Mere Stories

LADY MARGRAVE

WICKS was in despair. He looked round the flat hopelessly. Everything had been done and everything was useless. His master—Norman Byrne—was going to die. African fever had got into his bones, and left him no strength to fight an extra illness, combined with English climate. As for the consultation to take place at seven that evening, Wicks had no belief in it. Dr. Hamilton was an excellent man. ‘ Few as good and none better,’ he said to Mrs. Dunn, the cook,—she was making some chicken broth ready,—‘ and if he gives in, why, it’s all up.’

‘ Do you think he knows?’ she asked.

‘ Knows! yes, well enough. Why, the doctor told him plainly, and for answer he just looked up with that smile of his that would make any one glad to die in his place if it could be done, and said, “Well, old chap, it can’t be helped.”—I couldn’t stand it, and came out of the room.’ Wicks turned his head away and tried to steady his voice. ‘ Every comfort as he has—plenty of money, too, and only himself to think of.’

‘ When will his brother get here, do you think?’

‘ Can’t be till to-morrow night; it’s a long away from Vienna.’

‘ I suppose he’ll have all there is?’

‘ I expect so. Pity Mr. Norman went off making money in that outlandish place. What’s the good of money if you kill yourself making it?’

‘ What will become of us, I wonder, when he is gone?’ Dunn said anxiously.

‘ Don’t know,’ Wicks answered contemptuously. ‘ It’s him we’ve got to think about. What happens to us doesn’t matter a brass farthing;’ and he left her to go on with the chicken broth.

Wicks went through every room before he stopped at his master’s door. A pretty little flat, high up, just off St. James’s Street. Delightfully furnished; books everywhere; one or two pictures that Norman Byrne had picked up at Christie’s or anywhere else, not caring whether the price had been big or little if they took his fancy; flowers in a big copper vase, suggesting the remembrance of some fair woman who had loved them rather than effeminacy in himself; odds and ends from various places to which he had been; awkward-looking knives, and other weapons fastened up against the wall. In the drawing-room, newspapers, and a pipe on a Moorish table, that stood beside comfortable chair drawn up to the fire, suggested that he liked quiet and comfort; but the chair was empty now, and there was no book on the reading-desk screwed to its right arm. Something in the entire atmosphere of the place attested that the owner was cultivated and shy man, and that he did not give tea-parties to which women were invited. As a matter of fact, he had few friends of either sex, simply because he did not choose to make them. A handsome man of forty-three, lonely and silent: he had live his life, now the end of it was coming.

Wicks entered the room softly. Wrapped in a dressing-gown and covered with Arab blankets, Norman Byrne was lying on a wide sofa. Behind his shoulders the pillows were propped, and his picturesque head and grave face looked well against their whiteness. In his tired eyes there was a gleam of amusement still. He beckoned Wicks to his side.

‘ They say I am going to die,’ he said in a voice that was hardly above a whisper. ‘ Seems odd, doesn’t it, Wicks?’

‘ Do you think it’s true, sir?’ Wicks asked anxiously: he was too good a servant to show belief in any authority but the one he considered it his duty to accept.

Mr. Byrne nodded his head; Wicks accepted the decision like a soldier, with barely a sign: there was no fear of his master misunderstanding.

‘ Then what’s the good of a consultation, sir, if it’s only to say they are sure of it?’

‘ It pleases them, I suppose. You sent the telegram to my brother?’

‘ Yes, sir.’

‘ He can’t arrive till late to-morrow night. Have things comfortable for him, poor old chap—he will stay till it’s over, I suppose. Everything goes to him and his family, but I have thought of you—we have been together a long time, and you have taken care of me, Wicks—and Dunn. I shall get through pretty easily, I expect: it won’t hurt much.’

Wicks stood looking at him.

‘ Let me be,’ Mr. Byrne said, ‘ and don’t come near me with any more confounded slops, they are no good. I want to be quiet and think: a man doesn’t die every day.’ He looked up with a smile that always made Wicks feel it would be a pleasure to cast himself into a fiery furnace if his master desired it, and turned his face away from the light.

A long silence.

