Early in bed, I dozed off and slept restlessly for two or three hours. Once I thought I heard footsteps in the passage and listened eagerly. But no; it was some one else, and I didn’t hear Mlle Julie’s carriage drive up till much later. I looked at my watch; it was nearly twelve. Then my listening began. I must hear her walk past my door before I should be able to sleep again. She delayed a shorter time than usual that night, and sooner than I expected I heard her step at the end of the long corridor. Rapid at first, it became slower and slower as it drew near, seemed to be faltering, came to a stop. She was outside my door. The handle turned and she came in. I could hardly see her in the dark. She came up to my bed and sat down on it. My arms were round her neck, my head on her shoulder. She pressed me to her.
“I’m tired; I’m weak,” she murmured. Then almost passionately, but below her breath, she cried:
“My purest joys have been spoilt. Even my thoughts have been spoilt. Even my inmost self. But I have no joys now. I must say good-bye now to everything I have loved. To you too, Olivia, Olivia.”
She bent her head to kiss me and I felt her tears on my cheek.
And so I lay a moment longer in her arms, my head upon her shoulder, weeping too.
Only a moment. She disengaged herself gently, and as I still clung desperately to her hands, holding them to my heart, she said, almost sternly, “Let me go, Olivia.”
I obeyed.
As the door closed behind her, I lay down in my bed and buried my face in my pillow.
* * *
* * *
But what was this that suddenly disturbed me? What frightful clamour? My door was flung violently open. Mlle Julie was standing there, a candle in her hand, terror on her face.
“Quick! Quick!” she cried in a hoarse, unrecognizable voice. “Go and fetch Signorina and Frau Riesener. Something’s the matter with Mlle Cara. Run! Run!”
I dashed out of bed and without stopping to put on dressing-gown or slippers sped down the dark passage, up the stairs, which were dimly lighted by nightlights top and bottom, and flung open Signorina’s door. I knew she would be awake.
“Quick! Quick!” I cried breathlessly, “There’s something the matter—— Mlle Julie—— Mlle Cara—— She wants you.”
Signorina was out of bed, clutching me.
“The matter with whom?” she cried.
“Mlle Cara. Mlle Cara. I must go now and call Frau Riesener.”
She held me back. “What is it? What is it?”
“I don’t know. Go to her quick.”
Again I tore along the passage to Frau Riesener’s room at the other end. I had a harder task there. I knocked at the door; I almost battered on it. Then I opened it and called:
“Frau Riesener! Frau Riesener! Wake up! Wake up! Wake up!”
“What is it?” she said at last.
“You’re wanted downstairs. Quick!—— Mlle Cara—— There’s something the matter.”
I saw her light the candle deliberately.
“What is it?” she said again.
“I don’t know—I don’t know, I tell you. But you’re wanted—quick—quick!”
When I got downstairs again, Signorina was there in her neat little dressing-gown and slippers, bustling about with hot-water bottles, hot cloths and so on, and she was soon joined by Frau Riesener. I was dispatched to wake the housekeeper and tell her to send for the doctor, but first Signorina made me put on a skirt, a woollen coat and shoes.
“What has happened?” I asked.
“An overdose of chloral,” was the answer, as I knew it would be.
“And how is she?”
“Unconscious. That’s all I can say. We can’t do anything more till the doctor comes.”
But in those days, there were no telephones, no motorcars. The gardener’s boy would go to the town on his bicycle; the doctor would drive out in his carriage. An hour must elapse at the very least before he could possibly arrive. I stayed in my room, waiting, not daring to enquire, sometimes standing at my door listening, sometimes restlessly walking up and down my little bedroom, or lying face downwards on my bed. After the first confusion and agitation, the bustle died away and was succeeded by a deathly silence. Once, kind little Signorina put her head into my room for a second, but all she said was, “No change.” I saw no more of Mlle Julie.
