"You are young yet, Margaret,--oh, it might be--happiness, all that you have missed!"
"No!" Margaret replied, with a little smile. "I--think not!"
She closed her eyes as if she were contemplating that other happiness, and after a silence she opened them and touched Isabelle"s hand.
"I want to tell you something, dear.... I loved Rob Falkner, very much, the most a woman can."
"I knew it! ... I felt it.... That it only might be!"
"He came to me," Margaret continued, "when I was hard and bitter about life, when I was dead.... It was the kind of love that women dream of, ours,--the perfect thing you feel in your heart has always been there,--that takes all of you! ... It was good for us both--he needed me, and I needed him."
"Margaret!"
"I was wonderfully happy, with a dreadful happiness that was two parts pain, pain for myself, and more pain for him, because he needed me, you understand, and it could not be--I could not live with him and give him the food he hungered for--love."
Isabelle kissed the wistful face, "I know," she said. "I want to tell you more--but you may not understand! ... He had to go away. It was best; it was his work, his life, and I should have been a poor weak fool to let our love stand in the way. So it was decided, and I urged him to go. He came to see me at Bedmouth before he left,--a few days, a few hours of love. And we saw how it would have to be, that we should have to go on loving and living in the spirit, for as long as our love lasted, apart. We faced that.
But--but--"
Margaret hesitated and then with shining eyes went on in a low voice.
"It was not enough what we had had! I was not ready to let him go, to see him go--without all. He never asked--I gave him all. We went away to have our love by ourselves,--to live for each other just a few days. He took me away in his boat, and for a few days, a few nights, we had our love--we saw our souls."
She waited, breathing fast, then controlled herself.
"Those hours were more than ordinary life. They do not seem to me real even now, or perhaps they are the most real thing in all I have known. It was love before the parting--before Fate.... When it was all over, we went back to earth. I returned, to Mother Pole"s house in Bedmouth, and I went up to the children"s room and took my baby in my arms and kissed her, my little girl. And I knew that it had been right, all pure and holy, and I was glad, oh, so glad that it had been, that we had had the courage!"
Isabelle pressed the hand she held close to her breast and watched the shining face.
"And I have never felt differently--never for one moment since. It was the greatest thing that ever came to me, and it seems to me that I should never really have lived if it had not been for those days--those nights and days--and the heaven that we saw!"
"Then how can you speak as if life were ended now--"
Margaret held her hand before her face and did not answer. "It might be possible--for you both.... She never really cared for Rob,--she left him and took her child when they sold their house--because she was disappointed. And she has refused to go to him ever since."
"I know all that," Margaret murmured; "that is not it wholly. I can"t tell.
I don"t know yet. It is not clear.... But I know that I am proud and glad of what has been,--of our love in its fulness and glory. And I know it was not sin! Nothing can make it so to me."
She had risen and stood proudly before Isabelle.
"It has made living possible for him and for me,--it has made it something n.o.ble and great, to feel this in our souls.... I wanted to tell you; I thought you would understand, and I did not want you to be wrong about me,--not to know me all!"
She knelt and buried her head in Isabelle"s lap, and when she raised her face there were tears falling from the eyes.
"I don"t know why I should cry!" she exclaimed with a smile. "I don"t often.... It was all so beautiful. But we women cry when we can"t express ourselves any other way!"
"I shall always hope--"
Margaret shook her head.
"I don"t know.... There are other things coming,--another revelation, perhaps! I don"t think of what will be, dear."
But womanwise, Isabelle thought on after Margaret had left, of Falkner and Margaret, of their love. And why shouldn"t it come to them, she asked herself? The other, Falkner"s marriage, had been a mistake for both, a terrible mistake, and they had both paid for it. Bessie could have made it possible if she had wanted to, if she had had it in her. She had her chance. For him to go back to her now, with the gulf between them of all this past, was mere folly,--just conventional wrong-headedness. And it would probably be no better for Bessie if he were to make the sacrifice....
The revelation that Margaret had hinted of had not come to Isabelle. She lay awake thinking with aching heart of her own story,--its tragic ending.
But _he_ was not a man,--that, too, had been a mistake!
Isabelle, largely left to herself, for occupation drove about the snowy hills, sometimes taking with her for company one of the convalescents or a nurse, often alone, liking the solitude of the winter s.p.a.ces. Sometimes she went to the blacksmith"s shop and talked with the old man, learning the genealogy and the sociology of the neighborhood. The text for Sol Short"s wisdom was ever at hand in the pa.s.sers-by. Ending one of his transcripts, he made a phrase that lingered in Isabelle"s mind long afterward. "So she was left a charge upon the property," he said of an old woman that had come out of one of the village houses. "Aunt Mehitabel went with the house. When it was sold, she had to be taken over by the new owner, and her keep provided. And there she is now, an old woman in ill health and ill temper.
I don"t know as there is a worse combination."...
"I wonder why I stay," Isabelle said to Margaret after nearly two months had slipped by. "I am quite rested, as well as I shall ever be, I believe.
