“It is kind of you to have listened to me. You have done me so much honour, so much kindness—but this is the greatest you have ever done me. Do you understand that I feel it so?” For a moment his terrible intelligence pored upon her as she hung over his bed. It searched her, explored her, wondered, judged. A flicker of a smile—a momentary relaxation of his rigid lips—a faint wavering of his attention; then he signed, and closed his eyelids down. The strain was over, she had been heard, assessed, acquitted. When the night-nurse came in she found the patient at peace, and Mary Germain crouched on the floor asleep, her head upon the edge of the bed.
XV
THE DEAD HAND
Her calmness, which was not the stupor of grief, from this point onwards shocked her friend and disturbed her enemy in the house. The Rector could not but feel it a slight upon his dead brother and an attitude most unbecoming to so young a widow; but Mrs. James was made uncomfortable by an attitude for which she had not been prepared. Whatever the girl’s faults may have been, she had never been brazen. Why, then, was she brazen now? Why almost—yes, indecent in her indifference? Mary proposed nothing, objected to nothing; took no part in the funeral arrangements, answered no letters, read none, allowed her sister-in-law entire control, sank back, with evident contentment, to be the cipher in her own house, which, of course, she ought to have been from the first. There was something behind all this; Mrs. James was far too intelligent to misread it. This did not mean that Mary was over-whelmed—by grief, or shame, either; it did not mean that she felt herself in disgrace. No. This was impudence—colossal.
The Rector, to whom this reading of the girl was propounded, could not deny it colour. “She’s very young to have such troubles upon her, and of course she’s still very ignorant. She can’t express herself. I don’t at all agree with you, Constantia; but I own I should have preferred to see her in tears.”
“Why should she cry, pray? She has all that she wants—a sure income and her liberty. At least, that is what she supposes; but we shall see.”
“You paint your devils so impossibly black, my dear,” said the Rector, “that really they refute themselves. I am sorry to have to say it, but you are incapable of being just to this poor girl. However, as I own, tears had been a sign of grace.”
Certainly she shed no tears, that any one could see. She was frequently in her room alone, and may have cried there. The Rector made advances, by look, by gesture, even by words. He was not an effusive man; would sooner have died than have invited anybody to pray with him—but for all that he did put himself in her way, heart in hand, so to speak—and when she gently disregarded him he felt chilly.
She did not attend the funeral, nor did she choose, though she was urged, to be present at the reading of the will. She told the Rector, who pressed this duty upon her, that she couldn’t oblige him. “Please don’t ask me to do that. I have nothing to expect—and if he had left me anything I should have to think about it very seriously. He took me from nothing; I brought him nothing; he has done more for me, and allowed me to do more for my parents than I could ever have asked—even of him. I make no claims at all, and have no expectations. I have never thought about such things——”
“Naturally, my child, naturally not. But—after such a shock as this—after the first pang of loss—it is wise to think of the future. You had no settlement, you know.”
“How could I?” she asked simply. He smiled at the question.