CHAPTER XIV.
"But this is unbearable!" said Aldous. "Do you mean to say that she isat home and that she will not see me?"
Mrs. Boyce's self-possession was shaken for once by the flushedhumiliation of the man before her.
"I am afraid it is so," she said hurriedly. "I remonstrated withMarcella, but I could do nothing. I think, if you are wise, you will notfor the present attempt to see her."
Aldous sat down, with his hat in his hand, staring at the floor. After afew moments' silence he looked up again.
"And she gave you no message for me?"
"No," said Mrs. Boyce, reluctantly. "Only that she could not bear to seeanybody from the Court, even you, while this matter was stillundecided."
Aldous's eye travelled round the Mellor drawing-room. It was arrested bya chair beside him. On it lay an envelope addressed to Miss Boyce, ofwhich the handwriting seemed to him familiar. A needle with some blacksilk hanging from it had been thrust into the stuffed arm of the chair;the cushion at the back still bore the imprint of the sitter. She hadbeen there, not three minutes ago, and had fled before him. The doorinto Mrs. Boyce's sitting-room was still ajar.
He looked again at the envelope on the chair, and recognised thewriting. Walking across to where Mrs. Boyce sat, he took a seat besideher.
"Will you tell me," he said steadily--"I think you will admit I have aright to know--is Marcella in constant correspondence now with HenryWharton?"
Mrs. Boyce's start was not perceptible.
"I believe so," she quickly replied. "So far as I can judge, he writesto her almost every other day."
"Does she show you his letters?"
"Very often. They are entirely concerned with his daily interviews andefforts on Hurd's behalf."
"Would you not say," he asked, after another pause, raising his cleargrey eyes to her, "that since his arrival here in December Marcella'swhole views and thoughts have been largely--perhaps vitally--influencedby this man?"
Mrs. Boyce had long expected questions of this kind--had, indeed, oftenmarvelled and cavilled that Aldous had not asked them weeks before. Nowthat they were put to her she was, first of all, anxious to treat themwith common sense, and as much plain truth as might be fair to bothparties. The perpetual emotion in which Marcella lived tired andoppressed the mother. For herself she asked to see things in a drylight. Yet she knew well that the moment was critical. Her feeling wasmore mixed than it had been. On the whole it was indignantly on Aldous'sside--with qualifications and impatiences, however.
She took up her embroidery again before she answered him. In heropinion the needle is to the woman what the cigarette is to thediplomatist.
"Yes, certainly," she said at last. "He has done a great deal to formher opinions. He has made her both read and think on all those subjectsshe has so long been fond of talking about."
She saw Aldous wince; but she had her reasons for being plain with him.
"Has there been nothing else than that in it?" said Aldous, in an oddvoice.
Mrs. Boyce tried no evasions. She looked at him straight, her slight,energetic head, with its pale gold hair lit up by the March sun behindher.
"I do not know," she said calmly; "that is the real truth. I _think_there is nothing else. But let me tell you what more I think."
Aldous laid his hand on hers for an instant. In his pity and liking forher he had once or twice allowed himself this quasi-filial freedom.
"If you would," he entreated.
"Leave Marcella quite alone--for the present. She is not herself--notnormal, in any way. Nor will she be till this dreadful thing is over.But when it is over, and she has had time to recover a little,_then_"--her thin voice expressed all the emphasis it could--"_then_assert yourself! Ask her that question you have asked me--and get youranswer."
He understood. Her advice to him, and the tone of it, implied that shehad not always thought highly of his powers of self-defence in the past.But there was a proud and sensitive instinct in him which both told himthat he could not have done differently and forbade him to explain.
"You have come from London to-day?" said Mrs. Boyce, changing thesubject. All intimate and personal conversation was distasteful to her,and she admitted few responsibilities. Her daughter hardly counted amongthem.
"Yes; London is hard at work cabinet-making," he said, trying to smile."I must get back to-night."
"I don't know how you could be spared," said Mrs. Boyce.
