Sacred and Profane Love Part 6

But I knew why. The thing flashed over me instantly. My dear aunt was dead.

'You've got no aunt,' said Rebecca. 'My poor dear! And you at the concert!'

I dropped my head and my bosom on the bare mahogany table and cried.

Never before, and never since, have I spilt such tears--hot, painful drops, distilled plenteously from a heart too crushed and torn.

'There, there!' muttered Rebecca. 'I wish I could have told you different--less cruel; but it wasn't in me to do it.'

'And she's lying upstairs this very moment all cold and stiff,' a wailing voice broke in.

It was Lucy, who could not keep herself away from us.

'Will you go to your kitchen, my girl!'

Rebecca drove her off. 'And the poor thing's not stiff either. Her poor body's as soft as if she was only asleep, and doctor says it will be for a day or two. It's like that when they're took off like that, he says.

Oh, Miss Carlotta--'

'Tell me all about it before I go upstairs,' I said.

I had recovered.

'Your poor aunt went to bed just as soon as you were gone, miss,' said Rebecca. 'She would have it she was quite well, only tired. I took her up a cup of cocoa at ten o'clock, and she seemed all right, and then I sends Lucy to bed, and I sits up in the kitchen to wait for you. Not a sound from your poor aunt. I must have dropped asleep, miss, in my chair, and I woke up with a start like, and the kitchen clock was near on one. Thinks I, perhaps Miss Carlotta's been knocking and ringing all this time and me not heard, and I rushes to the front door. But of course you weren't there. The porch was nothing but a pool o' water. I says to myself she's stopping somewhere, I says. And I felt it was my duty to go and tell your aunt, whether she was asleep or whether she wasn't asleep.... Well, and there she was, miss, with her eyes closed, and as soft as a child. I spoke to her, loud, more than once. "Miss Carlotta a'n't come," I says.

"Miss Carlotta a'n't come, ma'am," I says. She never stirred. Thinks I, this is queer this is. And I goes up to her and touches her. Chilly! Then I takes the liberty of pushing back your poor aunt's eyelids, and I could but see the whites of her eyes; the eyeb.a.l.l.s was gone up, and a bit outwards. Yes; and her poor dear chin was dropped. Thinks I, here's trouble, and Miss Carlotta at the concert. I runs to our bedroom, and I tells Lucy to put a cloak on and fetch Dr. Roycroft. "Who for?" she says.

"Never you mind who for!" I says, says I. "You up and quick. But you can tell the doctor it's missis as is took." And in ten minutes he was here, miss. But it's only across the garden, like. "Yes," he said, "she's been dead an hour or more. Failure of the heart's action," he said. "She died in her sleep," he said. "Thank G.o.d she died in her sleep if she was to die, the pure angel!" I says. I told the doctor as you were away for the night, miss. And I laid her out, miss, and your poor auntie wasn't my first, either. I've seen trouble--I've--'

And Rebecca's tears overcame her voice.

'I'll go upstairs with you, miss,' she struggled out.

One thought that flew across my mind was that Doctor Roycroft was very intimate with the Ryleys, and had doubtless somehow informed them of my aunt's death. This explained Fred Ryley's strange words and att.i.tude to me on the way from the station. The young man had been too timid to stop me. The matter was a trifle, but another idea that struck me was not a trifle, though I strove to make it so. My aunt had died about midnight, and it was at midnight that Diaz and I had heard the mysterious knock on his sitting-room door. At the time I had remarked how it resembled my aunt's knock. Occasionally, when the servants overslept themselves, Aunt Constance would go to their rooms in her pale-blue dressing-gown and knock on their door exactly like that. Could it be that this was one of those psychical manifestations of which I had read? Had my aunt, in pa.s.sing from this existence to the next, paused a moment to warn me of my terrible danger? My intellect replied that a disembodied soul could not knock, and that the phenomenon had been due simply to some guest or servant of the hotel who had mistaken the room, and discovered his error in time. Nevertheless, the instinctive part of me--that part of us which refuses to fraternize with reason, and which we call the superst.i.tious because we cannot explain it--would not let go the spiritualistic theory, and during all my life has never quite surrendered it to the attacks of my brain.

There was a long pause.

'No,' I said; 'I will go upstairs alone;' and I went, leaving my cloak and hat with Rebecca.

Already, to my hypersensitive nostrils, there was a slight odour in the darkened bedroom. What lay on the bed, straight and long and thin, resembled almost exactly my aunt as she lived. I forced myself to look on it. Except that the face was paler than usual, and had a curious transparent, waxy appearance, and that the cheeks were a little hollowed, and the lines from the nose to the corners of the mouth somewhat deepened, there had been no outward change.... And _this_ once was she! I thought, Where is she, then? Where is the soul? Where is that which loved me without understanding me? Where is that which I loved? The baffling, sad enigma of death confronted me in all its terrifying crudity. The shaft of love and the desolation of death had struck me almost in the same hour, and before these twin mysteries, supremely equal, I recoiled and quailed. I had neither faith nor friend. I was solitary, and my soul also was solitary. The difficulties of Being seemed insoluble. I was not a moral coward, I was not p.r.o.ne to facile repentances; but as I gazed at that calm and unsullied mask I realized, whatever I had gained, how much I had lost. At twenty-one I knew more of the fountains of life than Aunt Constance at over sixty. Poor aged thing that had walked among men for interminable years, and never _known_! It seemed impossible, shockingly against Nature, that my aunt's existence should have been so! I pitied her profoundly. I felt that essentially she was girlish compared to me.

