Then she saw that someone was standing in the room, between her and the windows, a dark tall form with bent head. She sat up abruptly, and felt all through her body the ominous loud pounding of her heart, the roaring of her blood. Her throat felt as though a thin iron band were tightening about it. A sick horror churned in her, a sensation that something dreadful, something too enormous to be borne, had happened somewhere, was connected in some way with this quiet dark figure between her and the lighted windows.
She cried out: “Who are you? Speak to me! O God, can’t you speak to me?”
The figure stirred, came toward her without visible movement. Then she saw that it had a wan light on its face and she could see its features. It was Philippe. Never had she seen such a face, such deathliness, such torment. But worse than all else was the sudden agony in her chest, the swamping anguish. She screamed out, madly, over and over, over and over, beating her hands together, screaming his name: “Philippe! Philippe! Philippe!”
A blindness passed over her eyes, and through its dark waves she felt herself being shaken, heard someone call her. The blindness passed, and she found herself lying on her pillows. Paul was bending over her, calling her, shaking her gently. He was very frightened. His one thought was that her time had come upon her prematurely. It was not for some moments that he remembered that she had been calling Philippe.
“What is it, my darling? Are you in pain?”
She stared at him; he could see the brilliant distended eyes in the semi-darkness. Then she turned from him slowly and her eyes rolled about the room. All at once a convulsion ran over her body; she seized Paul wildly, she burst into convulsive sobs.
“Philippe! Something has happened to Philippe! I know it! He was here only a moment ago!”
She clung to him, her hands clutching him, tearing at his nightshirt, his arms, his hair, his shoulders. But when he tried to draw her to him, she thrust him off. And all the time she sobbed and groaned, and looked about the room. Her face was terrible, her long black hair dishevelled about it, and falling over her pillows.
For a moment Paul was silent, still gently holding. At last he said with difficulty: “My darling, there is no one here. You have been dreaming.”
Her cries and sobs became more and more anguished. Servants, awakened, stirred and murmured apprehensively in their rooms above. Paul was sick with alarm. Gertrude still struggled with him fiercely, but finally, as though suddenly stricken, she subsided, and lay against his chest. He held her with tender firmness, smoothing her hair, pressing her face against his body. Her moaning became softer, yet more agonized, harder to endure. He said nothing, but over her head he stared into the darkness, bitterly and sadly. He began to sigh deeply; his hand continued to stroke her head, and he still murmured soothingly to her.
Finally she grew quieter; the sobs were farther between. At last she slept in his arms, her cheek against his chest. But even in her sleep she whimpered a little. Paul did not sleep again. He lay gazing steadily at the dusky ceiling until it was morning.
When it was time for him to get up, Gertrude still slept, her face drawn and gray and small upon her pillow, her hair tragically strewn about it. He tiptoed softly from the room and ate his breakfast downstairs alone. He felt quite stony inside, quite motionless.
He had been gone an hour when Gertrude awoke. She dressed without haste, went downstairs to her breakfast, and then called for her carriage. She wrapped herself in a concealing broadcloth cloak and put her plumed black velvet hat on her head. Her maid, a young German girl, protested affectionately, assuring her mistress that she looked very ill and ought to remain at home. But Gertrude, smiling a drawn and twisted smile, was driven away.
She went to her father’s house. Ernest was just recovering from a combat with influenza and was still at home. Both he and May were surprised and alarmed at this early visit from Gertrude. But she assured them calmly that she had to do some shopping in town, and that she was going to call upon her Aunt Florabelle. May, apprehensive, studied her daughter’s clay-colored face with its pinched bluish nostrils, its tremulous and livid mouth. “Why, my dear child, you must go to the doctor!” she exclaimed. “And if you insist on seeing Florabelle first, I will certainly go with you!”