He paused; then he broke out: "When a man is in the doubt and trouble Iam, he must be spared. Indeed, since the night of the trial, I feel asthough I had been of very little use to any human being."
He spoke simply, but every word touched her. What an inconceivableentanglement the whole thing was! Yet she was no longer merelycontemptuous of it.
"Look!" she said, lifting a bit of black stuff from the ground besidethe chair which held the envelope; "she is already making the mourningfor the children. I can see she despairs."
He made a sound of horror.
"Can you do nothing?" he cried reproachfully. "To think of her dwellingupon this--nothing but this, day and night--and I, banished andpowerless!"
He buried his head in his hands.
"No, I can do nothing," said Mrs. Boyce, deliberately. Then, after apause, "You do not imagine there is any chance of success for her?"
He looked up and shook his head.
"The Radical papers are full of it, as you know. Wharton is managing itwith great ability, and has got some good supporters in the House. But Ihappened to see the judge the day before yesterday, and I certainlygathered from him that the Home Office was likely to stand firm. Theremay be some delay. The new ministry will not kiss hands till Saturday.But no doubt it will be the first business of the new HomeSecretary.--By the way, I had rather Marcella did not hear of my seeingJudge Cartwright," he added hastily--almost imploringly. "I could notbear that she should suppose--"
Mrs. Boyce thought to herself indignantly that she never could haveimagined such a man in such a plight.
"I must go," he said, rising. "Will you tell her from me," he addedslowly, "that I could never have believed she would be so unkind as tolet me come down from London to see her, and send me away empty--withouta word?"
"Leave it to my discretion," said Mrs. Boyce, smiling and looking up."Oh, by the way, she told me to thank you. Mr. Wharton, in his letterthis morning, mentioned that you had given him two introductions whichwere important to him. She specially wished you to be thanked for it."
His exclamation had a note of impatient contempt that Mrs. Boyce wasgenuinely glad to hear. In her opinion he was much too apt to forgetthat the world yields itself only to the "violent."
He walked away from the house without once looking back. Marcella, from,her window, watched him go.
"How _could_ she see him?" she asked herself passionately, both thenand on many other occasions during these rushing, ghastly days. His turnwould come, and it should be amply given him. But _now_ the very thoughtof that half-hour in Lord Maxwell's library threw her into wild tears.The time for entreaty--for argument--was gone by, so far as he wasconcerned. He might have been her champion, and would not. She threwherself recklessly, madly into the encouragement and support of the manwho had taken up the task which, in her eyes, should have been herlover's. It had become to her a _fight_--with society, with the law,with Aldous--in which her whole nature was absorbed. In the course ofthe fight she had realised Aldous's strength, and it was a bitteroffence to her.
How little she could do after all! She gathered together all thenewspapers that were debating the case, and feverishly read every line;she wrote to Wharton, commenting on what she read, and on his letters;she attended the meetings of the Reprieve Committee which had beenstarted at Widrington; and she passed hours of every day with Minta Hurdand her children. She would hardly speak to Mary Harden and the rector,because they had not signed the petition, and at home her relations withher father were much strained. Mr. Boyce was awakening to
a good deal ofalarm as to how things might end. He might not like the Raeburns, butthat anything should come in the way of his daughter's match was,notwithstanding, the very last thing in the world, as he soondiscovered, that he really desired. During six months he had taken itfor granted; so had the county. He, of all men, could not afford to bemade ridiculous, apart from the solid, the extraordinary advantages ofthe matter. He thought Marcella a foolish, unreasonable girl, and wasnot the less in a panic because his wife let him understand that he hadhad a good deal to do with it. So that between him and his daughterthere were now constant sparrings--sparrings which degraded Marcella inher own eyes, and contributed not a little to make her keep away fromhome.
