“Why — the little syringe full — wasn’t that right?” She saw the despair of life in his eyes. “Oh, God! My God!” she shrieked, breaking from his hands. “I’ve killed him!”
“I’m afraid you have,” said Routh, but under his breath, and she could not have heard him speak.
She threw herself wildly upon her husband’s breast, clutching him with her small white hands, lifting herself upon them, staring into his face, and then shrieking as she fell forwards again, her hands tearing at her own thick brown hair. Routh knew that Crowdie could not be disturbed. He stood back from the bedside and watched her with far-seeing, dreaming eyes, while the first fever of despair burned itself out in a raving delirium. He had seen such sights many times in his life, but he remembered nothing more terrible than the grief of this woman who had killed her husband by a hideous mistake, thinking to save him pain, thinking it well to break a promise he had taken of her for his safety, and which she had believed had been only for his self-respect.
Crowdie was past saving. Routh did all that his science could do, trying in turn every known means of breaking the death sleep, trying to hem in the life before it was quite gone out, that the very least breath of it might be imprisoned in the body. But it was of no use. The poison was in the veins, in the brain, the subtle spirit of the opium devil distilled to an invisible enemy. The little hand of Fate, that had been so small and noiseless a few hours earlier, spread, gigantic, and grasped Science by the throat and shook her off. There was not anything to be done. And Hester twisted her hands, and moaned and shrieked, and beat her breast, like a woman mad, as indeed she was.
Routh had understood. Crowdie was an epileptic. He had perhaps believed himself cured when he had married his wife, and had been horrified by the first attack. He loved her, and he would naturally wish to hide from her the secret of his life. The general feeling about epilepsy is not like what is felt for any other human weakness. An epileptic is hardly regarded as a natural being, and the belief that the disease is hereditary brands it with an especial horror. It had been ingenious on Crowdie’s part to invent the story about the morphia, and to carry it out and impress it on her by showing her the instrument and the bottle of poison. It was possible that there might have been some foundation of truth in the tale. He might have had the implements from a physician. But Routh, who had known him long, was convinced, for many reasons, that he had never been a victim to the habit of using the drug regularly. It had been very ingenious of the poor man. Hester could hardly have known anything of the after effects of breaking off such a habit, still less was it probable that she should know much about epilepsy, and trusting him as she did, it was natural that she should never have reported what he had told her to any one who might have explained the truth. The only mistake he had made had been in not throwing away the poison, and refilling the bottle with pure water. He had miscalculated the anxiety she would feel to relieve him, if he ever had an attack again. The mistake had cost him his life.
Towards morning the house in Lafayette Place was very still again, though there were lights in the windows, and the shadows of people moving about within passed and repassed upon the shades. Only the policeman on his beat, looking up eastward and seeing the dawn in the sky and glancing at the windows, knew that there had been trouble in the house during the night, and guessed that for a day or two the blinds would not be raised. But all the great city began to breathe again, turning in its sleep, and waking drowsily in the cool spring dawning to begin its daily life of work and play and passion, unconscious of such trifles as the loss of a man, or the madness of a frantic woman’s grief.
CHAPTER XXXIII.
IT WOULD HAVE needed more imagination than Katharine Lauderdale possessed to suppose that the scene in which she acted a part during the afternoon could possibly lead to serious consequences. Had she been told how jealous Hester really was of her, she could not have realized what such jealousy meant. She had gone away much more hurt by Hester’s coolness, and by her refusal to return to the old terms of friendship, than disturbed by the thought of the domestic quarrel she had left behind her. If Hester was jealous, foolishly, and if Crowdie had displeased both her and Katharine, the young girl considered it only fair that they should talk the matter over, and if Hester were angry, it might teach her husband to be more careful in future.
What had really affected her was the disenchantment she had felt when she found that Hester had no intention of renewing the relations which had existed before the affair of the will had produced a temporary estrangement. It had been another blow to another ideal, and another possibility of life was wiped away from the future.
Little by little her whole existence was being narrowed to one thought, one happiness, one belief, all centred in John Ralston. Of all the many people who had come into her young life, he alone had not brought her any permanent pain, nor any pain at all, save once, when she had been terribly mistaken about something he had done during the previous winter. More than once, indeed, and even within the past few weeks, they had been near to what would have made a disagreement between most lovers. But only near — no more. Just at that point when others might have taken offence foolishly, or spoken the hasty word that sets the whole fabric of love vibrating, and sometimes makes it rock and topple over and fall — just at that point one or the other of them had always yielded, and the danger had been over in an instant and as soon forgotten. It seemed as though they could never quarrel; and when they were weary, as they often had been of late, it rested them to be together even for a few moments.
So it had happened on that day when Ralston had met Katharine as she was coming from the Crowdies’, and they had walked together, and made a plan which would have been put into execution at once, but for the news Bright had given them, and which momentarily checked them when they were on the point of disclosing their long-kept secret. Then they had parted, judging it wiser that John should stay away from the house that evening, and avoid the danger of irritating Alexander Junior’s temper, which had most probably been more or less roused by the finding of another will.