You don"t need me. n.o.body does exactly! Molly writes me very contented little letters. Mother is staying with her, and she is at the party age, and would be terribly bored to come here, as you suggested. John is in St.
Louis; he seems to have a good deal to do out there this winter. So you see my little world gets on perfectly without me."
"Better stay here, then," Margaret urged, "until spring. It will do you good. You haven"t exhausted the doctor yet!"
"I almost never see him, and when he does remember me he chaffs me as if I were a silly child. No, I think I will go next week."
But she did not wish to leave. The winter peace of the little village had been like an enveloping anodyne to her weary body and mind. Removed from all her past, from the sights and the people that suggested those obsessing thoughts which had filled her waking hours with dreariness, she had sunk into the simple routine of Grosvenor as the tired body sinks into a soft bed. The daily sight of the snowy fields, the frozen hillsides black with forests, and the dry spirituous air, lifted her. Now and then the effect of the anodyne wore off and the old gnawing pain, or a sodden sense of futility, overwhelmed her afresh. "It will never get straight!" she said, thinking in the terms of Potts"s specifics. "I am somehow wrong, and I must go all my life with this torture--or worse--until I die!" And the whole panorama of her little life would unroll before her in the sleepless hours of the still night: her girl ambitions, her mistaken marriage, her striving for experience, for life, to satisfy--what? Then her mistaken love, and Vickers"s sacrifice, and the blackness afterwards,--the mistake of it all!
"They"ll be better without me,--mother and Molly and John! Let me die!" she cried. Then illogically she would think of Renault and wonder what _he_ could do for her. But she shrank from baring herself before his piercing gaze. "He would say I was a fool, and he would be right!"
So she went out into the cold country and walked miles over the frozen fields through the still woods, trying to forget, only to return still ridden by her thoughts,--bitter tears for Vickers, sometimes almost reproach for his act. "If he had let me plunge to my fate, it would have been better than this! I might never have known my mistake,--it would have been different, all of it different. Now there is nothing!" And at the end of one of these black moods she resolved to return to her world and "go through the motions as others do. What else? Perhaps it will be better when I am distracted. Potts will give me something to brace me."...
But Isabelle did not return to the city and get that prescription from the great Potts.
CHAPTER LIX
Just as Isabelle had completed her packing on Sunday afternoon, a message came to her from Dr. Renault through Margaret. "We need another woman,--two of our nurses have been called away and a third is sick. Will you give us some help?"
"I am going up myself for the night," Margaret added. "They are badly pushed,--six new cases the last three days."
So the night found Isabelle under the direction of Mrs. Felton, the little black-haired woman whose "case" the doctor had a.n.a.lyzed for her. It was a long night, and the next morning, all the experienced nurses being needed at an operation, Isabelle went on. The day was full and also the next two.
The hospital force was inadequate, and though the doctor had telegraphed for help there would be no relief for a week. So Isabelle was caught up in the pressing activity of this organism and worked by it, impelled without her own will, driven hard as all around her were driven by the circ.u.mstances behind her. Dr. Renault abhorred noise, disorder, excitement, confusion of any kind. All had to run smoothly and quietly as if in perfect condition. He himself was evident, at all hours of day or night, chaffing, dropping his ironical comments, listening, directing,--the inner force of the organism. One night the little nurse dropped asleep, clearly worn out, and Isabelle sent her to bed. The ward was quiet; there was nothing to be done. Isabelle, pacing to and fro in the gla.s.s sun parlor to keep herself awake, suddenly became aware of the stillness within her. It was as if some noisy piece of machinery had ceased to revolve without her having noticed it. It was possible for her in this quiet moment to realize this: for the first time in five days she had not thought of herself. For five days she had not consciously thought! Doubtless she would have to pay for this debauch of work. She would collapse. But for five days she had not known whether she felt ill or well, was happy or distressed. Excitement--to be paid for! She shrank from the weary round of old thought that must come, the revolution of the wheels within. For five days she had not thought, she had not cared, she had not known herself! That must be the opiate of the poor, driven by labor to feed and clothe themselves; of the ambitious, driven by hope and desire.... She must work, too; work was a good thing.
Why had Potts not included it in his panaceas? ...
Later when she walked back into the still ward, she thought she heard a stifled breathing, but when she went the rounds of the cots, all was still.
It was not until nearly morning that she noticed something wrong with a little boy, observing the huddled position of the limbs drawn up beneath the blanket. She felt of his face--it was cold. Frightened, she hurried to the bell to summon the night doctor. As she reached it Renault entered the ward and with a warning hand brought her back to the cot. He put his fingers swiftly here and there on the child"s body.
"Where is Mrs. Felton?" he demanded severely.
"She was so worn out I persuaded her to get some rest. Have I neglected anything?--is anything wrong?"
"The child is dead," Renault replied, straightening himself and covering up the little form.
"Oh, I have--done something wrong!"