The one place where she breathed freely, where the soul had full course,was in Minta Hurd's kitchen. Side by side with that piteous plaintivemisery, her own fierceness dwindled. She would sit with little Willie onher knees in the dusk of the spring evenings, looking into the fire, andcrying silently. She never suspected that her presence was often aburden and constraint, not only to the sulky sister-in-law but to thewife herself. While Miss Boyce was there the village kept away; and Mrs.Hurd was sometimes athirst, without knowing it, for homelier speech andsimpler consolations than any Marcella could give her.
The last week arrived. Wharton's letters grew more uncertain anddespondent; the Radical press fought on with added heat as the causebecame more desperate. On Monday the wife went to see the condemned man,who told her not to be so silly as to imagine there was any hope.Tuesday night, Wharton asked his last question in Parliament. Friday wasthe day fixed for the execution.
The question in Parliament came on late. The Home Secretary's answer,though not final in form, was final in substance. Wharton went outimmediately and wrote to Marcella. "She will not sleep if I telegraphto-night," he thought, with that instinct for detail, especially forphysical detail, which had in it something of the woman. But, knowingthat his letter could not reach her by the early post with the stroke ofeight next morning, he sent out his telegram, that she might not learnthe news first from the papers.
Marcella had wandered out before breakfast, feeling the house anoppression, and knowing that, one way or another, the last news mightreach her any hour.
She had just passed through the little wood behind and alongside of thehouse, and was in a field beyond, when she heard some one running behindher. William handed her the telegram, his own red face full ofunderstanding. Marcella took it, commanded herself till the boy was outof sight and hearing again, then sank down on the grass to read it.
"All over. The Home Secretary's official refusal to interfere withsentence sent to Widrington to-day. Accept my sorrow and sympathy."
She crushed it in her hand, raising her head mechanically. Before herlay that same shallow cup of ploughed land stretching from her father'sbig wood to the downs, on the edge of which Hurd had plied his ferretsin the winter nights. But to-day the spring worked in it, and breathedupon it. The young corn was already green in the furrows; thehazel-catkins quivered in the hedge above her; larks were in the air,daisies in the grass, and the march of sunny clouds could be seen in theflying shadows they flung on the pale greens and sheeny purples of thewide treeless basin.
Human helplessness, human agony--set against the careless joy ofnature--there is no new way of feeling these things. But not to havefelt them, and with the mad, impotent passion and outcry which filledMarcella's heart at this moment, is never to have risen to the fullstature of our kind.
* * * * *
"Marcella, it is my strong wish--my command--that you do _not_ go out tothe village to-night."
"I must go, papa."
It was Thursday night--the night before the Friday morning fixed forHurd's execution. Dinner at Mellor was just over. Mr. Boyce, who wasstanding in front of the fire, unconsciously making the most of his owninadequate height and size, looked angrily at his stately daughter. Shehad not appeared at dinner, and she was now dressed in the long blackcloak and black hat she had worn so constantly in the last few weeks.Mr. Boyce detested the garb.
"You are making yourself _ridiculous_, Marcella. Pity for these wretchedpeople is all very well, but you have no business to carry it to such apoint that you--and we--become the talk, the laughing-stock of thecounty. And I should like to see you, too, pay some attention to AldousRaeburn's feelings and wishes."
The admonition, in her father's mouth, would almost have made her laugh,if she could have laughed at anything. But, instead, she only repeated:
"I must go, I have explained to mamma."
"Evelyn! why do you permit it?" cried Mr. Boyce, turning aggressively tohis wife.
"Marcella explained to me, as she truly said," replied Mrs. Boyce,looking up calmly. "It is not her habit to ask permission of any one."
"Mamma," exclaimed the girl, in her deep voice, "you would not wish tostop me?"
"No," said Mrs. Boyce, after a pause, "no. You have gone so far, Iunderstand your wish to do this. Richard,"--she got up and went tohim,--"don't excite yourself about it; shall I read to you, or play agame with you?"
He looked at her, trembling with anger. But her quiet eye warned himthat he had had threatenings of pain that afternoon. His anger sank intofear. He became once more irritable and abject.
"Let her gang her gait," he said, throwing himself into a chair. "But Itell you I shall not put up with this kind of thing much longer,Marcella."