They drove away together in Gertrude’s carriage. There never had been much spontaneity between mother and daughter, very little confidence. It was only because Gertrude was really distraught that she told her mother of her dream. May, concerned and exceedingly alarmed, listened intently, seeing nothing but her daughter’s tortured face, her purple and bitten lips, hearing under the slow, unhurried words, the real terror and suffering. At the end, she looked at Gertrude’s misshapen body only half concealed by the cloak. Her own expression was full of despair and apprehension.
“But, my dearest,” she said, “it was only a dream, after all. This is really very silly, going to see Florabelle to ask her for news of Philippe.”
“I know it was Philippe. I know it,” said Gertrude’s soft monotonous voice, in which there was something relentless. “I’ve got to know. Otherwise,” she added more loudly, “I’ll go mad.”
May was silent. Under the fur robe of the carriage her gloved hands twisted and twisted. Once her lips parted suddenly, as though she found it hard to breathe.
The very instant the carriage turned into the driveway of the house on Quaker Terraces May knew that something was most frightfully wrong. The house looked quiet enough in the spring morning sunlight, its lawns greening visibly, yet through a sudden nightmare mist of horror, May knew something was wrong. It was all unreal, glaring, ghastly, and she had a feeling that at all costs she must stop Gertrude from entering that house. She cried out something peremptorily, and the coachman, surprised, pulled in the horses. May turned to Gertrude. Her voice was trembling when she spoke: “See, my darling, no one is up yet, except the servants. The whole household is still asleep. The blinds are all drawn. It would be unkind to disturb your aunt at this hour.”
Gertrude gazed at the house; the windows, shining in the sunlight, were shrouded in pale gray silk, shirred and fringed. But there was a stricken mute look about it, as though it had opened its mouth in a soundless scream. No one was about; the front door stood ajar. The house and its grounds seemed to stand in an awful nightmarish sort of trance.
“This is really very stupid of me,” thought May distractedly, over the thudding of her heart. “I’m letting my imagination run away with me.”
Gertrude said clearly: “Please drive in, Michaels.”
It was Gertrude, after all, who had the strength to get out of the carriage first. May followed, lifting her heavy skirts high, as she found she had a tendency to stumble. Gertrude had not bothered to pull the bell, but had stepped into the hall. Everything was quiet inside, full of sunshine on old polished fed mahogany panels and Turkey-red carpeting. A picture frame on the reddish walls caught the sun on its scrolled gilt. But there was not a sound.
In that silence the slight noise the women made on entering the house seemed like an uproar. The library door opened and Major Norwood thrust a dishevelled white head and tear-stained face into the brilliance of the hall.
“Is that you, Jules and Leon?” he asked faintly. “You were a long time returning home. You’d better go up to your mother—”
He stopped abruptly when he could distinguish the visitors. They regarded the Major fixedly, unable to move. Then he uttered a sort of whimper, held open the door leading to the library, and with a mute-pathetic gesture invited them in. Gertrude asked no questions; she did not hesitate or make a sound, but walked steadily into the library, her mother following. He closed the door after them. Then, still standing by it, he burst simply and unaffectedly into tears.
“Of course,” thought May numbly, “this is all a ridiculous nightmare. Such things don’t happen in the customary movement of events. Or, do they?” She seemed more upset than Gertrude, who had moved near a table and stood there tranquilly, her concealing cape falling
in motionless folds about her tall slight figure. Nothing could have been calmer than her face, though it looked marble-opaque in the dimmed light of the library; nothing could have been steadier than her distended eyes.
“Dear Major,” murmured May, “what is wrong? Is Florabelle ill?”
“How can I say it?” the Major cried, dabbing at his cheeks with his silk handkerchief, and shaking his head. “It is too terrible. We have sent for the boys. They ought to be here now. Poor Florrie is in a condition! Her heart is broken, her poor tender little heart,” he added with such pathos that the sentimentality was forgotten. “She will never get over this, my dear May! Never get over it! He was her love, her favorite.”
Gertrude laid her gloves carefully upon the table and loosened the neck of her cape. May went quickly to her side. But Gertrude did not glance at her.
