XXX
PARTED OUR FELLOWSHIP
Othello, ii. 1.
Berenice had abundant leisure to reflect upon her attitude toward her lovers, for Mrs. Frostwinch was soon so seriously ill that it was evident to all that the end was at hand. Berenice devoted herself to the invalid, although there was little that she could do. The sick woman did not suffer; she seemed merely to be fading out of life; to have lost her hold upon something which was slipping from her loosened grasp.
"The fact is, Bee," Mrs. Frostwinch said one day, "that the doctors say I'm dead. I'm beginning to believe it myself, and when I'm fully convinced, I suppose that that'll be the end."
"Oh, don't joke about it, Cousin Anna," cried Bee. "It is too dreadful."
"It won't make it any less dreadful to be solemn over it," the other answered. "However, death should be spoken of with respect; even one's own."
Berenice longed to know what had taken place between her cousin and Mrs. Crapps, but she hardly liked to ask. That there had been a disagreement of some kind, and that Mrs. Frostwinch had lost faith in the woman, she knew; but beyond this she was in the dark. One afternoon, however, her cousin explained matters.
"It is so humiliating, Bee, that I can hardly bear to think of it, the way things turned out. My conscience will be easier, though, if I tell you the whole of it. It is so vulgar that it makes me creep. We were at Jekyll's Island, and she had an ulcerated tooth."
"I thought she couldn't have such things?"
"She thought or pretended that she couldn't. I must say that she fought against it with tremendous pluck; but the face kept swelling, and the pain got to be more than she could bear. When she gave out she went to pieces completely. She literally rolled on the floor and howled. I couldn't go on believing in her after that. She'd actually made herself ridiculous."
"But," began Berenice, "I should think"—
"If it had been something dangerous, so that I had had to think of her life," went on her cousin, not heeding, "I could have borne it; but that common thing! Why, her face looked like a drunken cook's! I can't tell you the humiliation of it!"
"But if she could help you, why not herself?"
Mrs. Frostwinch smiled wanly.
"I've tried to think that out," answered she. "It was always said of the old witches, you know, that they couldn't help themselves. It is faith in somebody else that is behind the wonders they do. I've grown very wise in the last few weeks, Bee. I don't pretend that I understand all the facts, but I do know pretty well what the facts are. I believed in Mrs. Crapps, and that belief kept me up. When I couldn't believe in her, that was the end of it."
There seemed to Berenice something uncanny and monstrous in this calm acquiescence. She could not comprehend how her cousin could give up the struggle for life in this fashion, after having succeeded so long in holding death at bay.
"But surely," she protested, "you can't be willing to let everything depend upon her. You've proved the possibility"—
"I've proved the possibility of depending upon somebody else; that's all."
"Then find another woman that you can believe in."
"It is too late. I can't have the faith over again. I should always be expecting another humiliating downfall of my prophetess."
She was silent a moment, and then continued:—
"Do you know, Bee, it seems to me after all that my experience is like almost all religion. There are a few men and women who believe in themselves in that self-poised way that makes it possible for them to get on with just ethics; and there are those who can take hold of unseen things; but for the rest of us it's necessary to have some human being to lean on. I hope I don't shock you. I lie awake in the night a good deal, and my mind seems clearer than it used to be. All the religions seem to have a real, tangible human centre, a personality that human beings can appreciate and believe in. Mrs. Crapps was so real and so near at hand that I could have faith in her; now that that is gone there isn't anything left for me. I can't believe in her, and she has destroyed the Possibility of my believing in anybody else."
Berenice put out her hand in the growing dusk, caressing the thin fingers of the sick woman.
"But—but," she hesitated, "she hasn't destroyed your faith in—in everything, has she?"
"No, dear; she hasn't touched my belief in God; but it makes me ashamed to see how different a thing it is to believe in what we see and touch, from having a genuine faith in what we do not see. I have a faith in my soul still; the other was only a faith of the body. Perhaps it had only to do with the body, and it is not so bad to have lost it."
"Oh, Cousin Anna," Berenice murmured, tears choking her voice, "I can't bear to see you getting farther and farther off every day, and to feel so helpless."
"There, there, Bee," responded the other with tender cheerfulness, "you are not to agitate yourself or to excite me. I've lived half a year more now than the doctors allowed me, and I've enjoyed it too. Besides, think of the blessedness of not having any pain. Do you know, the night after Mrs. Crapps had that scene in the hotel, I was in a panic of terror lest my old agony should come back; but it didn't. Then I said to myself: 'Of course I couldn't suffer; I'm really dead!' You can't think what a comfort it was."
