The Irrational Knot Part 68

Marian obeyed; and the doctor, whose manner was kind, though different to that of the London physicians to whom she was accustomed, presently left the room and went upstairs. Eliza was howling like an animal. The sound irritated Marian even at that pa.s.s: she despised the whole Irish race on its account. She could hardly keep her temper as she said:

"Is Miss Conolly seriously hurt?"

"Oa, blessed hour! she's kilt. Her head's dhreepin wid blood."

Marian shuddered and felt faint again.

"Lord Almighty save use, I doa knoa how she done it at all, at all. She must ha fell agin the stoave. It's the dhrink, dhrink, dhrink, that brought her to it. It's little I knew what that wairy bottle o brandy would do to her, or sorra bit o me would ha got it."

"You did very wrong in getting it, Eliza."

"What could I do, miss, when she axed me?"

"There is no use in crying over it now. It would have been kinder to have kept it from her."

"Sure I know. Many's the time I tould her so. But she could talk the birds off the bushes, and it wint to me heart to refuse her. G.o.d send her well out of her throuble!"

Here the doctor returned. "How are you now?" he said.

"I think I am better. Pray dont think of me. How is she?"

"It's all over. Hallo! Come, Miss Biddy! you go and cry in the kitchen,"

he added, pushing Eliza, who had set up an intolerable lamentation, out of the room.

"How awful!" said Marian, stunned. "Are you quite sure? She seemed better this morning."

"Quite sure," said the doctor, smiling grimly at the question. "She was practically dead when they carried her upstairs, poor girl. It's easier to kill a person than you think, Mrs. Forster, although she tried so long and so hard without succeeding. But she'd have done it. She'd have been starved into health only to drink herself back into starvation, and the end would have been a very bad one. Better as it is, by far!"

"Doctor: I must go out and telegraph the news to London. I know one of her relatives there."

The doctor shook his head. "I will telegraph if you like, but you must stay here. Youre not yet fit to go out."

"I am afraid I have not been well lately," said Marian. "I want to consult you about myself--not now, of course, after what has happened, but some day when you have leisure to call."

"You can put off consulting me just as long as you please; but this accident is no reason why you shouldnt do it at once. If there is anything wrong, the sooner you have advice--you neednt have it from me if you prefer some other doctor--the better."

Upon this encouragement Marian described to him her state of health. He seemed a little amused, asked her a few questions, and finally told her coolly that she might expect to become a mother next fall. She was so utterly dismayed that he began to look stern in antic.i.p.ation of an appeal to him to avert this; an appeal which he had often had to refuse without ever having succeeded in persuading a woman that it was futile, or convincing her that it was immoral. But Marian spared him this: she was overwhelmed by the new certainty that a reconciliation with her husband was no longer possible. Her despair at the discovery shewed her for the first time how homesick she really was.

When the doctor left, Mrs. Myers came. She exclaimed; wept; and gossiped until two police officers arrived. Marian related to them what she had seen of the accident, and became indignant at the apparent incredulity with which they questioned her and examined the room. After their departure Eliza came to her, and invited her to go upstairs and see the body of Susanna. She refused with a shudder; but when she saw that the girl was hurt as well as astonished, it occurred to her that avoidance of the dead might, if it came to Conolly's knowledge, be taken by him to indicate a lack of kind feeling toward his sister. So she overcame her repugnance, and went with Eliza. The window-shades were drawn down, and the dressing-table had been covered with a white cloth, on which stood a plaster statuet of the Virgin and Child, with two lighted candles before it. To please Eliza, who had evidently made these arrangements, Marian whispered a few words of approval, and turned curiously to the bed. The sight made her uncomfortable. The body was decently laid out, its wounded forehead covered with a bandage, and Eliza's rosary and crucifix on its breast; but it did not, as Marian had hoped, suggest peace or sleep. It was not Susanna, but a vacant thing that had always underlain her, and which, apart from her, was ghastly.

"She died a good Catholic anyhow: the light o Heaven to her sowl!" said Eliza, whimpering, but speaking as though she expected and defied Marian to contradict her.

