when chudleigh wilmot arose on the following morning, with the semi-stupefied feeling of a man on whom a great calamity has just fallen, not the least painful portion of the task, not the least difficult part of the endurance that lay before him was the inevitable interview with his dead wife's friend. mrs. prendergast had requested that he would receive her early. this he learned from the servant who answered his bell; and he had directed that she should be admitted as soon as she arrived. he loitered about his room; he dallied with the time; he dared not face the cold silent house, the servants, who looked at him with natural curiosity, and, as he thought, avoidance. if the case had not been his own, wilmot would have remembered that the spectacle of a new-made widow or widower always has attractions for the curiosity of the vulgar: strong, if the grief in the case be very violent; and stronger, if it be mild or non-existent. wilmot was awfully shocked by his wife's death, terribly remorseful for his own absence, and perhaps for another reason--at which, however, he had not yet had the hardihood to look--almost stunned by the terrible sense, the conviction of the irrevocable ill of the past, the utterly irreparable nature of the wrong that had been done. but all these warring feelings did not constitute grief. its supreme agony, its utter sadness, its unspeakable weariness were wanting in the strife which shook and rent him. the thought of the dead face had terror and regret for him; but not the dreadful yearning of separation, not the mysterious wrenching asunder of body and spirit, almost as powerful as that of death itself, which comes with the sentence of parting, which makes the possibility of living on so incomprehensible and so cruel to the true mourner. not the fact itself, so much as the attendant circumstances, caused wilmot to suffer, as he undoubtedly did suffer. he knew in his heart that had there been no self-reproach involved in this calamity, he would not have felt it as he felt it now; and in the knowledge there was denial of the reality of grief.
no such thought as "how am i to live without her?" the natural utterance of bereavement, arose in wilmot's heart; though neither did he profane his wife's memory or do dishonour to his own higher nature by even the most passing reference to the object which had so fatally engrossed him. the strong hand of death had curbed that passion for the present, and his thoughts turned to kilsyth only with remorse and regret. but the wife who had had no absorbing share in his life could not by her death make a blank in it of wide extent or long duration.
he was still lingering in his room, when he was told that mrs. prendergast had arrived and was in the drawing-room. the closely-drawn blinds rendered the room so dark that he could not distinguish henrietta's features, still further obscured by a heavy black veil. she did not rise, and she made no attempt to take his hand, which he extended to her in silence, the result of agitation. she bowed to him formally, and was the first to speak. her voice was low and her words were hurried, though she tried hard to be calm.
"i was with your wife during her illness and at her death, dr. wilmot," she said; "and i am here now not to offer you ill-timed condolences, but to fulfil a trust."
her tone surprised wilmot, and affected him disagreeably. there had never been any disagreement between himself and mrs. prendergast; he was not a man likely to interfere or quarrel with his wife's friends; and as he was wholly unconscious of the projects she had entertained towards him, he had not any suspicion of hidden malice on her part. emotion he was prepared for--would indeed have welcomed; he was ready also for blame and reproaches, in which he would have joined heartily, against himself; but the calm, cold, rooted anger in this woman's voice he was not prepared for. if such a thing had been possible--the thought flashed lightning-like across his mind before she had concluded her sentence--he might have had in her an enemy, biding her time, and now at length finding it.
he did not speak, and she continued:
"i presume you have heard from dr. whittaker the particulars of mabel's illness, its cause, and the means used to avert--what has not been averted?--"
"i have," briefly replied the listener.
"then i need not enter into that--beyond this: a portion of my trust is to tell you that dr. whittaker is not to blame."
"i have not blamed him, mrs. prendergast."
"that is well. when mabel knew, or thought, i fear hoped, that her life was in danger, her strongest desire was that you should be kept in ignorance of the fact."
"good god! why?" exclaimed wilmot.
"i think you must know why better than i can tell you," replied henrietta pitilessly. "but, at all events, such was the case. dr. whittaker wrote to you, but she suppressed the letter. she gave it to me on the night she died. here it is."
chudleigh wilmot took the letter from her hand silently. astonishment and distress overwhelmed him.