And yet--and yet--that which she had kept and which I had given away was precious, too--indefinably and wonderfully precious! The price of knowledge and of ecstasy seemed heavy to me then. The girl that had gone with Diaz into that hotel apartment had come out no more. She had expired there, and her extinction was the price, Oh, innocence! Oh, divine ignorance! Oh, refusal! None knows your value save her who has bartered you! And herein is the woman's tragedy.

There in that mausoleum I decided that I must never see Diaz again. He was fast in my heart, a flashing, glorious treasure, but I must never see him again. I must devote myself to memory.

On the dressing-table lay a brown-paper parcel which seemed out of place there. I opened it, and it contained a magnificently-bound copy of _The Imitation of Christ_. Upon the flyleaf was written: 'To dearest Carlotta on attaining her majority. With fondest love. C.P.'

It was too much; it was overwhelming. I wept again. Soul so kind and pure! The sense of my loss, the sense of the simple, proud rect.i.tude of her life, laid me low.

V

Train journeys have too often been sorrowful for me, so much so that the conception itself of a train, crawling over the country like a snake, or flying across it like a winged monster, fills me with melancholy. Trains loaded with human parcels of sadness and illusion and brief joy, wandering about, crossing, and occasionally colliding in the murk of existence; trains warmed and lighted in winter; trains open to catch the air of your own pa.s.sage in summer; night-trains that pierce the night with your yellow, glaring eyes, and waken mysterious villages, and leave the night behind and run into the dawn as into a station; trains that carry bread and meats for the human parcels, and pillows and fountains of fresh water; trains that sweep haughtily and wearily indifferent through the landscapes and the towns, sufficient unto yourselves, hasty, panting, formidable, and yet mournful ent.i.ties: I have understood you in your arrogance and your pathos.

That little journey from Knype to Shawport had implanted itself painfully in my memory, as though during it I had peered too close into the face of life. And now I had undertaken another, and a longer one. Three months had elapsed--three months of growing misery and despair; three months of tedious familiarity with lawyers and distant relatives, and all the exasperating camp-followers of death; three months of secret and strange fear, waxing daily. And at last, amid the expostulations and the shrugs of wisdom and age, I had decided to go to London. I had little energy, and no interest, but I saw that I must go to London; I was driven there by my secret fear; I dared not delay. And not a soul in the wide waste of the Five Towns comprehended me, or could have comprehended me had it been so minded. I might have shut up the house for a time. But no; I would not. Always I have been sudden, violent, and arbitrary; I have never been able to tolerate half-measures, or to wait upon occasion. I sold the house; I sold the furniture. Yes; and I dismissed my faithful Rebecca and the clinging Lucy, and they departed, G.o.d knows where; it was as though I had sold them into slavery. Again and again, in the final week, I cut myself to the quick, recklessly, perhaps purposely; I moved in a sort of terrible languor, deaf to every appeal, pretending to be stony, and yet tortured by my secret fear, and by a hemorrhage of the heart that no philosophy could stanch. And I swear that nothing desolated me more than the strapping and the labelling of my trunks that morning after I had slept, dreamfully, in the bed that I should never use again--the bed that, indeed, was even then the property of a furniture dealer. Had I wept at all, I should have wept as I wrote out the labels for my trunks: 'Miss Peel, pa.s.senger to Golden Cross Hotel, London. Euston via Rugby,'

with two thick lines drawn under the 'Euston.' That writing of labels was the climax. With a desperate effort I tore myself up by the roots, and all bleeding I left the Five Towns. I have never seen them since. Some day, when I shall have attained serenity and peace, when the battle has been fought and lost, I will revisit my youth. I have always loved pa.s.sionately the disfigured hills and valleys of the Five Towns. And as I think of Oldcastle Street, dropping away sleepily and respectably from the Town Hall of Bursley, with the gold angel holding a gold crown on its spire, I vibrate with an inexplicable emotion. What is there in Oldcastle Street to disturb the dust of the soul?

I must tell you here that Diaz had gone to South America on a triumphal tour of concerts, lest I forget! I read it in the paper.