"Amen," said Marian.

"It's sure and sartin. There never was a Conolly a Prodestan yet."

Marian left the room, resolving to avoid such sights in future. Mrs.

Myers was below, anxious to resume the conversation which the visit of the police had interrupted. Marian could not bear this. To escape, she left the house, and went to her only friend in New York, Mrs. Crawford, whose frequent visits she had never before ventured to return. To her she narrated the events of the day.

"This business of the poor girl killing herself is real shocking," said Mrs. Crawford. "Perhaps your husband will come over here now, and give you a chance of making up with him."

"If he does, I must leave New York, Mrs. Crawford."

"What are you frightened of? If he is as good a man as you say, you ought to be glad to see him. I'm sure he would have you back. Depend on it, he has been longing for you all this time; and when he sees you again as pretty as ever, he will open his arms to you. He wont like you any the worse for being a little bashful with him after such an escapade."

"I would not meet him for any earthly consideration. After what the doctor told me to-day, I should throw myself out of the window, I think, if I heard him coming upstairs. I should like to see him, if I were placed where he could not see me; but face him I _could_ not."

"Well, my dear, I think it's right silly of you, though the little stranger--it will be a regular stranger--is a difficulty: there's no two ways about that."

"Besides, I have been thinking over things alone in my room; and I see that it is better for him to be free. I know he was disappointed in me.

He is not the sort of man to be tied down to such an ignorant woman as I."

"What does he expect from a woman? If youre not good enough for him, he must be very hard to please."

Marian shook her head. "He is capable of pitying and being considerate with me," she said: "I know that. But I am not sure that it is a good thing to be pitied and forborne with. There is something humiliating in it. I suppose I am proud, as you often tell me; but I should like to be amongst women what he is amongst men, supported by my own strength. Even within the last three weeks I have felt myself becoming more independent in my isolation. I was afraid to go about the streets by myself at first. Now I am getting quite brave. That unfortunate woman did me good.

Taking care of her, and being relied on so much by her, has made me rely on myself more. Thanks to you, I have not much loneliness to complain of. And yet I have been utterly cast down sometimes. I cannot tell what is best. Sometimes I think that independence is worth all the solitary struggling it costs. Then again I remember how free from real care I was at home, and yearn to be back there. It is so hard to know what one ought to do."

"You have been more lively since you got such a pleasant answer to your telegram. I wish the General would offer to let me keep my own money and as much more as I wanted. Not that he is close-fisted, poor man! That reminds me to tell you that you must stay the evening. He wants to see you as bad as can be--never stops asking me to bring you up some time when he's at home. You mustnt excuse yourself: the General will see you safe back to your place."

"But if visitors come, Mrs. Crawford?"

"n.o.body will come. If they do, they will be glad to see you. What do they know about you? You cant live like a hermit all your life."

Marian, sooner than go back to Mrs. Myers's, stayed; and the evening pa.s.sed pleasantly enough, although three visitors came: a gentleman, with his wife and brother. The lady, besides eating, and replying to the remarks with which Mrs. Crawford occasionally endeavored to entertain her, did nothing but admire Marian's dress and listen to her conversation. Her husband was polite; but Marian, comparing him with the English gentlemen of her acquaintance, thought him rather oppressively respectful, and too much given to conversing in little speeches. He had been in London; and he described, in a correct narrative style, his impressions of St. Paul's, the Tower, and Westminster Palace. His brother fell in love with Mrs. Forster at first sight, and sat silent until she remarked to him how strangely the hotel omnibuses resembled old English stage coaches, when he became recklessly talkative and soon convinced her that American society produced quite as choice a compound of off-handedness and folly as London could. But all this was amusing after her long seclusion; and once or twice, when the thought of dead Susanna came back to her, she was ashamed to be so gay.

No one was stirring at Mrs. Myers's when she returned. They had left her lamp in the entry; and she took it upstairs with her, going softly lest she should disturb the household. Susanna's usual call and pet.i.tion for a few minutes talk was no longer to be feared, for Susanna was now only a memory. Marian tried not to think of the body in the room above.

