Next day Smilash obtained from his wife a promise that she would behave
towards Agatha as if the letter had given no offence. Henrietta pleaded
as movingly as she could for an immediate return to their domestic
state, but he put her off with endearing speeches, promised nothing but
eternal affection, and sent her back to London by the twelve o’clock
express. Then his countenance changed; he walked back to Lyvern, and
thence to the chalet, like a man pursued by disgust and remorse. Later
in the afternoon, to raise his spirits, he took his skates and went to
Wickens’s pond, where, it being Saturday, he found the ice crowded
with the Alton students and their half-holiday visitors. Fairholme,
describing circles with his habitual air of compressed hardihood,
stopped and stared with indignant surprise as Smilash lurched past him.
“Is that man here by your permission?” he said to Farmer Wickens, who
was walking about as if superintending a harvest.
“He is here because he likes, I take it,” said Wickens stubbornly. “He
is a neighbor of mine and a friend of mine. Is there any objections to
my having a friend on my own pond, seein’ that there is nigh on two
or three ton of other people’s friends on it without as much as a
with-your-leave or a by-your-leave.”
“Oh, no,” said Fairholme, somewhat dashed. “If you are satisfied there
can be no objection.”
“I’m glad on it. I thought there mout be.”
“Let me tell you,” said Fairholme, nettled, “that your landlord would
not be pleased to see him here. He sent one of Sir John’s best shepherds
out of the country, after filling his head with ideas above his station.
I heard Sir John speak very warmly about it last Sunday.”
“Mayhap you did, Muster Fairholme. I have a lease of this land--and
gravelly, poor stuff it is--and I am no ways beholden to Sir John’s
likings and dislikings. A very good thing too for Sir John that I have
a lease, for there ain’t a man in the country ‘ud tak’ a present o’ the
farm if it was free to-morrow. And what’s a’ more, though that young man
do talk foolish things about the rights of farm laborers and such-like
nonsense, if Sir John was to hear him layin’ it down concernin’ rent
and improvements, and the way we tenant farmers is put upon, p’raps he’d
speak warmer than ever next Sunday.”
And Wickens, with a smile expressive of his sense of having retorted
effectively upon the parson, nodded and walked away.
Just then Agatha, skating hand in hand with Jane Carpenter, heard these
words in her ear: “I have something very funny to tell you. Don’t look
round.”
She recognized the voice of Smilash and obeyed.
“I am not quite sure that you will enjoy it as it deserves,” he
added, and darted off again, after casting an eloquent glance at Miss
Carpenter.
Agatha disengaged herself from her companion, made a circuit, and passed
near Smilash, saying: “What is it?”
Smilash flitted away like a swallow, traced several circles around
Fairholme, and then returned to Agatha and proceeded side by side with
her.
“I have read the letter you wrote to Hetty,” he said.
Agatha’s face began to glow. She forgot to maintain her balance, and
almost fell.
“Take care. And so you are not fond of me--in the romantic sense?”
No answer. Agatha dumb and afraid to lift her eyelids.
“That is fortunate,” he continued, “because--good evening, Miss Ward; I
have done nothing but admire your skating for the last hour--because
men were deceivers ever; and I am no exception, as you will presently
admit.”
Agatha murmured something, but it was unintelligible amid the din of
skating.
“You think not? Well, perhaps you are right; I have said nothing to you
that is not in a measure true. You have always had a peculiar charm for
me. But I did not mean you to tell Hetty. Can you guess why?”
Agatha shook her head.
“Because she is my wife.”
Agatha’s ankles became limp. With an effort she kept upright until she
reached Jane, to whom she clung for support.
“Don’t,” screamed Jane. “You’ll upset me.”
“I must sit down,” said Agatha. “I am tired. Let me lean on you until we
get to the chairs.”
“Bosh! I can skate for an hour without sitting down,” said Jane.
However, she helped Agatha to a chair and left her. Then Smilash, as if
desiring a rest also, sat down close by on the margin of the pond.
“Well,” he said, without troubling himself as to whether their
conversation attracted attention or not, “what do you think of me now?”
