The tip of Ernest’s tongue shot out and furtively wet his pale dry lips. He turned to May. She stirred only slightly.
“When we went to Florabelle’s,” she said in a low, almost indifferent voice, “we heard that Philippe had died on that leper island.” She paused, and he saw her eyes on him, dark brilliant circles in the whiteness, without mercy or any other emotion. “And there was a letter from the Bishop—” She lifted one hand a little, let it drop back to her side, heavily.
Very slowly, Ernest put his hand to his head. It was only for a moment; he seemed to move his strong legs apart, to brace himself for a terrific blow. He went down the steps, three more of them, and extended his hand to Gertrude.
“Don’t talk like that, Trudie,” he said gently. “I’m—sorry, for Philippe. But remember, I’m your father. You are upset. I would never have hurt you, or Philippe—” He went down two more steps. “My darling.”
But she jumped back from him, and her face was quite terrible. “Don’t touch me! You’ve killed Philippe! You are a liar! A vicious liar! You’ve tried to kill all of us, Frey and Guy and me! You killed Philippe.” Suddenly she burst into horrible dry sobs, and again she flung out her arms in that convulsive gesture. “You killed him, and you killed me. All these years, since he went away, I haven’t lived. I haven’t remembered one day from another. I haven’t lived at all since the day Philippe went away. Went away, because you made it impossible for him to stay. Lying, cheating, wicked man! You wanted something, and it didn’t matter to you if Philippe died to give it to you, or I died—”
“May! Stop her!” exclaimed Ernest. For the first time in their married life, May saw distraction on her husband’s face, saw that he was distraught and trembling. “Take hold of her, May. Can’t you see how she is—? Can’t you do something but stand there? She won’t let me touch her. Don’t stand there like a fool! Do something!”
“Why should I?” asked May coldly and bitterly. “Why should I save you from what you deserve?”
There was an abrupt silence. Then quietly, calmly, without passion, Ernest said to his wife: “Curse you.” He ran down the remaining stairs very quickly, and took Gertrude by the arm, very firmly, his fingers crushing into her flesh through the cape. To soothe this girl, to calm her, to hypnotize her, he put into his voice, his manner, his grip, all the strength and power he had ever had. And she looked at him blankly with her strained, half-mad eyes, trying to pull away from him.
“Trudie, my love,” he said gently, insistently, as though speaking to someone under a blanket of anæsthesia, “listen to me, only a moment. Try to hear me. My darling, if I had known this was to happen, I would have given my life to prevent it. Do you hear me, Trudie? I didn’t send Philippe away. I had nothing to do with his going. You say foolish things, Trudie. That is because you are—not well. But when this is all over, you will be ashamed. You will know then, as you have always known, that your father loves you more than any one else in the world, that he would give his right hand to save you from pain—Trudie, do you hear me, dearest?”
There was a great, an almost mortal anguish in his chest, and a cold sweat burst upon his skin. But his hand did not relax upon the thin arm he was gripping, that was trying to pull away from him.
For a moment after he had stopped speaking Gertrude continued to stare at him blankly. Then all at once a wild, almost childlike smile broke over her face. “You are such a liar,” she said, wonderingly.
There was another little silence. Then Ernest sighed. May had never heard such a sigh in her life, and something, in spite of herself, turned over in her breast. Ernest’s hand left Gertrude’s arm, and fell slowly to his side again. But he continued to look into her eyes, sadly, gently, pleadingly. And those eyes of hers repudiated him, stripped him, defied him to reach her again.
“Let me take you upstairs, my love,” he almost whispered, for he had seen a certain spasm in the muscles of her face, and a deadly alarm ran along his nerves. “Let me help you upstairs. You must lie down. You must think of your baby—”
Then she burst out laughing, tearing, strident laughter, and struck her hands together. “My baby! Do you think I care about my baby! Do you think I care about anything at all except Philippe.”
She stopped, and her face changed again, as though she had heard something frightful a while ago and was just beginning to realize what she had heard.
“Philippe! Philippe!” she cried suddenly, in a tone of mortal shock. A spasm of rigidity straightened her upwards to what seemed like unusual height.
And she turned and ran toward the hall door, her arms flung out before her. She actually reached the door, half opened it, then crumpled, all at once, as though shot. When Ernest reached her an instant later, he saw that she had fainted.
