XXXII
SUSPENSE: REACTION
Days of suspense followed, while Alice's life trembled in the balance.In what way these days were passed the watchers themselves scarcelyknew: for it is among the offices of suspense to make word and deedmechanical, and life a dream. The senses are dulled; nothing isrealised--not even death itself, when death comes. Afterwards youremember with horror your callousness: when all the time your senseshave been dulled by the most merciful of Nature's laws. Afterwards youfind that you received many an impression without knowing it. Thus DickEdmonstone, for one, recalled a few things that he had quite forgotten,on his way south in the train afterwards.
He could feel again the wind lifting the hair from his head on the darkhilltop. He saw the crescent moon racing through foamy billows ofclouds, like a dismasted ship before the wind. He felt the rushing airas he sped back to the post in the lonely road from which he watched allnight that square of yellow light--the light through her window-blind.This faint yellow light shot beams of hope into his heart through thelong nights; he watched it till dawn, and then crept wearily to his bedin the inn. When he roamed away from it, a superstitious dread seizedhim that he would return to find the light gone out for ever. The pale,faint light became to him an emblem of the faint, flickering life thathad burnt so low. He would wildly hurry back, with death at his heart.Thank God! the light still burned.
In memory he could hear his own voice treating with a carter for a loadof straw. He was again laying down with his own hands the narrow roadwith this straw; he was sitting half the day at his post in the gap ofthe hedge, watching her window; he was tasting again of the delight withwhich he watched the first vehicle crawl noiselessly across that straw.
These were among his most vivid recollections; but voices came back tohim plainest of all.
The voices of the professional nurses, whispering where they littledreamt there was a listener; foreboding the worst; comparing notes withtheir last fatal cases; throwing into their tones a kind of pity worsethan open indifference--perfunctory and cold. Or, again, these samevoices telling how a certain name was always on the feverish lipsupstairs.
"Ah, poor soul!" said they; "she thinks of nothing but him!"
Of whom? Whose name was for ever on her lips? The name of him to whomshe had breathed her last conscious words?
Even so; for another voice had echoed through the silent house more thanonce, and could never be forgotten by those who heard it; the piercing,heart-rending, delirious voice of Alice herself, reiterating those lastconscious words of hers:
"Hear what it was he said to me, and my answer--which is my answerstill!"
What had Miles said? What had been Alice's answer? Who would ever know?Not Dick; and these words came back to him more often than any others,and they tortured him.
But there were other words--words that had been spoken but yesterday,and as yet seemed too good to be true; the words of the kind old countrydoctor:
"She is out of danger!"
* * * * *
And now Dick Edmonstone was being whirled back to London. Alice wasdeclared out of danger, so he had come away. Alice was not going to die.Her young life was spared. Then why was Dick's heart not filled with joyand thanksgiving? Perhaps it was; but why did he not show it? He who hadbeen frenzied by her peril, should have leapt or wept for joy at hersafety. He did neither. He could show no joy. Why not?
Edmonstone arrived in town, and broke his fast at an hotel--he hadtravelled all night. After breakfast he drove, with his luggage, firstto the offices of the P. and O. Company in Leadenhall Street. He steppedfrom that office with a brisker air; something was off his mind;something was definitely settled. On his way thence to Waterloo hewhistled lively tunes in the cab. By the time he reached Teddington andIris Lodge, the jauntiness of his manner was complete. In fact, hismanner was so entirely different from what his mother and Fanny had beenprepared for, that the good ladies were relieved and delighted beyondmeasure for the first few minutes, until a something in his tone painedthem both.
"Oh yes," he said, carelessly, in answer to their hushed inquiry, "sheis out of danger now, safe enough. It has been touch and go, though."
He might have been speaking of a horse or dog, and yet have given peoplethe impression that he was a young man without much feeling.
"But--my boy," cried Mrs. Edmonstone, "what has been the matter withyou? We never heard that you were ill; and you look like a ghost, mypoor Dick!"
