Themison, dear."
Victor seized it, perused, and drew the big breath.
"From Themison," he said; he coughed.
"Don"t think to deceive me," said she. "I have not read the contents, I know them."
"The invitation at last, for to-morrow, Sunday, four P.M. Odd, that next day at eight of the evening I shall be addressing our meeting in the Theatre. Simeon speaks. Beaves Urmsing insists on coming, Tory though he is. Those Tories are jollier fellows than--well, no wonder! There will be no surgical... the poor woman is very low. A couple of days at the outside. Of course, I go."
"Hand me the note, dear."
It had to be given up, out of the pocket.
"But," said Victor, "the mention of you is merely formal."
She needed sleep: she bowed her head.
Nataly was the first at the breakfast-table in the morning, a fair Sunday morning. She was going to Mrs. John Cormyn"s Church, and she asked Nesta to come with her.
She returned five minutes before the hour of lunch, having left Nesta with Mrs. John. Louise de Seilles undertook to bring Nesta home at the time she might choose. Fenellan, Mr. Pempton, Peridon and Catkin, lunched and chatted. Nataly chatted. At a quarter to three o"clock Victor"s carriage was at the door. He rose: he had to keep an appointment. Nataly said to him publicly: "I come too." He stared and nodded. In the carriage, he said: "I"m driving to the Gardens, for a stroll, to have a look at the beasts. Sort of relief. Poor crazy woman!
However, it "s a comfort to her: so...!"
"I like to see them," said Nataly. "I shall see her. I have to do it."
Up to the gate of the Gardens Victor was arguing to dissuade his dear soul from this very foolish, totally unnecessary, step. Alighting, he put the matter aside, for good angels to support his counsel at the final moment.
Bears, lions, tigers, eagles, monkeys: they suggested no more than he would have had from prints; they sprang no reflection, except, that the coming hour was a matter of indifference to them. They were about him, and exercised so far a distraction. He took very kindly to an old mother monkey, relinquishing her society at sight of Nataly"s heave of the bosom. Southward, across the park, the dread house rose. He began quoting Colney Durance with relish while sarcastically confuting the cynic, who found much pasture in these Gardens. Over Southward, too, he would be addressing a popular a.s.sembly to-morrow evening. Between now and then there was a ditch to jump. He put on the sympathetic face of grief. "After all, a caged wild beast hasn"t so bad a life," he said.--To be well fed while they live, and welcome death as a release from the maladies they develop in idleness, is the condition of wealthy people:--creatures of prey? horrible thought! yet allied to his Idea, it seemed. Yes, but these good caged beasts here set them an example, in not troubling relatives and friends when they come to the gasp! Mrs.
Burman"s invitation loomed as monstrous--a final act of her cruelty.
His skin p.r.i.c.ked with dews. He thought of Nataly beside him, jumping the ditch with him, as a relief--if she insisted on doing it. He hoped she would not, for the sake of her composure.
It was a ditch void of bottom. But it was a mere matter of an hour, less. The state of health of the invalid could bear only a few minutes.
In any case, we are sure that the hour will pa.s.s. Our own arrive?
Certainly.
"Capital place for children," he exclaimed. And here startlingly before him in the cl.u.s.ters of boys and girls, was the difference between young ones and their elders feeling quite as young: the careless youngsters have not to go and sit in the room with a virulent old woman, and express penitence and what not, and hear words of pardon, after their holiday scamper and stare at the caged beasts.
Attention to the children precipitated him upon acquaintances, hitherto cleverly shunned. He nodded them off, after the brightest of greetings.
Such anodyne as he could squeeze from the incarcerated wild creatures, was exhausted. He fell to work at Nataly"s "aristocracy of the contempt of luxury"; signifying, that we the wealthy will not exist to pamper flesh, but we live for the promotion of brotherhood:--ay, and that our England must make some great moral stand, if she is not to fall to the rear and down. Unuttered, it caught the skirts of the Idea: it evaporated when spoken. Still, this theme was almost an exorcism of Mrs.
Burman. He consulted his watch. "Thirteen minutes to four. I must be punctual," he said. Nataly stepped faster.
Seated in the carriage, he told her he had never felt the horror of that place before. "Put me down at the corner of the terrace, dear: I won"t drive to the door."
"I come with you, Victor," she replied.
