Avery

by Elizabeth Stuart Phelps

PART II

At the claim of his voice she responded; smiling, she stirred. He could not help remembering how she had once said, "If I were dead, I should answer you if you called me, Marshall." And for the moment, she had looked—but it was not death.

She opened her large eyes and regarded him—strangely, he thought, for the instant; then with the lambent look which belonged to Jean, and quite steadily. He knelt by her, and drew the blanket up, and buttoned the nightdress at her throat with clumsy fingers.

"I have come back to say"—he began. But he could not say it. "Have you had an ill turn?" he temporized.

"I don't know," said Jean.

"How did you happen to be on the lounge?"

"I don't know," repeated Jean.

"Are you suffering, dear?"

"I fell asleep," said Jean, after some thought.

"Don't you remember when you got out of bed?"

"I have had a wonderful sleep," said Jean. "I never had anything of the kind before. It was like heaven."

"Are you suffering now?"

"No—I think not—no. I feel pretty weak. But I am not suffering."

"Shall I call the doctor?"

"I sha'n't need the doctor. I don't want ... I don't need anybody but you."

She turned and put her hand to his cheek. Her long hair fell away from her face and revealed its expression; he turned his own away at sight of it.

"How early you are dressed!" she said, in a different tone.

"I was going out," he stammered. "I was—going away."

"Oh! Going! Where are you going?"

"I won't, if you don't want me to."

"You did n't say where you were going."

"Well, you see—Romer asked me to take a little trip with him. He thought I looked fagged out. He starts in—Jove! He starts in twenty minutes."

"And you have n't had any breakfast!" said Jean; her divine self-oblivion pushed to the front,—a trained soldier. But her chin trembled in a touching fashion that she had when she was too much grieved to say so, or too weak to admit that she was grieved.

He had risen from his knees and stood beside her, looking down. Her weakness and her loveliness seemed to lift themselves towards him like pleading things which he thrust off. He felt uncomfortable and irresolute. He was conscious of trying not to look annoyed.

"You are going in a boat?" she asked, very faintly now.

"Well—yes—a sort of boat." Avery fumbled fatuously. "It's quite a safe one," he added. "And Romer says"— He began to tell her what Romer said.

"And guns?" she whispered. "There will be guns?"

"Oh, I presume Tom has a gun," replied the husband, with what he felt to be an ingenious veracity. "You know I 'm no shot. I don't like guns much better than you do, dear.... I 'm getting late," he observed abruptly. "But I won't go, Jean, if you don't want me to. I thought it might set me up a little," he added, before she could reply.

In fact, she did not seem to incline to reply, or did not feel able to do so; he could not tell which. She lay looking up at him quite steadily. Molly had taken both the children into the nursery, and the two were alone. A clock ticked on the mantel in a loud, irritating tone. The white silk Spanish shawl which had fallen from the lounge hung to his coat-sleeve; it was a delicate thing, and the fringe clung like tendrils; he had to tear it off roughly.

He bethought him to wrap the shawl about her when he had done this, for she seemed to be cold. As he bent to perform for her this little service—which was offered with an obtrusive tenderness—he stooped and kissed her throat. The soft, sweet flesh quivered at his touch. Jean raised her weak arms and clasped them about his neck. But they fell back instantly, as if the action had hurt her.

"Come, dear," he resumed hurriedly. "Shall I go—or not?"

"I don't feel quite well," faltered Jean. "I think—I slept too long—that heavenly sleep ... last night"—

"I 'll go and tell Romer I can't go," said Avery shortly. He started, and went half across the room, then paused. "Well, Jean?" he suggested. Jean did not reply. She was lying just as he had left her, with her arms fallen at her sides, her bright hair brushed back from her face, which looked strangely prominent and large. There was that in her eyes which a man would not have refused in a dog. The husband returned impetuously to her side.

"Poor Jean! I won't go. Really I won't. I 'll do just as you say—truly I will. Won't you say, Jean? Won't you express a wish?"

But Jean shook her head. The time had come when she had no wish to express; and she seemed not to have the strength to express even the fact that she had none.

