The northern express rushed onward through the night. Rugby, Stafford, Crewe had been left behind. The Yorkshire valleys and moors began to show themselves in pale ridges and folds under the moon. Julie, wakeful in her corner opposite the little, sleeping d.u.c.h.ess, was conscious of an interminable rush of images through a brain that longed for a few unconscious and forgetful moments. She thought of the deferential station-master at Euston; of the fuss attending their arrival on the platform; of the arrangements made for stopping the express at the Yorkshire Station, where they were to alight.
Faircourt? Was it the great Early-Georgian house of which she had heard Jacob speak--the vast pile, half barrack, half palace, in which, according to him, no human being could be either happy or at home?
And this was now his--and hers? Again the whirl of thoughts swept and danced round her.
A wild, hill country. In the valleys, the blackness of thick trees, the gleam of rivers, the huge, lifeless factories; and beyond, the high, silver edges, the sharp shadows of the moors.... The train slackened, and the little d.u.c.h.ess woke at once.
"Ten minutes to three. Oh, Julie, here we are!"
The dawn was just coldly showing as they alighted. Carriages and servants were waiting, and various persons whose ident.i.ty and function it was not easy to grasp. One of them, however, at once approached Julie with a privileged air, and she perceived that he was a doctor.
"I am very glad that your grace has come," he said, as he raised his hat. "The trouble with the Duke is shock, and want of sleep."
Julie looked at him, still bewildered.
"How long has my husband been ill?"
He walked on beside her, describing in as few words as possible the harrowing days preceding the death of the boy, Delafield"s attempts to soothe and control the father, the stratagem by which the poor Duke had outwitted them all, and the weary hours of search through the night, under a drizzling rain, which had resulted, about dawn, in the discovery of the Duke"s body in one of the deeper holes of the river.
"When the procession returned to the house, your husband"--the speaker framed the words uncertainly--"had a long fainting-fit. It was probably caused by the exhaustion of the search--many hours without food--and many sleepless nights. We kept him in his room all day. But towards evening he insisted on getting up. The restlessness he shows is itself a sign of shock. I trust, now you are here, you may be able to persuade him to spare himself. Otherwise the consequences might be grave."
The drive to the house lay mainly through a vast park, dotted with stiff and melancholy woods. The morning was cloudy; even the wild roses in the hedges and the daisies in the gra.s.s had neither gayety nor color. Soon the house appeared--an immense pile of stone, with a pillared centre, and wings to east and west, built in a hollow, gray and sunless. The mournful blinds drawn closely down made of it rather a mausoleum for the dead than a home for the living.
At the approach of the carriage, however, doors were thrown open, servants appeared, and on the steps, trembling and heavy-eyed, stood Susan Delafield.
She looked timidly at Julie, and then, as they pa.s.sed into the great central hall, the two kissed each other with tears.
"He is in his room, waiting for you. The doctors persuaded him not to come down. But he is dressed, and reading and writing. We don"t believe he has slept at all for a week."
"Through there," said Susan Delafield, stepping back. "That is the door."
[Ill.u.s.tration: "SHE FOUND HERSELF KNEELING BESIDE HIM"]
Julie softly opened it, and closed it behind her. Delafield had heard her approach, and was standing by the table, supporting himself upon it.
His aspect filled Julie with horror. She ran to him and threw her arms round him. He sank back into his chair, and she found herself kneeling beside him, murmuring to him, while his head rested upon her shoulder.
"Jacob, I am here! Oh, I ought to have been here all through! It"s terrible--terrible! But, Jacob, you won"t suffer so--now I"m here--now we"re together--now I love you, Jacob?"
Her voice broke in tears. She put back the hair from his brow, kissing him with a tenderness in which there was a yearning and lovely humility.
Then she drew a little away, waiting for him to speak, in an agony.
But for a time he seemed unable to speak. He feebly released himself, as though he could not bear the emotion she offered him, and his eyes closed.
"Jacob, come and lie down!" she said, in terror. "Let me call the doctors."
He shook his head, and a faint pressure from his hand bade her sit beside him.
"I shall be better soon. Give me time. I"ll tell you--"
Then silence again. She sat holding his hand, her eyes fixed upon him.