Wicks stood by the darkened window watching the still form, and listening to the low irregular breathing. One, from the little chiming clock on the mantelpiece—half-past—two o’clock. A restless movement from the sofa. He went to his master’s side.

‘ Come here,’ Mr. Byrne whispered. Wicks stooped his head: ‘ Lady Margrave is in town.’

‘ So I see, sir, and Sir Francis just been made a canon; it’s in the papers.’

‘ He went to Scotland two days ago, to bury his sister. I don’t think she can have gone, Hamilton would have said so—he has been attending their children. She never liked funerals, Wicks—she won’t come to mine,’ he added with a sorry smile and closed his eyes.

Another half-hour, the clock chimed half-past two. Mr. Byrne signed to Mr. Wicks again. ‘ I want to see her,’ he whispered, and each word seemed to be dragged from him. ‘ Perhaps she would come if she knew that I was dying. It’s more than fourteen years—Good God! and she has a husband and three children—it’s like a curious nightmare. Wicks, I don’t feel as though I could die without seeing her again.’

‘ What’s to be done, sir? Would you like me to go—’ Mr. Byrne turned on his pillow and was silent for a moment. Then he answered in the voice of one who was being tortured:

‘ I don’t know, perhaps it is part of the programme; but to lie here dying and to know that I shall never see her face again is like walking down the passage to hell. Get out of the room, and leave me alone.’

Without a word the man departed. Mr. Byrne appeared to struggle with his thoughts and then to put them from him with a long sigh of relief. The deadening languor came back, half-stupefying him; through it he felt the pain of his disease, but muffled, as one who has taken chloroform that has not wholly deadened him. The room vanished, and all things with it; and in its place there came before him a country road leading away from the river. He passed a little shop at which apples and ginger-beer were sold to the rather riotous young men and women who came down on Saturday afternoons to be taken on the river at so much an hour and imagine they were boating. He could see in the window a handbill printed in blue letters concerning a regatta, and farther on there was a turning with a sign-post at the corner. He passed it and went on. Some one was coming to meet him along the country road. He saw her plainly: she wore a blue dress and a white straw hat; there was a bunch of poppies in her waistband, and he knew she had put them there for him. She took his arm and walked beside him; she laughed and looked up at his face. In her blue eyes there was a look of happiness she did not attempt to hide—a look that no mortal man could fail to understand. They went on for half a mile; they came to a green with a clump of trees at one corner; just beyond the trees was a little square house with a garden round it and a high gate in front. They lifted the latch and went in. The garden was neglected, the fuchsias on the side-bed trailed on the gravel walk; the standard rose-trees on the untidy little lawn were covered with blight; the summer-house on one side wanted painting, the roof wanted mending, the sunshine poured through the holes in it now; on the little slate-coloured table there was a heap of pebbles. They entered the house together—he and she—it was silent, and the drawing-room, chintz-covered and shabby, was deserted: Mr. Pulford was always in town, at his chambers, or his club—anywhere, rather than with his daughter at home; so they had it to themselves all day long. There was the river, and the garden, the country stillness, and the occasional going to town, and never a soul to say a word or to ask how the story would end. They looked at each other—a long look of happiness at being together. He told her that she was pretty, and kissed her; she hid her face in his arms and laughed shyly and for sheer joy. They sat down on the sofa and pulled the books out from the shelves behind them, and read stray bits from the poets, and drew closer together and read a little more; and he wished, and knew she wished, that the summer-time would never end. He had looked out into the future that day, far ahead, and imagined a home that was his and Adelaide’s, a trim and comfortable place, different enough from his ramshackle one near the river. He thought of all they would do, the good times they would have, the books they would read, and the sound of her laughter that would somehow haunt the staircase. But he said no word of all this to her; only looked at her again, and thought how pretty she was, with her brown hair and flushed cheeks, and eyes that loved him and were ashamed, but took no trouble to keep their secret. And then he looked at the head of the sofa and journeyed a little farther on, and hated himself; for, though she had married Francis Margrave, a tall and staid and speechless parson, with dark hair and a white face and a benevolent smile, in some dim way he knew, though words had never told him, that she had leant her head down on the chintz-covered sofa-head, and wept the bitterest tears—tears that fell for love of him and because of his desertion. But she ought to have known that even though he had deserted her he meant to go back some day and to marry her, if he ever married any one at all. There had been no woman in the world with whom he had ever thought of spending life except Adelaide. She had made it impossible years ago when she married her parson; but even so, his thoughts had never seriously gone to any one else. He had enjoyed life pretty well without her, and known what happiness was in many lands; he gathered that she had known it too, and he somehow grudged it her because it was not his gift. People said she was devoted to her husband—so she ought to be; nevertheless he was sitting by her in the little chintz-covered drawing-room again. He could see the print in the volume quite plainly as he learnt over her shoulder and looked at the passionate words that neither had courage to read aloud. He put his cheek against hers; it was soft and flushed, like a peach.…

