Chapter XV

Once hidden by a group of trees, Giles broke into a run. The road stared in front of him, white and implacable; the dust rose from it, choking him. He bent forward, lifting his feet doggedly, dead tired, and with the feeling that he would never get to the villa. There was a lull in the wind, and a few splashes of warm rain fell upon him.

Suddenly he stopped. What was he running for? To find out if his wife had killed herself? A mere matter of curiosity. For it came into his mind that nothing whatever was changed. He had left her to die. He was going back--to save her? A cold sweat broke out on his forehead, he leant against a pine tree by the road side and rocked himself to and fro, trying to think.

A drove of kine passed close, their bells tinkling, as one by one turned wet muzzle, and moody, brown eyes towards him. The sound, full of memory, of those bells was a spur to his thoughts. Nothing was changed! A chance had been sent to him and to Jocelyn--above all, to Jocelyn! And he was going back to set it at naught?

He had a vision of the face that he loved, as it might become, haggard and shame-ridden, and of the faces of all the people he had ever known drawn in a sanctimonious circle around it. He felt as if he were being guilty of treachery. Why should he go back? He would stifle memory--forget he had ever been in the room. It was a cowardly thought, and he knew it. He could not get away from responsibility one way or the other--he had to accept it. He seemed continually to see his wife’s frail body half-raised on one bent elbow, her thin hand stretched gropingly, the long fingers closing on the medicine bottle--her face, the look of exhaustion upon it, and the heavy, half-closed eyes. He began to walk forward again, slowly at first, then faster and faster.

His mind swayed, like the olive trees in the gusty wind, this way and that. When at moments, in the blank irresolution of his thoughts, he had glimpses of the knowledge that it was all decided--that he _was_ going back to save her if he could--he hated himself.

The sound of a horse’s gallop was in the wind that beat in his face. An undefined feeling of guilt made him stoop to avoid notice as he walked. The horseman passed; there was a cry in his ears, the single word “Madame!” He looked up sharply; through a cloud of dust he had a glimpse of flying hoofs, and of Jacopo’s body turned in the saddle, waving a hand towards the villa.

Something had happened! What? Was he to go down to the grave with the memory of his desertion staring him in the face? Anything was better than this suspense. He dashed forward and arrived, breathless, and dripping with perspiration. He ran up the steps. At the window, out of which he had come, he stopped; it was as he had left it. He set his face against the glass, and stared through. He could see things in the room dimly in the grey light, her couch and figures standing beside it, the white drapery upon it, but he could not see her face.

The same spray of jessamine trailed across his cheek, a cockchafer buzzed against him. Was it really two hours since he had left that room?

The shrill sound of a woman’s sob came to him from within; it jarred his nerves, so that he started and his hand knocked against the glass. A figure inside looked up sharply with a gesture of surprise. It was Nielsen. Giles stared back at him through the window, his face, very white and motionless, still pressed against it. After a moment, when nothing in the heavens and the earth seemed to move, he pushed it open, and went in, walking unsteadily, his hands clenched convulsively on the hat in them.

“What is it?”

“Dead!”

“Ah!” There was no movement in the room save the heaving of the maid’s shoulders, as she crouched by the body of her mistress. The two men faced each other staring, the minds of both busy with a thousand thoughts, their eyes expressing nothing.

A long-drawn, quavering sob, with a gasp at the end, vibrated painfully through the silence. Giles with an uncontrollable movement put his hands up to his ears. Nielsen did not stir, but he frowned.

“You had better go, Pauline,” he said to the maid, “you can be of no use till the doctor comes, then I will call you, but you must be good and quiet, you know.” She rose, and went out, choking back her sobs.

Once more there was silence, and at the foot of the couch the men stared at each other. Nielsen, the shorter by four or five inches, stood gnawing his moustache, his head stiffly bent back, his hands in front of him mechanically polishing his eye-glass; his shortsighted eyes were narrowed and puckered with the effort of vision. Legard stared downwards at him, his eyes deep sunk, his hands folding and refolding his hat; his teeth were clenched, and beads of perspiration stood on his forehead.

