She would be sure to come at once. And what of the welcome she would meet? Leaving the station at London at six in the evening, she might arrive at the Priory, all impediments counted, between ten and eleven at night. Thence, coldly greeted, or not greeted, to the chamber of death.
A pitiable and cruel reception for a woman upon such a mission!
His mingled calculations and meditations reached that exclamatory terminus in feeling, and settled on the picture of Diana, about as clear as light to blinking eyes, but enough for him to realize her being there and alone, woefully alone. The supposition of an absolute loneliness was most possible. He had intended to drive back the next day, when the domestic storm would be over, and take the chances of her coming. It seemed now a piece of duty to return at night, a traverse of twenty rough up and down miles from Itchenford to the heath-land rolling on the chalk wave of the Surrey borders, easily done after the remonstrances of his host were stopped.
Dacier sat in an open carriage, facing a slip of bright moon. Poetical impressions, emotions, any stirrings of his mind by the sensational stamp on it, were new to him, and while he swam in them, both lulled and pricked by his novel accessibility to nature's lyrical touch, he asked himself whether, if he were near the throes of death, the thought of having Diana Warwick to sit beside his vacant semblance for an hour at night would be comforting. And why had his uncle specified an hour of the night? It was a sentiment, like the request: curious in a man so little sentimental. Yonder crescent running the shadowy round of the hoop roused comparisons. Would one really wish to have her beside one in death? In lifeah! But suppose her denied to us in life. Then the desire for her companionship appears passingly comprehensible. Enter into the sentiment, you see that the hour of darkness is naturally chosen. And would even a grand old Pagan crave the presence beside his dead body for an hour of the night of a woman he did not esteem? Dacier answered no. The negative was not echoed in his mind. He repeated it, and to the same deadness.
He became aware that he had spoken for himself, and he had a fit of sourness. For who can say he is not a fool before he has been tried by a woman! Dacier's wretched tendency under vexation to conceive grotesque analogies, anti-poetic, not to say cockney similes, which had slightly chilled Diana at Rovio, set him looking at yonder crescent with the hoop, as at the shape of a white cat climbing a wheel. Men of the northern blood will sometimes lend their assent to poetical images, even to those that do not stun the mind lie bludgeons and imperatively, by much repetition, command their assent; and it is for a solid exchange and interest in usury with soft poetical creatures when they are so condescending; but they are seized by the grotesque. In spite of efforts to efface or supplant it, he saw the white cat, nothing else, even to thinking that she had jumped cleverly to catch the wheel. He was a true descendant of practical hard-grained fighting Northerners, of gnarled dwarf imaginations, chivalrous though they were, and heroes to have serviceable and valiant gentlemen for issue. Without at all tracing back to its origin his detestable image of the white cat on the dead circle, he kicked at the links between his uncle and Diana Warwick, whatever they had been; particularly at the present revival of them. Old Lady Dacier's blunt speech, and his father's fixed opinion, hissed in his head.
They were ignorant of his autumnal visit to the Italian Lakes, after the winter's Nile-boat expedition; and also of the degree of his recent intimacy with Mrs. Warwick; or else, as he knew, he would have heard more hissing things. Her patronage of Miss Paynham exposed her to attacks where she was deemed vulnerable; Lady Dacier muttered old saws as to the flocking of birds; he did not accurately understand it, thought it indiscreet, at best. But in regard to his experience, he could tell himself that a woman more guileless of luring never drew breath. On the contrary, candour said it had always been he who had schemed and pressed for the meeting. He was at liberty to do it, not being bound in honour elsewhere. Besides, despite his acknowledgement of her beauty, Mrs. Warwick was not quite his ideal of the perfectly beautiful woman.
Constance Asper came nearer to it. He had the English taste for red and white, and for cold outlines: he secretly admired a statuesque demeanour with a statue's eyes. The national approbation of a reserved haughtiness in woman, a tempered disdain in her slightly lifted small upperlip and drooped eyelids, was shared by him; and Constance Asper, if not exactly aristocratic by birth, stood well for that aristocratic insular type, which seems to promise the husband of it a casket of all the trusty virtues, as well as the security of frigidity in the casket. Such was Dacier's native taste; consequently the attractions of Diana Warwick for him were, he thought, chiefly mental, those of a Lady Egeria. She might or might not be good, in the vulgar sense. She was an agreeable woman, an amusing companion, very suggestive, inciting, animating; and her past history must be left as her own. Did it matter to him? What he saw was bright, a silver crescent on the side of the shadowy ring. Were it a question of marrying her!That was out of the possibilities. He remembered, moreover, having heard from a man, who professed to know, that Mrs. Warwick had started in married life by treating her husband cavalierly to an intolerable degree: 'Such as no Englishman could stand,' the portly old informant thundered, describing it and her in racy vernacular. She might be a devil of a wife. She was a pleasant friend; just the soft bit sweeter than male friends which gave the flavour of sex without the artful seductions. He required them strong to move him.