"I shall not ask you, papa," she said steadily, as she moved towards thedoor. Mrs. Boyce paused where she stood, and looked after her daughter,struck by her words. Mr. Boyce simply took them as referring to themarriage which would emancipate her before long from any control of his,and fumed, without finding a reply.
The maid-servant who, by Mrs. Boyce's orders, was to accompany Marcellato the village, was already at the front door. She carried a basketcontaining invalid food for little Willie, and a lighted lantern.
It was a dark night and raining fast. Marcella was fastening up hertweed skirt in the hall, when she saw Mrs. Boyce hurry along the galleryabove, and immediately afterwards her mother came across the hall toher.
"You had better take the shawl, Marcella: it is cold and raw. If you aregoing to sit up most of the night you will want it."
She put a wrap of her own across Marcella's arm.
"Your father is quite right," she went on. "You have had one horribleexperience to-day already--"
"Don't, mamma!" exclaimed Marcella, interrupting her. Then suddenly shethrew her arms round her mother.
"Kiss me, mamma! please kiss me!"
Mrs. Boyce kissed her gravely, and let herself even linger a moment inthe girl's strong hold.
"You are extraordinarily wilful," she said. "And it is so strange to methat you think you do any good. Are you sure even that she wants to haveyou?"
Marcella's lip quivered. She could not speak, apparently. Waving herhand to her mother, she joined the maid waiting for her, and the twodisappeared into the blackness.
"But _does_ it do any good?" Mrs. Boyce repeated to herself as she wentback to the drawing-room. "_Sympathy!_ who was ever yet fed, warmed,comforted by _sympathy_? Marcella robs that woman of the only thing thatthe human being should want at such a moment--solitude. Why should weforce on the poor what to us would be an outrage?"
Meanwhile Marcella battled through the wind and rain, thankful that thewarm spring burst was over, and that the skies no longer mocked thishorror which was beneath them.
At the entrance to the village she stopped, and took the basket from thelittle maid.
"Now, Ruth, you can go home. Run quick, it is so dark, Ruth!"
"Yes, miss."
The young country girl trembled. Miss Boyce's tragic passion in thismatter had to some extent infected the whole household in which shelived.
"Ruth, when you say your prayers to-night, pray God to comfort thepoor,--and to punish the cruel!"
"Yes, miss," said the girl, timidly, and ready to cry. The lantern
sheheld flashed its light on Miss Boyce's white face and tall form. Tillher mistress turned away she did not dare to move; that dark eye, sowide, full, and living, roused in her a kind of terror.
On the steps of the cottage Marcella paused. She heard voices inside--orrather the rector's voice reading.
A thought of scorn rose in her heart. "How long will the poor endurethis religion--this make-believe--which preaches patience, _patience_!when it ought to be urging war?"
But she went in softly, so as not to interrupt. The rector looked up andmade a grave sign of the head as she entered; her own gesture forbadeany other movement in the group; she took a stool beside Willie, whosemakeshift bed of chairs and pillows stood on one side of the fire; andthe reading went on.
Since Minta Hurd had returned with Marcella from Widrington Gaol thatafternoon, she had been so ill that a doctor had been sent for. He hadbade them make up her bed downstairs in the warm; and accordingly amattress had been laid on the settle, and she was now stretched upon it.Her huddled form, the staring whiteness of the narrow face and closedeyelids, thrown out against the dark oak of the settle, and thedisordered mass of grizzled hair, made the centre of the cottage.
Beside her on the floor sat Mary Harden, her head bowed over the roughhand she held, her eyes red with weeping. Fronting them, beside a littletable, which held a small paraffin lamp, sat the young rector, hisTestament in his hand, his slight boy's figure cast in sharp shadow onthe cottage wall. He had placed himself so as to screen the crude lightof the lamp from the wife's eyes; and an old skirt had been hung over achair to keep it from little Willie. Between mother and child sat AnnMullins, rocking herself to and fro over the fire, and groaning fromtime to time--a shapeless sullen creature, brutalised by many childrenand much poverty--of whom Marcella was often impatient.
