LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

the aptitude of which for a one-minded cohesion enabled it to crush those fractional daughters of mischief. She was a really good woman of the world, heading a multitude; the same whom you are accustomed to hear exalted; lucky in having had a guided girlhood, a thick-curtained prudence; and in having stock in the moral funds, shares in the sentimental tramways. Wherever the world laid its hoards or ran its lines, she was found, and forcible enough to be eminent; though at fixed hours of the day, even as she washed her hands, she abjured worldliness: a performance that cleansed her. If she did not make morality appear loveable to the objects of her dislike, it was owing to her want of brains to see the origin, nature and right ends of morality. But a world yet more deficient than she, esteemed her cordially for being a bulwark of the present edifice; which looks a solid structure when the microscope is not applied to its components.

      Supposing Percy Dacier a dishonourable tattler as well as an icy lover, and that Lady Wathin, through his bride, had become privy to the secret between him and Diana? There is reason to think that she would have held it in terror over the baneful woman, but not have persecuted her: for she was by no means the active malignant of theatrical plots. No, she would have charged it upon the possession of brains by women, and have had a further motive for inciting the potent dignitary her husband to employ his authority to repress the sex's exercise of those fell weapons, hurtful alike to them and all coming near them.

      So extreme was her dread of Mrs. Warwick, that she drove from the London railway station to see Constance and be reassured by her tranquil aspect.

      Sweet Constance and her betrothed Percy were together, examining a missal.

      Lady Dunstane despatched a few words of the facts to Diana. She hoped to hear from her; rather hoped, for the moment, not to see her. No answer came. The great day of the nuptials came and passed. She counted on her husband's appearance the next morning, as the good gentleman made a point of visiting her, to entertain the wife he adored, whenever he had a wallet of gossip that would overlay the blank of his absence. He had been to the church of the wedding—he did not say with whom: all the world was there; and he rapturously described the ceremony, stating that it set women weeping and caused him to behave like a fool.

      'You are impressionable,' said his wife.

      He murmured something in praise of the institution of marriage—when celebrated impressively, it seemed.

      'Tony calls the social world "the theatre of appetites," as we have it at present,' she said; 'and the world at a wedding is, one may reckon, in the second act of the hungry tragicomedy.'

      'Yes, there's the breakfast,' Sir Lukin assented. Mrs. Fryar-Gunnett was much more intelligible to him: in fact, quite so, as to her speech.

      Emma's heart now yearned to her Tony: Consulting her strength, she thought she might journey to London, and on the third morning after the Dacier-Asper marriage, she started.

      Diana's door was open to Arthur Rhodes when Emma reached it.

      'Have you seen her?' she asked him.

      His head shook dolefully. 'Mrs. Warwick is unwell; she has been working too hard.'

      'You also, I'm afraid.'

      'No.' He could deny that, whatever the look of him.

      'Come to me at Copsley soon,' said she, entering to Danvers in the passage.

      'My mistress is upstairs, my lady,' said Danvers. 'She is lying on her bed.'

      'She is ill?'

      'She has been lying on her bed ever since.'

      'Since what?' Lady Dunstane spoke sharply.

      Danvers retrieved her indiscretion. 'Since she heard of the accident, my lady.'

      'Take my name to her. Or no: I can venture.'

      'I am not allowed to go in and speak to her. You will find the room quite dark, my lady, and very cold. It is her command. My mistress will not let me light the fire; and she has not eaten or drunk of anything since . . . . She will die, if you do not persuade her to take nourishment: a little, for a beginning. It wants the beginning.'

      Emma went upstairs, thinking of the enigmatical maid, that she must be a good soul after all. Diana's bedroom door was opened slowly.

      'You will not be able to see at first, my lady,' Danvers whispered. 'The bed is to the left, and a chair. I would bring in a candle, but it hurts her eyes. She forbids it.'

      Emma stepped in. The chill thick air of the unlighted London room was cavernous. She almost forgot the beloved of her heart in the thought that a living woman had been lying here more than two days and nights, fasting. The proof of an uttermost misery revived the circumstances within her to render her friend's presence in this desert of darkness credible. She found the bed by touch, silently, and distinguished a dark heap on the bed; she heard no breathing. She sat and listened; then she stretched out her hand and met her Tony's. It lay open. It was the hand of a drowned woman.

      Shutters and curtains and the fireless grate gave the room an appalling likeness to the vaults.

      So like to the home of death it seemed, that in a few minutes the watcher had lost count of time and kept but a wormy memory of the daylight. She dared not speak, for some fear of startling; for the worse fear of never getting answer. Tony's hand was lifeless. Her clasp of it struck no warmth.

      She stung herself with bitter reproaches for having let common mundane sentiments, worthy of a Lady Wathin, bar her instant offer of her bosom to the beloved who suffered in this depth of mortal agony. Tony's love of a man, as she should have known, would be wrought of the elements of our being: when other women named Happiness, she said Life; in division, Death. Her body lying still upon the bed here was a soul borne onward by the river of Death.

      The darkness gave sight after a while, like a curtain lifting on a veil: the dead light of the underworld. Tony lay with her face up, her underlip dropped; straight from head to feet. The outline of her face, without hue of it, could be seen: sign of the hapless women that have souls in love. Hateful love of men! Emma thought, and was; moved to feel at the wrist for her darling's pulse. He has, killed her! the thought flashed, as, with pangs chilling her frame, the pressure at the wrist continued insensible of the faintest beat. She clasped it, trembling, in pain to stop an outcry.

      'It is Emmy,' said the voice.

      Emma's heart sprang to heaven on a rush of thanks.

      'My Tony,' she breathed softly.

      She hung for a further proof of life in the motionless body. 'Tony!' she said.

      The answer was at her hand, a thread-like return of her clasp.

      'It is Emmy come to stay with you, never to leave you.'

      The thin still answer was at her hand a moment; the fingers fell away.

      A deep breath was taken twice to say:

      'Don't talk to me.'

      Emma retained the hand. She was warned not to press it by the deadness following its effort to reply.

      But Tony lived; she had given proof of life. Over this little wavering taper in the vaults Emma cowered, cherishing the hand, silently hoping for the voice.

      It came: 'Winter.'

      'It is a cold winter, Tony.'

      'My dear will be cold.'

      'I will light the fire.'

      Emma lost no time in deciding to seek the match-box. The fire was lit and it flamed; it seemed a revival in the room. Coming back to the bedside, she discerned her Tony's lacklustre large dark eyes and her hollow cheeks: her mouth open to air as to the drawing-in of a sword; rather as to the releaser than the sustainer. Her feet were on the rug her maid had placed to cover them. Emma leaned across the bed to put them to her breast, beneath her fur mantle, and held them there despite the half-animate tug of the limbs and the shaft of iciness they sent to her very heart. When she had restored them to some warmth, she threw aside her bonnet and lying beside Tony, took her in her arms, heaving now and then a deep sigh.

      She kissed her cheek.

      'It is Emmy.'

      'Kiss

Скачать книгу