“Why did you not tell me before, Mr. Trefusis?”
“That is the cream of the joke,” he replied, poising his heels on the
ice so that his skates stood vertically at legs’ length from him, and
looking at them with a cynical air. “I thought you were in love with me,
and that the truth would be too severe a blow to you. Ha! ha! And, for
the same reason, you generously forbore to tell me that you were no more
in love with me than with the man in the moon. Each played a farce, and
palmed it off on the other as a tragedy.”
“There are some things so unmanly, so unkind, and so cruel,” said
Agatha, “that I cannot understand any gentleman saying them to a girl.
Please do not speak to me again. Miss Ward! Come to me for a moment.
I--I am not well.”
Ward hurried to her side. Smilash, after staring at her for a moment in
astonishment, and in some concern, skimmed away into the crowd. When
he reached the opposite bank he took off his skates and asked Jane, who
strayed intentionally in his direction, to tell Miss Wylie that he
was gone, and would skate no more there. Without adding a word of
explanation he left her and made for his dwelling. As he went down into
the hollow where the road passed through the plantation on the college
side of the chalet he descried a boy, in the uniform of the post office,
sliding along the frozen ditch. A presentiment of evil tidings came upon
him like a darkening of the sky. He quickened his pace.
“Anything for me?” he said.
The boy, who knew him, fumbled in a letter case and produced a buff
envelope. It contained a telegram.
From Jansenius, London.
TO J. Smilash, Chamoounix Villa, Lyvern.
Henrietta dangerously ill after journey wants to see you doctors say
must come at once.
There was a pause. Then he folded the paper methodically and put it in
his pocket, as if quite done with it.
“And so,” he said, “perhaps the tragedy is to follow the farce after
all.”
He looked at the boy, who retreated, not liking his expression.
“Did you slide all the way from Lyvern?”
“Only to come quicker,” said the messenger, faltering. “I came as quick
as I could.”
“You carried news heavy enough to break the thickest ice ever frozen. I
have a mind to throw you over the top of that tree instead of giving you
this half-crown.”
“You let me alone,” whimpered the boy, retreating another pace.
“Get back to Lyvern as fast as you can run or slide, and tell Mr. Marsh
to send me the fastest trap he has, to drive me to the railway station.
Here is your half-crown. Off with you; and if I do not find the trap
ready when I want it, woe betide you.”
The boy came for the money mistrustfully, and ran off with it as fast
as he could. Smilash went into the chalet and never reappeared. Instead,
Trefusis, a gentleman in an ulster, carrying a rug, came out, locked the
door, and hurried along the road to Lyvern, where he was picked up by
the trap, and carried swiftly to the railway station, just in time to
catch the London train.
“Evening paper, sir?” said a voice at the window, as he settled himself
in the corner of a first-class carriage.
“No, thank you.”
“Footwarmer, sir?” said a porter, appearing in the news-vender’s place.
“Ah, that’s a good idea. Yes, let me have a footwarmer.”
The footwarmer was brought, and Trefusis composed himself comfortably
for his journey. It seemed very short to him; he could hardly believe,
when the train arrived in London, that he had been nearly three hours on
the way.
There was a sense of Christmas about the travellers and the people who
were at the terminus to meet them. The porter who came to the carriage
door reminded Trefusis by his manner and voice that the season was one
at which it becomes a gentleman to be festive and liberal.
“Wot luggage, sir? Hansom or fourweoll, sir?”
For a moment Trefusis felt a vagabond impulse to resume the language of
Smilash and fable to the man of hampers of turkey and plum-pudding in
the van. But he repressed it, got into a hansom, and was driven to his
father-in-law’s house in Belsize Avenue, studying in a gloomily critical
mood the anxiety that surged upon him and made his heart beat like a
boy’s as he drew near his destination. There were two carriages at the
door when he alighted. The reticent expression of the coachmen sent a
tremor through him.
The door opened before he rang. “If you please, sir,” said the maid in a
low voice, “will you step into the library; and the doctor will see you
immediately.”
On the first landing of the staircase two gentlemen were speaking to Mr.
