Suddenly he stopped. What was he running for? To find out if his wife had killed herself? A mere matter of curiosity. For it came into his mind that nothing whatever was changed. He had left her to die. He was going back—to save her? A cold sweat broke out on his forehead, he leant against a pine tree by the road side and rocked himself to and fro, trying to think.
A drove of kine passed close, their bells tinkling, as one by one turned wet muzzle, and moody, brown eyes towards him. The sound, full of memory, of those bells was a spur to his thoughts. Nothing was changed! A chance had been sent to him and to Jocelyn—above all, to Jocelyn! And he was going back to set it at naught?
He had a vision of the face that he loved, as it might become, haggard and shame-ridden, and of the faces of all the people he had ever known drawn in a sanctimonious circle around it. He felt as if he were being guilty of treachery. Why should he go back? He would stifle memory—forget he had ever been in the room. It was a cowardly thought, and he knew it. He could not get away from responsibility one way or the other—he had to accept it. He seemed continually to see his wife’s frail body half-raised on one bent elbow, her thin hand stretched gropingly, the long fingers closing on the medicine bottle—her face, the look of exhaustion upon it, and the heavy, half-closed eyes. He began to walk forward again, slowly at first, then faster and faster.
His mind swayed, like the olive trees in the gusty wind, this way and that. When at moments, in the blank irresolution of his thoughts, he had glimpses of the knowledge that it was all decided—that he was going back to save her if he could—he hated himself.
The sound of a horse’s gallop was in the wind that beat in his face. An undefined feeling of guilt made him stoop to avoid notice as he walked. The horseman passed; there was a cry in his ears, the single word “Madame!” He looked up sharply; through a cloud of dust he had a glimpse of flying hoofs, and of Jacopo’s body turned in the saddle, waving a hand towards the villa.
Something had happened! What? Was he to go down to the grave with the memory of his desertion staring him in the face? Anything was better than this suspense. He dashed forward and arrived, breathless, and dripping with perspiration. He ran up the steps. At the window, out of which he had come, he stopped; it was as he had left it. He set his face against the glass, and stared through. He could see things in the room dimly in the grey light, her couch and figures standing beside it, the white drapery upon it, but he could not see her face.
The same spray of jessamine trailed across his cheek, a cockchafer buzzed against him. Was it really two hours since he had left that room?
The shrill sound of a woman’s sob came to him from within; it jarred his nerves, so that he started and his hand knocked against the glass. A figure inside looked up sharply with a gesture of surprise. It was Nielsen. Giles stared back at him through the window, his face, very white and motionless, still pressed against it. After a moment, when nothing in the heavens and the earth seemed to move, he pushed it open, and went in, walking unsteadily, his hands clenched convulsively on the hat in them.
“What is it?”
“Dead!”