"If you think it best ... for you" ... The words were inarticulate.

"I really do," urged Avery uncomfortably. "At least, I did—that is, unless you are actually too ill to spare me.... How is a man to know?" he muttered, not thinking she would hear.

"Good-by," breathed Jean. She did not try to lift her arms this time. He stooped and kissed her affectionately. Her lips clung to his. But her eyes clung longer than her lips. They clasped him until he felt that if he did not throw them off, he could not get away.

Across the room he paused. "I 'll send Thorne," he said. "I 'll send the doctor. I can't go unless I feel quite safe about you. And I 'll call Molly as I go down."

He tried to add something about telegrams, and how short a trip it was, and so on. But Jean's eyes silenced him. Solemn, mute, distant, they looked upon him like the eyes of an alien being moving through the experiences of an unknown world. For a moment their expression appalled him; it was not reproach; it was scarcely to be called anguish; rather a fine and tragic astonishment, for which speech would have been too coarse a medium. But he shut the door, caught Pink, who was crying for her breakfast, kissed the child, and went.

As he stepped out into the street, the morning air struck him a slap in the face. The wind was rising, and it hit him hard in the breast, as if it had the mind to push him back. He forced his way against it, and reached the club out of breath and with suffused face, as if he were blushing. He flung an order at the desk:—

"Telephone for Dr. Thorne. Tell him Mrs. Avery is n't feeling quite as well as usual, and I am unfortunately called away. He 'd better go right over to the house."

He dashed into the dining-room, poured out a cup of coffee, and hurried to the river-wall. The Dream lay off in mid-stream—a white seventy-footer schooner-rigged, with a new suit of sails that presented an almost startling brightness in the early morning light. The tender was already manned, and rowed in impatiently at his signal. He was fifteen minutes late. He said nothing to the crew, assuming the ready lordliness of a poor man who had never owned and would never own a yacht, but apologized rather unnecessarily to Romer when he got aboard, explaining the circumstances with more minuteness than was necessary.

"Why, great Scott, man!" said Romer. "I 'd have waited for you another day—any number of them—if Mrs. Avery lifted an eyelash. Put you ashore now, if you say so."

But Avery shook his head magnanimously. The yacht slipped her mooring and swung slowly into the channel, careened under the strong westerly, and slid away. It was uncommon for pleasure boats of the Dream's class to anchor in the river, but it had been Romer's whim; if he did not value playing le bon prince at the club, he liked to do the uncommon with his yacht; he amused himself and his guest with the laggard process of getting out into the bay, pointing out the picturesqueness gained at the expense of time and trouble, and making himself entertaining—as Romer could—with the vivacity of a sportsman and the ingenuity of an accomplished host. Marshall Avery was not talkative, and replied with effort.

"We 'll have breakfast as soon as we 're through the draw," said Romer. It occurred to Avery that it would be impossible to eat. He sat with his eyes fixed on the housetops of the West End. In the early air and color this decorous section had a misty and gracious effect, half mysterious, wholly uncharacteristic of that architectural commonplace. There was the tower of the Church of the Happy Saints. And three blocks beyond—Molly would be just about bringing up the tray, and setting it on the invalid table beside the blue lounge.

"Somebody 's driving up back of the club," observed Tom Romer. "It's a buggy—looks a little like Thorne's, does n't it? Has those top wings. It's stopped at the river-wall." He handed the marine glass to his guest.

"All those doctors' buggies are alike," replied Avery. "I can't see very well," he added. In fact, the glass shook in his hand.

The yacht slipped through the draw comfortably, and headed to the harbor. The club, the river-wall, the buggy, vanished from the glass. The two gentlemen went below to breakfast. When they came on deck again, the Dream was easily clearing the harbor and making out to sea.

The wind was fair, and the yacht fled under full canvas.

"She walks right along!" cried Romer. He was exhilarated by the speed of his boat, which was, in fact, a racer, and built in all her lines to get over a triangular course in the least possible time. He talked about her safe points to the landsman (who responded with the satisfaction of ignorance), but the final end of the Dream's being was speed, unqualified by inferior considerations. To this American idol, boats, like men, are sacrificed as matters of course. One scarcely makes conversation on so obvious a topic.