After entreaties and reasons intermixed, to melt her resolve, he saw she was firm: and he asked himself, whether he might not be const.i.tutionally better adapted to persuade than to dissuade. The question thumped.
Having that house of drugs in view, he breathed more freely for the prospect of feeling his Nataly near him beneath the roof.
"You really insist, dear love?" he appealed to her: and her answer: "It must be," left no doubt: though he chose to say: "Not because of standing by me?" And she said: "For my peace, Victor." They stepped to the pavement. The carriage was dismissed.
Seventeen houses of the terrace fronting the park led to the funereal one: and the bell was tolled in the breast of each of the couple advancing with an air of calmness to the inevitable black door.
Jarniman opened it. "His mistress was prepared to see them."--Not like one near death.--They were met in the hall by the Rev. Groseman b.u.t.termore. "You will find a welcome," was his rea.s.surance to them: gently delivered, on the stoop of a large person. His whispered tones were more agreeably deadening than his words.
Mr. b.u.t.termore ushered them upstairs.
"Can she bear it?" Victor said, and heard: "Her wish ten minutes."
"Soon over," he murmured to Nataly, with a compa.s.sionate exclamation for the invalid.
They rounded the open door. They were in the drawing-room. It was furnished as in the old time, gold and white, looking new; all the same as of old, save for a division of silken hangings; and these were pale blue: the colour preferred by Victor for a bedroom. He glanced at the ceiling, to bathe in a blank s.p.a.ce out of memory. Here she lived,--here she slept, behind the hangings. There was refreshingly that little difference in the arrangement of the room. The corner Northward was occupied by the grand piano; and Victor had an inquiry in him:--tuned?
He sighed, expecting a sight to come through the hangings. Sensible that Nataly trembled, he perceived the Rev. Groseman b.u.t.termore half across a heap of shawl-swathe on the sofa.
Mrs. Burman was present; seated. People may die seated; she had always disliked the extended posture; except for the night"s rest, she used to say; imagining herself to be not inviting the bolt of sudden death, in her att.i.tude when seated by day:--and often at night the poor woman had to sit up for the qualms of her dyspepsia!--But I "m bound to think humanely, be Christian, be kind, benignant, he thought, and he fetched the spirit required, to behold her face emerge from a pale blue silk veiling; as it were, the inanimate wasted led up from the mould by morning.
Mr. b.u.t.termore signalled to them to draw near.
Wasted though it was, the face of the wide orbits for sunken eyes was distinguishable as the one once known. If the world could see it and hear, that it called itself a man"s wife! She looked burnt out.
Two chairs had been sent to front the sofa. Execution there! Victor thought, and he garrotted the unruly mind of a man really feeling devoutness in the presence of the shadow thrown by the dread Shade.
"Ten minutes," Mr. b.u.t.termore said low, after obligingly placing them on the chairs.
He went. They were alone with Mrs. Burman.
No voice came. They were unsure of being seen by the floating grey of eyes patient to gaze from their vast distance. Big drops fell from Nataly"s. Victor heard the French timepiece on the mantel-shelf, where a familiar gilt Cupid swung for the seconds: his own purchase. The time of day on the clock was wrong; the Cupid swung.
Nataly"s mouth was taking breath of anguish at moments. More than a minute of the terrible length of the period of torture must have gone: two, if not three.
A quaver sounded. "You have come." The voice was articulate, thinner than the telephonic, trans-Atlantic by deep-sea cable.
Victor answered: "We have."
Another minute must have gone in the silence. And when we get to five minutes we are on the descent, rapidly counting our way out of the house, into the fresh air, where we were half an hour back, among those happy beasts in the pleasant Gardens!
Mrs. Burman"s eyelids shut. "I said you would come."
Victor started to the fire-screen. "Your sight requires protection."
She dozed. "And Natalia Dreighton!" she next said.
They were certainly now on the five minutes. Now for the slide downward and outward! Nataly should never have been allowed to come.
"The white waistcoat!" struck his ears.
"Old customs with me, always!" he responded. "The first of April, always. White is a favourite. Pale blue, too. But I fear--I hope you have not distressing nights? In my family we lay great stress on the nights we pa.s.s. My cousins, the Miss Duvidneys, go so far as to judge of the condition of health by the nightly record."
"Your daughter was in their house."