Little piteous hand!--its touch was to her symbolic, imperative.
Eight months had she been at Mellor? And that Marcella, who had been living and moving amid these woods and lanes all this time--that foolish girl, delighting in new grandeurs, and flattered by Aldous Raeburn"s attentions--that hot, ambitious person who had meant to rule a county through a husband--what had become of her? Up to the night of Hurd"s death sentence she had still existed in some sort, with her obligations, qualms, remorses. But since then--every day, every hour had been grinding, scorching her away--fashioning in flame and fever this new Marcella who sat here, looking impatiently into another life, which should 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 cla.s.s; but in her _feeling_ all was confounded.
This awful growth of sympathy in her--strange irony!--had made all sympathy 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 her pocket the letter she had received from him that afternoon. She had hardly 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 the perpetual rush of images and sensations through the mind that hastened the hours. Once when the first streaks of the March dawn were showing through the curtains Minta Hurd sprang up with a loud cry:
"Oh, my G.o.d! Jim, _Jim!_ Oh, no!--take that off. Oh, _please_, sir, please! Oh, for G.o.d"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 or milk to his mouth, and tried to rouse him to take it, but she could make no impression on the pa.s.sive lips; the sleeping serenity of the brow never changed.
At last, with a start, Marcella looked round and saw that the morning was fully there. A cold light was streaming through the curtains; the fire was still glowing; but her limbs were stiff and chilled under her shawl. She sprang up, horror descending on her. Her shaking fingers could hardly draw out the watch in her belt.
_Ten minutes to eight_!
For the first time the girl felt nerve and resolution fail her. She looked at Mrs. Hurd and wrung her hands. The mother was muttering and moving, but not yet fully awake; and Willie lay as before. Hardly knowing what she was doing, she drew the curtains back, as though inspiration might come with the light. The rain-clouds trailed across the common; water dripped heavily from the thatch of the cottage; and a few birds twittered from some bedraggled larches at the edge of the common. Far away, beyond and beneath those woods to the right, Widrington lay on the plain, with that high-walled stone building at its edge. She saw everything as it must now be happening as plainly as though she were bodily present there--the last meal--the pinioning--the chaplain.
Goaded by the pa.s.sing seconds, she turned back at last to wake that poor sleeper behind her. But something diverted her. With a start she saw that Willie"s eyes were open.
"Willie," she said, running to him, "how are you, dear? Shall I lift your head a little?"
He did not answer, though she thought he tried, and she was struck by the 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 and see Willie!"
The mother sprang up bewildered, and, hurrying across the room, threw herself upon him.
"Willie, what is it ails you, dear? Tell mother! Is it your feet are so cold? But we"ll rub them--we"ll get you warm soon. And here"s something to 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--the only 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 her cheeks. She lifted them and put them on his breast, laying the cold fingers over them.
Then he tried to speak.
"Daddy!" he whispered, looking up fully at his mother; "take "em to Daddy!"
She fell on her knees beside him with a shriek, hiding her face, and shaking from head to foot. Marcella alone saw the slight, mysterious smile, the gradual sinking of the lids, the shudder of departing life that ran through the limbs.
A heavy sound swung through the air--a heavy repeated sound. Mrs. Hurd held up her head and listened. The church clock tolled eight. She knelt there, 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 and strength left wherewith to chide the fate that crushes it--broke Marcella"s heart. Sitting beside the dead son, she wrapt the mother in her arms, and the only words that even her wild spirit could find wherewith to sustain this woman through the moments of her husband"s death were words of prayer--the old shuddering cries wherewith the human soul from the beginning has thrown itself on that awful encompa.s.sing Life whence it issued, and whither it returns.
CHAPTER XV.
Two days later, in the afternoon, Aldous Raeburn found himself at the door of Mellor. When he entered the drawing-room, Mrs. Boyce, who had heard his ring, was hurrying away.
"Don"t go," he said, detaining her with a certain peremptoriness. "I want all the light on this I can get. Tell me, she has _actually_ brought herself to regard this man"s death as in some sort my doing--as something which ought to separate us?"
Mrs. Boyce saw that he held an opened letter from Marcella crushed in his hand. But she did not need the explanation. She had been expecting him at any hour throughout the day, and in just this condition of mind.
"Marcella must explain for herself," she said, after a moment"s thought.
"I have no right whatever to speak for her. Besides, frankly, I do not understand her, and when I argue with her she only makes me realise that I have no part or lot in her--that I never had. It is just enough. She was brought up away from me. And I have no natural hold. I cannot help you, or any one else, with her."
Aldous had been very tolerant and compa.s.sionate in the past of this strange mother"s abdication of her maternal place, and of its probable causes. But it was not in human nature that he should be either to-day.
He resumed his questioning, not without sharpness.
"One word, please. Tell me something of what has happened since Thursday, before I see her. I have written--but till this morning I have had not one line from her."
They were standing by the window, he with his frowning gaze, in which agitation struggled against all his normal habits of manner and expression, fixed upon the lawn and the avenue. She told him briefly what she knew of Marcella"s doings since the arrival of Wharton"s telegram--of the night in the cottage, and the child"s death. It was plain that he listened with a shuddering repulsion.
"Do you know," he exclaimed, turning upon her, "that she may never recover this? Such a strain, such a horror! rushed upon so wantonly, so needlessly."
"I understand. You think that I have been to blame? I do not wonder. But it is not true--not in this particular case. And anyway your view is not mine. Life--and the iron of it--has to be faced, even by women--perhaps, most of all, by women. But let me go now. Otherwise my husband will come in. And I imagine you would rather see Marcella before you see him or any one."
That suggestion told. He instantly gathered himself together, and nervously begged that she would send Marcella to him at once. He could think of nothing, talk of nothing, till he had seen her. She went, and Aldous was left to walk up and down the room planning what he should say. After the ghastly intermingling of public interests and private misery in which he had lived for these many weeks there was a certain relief in having reached the cleared s.p.a.ce--the decisive moment--when he might at last give himself wholly to what truly concerned him. He would not lose her without a struggle. None the less he knew, and had known ever since the scene in the Court library, that the great disaster of his life was upon him.
The handle of the door turned. She was there.
He did not go to meet her. She had come in wrought up to face attack--reproaches, entreaties--ready to be angry or to be humble, as he should give her the lead. But he gave her no lead. She had to break through that quivering silence as best she could.
"I wanted to explain everything to you," she said in a low voice, as she came near to him. "I know my note last night was very hard and abrupt. I didn"t mean to be hard. But I am still so tired--and everything that one says, and feels, hurts so."
She sank down upon a chair. This womanish appeal to his pity had not been at all in her programme. Nor did it immediately succeed. As he looked at her, he could only feel the wantonness of this eclipse into which she had plunged her youth and beauty. There was wrath, a pa.s.sionate protesting wrath, under his pain.
"Marcella," he said, sitting down beside her, "did you read my letter that I wrote you the day before--?"
"Yes."
"And after that, you could still believe that I was indifferent to your grief--your suffering--or to the suffering of any human being for whom you cared? You could still think it, and feel it?"