‘Have I your permission to go home, Mr Crampton? I am not well, and this conversation has upset me. It is all too new, too fresh, my dear friend; it will not bear discussion yet. If you can do without me, I should be thankful to try and procure a little rest at home. We have to be early at the office to-morrow.’
‘Go then, Hindes, by all means. I am afraid I am sadly selfish, but it is a relief in such cases to have a friend to unbosom oneself to. God bless you for all you have done for me. I could never have gone through that ceremony to-day if you had not stood by my side. I will go up to my poor wife now, and see what I can do or say to comfort her.’
He grasped Hindes’ hand as he spoke, and the two men separated for the night. Hannah was anxiously expecting her husband’s return. She knew his emotional nature, and how he suffered after any trial to his feelings. She had been suffering through the day very much herself. In Jenny Walcheren, she had lost the female friend whose society she had enjoyed the most, and her sympathy with the bereaved and heart-broken parents was extreme. She wept more for their sakes than for her own, and she knew that her husband felt for them, equally with herself. But, as he entered her presence, she was shocked to see the ravages of grief upon his countenance. It seemed unnatural to her that he should mourn so deeply as this—as if, too, something more than grief mingled with his feelings—if it had not seemed derogatory to his manhood, she would have said he must have become superstitious since Jenny’s death, for he seemed to have grown frightened of shadows, and to glance about him with a startled air, as if he expected to see something that was not there. She was a sweet, placid-tempered woman herself, with a strong sense of religion, who would never have been alarmed at the idea of any supernatural appearances; who did not believe in them in the first place, and, if she had done so, would have said they came of God, and therefore could never harm those who believed and trusted in Him.
She could not, therefore, account for her husband’s altered appearance, unless, indeed, there was something in his constitution which unfitted him for resisting the attacks of sorrow. And she had always been aware that he loved the dead girl equally with herself.
‘My dearest!’ she said, as soon as they were alone, and he had cast himself upon a sofa, ‘you must not give way like this, you must not indeed. You will make yourself ill if you fret so continuously, and you have your work to do, remember.’
‘Do leave me alone,’ he answered sulkily; ‘it’s all very well to preach, but everybody’s not so cold-blooded as yourself.’
‘Cold-blooded! Henry,’ she exclaimed. ‘Oh, don’t say I am that with regard to our darling Jenny. I think I mourn her loss as much as you do. But you frighten me, my dear. You can have no idea how altered you have become in these few days. You are like a wreck of your former self.’
‘It’s enough to make a man a wreck, to pass through such trying scenes as I have been doing. You seem to forget that everything has fallen to my share. From that terrible inquest, to this afternoon’s ceremony, Mr Crampton has depended on me for every mortal detail. You would feel like a wreck if you had done as much.’
‘Yes, yes, dear,’ she answered, soothingly, ‘for without having seen it all, I cannot get it out of my head. I have been trying so hard this afternoon to picture darling Jenny to myself, as she used to be—as I have seen her, a thousand times and more—with her bright, merry face and her saucy smile, driving those cobs of hers at such a rate through the town, without a fear or a care. But I can’t. I can only see that little, mournful, pale face which I looked on in her coffin, with its sunken eyes and closed lips, and—’
‘Damn it all!’ cried Hindes, furiously, as he leapt from the couch, ‘you have the most ingenious faculty of any woman I ever knew for torturing a man. Why on earth can’t you leave these harrowing details alone? What good does it serve to rake them up ad nauseam? Is that the way to make one forget? I cannot stand it any longer, I shall go to bed.’