Vain Fortune Part 23

'We shall get wet,' she murmured, as if she were answering the fly-man, who had said again, 'Drive you to the station in ten minutes!' She hated the man for his persistency.

'Say you will come with me!' Hubert whispered; and all the while the rain came down heavier.

'No, no, Hubert.... I cannot; I promised Emily that I never would. I am going back.'

'Then we must say good-bye. I will not go back.'

'You don't mean it. You don't really intend me to go back to Emily and tell her?... She will not believe me; she will think I have sent you away to gain my own end. Hubert, you mustn't leave me ... and in all this wet. See how it rains! I shall never be able to get home alone.'

'I will drive you on as far as the lodge-gate; farther than the lodge I will not go. Nothing in the world shall tempt me to pa.s.s it.'

At a sign from Hubert the little fly-man scrambled down from his box. He was a little old man, almost hunchbacked, with small mud-coloured eyes and a fringe of white beard about his sallow, discoloured face. He was dressed in a pale yellow jacket and waistcoat, and they both noticed that his crooked little legs were covered with a pair of pepper-and-salt trousers.

They felt sure he must have overheard a large part of their conversation, for as he opened the carriage door he grinned, showing his three yellow fangs.... His appearance was not encouraging. Julia wished he were different, and then she looked at Hubert. She longed to throw herself into his arms and weep. But at that moment the heavens seemed to open, and the rain came down like a torrent, thick and fast, splashing all along the road in a million splashes.

'Horrible weather, sir; shan't be long a-takin' you to Southwater. What part of the town be yer going to--the railway station?'

Julia still hesitated. The rain beat on their faces, and when some chilling drops rolled down her neck she instinctively sought shelter in the carriage.

'Drive me to the station as fast as you can. Catch the half-past five to London, and I'll give you five shillings.'

The leather thong sounded on the starved animal's hide, the crazy vehicle rocked from side to side, and the wet country almost disappeared in the darkness. Hedges and fields swept past them in faintest outline, here and there a blurred ma.s.s, which they recognised as a farm building. His arm was about her, and she heard him murmur over and over again--

'Dearest Julia, you are what I love best in the world.'

The words thrilled her a little, but all the while she saw Emily's eyes and heard her voice.

Hubert, however, was full of happiness--the sweet happiness of the quiet, docile creature that has at last obtained what it loves.

XIX

Emily awoke shivering; the fire had gone out, the room was in darkness, and the house seemed strange and lonely. She rang the bell, and asked the servant if he had seen Mr. Price. Mr. Price had gone out late in the afternoon, and had not come in. Where was Mrs. Bentley? Mrs. Bentley had gone out earlier in the afternoon, and had not come in.

She suspected the truth at once. They had gone to London to be married. The servant lighted a candle, made up the fire, and asked if she would wait dinner. Emily made no answer, but sat still, her eyes fixed, looking into s.p.a.ce. The man lingered at the door. At that moment her little dog bounded into the room, and, in a paroxysm of delight, jumped on his mistress's lap.

She took him in her arms and kissed him, and this somewhat rea.s.sured the alarmed servant, who then thought it was no more than one of Miss Emily's queer ways. Dandy licked his mistress's face, and rubbed his rough head against her shoulder. He seemed more than usually affectionate that evening. Suddenly she caught him up in her arms, and kissed him pa.s.sionately. 'Not even for your sake, dearest Dandy, can I bear with it any longer! We are all very selfish, and it is selfish of me to leave you, but I cannot help it.' Then a doubt crossed her mind, and she raised her head and listened to it. It seemed difficult to believe that he had told her a falsehood--cruel, wicked falsehood--he who had been so kind. And yet---- Ah! yes, she knew well enough that it was all true; something told her so. The lancinating pain of doubt pa.s.sed away, and she remained thinking of the impossibility of bearing any longer with the life.

An hour pa.s.sed, and the servant came with the news that Mr. Price and Mrs.