“It is Philippe, isn’t it, Major?” she asked in her clear light voice.
“Yes,” he answered, blowing his nose and blinking the kind and foolish tears from his eyes.
Gertrude drew a long slow breath, but her calm expression did not alter.
“He is dead, isn’t he?”
“Yes, my love, dead. I do not know, I really do not know, what we are to do—”
Gertrude sat down rather quickly. Her hands folded themselves in her lap. She stared at the floor. There was something appalling in her calm, her lack of outward emotion. But May began to cry, as she stood by Gertrude’s side, her hand on her shoulder. Naturally, her grief was less than it had been at her son’s death, and so she cried as she had not cried then. But her sorrow was for her daughter and not for the dead man. Finally she said, through her tears: “Darling, this is very dreadful. But you must remember—There are so many things for you to remember—” her voice trailed away vaguely.
The Major sat down and covered his face with his handkerchief. His broad shoulders heaved.
“May I go upstairs to poor Florrie?” asked May, drying her eyes.
“Ah, no, dear May. She is not in a condition to see any one. Her maid is with her, and the doctor. We have sent for Jules and Leon. I have sent a telegram to Chandler’s school, and we expect him this evening. Betsy, the poor child, is in the nursery, crying her little heart out. François is no use at all, and he has been put to bed. Florrie will not even see me, her husband. I believe they are putting her to sleep.”
“But what happened? What is it?” asked May faintly, becoming alarmed at Gertrude’s long immobility. The shoulder under her hand hardly moved with the slightest breath.
“It is so horrible,” wept the Major, looking at her pathetically with his simple wet blue eyes. He looked like a child himself, in spite of his bulk and his white hair. “It came this morning, the letter from Bishop Dominick. So kind, in spite of being a Roman and a priest! He wrote to us himself, and said he will come to see Florabelle soon, and sends his blessing and assures us of his sorrow, and says he will pray for us and for poor Philippe. It seems,” he added in a breaking voice, “that the poor boy died on the leper island to which he had asked to go. I believe it was cholera, or something equally dreadful.”
May averted her head. Gertrude still did not move. Her hands had relaxed and lay on her knees flaccidly, like dead hands. May dared not try to see her face.
“Will they send his body—home?” whispered May.
“No, he is already buried, the Bishop said. Nearly a month ago. It is such a long way off, that island, and ships only call once a month. They brought the news back.” Something seemed to occur to the poor man, for he stopped his weeping and looked at Gertrude and May with round wide eyes. “It is very strange, but it just occurred to me. The Bishop said he was sure that Mr. Ernest Barbour would be particularly affected to hear of his nephew’s death because of his deep interest in Philippe, as expressed on a certain day in Philadelphia, before the poor boy went to Montreal—”
“No! No!” cried May shrilly, before she had time to prevent herself. And then stopped, her hand against her lips. Then she caught Gertrude’s head in her arms and pressed it convulsively to her breast, as if to prevent it from seeing something too hideous to be borne.
The Major was dumbfounded, through his grief. He regarded May blankly for several moments. “What—what is it?” he stammered at last, blinking. “What have I said? That it was strange that the Bishop should think Mr. Ernest might be affected? But it is strange, is it not? I was not aware—Mr. Ernest did not seem to like Philippe, and Philippe—but pardon me, ladies,” he added with pathetic courtesy, “I should not say this—”
Gertrude pushed her mother away from her firmly but gently. Her face still had not changed, though there were purple clefts about her lips and patches like bruises under her shining eyes.
“I think—I understand, now,” she said in a bemused voice.
“I don’t see how we can bear it!” exclaimed the Major, weeping again. “To die all alone out there, without a friend.”
“Come home with me, my darling,” sobbed May, distraught, and taking one of her daughter’s hands. “Don’t think, my love. It—it is no what you think—What can I do? Darling, do not look like that! See, it is your Mama, who loves you—You must remember your baby, darling. You must not let yourself be upset. You owe it—Come home with me.”
