Chapter IV

EDY CARBERRY was not feeling very well. In a word, it was digestive.... But such troubles as these may mean a very great deal after a certain age and to a certain constitution; and little Dr. Basing recommended that her drive should be given up for the present and that she should remain in the house for a week or two.

So the little ceremonial ceased. The fat horses waxed slightly fatter; the aged lodge-keeper, whose duty it was to be standing by the gate bare-headed with a bent back at twenty minutes to three, snoozed uninterruptedly in his chair instead; the coachman remained half an hour longer in the steward's room after dinner; and when three days further had elapsed, Miss Fakenham was asked to come down.

It all fell pretty heavily upon^Sarah, whose duty it became to hang about and do nothing in particular. She took second place, definitely and clearly, to her ladyship's maid, and was instructed to wait upon that lady for orders. Miss Fakenham's arrival, therefore, was something of a relief.

But it was a very dreary time: the slender stream of guests dried up; it was impossible to accept invitations; and Sarah was reduced to long and lonely rides — not too long, as her mother might want her — and to seeing what she could of Mary at odd times.

Of course Mary let out fairly soon by hints and implications what was in the air, and the dreariness increased even further for her friend. It seemed to her exceedingly hard that this most natural and easy-going friend should take a turn of this kind. They had something resembling a small tiff one day just before Easter. They seemed, said Sarah, to be drifting apart.

" I can't understand," said Sarah, " why you need make such a fuss. It seems to me that you were much nicer before."

Mary paused with her hand on the garden-gate. She had walked up in the afternoon to enquire after Lady Carberry, and Sarah had walked down with her as far as the gate to the short cut across the park.

" I don't think that's the point," she said.

" It is for me," said Sarah. " Besides "

"Well?"

"It seems to me it's the real point for everyone. Surely religion can't do anything better than make people friendly and natural and all the rest. There's this world for certain; and as regards the other "

" Yes? " said Mary.

" Well, as regards the next world, no one knows anything for certain."

" Catholics do," said Mary, quick and sharp.

" So you say."

Sarah was certainly a little cross to-day. She had had a trying morning of it. The doctor had come as usual, and been rather gloomy: he had refused to give any kind of assurance as to when the old lady would be about again. And she herself had been sent for twice to be found fault with. Mary, then, seemed to her the last straw.

" You're a little fractious," said the girl, smiling.

Sarah made a small impatient sound.

" I hate all that sort of helpful cheerfulness," she said.

Mary let the gate swing to between them, and her face darkened ever so slightly.

" All right " she said. " Good-bye."

" Good-bye," said Sarah, with sudden dignity.

It was all very tiresome and troublesome, thought Sarah, as she went back to the house. She knew perfectly well she had behaved rather badly; but she preferred to say that Mary had. Then, two days later, came a sudden event that drove these things away.

She had been up to see her mother about twelve o'clock, and found her even more severe than usual. The beef-tea had not been properly prepared, and it was entirely Sarah's fault for not overlooking the servants more carefully. What, it was asked, would she herself do when she had a house of her own, if she could not even keep well-trained servants up to the mark? Would it not be better if Miss Fakenham took over the entire charge of the house for the present? And so forth. The worst of all was that it was entirely impossible to snap back. More, the old lady lay in awful dignity, crowned with a black lace shawl, her ruddy face pinched and fallen, with disagreeable-looking pouches beneath the eyes. The whole room too suggested a pathetic imitation of a presence-chamber: the large four-posted mahogany bed, the satin-wood toilette-table decked with silver objects, the faint smell of furs, dresses, eau-de-cologne, the deep carpet, the bath-rug, the little row of miniatures, the solemn chintz furniture, all somehow combined to suggest a great personage fallen low, surrounded by possessions which, with digestive troubles, she could not properly enjoy.

"You should be more thoughtful, my dear," observed her mother when the daughter had been sufficiently crushed. "When your poor father died I never left him night or day." " But, mother, you're not so ill as all that! " " We never know," said the old lady, who knew perfectly well that she was going to recover, and had told Dr. Basing with some warmth that very morning that she would not be treated like a helpless invalid.

" We never know. I only know that you should be more thoughtful. The beef-tea was most tasteless this morning; I could scarcely manage more than a spoonful or two.... So just remember, my dear, in future."

