THE room was small and dingy: opposite to the door an old-fashioned tent-bed hung with curtains of a huge-patterned chintz, immense flowers on a black ground: a candle standing on a small table by the bedside, another faintly blinking from the mantelpiece beyond, the darkness of everything around bringing into fuller relief the whiteness of the bed, the pillows heaped up to support a restless head, a worn and ghastly face, with large, gleaming eyes, which seemed to have an independent, restless life of their own. The face had been pretty when Wentworth had known it first. It was scarcely recognisable now. The cheek bones had become prominent, the lower part of the face worn away almost to nothing, the eyes enlarged in their hollow caves. She looked as she had been said to be—dying—except that the light in her eyes spoke of a secret force which might be fever, or might be because they were the last citadel of life. But though she seemed at the last extremity of existence, a few efforts had been made to ornament and adorn the dying creature, efforts which added unspeakably, horribly, to the ghastly look of her face. The collar of her night-dress had been folded over a pink ribbon, leaving bare an emaciated throat, round which was a little gold chain, suspending a locket: and her hair, still plentiful and pretty, the one human decoration which does not fade, was carefully dressed, though somewhat disordered by the continual motion of her restlessness. It was all horrible to Wentworth, death masquerading in the poor little vanities which were so unspeakably mean and small in comparison with that majesty, and all to please him—God help the forlorn creature! to make her look as when he had praised her prettiness, she from whom every prettiness, every possibility of pleasing, had gone.
She held out her two hands, which were worn to skin and bone, ‘Oh, Oliver, my Oliver! oh, I knew he would come. Oh, didn’t I say he would come?’ she cried. Wentworth could not but take the bony fingers into his own. He saw that it was expected he should kiss her; but that was impossible. He sat down in the chair which had been placed for him by the bedside.
‘I am very sorry to see you so ill, my poor girl,’ he said.
‘Ill’s not the word, Mr. Wentworth; she’s dying. She hasn’t above an hour or two in this world,’ said the mother, or the woman who took a mother’s place.
He gave her a look of horrified reproach, with the usual human sense that it is cruel to announce this fact too clearly. ‘I hope it is not quite so bad as that.’
‘Yes, Oliver; oh, dear Oliver, yes, yes,’ said the sick woman. ‘This is—my last night—on earth.’ She spoke with difficulty, pausing and panting between the words, her thin lips distended with a smile, the smile (he could not help remarking) that had always been a little artificial, poor girl! at her best. But even at that awful moment she was endeavouring to charm him still (he felt with horror) by the means which she supposed to have charmed him in the past.
‘Tell him, mother, tell him. I haven’t got—the strength.’ She put out her hands for his hand, which he could not refuse, though her touch made him shiver, and lay looking at him, smiling, with that awful attempt at fascination. He covered his eyes with his disengaged hand, half because of the horror in his soul, half that he might not see her face.
‘Mr. Wentworth,’ said the elder woman, ‘my poor child, sir, she’s got one wish—’ the bony hands closed upon his with a feeble, yet anxious pressure as this was said.
‘Yes; what is it? If it is anything I can do for her, tell me. I will do anything that can procure her a moment’s pleasure,’ he said.
Fatal words to say! but he meant them fully—out of pity first, and also out of a burning desire, at any cost, to get away. Anything for that! He would have willingly given the half of what he possessed only to get away from this place—to return to the life he had left, to hear this woman’s name no more.
Once more the wasted hands pressed his, and she gave a little cry. ‘I knowed it—always—mother. I told you.’
‘Hush, hush, dear! Don’t you wear yourself out. You’ll want all your strength. Mr. Wentworth, I didn’t expect no less from a gentleman like you. If she hasn’t been all she might have been, poor dear! though I don’t want to blame you, sir, you’re not the one as should say a word—for it was all out of love for you.’
Wentworth had it not in him to be cruel, but he drew his hand almost roughly from between the girl’s feverish hands. ‘What is the use of entering into such a question?’ he said. ‘I do not blame her. Let the past alone. What can I do for her now?’
He had risen up, determined to make his escape at all hazards—but the little cry she gave had so much pain in it that his heart was touched. He sat down again, and patted softly the poor hand that lay on the coverlet. ‘My poor girl, I don’t want to hurt you,’ he said.
