The routine went on, in the great silent house, so full of servants, yet so quiet, so seldom stirred by the opening and shutting of doors, or the ringing of bells, or by a barrel-organ or a street-hawker’s cry. There were means of stopping all such annoyances for a man as rich as Conway Field.
“Well, Mary, it is pleasant to be in the old room among the old books,” he said, with that sigh of lassitude which had been growing more habitual since this year began. “I am tired of most things, but never tired of my books. Time is never too long for them — too short, Mary, all too short. There are books that require a man’s life if he wants to get to the heart of them.”
“You know what people say about Naples,” he said one evening, when he had been dropping asleep in the twilight, only to wake after a minute or two. “See Naples and die — see the panorama of beauty, sea and land, mountain and sky, and expire in an ecstasy. I saw enough of Naples when I was young, drank that cup to the dregs — saw Naples and survived. But I wanted to see Rome once more before I blew out the candle. Rome is inexhaustible, and yet I was tired of it all even before Macpherson began to suggest that it was beginning to be too warm for an invalid. Rome wasn’t too warm for me, Mary, but I was tired of it, and I wanted to shift the scene. It amused me to show you the things which once interested me, and to watch your wonder and delight.”
He talked more freely to her in these summer days when the evening hours were long and they could sit with all the windows open and hear the thrushes and blackbirds in the garden, where there were elms and horse-chestnuts big enough for song-birds to make their domicile in the smoke-blackened branches.
The London doctor, the man who had been watchdog over Conway Field’s health for twenty years, showed no signs of uneasiness — bland, debonair, always cheerful and ready to talk of politics, sport, literature, even science, he came, like Macpherson, every other day. He came and made no sign. Mary had no inclination to question him. He would only tell her in more guarded language what the Scotsman had told her in his blunt way: The life was ebbing.
There had been less pain in this last year and the patient had been more cheerful, more inclined to talk of himself and of his youth. The flickering of a flame that had once burnt fiercely. But Mary knew that the life was ebbing — just as Austin, who came now very often to sit by his uncle’s chair, to talk or be silent as suited Mr. Field’s humour, just as Austin knew, though he said no word to Mary. He had been her fellow-traveller in the slow journey home, had done much to make the long days easier. And now he spent much time with his uncle, who had persuaded him to resign his comfortable post under Government, and give himself liberty for the things he loved — travel, good works, books, the better side of life.
“You are too good to go down to your grave as a barnacle,” Mr. Field said, “even if you should finish at the top of the Civil Service tree with a ribbon and a star. You arc good enough to live your own life and help other people to be happy, which is always easier than to be happy oneself; or it seems so, for oneself is a complex animal, full of far-reaching dreams and desires. Those other people — your East-end friends for instance — seem to want so little, only bread and picture-theatres.”
Sometimes, when Austin came early in the afternoon, Mr. Field would send Mary for a walk with Zamiel. The Park was near enough for him to be conveyed there without being run over, the footman always watching him. And on the prairie between Stanhope Gate and the Ranger’s lodge Zamiel could give himself a high time, Mary having enough influence to prevent his chasing sheep.
“Go and enjoy yourself in the Park, my dear, while Austin and I talk of the Yard.”
The “Yard” was Conway Field’s name for that vast manufactory of ships which was the source of his wealth, and in which he had never ceased to interest himself. It was wonderful how, prostrate on this invalid couch, dependent upon artificial means for every movement, he had been able to keep himself in close touch with that complicated machinery always working for him by the northern seaboard. It seemed to Austin as if his uncle knew every man in the Yard, every inch in the measurement of those huge ships whose dimensions were always changing.
Uncle and nephew were often closeted together, talking of things that Mary could not understand, while the busy Frominger took a running note.
“We are not talking secrets,” Conway told her one afternoon when she was giving him his tea, “but we discuss details that would only bore you, and Austin gives me his advice about my men. He is a Socialist, in his nice moderate way, and thinks that every man ought to enjoy the produce of the earth and be happy. But he thinks also that the man should buy his good things with good work, and not try to destroy the fabric that feeds and clothes him, because the Capitalist who sets the whole machine going, and who takes all the risks — the one man with a long head and an iron will to achieve — lives in a better house than the rank and file of his hands. If one could only make the labour leaders understand that the master also has a right to the fruits of his toil, and that without capital there would be no contracts to complete, they might cease preaching the gospel of discontent.”
Those were peaceful days — peaceful and monotonous, but never wearisome for Mary Smith. Her affection for the man whose burden she had helped him to bear had grown with every day of their companionship. He had given her all that best part of life which she knew how to value; and better even than great books and great thoughts, he had given her the affection which she had never known until she took up her task as reading girl.
