He broke it presently by saying: “There’s absolutely no doubt of her
death?”
“Unfortunately none. I’ve just risen from my knees by the bed where
they’ve laid her out.”
He fixed his eyes hard on the floor; then he raised them to mine. “How
does she look?”
“She looks--at peace.”
He turned away again, while I watched him; but after a moment he began:
“At what hour, then----?”
“It must have been near midnight. She dropped as she reached her
house--from an affection of the heart which she knew herself and her
physician knew her to have, but of which, patiently, bravely she had
never spoken to me.”
He listened intently and for a minute he was unable to speak. At last
he broke out with an accent of which the almost boyish confidence,
the really sublime simplicity rings in my ears as I write: “Wasn’t she
_wonderful_!” Even at the time I was able to do it justice enough to
remark in reply that I had always told him so; but the next minute, as
if after speaking he had caught a glimpse of what he might have made
me feel, he went on quickly: “You see that if she didn’t get home till
midnight--”
I instantly took him up. “There was plenty of time for you to have seen
her? How so,” I inquired, “when you didn’t leave my house till late?
I don’t remember the very moment--I was preoccupied. But you know that
though you said you had lots to do you sat for some time after dinner.
She, on her side, was all the evening at the ‘Gentlewomen.’ I’ve just
come from there--I’ve ascertained. She had tea there; she remained a
long, long time.”
“What was she doing all the long, long time?” I saw that he was eager to
challenge at every step my account of the matter; and the more he showed
this the more I found myself disposed to insist on that account, to
prefer, with apparent perversity, an explanation which only deepened the
marvel and the mystery, but which, of the two prodigies it had to choose
from, my reviving jealousy found easiest to accept. He stood there
pleading with a candour that now seems to me beautiful for the privilege
of having in spite of supreme defeat known the living woman; while I,
with a passion I wonder at to-day, though it still smoulders in a manner
in its ashes, could only reply that, through a strange gift shared by
her with his mother and on her own side likewise hereditary, the miracle
of his youth had been renewed for him, the miracle of hers for her. She
had been to him--yes, and by an impulse as charming as he liked; but oh!
she had not been in the body. It was a simple question of evidence. I
had had, I assured him, a definite statement of what she had done--most
of the time--at the little club. The place was almost empty, but the
servants had noticed her. She had sat motionless in a deep chair by
the drawing-room fire; she had leaned back her head, she had closed her
eyes, she had seemed softly to sleep.
“I see. But till what o’clock?”
“There,” I was obliged to answer, “the servants fail me a little. The
portress in particular is unfortunately a fool, though even she too is
supposed to be a Gentlewoman. She was evidently at that period of the
evening, without a substitute and, against regulations, absent for
some little time from the cage in which it’s her business to watch the
comings and goings. She’s muddled, she palpably prevaricates; so I can’t
positively, from her observation, give you an hour. But it was remarked
toward half-past ten that our poor friend was no longer in the club.”
“She came straight here; and from here she went straight to the train.”
“She couldn’t have run it so close,” I declared. “That was a thing she
particularly never did.”
“There was no need of running it close, my dear--she had plenty of time.
Your memory is at fault about my having left you late: I left you, as it
happens, unusually early. I’m sorry my stay with you seemed long; for I
was back here by ten.”
“To put yourself into your slippers,” I rejoined, “and fall asleep in
your chair. You slept till morning--you saw her in a dream!” He looked
at me in silence and with sombre eyes--eyes that showed me he had some
irritation to repress. Presently I went on: “You had a visit, at an
extraordinary hour, from a lady--_soit_: nothing in the world is more
probable. But there are ladies and ladies. How in the name of goodness,
if she was unannounced and dumb and you had into the bargain never
seen the least portrait of her--how could you identify the person we’re
talking of?”
“Haven’t I to absolute satiety heard her described? I’ll describe her
for you in every particular.”
“Don’t!” I exclaimed with a promptness that made him laugh once more. I
coloured at this, but I continued: “Did your servant introduce her?”
“He wasn’t here--he’s always away when he’s wanted. One of the features
of this big house is that from the street-door the different floors are
accessible practically without challenge. My servant makes love to a
young person employed in the rooms above these, and he had a long bout
of it last evening. When he’s out on that job he leaves my outer door,
on the staircase, so much ajar as to enable him to slip back without a
sound. The door then only requires a push. She pushed it--that simply
took a little courage.”
“A little? It took tons! And it took all sorts of impossible
calculations.”
“Well, she had them--she made them. Mind you, I don’t deny for a
moment,” he added, “that it was very, very wonderful!”
Something in his tone prevented me for a while from trusting myself to
speak. At last I said: “How did she come to know where you live?”
“By remembering the address on the little label the shop-people happily
left sticking to the frame I had had made for my photograph.”
“And how was she dressed?”
“In mourning, my own dear. No great depths of crape, but simple and
scrupulous black. She had in her bonnet three small black feathers.
She carried a little muff of astrachan. She has near the left eye,” he
continued, “a tiny vertical scar--”
I stopped him short. “The mark of a caress from her husband.” Then I
added: “How close you must have been to her!” He made no answer to this,
and I thought he blushed, observing which I broke straight off. “Well,
goodbye.”
“You won’t stay a little?” He came to me again tenderly, and this time
I suffered him. “Her visit had its beauty,” he murmured as he held me,
“but yours has a greater one.”
I let him kiss me, but I remembered, as I had remembered the day before,
that the last kiss she had given, as I supposed, in this world had been
for the lips he touched.
“I’m life, you see,” I answered. “What you saw last night was death.”
“It was life--it was life!”
He spoke with a kind of soft stubbornness, and I disengaged myself. We
stood looking at each other hard.
“You describe the scene--so far as you describe it at all--in terms that
are incomprehensible. She was in the room before you knew it?”
“I looked up from my letter-writing--at that table under the lamp, I had
been wholly absorbed in it--and she stood before me.”
“Then what did you do?”
“I sprang up with an ejaculation, and she, with a smile, laid her
finger, ever so warningly, yet with a sort of delicate dignity, to her
lips. I knew it meant silence, but the strange thing was that it seemed
immediately to explain and to justify her. We, at any rate, stood for
a time that, as I’ve told you, I can’t calculate, face to face. It was
just as you and I stand now.”
“Simply staring?”
He impatiently protested. “Ah! _we’re_ not staring!”
“Yes, but we’re talking.”
“Well, _we_ were--after a fashion.” He lost himself in the memory of it.
“It was as friendly as this.” I had it on my tongue’s end to ask if
that were saying much for it, but I remarked instead that what they had
evidently done was to gaze in mutual admiration. Then I inquired whether
his recognition of her had been immediate. “Not quite,” he replied,
“for, of course, I didn’t expect her; but it came to me long before she
went who she was--who she could only be.”