For two days Brigit Mead remained in her room, refusing to see anyone.
Tommy, who had reached the period when convalescents sleep most of the
time, was told that she was resting, and that he must be very good and
eat a great deal, with a view to surprising her by his progress when she
reappeared.
But the girl was not resting.
Up and down the two rooms she paced, day and night, her face set, her
hands clenched, talking aloud to herself sometimes, sometimes silent,
always thinking, thinking, thinking of Joyselle.
Had he ceased to love her, or was it merely a pose, or--ten thousand
theories occurred to her, to drive her perilously near madness in her
solitude. Things he had done, words he had said, characteristics she had
observed in him, all these things flashed into her mind, upsetting and
confirming each and every theory with an utter lack of logic, but with
pitiless conclusiveness.
And the longer she thought the more hopeless things grew. Théo himself
she dismissed with furious impatience; his letters remained unopened, an
affectionate wire of congratulation on Tommy's improvement she did not
answer. He and everyone else were swept aside by the flood of emotional
analysis regarding Joyselle that, in its headlong course, threatened to
carry her reason with it.
"If I had been married," she thought over and over again with cruel
shrewdness, "things--would have been different, and then he _could_ not
have escaped."
She wrote to Joyselle long letters full of incoherent self-accusations,
and made appeals for pity, but she knew that he would not answer her,
and so burned the letters.
She could not eat; did not even try, and the little sleep she got from
sheer exhaustion, after tramping up and down for hours, was heavy and
unrestful. Lady Kingsmead came to her door once or twice, but was not
allowed to enter, and went away unprotesting. And then, the third
morning, Dr. Long insisted on seeing her.
"Humph! Tired, are you? You look it. Tommy is going to Margate
to-morrow. You had better go too."
"Is my mother going?"
"No. Nurse is taking him. It will do him good--and you. Is anything
specific the matter?"
She looked at him and shook her head. "I am tired," she repeated.
"Very well. I'll give you some phosphites--and you had better go for a
walk. You need air."
The old man bustled away, and Brigit, after a few minutes' reflection,
went to her mother's room.
"I am going to town, mother," she began, without preamble, "and in a day
or so I shall join Tommy at Margate. Dr. Long says I had better go,
but--I have some things to see to first."
Lady Kingsmead, who was blackening her eyebrows before her glass,
turned, one eye made up, the other very undressed-looking in its natural
condition.
"But--you'll come back, Brigit? You aren't angry any more?"
"I--I don't know, mother. I--am so tired, I can't think."
Lady Kingsmead took up a letter that lay beside her and handed it to her
daughter. "Read this--dear," she said rather humbly. And Brigit read:
"Dear Tony," it ran, in a curious irregular, downward-trending
hand, "I've been awfully bad again, or I should have written before. I
was at the Joyselles' yesterday, and they told me that the danger is
over. I am so glad, poor old girl. How are you? And how is Brigit? I
hope she will believe you when you tell her about that day after I saw
her in Tite Street. I told her that you did not believe me and went for
me, but she wouldn't listen to me, and I don't blame her. I'm pretty
bad. I shan't last long, I think. Heart's getting bad, too. May I come
down and see you some time? Joyselle tells me the wedding is to be next
month----"
Brigit crushed the letter violently in her hand and threw it down, her
face distorted with anger.
"Poor old Gerald," commented her mother absently. After a pause she
turned. "Brigit--I give you my sacred word of honour that I did not
believe him that day. I never doubted you for a second. But he was so
queer--so ill--that I was alarmed, and was trying to comfort him when
you came in.
"Do you believe me?" she added, after a long pause.
Brigit, who stood by the window, nodded without turning.
"Oh, yes, I believe you," she said indifferently.
Then, before her mother could again speak, the girl left the room.
On her own table she found another letter, and to her surprise
recognised Carron's writing in the address. With a sudden foreboding of
evil, she sat down and opened the letter.
It was very long, written in pencil, and began:
"Before God, I swear you wronged your mother in thinking she believed
what I said about you that day in Pont Street. Before God, I give you my
word. Brigit, I am going to die; I cannot live. I don't like to live.
The world is abominable. I hate everybody. I hate you. I hate God. The
only way I can forget is to take morphine, and it is beginning to go
back on me. Sometimes I don't feel it at all. And it is only the last of
many friends to desert me----"
There were four pages of this, growing more and more incoherent, and
then at the last, the writer went on, his writing suddenly larger and
more distinct, as if he had taken pains to render it legible:
"I am going to die, Brigit, so good-bye. If you would have married me I
should not have done this. It is all your fault. "Gerald Carron."
For an instant her indignation at the incredible cowardice of the man
crushed every other feeling. Then a thrill of horror came over her.
Looking again at the last page she saw below the signature:
"If you will come to see me at five o'clock to-morrow, and are kind to
me, I won't do it."
Returning to her mother's room the girl handed her the letter. "Read the
last page," she said briefly.
Lady Kingsmead shuddered. "We must wire him. We'll tell him to come down
here--he must be mad--I--oh, Brigit!"
Brigit shook her head. "Of course he's mad. But we must go to him. We'll
wire from the station."
Hurrying her distracted mother to the train, the girl settled into a
corner and remained in unbroken silence until they reached town.
"It is odious, disgusting of him," she broke out in the hansom as they
went up St. James Street. "When he is quieted down, mother, you must
make him understand that I absolutely refuse to accept the
responsibility of his deeds. I never could bear him."
Lady Kingsmead nodded. "It is the morphine he takes. He must go into
one of these great cure places--or no, that is for drinking, I
believe----"
They had reached the house and gone up the stairs before she spoke
again. "I hope he won't be violent," she declared, "I wish you hadn't
insisted on coming. A wire would have done every bit as well----"
No one answering the ring, Brigit tried the door on which a card bearing
Carron's name was neatly tacked.
To her surprise the door was open, and crossing the little ante-chamber
the two women went into the sitting-room.
Lying on his face by the fireplace, in which red ashes still glowed,
Gerald Carron lay dead, a revolver near him, his face in a small pool of
blood.