To tell the truth, Avery was not especially fond of yachting, and the careening of the Dream under the pleasant westerly did not arouse in him that enthusiasm which, somehow, he had expected to experience on this trip. When the water ran over the rail, he changed his seat to windward. When it rushed over, he held on to something. Tom Romer chaffed him amiably.

"Why, this is only a fair sailing day!" he cried. "Wait till it breezes up."

"Oh, I shall enjoy it if it comes," replied the lawyer. In fact, he was enjoying nothing. His thoughts surged like the water through which the yacht was driving. Their depth was enveloped and disguised in foam. When Romer said proudly, "She's making twelve knots!" his guest reflected, "I 'm so much farther away from her."

The same personal pronoun answered for the sportsman and the husband. Before the Dream was off Plymouth, the little cruise had assumed the proportions of an Atlantic voyage to the landsman's imagination.

By noon he remembered that in his hurry to get off he had made no definite provision with Jean about telegrams from, but only for messages to her. All that was arranged in the note, but he had torn up the note. With that leisurely appreciation of unpleasant facts which is so natural to the sanguine, and so incomprehensible by the anxious temperament, it occurred to him in the course of the afternoon that his wife had seemed much less well than usual when he bade her good-by; in fact, that he had never seen her look precisely as she did that morning. He began to acknowledge distinctly to himself that he wished he knew how she was.

He grew definitely uneasy as the early autumn twilight dulled the color of the water and the horizon of the distant shore. They were well on the Shoals now, for the breeze was stiff, and the yacht ran at a spanking pace. The wind was not going down with the sun, but rose strongly. The landsman began to be a little seasick, which somehow added to his moral discomfort.

"How can I get a telegram off?" he asked abruptly, much in the tone in which he would have called for a district messenger in the court-house.

"Oh, I might tap a cable for you, I suppose," returned his host, with twitching mustache. "Look here," added Romer. "What is it—mal de mer? or nostalgia? Do you want to be put ashore?"

"Not at all," replied Avery, with the pugnacity which men are accustomed to mistake for high ethical obligations to their own sex. "I only want to get a message to my wife. You see, I promised her."

"We 'll run into Wood's Hole in the morning, by all means," said Romer cordially. "It's a great place for ducks, anyhow, off there."

"Oh—ducks?" repeated Avery stupidly. He had forgotten that they came to kill ducks.

"We 're goin' to have a breeze o' wind," observed one of the crew, who was lowering the jib-topsail.

"I'd like to take the dispatch myself, when we get there, if I may," the seasick lawyer hazarded, somewhat timidly. But next morning, when the Dream dropped anchor off Wood's Hole, and the tender was lowered, he was flat in his berth. He could not take the dispatch, and a detail of two from the crew bounced off with it, pounding over the choppy sea. The frail and fashionable tender looked like one of the little Florida shells that are sold by the quart; there was now a considerable sea; the yacht herself was pretty wet. Romer was in excellent spirits.

"We might get a duck or two before breakfast, if it isn't too rough," he suggested. "Sorry you 're laid up."

"Oh—ducks?" repeated Avery again. He wished he could have a chance to forget that he had left his wife too ill to lift her head, and had come wallowing out here to kill ducks.

"I can't remember that a duck ever did me any harm," he said savagely, aloud.

He heard the occasional report of guns over his head with a sense of personal injury. Nobody hit any ducks, and he was glad of it. The Dream cruised about, he did not know where. He had ceased to feel any interest in her movements. He did not even ask where they had anchored for the night. The wind rose steadily throughout the day. As the force of the blow increased, his physical miseries ascended and his moral consciousness declined. His anxiety for his wife blurred away in a befuddled sense of his own condition.

"I don't believe she's any worse off than I am," he thought. This reflection gave him some comfort. He slept again that night the shattered sleep of the seasick and unhappy, and woke with a cry.