He picked her up in his arms and ran with her to the stairs. At the foot he paused; her head was fallen back, and on her open lips there was a faint line of foam. But he did not look at her; over the body of his daughter, over her face and hanging arms, he looked at his wife.
For a long moment their eyes were fixed on each other, and then May stepped back very quickly. Ernest went up the stairs with his daughter. May heard his rapid footsteps going down the hall, heard him carrying Gertrude into the room where she had been born.
CHAPTER XCIV
The doctor, shaking his head, murmured something about “very frail constitution,” and returned to the bedroom. Two nurses were summoned from the hospital, the hospital which Martin had built and endowed. They would not allow even May to enter the room, from which came an endless, monotonous moaning. She sat by the closed door, very quiet, unmoving. The nurses found something unbearably pathetic in the sight of this silent, stout, middle-aged woman sitting there as though she were blind and only half-conscious. Downstairs, Ernest sat with Paul, his son-in-law.
In the afternoon Dorcas arrived, after having visited her stricken sister, Florabelle. Her liking for her brother had not increased with the years, but when she saw him the selfish coldness in her relaxed and warmed. She sat beside him, holding his hand. She said comforting things to him, and he listened, apparently, but she realized, sighing, that he did not really hear her. Paul walked up and down, running his hands distractedly through his hair. At every sound from above he ran to the stairway, and peered up, straining and listening. Then he returned to the living room and began his walking again. They could hear the steps of the nurses above, the low voice of the doctor. Once in a while they heard a shrill and ripping scream, convulsive cries of agony. At these times Ernest caught his head as though he would like to tear it from his neck.
This went on all day, and into the twilight. No one thought of eating. The servants tiptoed about, whispering. Some of them had heard what had taken place between Ernest and his daughter, and they repeated it to each other, gloating. None of them felt any sympathy for him, but many expressed their pity for May and the suffering girl dying in the bed where she had been born.
At twilight they heard a door open, and the doctor came downstairs, pale and haggard, almost weeping. Ernest got up and ran to him, speechless. He shook his head. “She’s conscious now,” he said. “She’s asked for her mother.” He paused. “The baby will live, perhaps,” he said gently, “It is a little girl.”
Dorcas, crying, came to stand beside her brother. She took his arm.
“And Trudie?” she faltered.
The doctor spread out his hands significantly. Paul had come up to him, and he put his hand on the young man’s shoulder. “You may go up, Paul,” he said.
Ernest moved a little. “Hasn’t she—asked for me?”
“No, sir. I’m sorry. Women—like this—usually want only their mothers and their husbands. I’m sorry. My dear sir,” he added in consternation, “you had better sit down and try to rest, at once!”
At eight o’clock that night Gertrude Barbour died, without struggle, without even a murmur from the depths of her apathy and pain. But Ernest, sitting with Eugene and Dorcas in the
living room, was not told for over an hour. And then he was told as he stood in the old nursery where his children had played, with his granddaughter in his arms.
The news was brought to the Norwood family, and Jules received it. He went upstairs at once to his brother’s room. This house, too, was dark with mourning, and Florabelle still lay prostrate in her room with her husband beside her.
Jules opened Leon’s door. That young man was lying on his bed, his arms folded under his head, staring gloomily at the ceiling. As Jules entered, swiftly and silently as was his custom, Leon sat up. Something in Jules’ manner made him stare at him alertly.
Jules sat down, neatly crossed his thin knees. He returned his brother’s regard steadily, and with somberness.
Then he said: “Gertrude died tonight.” He paused, and carefully removed an imaginary thread from his sleek broadcloth. “The baby is a girl.”
There was a silence. Then: “Ah,” said Leon.
The brothers continued to look at each other.
CHAPTER XCV
A week after Gertrude’s funeral, Amy sent for Paul, who had not called upon his mother since his wife’s death. He came, silent and haggard and cold, and sat opposite her in her little sitting room. But she saw that he would not look at her. She was full of pity and grief for him, and at last she laid her hand on his knee. He did not say anything, but after a moment he moved his knee from under her hand. She sighed.
“Paul,” she said gently, “if you would like it, I will be glad to move out to Robin’s Nest and keep house for you.”