"_And he said, Lord, remember me when Thou comest into Thy Kingdom. AndHe said unto him, Verily, I say unto thee, To-day shalt thou be with Mein Paradise."_
The rector's voice, in its awed monotony, dwelt insistently on eachword, then paused. "_To-day_," whispered Mary, caressing Minta's hand,while the tears streamed down her cheeks; "he repented, Minta, and theLord took him to Himself--at once--forgiving all his sins."
Mrs. Hurd gave no sign, but the dark figure on the other side of thecottage made an involuntary movement, which threw down a fire-iron, andsent a start through Willie's wasted body. The reader resumed; butperfect spontaneity was somehow lost both for him and for Mary.Marcella's stormy presence worked in them both, like a troubling leaven.
Nevertheless, the priest went steadily through his duty, dwelling onevery pang of the Passion, putting together every sacred and sublimeword. For centuries on centuries his brethren and forerunners had heldup the Man of Sorrows before the anguished and the dying; his turn hadcome, his moment and place in the marvellous never-ending task; heaccepted it with the meek ardour of an undoubting faith.
"_And all the multitudes that came together to this sight, when theybeheld the things that were done, returned, smiting their breasts_."
He closed the book, and bent forward, so as to bring his voice close tothe wife's ear.
"So He died--the Sinless and the Just--for you, for your husband. He haspassed through death--through cruel death; and where He has gone, wepoor, weak, stained sinners can follow,--holding to Him. No sin, howeverblack, can divide us from Him, can tear us from His hand in the darkwaters, if it be only repented,--thrown upon His Cross. Let us pray foryour husband, let us implore the Lord's mercy this night--thishour!--upon his soul."
A shudder of remembrance passed through Marcella. The rector knelt; Mrs.Hurd lay motionless, save for deep gasps of struggling breath atintervals; Ann Mullins sobbed loudly; and Mary Harden wept as sheprayed, lost in a mystical vision of the Lord Himself among them--thereon the cottage floor--stretching hands of pity over the woman besideher, showing His marred side and brow.
Marcella alone sat erect, her whole being one passionate protest againsta faith which could thus heap all the crimes and responsibilities ofthis too real earth on the shadowy head of one far-off Redeemer. "Thisvery man who prays," she thought, "is in some sort an accomplice ofthose who, after tempting, are now destroying, and killing, because theyknow of nothing better to do with the life they themselves have madeoutcast."
And she hardened her heart.
When the spoken prayer was over, Mr. Harden still knelt on silently forsome minutes. So did Mary. In the midst of the hush, Marcella saw theboy's eyes unclose. He looked with a sort of remote wonder at his motherand the figures beside her. Then suddenly the gaze became eager,concrete; he sought for something. Her eye followed his, and sheperceived in the shadow beside him, on a broken chair placed behind therough screen which had been made for him, the four tiny animals ofpinched paper Wharton had once fashioned. She stooped noiselessly andmoved the chair a little forward that he might see them better. Thechild with difficulty turned his wasted head, and lay with his skeletonhand under his cheek, staring at his treasures--his little, all--withjust a gleam, a faint gleam, of that same exquisite content which hadfascinated Wharton. Then, for the first time that day, Marcella couldhave wept.
At last the rector and his sister rose.
"God be with you, Mrs. Hurd," said Mr. Harden, stooping to her; "Godsupport you!"
His voice trembled. Mrs. Hurd in bewilderment looked up.
"Oh, Mr. Harden!" she cried with a sudden wail. "Mr. Harden!"
Mary bent over her with tears, trying to still her, speaking again withquivering lips of "the dear Lord, the Saviour."
The rector turned to Marcella.
"You are staying the night with her?" he asked, under his breath.
"Yes. Mrs. Mullins was up all last night. I offered to come to-night."
"You went with her to the prison to-day, I believe?"
"Yes."
"Did you see Hurd?"
"For a very few minutes."