A port-hole of gray dawn darkened by green waters was in the stateroom, which seemed to be standing on its experienced and seaworthy head. The yacht was keeling and pitching weakly. Tom Romer stood beside the berth, looking at his guest; he did not smile. It was an uncommon thing to see Tom Romer without a smile. The yachtsman wore oilskins and a sou'wester, and dripped with salt water like a Grand Banker.

"God! Romer, what's the matter?" Avery got to his feet at once. He forgot that he was seasick. His bodily distresses fled before the swift, strong lash of fright.

"The fact is," replied Romer slowly, "we 've struck a confounded gale—a November gale," he added. "It's turned easterly. She 's been dragging her anchor since two. Now"—

"Now what?" demanded Avery sharply. He staggered into his clothes without waiting for an answer.

"Well—we 've snapped our road."

"Road?" The landsman struggled to recall his limited stock of nautical phrases. "That's the rope you tie your anchor to? Oh! What are you going to do?" he asked, with unnatural humility. The fatal helplessness of ignorance overwhelmed him. If he ever lived to get back, he would turn the tables, and conduct Romer through a complicated lawsuit.

"Run into the Sound if I can," returned Romer. "It won't do to get caught on some of these shoals round here."

"Of course not," replied Avery, who did not know a shoal from a siren. "Say, Romer, what's the amount of danger? Out with it!"

"Oh, she's good for it," said the yachtsman lightly. Then his voice and manner changed. His insouciant black eyes peered suddenly at his guest as if from a small, keen, marine lens.

"Say, old fellow," he said slowly, "I hope there was n't any sort of a quarrel,—you know,—any domestic unpleasantness, before you came on this trip? I wish to blank I 'd left you ashore."

"Quarrel? A demon could n't quarrel with my wife!" exploded Avery.

"That was my impression," returned his host. "Beg pardon, Avery. You see—to be honest, I can't say exactly how we 're coming out of this. There are several things which might happen. I thought"—the sportsman stammered, and stopped.

"If you should pull through and I should n't," said Avery, lifting a gray face,—"I 'm not a swimmer, and you are,—tell her I 'd give my immortal soul if I had n't left her. Tell her—I—God! Romer, she was very sick! She did n't want me to go."

"I 've always thought," said the bachelor, "that if I had a wife—a woman like that"— His face hardened perceptibly, dripping under his sou'wester. "You fellows don't know what you 've got," he added abruptly. He scrambled up the companionway without looking back. Avery followed him abjectly.

At this moment the yacht groaned, grated, and keeled suddenly. Water poured over the rail. The deck rang with cries. Avery got up, and held on to something. It proved to be the main-sheet. It ran through his fingers like a saw, and escaped. Confusedly he heard the mate crying:—

"We 've struck, sir! She 's stove in!"

"Well," replied the owner coolly, "get the boats over, then."

He did not look at his guest. Avery looked at the water. It seemed to leap up after him, hike a beast amused with a ghastly play. Oddly, he recalled at that moment coming in one day—it was after she knew what ailed her—and finding Jean with a book face down on her lap. He picked it up and read, "The vision of sudden death." He had laughed at her, and scolded her for filling her mind with such things.

"You don't quite understand, dear," she had answered.

"Come," said Romer, whose remarkable self-possession somehow increased rather than diminished Avery's alarm, "we have n't as much time to spare as I would like. Hold hard there while Mr. Avery gets aboard!"

The tender was prancing like a mustang on a prairie, for there was really a swamping sea. The landsman was clumsy and nervous, missed his footing, and fell.

As he went under he cried, in a piercing voice, "Tell my wife"— When the water drove into his throat and lungs, he thought how he had seen her fight for her breath, patiently, hours at a time. She had told him once that it was like drowning.

It was two days after this that a man who attracted some attention among the passengers got off the Shore train at the old station in the city.

Marshall Avery seemed to himself to see this man as if he saw another person, and felt a curious interest in his appearance and movements. The man was dressed in borrowed clothes that did not fit; his face was haggard and heavily lined; he had no baggage, and showed some excitement of manner, calling several hackmen at once, and berating the one he selected for being too slow. A kind of maniacal hurry possessed him.