Some one was beside him. The little clock struck the half hour; it must be half-past three, and he had been dreaming.

‘ Lady Margrave’s here, sir.’ Wicks felt his own voice tremble while he said it.

‘ She wants to know if you will see her.’

Mr. Byrne looked round as though to make sure he was awake.

‘ Does she know?’

‘ She had heard,’ Wicks answered in a low voice, ‘ and came and asked if it was true, and if she might see you.’

Perhaps she has been thinking of the river too. …Norman Byrne closed his eyes and had a long struggle with himself. Wicks went round the room, making it straight, and then stood waiting.

‘ You can bring her in,’ Mr. Byrne said slowly.

There was a little rustle of stuff, a hesitating whisper, ‘ Norman’—the door closed, Wicks had gone, and he and she were alone.

She crossed to the sofa without a word, and knelt beside him. She looked worn and thin, and older than her years. The flush had gone from her face—it was pale and grave—but her eyes had kept their blueness. He looked at her hopelessly and loved her, far more than he had done that last day on the river. Her lip quivered, and her eyes filled with tears, but she managed to hold them back, and waited broken and hungry for a word from him.

‘ I thought we should never see each other again,’ he said, and looked at her black dress, and wondered vacantly if she were in mourning already. In her bosom there was a rose. ‘ I don’t think I could have got through if you hadn’t come, dear.’ She put her face down upon his hands lying outside the Arab blanket—hands that had not lost their brownness, though they were thin and nervous as a woman’s—and covered with kisses. Then without a word she raised her eyes to his again, and they drew nearer and kissed each other.

‘ It is fourteen years,’ she said, with passionate apology, ‘ and you were first. I can’t help it—nothing in the world can kill it.’

‘ It has all been a terrible mistake,’ he answered ruefully; ‘ but it will be over pretty soon now, for one of us.’

‘ I cannot face it, or live without you;’ her voice was low but her words were like a cry of anguish.

He put his hand on her head.

‘ I thought it was only I who cared,’ he said after a moment’s silence, and with such infinite tenderness that joy and sorrow fought in her heart as if with knives.

‘ You are just my life,’ she whispered.

‘ But we have not seen each other all these years.’

‘ It has made no difference.’

‘ You have—him.’

‘ It makes no difference.’

‘ And your children?’

‘ I know—I know—but you were first. He and they, alike, came too late; I could not tear you out of me. Nothing has made any difference. I would never have seen you again if you had been well and going to live, but now—in this last hour that we shall ever know together—let the truth be told between us.’

‘ I thought you had forgotten me long ago.’

‘ All these years I have done my best to tear the thought of you out of my heart, and I cannot—it is stronger than I am.’

‘ But you have been happy?’ and he put his hand on her head.

‘ I have been happy,’ she answered, ‘ for I have worshipped him, and thought how wonderful it was to live in his sight and do as he desired.’

‘ How can you love me if you worship him?’

‘ It is so different. He is a being apart; he has given me everything in the world; he makes me do my best and be my best. I have been ashamed of every moment that I have lived with him if it has not made for righteousness. He has been my Christ and I have worshipped him, but you—you have been the mortal man that I have loved.’

‘ Why did you marry him?’