At last I heard the doctor’s step, a brief, whispered colloquy in the passage between him and Frau Riesener, the sound of a gently shutting door. I nerved myself for another long wait. There would certainly be all kinds of things to do—emetics, stomach-pumps, artificial breathing. I imagined all this, but no. Dreadful as the delay of his coming had been, the shortness of his stay was more dreadful still. I heard him and Frau Riesener walking down the passage together. It was he who was talking this time.
Signorina came to my room then.
“I can only stay a second, Olivia. It’s all over. She’s dead. She’s been dead for hours.”
I don’t know how I got through the night. This was no personal grief, but I was hardly aware of that. It was my first contact with death and death with some of its worst terrors, unexpected, unapprehended—the brutal stroke of some awful, malignant power lying in wait for us, ready to pounce when we were least prepared. Not the slow natural death of elders, not the anticipated, inevitable result of disease, but an accident. An avoidable, unnecessary accident. An accident! But was it an accident? A fresh horror chilled me. Supposing it were not an accident. Supposing she had taken the overdose on purpose? Could she have? No, it was impossible. Why should she do such a thing? And yet I knew she had often threatened to. But then I had heard that people who threatened never did it—it was a common saying. And nobody had ever seemed to take her threats seriously. It must be an accident. Miss Smith was to pour out the dose for her. She had made a mistake. Professor Tyndall, I remembered, had died in that very way from an overdose of chloral given him by his wife, who had nearly gone mad with grief afterwards. What were the others thinking? Mlle Julie? Oh! let me turn away my thoughts from her? Signorina? Frau Riesener? And the doctor? Should I ever know what had happened? Would they tell me? Would they know themselves?
* * *
* * *
Though I think that, thanks to Signorina, I was told in the course of the next few days all the conclusions that were come to, I still imagine that I was never told their real suspicions. At any rate, I never told mine. There was, of course, an enquiry the next day. The doctor, the commissaire de police, some odd gentlemen called “the parquet” were constantly in the house. Everybody remotely connected with the affair was questioned. I myself was summoned to give an account of what I knew. I was particularly questioned as to the hour of Mlle Julie’s return and how I knew it was at twelve o’clock midnight, as I stated.
“Because I heard her carriage drive up and looked at my watch.”
“How do you know it was her carriage?”
“Because she came to my room.”
“Ah? And why was that?” They raised their brows and I hated them.
I cast about for some lie. How could one desecrate the truth by telling it to people like them?
“I’d not been very well that morning and she came to ask how I was and whether I wanted anything.”
“And did she say anything particular?”
(Anything particular!)
“No. She just said ‘How are you?’ and ‘Good-night!’”
(Fortunately Mlle Julie must have said much the same, for they made no comment.)
“And how long after that was it that she called you?”
“About two minutes, I should think.”
“Thank you, Mademoiselle. That will do.”
Frau Riesener was questioned as to Mlle Cara’s mental condition.
“Perfectly calm and cheerful,” was the answer. Though she had had a headache in the mo
rning, and had not slept well the night before, she seemed better in the evening, and when Frau Riesener had said good-night to her at about eight o’clock, she had advised her not to take the sleeping-draught. “‘Oh!’ she had said, ‘I’ll just have it put beside me and not take it unless I feel I’m not going to sleep.’” Frau Riesener had had a bad headache herself, had given her instructions to Miss Smith, and then gone to bed.
Miss Smith was then asked whether she agreed that Mlle Cara was in a calm, cheerful state of mind?
“No, anything but,” was her answer.
“Did she say anything in particular?”
“She moaned a good deal about her headache.”
“Is that all?”
“Once she said——”
“Yes? What?”
“‘I wish I hadn’t done it.’”
“Done what?”
“I don’t know. I’ve no idea.”
When asked about the dose, Miss Smith swore with tears that she had poured out the exact dose, as instructed by Frau Riesener, and put it on Mlle Cara’s bedside table.
Frau Riesener swore (without tears) that she had instructed her to give the exact dose prescribed by the doctor.