‘You mustn’t be harsh to her,’ said the mother. ‘How would you like to think that poor thing had gone miserable out of this world to complain of you, sir, before the Throne? Not as she’d have the heart to do it, for she thinks there is no one like you, whatever you may say to her. Mr. Wentworth, there’s just one thing you can do for her. Make an honest woman of her, sir, before she dies.’
‘What!’ said Wentworth, springing once more to his feet. He but dimly, vaguely understood what she meant, yet felt for a moment as if he had fallen into an ambush, as if he had been trapped into a den of thieves. He thought he saw a man’s head appearing at the door, and heard whisperings and footsteps on the stairs. This it was that produced the momentary fury of his cry; but then he regained control of himself, and looking round saw no one but the dying girl on the bed and an elderly woman standing in front of him, looking at him with deprecating yet earnest eyes.
‘It’s a great deal,’ said the woman, ‘and yet it’s nothing. It’s what will never harm you one way or another, what nobody will know, nor be able to cast in your teeth—that won’t cost you anything (except, maybe, a bit of a fee), and yet it’s everything to her. It would make all the difference between going out of this world honest and creditable and going in her shame, which it was you that brought her to it.’
‘That’s a lie!’ said Oliver. Was it to be supposed he could think of civility at such a moment? A desperate tremor seized hold upon him. He got up and turned, half blinded with horror and excitement, towards the door. ‘I came here,’ he said, ‘because—because—’
Ah! because—why? What could he say? He had meant to be kind—to make up to her somehow, he could not tell how, for the fact that he was happy and she dying. He stood arrested with those words upon his lips, which he could not say, half turned from her, facing the door, as if he would have broken away.
And then there came a low, despairing cry from the bed—the cry as of a lost creature. ‘Oh, Oliver, Oliver! you loved me once. Oh, don’t go and leave me! You loved me, and I loved you.’
He would have cried out that it was false, but the breathless voice, broken by panting that sounded like the last struggle, the voice of the woman who was dying, while he was full of life and force, silenced him in spite of himself. The mother had flown to her to raise her head, to give her something from a glass on the table, and he, too, turned again, awe-stricken, thinking the last moment had come.
‘And you can stand and see her like this,’ said the woman by the bedside, in a low tone. ‘You that are well and strong and have the world before you; and let her go out of it at five-and-twenty, a girl as you made an idol of once, a girl as you have helped to bring to this, and won’t lift a finger to satisfy her before she dies, to give her what she wants, and what will make her happy for the last hour—before she dies!’
The girl herself was past speaking. She lay back against her mother’s breast, her own worn and emaciated shoulders heaving with convulsive struggles for the departing breath. She could not speak, but those eyes, which were so living while she was dying, turned to him with a look of such appeal, such entreaty that he could not bear the sight. They were large with fever and weakness, liquid and clear and dilated, as the eyes of the dying often are, like two stars glowing out in sudden light from the pale night of her face. He cried out, ‘What do you want me to do?’ with despair in his voice, and a sense that whatever they asked of him he could not now refuse.
‘To do her justice,’ said the mother. ‘Oh, Mr. Wentworth, to make up to her for all she’s suffered. To make her an honest woman before she dies.’
The girl’s dying lips moved, but no sound was heard: a pathetic smile came upon her lips, her eyes held him with that prayer, too intense for words. Oliver turned away his head not to see them, then turned back again as if in them there was some spell. A passionate impatience pricked his heart, for their inference was not true. They had not been to each other what was said. Love! love was too great a word to be mentioned here at all. It had been levity, folly; it had not been love. She had been too slight for such a word; but she was not too slight for death. For that solemnity nothing is too slight or too poor; and death is as great as love is, and compels respect. She drew his eyes to her so that he could not free himself. He said in an unnatural, stifled voice, ‘Whatever you want from me—this is not the—the time. There is nothing to be done to-night—and after to-night’—he could not say the words—he waved his hand towards the bed. She was dying now—now—before their eyes.
‘I know what you mean,’ said the mother, with dreadful calm. ‘She won’t last out the night. Very likely she won’t, but that’s what nobody knows except her Maker. If she don’t, you can’t do nothing, and nobody here will say a word. But if she do—! Give her your word, Mr. Wentworth, as you’ll marry her to-morrow if she lives, and she’ll die happy. She’ll die happy; whether it comes to anything or whether it don’t. Mr. Wentworth, sir, do, for the love of God!’