" I'm very sorry, mother; but really, the beef-tea "

" Yes, my dear; I do not expect you to prepare it. That would be too much to ask. But it's the general tone of the house that shows itself in little things like that. If the servants had been kept up to their work this would not have happened. Now go and enjoy yourself, my dear. A good brisk walk before lunch would do you good. Just give me that prayer-book, and the miniature of your poor father, before you go. I like to have them beside me.... And tell Linton to come to me immediately. And please, my dear, see that the baize-door is kept closed at the top of the stairs. I think that is not too much to ask under the circumstances."

Sarah looked at her, torn between compassion and resentment It was this kind of thing all day long.

Certainly she looked ill this morning; her ringless old hands jerked gently and peevishly on the silk rug that lay over her; and her face was lined in iron-looking folds. The scorned beef-tea stood in a small white fluted covered vessel on the pedestal by the bedside; and two toast crumbs, one on the very end of the old lady's nose, made her dignity the more pathetic.

Sarah made suitably filial remarks and went downstairs.

The luncheon-table too increased her sense of dreariness. It was so exact in its appointments, each of which was dictated by irrevocable laws. The butler was so immutable, the food so exceedingly well cooked. And yet the chair of the mistress of all was pushed back against the wall, her place at the head of the table, so sacred was it, rested vacant, and the roast lamb lay instead before Sarah's own seat in the middle of the long side facing the windows. Neither was Miss Fakenham helpful: she sat subdued and gloomy opposite Sarah, answered all her remarks correctly and volunteered none of her own.

It was as the sweets were being actually placed upon the table that the blow fell. A bell was heard to ring; the butler nodded swiftly and silently to the footman, who vanished. The butler, when all was set, vanished also; and two minutes later reappeared, slightly breathless.

" Her ladyship is taken suddenly ill, my lady. Her ladyship's maid "

Then the two rose and fled.

ii

Mary first heard the news from Dr. Basing himself in the afternoon, and it fell on her with that sense of bewilderment which such news, regarding one whom one rather dislikes, always bears with it.

" Dead! You don't mean it! "

The doctor quieted his horse and leaned over the rail a little nearer. It was just outside the park-gates.

" Indeed, yes," he said; " it was what I feared. The heart was weak. It was all over by five minutes after I got there."

Mary turned her pony's head on the instant and was off.

The house was in the same sort of breathless condition, suggesting without manifesting disorder, in which, as in a bad dream, she remembered her own house hardly more than seven months ago. It looked like a familiar face in a swoon. In the hall, down which she had so often seen Lady Carberry proceeding as on some high day, were small evidences, scarcely noticeable, yet taken together, significant of a real disorganisation. A bright red and black cricketing cap, plainly the property of a footman, lay in the midst of the majolica plate that held the calling-cards. (The butler secreted it deftly as he came to the door.) An umbrella lay all across the floor, and a white fluted covered vessel stood on the seat of a polished wooden chair. Whether it was these things, or her own knowledge, or whether conceivably some actual shadow of emptiness cast from some plane of which we know nothing — at least there was desolation here, and a certain horror of darkness.

She went swiftly through into the morning-room, a cave of firelight and dying daylight stealing through unshuttered windows, and there started up a figure hidden in a deep chair that threw itself, wild-eyed, into her arms....

" And the worst of it all," moaned Sarah presently, " is that she didn't know me. And the last thing I really saw of her was when she was cross with me. Oh, my dear, does she understand now, do you think? "

Mary tightened her arms round her friend.

" My darling, of course it's all right. Don't think of it like that."

" Yes, yes; but what does she think of it all now? Tell me. You Catholics say you know."

Mary hesitated. Was purgatory assimilable Sarah just now? And yet, if ever, purgatory wei obviously necessary!... She hesitated.

" The Rector's been up here; he's been telling m< about heaven and all that; but — but, Mary deai

I — I can't think of mother... like that. Do you really think? "

Her voice faltered and stopped.

Then Mary made an attempt. Truly she did her best; she insisted on happiness for all those who followed the light they had; she toned down certain points, which need not be discussed; she said that she quite agreed that heaven and palms and harps were a little difficult just at present, considered as an environment for Lady Carberry; she hinted gently.