‘ Oh, Norman,’ she said gently, ‘ you left me and my heart was broken; you know what we were to each other—and yet you left me. I don’t say it to reproach you, my darling,’ and she covered his hands with kisses again, ‘ but only to justify myself in your sight. You loved me and I was within your reach: you did not want to bind yourself, and you went away. Don’t you remember, Norman? You went away without a word and left me for months—years. I was just a girl to whom the ordinary rights and wrongs were such immensities, and I exaggerated all that I had done for love of you. I had my choice in a way—the choice of feeling that I was a wife you had deserted or a mistress you had cast off. At first I chose the latter unconsciously, for though it was shame to me, it was less blame to you. I thought you despised me and did not care. And all those months,’ she went on, with a catch in her breath, ‘ of agony and loneliness—I thought they would kill me—I love so. I loved you till I could have died of it.’

‘ I should have come back after a time.’

‘ No,’ she answered sadly, ‘ you would never have come back, dear, or cared for me again. I might have waited all my life in shame and bitterness. It was only when you heard that I was beyond your reach that you cared. Oh, my life, my dear,’ she went on, in a low voice that was hardly above a whisper, ‘ it is only because I want you to know I was not false to you that I tell you this. I never have been for a single moment.’

‘ How did you come to marry him?’

‘ He came to me in the days when I only wanted to die, and loved me more than any one in the world—more than you ever did for a single moment, Norman. He thought me good—and he made me good; being with him was earthly salvation; it seemed to purify me, to wash me white and promise me saintliness when merely human happiness had failed. It made me ecstatic with joy sometimes, but it was the joy of a religious enthusiast. Oh, don’t blame me, dearest! surely you understand? I have hidden it deep down, but love of you has never for an instant gone out of my heart. I have thought it something to be alive in the same world with you. The world will go into darkness for me and life be only unutterable anguish if you go out of it.’

‘ But you belong to him now; you can’t do away with that. You are his wife and the mother of his children.’

‘ Norman,’ she whispered, ‘ it is such a strange thing, but I always feel that I am your wife. The tie between us was made first and can never be undone. Towards him I am like a strange woman who has been taken into his love out of infinite pity for pain of which he does not know, a worshipper whose great honour and happiness, yes, even happiness—the happiness of a woman on the steps of heaven looking towards her Saviour, while her poor human love, of which she does not dare to think, is in the world behind her—it is to live her life with him and work with him, and hear children. In my heart I often kneel to kiss his feet. Some day I shall be buried in the same grave with him, and then the story will be complete. I think I shall get up and creep from under the white stone and go to you alone in your grave’—the tears rushed to her eyes at the last word—

‘ and put my face against the wet grass over you. Then I will go down—and down—seeking you in the darkness, and lie still and cold for just one hour beside you before I go back to that other place that is ever my home. Norman, even though I have this tremendous secret in my heart, towards you both I have been true, giving to you each the utmost that was in me. I could not do more, dear; do you understand? If I could only know that you did—’

‘ I love you,’ he said, looking into her eyes and at the ghost of the old sweet flush that had come back to her face, ‘ and have never love any other woman in my life. I was a fool, dear, as well as a brute, for I love you most in the world.’

‘ Oh! if you had said it years ago! If you had said it just once—’

‘ And you mean that you love me still,’ he asked, ‘ though you are married to another man?’ The muffled pain in the distance was drawing near. He knew in a minute or two he would have to hurry her away.

‘ Yes, I love you, and shall till the last hour of my life, and afterwards too if I know,’ she added passionately. ‘ I have if no shame in saying it. I should be ashamed if I did not love you—if, having been all that I was to you, I could forget. Oh, it would be base indeed! And yet I worship him. I want you to understand, Norman, so that in Heaven you may not feel that you have wronged him. I could not be false to him any more than to you. I shall spend my days trying to live in the manner he likes best, and wondering at Heaven’s goodness that gave his love to me. It is so strange,’ and a little awe came into her voice, ‘ but when I look at the children, and think that they will grow up to be men and women like him, I feel that they are only his—not mine, but only my most sacred charge.’

‘ His—but yours too,’ he said with a little mortal bitterness in his voice. She crouched lower and hid her face, and for a few moments there was silence—the silence that we know to be part of our keenest history.

Then she raised her head and looked at him.