Jansenius, who hastily moved out of sight, not before a glimpse of his
air of grief and discomfiture had given Trefusis a strange twinge,
succeeded by a sensation of having been twenty years a widower. He
smiled unconcernedly as he followed the girl into the library, and asked
her how she did. She murmured some reply and hurried away, thinking that
the poor young man would alter his tone presently.
He was joined at once by a gray whiskered gentleman, scrupulously
dressed and mannered. Trefusis introduced himself, and the physician
looked at him with some interest. Then he said:
“You have arrived too late, Mr. Trefusis. All is over, I am sorry to
say.”
“Was the long railway journey she took in this cold weather the cause of
her death?”
Some bitter words that the physician had heard upstairs made him aware
that this was a delicate question. But he said quietly: “The proximate
cause, doubtless. The proximate cause.”
“She received some unwelcome and quite unlooked-for intelligence before
she started. Had that anything to do with her death, do you think?”
“It may have produced an unfavorable effect,” said the physician,
growing restive and taking up his gloves. “The habit of referring such
events to such causes is carried too far, as a rule.”
“No doubt. I am curious because the event is novel in my experience. I
suppose it is a commonplace in yours. Pardon me. The loss of a lady so
young and so favorably circumstanced is not a commonplace either in my
experience or in my opinion.” The physician held up his head as he
spoke, in protest against any assumption that his sympathies had been
blunted by his profession.
“Did she suffer?”
“For some hours, yes. We were able to do a little to alleviate her
pain--poor thing!” He almost forgot Trefusis as he added the apostrophe.
“Hours of pain! Can you conceive any good purpose that those hours may
have served?”
The physician shook his head, leaving it doubtful whether he meant to
reply in the negative or to deplore considerations of that nature.
He also made a movement to depart, being uneasy in conversation with
Trefusis, who would, he felt sure, presently ask questions or make
remarks with which he could hardly deal without committing himself in
some direction. His conscience was not quite at rest. Henrietta’s pain
had not, he thought, served any good purpose; but he did not want to
say so, lest he should acquire a reputation for impiety and lose his
practice. He believed that the general practitioner who attended the
family, and had called him in when the case grew serious, had treated
Henrietta unskilfully, but professional etiquette bound him so strongly
that, sooner than betray his colleague’s inefficiency, he would have
allowed him to decimate London.
“One word more,” said Trefusis. “Did she know that she was dying?”
“No. I considered it best that she should not be informed of her danger.
She passed away without any apprehension.”
“Then one can think of it with equanimity. She dreaded death, poor
child. The wonder is that there was not enough folly in the household to
prevail against your good sense.”
The physician bowed and took his leave, esteeming himself somewhat
fortunate in escaping without being reproached for his humanity in
having allowed Henrietta to die unawares.
A moment later the general practitioner entered. Trefusis, having
accompanied the consulting physician to the door, detected the family
doctor in the act of pulling a long face just outside it. Restraining a
desire to seize him by the throat, he seated himself on the edge of the
table and said cheerfully:
“Well, doctor, how has the world used you since we last met?”
The doctor was taken aback, but the solemn disposition of his features
did not relax as he almost intoned: “Has Sir Francis told you the sad
news, Mr. Trefusis?”
“Yes. Frightful, isn’t it? Lord bless me, we’re here to-day and gone
to-morrow.”
“True, very true!”
“Sir Francis has a high opinion of you.”
The doctor looked a little foolish. “Everything was done that could be
done, Mr. Trefusis; but Mrs. Jansenius was very anxious that no stone
should be left unturned. She was good enough to say that her sole reason
for wishing me to call in Sir Francis was that you should have no cause
to complain.”
“Indeed!”
“An excellent mother! A sad event for her! Ah, yes, yes! Dear me! A very
sad event!”
“Most disagreeable. Such a cold day too. Pleasanter to be in heaven than
here in such weather, possibly.”
“Ah!” said the doctor, as if much sound comfort lay in that. “I hope so;
I hope so; I do not doubt it. Sir Francis did not permit us to tell her,
and I, of course, deferred to him. Perhaps it was for the best.”
