Vain Fortune Part 25

'And I never succeeded in writing my play?'

'No; I don't mean that. Of course you will write your play; all you have to do is to be less critical.'

'Yes, I know--I have heard that before; but, unfortunately, we cannot change ourselves. I'll either carry my play through completely, realise my ideal, or----'

'Remain for ever unsatisfied?'

'Whether I write it or no, I shall be happy in your love.'

'Yes, yes; let us be happy.'

They looked at each other. He did not speak, but his thought said--

'There is no happiness on earth for him who has not accomplished his task.'

'Shall we be happy? I wonder. We have both suffered,' she said, 'we are both tired of suffering, and it is only right that we should be happy.'

'Yes, we shall be happy, I will be happy. It shall be my pleasure to attend to you, to give you all your desire. But you said just now that you had suffered. I have told you my past. Tell me yours. I know nothing except that you were unhappily married.'

'There is little else to know; a woman's life is not adventurous, like a man's. I have not known the excitement of "first nights," nor the striving and the craving for an artistic ideal. My life has been essentially a woman's life,--suppression of self and monotonous duty, varied by heart-breaking misfortune. I married when I was very young; before I had even begun to think about life I found---- But why distress these hours with painful memories?'

'It is pleasant to look back on the troubles we have pa.s.sed through.'

'Well, I learnt in one year the meaning of three terrible words--poverty, neglect, and cruelty. In the second year of my marriage my husband died of drink, and I was left a widow at twenty, entirely penniless. I went to live with my sister, and she was so poor that I had to support myself by giving music-lessons. You think you know the meaning of poverty: you may; but you do not know what a young woman who wants to earn her bread honestly has to put up with, trudging through wet and cold, mile after mile, to give a lesson, paid for at the rate of one-and-sixpence or two shillings an hour.'

Julia took her eyes from her husband's face, and looked dreamily into the fire. Then, raising her face from the flame, she looked around with the air of one seeking for some topic of conversation. At that moment she caught sight of the corner of a letter lying on the mantelpiece. Reaching forth her hand, she took it. It was addressed to her husband.

'Here is a letter for you, Hubert.... Why, it comes from Ashwood. Yes, and it is in the hand-writing of one of the servants. Oh, it is Black's writing! It may be about Emily. Something may have happened to her. Open it quickly.'

'That is not probable. Nothing can have happened to her.'

'Look and see. Be quick!'

Hubert opened the letter, and he had not read three lines when Julia's face caught expression from his, which had become overcast.

'It is bad news, I know. Something has happened. What is it? Don't keep me waiting. The suspense is worse than the truth.'

'It is very awful, Julia. Don't give way.'

'Tell me what it is. Is she dead?

'Yes; she is dead.' Julia got up from her husband's knees and stood by the mantelpiece, leaning upon it. 'It is more than mere death.'

'What do you mean? She killed herself--is that it?'

'Yes; she drowned herself the night before last in the lake.'

'Oh, it is too horrible! Then we have murdered her. Our unpardonable selfishness! I cannot bear it!' Her eyes closed and her lips trembled.

Hubert caught her in his arms, laid her on the chair, and, fetching some water in a tumbler, sprinkled her face; then he held it to her lips; she drank a little, and revived. 'I'm not going to faint. Tell me--tell me when the unfortunate child----'

'They don't know exactly. She was in the drawing-room at tea-time, and the drawing-room was empty when Black went round three-quarters of an hour after to lock up. He thought she had gone to her room. It was the gardener who brought in the news in the morning about nine.'

'Oh, good G.o.d!'

'Black says he noticed that she looked very depressed the day before, but he thought she was looking better when he brought in the tea.'

'It was then she got my letter. Does Black say anything about giving her a letter?'

'Yes, that is to say----'

'I knew it! I knew it!' said Julia; and her eyes were wild with grief, and she rocked herself to and fro. 'It was that letter that drove her to it. It was most ill-advised. I told you so. You should have written. She would have borne the news better had it come from you. My instinct told me so, but I let myself be persuaded. I told you how it would happen. I told you.