" And what I'm going to do next, goodness knows," moaned Sarah.

Mary's trickle of consolation dried up on the instant. There was really no need for consolation.

An hour later she came out again. Oh, yes, she had been upstairs and seen the satin-wood dressing-table, and the silver ornaments, and the mahogany bed, and that which lay on it, august and terrible. A nurse sat there by the bed. Sarah kneeled by her. Three candles were burning; and a little fire, before which hung a sheet or two, burned on the hearth. Miss Fakenham, Mary remembered afterwards, was somewhere in the room — a mourning shadow.

Sarah came down again with her, through the house so deathly still, clung to her again, and listened without hearing to the last words that Mary pumped up for her with intolerable effort.

Yet as the girl drove away again into the darkness, in spite of what she had seen and the sorrow of her friend, she was thinking of neither of these things, but of that interior conflict of her own which once more surged within her.

Ill

Jim was lying in bed in a room in his aunt's house in London when he heard the news by the first post.

It was a room so entirely characteristic of its inhabitant that it is really worth a description. First, it was papered and painted throughout in creamy white, with the exception of a light green frieze of the exact tint of apple leaves in sunlight, which colour was repeated in the short silk window curtains, furniture coverings, and carpet. All the furniture was of mahogany, brought to a high pitch of polish (it was of some period or other, but I entirely forget which, if I ever knew); it had spindlelegs and a particular kind of curve in its lines. The bed too was of mahogany, very delicate and exquisite, with a beautiful little inlay in the carved bed-head. There was not a great deal of furniture: the room had an empty aspect; but it was a very expensive emptiness.

Upon a discreet-looking upright couch at the foot of the bed lay Jim's clothes, ready for assumption. (His man had called him half an hour before, set out his bath -towel -dressing -gown, and placed a little early-morning tea-set of pink china beside his bed.) His clothes, even empty of Jim, were a caress to the eyes, so perfect were they; and by their side lay a pair of his famous clocked socks with suspenders attached.

But the bed itself and its occupant formed the climax, so white were the sheets, so delicate the silk bed-spead turned back over the foot, so beautiful the pyjamas, and so quiet the owner of all.

(I love Jim — as I have said before — at least I love, mentally, to walk round him, and look at him, and paw him with reverential fingers. He is so perfectly finished, so completely true to type, so utterly contented.)

Further, I forgot to mention, on the table by his bed lay a small vellum-covered book of French poems, a silver cigarette-case, and a match-box that struck a light almost entirely unaided. And on the spindle-legged table beyond the couch rested four more books — no more — in a little stand.

He was lying very quiet and thinking very hard; and, if the truth were known, I expect he was experiencing the supreme struggle of his life. He was wondering whether he would go to the funeral or not — no more. It would take place in three days, he was informed by his aunt's letter, that still lay open on the bed; and he was to send a wire immediately. So his bath cooled rapidly in the next room while he fought it out.

It was a struggle, because he chose to make it the symbol of a conflict in which he had long been engaged. The point was: was he to marry Sarah or not?

The alternatives lay before him, ranged down to their minutest details. Jim was essentially a bachelor; persons of his temperament always are: they are gloriously sufficient to themselves; their atmosphere is so individual and personal a thing that the risk of an alien intrusion is a danger seldom faced. Who could tell, for instance, whether Sarah's taste would rise to all that was represented by this white, apple-green, and mahogany? And if not...

On the other hand, there was a great deal to be said for it. An individualistic and artistic bachelor is apt, when he reaches a certain age, to be treated even too much as an individual and too little as a social personage. He ceases to be able to shoot or play billiards, or even fish as well as he would like; and philosophical conversation cannot please for ever. But the husband of Lady Sarah must always be taken into consideration. There would be two houses at once, and a third to follow on his aunt's death, besides quite a decent income. He need no longer stop in his Civil Service: he might even begin to add once more to his first editions. And, after all, Sarah was not a bad sort, all things considered, and might be capable of a good deal of improvement.

So Jim lay and considered it, with his sleek head black against the linen and his eyes closed.

Lady Carberry's death he did not even pretend to regret, except for the fact that it brought things to a point. He would no longer be able to play about down there. Sarah, undoubtedly, would drift off into other circles presently, and might — it was really quite conceivable, after all — she might find someone even more to her taste than Jim. It was now or never....