Katharine went into the library before going to her room, with a vague idea of ascertaining the state of the family humour, if any one happened to be there. She was not disappointed, for her father and mother were together, Alexander sitting upright in Katharine’s favourite chair, and Mrs. Lauderdale lying upon the sofa and staring at the ceiling. Katharine saw her first, and understood her mother’s warning glance. It was clear that there had been a pause in the conversation. Alexander’s face was cold and expressionless as he looked at his wife.
“Well,” he said, in a tone of repressed but righteous indignation, “have you heard the news, Katharine? They’ve found another will.”
“Yes,” she answered, kissing her mother by force of habit rather than from any other motive. “I just met Hamilton Bright in the street. He told me.”
“Oh, yes; he knows all about it.” Alexander spoke with profound resentment, as though Bright were personally responsible for the second will. “Katharine, my dear, I don’t think you’ve kissed me to-day. I didn’t see you this morning.”
Katharine looked at him in some surprise, smiled a little foolishly, as people do when they cannot understand exactly what is wanted of them, and then rose almost before she had sat down. She went to him and laid her cheek against his with precision, and both he and she kissed the air audibly and simultaneously. Alexander Junior had always detested anything like demonstration, but he insisted, on the other hand, upon the punctual execution of certain affectionate practices, as a matter of household discipline. Early or late the air must be kissed when the cheeks were in contact.
“I thought I’d seen you,” said Katharine, as she retired again to her seat.
“No,” answered Alexander, meditatively. “No — I think not. My child,” he continued, in a tone unusually gentle for him, “do you think that without feeling that you are betraying my poor uncle Robert’s confidence, you could tell
me what that will contains?”
She fancied from the way in which he spoke that he had framed the question at his leisure before she had come home, so as neither to offend her nor to refer to his previous attempts to gain her confidence. She hesitated a moment before answering him, but he did not appear to be impatient. In her quick weighing of the case, she could see little or no reason for not satisfying his curiosity.
“Recollect, my dear, that I only wish you to speak about it, if you feel that you can do so with a perfectly clear conscience,” he said.
“Oh, yes; of course!” she answered, repressing a smile. “But I don’t really see why you shouldn’t know. I think, while he was alive — well, that was different. But now — I think it’s quite fair. Of course, I don’t know what will this is. He may have made several, for all we know. But the one he told me about was like this. His idea was to make three trusts, all equal. Oh! — in the first place there was to be one million for the Brights, amongst the three, aunt Maggie, Hamilton, and Hester. Then the three equal shares of the rest were to go in trust to Charlotte and Jack Ralston and me — what did you say, papa?”
Alexander Junior had uttered an indistinct exclamation.
“Nothing,” he said. “Go on.”
“Each of us three was to pay half the income of a share to one of you three, you and mother, and Mrs. Ralston. But before that — I forgot to say it — each of us was to contribute something to make up an income for grandpapa — about fifty thousand dollars altogether, I think. Then the fortune was all to be in trust for our possible children. That was all. I don’t think there was anything else.”
“Do you mean to say that there was nothing left outright to any of us older ones?” asked Alexander, in a tone of stupefaction.
“Well — you three had half the income amongst you,” answered Katharine.
“What an absurd will!” exclaimed her father.
Then he bit his lip and sat in silence, looking at his clasped hands.
“But it may not be that will, after all,” he said, in a low voice, after a long pause. “A man who will leave one old will behind him may leave twenty. Lawyers always say that any one who changes his will once is sure to do it again and again.”
He drew little consolation from the thought, however, and he was suffering all that his arid nature was capable of feeling, in the anticipation of losing the control of the fortune which had been practically within his grasp. But he had grown used to uncertainty and emotion within the last two months, and his face was set and hard. Nevertheless, he felt that he could not long bear the eyes of the two women upon him in his trouble, unless he made an effort of some sort.
“Did the will say nothing about the trusteeship? Who were to be the trustees?” He asked the question with a revival of interest.
“I don’t know,” answered Katharine. “I never saw the will, of course. He only told me what I have told you.”
Alexander said nothing, but he slowly rose to his feet, with less of energy and directness than he usually showed in his movements.
“We’ll talk about it this evening,” he said, and left the room.
When he was gone Katharine rose and went over and sat upon the sofa at her mother’s feet. Mrs. Lauderdale had said nothing during the brief interview, but had watched her husband’s face anxiously when he spoke, as though she had anticipated some outbreak of temper, at least.
“I’m glad you told him at once, dear,” she said. “I’m very much troubled about him. I was afraid he’d be angry.”
“Isn’t it dreadful that any one should care so much?” Katharine spoke thoughtfully, and looked at the floor.
“I’m very anxious,” answered Mrs. Lauderdale, not noticing what her daughter had said. “He has talked in his sleep all night. He talks of nothing but the money. Of course, it’s incoherent, and I can’t make out half of what he says. It’s all the worse. I’m afraid his brain will be seriously affected if this goes on much longer.”
“Mother — hasn’t every one got some great passion like that, locked up inside of them, and trying to get out?”
Katharine looked up as she asked the question. Neither she nor her mother thought of those months of insane envy, which had almost separated them in heart forever.
