Part 19 (1/2)

”Now _you_'ve only got one thing to do,” said Felix. ”When I nudge you, say, '_Oui, monsieur le maire_.'”

They were inducted into the sanctuary of celebration, and Lilian saw a fat gentleman wearing the French national flag for a waistband. It would have been very comical had it not been so impressive. The ceremony started, Lilian understanding not a word. Felix nudged her. She murmured: ”_Oui, monsieur le maire_.” ... The ceremony closed.

Immediately afterwards Felix handed her a sort of little tract in a yellowish-brown cover.

”You're married now, and if anybody says you aren't, show 'em this.”

The _avoue_ was tremendous with bows and smiles. They drove back to the hotel. They were in the bedroom. Lilian took Felix apprehensively by the shoulders.

”Oh, darling. You're sure it hasn't done you any harm?”

”And that's not quite all. There's my will,” said he. ”Ring the bell.”

He spoke to Jacqueline, who after a few minutes brought in an English valet and an English lady's maid. Felix was set upon having his will witnessed by people with English addresses. He silently gave Lilian the will to read. He had written it himself. In three lines it bestowed upon her all that was his. Not a syllable about his sister. Well, that was quite right, because Miss Grig had means of her own. Sitting in the easy chair, with a blotting-pad on his knees, Felix signed the will.

Then the valet and the lady's maid signed, with much constraint and flourish. Felix gave them fifty francs apiece, and dismissed them.

”Put that with your marriage certificate,” he said to Lilian, folding up the will and offering it to her. ”I think I'll get back to bed.

Exhausting work, being married!” He laughed shortly. ”I'm going to sleep,” he said later, after he had eaten and drunk. ”You be off downstairs and have your lunch.”

But, of course, she could not go downstairs. She dropped into her bed, staggered by the swift evolution of her career. Staggered by it! Lo!

She was a typewriting girl wearing wristlets, poor, hopeless, with no prospects. A little while, and lo! she was the wife of a rich and brilliant adorer, and an honest man in whom her trust was absolute. And she was pregnant. Strange fear invaded her mind, the ancient fear that too much happiness is a crime that destiny will punish.

IX

The Widow

”Felix seriously ill; double pneumonia; we are married.--Lilian Grig.”

Ten words, plus Isabel's address and her own! She wrote the telegram after several trials, in her bedroom, on half a sheet of the hotel notepaper, Kate O'Connor standing by her side, the next morning but one.

”Give it me,” said the white nurse. ”I'll see to it for you, Mrs. Grig, as I go home.”

She looked up at the nurse, and the nurse, eyes no longer laughing, looked down at her. The nurse knew everything, and, moreover, must have a.s.sisted at scores of tragedies; yet Lilian regarded her as an innocent who understood nothing essential in life. Her comforting kiss was like the kiss of a very capable child pretending to be grown up.

Voices in the other bedroom! The doctor had arrived and was talking to the second nurse. They went in together. Felix lay a changed man, horribly aged. He was a man who had suddenly learned that in order to live it was necessary to breathe, and that breathing may be an intensely difficult operation of mechanics. His lined, wrinkled face was drawn with the awful anxieties incident to breathing, and with the acute pain in both lungs. The enemy was growing in strength and Felix was losing strength, but he could not surrender. He must continue to struggle, despite the odds, and there was no referee to stop the fight, either on the ground that it had developed into an a.s.sa.s.sination or on any other ground. The brutality had to proceed. And the sun streamed through the window; and outside, from the promenade where the idlers were strolling and the band was playing, the window looked exactly the same as all the other windows of the enormous hotel.

After an examination, Dr. Samson injected morphia. The result was almost instantaneous. The victim, freed from the anxiety of the pain, could devote the whole of his energy to breathing. He sighed, and smiled as if he had entered paradise. He gave a few short, faint coughs, like the cough of a nervous veiled woman in church, and said in a hoa.r.s.e, feeble, whispering voice:

”You must understand, doctor, it was all my fault. I insisted, and what could she do?” The two nurses modestly bent their gaze.

”Yes, yes,” the doctor concurred.

Felix had already made the same announcement several times.

”But I want everybody to know,” he persisted.

”Yes, yes,” said the doctor. ”I shall give you some oxygen this morning. It will be here in a minute. That will do you a lot of good.