A Sheaf of Corn Part 43

He named the invaluable maid. "Have her up to dress you," he advised.

The Bride shrugged her shoulders, and her fingers moved more quickly in a livelier movement. "We will change the room," she said.

Later, he had placed himself on the rug at her feet, and she, leaning forward in the armchair drawn over the fire, had her arm about his neck while he talked to her of himself, she questioning. Of his early life he talked, and what had been for and what against him; of his later success, and his old ambitions.

"All achieved now," he said, and turned to smile at her the curious, characteristic smile accomplished by a twist of a closed lip.

"I have not bored you?" he asked her with anxiety, when the evening was over. "Except to you, I have never in my life talked of myself. It is a luxury in which I must not too much indulge."

She rea.s.sured him with the zeal of the newly-wedded, much loved and loving wife. "Promise me that you will always tell me all, that you will never keep a secret from me," she said; and he promised, smiling upon her with his twisted lip.

"If you do," she cried, fondly threatening, "I shall know it, Sleep-talker! I shall ask you in your sleep and you will tell me all."

That, under those circ.u.mstances, he should probably tell her much that had no foundation in fact, and much that it would by no means please her to hear, he warned her.

She fancied by his tone that he was annoyed, and hastily a.s.serted that she had been in fun, that not for a moment could she seriously entertain such an intention.

"What you do not wish to tell me, be sure I do not wish to hear," she told him.

He stood by the open drawing-room door and watched her as she ran lightly upstairs.

Conscious of his eyes following her, the knowledge of his love and admiration warm at her heart, she went into their brightly-lit bedroom.

For years she had lived such an unloved life, watching her youth fade, fighting only for bread to keep herself alive in a world where none wanted her. Since, in this man's eyes she was still so young and fair, let her look at herself!

She crossed the room to the looking-gla.s.s with a quick, exultant step, but having reached the dressing-table, drew back with almost a cry.

Standing on it in its old place, facing her husband in his silver frame, was the silver-framed portrait with the elaborately-dressed fair hair, the smiling, shallow eyes of the first wife.

The Bride stifled the little cry upon her lips, but with her heart beating thickly, fell back from the dressing-table, and leant against the foot of the bed.

A moment's thought rea.s.sured her. There was nothing, after all, disturbing in the reappearance of a photograph which had been displaced. The invaluable maid with her slanting eyes, with, perhaps, her stupid devotion to a memory, was responsible.

At the thought the Bride's nerves steadied themselves, but her anger arose. She moved to the bell--but stopped. Better not to create talk among the servants by the order she had meditated; rather let this portrait of the dead wife follow the rest.

But when she held it, frame and all, over the fire, she relented and drew it back. "It is not like me to be a superst.i.tious fool. I will not," she said. "She is in her grave, and I am--here. In a way I did not wish, but could not help, I spoilt the last year of her life. She is dead, buried out of mind, shovelled away under the earth, that a joy undreamt of might come to me. This poor triumph at least she shall have, to keep her old place on the table. I will never dress in the morning without remembering I am in her place. When I prepare for my bed at night she shall not be forgotten."

"'Les morts que l'on fait saigner dans leur tombe se vengent toujours!'" she quoted to herself as she undressed; and while she prided herself upon being above superst.i.tion, decided upon the above method of propitiating the Shade.

In the night she had a dream which bathed her in the sweat of terror.

Opening her dreaming eyes upon the dressing-table which faced the foot of the bed she saw the figure of the dead wife standing there. Its back, clothed in its long nightdress, was turned to her, but in the gla.s.s which had so often reflected it she saw the foolish, fat face, the over-curled, fair hair. She saw, too, that the figure held in one hand its own photograph, while, with a pencil held in the other it wrote, smiling the while its own fatuous smile, on the reverse of the picture.

In her dream the Bride knew this vision to be a dream, a knowledge which by no means lessened the horror of it. "I must awake or die!" she said, and in a minute seemed broad awake.

It was morning; the suns.h.i.+ne flooding the room shone, with a brilliance which hurt the eyes upon the silver frame of the picture on the dressing-table. Nothing else was there; all the silver-topped pans and jars and bottles had disappeared; even the companion photograph was no longer to be seen; only the face of her one-time friend smiled and smiled and seemed to beckon from the strangely brilliant, dazzling frame.

With the horror of the dream no whit abated, the Bride rose heavily from her bed, dragged mysteriously attracted feet, that yet seemed weighted with lead, across the floor to the dressing-table; picked up in a hand that fumblingly obeyed the motion of her will, the picture.

Upon the back, written in the dead woman's familiar scrawl were the date of her death, and the words, "Died by my own hand."

In the desperate effort to cast the picture from her paralysed grasp, the Bride awoke.

She was really awake at last, and lying, faint with the dews of remembered terror, upon her bed, her head upon her husband's shoulder.

Thank G.o.d, awake at last! How horrible that had been!

Clinging to him in terror at first, she presently extricated herself from the man's encircling arm, and switched on the light. She dared not lie in the darkness with the thoughts that a.s.sailed her. Never for one instant before had the possibility of the wife's self-destruction occurred to her. Yet, all at once, how probable, how almost certain it seemed.

Died by her own hand! How easy it would have been! An overdose of the opiate the doctor was giving her to ease her pain. And she, weary of life--life made suddenly hideous to her; all her foolish vanities killed, her delight in herself, her belief in her friend, her faith in her husband. The gilding all stripped from the bauble which till then had made her happy. How possible! Nay, was it possible longer to doubt it?

And who was responsible? The woman who lay in her place, staring out into the room which had witnessed that foolish, harmless life, which had witnessed that tragic death; and the man sleeping beside her. They two.

Slowly, lest she should disturb him, the Bride raised herself upon her elbow, looked upon the sleeping face.

It was a face still unfamiliar to her in sleep. The always close-shut mouth was open, the straight-cut upper lip was strained tightly over the gums with a look almost of suffering, the eyes and temples looked as if sunken in pain. Feeling her gaze upon him, the man's lids half lifted themselves, an incoherent word or two fell from the stretched lips, the head moved restlessly upon the pillow.

Did he too guess this thing? Did he know?

"If he does he will never tell it to me," the Bride said to herself, knowing well he would spare her that pain.

In the next moment she was leaning over him, calling him in soft, distinct tones by his name.

"Love," she said, "do you hear me?"

He moaned, turning upon his back. The heavy jaw came fully into view, and the too thick throat which in the daytime the tall, close collar hid. With a light touch she swept the hair which, clinging low over his brow, so disguised it, backward.

"I hear," he answered in the thick, difficult voice of the sleeper.

"Love, I love you," she said. "Tell me, do you love me?"

A pause; then, "With my soul," he answered heavily.

"And--that other wife? Tell me, love."

The answer had always to be waited for, and seemed to come in unwilling response to the command of an intelligence afar off.

"Hate--I hated her," the sleeper said.

"She knew it--at last. Did she--did she _kill_ herself? Tell me the truth, love, as you love me."

No answer but a strangled muttering, a head that moved as if in pain.

The eyes watching him saw that the sleeper was tortured.

"But this once," she said to herself, "I must ask--I will know."

She bent over, without touching him, and put her lips down close to his ear. "Swear to tell me the truth," she said in her distinct, arresting whisper.

Long she waited, watching lips that writhed before speaking, eyes that seemed to ache to open and were sealed by an invisible hand. At length in the low, stumbling, unwilling voice came the response--"I swear."

"Did--she--kill--herself?"