"she bade me tell you that she laid her life down gladly; that she had nothing to leave, nothing to regret; that she was glad she had succeeded in keeping you in ignorance of her danger--for she knew, for the sake of your reputation, you would have left even miss kilsyth to be here at her death. but she preferred your absence; she distinctly bade me tell you so. she left no dying charge to you but this, that you should allow me to see her coffin closed on the second day after her death, and that you should wear her wedding-ring. i sent it to you last night, dr. wilmot. i hope you got it safely."
"i did; it is here on my finger," answered wilmot; "but, for god's sake, mrs. prendergast, tell me what all this means. why did my wife charge you with such a message for me; how have i deserved it? why did she, how should she, so young, and to all appearance not unhappy, wish to die, and to die in my absence? did she persevere in that wish, or was it only a whim of her illness, which, had there been any one to remonstrate with her, would have yielded later?"
"it was no whim, dr. wilmot. a wretched truth, i grant you, but a truth, and persisted in. so long as consciousness remained, she never changed in that."
a dark and angry look came into wilmot's face, and he raised his voice as he asked the next question:
"do you mean to explain this extraordinary circumstance, mrs. prendergast? are you going to give me the clue to this mystery? my wife and i always lived on good terms; we parted on the same. no man or woman living can say with truth that i ever was unkind to her, or that she had cause given her by me to wish her life at an end, to welcome death. i believe the communication you have just made to me is utterly without example. i never heard, i don't believe anyone ever heard of such a thing. i ask you to explain it, if you can."
"you speak as though you asked, or desired me to account for it too," said henrietta, in a cold and cutting tone, which rebuked the vehemence of his manner, and revealed the intense, unsleeping egotism of her disposition. "i could do so, i daresay; but i cannot see the profitableness of such a discussion between you and me. it is too late now; nothing can undo the wrong, no matter what it was, or how far it extended. it is all over, and i have nothing more to do than to carry out the last wishes of my dear friend. have i your permission to do so?" she asked, in the most formal possible tone, as she rose and stood opposite him.
wilmot put his hands up to his face, and walked hurriedly about the room. then he came suddenly towards henrietta, and said with intense feeling:
"i beg your pardon; i did not mean to speak roughly: but i am bewildered by all this. i am sure you must feel for me; you must understand how utterly i am unable to comprehend what has occurred. to come home and receive such a shock as the news of my wife's death, was surely enough in itself to try me severely. and now to hear what you tell me, and tell me too so calmly, as if you did not understand what it means, and what it must be to me to hear it! you were with her, her chosen friend. i think you knew her better than anyone in the world."
"and if i did," said henrietta,--all her assumed calm gone, and her manner now as vehement as his own,--"if i did, is not that an answer to all you ask me? if i am to explain her motives, to lay bare her thoughts, to tell her sorrows, to you, her husband, is that not your answer? surely you have it in that fact! they are not true husband and true wife who have closer friends. you never loved her, and you never knew or cared what her life was; and so, when she was leaving it, she kept you aloof from her."
wilmot made no sound in reply. he stood quite still, and looked at her. his eyes had grown accustomed to the gloom, and she had raised her veil. he could see her face now. her pale cheeks, paler than usual in her grief and passion, her deep angry sorrowful eyes, and her trembling lips, made her look almost terrible, as she stood there and told him out the truth.
"no," she went on, "you did not know her, and you were satisfied not to know her; you went complacently on your way, and never thought whether hers was lonely and wearisome. you never were unkind to her, you say; no, i daresay you never were. she had all the advantages to which your wife was entitled, and she did you and them due honour. why, even i, who did, as you say, know her best, had suspected only recently, and learned fully only since her illness began, all she suffered; no, not all--that one heart can never pour into another--but i have only read the story of her life lately, and you have never read it at all. you were a physician, and you did not see that your own wife, a dweller under your own roof, whose life was lived in your sight, had a mortal disease."
"what do you mean?" he said; "she had no such thing."