A small, bulgy, china clock on the mantelpiece beat nine in the tones of a distant cathedral. Jim opened his eyes and touched the bell by his bedside.

"Oh, just turn on some more hot water," he said when the man came. " I shall be down in half an hour; and there'll be a wire to send as soon as I come down."

So the great decision was taken; and Jim considered it all over again under innumerable aspects as he ate a kidney and a half and drank some coffee before setting out for Whitehall. (The kidney was slightly dry, he noticed; he would speak about it. No, on the whole, he wouldn't; it was his own fault for being late; and the coffee was so superlatively excellent that it really made up for the other.)

Ten minutes later, again, he was in the hall still thoughtful, slipping his arms into the coat respectfully held up by Charles his man.

" No, I'll take the umbrella," he said. " I think it might rain. No cab; I'll walk part of the way anyhow. The wire went all right? "

" Yessir."

Then he went out and turned briskly up the pavement to the left.

So the mysteries of Life and Death are wrought and interwoven.

I think too it is worth while to describe the funeral. No less than two columns of the county paper were occupied in its chronicle, recording the list of mourners, the special train from town, the mob of carriages and cars at the churchyard gate. Further, the churchyard itself figured at length, the exquisite symbolism of the sun that came out, the white surplice of the venerable Rector, the extraordinary beauty of the singing of the hymns "For all the saints " and " Now the labourer's task is o'er."

Lady Sarah's distinguished grief-stricken figure made its appearance four times in the two columns; and a word of tribute was paid to the broad-minded-ness of Mr. and Mrs. Weston, and especially the delicate sympathy of the latter, who, for the first time since they took up their residence at Manningham, entered the parish church. It was remarked also that Mr. James Fakenham supported his aunt on this melancholy occasion, and drove back with the mourners to the house of sorrow.

To Mary the experience was one of almost unrelieved horror.

She arrived with Jack ten minutes before the service began, and, sitting in the church in the seat assigned to her, watched through the low, clear-glass window that which the newspaper described as the " funeral cortege " (without the accent).

For the first time in her life she saw a plumed hearse actually in existence, and stared with almost superstitious terror on the twelve black erections, which with their long fringes resembled so many longhaired faceless heads nodding in mute sorrow.

She saw too the great coffin, silver-plated, clamped and bound, slide out from its end on to the shoulders of six men in black frock-coats, and watched its progress up the path, with the Rector in front, reading aloud words which she could not hear, while his surplice blew open from the neck. Then came the mourners and the crowd.

Presently when the church was filled — I omitted to say that Chopin's funeral march was being played meanwhile by the village schoolmistress — the organ boomed out again into a hymn, studied closely by Mary, recounting the glories of God's saints and the song of Alleluia which is theirs.

She reached out a hand and took Sarah's, who stood next to her — herself speechless. Death, it seemed to her, was terrible enough without this kind ' of unreality; yet Sarah smiled at her, as if comforted, through her heavy veil. Jim, Mary noticed, stood beyond Miss Fakenham next the aisle, with a respectfully bowed head.

So the affair went on. Once or twice she stared out again at the plumed heads that waited twenty yards away down the path, then again at the Rector reading, with that scholarly expression for which he was renowned in the district, an enormous portion of Scripture containing a few passages of amazing beauty and a good deal that was completely unintelligible to modern ears: " There is one glory of the stars... and another of the moon.... One kind of flesh... another kind of flesh "; and then, ever and again, at the monstrous shape before the chancel steps, loaded, piled, and heaped with white flowers as a symbol of innocence and simplicity.

And it was the body of Lady Carberry, she reflected, that rested there.

The second hymn at the graveside crowned her abhorrence. It began, certainly with sufficient beauty of expression, by announcing that "the labourer's task was o'er," that " the battle day was past," and that "the voyager lands at last upon the farther shore." It concluded, as in every verse, with a word upon the " servant " of God sleeping in Him.

Oh, yes, the hymn was a beautiful one, bringing tears to the eyes. (Sarah broke down and sobbed half-way through.) It was sung reverently and softly; and the sun came out, as recorded by the Gazette, and shone from curtaining western clouds. And the Rector uttered the last words with an almost perfect intonation; and yet, and yet...

