"Kitty--for G.o.d"s sake!"
"Oh, I know it," she said, almost with triumph--"now I _know_ it. I determined to know--and I got people in Venice to find out. She sent the message--that told him where I was--and I know the man who took it. I suppose it would be pathetic if I sent her word that I had forgiven her.
But I _haven"t_!"
Ashe cried out that it was wholly and utterly inconceivable.
[Ill.u.s.tration: "HE DREW SOME CHAIRS TOGETHER BEFORE THE FIRE"]
"Oh no!--she hated me because I had robbed her of Geoffrey. I had killed her life, I suppose--she killed mine. It was what I deserved, of course; only just at that moment--If there is a G.o.d, William, how could He have let it happen so?"
The tears choked her. He left his seat, and, kneeling beside her, he raised her in his arms, while she murmured broken and anguished confessions.
"I was so weak--and frightened. And _he_ said, it was no good trying to go back to you. Everybody knew I had gone to Verona--and he had followed me--No one would ever believe--And he wouldn"t go--wouldn"t leave me. It would be mere cruelty and desertion, he said. My real life was--with him. And I seemed--paralyzed. Who _had_ sent that message? It never occurred to me--I felt as if some demon held me--and I couldn"t escape--"
And again the sighs and tears, which wrung his heart--with which his own mingled. He tried to comfort her; but what comfort could there be? They had been the victims of a crime as hideous as any murder; and yet--behind the crime--there stretched back into the past the preparations and antecedents by which they themselves, alack, had contributed to their own undoing. Had they not both trifled with the mysterious test of life--he no less than she? And out of the dark had come the axe-stroke that ends weakness, and crushes the unsteeled, inconstant will.
After long silence, she began to talk in a rambling, delirious way of her months in Bosnia. She spoke of the _cold_--of the high mountain loneliness--of the terrible sights she had seen--till he drew her, shuddering, closer into his arms. And yet there was that in her talk which amazed him; flashes of insight, of profound and pa.s.sionate experience, which seemed to fashion her anew before his eyes. The hard peasant life, in contact with the soil and natural forces; the elemental facts of birth and motherhood, of daily toil and suffering; what it means to fight oppressors for freedom, and see your dearest--son, lover, wife, betrothed--die horribly amid the clash of arms; into this caldron of human fate had Kitty plunged her light soul; and in some ways Ashe scarcely knew her again.
She recurred often to the story of a youth, handsome and beardless, who had been wounded by a stray Turkish shot in the course of the long climb to the village where she nursed. He had managed to gain the height, and then, killed by the march as much as by the shot, he had sunk down to die on the ground-floor of the house where Kitty lived.
"He was a stranger--no one knew him in the village--no one cared. They had their own griefs. I dressed his wound--and gave him water. He thought I was his mother, and asked me to kiss him. I kissed him, William--and he smiled once--before the last hemorrhage. If you had seen the cold, dismal room--and his poor face!"
Ashe gathered her to his breast. And after a while she said, with closed eyes:
"Oh, what pain there is in the world, William!--what _pain_! That"s what--I never knew."
The evening wore on. All the noises ceased down-stairs. One by one the guests came up the stone stairs and along the creaking corridor. Boots were thrown out; the doors closed. The strokes of eleven o"clock rang out from the village campanile; and amid the quiet of the now drizzling rain the echoes of the bell lingered on the ear. Last of all a woman"s step pa.s.sed the door--stopped at the door of Kitty"s room, as though some one listened, and then gently returned. "Fraulein Anna!" said Kitty--"she"s a good soul."
Soon nothing was heard but the roar of the flooded stream on one side of the old narrow building and the dripping of rain on the other. Their low voices were amply covered by these sounds. The night lay before them, safe and undisturbed. Candles burned on the mantel-piece, and on a table behind Kitty"s head was a paraffine lamp. She seemed to have a craving for light.
"Kitty!" said Ashe, suddenly bending over her--"understand! I shall never leave you again."
She started, her head fell back on his arm, and her brown eyes considered him:
"William! I saw the _Standard_ at Geneva. Aren"t you going home--because of politics?"
"A few telegrams will settle that. I shall take you to Geneva to-morrow.
We shall get doctors there."
A little smile played about her mouth--a smile which did not seem to have any reference to his words or to her next question.
"n.o.body thinks of the book now, do they, William?"
