THIS was how she took it, as the young priest had taken it, as an atonement, as a duty. Instead of the despair they had expected, she was excited and inspired as people are who die for a great cause. She did not and would not take into account all that made Oliver’s strange sacrifice a thing without justice, without dignity—a mere hideous postscript to a mere vulgar sin, repented of indeed, but not made less vulgar and hideous even by repentance. Fortunately for Grace, nothing of this entered her mind. He had made atonement, he had righted a wrong at the cost of his own happiness. To be sure, it was at the cost of hers also, but in her exaltation she never thought of that. What she did mourn over was that he should not have told her; that he had suffered bitterly and cruelly, and had been driven to the uttermost despair rather than tell her; that he should have thought her incapable of the same sacrifice as he was making, less noble than himself. This hurt her in passing, but she had not time to think more of it. In the meantime he must be comforted, reassured, cared for. He must know that she understood him, that she—yes, she who was the victim, who had to bear the penalty—approved. She was inspired with strength and courage to do this. She was no victim—she was a martyr, sharing his martyrdom for the sake of what was right.
I need scarcely say that the Fords no more understood her than if she had been speaking a foreign language. They gazed at her with horror and bewilderment. They asked each other, had she not loved him after all? That a woman who loved him could have so accepted this revelation was to them incredible. Mr. Ford was almost angry with her in the disappointment with which he saw this extraordinary and un-looked-for effect. He said stiffly, that he was very glad that she could take it so philosophically—more than poor Oliver had done—but that as for comforting or helping him that was impossible. For Oliver had disappeared, and, so far as was known, might be heard of no more. How he had got out of his chambers, his anxious brother-in-law did not know; he supposed it must have been at the moment when, receiving no answer to his summons, he had gone to seek for help to break open the door. On his return the door had been found open, the rooms empty, the letter on the table, the pistol lying on the floor; but of Oliver no sign; and that was all that anyone knew.
It was evident, at least, that nothing could be done till next day. And Grace withdrew from the troubled pair, who did not understand her any more than they knew how to deal with the horrible crisis altogether. She went slowly, steadily to her own room, not trembling and sick at heart as when she had come. The suspense was over—now she knew everything. Her heart was in so strange an exaltation, that for the moment she seemed to feel no pain. It seemed to her as if Oliver and she were martyrs about to come out upon some scaffold hand in hand, and for the righting of wrong and the redeeming of the lost to die. Such a crisis has an intoxication peculiar to itself. She did not sleep all night, but lay down and thought over everything. The worst was that he had not told her. If he had but trusted in her, it was she who should have stood by him all along, and taken his part and justified him before the world.
She met Mrs. Ford in the morning as she left her room, putting a stop to all those attempts to make an invalid of her, and treat her as if she were ill, which is the common expedient of the lookers-on in cases of grief or mental suffering. Her face was pale but not without colour, very clear, like a sky after rain; the eyes limpid and large, as if they had increased in size somehow during the night.
‘When you have had your breakfast,’ she said, with a smile,—‘I have ordered it for you—then there are several things I wish you to do—for me—’
‘Grace!’ Mrs. Ford was astonished by her look, and felt herself taken by surprise. ‘You—you don’t mean—shopping?’ she asked, almost mysteriously, confounded by her friend’s calm.
Grace gave her a reproachful look. ‘I have ordered a carriage, too,’ she said, taking no notice of the suggestion. ‘Tell me when you are ready.’
Mrs. Ford, looking with guilty countenance at her watch, went quickly to the table at which her husband was seated, eating a hurried, but not at all an insufficient, breakfast.
‘I don’t know what she means,’ Mr. Ford said. ‘She has ordered a feast. There’s half a dozen things. No, no more; don’t bring any more. Trix, I’m going off to the Temple, of course, at once, and if I can find out anything or get any trace of where he has gone, I’ll telegraph. Mind what I told you last night. You must try and get her sent home.’