"Oh, don't, don't!" cried Bee. "I can't bear to have you talk like that."
"Well, then, we won't. There's something else I want to speak to you about while I am strong enough. Do you realize that when I am gone you'll be a rich woman?"
"I haven't thought about it. I've hated to think."
"Yes, dear, I understand; but when you are older you'll come to realize that half of the duty of life is to think of things which one would rather forget."
"But it could do no good to think of this."
"Perhaps not; but I want to ask you something. I know you'll forgive me. It's about Parker Stanford."
"You may ask me anything you like, of course, Cousin Anna. As for Parker Stanford, he's nothing more than the rest of the men I know, only he's been more polite. We are very good friends."
"No more?"
"No more; and we never shall be."
"But he surely wished to be?" The day had darkened until the room was lighted only by the flames of the soft coal fire which sputtered in the grate. The cousins could hardly see each other's faces; but in the dim light Berenice turned frankly toward Mrs. Frostwinch.
"That is all over now," responded she. "Of course to anybody else I shouldn't own that there ever was anything; but whatever there may have been is ended. He understands that perfectly."
For some minutes Berenice sat smoothing the invalid's hand, the firelight glancing on her face and hair.
"How pretty you are, Bee," Mrs. Frostwinch said at length. Then without pause she added: "Is there anybody else?"
Bee sank backward into the shadow with a quick, instinctive movement, dropping the hand she held.
"Who should there be?" she returned.
Her cousin laughed softly.
"You are as transparent as glass," she said. "Come, who is it?"
Berenice hesitated an instant, then threw herself forward, bending over the hand of her companion until her face was hidden.
"There isn't really anybody; and besides I've insulted him so that he never could help hating me. No, there isn't anybody, Cousin Anna; and there never will be. I know I should despise him if he wasn't angry; and besides," she added with the air of suddenly recollecting herself, "I hate him for what he said."
"That is evident," the other assented smilingly. "I could see at once that you hated him. But who is it?"
"Why, there isn't anybody, I tell you. Of course I thought about him after he saved my life, but"—
"Oh," interrupted Mrs. Frostwinch. "Then it is Mr. Wynne. But I thought"—
"He isn't a priest any more," Berenice struck in, replying to the unspoken doubt as if it had been in her own mind. "I heard yesterday that he has left the Clergy House for good, and is staying with Mrs. Staggchase."
"Have you seen him lately?"
"He overtook me on the street yesterday."
Mrs. Frostwinch put out her hand with a loving gesture.
"Bee," said she tenderly, "I want you to be happy. You've been like a daughter to me ever since your mother died, and I've thought of you almost as if you were my own child. If this is the man to make you happy"—
But Bee stooped forward and stopped the words with kisses.
"I can't talk of him," she said, "and he will never be anything to me.
He is angry, and he has a right to be. He"—
The entrance of the nurse interrupted them, and Berenice made haste to get away before there was opportunity for further question. In her anxiety to know something more of Mr. Wynne, Mrs. Frostwinch sent for Mrs. Staggchase, who came in the next day.
Mrs. Staggchase found her friend weak and frightfully changed. The high-bred face was haggard, the nostrils thin, while beneath the eyes were heavy purple shadows. A ghost of the old smile lighted her face, making it more ghastly yet, like the gleaming of a candle through a death-mask. The hand extended to the visitor was so transparent that it might almost have belonged to a spirit.
"My dear Anna," Mrs. Staggchase exclaimed, "I hadn't an idea"—
"That I was so near dying, my dear," interrupted the other. "I am worse than that, I am dead, really; but it doesn't matter. I want to talk to you about Bee."
"About Bee?" echoed the other, seating herself beside the bed. "What about her?"
"I should have said that I want to ask you about Mr. Wynne. Do you know anything about his relations to her?"
"The only relation that he has is that of a perfectly desperate adorer. He worships the ground she walks on, but he doesn't cherish anything that could be decently called hope."
"Then he does care for her?"
"My dear Anna, it almost makes me weep for my lost youth to see him. He has so wrought upon my glands of sentiment that this morning I actually examined my husband's wardrobe to see if the maid darns his stockings properly. Fred would be perfectly amazed if he knew how sentimental I feel. I even thought of sitting up last night to welcome him home from the club, but about half past one I came to the end of my novel and felt sleepy, so I gave that up."
