Christine went over to the table rather stupidly. She yawned — she was not wholly awake yet. The clock in the parlour below was striking three. She counted the strokes absently as she took out the four tablets. Agatha sat up in bed to wash them down with a sip of water from the glass Christine held to her lips. She had been warned not to do this and now she slipped back with a sigh.
“I’m weaker than I thought I was.”
“Is there anything else you’d like?” Christine asked, smothering another yawn.
“No, no, dear. I’m all right. It’s only that I rather feel as if I were a dish of jelly and would all fall apart if violently jarred,” said Agatha. “Go back to your chair and rest all you can. Sitting up like this is too hard on you — you’re not strong. But you won’t have to sit up many more nights. How glad I’ll be when I’m well again. It will be so nice to keep my house again — and read my books — and eat just what I want — and be finally rid of that respectable female, Miss Ransome.”
Christine went back, but she was thoroughly wakened up now and did not want to sleep. Agatha was soon asleep again. Moving softly, Christine turned on the light by the dressing table, screened it from the sick bed, and sat down before the mirror. Taking the pins out of the masses of her rich glossy black hair she began to experiment with various ways of hairdressing. Christine loved to do this. She was very proud and fond of her beautiful hair, and was in the habit of spending hours at her glass, sleeking and brushing it. After several experiments she got it up in a new way she liked exceedingly. She would wear it like that to Jen Keefe’s next dance — with her Spanish comb in it. She slipped across the hall to her own room, and returned with the comb, and put it in her hair. How pretty she was! She leaned her elbows on the table, cupped her chin in her hands, and studied her reflected face earnestly. How very white her skin was! What a delicate bloom was on her round modelled cheeks. How golden-brown her eyes were behind their long black lashes; her forehead was rather high, but this new way of doing her hair banished that defect. Her neck and arms were lovely. She was the prettiest girl in Harrowsdene, there was no doubt of that. And the happiest. And she would be happier yet — when she married Ward. Oh, she was going to have a splendid, joyous life — ever so much gayer than life at “Whiteflowers” had been. Though Agatha was a darling, she did not care much for social doings. But as young Mrs. Ward Lennox, she could do as she liked. Ward adored her — he would give her her own way in everything. No “settling down” for her into any poky routine of married life, looking after babies and pantry supplies. No, indeed — not for years to come. She hated children anyhow, children and housework. She was young and beautiful: she would grasp at all youth and beauty could give her. For years to come she would know the joy of pleasing the eyes of men.
She would entertain: Harrowsdene should have its eyes opened. And she would never give up Jennie. Ward didn’t like her, she knew, but he would get over that. He would have to get over his strict old-fashioned notions about things. She loved Jennie; Jennie was a dear thing, so gay and good-hearted. Of course, she wasn’t an old Calvinistic prude like most of the Harrowsdene women — like all of them, except Agatha. She believed in living and letting live. So did Christine.
“I’m — going — to — do — exactly — as — I — please,” she nodded with every word at the radiant face in the glass. “I’m — going — to — have — a — splendid — time.”
She touched her lovely shoulders admiringly.
“How sorry I am for ugly women,” she said. “What can they have to live for? But, of course, there must be some to do the stupid drudgery of life. We who are beautiful should be exempt from all that. It is just enough that we are beautiful.”
She laughed softly again, softly, triumphantly, insolently, defiant of fate — the last laughter of her youth.
It was dawn now. Agatha still slept. Christine turned off the mirror light and went to the open window. The grounds of “Whiteflowers” were very lovely in the faint, pearly lustre. The wind was whistling rather eerily in the dead reeds of the little swampy hollow behind “Whiteflowers,” but the sky was exquisite, with white clouds floating across it.
It was going to be a fine day. Christine was glad. She hated dull stormy days. She would go to see Jen in the afternoon. She hadn’t been anywhere since Agatha took ill. But there was no need to mew herself up any longer.
She turned and went over to the bed. Agatha was lying on the pillows, her face turned to the grey light. Something about it sent a strange, horrible dart of vague dismay to Christine’s heart. She bent once and touched Agatha’s cheek. Christine had never touched a dead person’s cheek before — but she knew — she knew.
