THE WIDOW
Chapter Six: The Widow
Jemmie Alison had been buried a fortnight. The rays of the fallow November sun lighted the table in the window of his old study at which his widow was seated engaged upon the task of sorting out his papers. Mary's hands frilled with snowy organdie were now the hands of her grandmother when she was fifty, fifty years ago. Otherwise she did not resemble Lady Flower, being of a fairer complexion with roses still fresh upon her cheeks and rich brown hair on which the gossamer spun by age was less conspicuous than the first rime upon October leaves. She had paused for a moment from her task and was staring out at the drooping chrysanthemums that gave to the garden of Woodworth Lodge such an aspect of mournfulness and decay. Why did not Markham take them up? There was nothing so melancholy as flowers which had outstayed their season. Winter was at hand. Of what use was it to try to prolong the illusion of summer? Winter was not to be cajoled by such pretenses. Besides, chrysanthemums were at best funereal blossoms. How high they had been heaped a fortnight ago, wreath upon wreath, on Jemmie's coffin.... She turned back to her task of sorting out the papers; but a minute or two later she stopped to reproach herself, as she had reproached herself many times daily since her husband's death with having failed to be as deeply moved by it as she ought. No doubt the protracted illness, when he lingered month by month after the doctors had declared that he could not survive another week, was partly responsible for the absence of emotion. She had been preparing so long for the death that, when at last he did die, she discovered that there was no emotion which she had not already exhausted. Yes, although while he lay dying all those weeks she had fought against a monstrous and wicked hope that the agony would not be too long protracted, at the end her only definite feeling had been one of relief. Poor old Jemmie, he had been so good throughout those weary weeks. The nurses had assured her that they had never known such a patient. It was strange that a man who throughout his life had allowed himself to be disconcerted by the smallest interference with his minor comforts should be able to endure without a murmur months of fierce pain. There must have been something fundamentally noble about Jemmie, some bedrock of character impervious alike to violent passions and the fretful whims of ordinary existence. Impervious at any rate to the latter. It was verging on the ludicrous to associate violent passions with Jemmie, for surely no man ever lived less subject to the stress of the unattainable. Not that his exemption should detract at all from her admiration of his suffering. On the contrary she should yield him a greater respect, because he could never have been tested in the whole of his life as he was tested every hour of that last illness. But herself? Had that endlessly drawn out vigil revealed in herself any fundamental nobility of character? Outwardly she had been all devotion. She had accepted the flattery of the nurses, the laudation of her friends, the pathetic gratitude of her husband for the care she lavished, the zeal with which she waited on him, the affection never in all their married life so freely given as when he lay dying. Yet always at the back of her mind had lurked the question when it would be over, the desire to be quit of her obligation, the longing to be herself for the remainder of her life. Or was she doing herself an injustice in thinking that? Was it not really the nervous strain of expecting the inevitable for so long which made her sigh for that consummation to achieve itself? It was foolish to exaggerate one's deficiencies. It savored of a morbid self-interest. These inward contests in which women permitted themselves to indulge, especially in books, were nothing more than a subtle form of self-flattery. They were another aspect of the schoolgirl's habit of talking a situation to death. The female mind could never resist the remnants of a conversation a whit more easily than it could resist a July sale.
Mary compelled herself to concentrate upon the task she had taken in hand, and for a while she was able to keep her thoughts fixed upon her husband's papers. How neatly he had kept his receipted bills until January of this year. Here was a thin sheaf for 1910, the record of the last month he spent walking about before he took to his bed. There had been plenty of bills all through this year for doctors and nurses and medicine, and at last for the funeral. But it was she who had kept them, so they were lying about anyhow. How vexed Jemmie would have been with her if he had known that she had already mislaid the undertaker's receipt.
"I wish you would try to be more business-like."
She could hear his voice so plainly that she looked round the room, and noted with a pang of regret that this pallid sunshine was not so weak but that it lighted up the dust upon his empty pipes. Was it conceivable that Jemmie was regarding her at this moment from another sphere? Was there really anything in spiritualism? She had wished to experiment with it after Richard was killed; but Jemmie had been so contemptuous of the idea and so profoundly convinced of the fraud it was, that she had lacked the courage for a real investigation. There was no Jemmie now to deter her. She must have a talk with Mrs. Hippisle who so firmly believed in the possibility of communicating with the dead ... yes, it would make such a difference if one could only be sure.
1909? Nothing but bills in that file. It would be prudent to keep them. Not that it was likely one of Jemmie's tradesmen would be dishonest. He had always patronized the oldest and most respectable firms in London. Still, there might be a clerical mistake. Better to keep 1909. 1908? She turned the leaves of that file. To one Angora coat ... to cuffs for same ... to one large bottle of Crinum ... to one large bottle of Doctor Gunter's Hair Tonic ... to one large bottle ... Jemmie had never ceased to abuse hair-restorers, but in his sixty-third year he was still the victim of their audacious promises.
If she did decide to take up spiritualism, she should not be so gullible as that. Why, Jemmie had begun to lose his hair before he was married! 1907, 1906, 1905, 1904. All receipted bills. 1904? A letter in Geoffrey's handwriting. That was queer.