Dick was standing in rather a swaggering attitude on the hearthrug. Hewheeled round, and looked at himself in the large glass over thechimneypiece. His face was haggard and lined, and his expression justthen was not a nice one.
"Why," he owned, with a grating laugh, "I certainly don't look very fit,now you mention it, do I? But it's all on the surface. I'm all right,bless you! I'm not on speaking terms with the sexton yet, anyway!"
A tear stood in each of Mrs. Edmonstone's dark eyes. Fanny frowned, andbeat her foot impatiently upon the carpet. What had come over Dick?
He must have known perfectly well the utter falsity of the mask he waswearing; if not, self-deception was one of his accomplishments. Orperhaps those tears in his mother's eyes caused a pang of shame to shootthrough him. In any case, he made a hasty effort to change his tone.
"How are you two? That is the main point with me. Bother my seediness!"
"We are always well," sighed Mrs. Edmonstone.
"And Maurice?"
"Maurice was never brisker."
"Lucky dog!" said Dick, involuntarily; and the bitterness was back inhis tone before he knew it.
"Your friend Mr. Flint," said Mrs. Edmonstone, "is Maurice's friend now,and Mr. Flint finds all his friends in good spirits."
"Do you mean to say old Jack is doing the absentee landlord altogether?Did he never go back?"
"Yes. But he is over again--he is in town just now," said Mrs.Edmonstone.
"He's fast qualifying for buckshot, that fellow," said Dick, with lightirony.
"I rather fancy," observed Fanny, with much indifference, "that you willsee him this evening. I half think he is coming back with Maurice." AndMiss Fanny became profoundly interested in the world out of the window.
"Good!" cried Dick; and there was a ring of sincerity in thatmonosyllable which ought to have made it appreciated--as much as adiamond in a dustheap!
In a little while Dick went up to his room. He had letters to write, hesaid; but he was heard whistling and singing as he unpacked hisportmanteau. Neither of the ladies saw much more of him that day. Theysat together in wretched silence; there was some constraint betweenthem; they felt hurt, but were too proud to express the feeling even toeach other. The fact was, they did not quite know why they felt hurt.Dick had greeted them kindly enough--it was only that there was asomething in his manner which they didn't like and could notunderstand. And so both these women longed heartily for evening, and thecoming of Maurice and merry Mr. Flint--Fanny, however, the more heartilyof the two.
Maurice and Flint did come--in excellent time, too; and it so happenedthat when the little table-gong rang out its silvery call, Mr. Flint andMiss Edmonstone were still perambulating the dewy, twilit tennis-court.It further happened, in spite of the last-mentioned fact, that MissFanny contrived to reach the drawing-room before her mother was finallydisentangled from the wools and needles that beset her at most hours ofthe day; that mother and daughter were the last to enter the littledining-room, hand in hand; that Miss Fanny looked uncommonly radiant,and that the usual stupid tears were standing in gentle Mrs.Edmonstone's soft, loving eyes.
Dick was unusually brilliant in his old place at the head of thetable--so brilliant that his friend Flint was taken by surprise, and,for his own part, silenced; though it is true that the latter hadsomething on his mind which would have made him, in any case, worsecompany than usual. Dick rattled on incessantly, about the dales, andthe moors, and
the grouse, as though his stay in Yorkshire wasassociated with no tragedy, and no sickness nigh unto death. His mood,indeed, was not taken up by the others, but he did not seem to notice orto mind that; only when he was quiet, all were quiet, and the suddensilences were embarrassing to all save their prime author.
The longest and most awkward of these pauses occurred while the crumbswere being removed. When the maid had withdrawn, Dick drank of hiswine, refilled his glass, held it daintily by the stem between fingerand thumb, leant back in his chair, and proceeded deliberately to breakthe spell.
"Ladies and gentlemen," he began, speaking the trite words in the samedisagreeable tone that had pained the ladies that morning, "I am goingto make you a little speech; a very little one, mind, so don't lookuncomfortable--you needn't even feel it."
He glanced from one to another of them. They did look uncomfortable;they felt that somehow Dick was not himself; they heartily wished hewould be quiet. His manner was not the manner to carry off a sneer as somuch pleasantry.
