It was not unremarked that a long time elapsed between the discovery of the suicide and its being heard of by anyone who had an interest in making it generally known. With the exception of two persons, all who were engaged upon the production of the newspaper went home in complete ignorance of what had happened, so cautiously and successfully was the situation dealt with by the sub-editor and his informant. When, after an examination by the doctor, who had been summoned in all secrecy, it became necessary to communicate with the police, the employees had all gone away, and the printed sheets had been conveyed to the distributing agents. Naturally, the subeditor of Stock and Share' preserved a certain reticence in the matter; but one could hardly be mistaken in assuming that the directors of the Britannia Companytwo or three of them, at all eventshad an opportunity of surveying their position long before the hour when this momentous news got abroad.
With regard to the company's affairs, only conjecture could be as yet indulged in. In view of the immediate stoppage of business, it was pretty safe to surmise that alarming disclosures awaited the public. No one, of course, would be justified in prejudging the case against the unhappy man who, amid seemingly brilliant circumstances, had been driven to so desperate an act.
And so on, and so on, in one journal after another, in edition upon edition. Harvey Rolfe read them till he was weary, listened to the gossip of the club till he was nauseated. He went home at length with a headache, and, having carefully avoided contact with Buncombe or Mrs Handover, made an effort to absorb himself in a volume of Gregorovius, which was at present his study. The attempt was futile. Talk still seemed to buzz about him; his temples throbbed; his thoughts wandered far and wide. Driven to bed long before his accustomed hour, he heard raucous voices rending the night, bellowing in hideous antiphony from this side of the street and the other, as the vendors of a halfpenny paper made the most of what Providence had sent them.
The first thing after breakfast next morning, he posted a line to Hugh Carnaby. 'Is there any way in which I can be of use to you? If you think not, I shall be off tomorrow to Greystone for a few days. I feel as if we were all being swept into a ghastly whirlpool which roars over the bottomless pit. Of course, I will stay if I can do anything, no matter what. Otherwise, address for a week to Basil Morton's.'
This he dropped into the nearest pillar-box, and, as the sun was endeavouring to shine, he walked the length of the street, a pretence of exercise. On his way back he was preceded by a telegraph boy, who stopped at Buncombe's front door, and awoke the echoes with a twofold double knock. Before the servant could open, Harvey was on the steps.
'What name?'
'Rolfe.'
'For me, then.'
He tore open the envelope.
'Could you come at once? Something has happened.Abbott.'
The boy wished to know if there would be a reply. Harvey shook his head, and stepped into the hall, where he stood reflecting. What could have happened that Edgar Abbott should summon him? Had his wife run away? Ah, to be sure, it must have something to do with Wager's childrenan accident, a death. But why send for him?
He made a little change in his dress, and drove forthwith to Kilburn. As his cab stopped, he saw that all the blinds in the front of the Abbotts' house were drawn down. Death, then, obviously. It was with a painful shaking of the nerves that he knocked for admission.
'Mr. Abbott?'
The servant girl, who had a long-drawn face, said nothing, but left him where he stood, returning in a moment with a mumbled 'Will you please to come in, sir?' He followed her to the room in which he had talked with Mrs. Abbott two days ago; and she it was who again received him. Her back to the light, she stood motionless.
'Your husband has telegraphed for me'
A voice that struggled with a sob made thick reply
'NoIhe is dead!'
The accent of that last monosyllable was heart-piercing. It seemed to Harvey as though the word were new-minted, so full it sounded of dreadful meaning.
'Dead?'
Mrs. Abbott moved, and he could see her face better. She must have wept for hours.
'He has been taking morphiahe couldn't sleep welland then his neuralgia. The girl found him this morning, at seven o'clockthere.'
She pointed to the couch.
'You mean that he had taken an overdoseby accident'
'It must have been so. He had to work lateand then he must have lain down to sleep.'
'Why here?'
'A flood of anguish whelmed her. She uttered a long moan, all the more terrible for its subdual to a sound that could not pass beyond the room. Her struggle for self-command made her suffering only the more impressive, the more grievous to behold.'
'Mr. Rolfe, I sent for you because you are his old friend. I meant to tell you all the truth, as I know it. I can't tell it before strangersin public! I can't let them knowthe shamethe shame!'