‘ Let us put all this aside,’ she pleaded, ‘ for this last time that we shall ever meet, and let my arm go round your neck. I want to look at you, dear. It is such joy to see you, such keen joy, that I cannot think beyond these moments that hold it; I feel as if they were tightening into my heart—were laying hold of me, and would lift me up even beyond the sorrow.’

‘ Rest your face on mine,’ he whispered, ‘ and tell me again that you are my wife.’

‘ Your wife, who has loved you always, and will, while her heart shall beat.’

‘ My sweet’—he said; he had taxed his strength to the utmost. ‘ You must go,’ he gasped; ‘ let those words be your last to me. See, you have broken your rose.’ He lifted it from the coverlet and looked at it. His eyes were growing dim. ‘ I’ll keep it—but you must go.’ She drew her arm away, and silently looked at his face—and kissed him with one last hopeless kiss, and dragged her lagging feet towards the door.

III

Half-past seven from the little clock on the mantelpiece—the consultation was over, but the doctors were still talking among themselves in the drawing-room. The pain stifled him and made every breath he drew a misery. ‘ I suppose Hamilton will come in before he goes,’ he said to himself, and lifted his head from the pillow and stared round the room. ‘ If these fellows did but know it, fate’s best turn has been sticking its knife into me. I shouldn’t have seen her but for that. Who would have thought she had cared all these years? The bit of life that was left me isn’t much to pay for the knowledge. …I hope it will be over before poor old Tom comes, I don’t want to see the expression on his face—sorry I’m going, for I know he likes me, poor chap, and a good deal of satisfaction that, since I must, his children will get the cash. What a fool I was not to marry her; we would have made the world spin like a conjuror’s plate. Perhaps I should have grown tired of her—better as it is. This pain will drive me mad. I daresay a woman would bear it without a groan, they beat us in some things. …Well, doctor, what have you to say?’

‘ My dear Byrne, I have good news; you have taken the most extraordinary turn since the morning, there is some hope that you may pull through.’ Norman Byrne stared at him in blank dismay, but the desire to live is strong in all of us, and a little pleasure took possession of him.

‘ What a strange thing,’ he said; ‘ but you are making me into an impostor. I took leave of an old friend this afternoon and they have telegraphed for Tom. What does this pain mean if I am not going to die?’

‘ A good symptom: we have ordered you something to calm it down. You must go to sleep and not talk. Wicks knows precisely what to do. I shall come and look at you very early in the morning.

‘ Things have taken a queer turn. But I have no business to live,’ Byrne said to himself when the doctor was gone. ‘ Tom with his seven children expect my to die, and Margrave living in saintly and unconscious bigamy with my wife. It will be pretty awkward—I believe there is morphia in this medicine, I am dropping off to sleep—’

A long silence.

‘ Well, what now?’

‘ Nearly half-past nine, sir, and here’s your chicken broth. You have been asleep these two hours—the longest sleep you have had this week.’

‘ Leave me alone, Wicks, and go about your business. I want to think.’

‘ The doctor said you must take food, sir.’

‘ Plenty of time; perhaps nothing will come of it after all. There, I have finished your confounded chicken broth; take the cup out of my sight, do anything you have to do, and go. I can’t stand any one in the room.’

‘ All right, sir,’ but he lingered by the bed. ‘ Dunn was looking out of window just now, sir,’ he said in a low voice, ‘ and saw Lady Margrave go along on the other side of the road. Dunn says she has seen her go by two or three times every evening with her face turned over here, but she didn’t know who she was till she came to-day. She stood a bit looking up at your window; of course she didn’t know that Dunn saw her—’

‘ Has she gone?’

‘ Yes, sir. Dunn saw her get into a hansom a little way up, or she would have run out and told her you were better.’

‘ It is better to be sure first. Put the bell-rope by my hand, Wicks, and go.’

‘ Yes, sir, but I must come in and give you your medicine in an hour—’

‘ What’s the good of it? leave me alone.’

‘ There’s opium in it, sir, to make you comfortable for the night.’ Wicks took up the bottle and looked at it, and put it down on the table by the bedside. ‘ I’ll come back eleven, sir,’ and he hurried softly from the room, feeling to his finger-tips Mr. Byrne’s impatience to get ride of him.