"Drive for your life!" he said. He did not lean back in the carriage, but sat up straight, as if he could not spare time to be comfortable. When the hack door slammed Avery saw the man no more, but seemed to crouch and crawl so far within his personality that it was impossible to observe the traveler from the outside.

Avery had never in his life before been in the throat of death, and been spewed out, like a creature unwelcome, unfit to die. The rage of the gale was in his ears yet; the crash of the waves seemed to crush his chest in. Occasionally he wiped his face or throat, as if salt water dashed on it still. He had made up his mind definitely—he would never tell Jean the details. She would not be able to bear them. It might do her a harm. He would simply say that the yacht got caught in a blow, and struck, and that the tender brought him ashore. She would not understand what this meant. Why should she know that he went overboard in the process? Or what a blank of a time they had to fish him out? Or even to bring him to, for that matter? Why tell her how long the tender had tossed about like a chip in that whirlpool? It was unnecessary to explain hell to her. To say, "We snapped an oar; we had to scull in a hurricane," would convey little idea to her. And she would be so distressed that one of the crew was lost. The Dream was sunk. Romer had remained on the Cape to try to recover the body of his mate. He, Marshall Avery, her husband, had been saved alive, and had come back to her. What else concerned, or, indeed, what else could interest her? In ten minutes nothing would interest either of them, except that he had her in his arms again.... Jean! He thrust his face out of the hack window and cried:—

"Drive faster, man! I 'm not going to a funeral."

The driver laid the whip on and put the horse to a gallop. The passenger leaned back on the cushions now for the first time and drew a full breath.

"Jean!" he repeated, "Jean! Jean!"

The tower of the Church of the Happy Saints rose before his straining eyes against the cold November sky. It was clear and sunny after the storm; bleak, though. He shivered a little as he came in sight of the club. A sick distaste for the very building overcame him. A flash of the river where the Dream had anchored glittered between the houses. He turned away his face. He thought:—

"I wonder when she got the telegrams?" The first one must have reached her by noon of the second day out. This last, sent by night delivery from the little Cape village where the shipwrecked party had landed (he had routed out the operator from his bed to do it)—this last telegram ought to have found her by breakfast-time. She would know by now that he was safe. She might have had—well, admit that she must have had some black hours. Possibly the papers—but he had seen no papers. It had been a pity about the telephone. He had searched everywhere for the Blue Bell. He had found one in a grocery, but the tempest had gnawed the long-distance wire through. He would tell her all about it now in six minutes—in five—poor Jean!

No—stop. He would carry her some flowers. It would take but a minute. She thought so much of such little attentions. The driver reined up sharply at the corner florist's; it was Avery's own florist, but the salesman was a stranger, a newcomer. He brought a dozen inferior tea-roses out with an apology.

"Sorry, sir, but they are all we have left. We 've been sending everything to Mr. Avery's."

Avery stared at the man stupidly. Was Jean entertaining? Some ladies' lunch? Then she was much better. Or was she so ill that people were sending flowers, as people do, for lack of any better way of expressing a useless sympathy? He felt his hands and feet turn as cold as the seas of Cape Cod.

"Drive slower," he said. But the fellow did not hear him, and the hack rushed on. At the passenger's door it stopped with a lurch. Avery got out slowly. The house looked much as usual, except that a shade in Jean's bedroom was drawn. It was just the hour when she sometimes tried to sleep after an ill night. The husband trod softly up the long steps. He felt for his latch-key, but remembered that he had never seen it since he went overboard. He turned to ring the bell.

As he did so something touched his hand disagreeably; a gust of November wind twisted it around and around his wrist. Avery threw the thing off with a cry of horror.

He had leaned up heavily against the door, and when Molly opened it suddenly, he well-nigh fell into the house.

"Oh, sir!" said Molly. She had been crying, and looked worn. He stood with his tea-roses in his hand staring at her; he did not speak. He heard the baby crying in the nursery, and Pink's little feet trotting about somewhere. The house was heavy with flowers,—roses, violets, tuberoses,—a sickening mixture of scents. He tried several times to speak, but his dry throat refused.

"What's happened?" he managed to demand at last, fiercely, as if that would help anything.