So I arrived in London on a February day, about one o'clock. And the hall-porter at the Golden Cross Hotel, and the two pale girls in the bureau of the hotel, were sympathetic and sweet to me, because I was young and alone, and in mourning, and because I had great rings round my eyes. It was a fine day, blue and mild. At half-past three I had nothing in the world to do. I had come to London without a plan, without a purpose, with scarcely an introduction; I wished simply to plunge myself into its solitude, and to be alone with my secret fear. I walked out into the street, slowly, like one whom ennui has taught to lose no chance of dissipating time. I neither liked nor disliked London. I had no feelings towards it save one of perplexity. I thought it noisy, dirty, and hurried. Its great name roused no thrill in my bosom. On the morrow, I said, I would seek a lodging, and perhaps write to Ethel Ryley.

Meanwhile I strolled up into Trafalgar Square, and so into Charing Cross Road. And in Charing Cross Road--it was the curst accident of fate--I saw the signboard of the celebrated old firm of publishers, Oakley and Dalbiac. It is my intention to speak of my books as little as possible in this history. I must, however, explain that six months before my aunt's death I had already written my first novel, _The Jest_, and sent it to precisely Oakley and Dalbiac. It was a wild welter of youthful extravagances, and it aimed to depict London society, of which I knew nothing whatever, with a flippant and cynical pen. Oakley and Dalbiac had kept silence for several months, and had then stated, in an extremely formal epistle, that they thought the book might have some chance of success, and that they would be prepared to publish it on certain terms, but that I must not expect, etc. By that time I had lost my original sublime faith in the exceeding excellence of my story, and I replied that I preferred to withdraw the book. To this letter I had received no answer. When I saw the famous sign over a doorway the impulse seized me to enter and get the ma.n.u.script, with the object of rewriting it. Soon, I reflected, I might not be able to enter; the portals of mankind might be barred to me for a s.p.a.ce.... I saw in a flash of insight that my salvation lay in work, and in nothing else. I entered, resolutely. A brougham was waiting at the doors.

After pa.s.sing along counters furnished with ledgers and clerks, through a long, lofty room lined with great pigeon-holes containing thousands of books each wrapped separately in white paper, I was shown into what the clerk who acted as chamberlain called the office of the princ.i.p.al. This room, too, was s.p.a.cious, but so sombre that the electric light was already burning. The first thing I noticed was that the window gave on a wall of white tiles. In the middle of the somewhat dingy apartment was a vast, square table, and at this table sat a pale, tall man, whose youth astonished me--for the firm of Oakley and Dalbiac was historic.

He did not look up exactly at the instant of my entering, but when he did look up, when he saw me, he stared for an instant, and then sprang from his chair as though magically startled into activity. His age was about thirty, and he had large, dark eyes, and a slight, dark moustache, and his face generally was interesting; he wore a dark gray suit. I was nervous, but he was even more nervous; yet in the moment of looking up he had not seemed nervous. He could not do enough, apparently, to make me feel at ease, and to show his appreciation of me and my work. He spoke enthusiastically of _The Jest_, begging me neither to suppress it nor to alter it. And, without the least suggestion from me, he offered me a considerable sum of money in advance of royalties. At that time I scarcely knew what royalties were. But although my ignorance of business was complete, I guessed that this man was behaving in a manner highly unusual among publishers. He was also patently contradicting the tenor of his firm's letter to me. I thanked him, and said I should like, at any rate, to glance through the ma.n.u.script.

'Don't alter it, Miss Peel, I beg,' he said. 'It is "young," I know; but it ought to be. I remember my wife said--my wife reads many of our ma.n.u.scripts--by the way--' He went to a door, opened it, and called out, 'Mary!'

A tall and slim woman, extremely elegant, appeared in reply to this appeal. Her hair was gray above the ears, and I judged that she was four or five years older than the man. She had a kind, thin face, with shining gray eyes, and she was wearing a hat.

'Mary, this is Miss Peel, the author of _The Jest_--you remember. Miss Peel, my wife.'

The woman welcomed me with quick, sincere gestures. Her smile was very pleasant, and yet a sad smile. The husband also had an air of quiet, restrained, cheerful sadness.

'My wife is frequently here in the afternoon like this,' said the princ.i.p.al.

'Yes,' she laughed; 'it's quite a family affair, and I'm almost on the staff. I distinctly remember your ma.n.u.script, Miss Peel, and how very clever and amusing it was.'

Her praise was spontaneous and cordial, but it was a different thing from the praise of her husband. He obviously noticed the difference.

'I was just saying to Miss Peel--' he began, with increased nervousness.

'Pardon me,' I interrupted. 'But am I speaking to Mr. Oakley or Mr. Dalbiac?'

'To neither,' said he. 'My name is Ispenlove, and I am the nephew of the late Mr. Dalbiac. Mr. Oakley died thirty years ago. I have no partner.'

'You expected to see a very old gentleman, no doubt,' Mrs.

Ispenlove remarked.

'Yes,' I smiled.

'People often do. And Frank is so very young. You live in London?'

'No,' I said; 'I have just come up.'

'To stay?'

'To stay.'

'Alone?'