A shriek of terror broke from her lips. Nurse Ransome, who had just been coming across the hall, rushed through the doorway, followed by old Jean, the housekeeper, who had been on her way downstairs. Nurse Ransome saw at a glance what had happened, but she went promptly to work with all proper attempts at revival. Jean was dispatched downstairs to telephone for the doctor. White, shaking, useless, Christine was told to open the other window.
Christine went uncertainly toward the window. On her way she passed the table where the medicine bottle stood. Suddenly she stopped, looking at it. The bottle of sleeping tablets was on it. It had not been put up in its place at eleven o’clock. The bottle of regular tablets was back in the corner, half hidden by the window curtain, just as it had been at eleven o’clock.
What had she given to Agatha at three o’clock?
A hideous conviction suddenly took possession of her mind. She remembered — as if the whole incident rose out of subliminal depths into consciousness — she remembered feeling the raised letters of the poison bottle in her fingers as she counted out the four tablets. The regular medicine bottle was smooth. Her conscious mind, dulled by sleep, had not been aware of what she was doing — had retained no memory of it. But she knew what she had done. At eleven o’clock, her thoughts still tangled in the cobweb meshes of her voluptuous dreaming, she had forgotten to put the sleeping tablets safely back on the shelf. At three o’clock she had picked up the bottle and given Agatha four tablets from it. Four — and three were fatal!
A sensation of deadly cold went over her from head to foot — then nausea, horrible, beyond expression. She fought it off, and, blindly obeying the dictates of an impulse that had no connection with reason but rushed furiously up from the deeps of being, she caught the poison bottle in her icy hand and set it on the shelf, with one wild, terrified look back at Nurse Ransome. Nurse Ransome had not seen; she was busy with what had been Agatha.
Christine felt herself falling — falling — falling — into unimagined, unimaginable depths of horror. She slid down to the floor by the table, unconscious.
Agatha North’s death, coming when everyone had supposed she was beyond all danger, shocked Harrowsdene to its centre. She had died in her sleep from heart failure, Dr. Lennox said. He had known it was possible, but, as she herself had said, her grandmother had lived to old age with just the same kind of a heart, so he had not been much afraid of it. There was no doubt — no suspicion. Everybody was very sorry for Christine who seemed, it was said — for but few people saw her — to be dazed by the blow.
When Christine had recovered consciousness in her own room, Dr. Lennox and Nurse Ransome had tried to keep her there, but she broke away from them with unnatural strength and ran wildly to Agatha’s room. Nurse Ransome was quite disgusted with her entire lack of self-control. She had screamed — laughed — implored Agatha to speak to her — look at her. Agatha had always answered her when she called before. Now she did not even open her eyes — her beautiful, large-lidded eyes. Christine had wrung her hands and tom her hair. Mingled with all her horror and agony was incredulity. This thing could not have happened. Agatha could not be dead — it was absurd — impossible. Why didn’t they do something?
“Everything has been done — everything,” said Ward Lennox compassionately. Even he did not like
this frenzy of Christine’s. But she was very young and this was her first sorrow. Agatha had been everything to her, mother, sister, comrade.
Under all Christine’s agony was a horror of the discovery of what she had done, and a mad, unreasoning determination that it must not be discovered. She fainted again when she was forced to accept the fact that Agatha was dead; when she recovered she was calm, spent, quiet. She learned that Ward thought Agatha had died of heart failure; no one seemed to have the slightest inkling of the truth. Nurse Ransome questioned her concerning the events of the night, sharply enough, with a shrewish glint in her eyes, as was her way, but evidently without suspicion. Christine told her tale unhesitatingly, looking straight into Nurse Ransome’s eyes as she told it. She was glad it was Nurse Ransome and not Ward Lennox who asked her. She could not, she thought, have told that story unshrinkingly to him.
Agatha had been very restless at eleven — she had given her one sleeping tablet and she had slept until three. Then she had asked for her usual medicine.