"Did you hear anything of his state of mind?" he asked anxiously. "Is hepenitent?"
"He talked to me of Willie," she said--a fierce humanness in herunfriendly eyes. "I promised him that when the child died, he should beburied respectably--not by the parish. And I told him I would alwayslook after the little girls."
The rector sighed. He moved away. Then unexpectedly he came back again.
"I must say it to you," he said firmly, but still so low as not to beheard by any one else in the cottage. "You are taking a greatresponsibility here to-night. Let me implore you not to fill that poorwoman with thoughts of bitterness and revenge at such a moment of herlife. That _you_ feel bitterly, I know. Mary has explained to me--butask yourself, I beg of you!--how is _she_ to be helped through hermisery, either now or in the future, except by patience and submissionto the will of God?"
He had never made so long a speech to this formidable parishioner ofhis, and his young cheek glowed with the effort.
"You must leave me to do what I think best," said Marcella, coldly. Shefelt herself wholly set free from that sort of moral compulsion whichhis holiness of mind and character had once exerted upon her. Thathateful opinion of his, which Mary had reported, had broken the spellonce for all.
Mary did not venture to kiss her friend. They all went. Ann Mulling, whowas dropping as much with sleep as grief, shuffled off last. When shewas going, Mrs. Hurd seemed to rouse a little, and held her by theskirt, saying incoherent things.
"Dear Mrs. Hurd," said Marcella, kneeling down beside her, "won't youlet Ann go? I am going to spend the night here, and take care of you andWillie."
Mrs. Hurd gave a painful start.
"You're very good, miss," she said half-consciously, "very good, I'msure. But she's his own flesh and blood is Ann--his own flesh and blood.Ann!"
The two women clung together, the rough, ill-tempered sister-in-lawmuttering what soothing she could think of. When she was gone, MintaHurd turned her face to the back of the settle and moaned, her handsclenched under her breast.
Marcella went about her
preparations for the night. "She is extremelyweak," Dr. Clarke had said; "the heart in such a state she may die ofsyncope on very small provocation. If she is to spend the night incrying and exciting herself, it will go hard with her. Get her to sleepif you possibly can."
And he had left a sleeping draught. Marcella resolved that she wouldpersuade her to take it. "But I will wake her before eight o'clock," shethought. "No human being has the right to rob her of herself throughthat last hour."
And tenderly she coaxed Minta to take the doctor's "medicine." Mintaswallowed it submissively, asking no questions. But the act of taking itroused her for the time, and she would talk. She even got up andtottered across to Willie.
"Willie!--Willie!--Oh! look, miss, he's got his animals--he don't thinkof nothing else. Oh, Willie! won't you think of your father?--you'llnever have a father, Willie, not after to-night!"
The boy was startled by her appearance there beside him--his haggard,dishevelled mother, with the dews of perspiration standing on the face,and her black dress thrown open at the throat and breast for air. Helooked at her, and a little frown lined the white brow. But he did notspeak. Marcella thought he was too weak to speak, and for an instant itstruck her with a thrill of girlish fear that he was dying then andthere--that night--that hour. But when she had half helped, half forcedMrs. Hurd back to bed again, and had returned to him, his eyelids hadfallen, he seemed asleep. The fast, whistling breath was much the sameas it had been for days; she reassured herself.
And at last the wife slept too. The narcotic seized her. The achinglimbs relaxed, and all was still. Marcella, stooping over her, kissedthe shoulder of her dress for very joy, so grateful to every sense ofthe watcher was the sudden lull in the long activity of anguish.
Then she sat down in the rocking chair by the fire, yielding herselfwith a momentary relief to the night and the silence. The tall clockshowed that it was not yet ten. She had brought a book with her, and shedrew it upon her knee; but it lay unopened.
A fretting, gusty wind beat against the window, with occasional rushesof rain. Marcella shivered, though she had built up the fire, and put onher cloak.
A few distant sounds from the village street round the corner, thechiming of the church clock, the crackling of the fire close besideher--she heard everything there was to hear, with unusual sharpness ofear, and imagined more.
