The world knows how Charteris was killed in Fairhaven by Jasper
Hardress--the husband of "that flighty Mrs. Hardress" Anne had spoken
of.
"And I hardly know," said Mrs. Ashmeade, "whether more to admire the
justice or the sardonic humor of the performance. Here after hundreds of
entanglements with women, John Charteris manages to be shot by a jealous
maniac on account of a woman with whom--for a wonder--his relations were
proven to be innocent. The man needed killing, but it is asking too much
of human nature to put up with his being made a martyr of."
She cried a little, though. "It--it's because I remember him when he was
turning out his first mustache," she explained, lucidly.
* * * * *
But with the horror and irony of John Charteris's assassination the
biographer of Rudolph Musgrave has really nothing to do save in so far
as this event influenced the life of Rudolph Musgrave.
It was on the day of Charteris's death--a fine, clear afternoon in late
September--that Rudolph Musgrave went bass-fishing with some eight of
his masculine guests. Luncheon was brought to them in a boat about two
o'clock, along with the day's mail.
"I say--! But listen, everybody!" cried Alfred Chayter, whose mail
included a morning paper--the _Lichfield Courier-Herald_, in fact.
He read aloud.
"I wish I could be with Anne," thought Colonel Musgrave. "It may be I
could make things easier."
But Anne was in Lichfield now....
He had just finished dressing for supper when it occurred to him that
since their return from the river he had not seen Patricia. He was
afraid that Patricia, also, would be upset by this deplorable news.
As he crossed the hall Virginia came out of Patricia's rooms. The
colonel raised his voice in speaking to her, for with age Virginia was
growing very deaf.
"Yaas, suh," she said, "I'm doin' middlin' well, suh, thank yeh, suh.
Jus' took the evenin' mail to Miss Patricy, like I always do, suh." She
went away quietly, her pleasant yellow face as imperturbable as an
idol's.
He went into Patricia's bedroom. Patricia had been taking an afternoon
nap, and had not risen from the couch, where she lay with three or four
unopened letters upon her breast. Two she had opened and dropped upon
the floor. She seemed not to hear him when he spoke her name, and yet
she was not asleep, because her eyes were partly unclosed.
There was no purple glint in them, as once there had been always. Her
countenance, indeed, showed everywhere less brightly tinted than
normally it should be. Her heavy copper-colored hair, alone undimmed,
seemed, like some parasitic growth (he thought), to sustain its beauty
by virtue of having drained Patricia's body of color and vitality.
There was a newspaper in her right hand, with flamboyant headlines,
because to Lichfield the death of John Charteris was an event of
importance.
Patricia seemed very young. You saw that she had suffered. You knew it
was not fair to hurt a child like that.
But, indeed, Rudolph Musgrave hardly realized as yet that Patricia was
dead. For Colonel Musgrave was thinking of that time when this same
Patricia had first come to him, fire-new from the heart of an ancient
sunset, and he had noted, for the first time, that her hair was like the
reflection of a sunset in rippling waters, and that her mouth was an
inconsiderable trifle, a scrap of sanguine curves, and that her eyes
were purple glimpses of infinity.
"This same Patricia!" he said, aloud.