"she had!" henrietta repeated impetuously; "she had a broken heart. you never ill-treated her--true; you never neglected her--true,--until she was dying, that is to say;--but did you ever love her, dr. wilmot? did you ever consider her as other or more than an appendage of your position, an ornament in your house, a condition of your social success and respectability? what were her thoughts, her hopes, her disappointments to you? did you ever make her your real companion, the true sharer of your life? did you ever return the love, the worship which she gave you? did you ever pity her jealous nature; did you ever interpret it by any love or sensitiveness of your own, and abstain from wounding it? did you know, did you care, whether she suffered when you shut yourself up in your devotion to a pursuit in which she had no share? all women have to bear that, no doubt, and are fools if they quarrel with the bread-winner's devotion to his work. yes; but all women have not her silent, brooding, jealous, sullen nature; all women are not so little frivolous as she was; all women, dr. wilmot, do not love their husbands as mabel loved you."
she paused in the torrent of her words, and then he spoke.
"all this is new and terrible to me; as new as it is terrible. mrs. prendergast, do me the justice to believe that."
"it is not for me to do you justice or injustice," she made answer; "your punishment must come from your own heart, or you must go unpunished."
"but"--he almost pleaded with her--"mabel never blamed me, never tried to keep me more with her; rarely indeed expressed a wish of any kind. i declare, before god, i never dreamed, it never occurred to me to suspect that she was unhappy."
"no," she said; "and mabel knew that. she interested you so little, you cared so little for her, that you never looked below the surface of her life; and her pride kept that surface fair and smooth. she would have died before she would have complained,--she has died, in fact, and made no sign."
"yes," said wilmot suddenly and bitterly; "but she has left me this legacy, brought me by your hands, of miserable regret and vain repentance. she has insured the destruction of my peace of mind; she has taken care that mine shall be no ordinary grief, sent by god and to be dispelled by time; she has added bitterness to the bitter, and put me utterly in the wrong by her unwarrantable concealment and reticence."
"how truly manlike your feelings are, dr. wilmot! she has hurt your pride, and you can't forgive her even in death! she has put you in the wrong,--and all her own wrongs, so silently borne, sink into nothing in comparison!"
"i deny it!" wilmot said vehemently; "she had no wrongs,--no woman of her acquaintance had a better husband. what did i ever deny her?"
"only your love, only a wife's true place in your life, only all she longed for, only all she died for lack of."
"all this is absurd," he said. "if she really had these romantic notions, why did she conceal them? have i nothing to complain of in this? was she just to me, or candid with me?"
"what encouragement did you give her? do you think a proud, shy, silent woman like mabel was likely to lay her heart open to so cold and careless a glance as yours? no; she loved you as few women can love; but if she had much love, so she had much pride and jealousy; and all three had power with her."
"jealousy!" said wilmot in an angry tone; "in god's name, of whom did she contrive to be jealous."
"her jealousy was not of a mean kind," said henrietta. "ever since your marriage it had nourished itself, so far as i understood the matter, upon your devotion to your profession, upon the complacent ease with which you set her claims aside for those which so thoroughly engrossed you, that you had no heart, no eyes, no attention for her. of late--" she paused.
"well?" said wilmot;--"of late?"
"of late," repeated henrietta, speaking now with some more reserve of manner, "she believed you devoted--to a degree which conquered your devotion to your profession and to the interests of your own advancement--to the patient who detained you at kilsyth."
"what madness! what utter folly!" said wilmot; but his face turned deeply red, and he felt in his heart that the arrow had struck home.
"perhaps so," said henrietta, and her voice resumed the cutting tone from which all through this painful interview wilmot had shrunk. "but mabel was not more reasonable or less so than other jealous women. you had never neglected your business for her, remember, or been turned aside by any sentimental attraction from your course of professional duty. friendship, gratitude, and interest alike required you to attend to mr. foljambe's summons. you did not come, and people talked. mr. foljambe himself spoke of the attractions of kilsyth, and joked, after his inconsiderate manner."
"in her presence?" said wilmot incautiously.
