"I know he didn't care a straw for me" – she gasped, dabbing her temples with a handkerchief soaked in eau-de-Cologne – "yet it seemed sometimes almost as if he did: he was so attentive – but then he had such lovely manners – no doubt he was just as attentive to all girls. Oh, Mop, if he had cared for me, and if I had married him – what a paradise this earth would have been. Mr. Tregonell told me that he had quite four thousand a year."
And thus – and thus, with numerous variations on the same theme – poor Dopsy mourned for the dead man; while the low murmur of the distant sea, beating for ever and for ever against the horned cliffs, and dashing silvery white about the base of that Mechard Rock which looks like a couchant lion keeping guard over the shore, sounded like a funeral chorus in the pauses of her talk.
It was half-past ten when Christabel left her boy's bedside, and, on her way to her own room, suddenly remembered Jessie's unexplained absence.
She knocked at Miss Bridgeman's door twice, but there was no answer, and then she opened the door and looked in, expecting to find the room empty.
Jessie was sitting in front of the fire in her hat and jacket, staring at the burning coals. There was no light in the room, except the glow and flame of the fire, but even in that cheerful light Jessie looked deadly pale. "Jessie," exclaimed Christabel, going up to her and putting a gentle hand upon her shoulder, for she took no notice of the opening of the door, "where in heaven's name have you been?"
"Where should I have been? Surely you can guess! I have been to see him."
"To the farm – alone – at night?"
"Alone – at night – yes! I would have walked through storm and fire – I would have walked through – " she set her lips like iron, and muttered through her clenched teeth, "Hell."
"Jessie, Jessie, how foolish! What good could it do?"
"None to him, I know, but perhaps a little to me. I think if I had stayed here I should have gone stark, staring mad. I felt my brain reeling as I sat and thought of him in the twilight, and then it seemed to me as if the only comfort possible was in looking at his dead face – holding his dead hand – and I have done it, and am comforted – a little," she said, with a laugh, which ended in a convulsive sob.
"My good warm-hearted Jessie!" murmured Christabel, bending over her lovingly, tears raining down her cheeks; "I know you always liked him."
"Always liked him!" echoed the other, staring at the fire, in blank tearless grief; "liked him? yes, always."
"But you must not take his death so despairingly, dear. You know that, under the fairest circumstances, he had not very long to live. We both knew that."
"Yes! we knew it. I knew – thought that I had realized the fact – told myself every day that in a few months he would be hidden from us under ground – gone to a life where we cannot follow him even with our thoughts, though we pretend to be so sure about it, as those women do in 'The Gates Ajar.' I told myself this every day. And yet, now that he is snatched away suddenly – cruelly – mysteriously – it is as hard to bear as if I had believed that he would live a hundred years. I am not like you, a piece of statuesque perfection. I cannot say 'Thy will be done,' when my dearest – the only man I ever loved upon this wide earth is snatched from me. Does that shock your chilly propriety, you who only half loved him, and who broke his heart at another woman's bidding? Yes! I loved him from the first – loved him all the while he was your lover, and found it enough for happiness to be in his company – to see and hear him, and answer every thought of his with sympathetic thoughts of mine – understanding him quicker and better than you could, bright as you are – happy to go about with you two – to be the shadow in the sunshine of your glad young lives, just as a dog who loved him would have been happy following at his heels. Yes, Belle, I loved him – I think almost from the hour he came here, in the sweet autumn twilight, when I saw that poetic face, half in fire-glow and half in darkness – loved him always, always, always, and admired him as the most perfect among men!"
"Jessie, my dearest, my bravest! And you were so true and loyal. You never by word or look betrayed – "
"What do you think of me?" cried Jessie, indignantly. "Do you suppose that I would not rather have cut out my tongue – thrown myself off the nearest cliff – than give him one lightest occasion to suspect what a paltry-souled creature I was – so weak that I could not cure myself of loving another woman's lover. While he lived I hated myself for my folly; now he is dead, I glory in the thought of how I loved him – how I gave him the most precious treasures of my soul – my reverence – my regard – my tears and hopes and prayers. Those are the only gold and frankincense and myrrh which the poor of this earth can offer, and I gave them freely to my divinity!"
Christabel laid her hand upon the passionate lips; and, kneeling by her friend's side, comforted her with gentle caresses.
"Do you suppose I am not sorry for him, Jessie?" she said reproachfully, after a long pause.
"Yes, no doubt you are, in your way; but it is such an icy way."
"Would you have me go raving about the house – I, Leonard's wife, Leo's mother? I try to resign myself to God's will: but I shall remember him till the end of my days, with unspeakable sorrow. He was like sunshine in my life; so that life without him seemed all one dull gray, till the baby came, and brought me back to the sunlight, and gave me new duties, new cares!"
"Yes! you can find comfort in a baby's arms – that is a blessing. My comfort was to see my beloved in his bloody shroud – shot through the heart – shot through the heart! Well, the inquest will find out something to-morrow, I hope; but I want you to go with me to-morrow morning, as soon as it is light, to the Kieve."
"What for?"
"To see the spot where he died."
"What will be the good, Jessie? I know the place too well; it has been in my mind all this evening."
"There will be some good, perhaps. At any rate, I want you to go with me; and if there ever was any reality in your love, if you are not merely a beautiful piece of mechanism, with a heart that beats by clockwork, you will go."
"If you wish it I will go."
"As soon as it is light – say at seven o'clock."
"I will not go till after breakfast. I want the business of the house to go on just as calmly as if this calamity had never happened. I don't want any one to be able to say, 'Mrs. Tregonell is in despair at the loss of her old lover.'"
"In fact you want people to suppose that you never cared for him!"
"They cannot suppose that, when I was once so proud of my love. All I want is that no one should think I loved him too well after I was a wife and mother. I will give no occasion for scandal."
"Didn't I say that you were a handsome automaton?"
"I do not want any one to say hard things of me when I am dead – hard things that my son may hear."
"When you are dead! You talk as if you thought you were to die soon. You are of the stuff that wears to threescore-and-ten, and even beyond the Psalmist's limit. There is no friction for natures of your calibre. When Werther had shot himself, Charlotte went on cutting bread and butter, don't you know? It was her nature to be proper, and good, and useful, and never to give offence – her nature to cut bread and butter," concluded Jessie, laughing bitterly.
Christabel stayed with her for an hour, talking to her, consoling her, speaking hopefully of that unknown world, so fondly longed for, so piously believed in by the woman who had learnt her creed at Mrs. Tregonell's knees. Many tears were shed by Christabel during that hour of mournful talk; but not one by Jessie Bridgeman. Hers was a dry-eyed grief.
"After breakfast then we will walk to the Kieve," said Jessie, as Christabel left her. "Would it be too much to ask you to make it as early as you can?"
"I will go the moment I am free. Good-night, dear."
CHAPTER III
DUEL