“He was such a fine boy,” said the Major hoarsely, “such a fine boy Such brilliance, such kindness, such devotion to his mother. Whoever would have thought it, when he was such a sturdy little fellow, running about, and laughing, that some day, on a far away island, among lepers, that the cholera would kill him—”
“No,” said Gertrude in a loud and ringing voice. “It was not the cholera that killed him. My father killed him.”
“Darling!” said May. “You must not say that! You must not! Don’t look like that, Gertrude! This is your Mama! See, it is your Mama kneeling here beside you, crying for you. Your Mama! My little girl! Look at your Mama, kneeling here,” and indeed, the poor woman knelt in a welter of petticoats and furs beside Gertrude’s chair, trying to hold the stiff body in her arms, trying to draw down the stiff head upon her shoulders. “Trudie, sweetheart, you are killing me—I can’t bear it—”
“Madam!” exclaimed the Major, overcome with remorse. He forgot his grief and tried to induce May to rise. But she clung stubbornly to Gertrude, who did not move. “I am a cad, Madam, a cad! A blackguard, only a blackguard! I should have remembered Gertrude’s—Ah, I ought to be shot!” he added with fervent self-hatred.
May laid her gray head upon Gertrude’s knees and sobbed helplessly, with a sort of relaxed anguish. She felt the thinness of them under her cheek; once or twice she turned her head and pressed her lips against them. Her arms clung to Gertrude’s rigid legs. All other sorrows, other griefs, seemed nothing compared to this, this torture she suffered for her daughter. Could she have died to save Gertrude this, could she have given up anything in her life then, she would have done it with joy. This was worse, she thought wildly, much worse, than giving birth, much worse than seeing your child’s dead body; nothing was worse in all the world than seeing your child being torn to tatters in front of your eyes, watching it die fragment by fragment, in an ecstasy of torment too great for sound. If only Gertrude had died when she was born, or yesterday, an hour ago—
“O God,” she groaned deeply, as though she were dying herself. “O dear God.”
She heard a faint far sigh. Gertrude was stirring. “Don’t cry so, Mama,” she was saying quietly. “Nothing can help me—or Philippe, now. Please take me home. I want to see my father,” she continued in a curious voice. “I must see my father.”
There was the sound of hurried footsteps and agitated voices outside. Jules and Leon had arrived. They burst into the library, full of questions and anxieties. But when they saw Gertrude standing there, with such a face, they could not speak or move for several moments.
CHAPTER XCIII
Ernest was just coming down the stairway from his room when Gertrude and May entered the
hallway from outside.
His peculiar instinct, that always warned him of danger, made him stop halfway down and grip the banister; the hairs on the back of his neck bristled, and a cold tingle ran down his spine.
Gertrude stood at the foot of the stairs, staring up at him, and he stared down at her in return, in rigid silence. As for May, she stood slightly behind her daughter, and said nothing, made no gesture at all. Her attitude was fateful, waiting.
Through the pounding warning of his aroused instinct, through his apprehension, through his awareness of an awful danger, a horror, in fact, Ernest felt that this young woman waiting for him at the foot of the stairs was no longer his daughter. It was not Gertrude’s face lifted up to him; it was not Gertrude’s eyes fixed on him. Only the recognition of him was there; Gertrude had gone.
“Trudie!” he exclaimed, his voice thickening in his throat. But he did not take a step down toward her.
“You’ve killed Philippe,” she said loudly and clearly.
“Killed—What do you mean?” He wondered if it were his voice that he heard. Everything was rising and falling about him in sickening waves. He could see the purple and orange light that fell through the windows splashing on his own hand as he still gripped the banister.
“I know it all, now,” said Gertrude, in that odd automatic voice, which was without inflection. “You sent him away. To die. He’s dead now.” She flung out her arms with a surrendering, a convulsive gesture. “And I’m dead, too. You’ve killed me, as well as Philippe.”
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