How often had she been dexterously left alone with them in the drawing-room! Thank G.o.d! all that was far, far behind her. Death was dignified, sweet-smelling in its peace, when she thought of all that the gilt-and-chintz drawing-room stood for in her memories. Death was sweet when life was so ugly.
Now she was in the street, the door closed behind her, and no servant had seen her.
It was a foggy afternoon, and the soiled white houses opposite were dim. A thin, stray cat rubbed against the area railings and mewed as Allida stood, pausing for a moment, on the steps.
Which was the nearest pillar-box? At the end of the street, just round the corner. The plaintive, nasal cry of the cat caught her attention.
Poor creature! She ought to spare some poison for it. The irony of the idea almost made her smile as she stooped and patted the dingy head. The cat, leaning like a s.h.i.+p in a stiff wind, walked to and fro across her dress, looking up at her as it still plaintively, interrogatively mewed.
Its appeal put aside for a moment the decision as to which pillar-box.
She picked up the cat and returned to the door. The maid answered her ring.
Allida was a little sorry that she must speak once more, after all, on this mundane plane. The finish of her tragedy seemed slightly marred by this episode. But she heard her calm voice telling the maid to feed the cat--"And keep it until you can find a home for it. Cook won"t mind, will she?"
"Oh, no, miss; cook is fond of cats. Poor thing, then," said the maid, who was tender of heart.
Again the door was shut, and again the pillar-box was the last act but one of her drama.
She walked swiftly down the street, thinking, oddly, more about the cat than about her destination or the letter she held clutched in her pocket. The stripes on the cat"s head, its rough, sooty fur, the sharp projection of its backbone and the grotesque grimace of its mew--her mind dwelt on these trivial details; and under all was a funny added contentment at this further proof of the mercilessness and ugliness of the world she was leaving.
The corner of the street was reached and turned. There, in the fog, stood the red shaft of the pillar-box. Beyond it a street lamp, already lighted, made a blur of light in the thick air and cast upward a long cone of shadow.
Allida"s heart suddenly shrank and shuddered.
The lamp and the pillar-box looked horrible. Death was horrible. To see him no more was horrible. She felt only horror as mechanically she took out the letter and dropped it into the box.
The heavy sound of its fall turned her shuddering heart to ice.
She had felt horror, she had been prepared for horror, but not for such horror as this. It would all be like this now, she knew, until the end.
Let her hurry through it, then; let her escape quickly; and, at all events, her own room, her familiar little room, with its fire, its books, its quiet white bed, would be a refuge after this terrible, empty street. She thought only of her room,--the thought blotting out what would happen in it,--knowing only that she longed to be there, with a longing like a wounded child"s for its mother"s arms. And yet she still stood staring at the slit in the pillar-box.
"Miss Fraser," a voice said beside her.
It was a voice of carefully quiet greeting, guarded interrogation, guarded expostulation.
She looked up, feeling something shatter in her, fearing that she was going to faint. It was almost like the crash of death and like a swooning into a new consciousness. She only dimly, through the swooning sense of change, recognized the face that looked at her, smiling, but so puzzled, so pained--so pained that she guessed that her own face must show some strange terror.
She had seen the face, in the chintz-and-gilt drawing-room,--it had seemed out of place there,--she had seen it often; but memory was blurred. Had he not taken her down to dinner somewhere only the other day? Yes; she knew him well; only she was dead, a ghost, and reality, familiar reality, looked different.
"Mr. Haldicott," she said, putting out her hand. Her voice was normal--she heard that; she felt that she could almost have smiled. Yet something was fearfully shattered, some power in herself that had directed her so resolutely till now. The cat had been disconcerting, but the appearance of this man, whom she knew quite well, who might talk, might question her, might walk back beside her, seemed fatally disconcerting. For could she act? Could she still speak on normally? And further delay, now that every link was broken, now that to all real intents and purposes she was dead, was a torture too fearful to be contemplated. Yet how evade it? She felt that her hand, which he still held, held very tightly, was trembling.
"You are ill," he said.
She shook her head.
"No; not at all. I only came out for a little walk. And I must go back to tea."
"Your mother is at home?"
"No; she is out of town. She doesn"t get back till to-morrow."
"You are going to have tea all alone?"
Allida gazed at him. How should she evade him if he offered to come back?
"I haven"t had my walk yet. I came out for a little walk," she repeated.
By the blurred light of the street lamp he still looked at her, still held her trembling hand. His face showed his perplexed indecision.
Suddenly he drew the hand within his arm.
"Let us have the little walk, then," he said, "only you must let me come with you. You are in some great trouble. Don"t bother to deny it. Don"t say anything. Your face showed me that something dreadful was happening to you. Don"t speak--I saw it as I was pa.s.sing on the other side of the street. The lamp was just lighted, else I shouldn"t have recognised you.