He did not reply for a moment, and then he said, not looking at her: “Thank you. But I’ve already talked to Elsa, and she is coming to me.” He paused. He lifted his eyes and looked at her with such hatred, such bitterness, that she felt a shock of illness and astonishment. “You’ve made it impossible for Elsa to live here any longer with you. And as for myself, I don’t care to have you in my house.”
Amy, unable to speak for a few minutes, sat rigidly in her chair. She was nearly fifty, but seemed much younger in spite of her sad face. Her hands lay in her lap, but the cords rose in them after her son’s words.
“Why?” she asked quietly.
Paul stood up, shrugged, and went to a window. Then he turned to her and said, with contempt: “I think you know why.”
Amy picked up her filmy handkerchief and touched her lips with it. “I see,” she replied gently. “You know about it.”
He made an enraged gesture. “I’ve always known about it. For years. I’ve heard whispers and laughs, behind my back. I’ve always known it. And always detested you for it.” He paused, breathing in a disordered fashion, then continued with fury: “You’ve asked me before if you could do anything for me. You can. You can never let Uncle Ernest know that I know. Because—because if he knew I knew, it would make it impossible for him to have me with him any longer.”
“And knowing this for years,” went on his mother’s soft voice, almost abstractedly, “you never felt like telling me before?”
“No. Why should I? I had other fish to fry, and I didn’t want anything to occur to keep Uncle Ernest from taking me in with him.”
“And what makes you tell me now?”
“I can’t help it! I suppose I should have kept my mouth shut. But—well, things have gotten a little out of hand with me, lately. And then, to realize that my mother is a light woman—”
Amy looked at him gently. “I see,” she said again. Her voice was full of pity. “Poor Paul.”
He was astonished. He lowered at her suspiciously. But he had never understood his mother and he was no nearer understanding her now.
“And you’re sure this will make no difference in your relations with Ernest, Paul?”
“None. Why should it? Unless you tell him I know.”
“I won’t tell him.” She hesitated and said, once more, “Poor Paul.”
A few days later, in pale silence, Elsa left her mother’s house and went out to Roseville, to Robin’s Nest. Then when John Charles, sullen and heavy-lidded, informed his mother that it would be convenient for him to live with Paul, in order to keep him informed about things at the bank, Amy said, as she always said to the puzzling and the unbearable and the sad: “I see.” So Amy was left alone in the house on Quaker Terraces. She had never thought it was possible to feel so lonely, so desolate. Ernest had not come to her since Gertrude’s death, and she had a feeling that he would not come again for some time. Sighing, she thought that she had never been like this, not even when she had lived on the farm ages ago. Remembering the farm, she remembered Martin. And sighed again. Life, she thought, was a tragic and useless business.
Two weeks after Gertrude’s death, May spoke to her husband for the first time since that event. She informed him, very quietly, that she was leaving him, and was going to live with Reginald and his wife in the country, for a few months, and then was going to join Godfrey in Paris. Joey, she said, was so attached to his father that she felt it would be unfair to take him with her. She said all this without emotion, almost indifferently. She had lost much weight, and the folds of her shrunken skin made her appear quite old. Her hair had whitened perceptibly, and it was only underneath that there was any vestige of the bright dark red of her youth.
Ernest received this news impassively, without a word. One night he came home and was informed by the excited butler that Mrs. Barbour had gone. Ernest walked upstairs and entered his wife’s room for the first time in many years. She was not there, now, to forbid his entrance. He sat down in her own chair by the empty fireside, and looked at the smooth bed. There was not even a breath of scent to tell any one that she had ever lived and slept in that room. Everything was polished, with glossy repellent surfaces, as though no one had ever touched it. Every trace of May was gone, and the doors of her great polished mahogany wardrobe swung open to show the dark and empty interior. When Ernest got up to go he glanced in the mirror above the dressing table. He thought to himself: That’s an old man’s face. He went downstairs and walked all through the house, the Sessions house. And as he walked he said to himself: This is the Sessions house. It’s not mine at all. It only tolerated me, this house I’ve worked for. And now it doesn’t tolerate me any more. It’s like an empty house with all the furniture removed, and even the walls hate me.
