XIX
Emily awoke shivering; the fire had gone out, the room was in darkness, and the house seemed strange and lonely. She rang the bell, and asked the servant if he had seen Mr. Price. Mr. Price had gone out late in the afternoon, and had not come in. Where was Mrs. Bentley? Mrs. Bentley had gone out earlier in the afternoon, and had not come in.
She suspected the truth at once. They had gone to London to be married. The servant lighted a candle, made up the fire, and asked if she would wait dinner. Emily made no answer, but sat still, her eyes fixed, looking into space. The man lingered at the door. At that moment her little dog bounded into the room, and, in a paroxysm of delight, jumped on his mistress's lap. She took him in her arms and kissed him, and this somewhat reassured the alarmed servant, who then thought it was no more than one of Miss Emily's queer ways. Dandy licked his mistress's face, and rubbed his rough head against her shoulder. He seemed more than usually affectionate that evening. Suddenly she caught him up in her arms, and kissed him passionately. 'Not even for your sake, dearest Dandy, can I bear with it any longer! We are all very selfish, and it is selfish of me to leave you, but I cannot help it.' Then a doubt crossed her mind, and she raised her head and listened to it. It seemed difficult to believe that he had told her a falsehood—cruel, wicked falsehood—he who had been so kind. And yet—— Ah! yes, she knew well enough that it was all true; something told her so. The lancinating pain of doubt passed away, and she remained thinking of the impossibility of bearing any longer with the life.
An hour passed, and the servant came with the news that Mr. Price and Mrs. Bentley had gone to London; they had taken the half-past five train. 'Yes,' she said, 'I know they have.' Her voice was calm. There was a strange hollow ring in it, and the servant wondered. A few minutes after, dinner was announced; and to escape observation and comment she went into the dining-room, tasted the soup, and took a slice of mutton on her plate. She could not eat it. She gave it to Dandy. It was the last time she should feed him. How hungry he was! She hoped he would not care to eat it; he would not if he knew she was going to leave him.
In the drawing-room he insisted on being nursed; and alone, amid the faded furniture, watched over by the old portraits, her pale face fixed and her pale hands clasping her beloved dog, she sat thinking, brooding over the unhappiness, the incurable unhappiness, of her little life. She was absorbed in self, and did not rail against Hubert, or even Julia. Their personalities had somehow dropped out of her mind, and merely represented forces against which she found herself unable any longer to contend. Nor was she surprised at what had happened. There had always been in her some prescience of her fate. She and unhappiness had always seemed so inseparable, that she had never found it difficult to believe that this last misfortune would befall her. She had thought it over, and had decided that it would be unendurable to live any longer, and had borne many a terrible insomnia so that she might collect sufficient chloral to take her out of her misery; and now, as she sat thinking, she remembered that she had never, never been happy. Oh! the miserable evenings she used to spend, when a child, between her father and mother, who could not agree—why, she never understood. But she used to have to listen to her mother addressing insulting speeches to her father in a calm, even voice that nothing could alter; and, though both were dead and years divided her from that time, the memory survived, and she could see it all again—that room, the very paper on the wall, and her father being gradually worked up into a frenzy.
When she was left an orphan, Mr. Burnett had adopted her, and she remembered the joy of coming to Ashwood. She had thought to find happiness there; but there, as at home, fate had gone against her, and she was hardly eighteen when Mr. Burnett had asked her to marry him. She had loved that old man, but he had not loved her; for when she had refused to marry him he had broken all his promises and left her penniless, careless of what might become of her. Then she had given her whole heart to Julia, and Julia, too, had deceived her. And had she not loved Hubert?—no one would ever know how much; she did not know herself,—and had he not lied to her? Oh, it was very cruel to deceive a poor little girl in this heartless way! There was no heart in the world, that was it—and she was all heart; and her heart had been trampled on ever since she could remember. And when they came back they would revenge themselves upon her—insult her with their happiness; perhaps insist on sending her away.
Dandy drowsed on her lap. The servant brought in the tea, and when he returned to the kitchen he said he had never seen any one look so ghost-like as Miss Emily. The clock ticked loudly in the silence of the old room, the hands moving slowly towards ten. She waited for the hour to strike; it was then that she usually went to bed. Her thoughts moved as in a nightmare; and paramount in this chaotic mass of sensation was an acute sense of the deception that had been practised on her; with the consciousness, now firm and unalterable, that it had become impossible for her to live. When the clock struck she got up from her chair, and the movement seemed to react on her brain; her thoughts unclouded, and she went up-stairs thinking clearly of her love of this old house. The old gentleman in the red coat, his hand on his sword, looked on her benignly; and the lady playing the spinet smiled as sweetly as was her wont. Emily held up the candle to the picture of the windmill. She had always loved that picture, and the sad thought came that she should never see it again. Dandy, who had galloped up-stairs, stood looking through the banisters, wagging his tail.
The moment she got into her room she wrote the following note: 'I have taken an overdose of chloral. My life was too miserable to be borne any longer. I forgive those who have caused my unhappiness, and I hope they will forgive me any unhappiness I have caused them.' They were nothing to her now; they were beyond her hate, and the only pang she felt was parting with her beloved Dandy. There he stood looking at her, standing on the edge of the bed, waiting for her to cover him up and put him to sleep in his own corner. 'Yes, Dandy, in a moment, dear—have patience.' She looked round the little room, and, remembering all that she had suffered there, thought that the walls must be saturated with grief, like a sponge.
It was a common thing at that time for her to stand before the glass and address such words as these to herself: 'My poor girl, how I pity you, how I pity you!' And now, looking at herself very sadly, she said, 'My poor girl, I shall never pity you any more!' Having hung up her dress, she fetched a chair and took various doses of chloral out of the hollow top of her wardrobe, where she had hidden things all her life—sweets, novels, fireworks. They more than half-filled the tumbler; and, looking at the sticky, white liquid, she thought with repugnance of drinking so much of it. But, wanting to make quite sure of death, she resolved to take it all, and she undressed quickly. She was very cold when she got into bed. Then a thought struck her, and she got out of bed to add a postscript to her letter. 'I have only one request to make. I hope Dandy will always be taken care of.' Surprised that she had not wrapped him up and told him he was to go to sleep, the dog stood on the edge of the bed, watching her so earnestly that she wondered if he knew what she was going to do. 'No, you don't know, dear—do you? If you did, you wouldn't let me do it; you'd bark the house down, I know you would, my own darling.' Clasping him to her breast, she smothered him with kisses, then put him away in his corner, covering him over for the night.