Bentley had gone to London; they had taken the half-past five train. 'Yes,'

she said, 'I know they have.' Her voice was calm. There was a strange hollow ring in it, and the servant wondered. A few minutes after, dinner was announced; and to escape observation and comment she went into the dining-room, tasted the soup, and took a slice of mutton on her plate. She could not eat it. She gave it to Dandy. It was the last time she should feed him. How hungry he was! She hoped he would not care to eat it; he would not if he knew she was going to leave him.

In the drawing-room he insisted on being nursed; and alone, amid the faded furniture, watched over by the old portraits, her pale face fixed and her pale hands clasping her beloved dog, she sat thinking, brooding over the unhappiness, the incurable unhappiness, of her little life. She was absorbed in self, and did not rail against Hubert, or even Julia. Their personalities had somehow dropped out of her mind, and merely represented forces against which she found herself unable any longer to contend. Nor was she surprised at what had happened. There had always been in her some prescience of her fate. She and unhappiness had always seemed so inseparable, that she had never found it difficult to believe that this last misfortune would befall her. She had thought it over, and had decided that it would be unendurable to live any longer, and had borne many a terrible insomnia so that she might collect sufficient chloral to take her out of her misery; and now, as she sat thinking, she remembered that she had never, never been happy. Oh! the miserable evenings she used to spend, when a child, between her father and mother, who could not agree--why, she never understood. But she used to have to listen to her mother addressing insulting speeches to her father in a calm, even voice that nothing could alter; and, though both were dead and years divided her from that time, the memory survived, and she could see it all again--that room, the very paper on the wall, and her father being gradually worked up into a frenzy.

When she was left an orphan, Mr. Burnett had adopted her, and she remembered the joy of coming to Ashwood. She had thought to find happiness there; but there, as at home, fate had gone against her, and she was hardly eighteen when Mr. Burnett had asked her to marry him. She had loved that old man, but he had not loved her; for when she had refused to marry him he had broken all his promises and left her penniless, careless of what might become of her. Then she had given her whole heart to Julia, and Julia, too, had deceived her. And had she not loved Hubert?--no one would ever know how much; she did not know herself,--and had he not lied to her? Oh, it was very cruel to deceive a poor little girl in this heartless way! There was no heart in the world, that was it--and she was all heart; and her heart had been trampled on ever since she could remember. And when they came back they would revenge themselves upon her--insult her with their happiness; perhaps insist on sending her away.

Dandy drowsed on her lap. The servant brought in the tea, and when he returned to the kitchen he said he had never seen any one look so ghost-like as Miss Emily. The clock ticked loudly in the silence of the old room, the hands moving slowly towards ten. She waited for the hour to strike; it was then that she usually went to bed. Her thoughts moved as in a nightmare; and paramount in this chaotic ma.s.s of sensation was an acute sense of the deception that had been practised on her; with the consciousness, now firm and unalterable, that it had become impossible for her to live. When the clock struck she got up from her chair, and the movement seemed to react on her brain; her thoughts unclouded, and she went up-stairs thinking clearly of her love of this old house. The old gentleman in the red coat, his hand on his sword, looked on her benignly; and the lady playing the spinet smiled as sweetly as was her wont. Emily held up the candle to the picture of the windmill. She had always loved that picture, and the sad thought came that she should never see it again.

Dandy, who had galloped up-stairs, stood looking through the banisters, wagging his tail.

The moment she got into her room she wrote the following note: 'I have taken an overdose of chloral. My life was too miserable to be borne any longer. I forgive those who have caused my unhappiness, and I hope they will forgive me any unhappiness I have caused them.' They were nothing to her now; they were beyond her hate, and the only pang she felt was parting with her beloved Dandy. There he stood looking at her, standing on the edge of the bed, waiting for her to cover him up and put him to sleep in his own corner. 'Yes, Dandy, in a moment, dear--have patience.' She looked round the little room, and, remembering all that she had suffered there, thought that the walls must be saturated with grief, like a sponge.