It was one of the few sentimentalities of his life. But then, he thought wryly, a man should be allowed to be sentimental once in a while. However, he could not rid himself of the weird feeling that the house, which had been his, was once more the Sessions house, and even the fact that he lived there all alone could not alter that insistent and gloomy fact. He looked at the dark portraits on the ivory walls in the drawing room, and the faces, all Sessions faces, regarded him with sombre affront. Once he had a ridiculous feeling that Gregory Sessions walked behind him, smiling.
He went out to Robin’s Nest more and more often, where he was received with the lavish affection and sincere pleasure which he had never received in his own house from his own children. Paul had named his little daughter, who had had a severe struggle to retain her life, Alice Sessions Barbour. She lay upstairs in a great new nursery, attended by the most efficient of nurses, a tiny blue-eyed little thing with a fluff of pale red hair. She reminded her grandfather of his son, Guy. When she was christened, Ernest gave her a gold christening mug with her name engraved upon it.
Elsa worshipped her. She actually wept when Paul refused permission for her to teach the child to call her mother. But Elsa was very happy these days. All her old ease and affection for her uncle had returned, now that she was removed from her mother. Her old exuberance came back much to the disapproval of the nurse, who finally had to refuse to allow Elsa to jog her niece violently. Elsa knew that she would never marry; she knew she would never stop loving Godfrey, of whom she never heard anything.
When Paul and Elsa suggested to their uncle that he come out to Robin’s Nest to live, he did not refuse as promptly as they had feared. In fact,
he seemed to be thinking the matter over. Certainly it was no pleasure for him to live in the Sessions house any longer, with Joey away at school and only at home in the summer. (He was thinking of it as “the Sessions house” almost always, now.) Moreover, as Paul pointed out, the section was becoming “run down,” and the house, though immaculately kept up and painted and polished, with lawns still velvety and trees trimmed and green, seemed to be acquiring an air of desolation and dilapidation. But, though Paul’s hopes became stronger, Ernest had not the slightest intention of leaving the Sessions house.
He had not seen Amy for four months now, and she had not written him nor had he written her. But he was beginning to act a little oddly now, when at home. He would sit at the end of the great mahogany table, and look across its vast circular width for minutes at a time. Years ago the whole family had sat there, Godfrey and Gertrude, Guy and Reginald, May and himself and young Joey. No one but he sat here now, in the silver and mahogany and ivory emptiness of the room, with the vast ivory candles burning in their candelabra on the sideboard and the walls, and the butler making the only other human being beside himself in all that shining and polished vastness. But these days, as Ernest looked fixedly across the table, he began to smile a little. As though someone sat there and spoke to him.
Then, five months after May had left him, he did the most audacious thing of his life: he sued May for divorce.
CHAPTER XCVI
On the surface it did not seem so very audacious, even in 1882, when divorces were extremely uncommon things and severely criticized. Ernest Barbour’s wife had obviously deserted him, and refused to return to her home, and so he was suing her for divorce, a deeply injured and saddened gentleman. But in reality, his suit for divorce against May Sessions was a dangerous thing, audacious to the point of foolhardiness and effrontery. He was gambling everything on the hope that she would keep her mouth shut with regard to Amy, that she would not contest the divorce and bring countersuit, naming her cousin. If she did speak, did bring countersuit, he knew his losses would be terrible. In the first place, hostile newspapers and politicians had never let him forget that he was a low-born English man, that his entry into society had been accomplished and facilitated by his marriage to that great lady, Miss May Sessions. He had gained a great deal through the friends of the Sessions; even the President had been a younger friend of Gregory’s. He needed the politicians who accepted him because of the Sessionses, especially since the late labor disturbances, the growing sentiment against the importation of alien contract labor and the increasing distrust of the people for powerful industrialists. They would, after the first shock, forgive his divorce, but if they felt, in the event that May talked, that the late Miss Sessions had been grossly ill-used, they would never stop until they ruined him. Then, in the second place, Amy would be so shamed that she might have to leave the country; his relations with Paul would come to an abrupt end, though he had no illusions that this would be because Paul would feel outraged at the revelations. In fact, Ernest had a faint idea that Paul knew all about his uncle’s relations with his mother. Then, there was his granddaughter to be considered.
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