“I gave it to her,” said Christine unquailingly, “and then she went to sleep again.”
“Was there anything unusual about her?” asked Nurse Ransome. “Did she complain of anything?”
“I noticed nothing unusual.” Christine’s voice was steady and even. “She spoke of feeling her weakness — and she raised herself up to take her tablets before I could prevent her.”
Nurse Ransome nodded.
“The exertion may have affected her heart a little. She must have died soon after three o’clock, Dr. Lennox says. It is strange you never noticed anything before morning.”
“I was sitting over by the window — I never heard the slightest sound from her. I thought she was asleep.”
“Did you doze off?” Nurse Ransome was a little contemptuous.
“No, I was wide awake all the time,” said Christine deliberately.
She was tearless now, tearless, cunning, and terrified to the bottom of her soul. She shut herself up in her room when Nurse Ransome had gone and walked the floor.
No one must ever know. She would not confess. It could do Agatha no good now. And what harm might it not do to herself? She was wholly ignorant of what was or might be done in such cases and in her ignorance imagined the worst. They might not believe her — not now, at all events, after those instinctive lies of terror — they might think she had done it on purpose, that she might the sooner fall heir to Agatha’s money. Sent to prison — tried — she, Christine North, on whom the winds of heaven had not dared to blow too roughly. And even at the best — even if they believed her — even if nothing could or would be done to her — what shame, what humiliation, what outrage to her pride! To have it known that she had poisoned Agatha, her virtual mother, through sheer carelessness, to be always pointed out as one who had been capable of such a deed, no, no, she could never face such a thing — never. Anything, any fate, would be better than that. And she knew what her fate must be. She could never marry Ward Lennox now. Confessed or unconfessed, this thing must always stand between them. But just now in her guilt and dismay and dread, this seemed of little moment. The soul can entertain but one overmastering passion at a time.
She stood before her mirror and looked at her changed face, her white, haggard face with its horror-filled eyes. It was as if in one hour she had passed from youth to middle age.
“I will not tell — it must never be known,” she whispered, clenching her hands.
Her dread, and the unscrupulous determination caused by it, carried her through the funeral. People talked of her unnatural composure and her marble-white face. They pitied her, knowing what she had lost in Agatha. But in the back of their minds was the thought that she was a rich woman now, the mistress and owner of “Whiteflowers,” and in due time would be wife of Ward Lennox. Back of this again was a thought, or rather a feeling, that giddy, shallow Christine was not worthy of such good fortune.
“She didn’t shed a tear — too proud to cry before folks, North-like,” said old Aunt Hetty Lawson. “She doesn’t become her black. You’ll see, she won’t wear it longer than she has to. She’ll make Agatha’s money fly. Well, well, Harrowsdene will miss Agatha North. There aren’t many women in the world like her.”
Christine never forgot the agony of that hour. She had to sit still among the mourners. She had to look once more on Agatha’s dead face — Agatha’s lovely, placid face — and know that she had killed her, had cut her off in her gracious, beloved, useful prime. Agatha, who had loved her so entirely and whom she had loved so deeply in return. She had to endure the consolations of people who would despise and condemn her ruthlessly if they knew the truth. At moments it seemed to Christine that they must know it — that her horrible inward sense of guilt and remorse must be branded on her face for all to see. Her own realization of what she had done was so intense and vivid that it seemed as if it must radiate from her to the minds of all around her. Yet she sat on like a white statue, as motionless, as seemingly calm as the dead woman herself.
It was over; Agatha’s beautiful soul, full of fancy and charm and love, had gone to its own place; her ripe, beautiful body was buried in Harrowsdene cemetery and covered speedily with a loose drift of autumn leaves. And Christine shut herself up at “Whiteflowers” alone, refusing to see anyone, even Ward Lennox.