“I never did,” said Mrs. Lauderdale, innocently. “I never cared for anything like that.”
“I have,” said Katharine. “I do. It’s just like my caring for Jack. You might as well try to face an express train as to stand in the way of it. I know just how papa feels — now. Only with him it’s money. He’ll upset the whole world to have it, as I’d turn the universe inside out rather than lose Jack. I suppose that’s the meaning of the word passion — I’m beginning to understand it.”
“It sounds much more like the meaning of sin,” observed Mrs. Lauderdale. “I don’t mean in your case, dear. Love’s quite another thing. Perhaps I shouldn’t have said it at all.”
CHAPTER XXXIV.
EVEN ALEXANDER JUNIOR, more than preoccupied by his hopes and fears in regard to the will, was profoundly shocked by the news of Walter Crowdie’s sudden death. Doctor Routh, as a friend of the family, took it upon himself to notify all the relations of what had taken place in the night, for during the first hours Hester had been incapable of any thought. He had undertaken to inform Hester’s mother, and he wrote to the Lauderdales and the Ralstons at once, in order that they might not learn the news from the papers and accidentally.
No one of the family had ever liked poor Crowdie, but all of them had been fond of Hester at one period or another of her life, though she had never seemed to possess the power of keeping upon terms of intimacy with more than one of them at a time, and never with any for very long. The fact that the loss was hers softened every judgment of the man who was gone, and in the first anxiety which every one felt to show a sympathy which was genuine, Alexander Junior was perhaps the only one who remembered that Mr. Allen was coming at eleven o’clock to open the document which had been found, before the eyes of the whole family. With a delicacy which might be attributed to the implacability of circumstances, but for which he was afterwards willing to take more credit than he got, he sent a message down town, explaining what had happened, and putting off the meeting until the afternoon. Alexander spent his morning in making sure that every one could be present, except Mrs. Bright. Hamilton would represent his mother and sister.
It seemed heartless to Katharine that no one — not even Hamilton Bright himself — should have suggested putting off the reading of the paper at least until the next day, and once more the ruthlessness of humanity was thrust upon her so that she could not help seeing it. It was true, she admitted, that in reality Crowdie had been the husband of a very distant cousin, and in theory neither the Lauderdales nor the Ralstons would be expected to suspend a curiosity which concerned the fate of a colossal fortune, for the matter of a death which hardly touched them. Yet Katharine thought that in practice people might show some feeling in such a case. What she saw was that the first shock was real and startling, but that half an hour after hearing the news her father and mother were discussing Crowdie’s character with about as much consideration as though he had been a dead Chinaman, or a foreign prime minister. She registered another bit of strong evidence against the efficacy of professed religion, and shut herself up in her room for the morning, for the mere satisfaction of being alone and of asking herself what she had really thought of Crowdie.
She had detested him. She had no doubt of that. When she recalled a certain smile of his, and thought of the redness of his lips, she shivered and was disgusted. She did not like to remember his undulating, womanish gait, nor the pallor of his face. Everything about him had repelled her intensely. And yet, when she thought of him lying dead at that moment, she felt a sharp pang, which was very like what she might have felt if she had really missed him. She could not understand that. Then she remembered his voice, and the enchantment of his singing on that night at the Brights’ the song of L
ohengrin — the song of the swan, she thought, as it had turned out to be in truth, so far as she was concerned. She wondered whether it were his voice that she was really thinking of with regret. For she certainly felt the little pang. It came again when she remembered that he was dead. She tried it two or three times. It came once more, then very faintly, then not at all, try as she might to think of him as he probably looked. She had never seen any one dead except old Robert Lauderdale, but that was a recent memory. All the details of death were fresh in her mind, and she could picture to herself the quiet household, the subdued voices, the darkened rooms, the flowers. The faint smell of them came back to her. She wondered whether the smell had been so peculiar, and faint, and sickening, because they had been almost all white. But there was no pang of ‘missing’ when she thought of the old man. Yet she had been fond of him, and she had detested Crowdie. She did not understand, as she sat all alone thinking about it. She came to the conclusion that when people die they are missed in proportion to their vitality by those who have not really loved them. Perhaps she was right. The nature and causes of those sudden thrusts which ordinarily sensitive people feel have been very little studied.
But Katharine was sincerely sorry for Hester. She did not know whether to go to her at once, or to wait until the next day. Her impulse was to go immediately, though she asked herself whether Hester could possibly wish to see her, and she tried to put herself in Hester’s place. But the thought that John Ralston might die brought such a burst of pain with it that she rose from her seat and walked about the room, breathing a little faster. Then, having risen, she went downstairs and consulted her mother.
“If I were you, I should go,” said Mrs. Lauderdale. “I’ll go with you, if you like. You’ve always been her best friend. I’m sure she’s been much nearer to you than your sister ever was, hasn’t she? Of course she has. It can’t do any harm to go and ask for aunt Maggie, and if Hester wants to see you, you can go up and I’ll come home alone, or stay downstairs with aunt Maggie until you’re ready.”
Complete Works of F Marion Crawford Page 753