It was a common thing at that time for her to stand before the gla.s.s and address such words as these to herself: 'My poor girl, how I pity you, how I pity you!' And now, looking at herself very sadly, she said, 'My poor girl, I shall never pity you any more!' Having hung up her dress, she fetched a chair and took various doses of chloral out of the hollow top of her wardrobe, where she had hidden things all her life--sweets, novels, fireworks. They more than half-filled the tumbler; and, looking at the sticky, white liquid, she thought with repugnance of drinking so much of it. But, wanting to make quite sure of death, she resolved to take it all, and she undressed quickly. She was very cold when she got into bed. Then a thought struck her, and she got out of bed to add a postscript to her letter. 'I have only one request to make. I hope Dandy will always be taken care of.' Surprised that she had not wrapped him up and told him he was to go to sleep, the dog stood on the edge of the bed, watching her so earnestly that she wondered if he knew what she was going to do. 'No, you don't know, dear--do you? If you did, you wouldn't let me do it; you'd bark the house down, I know you would, my own darling.' Clasping him to her breast, she smothered him with kisses, then put him away in his corner, covering him over for the night.

She felt neither grief nor fear. Through much suffering, thought and sensation were, to a great extent, dead in her; and, in a sort of emotive numbness, she laid her candlestick in its usual place on the chair by her bedside; and, sitting up in bed, her night-dress carefully b.u.t.toned, holding the tumbler half-filled with chloral, she tried to take a dispa.s.sionate survey of her life. She thought of what she had endured, and what she would have to endure if she did not take it. Then she felt she must go, and without hesitation drank off the chloral. She placed the tumbler by the candlestick, and lay down, remembering vaguely that a long time ago she had decided that suicide was not wrong in itself. The last thing she remembered was the clock striking eleven.

For half an hour she slept like stone. Then her eyes opened, and they told of sickness now in motion within her. And, strangely enough, through the overpowering nausea rising from her stomach to her brain, the thought that she was not going to die appeared perfectly clear, and with it a sense of disappointment; she would have to begin it all over again. It was with great difficulty that she struck a match and lighted a candle. It seemed impossible to get up. At last she managed to slip her legs out of bed, and found she could stand, and through the various a.s.saults of retching she thought of the letter: it must be destroyed; and, leaning in the corner against the wall and the wardrobe, she tried to recover herself. A dull, deep sleep was pressing on her brain, and she thought she would never be able to cross the room to where the letter was. Dandy looked out of his rug; she caught sight of his bright eyes.

On cold and shaky feet she attempted to make her way towards the letter; but the room heaved up at her, and, fearing she should fall, and knowing if she did that she would not be able to regain her feet, she clung to the toilette-table. She must destroy that letter: if it were found, they would watch her; and, however impossible her life might become, she would not be able to escape from it. This consideration gave her strength for a final effort. She tore the letter into very small pieces, and then, clinging to a chair, strove to grasp the rail of the bed; but the bed rolled worse than any ship. Making a supreme effort, she got in; and then, neither dreams nor waking thoughts, but oblivion complete. Hours and hours pa.s.sed, and when she opened her eyes her maid stood over the bed, looking at her.

'Oh, miss, you looked so tired and ill that I didn't wake you. You do seem poorly, miss. It is nearly two o'clock. Should you like to sleep a little longer, or shall I bring you up some breakfast?'

'No, no, no, thank you. I couldn't touch anything. I'm feeling wretched; but I'll get up.'

The maid tried to dissuade her; but Emily got out of bed, and allowed herself to be dressed. She was very weak--so weak that she could hardly stand up at the washstand; and the maid had to sponge her face and neck.

But when she had drunk a cup of tea and eaten a little piece of toast, she said she felt better, and was able to walk into the drawing-room. She thought no more of death, nor of her troubles; thought drowned in her; and in a pa.s.sive, torpid state she sat looking into the fire till dinner-time, hardly caring to bestow a casual caress on Dandy, who seemed conscious of his mistress's neglect, for, in his sly, coaxing way, he sometimes came and rubbed himself against her feet. She went into the dining-room, and the servant was glad to see that she finished her soup, and, though she hardly tasted it, she finished a wing of a chicken, and also the gla.s.s of wine which the man pressed upon her. Half an hour after, when he brought out the tea, he found her sitting on her habitual chair nursing her dog, and staring into the fire so drearily that her look frightened him, and he hesitated before he gave her the letter which had just come up from the town; but it was marked 'Immediate.'