"yes, in her presence," said henrietta, who perfectly appreciated the slip he had made. "she knew some people who knew the kilsyths, and she heard the remarks that were made. i daresay she imagined more than she heard. no matter. nothing matters any more. she was not sorry to die when her time came; she would not have you troubled,--that is all. and now i will leave you. i am going to her."
the last sentence had a dreadful effect on wilmot. in the agitation, the surprise, the pain of this interview, he had almost forgotten time; the present reality had nearly escaped him. he had been rapt away into a world of feeling, of passion; he had been absorbed in the sense of a discovery, and of something which seemed like an impossible injustice. with henrietta's words it all vanished, and he remembered, with a start, that his wife lay dead upstairs. they were not talking of a life long extinguished, which in former years might have been made happier by him, but of one which had ended only a few hours ago; a life whose forsaken tenement was still untouched by "decay's effacing fingers." with all this new knowledge fresh upon him, with all this bewildering conviction of irreparable wrong, he might look upon the calm young face again. not as he had looked upon it yesterday; not with the deep sorrow and the irresistible though unjustified compassion with which death in youth is always regarded, but with an exceeding and heart-rending bitterness, in comparison with which even that repentant grief was mild and merciful. the fixedness, the blank, the silence, would be far more dreadful, far more reproachful now, when he knew that he had never understood, never appreciated her--had unwittingly tortured her; now when he knew that, in all her youth and beauty, she had been glad to die. glad to die! the words had a tremendous, an unbearable meaning for him. if even the last month could have been unlived! if only he had not had that to reproach himself with, to justify her! in vain, in vain. in that one moment of unspeakable suffering wilmot felt that his punishment, however grave his offence, was greater than he could bear.
he turned away from henrietta with the air of a man to whom another word would be intolerable, and sat down wearily. she stood still, looking at him, as if awaiting an answer or a dismissal.
at length she said, "have you forgotten, dr. wilmot, that i asked your permission to carry out mabel's wish?"
"no," he said drearily, "i remember. of course do as you like; i should say, as she directed. i suppose the object of her request was, that i should see her no more, in death either. well, well--it is fortunate that did not succeed too." he spoke in a patient, broken tone, which touched henrietta's heart. but her perverted notion of truth and loyalty to the dead held her back from showing any sign of softening. just as she was leaving the room he said:
"such a course is very unusual, is it not?"
"i believe so," she replied; "but the servants know it was her desire."
then henrietta prendergast went away; and presently he heard a slight sound in that awful room overhead, and he knew she had taken her place beside the dead. he felt, as he sat for hours of that day quite alone, like a banished man. his wife was doubly dead to him now. all his married life had grown on a sudden unreal; and when he thought of the still white face which he was to see once, and only once more, for ever, it was with a strange sense of dread and avoidance, and not with the tender sorrow which, even amid the shock and self-reproach of yesterday, had come to his relief.
somehow, he could not have told how, with the inevitable interruptions, the wretched necessary business of such a time, the hours of that day passed over chudleigh wilmot's head, and the night came. he had looked his last upon his wife, had taken his solemn leave of the death-chamber. she lay now in her coffin, sealed, hidden from sight for evermore, and there was nothing now but the long dreary waiting. in its turn that too passed, and in due time the funeral day; and chudleigh wilmot was quite alone in his silent house, and had only to look back into the past. forward into the future he did not dare, he had not heart to look. a kind of blank, the reaction from intense excitement, had set in with him, and for the first time in his life his physical strength flagged. the claims of his business began to press upon him; people sent for him, respectfully and hesitatingly, but with some confidence that he would come, nevertheless. and wilmot went; and was received with condoling looks, which he affected not to see, and compassionating tones, of which he took no notice.
he had no more to do with the past--he had buried it; his sole desire was that others should aid him in this apparent oblivion; how far from real it was, he alone could have told. he had written to kilsyth a few indispensable lines, and had had a formal report of madeleine's health, which he had conscientiously tried to range with other professional documents, and lay by with them. it was certainly a dark and dreary time, endless in length, and so hopeless, so final, that it seemed to have no outlet; a time than which chudleigh wilmot believed life could never bring him a darker. but trouble was new to him. he learned more about it later on in his day.