He had seldom in all the time they had been together given outward expression to his regard; had never touched the delicate hand with his lips when it hovered about him. He had taken all her attentions as a matter of course, even as something bought and paid for; but she knew somehow that he loved her, and that his affection had grown day by day in those close relations which his helplessness had made inevitable. The sense of being loved was far more to her than all the advantages of her position in that household, better than comfort and luxury, refined surroundings and the assurance that her future days would not be penniless. To that assurance she had indeed never given a serious thought, though had she ever thought of it her knowledge of Mr. Field’s character would have told her that any provision made by him would be liberal. From the hour she entered his house, going there from the doorstep in Sanders Street and the Rescue Home in North London, she had never troubled herself with thoughts of what might be waiting for her in the days to come. There had been so much to think of in Conway Field’s library. Each day had brought its round of tasks, and her tasks had been absorbing and sweet. The life had suited her; and habit had never lessened her interest in the sufferer who had such bitter need of faithful service and of a mind in harmony with his own — something more even than sympathy — understanding, appreciation. Her affection had grown with all the sad hours she had sat beside his bed in his fits of sleeplessness, helping him to wear through the long desert of the night, the pale growth of the slowly coming day.
It was only now that any thought of her future came into her mind, and it was the thought of how dreary and how empty the world would be without those daily talks, that cherished companionship — without the mind that had filled every hour of her life. She knew that the shadows were closing round them, that the last sleepless hours would be changed to the sleep that knows no waking.
She knew, she knew, that the end was near.
XX
THE doctor came every morning now, and every evening too, not with any fuss or elaborate questioning — came in his character of the genial friend, only to ask if the night had been good, to give some slight advice as to the arrangements for the day, and to decide if the weather was or was not good enough for the Park, or a drive to Hampstead or Stanmore. And in the evening the visit seemed still more trivial — just a little friendly talk about the events of the day. Once or twice in those days of gradual decline, the general practitioner asked permission to bring one of his neighbours from Harley Street, on
e of those new men who had suddenly acquired fame — or fashion — by the successful treatment of a difficult case: a new light in the medical world, who might interest Mr. Field.
“Bring him, if you like,” Conway had said, with his most fatigued air, and he would receive the new man with exquisite courtesy, and even appear interested in his conversation, and would allow him to write a prescription for the very last word in soporifics, and pretend to hope that it would give him better nights.
“I have tried every discovery in that line,” he said; “but Columbus had tried in a good many directions before he found America, and I may as well try the new opiate.”
And then the new doctor went away pleased with his patient and with the cheque that Austin slipped into his hand as they went through the gallery, and wondering at that treasure house of art and literature that he saw for the first time.
“I hope I may be allowed to see your uncle again,” he said, “though I fear I can be of very little use. I shall look in some time as a friend, if you think he will like to talk to me.”
“I believe he will,” Austin answered simply. “He is keenly interested in progress and discovery, most especially in your profession.”
He was keenly interested in everything. Never had his mind been more alive than now when those who watched and listened to him knew that the man with the scythe was waiting at the door, that nothing science could discover, or wealth could buy, would prolong that vivid existence — so frail a wreck, the irreducible minimum of physical power, yet so intense a life — the life of the mind.
In those hours that Mary spent alone with him he talked more than he had talked on his best days; as if there were just a touch of restlessness and fever in the too-active brain.
He liked to talk of the books she had read to him, Jowett’s translation of the Phaedo, William James’s lecture on “ Human Immortality.” He made her read the lecture to him for the third or fourth time.
“Even William James is elusive when he talks of the soul,” he said. “It all comes to the same thing in the end — a question that can never be answered on this side of the river. Socrates or Butler, Plato or Schopenhauer. It all comes to Rabelais’ grand peut-être. One is glad when men like Romanes and James are on the side of the Angels. But, after all, how can they help us? They cannot know the unknowable. Dreams, speculations, soap-bubbles floating above our heads, golden in the sunlight — a flash and they are gone.”
Mary sat by his side and listened to him. It was all she could do. Trained nurses had been suggested, but he had no need of them. His valet was as highly trained for this particular case as the best surgical nurse in London. There was nothing more to be done for him now than there had been ten years ago — a dull monotony of helplessness that had permitted no change of treatment. The only change was that the thin thread of life so wonderfully spun out for thirty years was worn to the snapping-point.
“Mary, if ever you have wealth and power, be kind,” he said to her in one of his snatches of talk, after long silences. “Never mind if the people you help are ungrateful — not even if they are worthless. Don’t harden your heart against suffering, in whatever shape it may come to you. Be kind, my dear, it is the only thing one likes to remember when we are on the threshold of the great mystery — the great perhaps. The prince of jesters could get no nearer the truth than that, and Gregory the Great could know no more of the final fate of man than François Rabelais.”
All was over. Conway Field had slipped out of life very quietly at the last — like a well-bred man who knows how to leave an assembly without fuss.
He did not expire in an epigram, or mark his departure by some exquisite courtesy.
“I am very tired,” he said to Mary Smith, reading Plato to him when the cold grey winter dawn was creeping between the edges of the curtains, and a chillier air through the open windows had come with the coming of the light.
“Shut up your book, my dear. I have had almost enough of Jowett, almost enough of everything, almost enough.”