He looked at last on the green walls of the Priory, scarcely supposing a fair watcher to be within; for the contrasting pale colours of dawn had ceased to quicken the brilliancy of the crescent, and summer daylight drowned it to fainter than a silver coin in water. It lay dispieced like a pulled rag. Eastward, over Surrey, stood the full rose of morning. The Priory clock struck four. When the summons of the bell had gained him admittance, and he heard that Mrs. Warwick had come in the night, he looked back through the doorway at the rosy colour, and congratulated himself to think that her hour of watching was at an end. A sleepy footman was his informant. Women were in my lord's dressing-room, he said. Upstairs, at the death-chamber, Dacier paused. No sound came to him. He hurried to his own room, paced about, and returned. Expecting to see no one but the dead, he turned the handle, and the two circles of a shaded lamp, on ceiling and on table, met his gaze.
CHAPTER XX
DIANA A NIGHT-WATCH IN THE CHAMBER OF DEATH
He stepped into the room, and thrilled to hear the quiet voice beside the bed: 'Who is it?'
Apologies and excuses were on his tongue. The vibration of those grave tones checked them.
'It is you,' she said.
She sat in shadow, her hands joined on her lap. An unopened book was under the lamp.
He spoke in an underbreath: 'I have just come. I was not sure I should find you here. Pardon.'
'There is a chair.'
He murmured thanks and entered into the stillness, observing her.
'You have been watching . . . . You must be tired.'
'No.'
'An hour was asked, only one.'
'I could not leave him.'
'Watchers are at hand to relieve you'
'It is better for him to have me.'
The chord of her voice told him of the gulf she had sunk in during the night. The thought of her endurance became a burden.
He let fall his breath for patience, and tapped the floor with his foot.
He let fall his breath for patience, and tapped the floor with his foot.
He feared to discompose her by speaking. The silence grew more fearful, as the very speech of Death between them.
'You came. I thought it right to let you know instantly. I hoped you would come to-morrow'
'I could not delay.'
'You have been sitting alone here since eleven!'
'I have not found it long.'
'You must want some refreshment . . . tea?'
'I need nothing.'
'It can be made ready in a few minutes.'
'I could not eat or drink.'
He tried to brush away the impression of the tomb in the heavily- curtained chamber by thinking of the summer-morn outside; he spoke of it, the rosy sky, the dewy grass, the piping birds. She listened, as one hearing of a quitted sphere.
Their breathing in common was just heard if either drew a deeper breath. At moments his eyes wandered and shut. Alternately in his mind Death had vaster meanings and doubtfuller; Life cowered under the shadow or outshone it. He glanced from her to the figure in the bed, and she seemed swallowed.
He said: 'It is time for you to have rest. You know your room. I will stay till the servants are up.'
She replied: 'No, let this night with him be mine.'
'I am not intruding . . .?'
'If you wish to remain . . .'
No traces of weeping were on her face. The lampshade revealed it colourless, and lustreless her eyes. She was robed in black. She held her hands clasped.
'You have not suffered?'
'Oh, no.'
She said it without sighing: nor was her speech mournful, only brief.
'You have seen death before?'
'I sat by my father four nights. I was a girl then. I cried till I had no more tears.'
He felt a burning pressure behind his eyeballs.
'Death is natural,' he said.
'It is natural to the aged. When they die honoured . . .'
She looked where the dead man lay. 'To sit beside the young, cut off from their dear opening life . . . !' A little shudder swept over her. 'Oh! that!'
'You were very good to come. We must all thank you for fulfilling his wish.'
'He knew it would be my wish.'
Her hands pressed together.
'He lies peacefully!'
'I have raised the lamp on him, and wondered each time. So changeless he lies. But so like a sleep that will wake. We never see peace but in the features of the dead. Will you look? They are beautiful. They have a heavenly sweetness.'
The desire to look was evidently recurrent with her. Dacier rose.
Their eyes fell together on the dead man, as thoughtfully as Death allows to the creatures of sensation.
'And after?' he said in low tones.
'I trust to my Maker,' she replied. 'Do you see a change since he breathed his last?'
'Not any.'
'You were with him?'
'Not in the room. Two minutes later.'
'Who . . .?'
'My father. His niece, Lady Cathairn.'
'If our lives are lengthened we outlive most of those we would have to close our eyes. He had a dear sister.'