Harvey's sympathy gave way to astonishment and strange surmise. Hurriedly he besought her not to reveal anything in her present distress; to wait till she could reflect calmly, see things in truer proportion. His embarrassment was heightened by an inability to identify this woman with the Mrs. Abbott he had known; the change in her self-presentment seemed as great and sudden as that in her circumstances. Face and voice, though scarce recognisable, had changed less than the soul of heras Harvey imaged it. This entreaty she replied to with a steadiness, a resolve, which left him no choice but to listen.
'I cannot, dare not, think that he did this knowingly. No! He was too brave for that. He would never have left me in that wayto my despair. But it was my fault that made him angryno, not angry; he was never that with me, or never showed it. But I had behaved with such utter selfishness'
Her misery refused to word itself. She sank down upon a chair and sobbed and moaned.
'Your grief exaggerates every little fault,' said Harvey.
'Noyou must hear it allthen perhaps I can hide my shame from strangers. What use would it be if they knew? It alters nothingit's only in my own heart. I have no right to pain you like this. I will tell you quietly. You know that he went to Waterbury, on business. Did he tell you?it was to buy a share in a local newspaper. I, in my blindness and selfishness, disliked that. I wanted to live here; the thought of going to live in the country seemed unbearable. That Edgar was overworked and ill, seemed to me a trifle. Don't you remember how I spoke of it when you came here the other morning?I can't understand myself. How could I think so, speak so!'
The listener said nothing.
'He did what he purposedmade a bargain, and came back to conclude the purchase by correspondence. But his moneythe small capital he counted uponwas in "Britannia" shares; and you know what happened yesterdayyesterday, the very day when he went to sell the shares, thinking to do so without the least difficulty.'
Harvey gave a grim nod.
'He came home, and I showed that I was glad'
'No! You accuse yourself unreasonably.'
'I tell you the truth, as my miserable conscience knows it. I was crazy with selfishness and conceit. Rightly, he left me to my cowardly temper, and went out again, and was away for a long time. He came back to dinner, and then the suffering in his face all but taught me what I was doing. I wanted to ask him to forgive meto comfort him for his loss; but pride kept me from it. I couldn't speakI couldn't! After dinner he said he had a lot of work to do, and came into this room. At ten o'clock I sent him coffee. I wished to take it myselfO God! if only I had done so! I wished to take it, and speak to him, but still I couldn't. And I knew he was in torture; I saw at dinner that pain was racking him. But I kept away, and went to my own bed, and sleptwhilst he was lying here.'
A rush of tears relieved her. Harvey felt his own eyes grow moist.
'It was only that he felt so worn out,' she pursued. 'I know how it was. The pain grew intolerable, and he went upstairs for his draught, and thennot having finished his workhe thought he would lie down on the sofa for a little; and so sleep overcame him. He never meant this. If I thought it, I couldn't live!'
'Undoubtedly you are right,' said Harvey, summoning an accent of conviction. 'I knew him very well, and he was not the man to do that.'
'No? You are sure of it? You feel it impossible, Mr. Rolfe?'
'Quite impossible. There are menoh, you may assure yourself that it was pure accident. Unfortunately, it happens so often.'
She hung on his words, leaning towards him, her eyes wide and lips parted.
'So often! I have seen so many cases, in the papers. And he was absent-minded. But what right have I to seek comfort for myself? Was I any less the cause of his death? But must I tell all this in public? Do you think I ought to?'
With comfortable sincerity Rolfe was able to maintain the needlessness of divulging anything beyond the state of Abbott's health and his pecuniary troubles.
'It isn't as if we had lived on ill terms with each other,' said the widow, with a sigh of gratitude. 'Anything but that. Until of late we never knew a difference, and the change that came was wholly my fault. I hadn't the honesty to speak out and say what was in my mind. I never openly opposed his wish to leave London. I pretended to agree to everything, pretended. He showed me all his reasons, put everything simply and plainly and kindly before me, and if I had said what I thought, I feel sure he would have given it up at once. It was in my own hands to decide one way or the other.'
'Why should you reproach yourself so with mere thoughts, of which he never became aware?'
'Oh, it was yesterday, when he came back from the City. He knew then that I was glad he couldn't carry out his purpose. He looked at me as he never had done beforea look of surprise and estrangement. I shall always see that look on his face.'
Harvey talked in the strain of solace, feeling how extraordinary was his position, and that of all men he had least fitness for such an office. It relieved him when, without undue abruptness, he could pass to the practical urgencies of the case. Were Wager's children still in the house? Alas! they were, and Mrs. Abbott knew not what to do about them.