Though she was free from the dread which was just then making Eliza tremble, cry, and cross herself to sleep, she disliked the body all the more as she distinguished it from the no-longer existent woman: a feat quite beyond the Irish peasant girl. She sat down and began to think.

The Crawfords and their friends had been very nice to her: no doubt the lady would not have been civil had she known all; but, then, the lady was a silly person. They were not exactly what Marian considered the best sort of people; but New York was not London. She would not stay at Mrs. Myers's: her income would enable her to lodge more luxuriously. If she could afford to furnish some rooms for herself, she would get some curtains she had seen one day lately when shopping with Mrs. Crawford.

They would go well with----

A noise in the room overhead: Susanna's death chamber. Marian gave a great start, and understood what Eliza meant by having "the life put across in her." She listened, painfully conscious of the beats of her heart. The noise came again: a footstep, or a chair pushed back, or--she was not certain what. Could Mrs. Myers be watching at the bedside? It was not unlikely. Could Susanna be recovering--finding herself laid out for dead, and making a struggle for life up there alone? That would be inconvenient, undesirable: even Marian forgot just then to consider that obvious view wrong and unfeeling; but, anyhow, she must go and see, and, if necessary, help. She wished there were some one to keep her company; but was ashamed to call Eliza; and she felt that she would be as well by herself as with Mrs. Myers. There was nothing for it but to take a candle and go alone. No repet.i.tion of the noise occurred to daunt her afresh; and she reached the landing above almost rea.s.sured, and thinking how odd it was that the idea of finding somebody--Susanna--there, though it had come as a fear, was fading out as a disappointed hope.

Finding herself loth to open the door, she at last set her teeth and did it swiftly, as if to surprise someone within. She did surprise some one: her husband, sitting by his sister's body. He started violently on seeing her, and rose; whilst she, mechanically shutting the door without turning, leaned back against it with her hand behind her, and looked at him open-mouthed.

"Marian," he said, in a quite unexpectedly apprehensive tone, putting up his hand deprecatingly: "remember, here"--indicating the figure on the bed--"is an end of hypocrisy! No unrealities now: I cannot bear them.

Let us have no trash of magnanimous injured husband, erring but repentant wife. We are man and woman, nothing less and nothing more.

After our marriage you declined intercourse on those terms; and I accepted your conventions to please you. Now I refuse all conventions: you have broken them yourself. If you will not have the truth between us, avoid me until I have subsided into the old groove again. There!" he added, wincing, "dont blush. What have you to blush for? It was the only honest thing you ever did."

"I dont understand."

"No," he said gently, but with a gesture of despair; "how could you? You never did, and you never will."

"If you mean to accuse me of having deceived you," said Marian, greatly relieved and encouraged by a sense of being now the injured party, "you are most unjust. I dont excuse myself for behaving wickedly, but I _never_ deceived you or told you a falsehood. Never. When he first spoke wrongly to me, I told you at once; and you did not care."

"Not a straw. It was nothing to me that he loved you: the point was, did you love him? If not, then all was well: if so, our marriage was already at an end. But you mistake my drift. Falsehood is something more than fibbing. You never told fibs--except the two or three dozen a week that mere politeness required and which you never thought of counting; but you never told me the truth, Marian, because you never told your self the truth. You told me what you told yourself, I grant you; and so you were not conscious of deceit. I dont reproach you. Surely you can bear to be told what every honest man tells himself almost daily."

"I suppose I have deserved it," said Marian; "but unkind words from you are a new experience. You are very unlike yourself to-night."

He repressed, with visible effort, an explosion of impatience. "On the contrary, I am like myself--I actually am myself to-night, I hope." Then the explosion came. "Is it utterly impossible for you to say something real to me? Only learn to do that, and you may have ten love romances every year with other men, if you like. Be anything rather than a ladylike slave and liar. There! as usual, the truth makes you shrink from me. As I said before, I refuse further intercourse on such terms.