Her dread of being found out was almost gone. Agatha was buried. Since there had been no suspicion before, there would be none now. She was safe. But now that terror was over, another emotion rose up and possessed her soul, horror of herself, passionate, unappeasable remorse. By sheer carelessness she had killed Agatha; she had preened and exulted before her mirror while Agatha was lying dead behind her — Agatha who wanted so much to live. She must atone for it, she must atone for it by lifelong penance. Sitting alone in her room, listening to the heavy rain that she knew was streaming down on Agatha’s unprotected grave, she made her enduring vow.
“I have robbed her of life. I will not have life myself,” said Christine.
At first people thought the change in Christine was merely the result of grief and trouble. It would soon wear off, they said. But it did not; then they began to talk and wonder and whisper again. They talked and wondered and whispered until they were tired of talking and wondering and whispering and lapsed into acceptance of a threadbare fact.
Christine cared nothing for their talking and wondering and whispering. She was bent only on atonement — bent on dulling the sting of remorse to a bearable degree by increasing penance. Within a month of Agatha’s death she had organized her existence on the lines it was henceforth to follow, and nothing — entreaty, advice, blame — ever availed to move her one jot from her elected path, until people gave up blaming, entreating, advising; left her alone, and practically forgot her. Nobody could ever have believed that, much as Christine was known to have loved Agatha, her sorrow could have had such a lasting and revolutionary effect on her. But since it was undeniably so, they accepted it, concluding that Christine’s mind had been affected by the shock of Agatha’s death. After all, there had always been a strain of eccentricity in the Norths. Agatha herself had been eccentric in her very philosophy of living — so gay and tolerant and vivid at the years when other women had grown sober and hidebound and drab with the stress of existence.
Christine, with her own hands, put away all the things Agatha would never wear or use more, pretty things all of them, for Agatha had loved pretty things. She hung Agatha’s picture in the room where Agatha had died, that she might not see it, and locked the door. But she took the brown bottle of sleeping tablets and set it on her own dressing table before her mirror, on the dressing table from which had been banished all the little implements of beauty she had been wont to use assiduously. She had no longer any use for them, but every night and every morning as she brushed her thick black hair straightly and unbecomingly off her face to its prim coil behind, she looked at the deadly reminder of her deed.
Ward Lennox respected her grief an
d desire for solitude as long as he could bear it. Then he went to her, told her his love, and asked her to marry him. Christine coldly refused. He was thunderstruck; he had been sure Christine loved him. Had he not seen her eyes change at sight of him, the revealing colour rise in her lovely face? Yet now she looked unblushingly at him and told him she could never marry him. He did not give up easily; he urged, entreated, reproached. Christine listened and said nothing.
“Don’t you love me?” he asked.
“No,” she said, with her eyes cast down.
Ward did not believe her. He went away at last, intending to return soon. But when he went back he rang the bell at “Whiteflowers” unavailingly; and no answer came to his letters. He tried at intervals for a year to see Christine; then he gave up, convinced that she did not care for him, never had cared. What he had mistaken for love had only been the coquettish allurement of a wild girl, who had been sobered by trouble into a realization that she should not so play with the great passion of life.
Christine loved him as she had always done. For one mad moment she was tempted to confess all and throw herself on his mercy. Surely if he loved her as he said he did he would overlook and forgive. But then, to feel always humiliated before him in his knowledge of her indefensible carelessness; she could not bear the thought. This one master dread held back the words. Without it she would not have been strong enough to put away love from her, even for atonement. All other joys she could sacrifice to her craving for remorse. But not this. If it had not been for the pride that could not brook the thought of shame she would have fallen at his feet and gasped out the truth. But that pride sealed her lips forever.
She put all her old friends out of her life. Most of them had been of the Keefe set. When Mrs. Keefe came to “Whiteflowers” old Jean Stewart told her ungraciously that Christine would not see her. Mrs. Keefe went away insulted and never made any further attempt to renew her intimacy with Christine. When, two years later, the scandal of the Keefe divorce case, with all its unsavoury details in the matter of a certain Muskoka house party, burst upon Harrowsdene, people said significantly that it was well Christine North was not mixed up in that. But by this time Harrowsdene had accepted and almost forgotten the new Christine.
The Complete Works of L M Montgomery Page 753