"No, Kitty, no! It"s all forgotten, dear."
"Oh, it was abominable!" She drew a long breath. "But I can"t help it--I did get a horrid pleasure out of writing it--till Venice--till you left off loving me. Oh, William! William!--what a good thing it is I"m dying!"
"Hush, Kitty--hush."
"It gives one such an unfair advantage, though, doesn"t it? You can"t ever be angry with me again. There won"t be time. William, dear!--I haven"t had a brain like other people. I know it. It"s only since I"ve been so ill--that I"ve been sane! It"s a strange feeling--as though one had been _bled_--and some poison had drained away. But it would never do for me to take a turn and live! Oh no!--people like me are better safely under the gra.s.s. Oh, my beloved! my beloved! I just want to say that all the time, and nothing else--I"ve hungered so to say it!"
He answered her with all the anguish, all the pa.s.sionate, fruitless tenderness and vain comfortings that rise from the human heart in such a strait. But when he asked her pardon for his hardness towards the Dean"s pet.i.tion, when he said that his conscience had tormented him thenceforward, she would scarcely hear a word.
"You did quite right," she said, peremptorily--"quite right."
Then she raised herself on her arm and looked at him.
"William!" she said, with a strange, kindled expression. "I--I don"t think I can live any more! I think--I"m dying--here--now!"
She fell back on her pillows, and he sprang to his feet, crying that he must go for Fraulein Anna and a doctor. But she held him feebly, motioning towards the brandy and strychnine. "That"s all--you can do."
He gave them to her, and again she revived and smiled at him.
"Don"t be frightened. It was a sudden feeling--it came over me--that this dear little room--and your arms--would be the end. Oh, how much best! There!--that was foolish!--I"m better. It isn"t only the lungs, you see; they say the heart"s worst. I nearly went at Vevey, one night.
It was such a long faint."
Then she lay quiet, with her hand in his, in a dreamy, peaceful state, and his panic subsided. Once she sent messages to Lady Tranmore--messages full of sorrow, touched also--by a word here, a look there--by the charm of the old Kitty.
"I don"t deserve to die like this," she said, once, with a half-impatient gesture. "Nothing can prevent it"s being beautiful--and touching--you know; our meeting like this--and your goodness to me. Oh, I"m glad! But I don"t want to glorify--what I"ve done. _Shame! Shame!"_
And again her face contracted with the old habitual agony, only to be soothed away gradually by his tone and presence, the spending of his whole being in the broken words of love.
Towards the morning, when, as it seemed to him, she had been sleeping for a time, and he had been, if not sleeping, at least dreaming awake beside her, he heard a little, low laugh, and looked round. Her brown eyes were wide open, till they seemed to fill the small, blighted face; and they were fixed on an empty chair the other side of the fire.
"It"s so strange--in this illness," she whispered--"that it makes one dream--and generally kind dreams. It"s fever--but it"s nice." She turned and looked at him. "Harry was there, William--sitting in that chair. Not a baby any more--but a little fellow--and so lively, and strong, and quick. I had you both--_both_."
Looking back afterwards, also, he remembered that she spoke several times of religious hopes and beliefs--especially of the hope in another life--and that they seemed to sustain her. Most keenly did he recollect the delicacy with which she had refrained from asking his opinion upon them, lest it should trouble him not to be able to uphold or agree with her; while, at the same time, she wished him to have the comfort of remembering that she had drawn strength and calm, in these last hours, from religious thoughts.
For they proved, indeed, to be the last hours. About three the morning began to dawn, clear and rosy, with rich lights striking on the snow.
Suddenly Kitty sat up, disengaged herself from her wraps, and tottered to her feet.
"I"ll go back to my room," she said, in bewilderment. "I"d rather."
And as she clung to him, with a startled yet half-considering look, she gazed round her, at the bright fire, the morning light, the chair from which he had risen--his face.
He tried to dissuade her. But she would go. Her aspect, however, was deathlike, and as he softly undid the doors, and half-helped, half-carried her across the pa.s.sage, he said to her that he must go and waken Fraulein Anna and find a doctor.
"No--no." She grasped him with all her remaining strength; "stay with me."
They entered the little room, which seemed to be in a glory of light, for the sun striking across the low roof of the inn had caught the foamy water-fall beyond, and the reflection of it on the white walls and ceiling was dazzling.
Beside the bed she swayed and nearly fell.