You can't say I didn't. Oh! why did you persuade me--why--why--why?'

'Julia dear, we are not responsible. We were in nowise bound to sacrifice our happiness to her----'

'Don't say a word! I say we were bound. Life can never be the same to me again.'

Hubert did not answer. Nothing he could say would be of the slightest avail, and he feared to say anything that might draw from her expressions which she would afterwards regret. He had never seen her moved like this, nor did he believe her capable of such agitation, and the contrast of her present with her usual demeanour made it the more impressive.

'Oh,' she said, leaning forward and looking at him fixedly, 'take this nightmare off my brain, or I shall go mad! It isn't true; it cannot be true. But--oh! yes, it's true enough.'

'Like you, Julia, I am overwhelmed; but we can do nothing.'

'Do nothing!' she cried; 'do nothing! We can do nothing but pray for her--we who sacrificed her.' And she slipped on her knees and burst into a pa.s.sionate fit of weeping.

'The best thing that could have happened,' thought Hubert; and his thought said, clearly and precisely, 'Yes; it is awful, shocking, cruel beyond measure!'

The fire was sinking, and he built it up quietly, ashamed of this proof of his regard for physical comfort, and hoping it would pa.s.s unnoticed. His pain expressed itself less vehemently than Julia's; but for all that his mind ached. He remembered how he had taken everything from her--fortune, happiness, and now life itself. It was an appalling tragedy--one of those senseless cruelties which we find nature constantly inventing. A thought revealed an unexpected a.n.a.logy between him and his victim. In both lives there had been a supreme desire, and both had failed. 'Hers was the better part,' he said bitterly. 'Those whose souls are burdened with desire that may not be gratified had better fling the load aside. They are fools who carry it on to the end.... If it were not for Julia----'

Then he sought to determine what were his exact feelings. He knew he was infinitely sorry for poor Emily; but he could not stir himself into a paroxysm of grief, and, ashamed of his inability to express his feelings, he looked at Julia, who still wept.

'No doubt,' he thought, 'women have keener feelings than we have.'

At that moment Julia got up from her knees. She had brushed away her tears.

Her face was shaken with grief.

'My heart is breaking,' she said. 'This is too cruel--too cruel! And on my wedding night.'

Their eyes met; and, divining each other's thought, each felt ashamed, and Julia said--

'Oh, what am I saying? This dreadful selfishness, from which we cannot escape, that is with us even in such a moment as this! That poor child gone to her death, and yet amid it all we must think of ourselves.'

'My dear Julia, we cannot escape from our human nature; but, for all that, our grief is sincere. We can do nothing. Do not grieve like that.'

'And why not? She was my best friend. How have I repaid her? Alas! as woman always repays woman for kindness done. The old story. I cannot forgive myself. No, no! do not kiss me! I cannot bear it. Leave me. I can see nothing but Emily's reproachful face.' She covered her face in her hands and sobbed again.

The same scenes repeated themselves over and over again. The same fits of pa.s.sionate grief; the same moment of calm, when words impregnated with self dropped from their lips. The same nervous sense that something of the dead girl stood between them. And still they sat by the fire, weary with sorrow, recrimination, long regret, and pain. They could grieve no more; and before dawn sleep pressed upon their eyelids, and at the end of a long silence he dozed--a pale, transparent sleep, through which the realities of life appeared almost as plainly as before. Suddenly he awoke, and he shivered in the chill room. The fire was sinking; dawn divided the window-curtains. He looked at his wife. She seemed to him very beautiful as she slept, her face turned a little on one side, and again he asked himself if he loved her.

Then, going to the window, he drew the curtains softly, so as not to awaken her; and as he stood watching a thin discoloured day breaking over the roofs, it again seemed to him that Emily's suicide was the better part.

'Those who do not perform their task in life are never happy.' The words drilled themselves into his brain with relentless insistency. He felt a terrible emptiness within him which he could not fill. He looked at his wife and quailed a little at the thought that had suddenly come upon him.