“You would have told her, then, if Sir Francis had not objected?”
“Well, there are, you see, considerations which we must not ignore in
our profession. Death is a serious thing, as I am sure I need not remind
you, Mr. Trefusis. We have sometimes higher duties than indulgence to
the natural feelings of our patients.”
“Quite so. The possibility of eternal bliss and the probability of
eternal torment are consolations not to be lightly withheld from a
dying girl, eh? However, what’s past cannot be mended. I have much to
be thankful for, after all. I am a young man, and shall not cut a bad
figure as a widower. And now tell me, doctor, am I not in very bad
repute upstairs?”
“Mr. Trefusis! Sir! I cannot meddle in family matters. I understand my
duties and never over step them.” The doctor, shocked at last, spoke as
loftily as he could.
“Then I will go and see Mr. Jansenius,” said Trefusis, getting off the
table.
“Stay, sir! One moment. I have not finished. Mrs. Jansenius has asked
me to ask--I was about to say that I am not speaking now as the medical
adviser of this family; but although an old friend--and--ahem! Mrs.
Jansenius has asked me to ask--to request you to excuse Mr. Jansenius,
as he is prostrated by grief, and is, as I can--as a medical man--assure
you, unable to see anyone. She will speak to you herself as soon as she
feels able to do so--at some time this evening. Meanwhile, of course,
any orders you may give--you must be fatigued by your journey, and I
always recommend people not to fast too long; it produces an acute form
of indigestion--any orders you may wish to give will, of course, be
attended to at once.”
“I think,” said Trefusis, after a moment’s reflection, “I will order a
hansom.”
“There is no ill-feeling,” said the doctor, who, as a slow man, was
usually alarmed by prompt decisions, even when they seemed wise to him,
as this one did. “I hope you have not gathered from anything I have
said--”
“Not at all; you have displayed the utmost tact. But I think I had
better go. Jansenius can bear death and misery with perfect fortitude
when it is on a large scale and hidden in a back slum. But when it
breaks into his own house, and attacks his property--his daughter was
his property until very recently--he is just the man to lose his head
and quarrel with me for keeping mine.”
The doctor was unable to cope with this speech, which conveyed vaguely
monstrous ideas to him. Seeing Trefusis about to leave, he said in a low
voice: “Will you go upstairs?”
“Upstairs! Why?”
“I--I thought you might wish to see--” He did not finish the sentence,
but Trefusis flinched; the blank had expressed what was meant.
“To see something that was Henrietta, and that is a thing we must cast
out and hide, with a little superstitious mumming to save appearances.
Why did you remind me of it?”
“But, sir, whatever your views may be, will you not, as a matter of
form, in deference to the feelings of the family--”
“Let them spare their feelings for the living, on whose behalf I have
often appealed to them in vain,” cried Trefusis, losing patience. “Damn
their feelings!” And, turning to the door, he found it open, and Mrs.
Jansenius there listening.
Trefusis was confounded. He knew what the effect of his speech must be,
and felt that it would be folly to attempt excuse or explanation. He put
his hands into his pockets, leaned against the table, and looked at her,
mutely wondering what would follow on her part.
The doctor broke the silence by saying tremulously, “I have communicated
the melancholy intelligence to Mr. Trefusis.”
“I hope you told him also,” she said sternly, “that, however deficient
we may be in feeling, we did everything that lay in our power for our
child.”
“I am quite satisfied,” said Trefusis.
“No doubt you are--with the result,” said Mrs. Jansenius, hardly. “I
wish to know whether you have anything to complain of.”
“Nothing.”
“Please do not imply that anything has happened through our neglect.”
“What have I to complain of? She had a warm room and a luxurious bed to
die in, with the best medical advice in the world. Plenty of people
are starving and freezing to-day that we may have the means to die
fashionably; ask THEM if they have any cause for complaint. Do you think
I will wrangle over her body about the amount of money spent on her
illness? What measure is that of the cause she had for complaint? I
never grudged money to her--how could I, seeing that more than I can
waste is given to me for nothing? Or how could you? Yet she had great
reason to complain of me. You will allow that to be so.”
