Part 13 (1/2)

'But why despair so soon?' she cried, rebelling against this heavy acquiescence of his and her own sense of hopelessness. 'You are a man any woman might love. Why should she not pa.s.s from the mere friendly intellectual relation to another? Don't go away from London. Stay and see as much of her as you can.'

Kendal shook his head. 'I used to dream,' he said huskily, 'of a time when failure should have come, when she would want some one to step in and s.h.i.+eld her. Sometimes I thought of her protected in my arms against the world. But now!'

She felt the truth of his unspoken argument--of all that his tone implied. In the minds of both the same image gathered shape and distinctness. Isabel Bretherton in the halo of her great success, in all the intensity of her new life, seemed to her and to him to stand afar off, divided by an impa.s.sable gulf from this simple, human craving, which was crying to her, unheard and hopeless, across the darkness.

CHAPTER VIII

A month after the first performance of _Elvira_ Kendal returned to town on a frosty December afternoon from the Surrey lodgings on which he had now established a permanent hold. He mounted to his room, found his letters lying ready for him, and on the top of them a telegram, which, as his man-servant informed him, had arrived about an hour before. He took it up carelessly, opened it, and bent over it with a start of anxiety.

It was from his brother-in-law. '_Marie is very ill. Doctors much alarmed. Can you come to-night_?' He put it down in stupefaction. Marie ill! the doctors alarmed! Good heavens! could he catch that evening train? He looked at his watch, decided that there was time, and plunged, with his servant's help, into all the necessary preparations. An hour and a half later he was speeding along through the clear cold moonlight to Dover, realising for the first time, as he leant back alone in his compartment, the full meaning of the news which had hurried him off. All his tender affection for his sister, and all his stifling sense of something unlucky and untoward in his own life, which had been so strong in him during the past two months, combined to rouse in him the blackest fears, the most hopeless despondency. Marie dead,--what would the world hold for him! Books, thought, ideas--were they enough? Could a man live by them if all else were gone? For the first time Kendal felt a doubt which seemed to shake his nature to its depths.

During the journey his thoughts dwelt in a dull sore way upon the past. He saw Marie in her childhood, in her youth, in her rich maturity. He remembered her in the schoolroom spending all her spare time over contrivances of one kind or another for his amus.e.m.e.nt. He had a vision of her going out with their mother on the night of her first ball, and pitying him for being left behind. He saw her tender face bending over the death-bed of their father, and through a hundred incidents and memories--all beautiful, all intertwined with that lovely self-forgetfulness which was characteristic of her, his mind travelled down to an evening scarcely a month before, when her affection had once more stood, a frail warm barrier, between him and the full bitterness of a great renunciation. Oh Marie, Marie!

It was still dark when he reached Paris, and the gray winter light was only just dawning when he stopped at the door of his brother-in-law's house in one of the new streets near the Champs Elysees. M. de Chateauvieux was standing on the stairs, his smoothly-shaven, clear-cut face drawn and haggard, and a stoop in his broad shoulders which Kendal had never noticed before. Kendal sprang up the steps and wrung his hand.

M. de Chateauvieux shook his head almost with a groan, in answer to the brother's inquiry of eye and lip, and led the way upstairs into the forsaken _salon_, which looked as empty and comfortless as though its mistress had been gone from it years instead of days. Arrived there, the two men standing opposite to each other in the streak of dull light made by the hasty withdrawal of a curtain, Paul said, speaking in a whisper, with dry lips:

'There is no hope--the pain is gone; you would think she was better, but the doctors say she will just lie there as she is lying now till--till--the end.'

Kendal staggered over to a chair and tried to realise what he had heard, but it was impossible, although his journey had seemed to him one long preparation for the worst. 'What is it--how did it happen?' he asked.

'Internal chill. She was only taken ill the day before yesterday, and the pain was frightful till yesterday afternoon; then it subsided, and I thought she was better--she herself was so cheerful and so thankful for the relief--but when the two doctors came in again, it was to tell me that the disappearance of the pain meant only the worst--meant that nothing more can be done--she may go at any moment.'

There was a silence. M. de Chateauvieux walked up and down with the noiseless step which even a few hours of sickness develop in the watcher, till he came and stood before his brother-in-law, saying in the same painful whisper, 'You must have some food, then I will tell her you are here.'

