April's Lady Part 56

"And what is it to me?" asks the girl, as pale now as he is. "Is it a relief--a comfort to me to have to listen to you?"

She clenches her hands involuntarily. The fan falls with a little crash to the ground.

"No." He is silent a moment, "No--it is unfair--unjust! You shall not be made uncomfortable again. It is the last time.... I shall not trouble you again in this way. I don't say we shall never meet again.

You"--pausing and looking at her--"you do not desire that?"

"Oh, no," coldly, politely.

"If you do, say so at once," with a rather peremptory ring in his tone.

"I should," calmly.

"I am glad of that. As my cousin is a great friend of mine, and as I shall get a fortnight's leave soon, I shall probably run over to Ireland, and spend it with her. After all"--bitterly--"why should I suppose it would be disagreeable to you?"

"It was quite a natural idea," says she, immovably.

"However," says he, steadily, "you need not be afraid that, even if we do meet, I shall ever annoy you in this way again----"

"Oh, I am never afraid," says she, with that terrible smile that seems to freeze him.

"Well, good-bye," holding out his hand. He is quite as composed as she is now, and is even able to return her smile in kind.

"So soon? But Barbara will be down to tea in a few minutes. You will surely wait for her?"

"I think not."

"But really do! I am going to see after the children, and give them some chocolate I bought for them."

"It will probably make them ill," says he, smiling still. "No, thank you. I must go now, indeed. You will make my excuses to Mrs. Monkton, please. Good-bye."

"Good-bye," says she, laying her hand in his for a second. She has grown suddenly very cold, shivering: it seems almost as if an icy blast from some open portal has been blown in upon her. He is still looking at her.

There is something wild--strange--in his expression.

"You cannot realize it, but I can," says he, unsteadily. "It is good-bye forever, so far as life for me is concerned."

He has turned away from her. He is gone. The sharp closing of the door wakens her to the fact that she is alone. Mechanically, quite calmly, she looks around the empty room. There is a little Persian chair cover over there all awry. She rearranges it with a critical eye to its proper appearance, and afterward pushes a small chair into its place. She pats a cushion or two, and, finally taking up her bonnet and the pins she had laid upon the chimney-piece, goes up to her own room.

Once there----

With a rush the whole thing comes back to her. The entire meaning of it--what she has done. That word--forever. The bonnet has fallen from her fingers. Sinking upon her knees beside the bed, she buries her face out of sight. Presently her slender frame is torn by those cruel, yet merciful sobs!

CHAPTER XL.

"The sense of death is most in apprehension."

"Thus grief still treads upon the heels of pleasure."

It is destined to be a day of grief! Monkton who had been out all the morning, having gone to see the old people, a usual habit of his, had not returned to dinner--a very unusual habit with him. It had occurred, however, once or twice, that he had stayed to dine with them on such occasions, as when Sir George had had a troublesome letter from his elder son, and had looked to the younger to give him some comfort--some of his time to help him to bear it, by talking it all over. Barbara, therefore, while dressing for Mrs. Thesiger's "At Home," had scarcely felt anxiety, and, indeed, it is only now when she has come down to the drawing-room to find Joyce awaiting her, also in gala garb, so far as a gown goes, that a suspicion of coming trouble takes possession of her.

"He is late, isn't he?" she says, looking at Joyce with something nervous in her expression. "What can have kept him? I know he wanted to meet the General, and now----What can it be?"

"His mother, probably," says Joyce, indifferently. "From your description of her, I should say she must be a most thoroughly uncomfortable old person."

"Yes. Not pleasant, certainly. A little of her, as George Ingram used to say, goes a long way. But still----And these Thesiger people are friends of his, and----"

"You are working yourself up into a thorough belief in the sensational street accident," says Joyce, who has seated herself well out of the glare of the chandelier. "You want to be tragic. It is a mistake, believe me."

Something in the bitterness of the girl's tone strikes on her sister's ear. Joyce had not come down to dinner, had pleaded a headache as an excuse for her non-appearance, and Mrs. Monkton and Tommy (she could not bear to dine alone) had devoured that meal _a deux_. Tommy had certainly been anything but dull company.

"Has anything happened, Joyce?" asks her sister quickly. She has had her suspicions, of course, but they were of the vaguest order.

Joyce laughs.

"I told you your nerves were out of order," says she. "What should happen? Are you still dwelling on the running over business? I a.s.sure you you wrong Freddy. He can take care of himself at a crossing as well as another man, and better. Even a hansom, I am convinced, could do no harm to Freddy."

"I wasn't thinking of him," says Barbara, a little reproachfully, perhaps. "I----"

"No. Then you ought to be ashamed of yourself! Here he is," cries she suddenly, springing to her feet as the sound of Monkton's footsteps ascending the stairs can now be distinctly heard. "I hope you will explain yourself to him." She laughs again, and disappears through the doorway that leads to the second hall outside, as Monkton enters.

"How late you are, Freddy," says his wife, the reproach in her voice heightened because of the anxiety she had been enduring. "I thought you would never----What is it? What has happened? Freddy! there is bad news."

"Yes, very bad," says Monkton, sinking into a chair.

"Your brother----" breathlessly. Of late, she has always known that trouble is to be expected from him.

"He is dead," says Monkton in a low tone.

Barbara, flinging her opera cloak aside, comes quickly to him. She leans over him and slips her arms round his neck.

"Dead!" says she in an awestruck tone.

"Yes. Killed himself! Shot himself! the telegram came this morning when I was with them. I could not come home sooner; it was impossible to leave them."

"Oh, Freddy, I am sorry you left them even now; a line to me would have done. Oh, what a horrible thing, and to die like that."

"Yes." He presses one of her hands, and then, rising, begins to move hurriedly up and down the room. "It was misfortune upon misfortune," he says presently. "When I went over there this morning they had just received a letter filled with----"

"From him!"

"Yes. That is what seemed to make it so much worse later on. Life in the morning, death in the afternoon!" His voice grows choked. "And such a letter as it was, filled with nothing but a most scandalous account of his----Oh!"----he breaks off suddenly as if shocked. "Oh, he is dead, poor fellow."

"Don't take it like that," says Barbara, following him and clinging to him. "You know you could not be unkind. There were debts then?"

"Debts! It is difficult to explain just now, my head is aching so; and those poor old people? Well, it means ruin for them, Barbara. Of course his debts must be paid, his honor kept intact, for the sake of the old name, but--they will let all the houses, the two in town, this one, and their own, and--and the old place down in Warwickshire, the home, all must go out of their hands."