“It is perfectly true.”
“Well, when I am in the humor for it, I will reproach myself and not
you.” He paused, and then turned forcibly on her, saying, “Why do you
select this time, of all others, to speak so bitterly to me?”
“I am not aware that I have said anything to call for such a remark. Did
YOU,” (appealing to the doctor) “hear me say anything?”
“Mr. Trefusis does not mean to say that you did, I am sure. Oh, no. Mr.
Trefusis’s feelings are naturally--are harrowed. That is all.”
“My feelings!” cried Trefusis impatiently. “Do you suppose my feelings
are a trumpery set of social observances, to be harrowed to order and
exhibited at funerals? She has gone as we three shall go soon enough. If
we were immortal, we might reasonably pity the dead. As we are not, we
had better save our energies to minimize the harm we are likely to do
before we follow her.”
The doctor was deeply offended by this speech, for the statement that
he should one day die seemed to him a reflection upon his professional
mastery over death. Mrs. Jansenius was glad to see Trefusis confirming
her bad opinion and report of him by his conduct and language in the
doctor’s presence. There was a brief pause, and then Trefusis, too far
out of sympathy with them to be able to lead the conversation into a
kinder vein, left the room. In the act of putting on his overcoat in the
hall, he hesitated, and hung it up again irresolutely. Suddenly he ran
upstairs. At the sound of his steps a woman came from one of the rooms
and looked inquiringly at him.
“Is it here?” he said.
“Yes, sir,” she whispered.
A painful sense of constriction came in his chest, and he turned pale
and stopped with his hand on the lock.
“Don’t be afraid, sir,” said the woman, with an encouraging smile. “She
looks beautiful.”
He looked at her with a strange grin, as if she had uttered a ghastly
but irresistible joke. Then he went in, and, when he reached the bed,
wished he had stayed without. He was not one of those who, seeing little
in the faces of the living miss little in the faces of the dead. The
arrangement of the black hair on the pillow, the soft drapery, and the
flowers placed there by the nurse to complete the artistic effect to
which she had so confidently referred, were lost on him; he saw only
a lifeless mask that had been his wife’s face, and at sight of it his
knees failed, and he had to lean for support on the rail at the foot of
the bed.
When he looked again the face seemed to have changed. It was no longer
a waxlike mask, but Henrietta, girlish and pathetically at rest. Death
seemed to have cancelled her marriage and womanhood; he had never seen
her look so young. A minute passed, and then a tear dropped on the
coverlet. He started; shook another tear on his hand, and stared at it
incredulously.
“This is a fraud of which I have never even dreamed,” he said. “Tears
and no sorrow! Here am I crying! growing maudlin! whilst I am glad that
she is gone and I free. I have the mechanism of grief in me somewhere;
it begins to turn at sight of her though I have no sorrow; just as she
used to start the mechanism of passion when I had no love. And that made
no difference to her; whilst the wheels went round she was satisfied. I
hope the mechanism of grief will flag and stop in its spinning as soon
as the other used to. It is stopping already, I think. What a mockery!
Whilst it lasts I suppose I am really sorry. And yet, would I restore
her to life if I could? Perhaps so; I am therefore thankful that I
cannot.” He folded his arms on the rail and gravely addressed the dead
figure, which still affected him so strongly that he had to exert his
will to face it with composure. “If you really loved me, it is well for
you that you are dead--idiot that I was to believe that the passion you
could inspire, you poor child, would last. We are both lucky; I have
escaped from you, and you have escaped from yourself.”
Presently he breathed more freely and looked round the room to help
himself into a matter-of-fact vein by a little unembarrassed action, and
the commonplace aspect of the bedroom furniture. He went to the pillow,
and bent over it, examining the face closely.
“Poor child!” he said again, tenderly. Then, with sudden reaction,
apostrophizing himself instead of his wife, “Poor ass! Poor idiot! Poor
jackanapes! Here is the body of a woman who was nearly as old as myself,
and perhaps wiser, and here am I moralizing over it as if I were God
Almighty and she a baby! The more you remind a man of what he is, the
more conceited he becomes. Monstrous! I shall feel immortal presently.”