when a fortnight had elapsed after wilmot's return to london, and the tumult of his mind had subsided, though the bitterness of his feelings was not yet allayed, he chanced one morning to require a paper, which he knew was to be found in a certain cabinet which filled a niche in the wall of his consulting-room. the cabinet in question was one he rarely opened; and the moment he attempted to turn the key, he felt confident that the lock had been tampered with. the conviction was singularly unpleasant; for the cabinet was a repository of private papers, deeds, letters, and professional notes. it also contained several poisons, which wilmot kept there in what he supposed to be inviolable security. closer inspection confirmed his suspicions. the lock had been opened by the simple process of breaking it; and the doors, merely laid together, had caught on a jagged piece of metal, and thus presented the slight obstacle they had offered. with a mere shake they unclosed.
this circumstance puzzled wilmot exceedingly. he made a careful examination of the contents of the cabinet. all was precisely as he had left it; not a paper missing or disturbed.
"who can have been at the cabinet?" he thought, "and with what motive?--nothing has been taken; nothing, so far as i can discover, has been touched. mere curiosity would hardly tempt anyone to run such a risk; and no one knew that there was anything of value here. stay," he reflected; "one person knew it. she knew it; she knew that i kept private papers here. no doubt it was she who opened the cabinet. but with what motive? what can she possibly have wanted which she could have hoped to find here?"
no answer to this query presented itself to wilmot's mind. he thought and thought over it, painfully recurring to all mrs. prendergast had told him, and trying to help himself to a solution of this mystery by the aid of those which had preceded it. for some time he thought in vain; at length the idea struck him that the jealous woman, restless and miserable in her unhappy curiosity--he could understand now what she had felt, he could pity her now--had opened the cabinet to seek for letters from some fancied rival in his affections. nothing but his belief in the perversion of mind which comes of the indulgence of such a passion as jealousy could have led wilmot to suspect his wife of such an act for a moment. but he was a wise man, now that it was too late, in that lore which he had never studied while he might have read the book, and he recognised the transforming power of jealousy. yes, that was it doubtless; she had sought here for the material wherewith to feed the flame that had tortured her.
chudleigh wilmot took the paper he wanted from the place where it had lain, and was about to close the doors of the cabinet once more--restoring them, until he could have the lock repaired, to their deceptive appearance of security--when his attention was caught by a dark-coloured spot, about the size of a shilling, upon the topmost sheet of a packet of papers which lay beside a small mahogany case containing the before-mentioned poisons. he took the packet out and examined it. the spot was there, and extended to every paper in the packet. a sudden flush and expression of vague alarm crossed wilmot's face. he took up the case and examined the exterior. a dark mark, the stain of some glutinous fluid, ran down the side of the box next which the papers had lain. for a moment he held the case in his hands, and literally dared not open it. then in sickening fear he did so, and found its contents apparently undisturbed. the box was divided into ten little compartments, in each of which stood a tiny bottle, glass-stoppered and covered with a leaden capsule. to the neck of each was appended a little leaden seal, the mark of the french chemist from whom wilmot had purchased the deadly drugs. he took the bottles out one by one, examined their seals, and held them up to the light. all safe for nine out of the number; but as he touched the tenth, the capsule with the leaden seal attached to it fell off, and wilmot discovered, with ineffable horror, that the bottle, which had contained one of the deadliest poisons known to science, was half empty.
he set down the case, and reeled against the corner of the mantelshelf near him, like a drunken man. he could not face the idea that had taken possession of him; he could not collect his thoughts. he gasped as though water were surging round him. once more he took up the bottle and looked at it. it was only too true; one half the contents was missing. he closed the case, and pushed it back into its place. it struck against something on the shelf of the cabinet. he felt for the object, and drew out his wife's seal-ring!
and now chudleigh wilmot knew what was the terror that had seized him. it was no longer vague; it stood before him clear, defined, unconquerable; and he groaned:
"my god! she destroyed herself!".