The doctor swore that if that were so, no fatal result could possibly have ensued.
The bottle was produced. Miss Smith had put it back in the medicine chest that same evening. Was the medicine chest kept locked? Yes, generally. But that evening Frau Riesener, who kept the key as a rule, had given it to Miss Smith who, not thinking it necessary to disturb Frau Riesener by returning it the same night, had left it in the lock.
There was conflicting evidence over the bottle. When full, it contained six doses. Two might be fatal to a person of Mlle Cara’s constitution. It was a bottle on which the doses were divided off by lines. When produced, it was shown that there were three doses left. Frau Riesener swore that when she gave it to Miss Smith, it contained five doses. Miss Smith swore, with tears, that it had contained only four—and then she grew flustered and confused, and said that perhaps, after all, there had been five doses, but she was positively sure she had poured the medicine out to the exact line shown her by Frau Riesener.
Frau Riesener was ready to prove that there were five doses in the bottle when she gave it to Miss Smith. She had only given Mlle Cara one dose out of that bottle. She always noted these things in her diary. There it was! A fortnight before, Mlle Cara had had a dose and none in the interval. Therefore five doses had been in the bottle when she had given it to Miss Smith.
At the end of this agitated day, the doctor signed a certificate to say Death by misadventure, caused by accidentally taking an overdose of chloral, and the commissaire and the parquet accepted his finding without demur. The ladies were highly esteemed in the town; Frau Riesener and the doctor were on the best of terms and very willing to exonerate each other. Nobody wanted to make the business more disagreeable than was necessary for anyone—except for the unfortunate Miss Smith. Nothing, however, could be clearer. It was a deplorable mistake, but there it was. There was no further enquiry—no post-mortem. Only the slightest allusion was made to the coming separation between the friends. Mlle Julie, as Signorina admitted, had been treated with the utmost consideration and sympathy by everyone.
But as I myself pondered over the affair, I came to the conclusion that ces Messieurs de la police et du parquet had done their work very inefficiently, and very unfairly for poor little Miss Smith. Even the doctor, I thought, was to blame. Several possibilities occurred to me which had not been gone into: perhaps her heart was weak and one dose had sufficed to kill her. The doctor had refused to consider the possibility of this—it would have been a proof of his negligence had it been the case.
The medicine chest had been admittedly left open that night; it stood in the lingerie at the end of the passage, a door or two from Mlle Cara’s room. What was there to prevent her from going to it and taking the extra dose herself?
For that matter, anyone might have gone to the cupboard and taken the bottle and poured the extra dose into the glass—anyone who had access to Mlle Cara’s room. But this was a fantastic idea!
“Mlle Julie is afraid, I can see, that she did it herself. But I’m absolutely certain,” said Signorina stoutly, “that she didn’t. She was incapable of such a thing. And at any rate she wouldn’t have done it like that. She’ld have made the most of it—left a farewell note—done it theatrically—and probably managed after all to be brought round before it was too late.”
“What did she mean by saying, ‘I wish I hadn’t done it’?”
“I’ve thought and thought and I can’t imagine. At any rate,” she went on, “I thank my stars that I refused to pour out the dose myself, as Frau Riesener wanted me to. I should have been landed perhaps, in poor Miss Smith’s shoes.”
“Oh no, Signorina, you wouldn’t. You’ld never have made the mistake.”
She smiled grimly: “Perhaps not.”
None of my doubts were ever solved with any certainty. I still sometimes puzzle over them. I am still constantly baffled. Psychological or material objections seem to block the way to every solution, and yet the solution, we know, exists; it is there, like a lost jewel, close at hand perhaps, if only some power would give us eyes to see it.
XII
What with the enquiry and the last offices that had to be rendered to the poor dead body, the day passed busily enough, I suppose, for everybody. Signorina did her best to occupy me too. The school, as may be imagined, had been thrown into a state of consternation and disorganization. There were no classes, no walks; huddled groups collected in corners; nothing was heard but hushed whispers; no girl dared look at another as they passed tip-toeing along the passages. The shadow of death was on us all.