When he left the room she opened it. It was from Mrs. Bentley:--

'Dearest Emily,--I know that Hubert told you that he was not going to marry me. He thought he was not, for I had refused to marry him; but a short time after we met in the park quite accidentally, and--well, fate took the matter out of our hands, and we are to be married to-morrow. Hubert insists on going to Italy, and I believe we shall remain there two months. We have made arrangements for your aunt to live with you until we come back; and when we do come back, I hope all the little unpleasantnesses which have marred our friendship for this last month or two will be forgotten. So far as I am concerned, nothing shall be left undone to make you happy. Your will shall be law at Ashwood so long as I am there. If you would like to join us in Italy, you have only to say the word. We shall be delighted to have you.'

Emily could read no more. 'Join them in Italy!' She dashed the letter into the fire, and an intense hatred of them both pierced her heart and brain.

It was the kiss of Judas. Oh, those hateful, lying words! To live here with her aunt until they came back, to wait here quietly until she returned in triumph with him--him who had been all the world to her. Oh no; that was not possible. Death, death--escape she must. But how? She had no more chloral. Suddenly she thought of the lake. 'Yes, yes; the lake, the lake!'

And then a keen, swift, pa.s.sionate longing for death, such as she had not felt at all the night before, came upon her. There was the knowledge too that by killing herself she would revenge herself on those who had killed her. She was just conscious that her suicide would have this effect, but hardly a trace of such intention appeared in the letter she wrote; it was as melancholy and as brief as the letter she had torn up, and ended, like it, with a request that Dandy should be well looked after. She had only just directed the envelope when she heard the servant coming to take away the tea-things. She concealed the letter; and when his steps died away in the corridor and the house-door closed, she knew she could slip out un.o.bserved. Instinctively she thought of her hat and jacket, and, without a shudder, remembered she would not need them. She sped down the pathway through the shadow of the firs.

It was one of those warm nights of winter when a sulphur-coloured sky hangs like a blanket behind the wet, dishevelled woods; and, though there was neither moon nor star, the night was strangely clear, and the shadow of the bridge was distinct in the water. When she approached the brink the swans moved slowly away. They reminded her of the cold; but the black obsession of death was upon her; and, hastening her steps, she threw herself forward.

She fell into shallow water and regained her feet, and for a moment it seemed uncertain if she would wade to the bank or fling herself into a deeper place. Suddenly she sank, the water rising to her shoulders. She was lifted off her feet. A faint struggle, a faint cry, and then nothing--nothing but the whiteness of the swans moving through the sultry night slowly towards the island.

XX

Its rich, inanimate air proclaimed the room to be an expensive bedroom in a first-cla.s.s London hotel. Interest in the newly-married couple, who were to occupy the room, prompted the servants to see that nothing was forgotten; and as they lingered steps were heard in the pa.s.sage, and Hubert and Julia entered. The maid-servants stood aside to let them pa.s.s, and one inquired if madame wanted anything, so that her eyes might be gratified with a last inquisition of the happy pair.

'How wonderful! oh, how wonderful! I don't think I ever saw any one act before like that--did you?'

'She certainly had three or four moments that could not be surpa.s.sed. Her entrance in the sleep-walking scene--what vague horror! what pale presentiment! how she filled the stage! nothing seemed to exist but she.'

'And Ford; what did you think of Ford's Macbeth?'

'Very good. Everything he does is good. Talent; but the other has genius.'

'I shall never forget this evening. What an awful tragedy!'

'Perhaps I should have taken you to see something more cheerful; but I wanted to see Miss Ma.s.sey play Lady Macbeth. But let us talk of something else. Splendid fire--is it not?'