“That is all I have left—that you should know that. Had I been happy I might have pulled through, although I had a horrible time, a horrible time! But my brain, all my blood, was on fire. I don’t know—the doctor will explain—but I do know that my only chance was mental peace, and I was like a mad creature from the moment I learned you had gone to that woman. O God! I am only nineteen. What was I born for?”
She paused a moment and he stared at her with blanched face and mouth slightly open. His expression was almost vacant, his remarkably receptive faculty exercising itself unconsciously. To Mabel he looked as young as when she had first known him, and her expression softened, but only for a moment. Her face set again, and she went on:
“I don’t mind dying so much, for I am so tired I don’t care, and there is nothing left to live for. Even the baby deserted me. But I have lost—lost! And I was so sure I should win! Why should I not have been confident? I had had everything—always—it is so strange that I should be ground to powder! I feel as if the huge wheels of one of those old Roman chariots—conquerors’ chariots!—had crushed me. I was a real little queen, and now I am nothing! nothing! And only nineteen! Why was I born?”
She raised herself on her hands; her immense hollow eyes, which had wandered during her last words, focussed, were piercing for the first time, probably, since they had met the light. “I think I should not mind even that—anything—” she was whispering, her voice almost dead—“if I could only have understood you. But to have been your wife, to have loved you so, and to die knowing that not for one minute, not for one second—and even death gives me no insight—”
He fled from the room as she fell back. The doctor, a nurse, and Mrs. Cutting, were waiting on the threshold. He went hastily to his own room, and as he closed the door he felt something at his heels. It was LaLa, and he took him in his arms and sat without moving, almost without thought, for an hour. At the end of that time there was a tap and he admitted Mrs. Cutting. As he saw her face he braced himself and all sense of unreality left him. Her cherished but never harnessed youth had deserted her. Her face was pinched and yellow and old. Her hair was streaked with white. Her lips were gray and shaking. But even in her deep maternal grief, in the one violent blow that life had dealt her, even in her new hatred of this royal child of fortune, she was unable to undam her soul and overwhelm him with a fury of scorn and hatred, as she had dimly imagined she should do when she left Mabel’s room for his. She could suffer, but not for her were the great tragic emotions, the splendours, the lightning blasts of expression. As she disciplined her relaxed mouth and pressed her hand hard against her bosom, Ordham’s mind vagrantly recalled an observation of Styr’s regarding the best of the American actors: that they managed to convey the impression of deep intense emotion, artistically repressed; when as a matter of fact they had nothing to repress. But that the poor woman suffered to the full capacity of her meagre nature he could not doubt, and he tried to take her hand and lead her to a chair. But she, like her daughter, thrust him away.
“Mabel is dead,” she said.
As his brain whirled it almost cast out the collocations: “Of course!” “I am so sorry!” and the bathos of it twisted his features into a grin that was as like a smile as a mask is like the human face; but Mrs. Cutting fell back in horror.
“You—you—was it not enough to kill her, without laughing—”
“Good God, how can you say such a thing? I feel as hysterical as a woman. How else could I feel? I am distracted, half out of my mind with horror and remorse. Give me credit for that much at least.”
“You are still young enough to feel excited at being in the midst of a tragedy!” Mrs. Cutting spoke almost dryly. “But I doubt if you will long convince yourself that it is anything more. I hope this may be the last time I shall ever be obliged to speak to you, and therefore I will say at once that I wish to take my child and her child to New York for interment. I don’t think it necessary to give my reasons.”