‘She is going to do her—shopping,’ said Trix. To tell the truth, she did not herself believe this, but it was the first thing that occurred to her to say.
‘Her SHOPPING!’ Mr. Ford panted forth, with a great burst of agitated laughter. ‘Great Heavens, you don’t say so! Her shopping! What a fool I have been to put myself out about her. You women will do your shopping on the Day of Judgment.’
Trix thought it was perhaps better to let him go away with this idea; it would leave him, she felt, more free. And when Grace joined her with her bonnet on, and disclosed her design, Mrs. Ford was startled for the moment, but yielded without much difficulty. They drove away in the soft morning, when even the London streets look like spring, miles away through the interminable streets, until at last they came to that one among so many others where the pavement was worn by Oliver’s weary feet, where he had gone with his heart bleeding, so that it was strange he had left no trace. It seemed to both the women as if he had left traces of these painful steps, as if the sky darkened when they got there, and the air began to moan with coming storm. It did so, it was true, but not because of Oliver. A sudden April shower (though it was in May) fell in a quick discharge of glittering drops as they drove up to the house. Not to the door—for already a cab was standing which blocked the way: but the cab was not all. A little crowd, excited and tumultuous, had gathered round the steps, some pushing in to the very threshold of the open door. It did not seem wonderful to the ladies that the crowd should be here. It seemed of a piece with all the rest. A thing so extraordinary and out of nature had happened, it was nothing strange if the common people about raised a wonder over it, as everyone who knew must do. They forgot that this affair was interesting only to themselves, and that nobody here was aware of their existence. They made their way with heavy hearts to the edge of the crowd.
‘Is there anything wrong? What is the matter?’ Trix asked of one of the throng.
‘They say as she’s dying, ma’am,’ said the woman to whom she spoke.
‘Ah, poor thing!’ cried another, anxious to give information. The crowd turned its attention at once to the two ladies.
‘Just a-going to take her first drive out,’ said one. ‘All in the grand fur cloak he gave her.’
‘A man as grudged her nothing.’
‘It’s like on the stage,’ said another. ‘Ladies, a rich gentleman, and grudged her nothing. And she’s never got time to enjoy it. Oh, she’s never got time to enjoy it!’
These voices ran altogether, confusing each other. They conveyed little meaning to the minds of the two ladies, who heard imperfectly, and did not understand.
Grace was the one who pushed through the crowd. ‘Let us pass, please. We have come to see someone,’ she said, clutching Trix’s dress with her hand.
‘Oh, is that the doctor? Stand back and let the doctor pass,’ said a voice from within the door of the little parlour. The speaker came out as she spoke. She was the mother, with a pale and frightened face surmounted by a bonnet gay with ribbons and flowers. ‘Oh, ladies, I cannot speak to you now! Oh, if it’s anything about the dressmaking, Matilda will come to you to-morrow. We’re in great trouble now. Oh, doctor, doctor, here you are at last!’
Then a man brushed past, hurrying in. Grace followed, not knowing what she did. She never forgot the scene she saw. In an arm-chair, the only one in the room, sat propped up a young woman wrapped in a fur cloak, with a white bonnet covered with flowers. Her eyes were half open; her jaws had dropped. Another young woman, apparently her sister, stood stroking her softly, calling to her: ‘Oh, wake up, Ally!—oh, wake up!—there’s the carriage at the door, and here—here’s the doctor come to see you.’ Through the sound of this frightened, half-weeping voice came the sharp, clear tones of the doctor: ‘How long has she been like this? Lay her down—lay her down anywhere. Yes, on the floor, if there’s nowhere else. Silence, silence, woman! Can’t you see—’
There was an interval of quiet, and then the voice of the mother, ‘I’ll get a mattress in a moment. She can’t lie there on the floor, her that’s been taken such care of. Doctor! is it a faint? is it a faint? is it—’
Another moment of awful suspense, the silence tingling, creeping; the voices of the little crowd sounding like echoes far off. Then the doctor rose from where he had been kneeling on the floor.