"The doctor's here. He 'll tell you, sir," said Molly. She did not look him in the eye, but went softly and knocked at the library door. Avery started to go upstairs.

"Oh, Mr. Avery," cried Molly, "don't you do that; don't you, sir!"

Then Dr. Thorne stepped out of the library. "Wait a minute, Avery," he said, in a quiet, matter-of-fact tone, which at once restored Avery's composure. "Just come in here before you go up, will you?"

Marshall Avery obeyed. He stepped into the library. And Dr. Thorne shut the door.

The two men regarded each other for a moment in surcharged silence. The distracted husband stood trembling pitiably. He passed his left hand over his eyes, then pushed it over his right wrist several times, as if he were pushing away an obstruction.

"I don't seem to be quite right in the head, Thorne," he pleaded. "I thought there was—something on the doorbell.... I 've been shipwrecked. I 'm not—just myself.... Why don't you speak to me? Doctor! Doctor!"

"I find it—difficult," replied the experienced physician, with embarrassment. "The case is—unusual. Mrs. Avery"—

"Give me the worst!" cried the tortured man.

"That is impossible," said Esmerald Thorne, in a deep voice. He turned away and went to the window, where he stood looking out into the back yard. Kate was hanging out some sheets and other bedding. Avery noticed this circumstance—he had got up and stood behind the doctor—as people notice the pettiest items in the largest crises of their lives. A small fluttering white thing on the line arrested his attention. It was the silk Spanish shawl which he had given his wife.

He put out his hand—groped, as a seeing man suddenly smitten blind will grope—and, fumbling, found the doctor's arm and clutched it. Then he toppled; his weight came heavily, and the physician caught him before he struck the floor.

He pushed the brandy away from his lips and struggled up. Even at that moment it occurred to him that Esmerald Thorne looked at him with something like aversion.

"When did she die?"

"Yesterday."

"What time?"

"At the ebb of the tide. It was eleven o'clock in the morning."

"Who was with her?"

"The servants."

"Oh, my God, Thorne! Nobody else? Were n't you there?"

"I got there.... I doubt if she knew it.... It was only twenty minutes before the end. Hush! Avery, hush! Don't groan like that, man. Nobody is to blame. If only—you"— Dr. Thorne checked himself, savagely, as he did when he was moved beyond endurance.

"Oh, I take it all!" cried Avery. He stooped as if he bent his broad shoulders to receive some mighty burden. "I shall carry it all ... forever. Men have gone mad," he added, more calmly, "for much less than I have got to face."

"If you find yourself strong enough," said the physician, "I shall try to put you in possession of the facts." Again, as before, Avery thought he noticed an expression of aversion on the countenance of his old friend. Cowering, he bowed before it. It was part of his punishment; and he had already begun to feel that nothing but a consciousness of punishment could give him any comfort now.

"Will you go up and see her first?" asked Dr. Thorne, as if to gain time. "She looks very lovely," he added, with quivering lip.

But the room rang to such a cry as the man of mercy—used to human emergency, and old before his time in the assuagement of human anguish—had never heard.

It softened Dr. Thorne a little, and he tried to be more gentle. He did not succeed altogether. Iron and fire were in the doctor's nature, and the metal did not melt for Marshall Avery.

He began quietly, with a marked reserve. Mrs. Avery, he said, had been very ill on the morning that her husband started. He had hurried to the house, as requested; her condition was so alarming that, after doing what he could to relieve her, he had driven rapidly to the river-wall back of the club, hoping to signal the yacht before it was out of reach; he had even dispatched some one in a row-boat, and some one else on a bicycle, hoping to overtake the Dream at the draw. The patient must have been low enough all night; and being subject to such attacks—

