Rudolph Musgrave sat all night beside the body. He had declined to speak
with innumerable sympathetic cousins--Vartreys and Fentons and
Allardyces and Musgraves, to the fifth and sixth remove--who had come
from all quarters, with visiting-cards and low-voiced requests to be
informed "if there is anything we can possibly do."
Rudolph Musgrave sat all night beside the body. He had not any strength
for anger now, and hardly for grief, Agatha had been his charge; and the
fact that he had never plucked up courage to allude to her practises was
now an enormity in which he could not quite believe. His cowardice and
its fruitage confronted him, and frightened him into a panic frenzy of
remorse.
Agatha had been his charge; and he had entrusted the stewardship to
Patricia. Between them--that Patricia might have her card-game, that he
might sit upon a platform for an hour or two with a half-dozen other
pompous fools--they had let Agatha die. There was no mercy in him for
Patricia or for himself. He wished Patricia had been a man. Had any man
--an emperor or a coal-heaver, it would not have mattered--spoken as
Patricia had done within the moment, here, within arm's reach of the
poor flesh that had been Agatha's, Rudolph Musgrave would have known his
duty. But, according to his code, it was not permitted to be
discourteous to a woman....
He caught himself with grotesque meanness wishing that Agatha had been
there,--privileged by her sex where he was fettered,--she who was so
generous of heart and so fiery of tongue at need; and comprehension that
Agatha would never abet or adore him any more smote him anew.
* * * * *
And chance reserved for him more poignant torture. Next day, while
Rudolph Musgrave was making out the list of honorary pall-bearers, the
postman brought a letter which had been forwarded from Chicago. It was
from Agatha, written upon the morning of that day wherein later she had
been, as Patricia phrased it, "queer, you know."
He found it wildly droll to puzzle out those "crossed" four sheets of
trivialities written in an Italian hand so minute and orderly that the
finished page suggested a fly-screen. He had so often remonstrated with
Agatha about her penuriousness as concerned stationery.
"Selina Brice & the Rev'd Henry Anstruther, who now has a church in
Seattle, have announced their engagement. Stanley Haggage has gone to
Alabama to marry Leonora Bright, who moved from here a year ago. They
are both as poor as church mice, & I think marriage in such a case an
unwise step for anyone. It brings cares & anxieties enough any way,
without starting out with poverty to increase and render deeper every
trouble...."
Such was the tenor of Agatha's last letter, of the last self-expression
of that effigy upstairs who (you could see) knew everything and was not
discontent.
Here the dead spoke, omniscient; and told you that Stanley Haggage had
gone to Alabama, and that marriage brought new cares and anxieties.
"I cannot laugh," said Rudolph Musgrave, aloud. "I know the jest
deserves it. But I cannot laugh, because my upper lip seems to be made
of leather and I can't move it. And, besides, I loved Agatha to a degree
which only You and I have ever known of. She never understood quite how
I loved her. Oh, won't You make her understand just how I loved her? For
Agatha is dead, because You wanted her to be dead, and I have never told
her how much I loved her, and now I cannot ever tell her how much I
loved her. Oh, won't You please show me that You have made her
understand? or else have me struck by lightning? or do _anything_....?"
Nothing was done.
X
And afterward Rudolph Musgrave and his wife met amicably, and without
reference to their last talk. Patricia wore black-and-white for some six
months, and Colonel Musgrave accepted the compromise tacitly. All passed
with perfect smoothness between them; and anyone in Lichfield would have
told you that the Musgraves were a model couple.
She called him "Rudolph" now.
"Olaf is such a silly-sounding nickname for two old married people, you
know," Patricia estimated.
The colonel negligently said that he supposed it did sound odd.
"Only I don't think Clarice Pendomer would care about coming," he
resumed,--for the two were discussing an uncompleted list of the people
Patricia was to invite to their first house-party.
"And for heaven's sake, why not? We always have her to everything."
He could not tell her it was because the Charterises were to be among
their guests. So he said: "Oh, well--!"
"Mrs. C.B. Pendomer, then"--Patricia wrote the name with a flourish.
"Oh, you jay-bird, I'm not jealous. Everybody knows you never had any
more morals than a tom-cat on the back fence. It's a lucky thing the boy
didn't take after you, isn't it? He doesn't, not a bit. No, Harry
Pendomer is the puniest black-haired little wretch, whereas your other
son, sir, resembles his mother and is in consequence a ravishingly
beautiful person of superlative charm--"
He was staring at her so oddly that she paused. So Patricia was familiar
with that old scandal which linked his name with Clarice Pendomer's! He
was wondering if Patricia had married him in the belief that she was
marrying a man who, appraised by any standards, had acted infamously.
"I was only thinking you had better ask Judge Allardyce, Patricia. You
see, he is absolutely certain not to come--"
* * * * *
This year the Musgraves had decided not to spend the spring alone
together at Matocton, as they had done the four preceding years.
"It looks so silly," as Patricia pointed out.
And, besides, a house-party is the most economical method,--as she also
pointed out, being born a Stapylton--of paying off your social
obligations, because you can always ask so many people who, you know,
have made other plans, and cannot accept.
* * * * *
"So we will invite Judge Allardyce, of course," said Patricia. "I had
forgotten his court met in June. Oh, and Peter Blagden too. It had
slipped my mind his uncle was dead...."
"I learned this morning Mrs. Haggage was to lecture in Louisville on the
sixteenth. She was reading up in the Library, you see--"
"Rudolph, you are the lodestar of my existence. I will ask her to come
on the fourteenth and spend a week. I never could abide the hag, but she
has such a--There! I've made a big blot right in the middle of
'darling,' and spoiled a perfectly good sheet of paper!... You'd better
mail it at once, though, because the evening-paper may have something in
it about her lecture."