‘Why did you let her do this?’ he said, sternly, ‘I warned you she must not do it.’
‘Oh, doctor, her heart was set upon it—and such a beautiful morning, and her new, beautiful fur cloak as she couldn’t catch cold in. Doctor, why don’t you do something? DOCTOR!’ cried the mother, seizing him by the arm.
He shook her off. He was rough in his impatience. ‘Can’t you see,’ he said, ‘that there is nothing to be done? Take off that horrible finery; the poor girl is dead.’
‘The poor girl is dead.’ Grace thought it was her own voice that repeated those awful words. They went to her heart with a shock, making her giddy and faint. Her voice sounded through the confused cries of the woman about that prostrate figure. ‘Dead!’ The doctor turned to her, as if it was she to whom explanations were due.
‘I warned them,’ he said, ‘that her life hung on a thread. I told them she must make no exertion. I knew very well how it would be. The wonder is that she has lasted so long,’ he added, after that momentary excitement sinking into professional calm. ‘No, no, there’s nothing to be done. Can’t you see that for yourself?’
‘And the cab at the door to take her for her airing!’ cried the mother, in shrill tones of distraction. ‘Oh, doctor, give her something! The brandy, where is the brandy, Matilda? I’ve seen her as far gone—’
‘You have never seen her like this before. She is dead,’ said the doctor, in the unceremonious tones in which he addressed such patients. ‘You had better get a sofa or something to lay her on, poor thing! nothing can hurt her now; and send and let her husband know.’ He followed Grace out into the passage, where she had withdrawn, unable to bear that awful sight.
‘It is a strange story. I don’t understand it. Sounds like a novel,’ he said. ‘I don’t think he’ll be very sorry. He’ll bear it better than most—though he only married her about three weeks ago. It was the strangest thing I ever heard of. A gentleman—no doubt of that. What he could ever have to say to a girl like her, God knows. But he suddenly appeared on the scene when she was at the last gasp, and married her. I had given her up; but afterwards she made a surprising rally. Even I was taken in. I thought that she might still pull through. But you see I was mistaken,’ he added cheerfully.
Grace stood and leaned against the wall. Everything swam in her eyes, and all the sounds, the voices of the women lamenting within, the cries and questions without, the sharp, clear sentences of the doctor, all mingled in a strange confusion like sounds in a dream. In the midst of all this tumult came the voice of Trix calling to her to come out into the open air, and a touch on her arm, which she felt to be that of the doctor, leading her away. She made a great effort and recovered herself. ‘We want to know,’ she said, faintly, grasping at Trix’s hand. ‘We came to see—we belong to Mr. Wentworth,’ and then with a rush of gathering energy her sight came back to her, and she saw the face of the man who stood, curious yet indifferent, between her and the chamber of death.
‘Ah, the husband!’ he said.
‘We came—to see her: is it truly, truly—? He has been ill, and we have to act for him. We have—his authority. Trix, speak for me! Is it—? Is that—?’ There came a strange, convulsive movement in her throat, like sobbing, beyond her control. She could not articulate any more.
‘I am his sister,’ said Mrs. Ford; ‘is it true?—is the woman—dead? Oh! it’s dreadful to be glad, I know. If you are the doctor, tell us, for Heaven’s sake! Is she dead—is it she—the woman—’
‘The poor girl,’ said Grace, softly; ‘the poor, poor girl!’
This she said over and over again to herself as they drove away. She made no reply to the questions, the remarks, the thanksgivings of her companions. They drove straight to the Temple in direct contradiction of Mr. Ford’s orders, and went up into the chambers where Oliver had suffered so much, from which he had escaped in the half delirium of his despair. Mr. Ford was there, still inquiring vaguely, endeavouring to find some clue. He met the ladies, as was natural, with suppressed rage, asking what they wanted there; but the news they brought was sufficient even in his eyes to excuse their appearance, though even that threw no light upon the other question, which now became the most important: where Oliver had gone.