Part 57 (2/2)
”Daddy!” he whispered, looking up fully at his mother; ”take 'em to Daddy!”
She fell on her knees beside him with a shriek, hiding her face, and shaking from head to foot. Marcella alone saw the slight, mysterious smile, the gradual sinking of the lids, the shudder of departing life that ran through the limbs.
A heavy sound swung through the air--a heavy repeated sound. Mrs. Hurd held up her head and listened. The church clock tolled eight. She knelt there, struck motionless by terror--by recollection.
”Oh, Jim!” she said, under her breath--”my Jim!”
The plaintive tone--as of a creature that has not even breath and strength left wherewith to chide the fate that crushes it--broke Marcella's heart. Sitting beside the dead son, she wrapt the mother in her arms, and the only words that even her wild spirit could find wherewith to sustain this woman through the moments of her husband's death were words of prayer--the old shuddering cries wherewith the human soul from the beginning has thrown itself on that awful encompa.s.sing Life whence it issued, and whither it returns.
CHAPTER XV.
Two days later, in the afternoon, Aldous Raeburn found himself at the door of Mellor. When he entered the drawing-room, Mrs. Boyce, who had heard his ring, was hurrying away.
”Don't go,” he said, detaining her with a certain peremptoriness. ”I want all the light on this I can get. Tell me, she has _actually_ brought herself to regard this man's death as in some sort my doing--as something which ought to separate us?”
Mrs. Boyce saw that he held an opened letter from Marcella crushed in his hand. But she did not need the explanation. She had been expecting him at any hour throughout the day, and in just this condition of mind.
”Marcella must explain for herself,” she said, after a moment's thought.
”I have no right whatever to speak for her. Besides, frankly, I do not understand her, and when I argue with her she only makes me realise that I have no part or lot in her--that I never had. It is just enough. She was brought up away from me. And I have no natural hold. I cannot help you, or any one else, with her.”
Aldous had been very tolerant and compa.s.sionate in the past of this strange mother's abdication of her maternal place, and of its probable causes. But it was not in human nature that he should be either to-day.
He resumed his questioning, not without sharpness.
”One word, please. Tell me something of what has happened since Thursday, before I see her. I have written--but till this morning I have had not one line from her.”
They were standing by the window, he with his frowning gaze, in which agitation struggled against all his normal habits of manner and expression, fixed upon the lawn and the avenue. She told him briefly what she knew of Marcella's doings since the arrival of Wharton's telegram--of the night in the cottage, and the child's death. It was plain that he listened with a shuddering repulsion.
”Do you know,” he exclaimed, turning upon her, ”that she may never recover this? Such a strain, such a horror! rushed upon so wantonly, so needlessly.”
”I understand. You think that I have been to blame? I do not wonder. But it is not true--not in this particular case. And anyway your view is not mine. Life--and the iron of it--has to be faced, even by women--perhaps, most of all, by women. But let me go now. Otherwise my husband will come in. And I imagine you would rather see Marcella before you see him or any one.”
That suggestion told. He instantly gathered himself together, and nervously begged that she would send Marcella to him at once. He could think of nothing, talk of nothing, till he had seen her. She went, and Aldous was left to walk up and down the room planning what he should say. After the ghastly intermingling of public interests and private misery in which he had lived for these many weeks there was a certain relief in having reached the cleared s.p.a.ce--the decisive moment--when he might at last give himself wholly to what truly concerned him. He would not lose her without a struggle. None the less he knew, and had known ever since the scene in the Court library, that the great disaster of his life was upon him.
The handle of the door turned. She was there.
He did not go to meet her. She had come in wrought up to face attack--reproaches, entreaties--ready to be angry or to be humble, as he should give her the lead. But he gave her no lead. She had to break through that quivering silence as best she could.
”I wanted to explain everything to you,” she said in a low voice, as she came near to him. ”I know my note last night was very hard and abrupt. I didn't mean to be hard. But I am still so tired--and everything that one says, and feels, hurts so.”
She sank down upon a chair. This womanish appeal to his pity had not been at all in her programme. Nor did it immediately succeed. As he looked at her, he could only feel the wantonness of this eclipse into which she had plunged her youth and beauty. There was wrath, a pa.s.sionate protesting wrath, under his pain.
”Marcella,” he said, sitting down beside her, ”did you read my letter that I wrote you the day before--?”
”Yes.”
”And after that, you could still believe that I was indifferent to your grief--your suffering--or to the suffering of any human being for whom you cared? You could still think it, and feel it?”
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