“I don’t believe--how do you know?” he said suddenly, but without looking at the couch.

“It is so, I have seen it too often. But look for yourself, I found her like that.” Nielsen pointed towards the body.

“No! No!” said Giles in a harsh whisper, “that’s enough.” He covered his eyes with his hand, and, turning away, began to walk up and down the room. He did not once glance at the body. Nielsen watched him unobserved with a growing feeling of perplexity and of repulsion. “Poor lady!” he said softly, and sat down by the side of the couch. Bending forward with his chin in his hand, he continued to watch Giles restlessly pacing up and down the room. He was trying to put the pieces of a puzzle together in his mind. It seemed to him singular that Legard had not asked any questions; he appeared to know already. His mind reverted to the picture of him hurrying away from the villa hatless and with great strides two hours ago, and a thought struck him.

“Was your wife alive when you left her, you know--two hours ago?” he asked suddenly.

Legard stopped short in his pacing; it was as if a sudden accusation had been hurled at him.

“Yes,” he said hoarsely. “That is--.” He broke off. How did Nielsen know he had been with her? He clenched his jaws and the snap of his teeth together was the only sound in the silent room. For an instant he felt like a hunted man, and he glared at the Swede, waiting for the next question. But it did not come. Nielsen sat there, quietly nursing his chin and looking at the floor--the answer had told him what he wanted to know. Legard _had_ been in the room, but the servants had not known it; he had come out like a man flying from the plague, and it was not an hour since he had himself found Mrs. Legard dead. She had apparently died from an overdose of morphia, for as she lay with her hand by her side, the fingers of it were still closed upon the medicine glass.

It was a singular affair; with the discretion of experience he filed it for reference, and sat quietly nursing his chin and looking at the floor.

Outside, the wind moaned and raged, and a driving rain began to beat against the windows. Inside was the stillness of death itself.

Giles had fallen into a chair with his elbows resting on the table, and his face buried in his hands. The hunted feeling of the moment had gone in a great indifference--a numb sensation that was creeping over him. What did it matter? Let the fellow think what he would, he could _know_ nothing. There was nothing to know, of course--it was a matter between him and his own conscience.

He was surprised that he no longer felt pain, remorse, or indecision, only a dull craving for rest, and that peculiar numbness in his brain and limbs.

There was a sound of wheels outside--then footsteps--he heard them indistinctly through the hissing of the rain and the moaning of the wind. The door opened, and some one came into the room.

In the dim light he had an impression of a man with a bearded face and dark clothes, of water dripping from the sleeves of his coat and from his hat. A doctor! Not his wife’s doctor! He was conscious, too, of the maid’s presence, of low-voiced questions and answers in French, of fingers pointed at himself, of a long hush, of the lifting of something white on the couch and of its being laid gently back again.

He had an impression of being spoken to, and of answering, of the subdued rattle of Venetian blinds drawn up, of the soft beating of the rain against the window panes.

The group of figures round the couch seemed to shift and shift again. There was another long hush, then a whisper in French.

“Poor fellow, he seems quite overcome!” And another voice, low also, and of uncertain intonation, said, “_Que voulez-vous?_ it is his wife.”

In a silence, that seemed everlasting, he sat staring at a black figure leaning over the couch and going through evolutions with a bottle, measuring, smelling, tasting it, bending forward till his body was right-angled, raising himself again. Then the silence came to an end in words pronounced, distinctly and with finality, in the French tongue.

“Morphia--the bottle in her hand--she was in the habit of taking it? Ah! Yes--failure of the action of the heart, no doubt an overdose--dead about an hour--poor woman--not an uncommon case.”

He experienced a sensation of gratitude--the first sensation of any sort for many minutes--the affair was not eternal, he would sometime or another get rid of these people, and be left to himself and have rest. He got up slowly and with effort. Again the slurred rattle of the Venetian blinds, the rustle of a sheet drawn over the couch. Then a moment when three figures stood stiff, awkward, dismally devoid of action; a confused shaking of hands, a subdued unintelligible murmur, a glimpse of retreating figures, the fluttering whish of a skirt, the click of a closing door, and--he was alone.