He touched the cheek with a faint attempt at roughness, to feel how cold
it was. Then he touched his own, and remarked:
“This is what I am hastening toward at the express speed of sixty
minutes an hour!” He stood looking down at the face and tasting this
sombre reflection for a long time. When it palled on him, he roused
himself, and exclaimed more cheerfully:
“After all, she is not dead. Every word she uttered--every idea she
formed and expressed, was an inexhaustible and indestructible impulse.”
He paused, considered a little further, and relapsed into gloom, adding,
“and the dozen others whose names will be with hers in the ‘Times’
to-morrow? Their words too are still in the air, to endure there to
all eternity. Hm! How the air must be crammed with nonsense! Two sounds
sometimes produce a silence; perhaps ideas neutralize one another in
some analogous way. No, my dear; you are dead and gone and done with,
and I shall be dead and gone and done with too soon to leave me leisure
to fool myself with hopes of immortality. Poor Hetty! Well, good-by, my
darling. Let us pretend for a moment that you can hear that; I know it
will please you.”
All this was in a half-articulate whisper. When he ceased he still bent
over the body, gazing intently at it. Even when he had exhausted the
subject, and turned to go, he changed his mind, and looked again for a
while. Then he stood erect, apparently nerved and refreshed, and left
the room with a firm step. The woman was waiting outside. Seeing that he
was less distressed than when he entered, she said:
“I hope you are satisfied, sir!”
“Delighted! Charmed! The arrangements are extremely pretty and tasteful.
Most consolatory.” And he gave her half a sovereign.
“I thank you, sir,” she said, dropping a curtsey. “The poor young lady!
She was anxious to see you, sir. To hear her say that you were the only
one that cared for her! And so fretful with her mother, too. ‘Let him be
told that I am dangerously ill,’ says she, ‘and he’ll come.’ She didn’t
know how true her word was, poor thing; and she went off without being
aware of it.”
“Flattering herself and flattering me. Happy girl!”
“Bless you, I know what her feelings were, sir; I have had experience.”
Here she approached him confidentially, and whispered: “The family were
again’ you, sir, and she knew it. But she wouldn’t listen to them. She
thought of nothing, when she was easy enough to think at all, but of
your coming. And--hush! Here’s the old gentleman.”
Trefusis looked round and saw Mr. Jansenius, whose handsome face
was white and seamed with grief and annoyance. He drew back from the
proffered hand of his son-in-law, like an overworried child from an
ill-timed attempt to pet it. Trefusis pitied him. The nurse coughed and
retired.
“Have you been speaking to Mrs. Jansenius?” said Trefusis.
“Yes,” said Jansenius offensively.
“So have I, unfortunately. Pray make my apologies to her. I was rude.
The circumstances upset me.”
“You are not upset, sir,” said Jansenius loudly. “You do not care a
damn.”
Trefusis recoiled.
“You damned my feelings, and I will damn yours,” continued Jansenius in
the same tone. Trefusis involuntarily looked at the door through which
he had lately passed. Then, recovering himself, he said quietly:
“It does not matter. She can’t hear us.”
Before Jansenius could reply his wife hurried upstairs, caught him by
the arm, and said, “Don’t speak to him, John. And you,” she added, to
Trefusis, “WILL you begone?”
“What!” he said, looking cynically at her. “Without my dead! Without my
property! Well, be it so.”
“What do you know of the feelings of a respectable man?” persisted
Jansenius, breaking out again in spite of his wife. “Nothing is sacred
to you. This shows what Socialists are!”
“And what fathers are, and what mothers are,” retorted Trefusis, giving
way to his temper. “I thought you loved Hetty, but I see that you only
love your feelings and your respectability. The devil take both! She was
right; my love for her, incomplete as it was, was greater than yours.”
And he left the house in dudgeon.
But he stood awhile in the avenue to laugh at himself and his
father-in-law. Then he took a hansom and was driven to the house of
his solicitor, whom he wished to consult on the settlement of his late
wife’s affairs.