Now walk quietly on like this. Don"t even think. I"m not a meddling idiot; I know I"m not. You are desperate about something, and anything, any one, even a complete stranger, and I"m not that, who steps in between desperation and an act is justified--perhaps a G.o.dsend."
He was walking beside her, half leading her, talking quickly, as if to give her time to recover, and glancing at her stricken, helpless face.
As they walked they heard behind them the rattling fall of letters into a postman"s bag; the pillar-box had been emptied.
The youth of the face, its essential childishness, the web of soft hair that hung disarranged over her cheek, made her look like a very little girl, and was in strange contrast with the look of terror.
They walked on and on, down streets, across wide, phantasmal squares.
Haldicott held the hand on his arm,--he did not speak,--and Allida felt herself moving with him through the fog like an Eurydice led by Orpheus, a shade among the shades. And all the while there hovered before her thoughts the vision of that quiet room, that white bed, still waiting for her. Suddenly she broke into sobs. She stopped. She leaned helplessly against his arm.
"Good heavens! you will tell me now," Haldicott exclaimed. "Cross the road here. Lean on me. We will go into the park. No one can see you."
She stumbled on blindly beside him, both hands clutching his arm.
All she knew was that she had left life behind her, and yet that she must go back to that room, and that the room now was more horrible than the pillar-box had been. She had left life behind her, and yet she still clung to it--here beside her. Life! life! warm, kind life!
In the park he led her into a deserted path. A bench stood beneath a tall, leafless tree, its branches stencilled flatly on the yellow-gray fog. Haldicott and Allida sat down side by side.
"Now tell me. You can trust me utterly. Tell me everything," said Haldicott.
His fine face, all competence and mastery, studied hers, its shattered loveliness. She leaned her head back against the bench. Life was there, and a great peace seemed to flow through her as the mere consciousness of its presence filled her. As long as he held her hand she could not be frightened; and since she was only a ghost, since all her past seemed to have dropped from her, she could look at it with him, she could tell him what he asked. As if exhausted, borne along by his will, she said, "I am going to commit suicide."
Haldicott made no e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n and no movement. Her eyes were closed, and he studied her face. Its innocent charm almost made him smile at her words; and yet the expression he had seen from across the street, as she dropped that letter into the box and stood frozen, had gone too well with such words. He reflected silently. He had long known Allida Fraser, never more than slightly; and yet from the frequency of slight knowledge he found that he had acc.u.mulated, quite unconsciously, an impression of her, distinct, sweet, appealing. He saw her, silent and gentle, in her tawdry mother"s tawdry house; he heard her grave quiet voice. He had thought her, not knowing that he thought at all, charming. He had always been glad to talk to her, to make her gravity, the little air of chill composure that he had so understood, and liked, in the daughter of a desperate, faded flirt, warm into confident interest and smiles.
Thinking of that quiet voice, that gentle smile, the poise and dignity of all the little personality, he could not connect them with hysterical shallowness. But he had, he now recognized, thought of her as older, more tempered to reality. There was a revelation of desperate youth, and youth"s sense of the finality of desperation, on her face; and, with all the rigid resolve he had seen, he could guess in it youth"s essential fluidity. She was resolved, and yet all resolves in a soul so young were only moods, unless circ.u.mstances let them stand still, stagnate, and finally freeze. She was not frozen yet. It was only a mood standing still; shake it, and it would fluctuate into surprising changes. Allida opened her eyes while he reflected, and many moments had gone by since her words.
"How amazing that I should tell you, calmly tell you, isn"t it?" she said. "And yet I can"t feel it as amazing. Nothing could amaze me. I seem to have pa.s.sed beyond any feeling of that sort. But since I am so really dead already, that I can tell you, you must respect my confidence in you. You must not try to prevent me. I trust you."
"I shan"t prevent you," said Haldicott.
Again she closed her eyes. "Thanks. It is almost a comfort to be able to tell some one. I know now how fearfully lonely I have been. And yet--I wish I hadn"t met you--or I will wish it. Now I can wish nothing, and feel nothing--except that you are there, alive, and that I am going to die. But it will be harder to do now. Everything seems so vague, everything seems left behind. The very sorrow that makes me do it seems so far away--like a dream. I can"t go through all the realization again, and when I do it now, it will seem to be for something unreal." Her voice trailed off.
"Are you sure you are going to do it?" Haldicott asked presently.
They spoke very slowly, with long pauses, as though a monotony of leisure were about them; as though, in some quiet, dim place of departed spirits, time had ceased.
"Yes; quite sure. I have bought it--the poison--I had a doctor"s prescription--I have thought it all out carefully. It"s in the top drawer of my dressing-table."
She would, he saw, tell him everything.