“Swear to me that you will be here when I return,” he said.
“Yes, I shall be here.”
His eyes contracted at some hint of irony in her voice, and his grip on her hands intensified.
“If I thought that you would make way with yourself, I should not leave you. Unless you swear that you will do nothing so foolish and so cruel, I shall not return to England, and in that case I may have my wife’s death on my head.”
She returned his intense gaze for a moment, then, wrenching her hands away, pushed him from her violently. “Do not worry!” she cried harshly. “If I kill myself, I’ll take you with me. I am not Isolde for nothing. But now, for God’s sake, go! I want to be alone.”
LVIII
THE FOOLISH FATES
If Ordham could be very hard, he could also be very soft. When he received a telegram at Flushing stating that Mabel was still alive, but that her condition was hopeless, he was moved deeply, the more so, perhaps, because his sympathies had been so profoundly stirred a few hours before. At the same time he wished to heaven he were on the other side of the world. When he reached London, he went hastily to the sick room, fearing that if he stopped to think his courage might desert him, for it was his first personal encounter with death. There was a strange moaning sound from the bed, such as he had heard animals utter in their last extremity, and he stumbled over a pail of ice. The darkened room seemed to him full of people and in an indescribable confusion, but he had barely caught a glimpse of Mrs. Cutting, dishevelled, haggard, when everybody seemed to disappear simultaneously, leaving him and the dying creature in the bed alone.
He made his way across the big room and saw Mabel, who looked like waxwork with enormous glass eyes. He shuddered, but bent over and would have kissed her had she not pushed him feebly away. He sat down, and his nervousness, even his horror, fled. He looked at the shrunken pallid remnant of the beautiful girl he had married and was filled with an immense pity, which induced one of those rare moments in life, like tiny islands, that have no space for self. He was also awed, as one must ever be in the presence of death, but those little green isles in the ocean of egoism have their atmosphere of unreality; and he felt throughout this interview, which he has never tried to forget, like a man who dreams yet believes himself to be awake.
Mabel spoke in a small distant voice. “I am dying and you have killed me.”
“I am afraid I have.”