The girl recovered a little gasping breath. ‘I’ll die happy. I’ll die happy, whether it comes to anything or not.’ Even this little rally showed more and more the nearness of the end.
He had shrank at the word ‘marry’ as if it had been a blow aimed at him, but he could not escape from the tragic persistence of those eyes. And overwhelmed as he was, a little hope rose in him. He said to himself, ‘She can never live till to-morrow.’ Why should he resist if a promise would make her happy? for she was surely dying, and she never could take him at his word. ‘If that is all, I will promise,’ he said.
The light in her eyes seemed to give a leap of joy and triumph, then closed under the flickering eyelids, he thought for ever, and he cried out involuntarily, and made a step nearer to the bed. When her eyes were closed, she looked like one who had been dead a day, nothing but a faint, convulsive heave of the shoulders showing that there was life in her still.
The mother busied herself about the half-unconscious creature, putting the cordial to her lips, supporting the pillow against her own breast. ‘You will have an easy bargain,’ she said, as she went on with these cares; ‘but anyhow, we’ll bless you for what you say. Matilda, give me the drops the doctor left for her when she felt faint. She’s very low, now, poor dear! Mr. Wentworth’s behaving like a gentleman, as you always said he would. He has promised to marry her to-morrow morning, if she lives. She’ll not live, but she’s satisfied, poor dear!’
Matilda had come so softly into the room that she startled him as if she had been a ghost. ‘I knew as he would do it when he saw how bad she was; but, Lord, what do it matter to the poor thing now?’
This was his own opinion. In a few minutes more there was a bustle downstairs, which Matilda pronounced to be the doctor coming, and Wentworth went down to wait until he had paid his visit. The little parlour below had one candle burning in it, for the benefit of those who went and came. The young man was left there for a few minutes alone. To describe the condition in which he was is impossible. His heart was beating with a dull noise against his breast. All that had been so bright to him a little while before had become as black as night. He could not think; only contemplate what was before him dumbly, with horror and disgust and fear. He had given a pledge, but it was a pledge that never would call for fulfilment—no, no, it never could be fulfilled—it would be as a nightmare, a dreadful dream, from which he would awake by-and-by and find the sun shining and all well. After a while he heard the doctor’s heavy foot come clamping down the wooden staircase. He was angry with the man for having so little delicacy, for making so much noise when his patient was dying. Presently he came in to give his bulletin to the gentleman, whom he perceived at once to be somehow very deeply concerned.
‘Last the night? No, I don’t think she’ll last the night: but you never can tell exactly with such nervous subjects. She might put on a spurt and come round again for a little while.’
‘Then,’ said Wentworth, with a sense that he was acquiring information clandestinely, ‘there is no hope of any permanent recovery?’
The doctor laughed him to scorn. If he had not been a parish doctor, accustomed to very poor patients and their ways, he would not have allowed himself to laugh in such circumstances.
‘When she has not above half a lung, and her heart is—but you don’t understand these matters, perhaps. She may make a rally for a few hours, but I doubt if she will see out this night.’
After this, Wentworth went home to the closed-up chambers, where nobody expected him, and to which he got admittance with difficulty. He had to walk miles, he thought, through those dreadful streets, all like each other, all gleaming with wet, before he could even find a cab. There was no strength left in him. He went on and on mechanically, and might, he thought, have been wandering all night, but that the sight of a slowly passing cab, which he knew he wanted, brought him back to a dull sense of the necessity of shelter. The cold rooms, so vacant and unprepared, which were just shelter and no more, were scarcely an improvement upon the mechanical march and movement, which deadened his mind and made him less sensible of his terrible position. It had been arranged that if she was still alive in the morning, a messenger was to be sent to him, and that then he was to take the necessary steps to redeem his pledge. But he said to himself that it was impossible—that she could not live till morning. It was a horrible moment for a man to go through—a man whose life had blossomed into such gladness and prosperity. But still, if he could but be sure that nothing worse was to come of it—and what could come of it when the doctor himself was all but sure that she could not see out the night?