‘ Walking up and down,’ Norman Byrne said to himself. ‘ It’s a wonderful thing to be loved by a woman. I want to see her again—and to live; but I have no business to do that after this afternoon. We should come to grief. I should take her away somehow. She was mine first and belongs to me; she said it herself—said she was my wife—and she is, the only one I ever wanted. In my thoughts at any rate I have been faithful to her. There was never any one else. It’s no good, we shouldn’t be happy, her children would be hacking at her thoughts if she left them—and Margrave! I wonder what he’d do? Doesn’t matter, I am not going to ruin any man’s life and children, or any woman’s either. I did once, but I didn’t mean it, God knows. I wish I had her in my arms with her face against mine. I should like to feel her die in them, and to be buried with her. It would be so quiet, and we should be together till our very bones were dust. –Life is such a bother. –I want to be quiet and alone. –I must get out of the way, that’s certain. If I live she will remember everything she said to-day and hate herself; besides, we couldn’t keep apart, a man and a woman who love each other, and know it, and have put it into words. …Poor Tom, it would be the deuce for him my not dying; his children want educating on my India stock. Besides, the scene is set for dying, and it must be carried through. These pillows are slipping down like so much hay from a stack. What’s this? Her rose! My darling, my sweet woman, I would go to hell for a fortnight to see you look as you did once, when you came along the road to meet me,’ and he lifted the rose to his lips.

A long hour—an hour of mental struggle and pain. ‘ It won’t do,’ he said at last,

‘ she called him her Christ, and said he had saved her. If I live now it will be to her damnation.’ He pulled the bell-rope.

‘ Wicks, what time is it?’

‘ Five minutes to eleven, sir. I was just coming.’

‘ Give me my medicine—how much am I to take?’ he asked, watching the man measure the dose from the bottle on the table.’

‘ Three doses here, sir. Doctor said I was to be careful.’

‘ It doesn’t matter, a little more or less,’ he said wearily, and gulped down the portion handed him. Wicks replaced the bottle among the others. ‘ Wait,’ Mr. Byrne said, ‘ give me the box with the steel handle. Open it—Bramah lock, you know. I want to fumble in it; put it by my side. Ah! there they are,’ and he pulled out a little packet of letters. ‘ Put them into the fire, Wicks; I may die yet, and shouldn’t like any one to find them. There, you can take away the box, and then go. Stay, I want you to open the window about three inches.’

‘ Might do you harm, sir?’

‘ The curtain will make it all right—open it.’ Wicks, with his military habit of obedience, did as he was told. ‘ Now, then, put the lamp low, the light bothers me, and leave the fire alone. That’s right,’ he said, with a sigh of relief, as the door closed after the man. ‘ I wonder if she will go by again. If she does the darkness will tell her. By Jove! this is what I want—the darkness and stillness. Life would only by an anti-climax now. Besides, take it altogether, it was the best hour we ever had, the closet, it would be a pity to journey away from it. This is the kindest thing I can do for her, and the crumbs of the good deed will fall to Tom’s children. Ah—there’s the pain coming back again; I shall be even with it this time. My sweet, I can feel your kisses—my wife you called yourself. I wonder if she will come and pay me that visit deep down in the grave.’ He dragged himself inch by inch to the edge of the bed, and felt for the two remaining does of opium. ‘ It won’t take long,’ he said; ‘ I am getting drowsy already with only one.’ His hand shook as he emptied the contents of the bottle into the glass, they touched each other and chinked; it sent a thrill of fright through him lest Wicks should hear, and come: then it would be all up, he thought. But no—no, there was not a sound. Wicks was asleep, perhaps. ‘ Poor chap, I expect he’s worn out,’ his master said, and felt for the rose under his pillow. He found it, and clutched it tightly in his hand, then, with a great effort, raised himself on his right elbow. The darkness deepened: there was a moment’s silence—a silence that seemed to wait. A shudder went through him, he felt that he must hurry, the world was standing still for him—its gate was open, so that he might journey outwards. He puts the little glass to his lips: ‘ Here’s to my widow,’ he said, and drained it.