--sorry--” it said.
For what--for what? In the intense stillness every feeble syllable was
heard. Only a minute or two more was left to make amends for the cruelty
of a life. The spectators held their breath. As for the wife, whose life
perhaps hung upon these syllables as much as his did, she never moved or
spoke, but went on fanning, fanning, supplying to him these last billows
of air for which he labored. Suddenly a change came over the dying face,
the eyes with all their old eagerness turned to the doctor, asking
pitifully--was it for help in the last miserable strain of nature, this
terrible effort to die?
Mrs. Trevanion seemed turned into stone. She stood and fanned after all
need was over, solemnly winnowing the cold, penetrating air, which was
touched with the additional chill of night, in waves towards the still
lips which had done with that medium of life. To see her standing there,
as if she had fainted or become unconscious, yet stood at her post still
exercising that strange mechanical office, was the most terrible of all.
The doctor came round and took her by the arm, and took the fan out of
her hand.
“There’s no more need for that,” he cried in a broken voice; “no more
need. Let us hope he is gone to fuller air than ours.”
She was so strained and stupefied that she scarcely seemed to understand
this. “Hush!” she said, pulling it from his hands, “I tell you it does
him good.” She had recovered the fan again and begun to put it in
motion, when her eyes suddenly opened wide and fixed upon the dead face.
She looked round upon them all with a great solemnity, yet surprise. “My
husband is dead!” she said.
“Grace,” said John Trevanion, “come away. You have done everything up to
the last moment. Come, now, and rest for the sake of the living. He
needs you no more.”
He was himself very much moved. That which had been so long looked for,
so often delayed, came now with all the force of a surprise. Rosalind,
in an agony of tears, with her face hidden in the coverlid; Madam
standing there, tearless, solemn, with alas, he feared, still worse
before her than anything she divined; the young fatherless children
outside, the boy at school, the troubles to be gone through, all rushed
upon John Trevanion as he stood there. In a moment he who had been the
object of all thought had abdicated or been dethroned, and even his
brother thought of him no more. “For the sake of the living,” he
repeated, taking his sister-in-law by the arm. The touch of her was like
death; she was cold, frozen where she stood--penetrated by the wintry
chill and by the passing of that chiller presence which had gone by
her--but she did not resist. She suffered him to lead her away. She sank
into a chair in the hall, as if she had no longer any power of her own.
There she sat for a little while unmoving, and then cried out suddenly,
“For the living!--for which of the living? It would be better for the
living if you would bury me with him, he and I in one grave.”
Her voice was almost harsh in this sudden cry. What was it--a lie, or
the truth? That a woman who had been so outraged and tormented should
wish to be buried with her husband seemed to John Trevanion a thing
impossible; and yet there was no falsehood in her face. He did not know
what to think or say. After a moment he went away and left her alone
with her--what?--her grief, her widowhood, her mourning--or was it only
a physical frame that could bear no more, the failure of nature,
altogether exhausted and worn out?