'No, no; I want no food,--any time will do for that. Does she expect me?'

'Yes; you won't wait? Then come.' He led the way across a little anteroom, lifted a curtain, and knocked. The nurse came, there was a little parley, and Paul went in, while Eustace waited outside, conscious of the most strangely trivial things, of the pa.s.sers-by in the street, of a wrangle between two _gamins_ on the pavement opposite, of the misplacement of certain volumes in the bookcase beside him, till the door opened again, and M. de Chateauvieux drew him in.

He stepped over the threshold, his whole being wrought up to he knew not what solemn pageant of death and parting, and the reality within startled him. The room was flooded with morning light, a frosty December sun was struggling through the fog, the curtains had just been drawn back, and the wintry radiance rested on the polished bra.s.s of the bed, on the bright surfaces of wood and gla.s.s with which the room was full, on the little tray of tea-things which the nurse held, and on his sister's face of greeting as she lay back smiling among her pillows. There was such a cheerful home peace and brightness in the whole scene--in the crackling wood fire, in the sparkle of the tea-things and the fragrance of the tea, and in the fresh white surroundings of the invalid; it seemed to him incredible that under all this familiar household detail there should be lying in wait that last awful experience of death.

Marie kissed him with grateful affectionate words spoken almost in her usual voice, and then, as he sat beside her holding her hands, she noticed that he looked pale and haggard.

'Has he had some breakfast, Paul? Oh, poor Eustace, after that long journey! Nurse, let him have my cup, there is some tea left; let me see you drink it, dear; it's so pleasant just to look after you once more.'

He drank it mechanically, she watching him with her loving eyes, while she took one hand from him and slipped it into that of her husband as he sat beside her on the bed. Her touch seemed to have meaning in it, for Paul rose presently and went to the far end of the large room; the nurse carried away the tea-things, and the brother and sister were practically alone.

'Dear Eustace,' she began, after a few pathetic moments of silence, in which look and gesture took the place of speech, 'I have so longed to see you. It seemed to me in that awful pain that I must die before I could gather my thoughts together once more, before I could get free enough from my own wretched self to say to my two dear ones all I wished to say.

But now it is all gone, and I am so thankful for this moment of peace.

I made Dr. de Chavannes tell me the whole truth. Paul and I have always promised one another that there should never be any concealment between us when either of us came to die, and I think I shall have a few hours more with you.'

She was silent a little; the voice had all its usual intonations, but it was low and weak, and it was necessary for her from time to time to gather such strength as might enable her to maintain the calm of her manner. Eustace, in bewildered misery, had hidden his face upon her hands, which were clasped in his, and every now and then she felt the pressure of his lips upon her fingers.

'There are many things I want to say to you,' she went on. 'I will try to remember them in order. Will you stay with Paul a few days--after--? will you always remember to be good to him? I know you will. My poor Paul, oh if I had but given you a child!'

The pa.s.sion of her low cry thrilled Eustace's heart. He looked up and saw on her face the expression of the hidden yearning of a lifetime. It struck him as something awful and sacred; he could not answer it except by look and touch, and presently she went on after another pause:

'His sister will come to him very likely--his widowed sister. She has a girl he is fond of. After a while he will take pleasure in her.--Then I have thought so much of you and of the future. So often last night I thought I saw you and _her_, and what you ought to do seemed to grow plain to me. Dear Eustace, don't let anything I say now ever be a burden to you--don't let it fetter you ever--but it is so strong in me you must let me say it all. She is not in love with you, Eustace--at least, I think not. She has never thought of you in that way; but there is everything there which ought to lead to love. You interest her deeply; the thought of you stands to her as the symbol of all she wants to reach; and then she knows what you have been to all those who trusted you. She knows that you are good and true. I want you to try and carry it farther for her sake and yours.' He looked up and would have spoken, but she put her soft hand over his mouth. 'Wait one moment. Those about her are not people to make her happy--at any time if things went wrong--if she broke down--she would be at their mercy. Then her position--you know what difficulties it has--it makes my heart ache sometimes to think of it. She won my love so. I felt like a mother to her. I long to have her here now, but I would not let Paul send; and if I could think of her safe with you--in those true hands of yours. Oh, you will try, darling?' He answered her huskily and brokenly, laying his face to hers on the pillow.