“You must occupy the little ones, Olivia,” said Signorina. “Take them into the study and read to them after tea.”
It was the kindest thing she could have done for me. I often read to the little ones; they enjoyed it and so did I. We had a book in hand—Ivanhoe, I think. Reading aloud forced me to a certain surface attention, without putting too great a strain on my mind. The back of my mind was still busy with the tragedy upstairs, but I could not let it absorb me. And the little ones that evening were very charming, I thought.
“A cushion for Olivia.”
“A stool for Olivia.”
“I’m going to sit next to her.”
“So am I.”
“Isn’t it wrong to listen to a story?” asked one.
“No, it’s quite right. It’s the best thing you can do to help every one.”
“Does it help you?”
“Oh yes. Me most of all.”
“Then we’ll listen. Go on. Go on.”
And at the end they clustered round me to thank me, to kiss me. They flung their arms round my neck; they stroked my cheek. One of them said, I remember, “Poor pretty Olivia,” and it was all I could do to keep from crying. And so the evening went by. But the night was to follow—the first night of vigil.
Signorina came to my room at about ten o’clock, looking, I thought, wild-eyed.
“She won’t let me stay with her,” she said. “She won’t have anyone with her. She got angry with me when I implored her to let me stay, if only in the next room. ‘She was my friend,’ she said. She said it almost fiercely, Olivia. ‘She was the only person I ever loved, and am I not to spend the first night alone with her? To-morrow, you and Frau Riesener can do as you please, but to-night I’m going to be alone.’ When she talks in that voice, I daren’t disobey. But oh, her face is terrible.”
We clung to each other for a moment or two and then she went slowly and heavily away.
At eleven o’clock, I could bear it no longer. I put on my dressing-gown and slippers and crept out of my room. Everything was silent, everything dark, except for a ray of light that came from underneath
the door of Mlle Cara’s room. A dressing-room separated it from Mlle Julie’s. Oh, I had no thought of intruding on that vigil, but I must spend it near her. I sat down on the floor outside the door, as I had seen Indian servants sit and sleep outside their masters’ rooms, my knees drawn up, my arms clasped round them, my head resting on them. I could sit so for a long time. Sometimes I dozed, sometimes I thought of her. What was she suffering? What were her regrets, her memories—remorse too, perhaps. I remembered that verse she had read:
Comme le souvenir est voisin du remord!
What could I do for her? How could I help her, how serve her? There was nothing I could do. Each of us must suffer alone. Alone! How alone she was in there! Alone with a dead body—with the only person she had ever loved. A dead past behind her. A dreary future of exile before her. . . . But perhaps now that exile would not be necessary. Perhaps she would be able to stay on here, recover, be happy again. I should be with her; Signorina too; life would smile once more. And so my thoughts wandered and I built a shining, flimsy fabric and then came to myself with a shudder of horror. There was a dead body behind that door, and I was thinking already of happiness.
Mlle Cara—I must turn my thoughts to her. What had her life been? Unhappiness had come to her too. She too had been wounded perhaps in her deepest soul. She too had been wounded perhaps by the person she loved best. And so that was what love led to. To wound and be wounded. I myself was on the same bitter road. No. I would not believe it. Out of such suffering, if only we could have strength to use it rightly, virtue might be fashioned. Poor Mlle Cara had been weak, vain, selfish—so I judged—she had been deteriorated by suffering, she had given way, she had let herself be devoured by jealousy and vanity. Could she have helped it? I didn’t know; but Mlle Julie had helped it and so would I. I would be better for my love, for my pain. Even the pain of absence—so I vowed with clenched teeth—should make me better not worse. What did better and worse mean? Oh, that was too difficult a question for just now. It was enough to say that I felt what they meant—and that I chose with all my heart to be on the side of good.
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