Well, in a sentence, what was there in common between all this tenderness and confidence and the life of the old woman whose body lay in the midst?

Mary struggled against the thought — it was horrible to think such things — yet, was it not an indisputable fact that the life that had ended had been one of utter and complete selfishness? She had been hard upon all who knew her; she had sinned by every sin of pride and complacency, and even the smaller kinds of tyranny, that it was possible to imagine; she had spoiled, so far as it was possible for her to spoil, the life of this poor girl beside her, who sobbed and sobbed at the thought that their last words had been words of reproach and fault-finding, though not even on her side— this poor girl, who, in the midst of her agony, had had time to wonder what was going to become of herself. Certainly the old woman had lived a conventionally good life; she had outraged no proprieties, had brought herself within the reach of no human or social law; yet if there were a divine law of love anywhere in the universe, her life had been but one defiance of it from beginning to end. She had no friends; she had only unreal shadows of herself. There was not one soul in the universe who in a week's time would really regret her, or one life that would be the poorer for her loss. This passionate crying of the girl, these discreet eyewipings of Miss Fakenham and two other middle-aged ladies — these were at the most purely symptoms of nervous emotionalism. In a month from now Sarah would be happier and freer and more effective than ever in her life before; and as for this grave concern on the faces of the Lord Lieutenant of the county, the magistrates, a dozen farmers — tenants, of course — Jim Fakenham, and the rest of the mob — this was worth exactly as much, considered morally, as the black coats and gloves that they wore upon their bodies.

And it was this woman who was the labourer and soldier and traveller of God, who had won her reward; and it was from the lips of the soul that had inhabited that body that the eternal Alleluia was presumed to be pealing. Was there not to be one cry for mercy, one confession of failure and misery, one utterance of faith and hope in a compassion utterly undeserved and forfeited?...

" The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Ghost be with us all evermore," said the Rector comfortably. And the choir sang Stainer's Amen.

v

Husband and wife drove in silence through the park gate. Mary had promised Sarah to come up a little later when the mourning guests had gone.

Then Jack turned to her in the brougham.

" My dear," he said, " don't look so overcome."

Mary said nothing.

" Well, she was a good old thing, I suppose," he said.

Mary assented with a nod.

" And I suppose Sarah '11 go and live with an aunt or something," he went on. " She's well enough off, anyhow. There was Jim Fakenham there; did you see him? "

Mary sighed.

" Oh, Jack! " she said, " it really was awful, though. That hearse, those hymns... everything. That's what's called a bright funeral."

Jack made a small demurring sound. (He looked extraordinarily odd, thought Mary, in black gloves and trousers.)

" Yes," he said, " I suppose so. But I don't see why they shouldn't. They don't pray for the dead, you see, so I don't see why they shouldn't put the best construction "

" Oh, Jack! you don't believe that for one instant."

Jack looked out of the window.

Even in their own delightful drawing-room Jack's black suit cast a certain dreariness. They had tea instantly, but everything was a little sepulchral, for all that. Once again Jack remarked upon Mary's manner; and this time she seemed to resent it a little.

" Oh, don't bother, my dear! " she said. " Sarah's on my mind, rather, too."

11 Too?" questioned Jack.

"As well as Lady Carberry," said Mary deliberately.

She rose and went to the window, leaving her cup half drunk. The sun had set a few minutes before beyond the western slopes, and the air was of that dying luminosity that resembles a hope that is going downhill — exquisite, tender, and melancholy. The clouds had cleared yet more before sunset, and there shone, high up, coming and going, seen as within folded-back curtains, a single star like a crumb of glass. Beneath, the slopes lay dull and menacing, dark ash-coloured, darkening as she looked. A little wind shook the dwarf-ivy at the window and sank again. It seemed to Mary as if everything waited for some solution — some key-word to set all in order. Were things generally really so futile and meaningless as they^ appeared? Or was there, after all, an answer — a missing letter that would make sense out of nonsense?... And if so, was it what she suspected?...

Mary turned round abruptly.

" Where are you going? " asked Jack, lowering his cup.

" I'm going up to church for a bit," said Mary, and went out.