His voice was weak, but no weaker than it had been for a long time. There was nothing to alarm Mary. The doctor who had looked in at nine o’clock last night had given no note of warning, the fatal word “Sinking” had not been uttered. But the progress had so long been downward, the end had so long been inevitable, that day after day his doctor had left him at night wondering whether he would find him alive in the morning.
Mary pressed the electric bell that rang in Ridley’s room, and that faithful attendant, who had only left his master at three o’clock, was by the bedside before Mary had put the book away, with the ribbon across the page ready to be resumed whenever Mr. Field called for it.
She had read longer hours of late than he had allowed her to read until this last winter. She had sat by his side for the greater part of the night, reading, reading, for she knew that the sound of her voice soothed him, and often helped him to blessed intervals of sleep.
She left him knowing that Ridley would not leave him and that no other attendance would be needed till the day began — the late beginning of a day that was always too long, the laborious toilet, valet assisted by two footmen, the meagre breakfast, the change from the spacious bedroom to the splendid library, or, if he were in a restless humour, to the gallery, where he would have himself wheeled to and fro along the walls that held his cherished pictures.
Mary’s sleep had been deep of late, the deep oblivion of a tired brain, and this morning there seemed to have been no interval between the moment when she laid her head upon the pillow, and her awaking with the sound of Garland’s gentle voice in her ear.
She started up, wide awake in an instant, and saw the winter sunshine in the room, and Garland standing by her bed with the morning tea. She put the tray on the table, but instead of retiring softly after her wont, leaving her mistress to rouse herself at her leisure, ready to answer the first vibration of the electric bell, never obtrusive, rarely speaking unless she was spoken to — this morning she seemed different somehow. She stood motionless, with a grave sad countenance.
“What kind of morning is it, Garland?”
“Oh, ma’am, such a bright morning, and the sun in all the rooms as if it was April or May.”
And at this point Garland burst into tears.
“Oh, Garland, what has happened? Is Mr. Field worse?”
Mary sprang out of bed, put on her dressing-gown, and ran towards the door.
“Don’t, ma’am, don’t go to him. It is all over. Mr. Field passed away last night, an hour after you left — passed away in his sleep. Oh, don’t, don’t cry, ma’am,” entreated Garland, who was sobbing vehemently. “Such a peaceful ending — just one long sigh and he was gone. Ridley said it was beautiful, and his face looks like one of the marble faces that he set such store by.”
He had passed away. Conway Field was not. The one friend who had needed her, and had loved her, the one creature to whom she had been first useful, and then indispensable, was gone for ever. In the simple speech of Susan Garland, Conway Field “had passed away.” In the still simpler words of Holy Writ, Conway Field “was not.”
She could not even go to him — could not stand by his bed and look upon the marble face. Strange hands had taken possession of him. By and by she would be allowed to see him, Ridley told her. Not now. They were getting him ready for the grave.
Mary went back to her room disconsolate — more miserable than she had ever been since she had entered that house, anxious, frightened, hardly daring to hope that her services could be accepted there, expecting to be crushed by a haughty dismissal. And she had been made welcome there, and treated as daughters are treated when a father is kind.
He was gone, and she knew for the first time how much she had loved him: how large a space her affection for him filled in her life.
The days that came after this were dream days — seven of them — seven short wintry days in the darkened house, where only a streak of unwelcome sunshine stole through a crack in
a shutter, and made a jarring note in the funereal darkness.
All the splendour of the things he had loved, pictures and statues, seemed to look at Mary and Austin with a cruel irony. They had helped him to bear that long disease — his life — and now he was gone it seemed as if the soul had gone out of them. They, too, were dead.
‘It is the finest private collection in London, perhaps in Europe,” Austin told Mary, “for it is the knowledge of the man who buys and not just the money he spends, that makes a collection valuable; and I believe my uncle’s all-round knowledge of Art was unequalled. He had nothing else to think about for thirty years of his life, poor soul!”
“I hope he has left his collection to the nation, complete and unbroken,” Austin said one day. And that brief speech was the only allusion to Mr. Field’s will that had been made in that house upstairs since his death. Downstairs no doubt there had been infinite talk, no doubt the upper-servants had held their conclave over that pudding course which they ate aloof from footmen and other underlings, and each had expatiated upon his or her ideas of what the master ought to have done with his money, and each speaker glowed with pride as he set forth his views, pride in his own splendid sense of justice, based upon his exceptional knowledge of the world and of mankind.
Mr. Drayson, the butler, of only fifteen years’ service, had been oppressively voluble, and would hardly brook contradiction. He allotted the bulk of his master’s fortune to Austin Sedgwick, who, according to his idea, was one of those unassuming young men who often drop in for a good thing. He had been more with his uncle than any of the batch of blood-suckers, and no doubt his uncle admired him for sticking all those years to his work in a government office — just a clerk with a pen behind his ear, week in, week out — instead of bleeding him. He did not allot much to George Bertram, who had been fool enough to neglect the old man in the last year of his life.
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