Dick continued:
"All good things must come to an end, you know--and, in fact, that's myvery original text. Now look at me, please--mother, look at your sheepthat was lost: thanks. You will, perhaps, agree with me that I'm hardlythe fellow I was when I landed; the fact being that this beautifulBritish climate is playing old Harry with me, and--all good things cometo an end. If I may class myself among the good things for a moment--forargument's sake--it seems to me that one good thing will come to an endpretty soon. Look at me--don't you think so?"
The wretched smile that crossed his lean, pale face was not at variancewith his words. He was much altered. His cheeks were sunken andbloodless, dark only under the eyes. His eyes to-night were unnaturallybright. His lips too were bloodless; to-night they were quiveringincessantly. His question was left unanswered, as he meant that itshould be. Flint was trying mentally to compute the quantity of wine hisfriend might possibly have taken; the others could not have spoken atthat moment even if they would.
"Now," continued Dick, still toying with his wine, "the country I left afew months ago never allows a man to fall into my unhappy plight. Itputs a man in good health at the beginning, and keeps him in it to theend, somewhere in the nineties. Why, Maurice, if he went out there,would find that he has never known what health is! Fanny, we know, is ahardy plant, and would thrive anywhere; yet she was made for the lifeout there, if girl ever was. As for you, mother, it would clap twentyyears on to your dear old life--no, it would make you twenty yearsyounger. No one who has once lived there will live anywhere else. Evenold Flint here is dying to go back; he confessed as much last month. Nowwhat I say is this: all good things, etcetera--England among them.Therefore let us all go out there together, and live happily everafterwards! Stop; hear me out, all of you: it's arranged already--I goout first, to stock the station, and all the rest of it. The fact is, Ibooked my passage this morning! Come, you have had good patience; myspeech, like better 'good things,' has come to an end!"
His tone had changed from half-jest to whole earnest--from earnestnessto ardour--from ardour to something bordering on defiance. But, with thelast word scarcely out of his mouth, he checked himself, and ejaculatedbelow his breath: "Good heavens!"
Mrs. Edmonstone had rushed sobbing from the room.
No one followed her. The others stared blankly, then indignantly, atDick, in whose face concern began to show itself. Then young Mauricespoke up.
"If I were you," he said hotly to his brother, "I'd go after her, andtell her you have taken too much wine, and beg her pardon for making afool of yourself!"
Dick darted an angry glance at him, but rose and stalked from the room.In point of fact, the wine had not had much to do with it--no more andno less than it has to do with anybody's after-dinner speech. At thesame time, Dick had not been altogether in his right senses, either thenor any time that day. He found his mother weeping as though her heartwould break; whereat his own heart smote him so that he came to hissenses there and then, and knelt in humility and shame at her feet.
"Dearest mother, forgive me!" he murmured again and again, and took herhand in his and kissed it.
"But are you--are you really going back--back over the seas?" shesobbed.
"Yes. I can't help it, mother! No one knows how miserable I have beenover here. Forgive me--forgive me--but I can't stay! I can't indeed!But--but you shall come out too, and the others; and your life will behappier than it has been for years, once you are used to it."
Mrs. Edmonstone shook her head.
"No; it is impossible," she said with sudden decision.
"How so? Both Fanny and Maurice, once when I sounded them--"
"Fanny will never go, and I cannot leave her."
"Why? Mother dear, what do you mean?"
"I mean that your sister is going to be married."
Married! The mere word ought not to have cut him to the heart; yet, inthe state that he was in then, it did. He rose uncertainly to his feet.
"You take my breath away, mother! I know of nothing. Whom is it to?"
"Can you ask?"
"I cannot guess."
"Then it is to your friend, Mr.--no, Jack--Jack Flint."
"God bless old Jack!"
That was what Dick said upon the instant. Then he stood silent. Andthen--Dick sank into a chair, and laid his face upon his hands.
"I can go out alone," he whispered. "And--and I wish them joy; from myheart I do! I will go and tell them so."