All at once restlessness, or some undefined impression, made her lookround her. She saw that the scanty baize curtain was only half-drawnacross one of the windows, and she got up to close it. Fresh from thelight of the lamp, she stared through the panes into the night withoutat first seeing anything. Then there flashed out upon the dark the doorof a public-house to the right, the last in the village road. A man cameout stumbling and reeling; the light within streamed out an instant onthe road and the common; then the pursuing rain and darkness fell uponhim.
She was drawing back when, with sudden horror, she perceived somethingelse close beside her, pressing against the window. A woman's face!--thepowerful black and white of it--the strong aquiline features--the madkeenness of the look were all plain to her. The eyes looked in hungrilyat the prostrate form on the settle--at the sleeping child. Anotherfigure appeared out of the dark, running up the path. There was a slightscuffle, and voices outside. Marcella drew the curtain close with ahasty hand, and sat down hardly able to breathe. The woman who hadlooked in was Isabella Westall. It was said that she was becoming moreand more difficult to manage and to watch.
Marcella was some time in recovering herself. That look, as of asleepless, hateful eagerness, clung to the memory. Once or twice, as ithaunted her, she got up again to make sure that the door was fast.
The incident, with all it suggested, did but intensify the horror andstruggle in which the girl stood, made her mood more strained, morepiercingly awake and alert. Gradually, as the hours passed, as allsounds from without, even that of the wind, died away, and the silencesettled round her in ever-widening circles, like deep waters sinking torepose, Marcella felt herself a naked soul, alone on a wide sea, withshapes of pain and agony and revolt. She looked at the sleeping wife."He, too, is probably asleep," she thought, remembering some informationwhich a kindly warder had given her in a few jerky, well-meantsentences, while she was waiting downstairs in the gaol for Minta Hurd."Incredible! only so many hours, minutes left--so far as any mortal_knows_--of living, thinking, recollecting, of all that makes ussomething as against the _nothing_ of death--and a man wastes them insleep, in that which is only meant for the ease and repair of the dailystruggle. And Minta--her husband is her all--to-morrow she will have nohusband; yet she sleeps, and I have helped to make her. Ah! Nature maywell despise and trample on us; there is no reason in us--no dignity!Oh, why are we here--why am _I_ here--to ache like this--to hate goodpeople like Charles Harden and Mary--to refuse all I could give--tomadden myself over pain I can never help? I cannot help it, yet I cannotforsake it; it drives, it clings to me!"
She sat over the fire, Willie's hand clasped in hers. He alone in thisforlorn household _loved_ her. Mrs. Hurd and the other children fearedand depended on her. This creature of thistle-down--this little threadand patch of humanity--felt no fear of her. It was as though hisweakness divined through her harshness and unripeness those maternal andprotecting powers with which her nature was in truth so richly dowered.He confided himself to her with no misgivings. He was at ease when shewas there.
Little piteous hand!--its touch was to her symbolic, imperative.
Eight months had she been at Mellor? And that Marcella, who had beenliving and moving amid these woods and lanes all this time--that foolishgirl, delighting in new grandeurs, and flattered by Aldous Raeburn'sattentions--that hot, ambitious person who had meant to rule a countythrough a husband--what had become of her? Up to the night of Hurd'sdeath sentence she had still existed in some sort, with her obligations,qualms, remorses. But since then--every day, every hour had beengrinding, scorching her away--fashioning in flame and fever this newMarcella who sat here, looking impatiently into another life, whichshould know nothing of the bonds of the old.
Ah, yes!--her _thought_ could distinguish between the act and the man,between the man and his class; but in her _feeling_ all was confounded.This awful growth of sympathy in her--strange irony!--had made allsympathy for Aldous Raeburn impossible to her. Marry him?--no!no!--never! But she would make it quite easy to him to give her up.Pride should come in--he should feel no pain in doing it. She had in herpocket the letter she had received from him that afternoon. She hadhardly been able to read it. Ear and heart were alike dull to it.