'You can't think of anyone who would take themfor a day or two, even?'
Among her acquaintances there was not one of whom she could venture to ask such a service. 'People have such a dread of children.' Her sister was a governess in Ireland; other near relatives she had none. Edgar Abbott's mother, old and in feeble health, lived near Waterbury; how was the dreadful news to be conveyed to her?
Harvey bestirred himself. Here, at all events, was a call to active usefulness; he felt the privilege of money and leisure.
'Can you give me the name of any one at Waterbury who would be a fit person to break the news to Mrs. Abbott?'
Two names were mentioned, and he noted them.
'I will send telegrams at once to both.'
'You will say it was an accident'
'That shall be made clear. As for the children, I think I can have them taken away this morning. In the house where I live there is a decent woman who I dare say would be willing to look after them for the present. Will you leave this entirely in my hands?'
'I am ashamedI don't know how to thank you.'
'No time shall be lost.' He rose. 'If Mrs. Handover will help us, I will bring her here; then I shall see you again. In any case, of course, I will come backthere will be other business. But you ought to have some friendsome lady.'
'There's no one I can ask.'
'Oh, but of all the people you know in Londonsurely!'
'They are not friends in that sense. I understand it nowfifty acquaintances; no friend.'
'But let me thinklet me think. What was the name of that lady I met here, whose children you used to teach?'
'Mrs. Langland. She is very kind and friendly, but she lives at Gunnersburyso farand I couldn't trouble her.'
Upon one meeting and a short conversation, with subsequent remarks from Edgar Abbott, Rolfe had grounded a very favourable opinion of Mrs Langland. She dwelt clearly in his mind as 'a woman with no nonsense about her', likely to be of much helpfulness at a crisis such as the present. With difficulty he persuaded Mrs. Abbott to sit down and write a few lines, to be posted at once to Gunnersbury.
'I haven't dared to ask her to come. But I have said that I am alone.'
'Quite enough, I think, if she is at home.'
He took his leave, and drove back to Bayswater, posting the letter and despatching two telegrams on the way.
Of course, his visit to Greystone was given up.
CHAPTER 6
Hugh Carnaby was gratified by the verdict of felo de se. He applauded the jury for their most unexpected honesty. One had taken for granted the foolish tag about temporary madness, which would have been an insult to everybody's common-sense.
'It's a pity they no longer bury at four cross-roads, with a stake in his inside. (Where's that from? I remember it somehow.) The example wouldn't be bad.'
'You're rather early-Victorian,' replied Sibyl, who by this term was wont to signify barbarism or crudity in art, letters, morality, or social feeling. 'Besides, there's no merit in the verdict. It only means that the City jury is in a rage. Yet every one of them would be dishonest on as great a scale if they dared, or had the chance.'
'Something in that, I dare say,' conceded Hugh.
He admired his wife more than ever. Calm when she lost her trinkets, Sibyl exhibited no less self-command now that she was suddenly deprived of her whole fortune, about eight hundred a year. She had once remarked on the pleasantness and fitness of a wife's possessing in her own name an income equal to that of her husband; yet she resigned it without fuss. Indeed, Sibyl never made a fuss about anything. She intimated her wishes, and, as they were always possible of gratification, obtained them as a matter of course. Naturally, since their marriage, she and Hugh had lived to the full extent of their means. Carnaby had reduced his capital by a couple of thousand pounds in preliminary expenses, and debt to the amount of two or three hundred was outstanding at the end of the first twelvemonth; but Sibyl manifested no alarm.
'We have been great fools,' she said, alluding to their faith in Bennet Frothingham.
'It's certain that I have,' replied her husband. 'I oughtn't to have let your mother have her way about that money. If there had been a proper settlement, you would have run no risk. Trustees couldn't have allowed such an investment.'
The same day Sibyl bought a fur for her neck which cost fifteen guineas. The weather was turning cold, and she had an account at the shop.
That afternoon, too, she went to see her mother, and on returning at six o'clock looked into the library, where Hugh sat by the fire, a book in his hand. Carnaby found the days very long just now. He shunned his clubs, the Metropolitan and the Ramblers', because of a fear that his connection with the 'Britannia' was generally known; to hear talk on the subject would make him savage. He was grievously perturbed in mind by his position and prospects; and want of exercise had begun to affect his health. As always, he greeted his wife's entrance with a smile, and rose to place a chair for her.
'Thanks, I won't sit down,' said Sibyl. 'You look comfortable.'
'Well?'