Time pa.s.sed, she knew not how. Susan came into the room--a small sitting-room in the east wing--to tell her that the neighboring bedroom had been prepared for herself. Julie only looked up for an instant with a dumb sign of refusal. A doctor came in, and Delafield made a painful effort to take the few spoonfuls of food and stimulant pressed upon him.
Then he buried his face in the side of the arm-chair.
"Please let us be alone," he said, with a touch of his old peremptoriness, and both Susan and the doctor obeyed.
But it was long before he could collect energy enough to talk. When he did, he made an effort to tell her the story of the boy"s death, and the father"s self-destruction. He told it leaning forward in his chair, his eyes on the ground, his hands loosely joined, his voice broken and labored. Julie listened, gathering from his report an impression of horror, tragic and irremediable, similar to that which had shaken the balance of his own mind. And when he suddenly looked up with the words, "And now _I_ am expected to take their place--to profit by their deaths!
What rightful law of G.o.d or man binds me to accept a life and a responsibility that I loathe?" Julie drew back as though he had struck her. His face, his tone were not his own--there was a violence, a threat in them, addressed, as it were, specially to _her_. "If it were not for you," his eyes seemed to say, "I could refuse this thing, which will destroy me, soul and body."
She was silent, her pulses fluttering, and he resumed, speaking like one groping his way:
"I could have done the work, of course--I have done it for five years. I could have looked after the estate and the people. But the money, the paraphernalia, the hordes of servants, the mummery of the life! Why, Julie, should we be forced into it? What happiness--I ask you--what happiness can it bring to either of us?"
And again he looked up, and again it seemed to Julie that his expression was one of animated hostility and antagonism--antagonism to her, as embodying for the moment all the arguments--of advantage, custom, law--he was, in his own mind, fighting and denying. With a failing heart she felt herself very far from him. Was there not also something in his att.i.tude, unconsciously, of that old primal antagonism of the man to the woman, of the stronger to the weaker, the more spiritual to the more earthy?
"You think, no doubt," he said, after a pause, "that it is my duty to take this thing, even if I _could_ lay it down?"
"I don"t know what I think," she said, hurriedly. "It is very strange, of course, what you say. We ought to discuss it thoroughly. Let me have a little time."
He gave an impatient sigh, then suddenly rose.
"Will you come and look at them?"
She, too, rose and put her hand in his.
"Take me where you will."
"It is not horrible," he said, shading his eyes a moment. "They are at peace."
With a feeble step, leaning on her arm, he guided her through the great, darkened house. Julie was dimly aware of wide staircases, of galleries and high halls, of the pictures of past Delafields looking down upon them. The morning was now far advanced. Many persons were at work in the house, but Julie was conscious of them only as distant figures that vanished at their approach. They walked alone, guarded from all intrusion by the awe and sympathy of the unseen human beings around them.
Delafield opened the closed door.
The father and son lay together, side by side, the boy"s face in a very winning repose, which at first sight concealed the traces of his long suffering; the father"s also--closed eyes and sternly shut mouth--suggesting, not the despair which had driven him to his death, but, rather, as in sombre triumph, the all-forgetting, all-effacing sleep which he had won from death.
They stood a moment, till Delafield fell on his knees. Julie knelt beside him. She prayed for a while; then she wearied, being, indeed, worn out with her journey. But Delafield was motionless, and it seemed to Julie that he hardly breathed.
She rose to her feet, and found her eyes for the first time flooded with tears. Never for many weeks had she felt so lonely, or so utterly unhappy. She would have given anything to forget herself in comforting Jacob. But he seemed to have no need of her, no thought of her.
As she vaguely looked round her, she saw that beside the dead man was a table holding some violets--the only flowers in the room--some photographs, and a few well--worn books. Softly she took up one. It was a copy of the _Meditations of Marcus Aurelius_, much noted and underlined. It would have seemed to her sacrilege to look too close; but she presently perceived a letter between its pages, and in the morning light, which now came strongly into the room through a window looking on the garden, she saw plainly that it was written on thin, foreign paper, that it was closed, and addressed to her husband.
"Jacob!"
She touched him softly on the shoulder, alarmed by his long immobility.
He looked up, and it appeared to Julie as though he were shaking off with difficulty some abnormal and trancelike state. But he rose, looking at her strangely.
"Jacob, this is yours."