Mrs. Frostwinch smiled with the air of one who understands that the visitor is endeavoring to furnish a diversion from the dull sadness of the sick chamber.
"But Bee said he was angry with her."
"The anger of lovers, my dear, is legitimate fuel for the flame. That's nothing. She's been amusing herself with him, and if she thinks he resents it, so much the better for him."
"But is he"—
She hesitated as if not knowing how best to frame her question.
"He is a handsome creature, as you know if you remember him," the visitor said, taking up the word. "He is well born, he is well bred, if a little countrified. He's been shut up with monks and other mouldy things, and needs a little knocking about in the world; but I am very fond of him."
"Then you think"—
"I think that whoever gets Bee will get a treasure; but I am not sure that she is any too good for my cousin. He hasn't much money, unless he gets a little fortune that ought to have been his, and which he has some hope of. I mean to give him something myself one of these days, if he behaves himself; but of course he hasn't any idea of that."
"Bee will have all the Canton money, and can do as she likes."
Mrs. Staggchase looked down at the carpet as if studying the pattern.
"Perhaps," she returned.
"What do you mean by that?"
"If I know Maurice Wynne, the fact that she has money will make him very slow to speak. Besides, he has a silly crotchet in his head now. He thinks that if he tried to marry her it would look as if he had given up his religion for her."
"Did he?"
"Bless you, no. He was simply led into the Clergy House by being fond of a friend; one of those men that young men and old women fall in love with. Maurice never belonged there at all. I saw that the first day he came to stay with me at the beginning of the winter. I was abroad while he was in college, so I never knew him except most casually before."
"But if he really cares for her he'll get over those obstacles."
"If she cares for him, he must be made to."
"I am convinced that she does," Mrs. Frostwinch said. "I am so glad you speak well of him. I do so want Bee to be happy."
There was a long silence in the chamber. The two friends sat wrapped in thought. They had seen so much of life, they had had so many blessings of fortune, culture, position, wealth, that there was a grim irony in their sitting here helpless in the face of coming death. To their reverie, moreover, the mention of love could not but give color. No woman has ever come to speak of love entirely unmoved, though her heart may have been deadened or crushed beyond the power of thrilling or quickening at any other thought. These two, who had led lives so happy, so protected, so rich, sat there silent before the possibilities which lay in the love of a girl; until at last both sighed, whether with regret or tenderness perhaps they could not themselves have told. Perhaps both remembered their youthful days; remembered how one had lost her first love by death and the other parted from hers in anger, making a marriage which seemed more a matter of affronting the man discarded than of affection for the man she chose. They knew each other's history so completely that there could be no disguise between them. Their eyes met, and for an instant there was a suspicion of wistfulness in the glance. Then Mrs. Frostwinch shook her head, and smiled sadly.
"At least," she said, "I shall be spared the pain of growing old."
"After all," the other responded, "the bitterness of growing old is to feel that one has never completely been young."
The sick woman regarded her with burning eyes.
"But we have been young, Di," she said eagerly. "Surely we had all that there was."
"Anna," Mrs. Staggchase murmured, leaning toward her, "we know each other too well not to say things that most women are afraid to say. We both married well, and we have cared for our husbands and been happy. But we both know that there was deep down a memory"—
"No, no, Di," her friend interrupted excitedly, "you shall not make me think of that! I have forgotten all that; and I am dying comfortably. You shall not make me think of him! Only, dear Di, I want you to help Bee to marry the man she loves with her whole heart; that she loves as we might have loved if"—
Mrs. Staggchase kissed her solemnly.
"I promise, Anna."
Then she rose, her whole manner changing.
"Do you know, my dear," she observed, in a tone gayly satirical, "that I believe that Elsie Wilson is going to be beaten in her bishop steeplechase?"
"Do you mean that Father Frontford won't be elected?"
"I mean just that. However, things are still uncertain. It will be amusing to see what Elsie will do if she is defeated. She is capable of setting up a church of her own."
"There are two or three men with whom I have some influence that will go over to Mr. Strathmore if I am not here to look after them. I must write to them to-morrow and get them to promise to hold by our side."
But that night Mrs. Frostwinch died quietly in her sleep, and the letters were not written.