LVIII THE FOOLISH FATES

If Ordham could be very hard, he could also be very soft. When he received a telegram at Flushing stating that Mabel was still alive, but that her condition was hopeless, he was moved deeply, the more so, perhaps, because his sympathies had been so profoundly stirred a few hours before. At the same time he wished to heaven he were on the other side of the world. When he reached London, he went hastily to the sick room, fearing that if he stopped to think his courage might desert him, for it was his first personal encounter with death. There was a strange moaning sound from the bed, such as he had heard animals utter in their last extremity, and he stumbled over a pail of ice. The darkened room seemed to him full of people and in an indescribable confusion, but he had barely caught a glimpse of Mrs. Cutting, dishevelled, haggard, when everybody seemed to disappear simultaneously, leaving him and the dying creature in the bed alone.

He made his way across the big room and saw Mabel, who looked like waxwork with enormous glass eyes. He shuddered, but bent over and would have kissed her had she not pushed him feebly away. He sat down, and his nervousness, even his horror, fled. He looked at the shrunken pallid remnant of the beautiful girl he had married and was filled with an immense pity, which induced one of those rare moments in life, like tiny islands, that have no space for self. He was also awed, as one must ever be in the presence of death, but those little green isles in the ocean of egoism have their atmosphere of unreality; and he felt throughout this interview, which he has never tried to forget, like a man who dreams yet believes himself to be awake.

Mabel spoke in a small distant voice. “I am dying and you have killed me.”

“I am afraid I have.”

“That is all I have left—that you should know that. Had I been happy I might have pulled through, although I had a horrible time, a horrible time! But my brain, all my blood, was on fire. I don’t know—the doctor will explain—but I do know that my only chance was mental peace, and I was like a mad creature from the moment I learned you had gone to that woman. O God! I am only nineteen. What was I born for?”

She paused a moment and he stared at her with blanched face and mouth slightly open. His expression was almost vacant, his remarkably receptive faculty exercising itself unconsciously. To Mabel he looked as young as when she had first known him, and her expression softened, but only for a moment. Her face set again, and she went on:

“I don’t mind dying so much, for I am so tired I don’t care, and there is nothing left to live for. Even the baby deserted me. But I have lost—lost! And I was so sure I should win! Why should I not have been confident? I had had everything—always—it is so strange that I should be ground to powder! I feel as if the huge wheels of one of those old Roman chariots—conquerors’ chariots!—had crushed me. I was a real little queen, and now I am nothing! nothing! And only nineteen! Why was I born?”

She raised herself on her hands; her immense hollow eyes, which had wandered during her last words, focussed, were piercing for the first time, probably, since they had met the light. “I think I should not mind even that—anything—” she was whispering, her voice almost dead—“if I could only have understood you. But to have been your wife, to have loved you so, and to die knowing that not for one minute, not for one second—and even death gives me no insight—”

He fled from the room as she fell back. The doctor, a nurse, and Mrs. Cutting, were waiting on the threshold. He went hastily to his own room, and as he closed the door he felt something at his heels. It was LaLa, and he took him in his arms and sat without moving, almost without thought, for an hour. At the end of that time there was a tap and he admitted Mrs. Cutting. As he saw her face he braced himself and all sense of unreality left him. Her cherished but never harnessed youth had deserted her. Her face was pinched and yellow and old. Her hair was streaked with white. Her lips were gray and shaking. But even in her deep maternal grief, in the one violent blow that life had dealt her, even in her new hatred of this royal child of fortune, she was unable to undam her soul and overwhelm him with a fury of scorn and hatred, as she had dimly imagined she should do when she left Mabel’s room for his. She could suffer, but not for her were the great tragic emotions, the splendours, the lightning blasts of expression. As she disciplined her relaxed mouth and pressed her hand hard against her bosom, Ordham’s mind vagrantly recalled an observation of Styr’s regarding the best of the American actors: that they managed to convey the impression of deep intense emotion, artistically repressed; when as a matter of fact they had nothing to repress. But that the poor woman suffered to the full capacity of her meagre nature he could not doubt, and he tried to take her hand and lead her to a chair. But she, like her daughter, thrust him away.

“Mabel is dead,” she said.

As his brain whirled it almost cast out the collocations: “Of course!” “I am so sorry!” and the bathos of it twisted his features into a grin that was as like a smile as a mask is like the human face; but Mrs. Cutting fell back in horror.

“You—you—was it not enough to kill her, without laughing—”

“Good God, how can you say such a thing? I feel as hysterical as a woman. How else could I feel? I am distracted, half out of my mind with horror and remorse. Give me credit for that much at least.”

“You are still young enough to feel excited at being in the midst of a tragedy!” Mrs. Cutting spoke almost dryly. “But I doubt if you will long convince yourself that it is anything more. I hope this may be the last time I shall ever be obliged to speak to you, and therefore I will say at once that I wish to take my child and her child to New York for interment. I don’t think it necessary to give my reasons.”

“You will do everything you wish, of course. I should not think of opposing you.”

She stared at him in unwilling admiration in spite of her suffering, her indignation. He had mastered his excitement, and were he a kindly relative he could not be more courteous, more full of solicitude. She turned her back on him, thinking of nothing to say but “Thank you,” and she left the room feeling like an honoured guest reluctantly dismissed.

But the next three days were a nightmare to Ordham. He was determined to pay all respect to Mabel dead, which, to do him justice, he had, with brief lapses, managed to pay her living. He even sat beside the bed for a few moments after they had dressed her and folded her hands, and filled her arms with lilies. She was less pinched, less shrunken, in death. A little of her beauty had returned to her, and she looked no more than sixteen. Again pity possessed him, and he left the room abruptly and wandered about the darkened house. For three days he barely went out, and as he could not settle himself to read, and as every blind, according to that depressing old provincial custom, was down, as the house seemed to grow more and more silent, darker and darker, until he thought he should go mad, he took refuge in the attic, where in an unused room he opened a back window, and, companioned by LaLa, who clung to him, sat gazing by the hour over the roofs, trying not to think of the future, but making no bones about wishing the present were over.

Then came the ordeal at which he had to appear as chief mourner; but he girded up his loins, and, as a matter of fact, very nearly wept as he followed the long narrow casket out of the house. It was to remain in the mortuary chapel in Brompton Cemetery until Mrs. Cutting could close her house and start for New York. There was another short service out there, and as he was as white as death, and his shoulders sagged, the distinguished gathering, among whom were many Americans, pitied him intensely.