Chapter Twenty Nine.
Major Mallison, or The Dart of Death.
It was a spring morning, a year from the day when Mary Mallison had left home, and the remaining three members of the family at the Cottage were seated round the breakfast table. The passage of a single year leaves little impression in the appearance of grown men and women, but this instance was the exception to the rule, for an observant eye would have noted in each countenance something that had been missing twelve months before.
The Major had aged, in spirit as well as body. He ate little, but moved his lips continually in nerve-racked fashion, his faded eyes wandered here and there with a pitiful unrest. Mrs Mallison had noted the symptoms and ordered cod-liver oil, and the Major swallowed the doses with resignation, feeling the cure less obnoxious than continuous argument. A large bottle of the oil stood in readiness on a table near the door.
Mrs Mallison was stout and bustling as ever, but had lost her erstwhile complacency. In truth, though the good lady kept up a valiant presence in public, she was little pleased with the way things were going with her two daughters. A year ago both had been on the wave of prosperity, but the wave had floated them into a backwater, rather than to the haven where she would have them be. Mary was still wandering about the Continent, and mentioning no date for her return.
After several months in Switzerland she had crossed the frontier into Italy, had visited Rome and Florence and Venice, and was now domiciled in Paris. She wrote regularly once a fortnight, but her letters were extraordinarily unenlightening. Travellers’ letters are as a rule boring in their minutiae, but Mary never attempted a word of description. She simply gave a list of the things she had seen, with an occasional addition of “it was very beautiful,” which fact, as Mrs Mallison tartly remarked, her readers knew without being told. She sent home no presents as mementoes to the stay-at-homes. As a rich, independent daughter Mary could not be considered a success.
Teresa’s marriage hung fire! Mrs Mallison was a talkative woman, and it was to her credit that even to her husband she had not allowed her growing distrust of Dane Peignton to find vent in words. But day after day she asked herself the same question. Since the man cared enough for Teresa to ask her to be his wife, why did he not show a natural desire to be married? It was no question of means, for the new agency was sufficiently good, and included the use of a delightful house. It could be no question of health, since he had not been laid up a day the whole winter, and if, as was represented, his responsibility was such that he could not spare even a week at Christmas to visit Chumley, all the more reason that he should have a wife to look after his home! Teresa herself appeared to accept the delay as a matter of course, but her mother’s eyes were sharp enough to see through the pretence. The girl was unhappy; the girl was fretting; her persistent cheerfulness was a cloak to cover a wound; when she thought herself unobserved her face fell into weary lines. Yes! Teresa was unhappy, but with a mother’s jealous pride in a daughter’s attractiveness, Mrs Mallison told herself that, thank goodness! it hadn’t spoiled the girl’s good looks. She looked thinner perhaps; a trifle older, but there was something which added to her charm. She did not acknowledge in so many words that a hard face had softened, but told herself reassuringly that Dane would notice the improvement,—when he returned!
Anxiety about her daughters had made Mrs Mallison more than usually unobservant of her husband during the last few months. She cherished one or two axioms concerning him which lived on unchanged from year to year. One was that “Papa was always ailing,” another that “Papa was so tiresome,” a third that in dealing with Papa, it was wisdom to “take no notice.” The cod-liver oil was the only concession she had made to the increasing weakness which she could not ignore.
Breakfast was finished, and half a dozen letters were distributed round the table. Teresa turned over her share with an eager hand, and paled into indifference. It was with an obvious effort that she tore open an envelope, and made a pretence of reading. This morning at least she had made sure of a letter from Dane. It was eight days since she had heard from him last, and up till now he had written regularly once a week. They were not lover-like letters, those chronicles of daily doings, and allusions to the leading events of the day, but such as they were, they made the sum of Teresa’s life. She read each letter many times, yearning to find in it some trace of returning love, and once or twice of late she had believed the search successful. On one occasion her own weekly letter had been delayed, and Dane wrote that he had been uneasy all day fearing that she was ill. Again, writing of the loneliness of a life among strangers, he had afterwards inserted a closely written phrase: “Less lonely after your sweet words!” Teresa read that sentence with a thrill of intensest relief. Throughout the months of separation, she had persistently written to Dane in the same outspoken loving manner as she had done before the fateful visit to Gled Bay. He knew that she loved him, she was trusting to that love as the magnet which should draw him back to her side, and would not allow pride to stand in its way. Nevertheless, receiving those formally written answers, it was inevitable that she should experience moments of smarting doubt. Was she humbling herself to reap only impatience and contempt? And then, after five long months, had come that blessed reassurement.
“Less lonely, after your sweet words!”
Teresa had gone proudly after the receipt of that message, but she was hungry for more. The waiting seemed longer than ever, now that hope revived.
This morning at breakfast Teresa’s thoughts were so busily occupied with her fiancé that she barely realised the meaning of the words on the sheet before her. She was automatically turning to read them once more when her attention was attracted by a movement at the end of the table where her father had his place.
A moment before the Major had opened a long business-like letter which he still clasped in both hands, but he had fallen back in his chair, and his face was blanched and terrible to behold. As Teresa stared in amaze it seemed to her that with every second his body was changing, growing smaller, and more helpless. “Father!” she cried loudly. “Father!” but he had no eyes for her, he was staring across the table into his wife’s face.
“Margaret!” he gasped. “Margaret. It is ruin! I am a murderer, Margaret, a thief—I’ve played with the money that belonged to you, and the children, and it’s gone. We are ruined, Margaret!—it is all gone. What have I done! What have I done!”
Mrs Mallison rose from her seat and hurried round the table. She opened her arms as she went; they were wide open when she reached her husband’s side, and he shrank into them, his head sliding downward on her shoulder with a strange unnatural looseness. “As if he had no neck,” Teresa thought to herself as she looked on, “as if he had no neck!”
“There, my dear, there!” cried the wife tenderly, “don’t get upset! Whatever you’ve done, you meant it for the best. We know you well enough to be sure of that. There, my dear, there! You’ve been good to us for thirty-five years—we’re not going to blame you if you’ve made a mistake now... Teresa! speak to your father... comfort him... Henry, look up!... My God... Henry, speak!”
Her voice rose to a wail, for even as she spoke, even as she cradled him in her arms, the bolt fell,—so suddenly, so swiftly, that one second it was not, and the next it was there. One side of the face crumpled and fell, the eye closed, the mouth stretched in a ghastly grin. His wife seized his right arm, and shook it violently, but it fell to his side, heavy as lead. Within the loose tweed coat the shoulder seemed to disappear.
“Mother, Mother!” cried Teresa wildly, “you were so kind to him. You were so kind... You didn’t blame him one bit.”
They got him to bed and sent for the doctor, but he never regained consciousness. Before the afternoon was over he had breathed his last.
“And now, I suppose,” Mrs Mallison said dully, “Mary will come home.”