From time to time she probably slept in her chair. Or else it was theperpetual rush of images and sensations through the mind that hastenedthe hours. Once when the first streaks of the March dawn were showingthrough the curtains Minta Hurd sprang up with a loud cry:
"Oh, my God! Jim, _Jim!_ Oh, no!--take that off. Oh, _please_, sir,please! Oh, for God's sake, sir!"
Agony struggled with sleep. Marcella, shuddering, held and soothed her,and for a while sleep, or rather the drug in her veins, triumphed again.For another hour or two she lay restlessly tossing from side to side,but unconscious.
Willie hardly moved all night. Again and again Marcella held beef-tea ormilk to his mouth, and tried to rouse him to take it, but she could makeno impression on the passive lips; the sleeping serenity of the brownever changed.
At last, with a start, Marcella looked round and saw that the morningwas fully there. A cold light was streaming through the curtains; thefire was still glowing; but her limbs were stiff and chilled under hershawl. She sprang up, horror descending on her. Her shaking fingerscould hardly draw out the watch in her belt.
_Ten minutes to eight_!
For the first time the girl felt nerve and resolution fail her. Shelooked at Mrs. Hurd and wrung her hands. The mother was muttering andmoving, but not yet fully awake; and Willie lay as before. Hardlyknowing what she was doing, she drew the curtains back, as thoughinspiration might co
me with the light. The rain-clouds trailed acrossthe common; water dripped heavily from the thatch of the cottage; and afew birds twittered from some bedraggled larches at the edge of thecommon. Far away, beyond and beneath those woods to the right,Widrington lay on the plain, with that high-walled stone building at itsedge. She saw everything as it must now be happening as plainly asthough she were bodily present there--the last meal--the pinioning--thechaplain.
Goaded by the passing seconds, she turned back at last to wake that poorsleeper behind her. But something diverted her. With a start she sawthat Willie's eyes were open.
"Willie," she said, running to him, "how are you, dear? Shall I liftyour head a little?"
He did not answer, though she thought he tried, and she was struck bythe blueness under the eyes and nose. Hurriedly she felt his tiny feet.They were quite cold.
"Mrs. Hurd!" she cried, rousing her in haste; "dear Mrs. Hurd, come andsee Willie!"
The mother sprang up bewildered, and, hurrying across the room, threwherself upon him.
"Willie, what is it ails you, dear? Tell mother! Is it your feet are socold? But we'll rub them--we'll get you warm soon. And here's somethingto make you better." Marcella handed her some brandy. "Drink it, dear;drink it, sweetheart!" Her voice grew shrill.
"He can't," said Marcella. "Do not let us plague him; it is the end. Dr.Clarke said it would come in the morning."
They hung over him, forgetting everything but him for the moment--theonly moment in his little life he came first even with his mother.
There was a slight movement of the hand.
"He wants his animals," said Marcella, the tears pouring down hercheeks. She lifted them and put them on his breast, laying the coldfingers over them.
Then he tried to speak.
"Daddy!" he whispered, looking up fully at his mother; "take 'em toDaddy!"
She fell on her knees beside him with a shriek, hiding her face, andshaking from head to foot. Marcella alone saw the slight, mysterioussmile, the gradual sinking of the lids, the shudder of departing lifethat ran through the limbs.
A heavy sound swung through the air--a heavy repeated sound. Mrs. Hurdheld up her head and listened. The church clock tolled eight. She kneltthere, struck motionless by terror--by recollection.
"Oh, Jim!" she said, under her breath--"my Jim!"
The plaintive tone--as of a creature that has not even breath andstrength left wherewith to chide the fate that crushes it--brokeMarcella's heart. Sitting beside the dead son, she wrapt the mother inher arms, and the only words that even her wild spirit could findwherewith to sustain this woman through the moments of her husband'sdeath were words of prayer--the old shuddering cries wherewith the humansoul from the beginning has thrown itself on that awful encompassingLife whence it issued, and whither it returns.