Howard seemed not to understand.
"She must go to-morrow or she"ll be gone forever in ten days."
"Impossible," Howard said in a dull, dazed tone.
"At once, I tell you--at once."
"Impossible," Howard repeated. He was saying to himself, "And only this afternoon I wished I were free and wondered how I could free myself." He laughed strangely.
"Impossible," he said again. And again he laughed. The room swam around.
He stood up. "Impossible!" he said a fourth time, almost shouting it.
And he struck the doctor full in the face, reeled and fell headlong to the floor. When he recovered consciousness he was lying on a lounge, the doctor"s a.s.sistant standing beside him.
"I must go to her," he exclaimed and sat up. He saw the doctor a few feet away, holding a cloth odorous of arnica to his cheek. Howard remembered and began, "I beg your pardon,"--The doctor interrupted with: "Not at all. I"ve had many queer experiences but never one like that."
But Howard had ceased to hear. He was staring vacantly at the floor, repeating to himself, "And I wished to be free. And I am to be free."
"You must go back to her. Take her south tomorrow. Asheville is the best place."
Howard was on his way to the door. "We shall go by the first train," he said.
"Pardon me for telling you so abruptly," said the doctor, following him.
"But I saw that you weren"t--that is I couldn"t help noticing that you and she were--And usually the man in such cases--well, my sympathy is for the woman."
"Do you think a man voluntarily lives with a woman because he hates her?" Howard asked, with an angry sneer. He bowed coldly and was gone.
As he looked at Alice he saw that it was of no use to try to deceive her. "We must go South in the morning," he almost whispered, taking her hand and kissing it again and again, slowly and gently.
The next day but one they were at Asheville and two weeks later Howard could not hide from himself that she would soon be gone.
Her bed was drawn up to the open window and she Was propped with pillows. A mild breeze was flooding the room with the odours of the pine forests and the gardens. She looked out, dilated her nostrils and her eyes.
"Beautiful!" she murmured. "It is so easy to die here."
She put out her hand and laid it in his.
"I want you, my Alice." He was looking into her eyes and she into his.
"I need you. I can"t do without you."
She smiled with an expression of happiness. "Is it wrong," she asked, "to take pleasure in another"s pain? I see that you are in pain, that you suffer. And, oh, it makes me happy, so happy."
"Don"t," he begged. "Please don"t."
"But listen," she went on. "Don"t you see why? Because I--because I love you. There," she was smiling again. "I promised myself I never, never would say it first. And I"ve broken my word."
"What do you mean?"
"For nearly four years--all the years I"ve really lived--I have had only one thought--my love for you. But I never would say it, never would say "I love you," because I knew that you did not love me."
He was beginning to speak but she lifted her hand to his lips. Then she put it back in his and pushed her fingers up his coat-sleeve until they were hidden, resting upon his bare arm.
"No, you did not." Her voice was low and the words came slowly. "But since we came here, you have loved me. If I were to get well, were to go back, you would not. Ah, if you knew, if you only knew how I have wanted your love, how I have lain awake night after night, hour after hour, whispering under my breath "I love you. I love you. Why do you not love me?""
Howard put his head down so that his face was hid from her in her lap.
"After the doctor had talked to me a few minutes, had asked me a few questions," she went on, "I knew. And I was not sorry. It was nearly over, anyhow, dear. Did you know it? I often wondered if you did. Yes, I saw many little signs. I wouldn"t admit it to myself until this illness came. Then I confessed it to myself. And I was not sorry we were to part this way. But I did not expect"--and she drew a long breath--"happiness!"
"No, no," he protested, lifting his face and looking at her. She drank in the expression of his eyes--the love, the longing, the misery--as if it had been a draught of life.
"Ah, you make me so happy, so happy. How much I owe to you. Four long, long, beautiful years. How much! How much! And at last--love!"
There was silence for several minutes. Then he spoke: "I loved you from the first, I believe. Only I never appreciated you. I was so self-absorbed. And you--you fed my vanity, never insisted upon yourself."
"But we have had happiness. And no one, no one, no one will ever be to you what I have been."
"I love you." Howard"s voice had a pa.s.sionate earnestness in it that carried conviction. "The light goes out with you."
"With this little candle? No, no, dear--_my_ dear. You will be a great man. You will not forget; but you will go on and do the things that I"m afraid I didn"t help, maybe hindered, you in trying to do. And you will keep a little room in your heart, a very little room. And I shall be in there. And you"ll open the door every once in a while and come in and take me in your arms and kiss me. And I think--yes, I feel that--that I shall know and thrill."
Her voice sank lower and lower and then her eyes closed, and presently he called the nurse.
The next day he rose from his bed, just at the connecting door between his room and hers, and looked in at her. The shades were drawn and only a faint light crept into the room. He thought he saw her stir and went nearer.
"Why, they"ve made you very gay this morning," he laughed, "with the red ribbons at your neck."
There was no answer. He came still nearer. The red ribbons were long streamers of blood. She was dead.
VIII.
A STRUGGLE FOR SELF-CONTROL.
He left her at Asheville as she wished--"where I have been happiest and where I wish you to think of me." On the train coming north he reviewed his past and made his plans for the future.
As to the past he had only one regret--that he had not learned to appreciate Alice until too late. He felt that his failure to advance had been due entirely to himself--to his inertia, his willingness to seize any pretext for refraining from action. As to the future--work, work with a purpose. His mind must be fully and actively occupied. There must be no leisure, for leisure meant paralysis.
At the Twenty-third Street ferry-house he got into a hansom and gave the address of "the flat." He did not note where he was until the hansom drew up at the curb. He leaned forward and looked at the house--at their windows with the curtains which she had draped so gracefully, which she and he had selected at Vantine"s one morning. How often he had seen her standing between those curtains, looking out for him, her blue-black hair waving back from her forehead so beautifully and her face ready to smile so soon as ever she should catch sight of him.
He leaned back and closed his eyes. The blood was pounding through his temples and his eyeb.a.l.l.s seemed to be scalding under the lids.
"Never again," he moaned. "How lonely it is."