"I had warned you," said the physician coldly. "I explained to you the true nature of her condition. I have done my best for a year to prevent just this catastrophe.... No. I don't mean to be a brute. I don't want to dwell on that view of it. You don't need my reproaches. Of course you know how she took that trip of yours. When the storm came up, she—well, she suffered," said the doctor grimly. "And the wreck got into the papers. We did our best to keep them from her. But you know she was a reading woman. And then her anxiety.... And you hadn't given us any address to telegraph to. When she began to sink, we could not notify you. I should have sent a tug after you if it had n't been for the gale— What do you take me for? Of course I provided a nurse. And my wife would have been here, but she was out of town. She only returned last night. Helen did n't get here in time, either. It was most unfortunate. I sent the best woman I could command. My regular staff were all on duty somewhere. That was the infernal part of it. I had to take this stranger. I gave her every order. But Mrs. Avery seemed to rally that morning. She deceived us all. She deceived me; I admit it. The woman must needs take her two hours off just then—and Mrs. Avery got hold of the paper. That's the worst of it. She read the account of the wreck all through. You see, the reporters gave the party up. She was unconscious when I got here. Once she seemed to know me. But I cannot honestly say that I believe she did. I don't think I have anything more to say. Not just now, anyhow." Esmerald Thorne turned away and looked out of the window again, tapping on the sill with his fingers—scornfully one might have said.

"We made the best arrangements we could. Some relatives telegraphed. And the interment"—

"Oh, have some mercy, Thorne! I have borne all I can—from you." ...

"Esmerald?" As if a spirit had stirred it, the library door opened inwards slowly. A womanly voice embodied in a fair and stately presence melted into the room.

"Oh, my dear! my dear!" said Helen Thorne. "Leave him to me."

As the stricken man lifted his face from the lash of his fellow-man, the woman put out her hands and gathered his, as if he had been a broken child.

"Oh," she said, "don't take it so! Don't think of it that way. It would break Jean's heart.... She loved you so! ... And she knew you did n't know how sick she was. Any wife would know that—if her husband loved her, and if she loved him. And you did love her. And she knew you did. She used to tell me how sure she was of your true love—and how precious it was to her, and how much she ... cared for you."

Helen's voice faltered on these last three words; she pronounced them with infinite tenderness; it was the pathos of woman pleading for womanhood, or love defending love.

"And she would n't want you to be tortured so—now. Oh, she would be the first of us all to forgive you for any mistake you made, or any wrong you did. She would understand just how it all came about, better than any of us can—better than you do yourself. Jean always understood. She wanted nothing, nothing in this world, but for you to be happy. She was so grieved because she was sick, and could not go about with you, and make it as cheerful for you at home as she used to do. She used to tell me—oh, she used to tell me so many things about how she felt, and every feeling she ever had was purer and tenderer and truer than the feeling of any other woman that I ever knew! She was the noblest woman—the loveliest, ... and she loved you.... Why, she could n't bear it—she could n't bear it, dead up there as she is, if we let you suffer like this, and did not try ... if I did not try to comfort you."

Helen's own tears broke her choking words. But the heart-break of the man's sobs came now at last; and they had such a sound that the doctor covered his eyes, and stood with bowed head, as if he had been the culprit, not the judge, before the awful courts of human error, remorse, and love, in which no man may doom his fellow, since God's verdict awaits.

"Come, Mr. Avery," said Helen. She stooped and picked up the tea-roses, which had fallen and were scattered on the floor, put them into his cold hand—and then drew away. "She 'd rather you would go up alone," said Helen Thorne.

He passed out through the open door. His two friends fell back. The children could be heard in the dining-room: Molly was trying to keep them quiet there. It seemed to him as if he waded through hot-house flowers, the air was so thick with their repugnant scent. He crawled upstairs, steadying himself by the banister. The hall below looked small and dark, like a pit. His head swam, and it occurred to him that if he fell he would fall to a great depth. He clung to the wretched tea-roses that he had brought her. He remembered that this was the last thing he could ever do for her.

Outside the door of her room he stopped. His lips stirred. He found himself repeating the old, commonplace words wrung from the despair of mourners since grief was young in the story of the world:—

"It is all over. This is the end."

"No," said a distinct voice near him, "it is not the end."

Starting, he stared about him. The hall was quite empty, above and below. The nursery door was closed. The children and Molly could be heard in the dining-room. No person was within the radius of speech with him. The door of Jean's chamber was shut.

The roses shook in his hand.