“The poorest! Markham, you may think you can laugh at me. I am not clever; I am quite ignorant—that I know. But how can you say you are poor? You don’t know what it is to be poor. When they go away in the summer, they choose little quiet places; they spare everything they can. That is one thing I know better than you do. To say you are poor!”
He rose up and came towards her, and taking her hands in his, gave them a squeeze which was painful, though he was unconscious of it. “Fan,” he said, “all that is very pretty, and true for you; but if I hadn’t been poor, do you think all this would have happened as it has done? Do you think I’d have stood by and let Nelly marry that fellow? Do you think——? Hush! there’s the mother, with news; no doubt she’s got news. Fan, what d’ye think it’ll be?”
He held her hands tight, and pressed them till she had almost cried out, looking in her face with a sort of nervous smile which twitched at the corners of his mouth, looking in her eyes as if into a mirror where he could see the reflection of something, and so be spared the pain of looking directly at it. She saw that the subject which was of so much interest to her had passed clean out of his head. His own affairs were uppermost in Markham’s mind, as is generally the case whenever a man can be supposed to have any affairs at all of his own.
And Frances, kept in this position, as a sort of mirror in which he could see the reflection of his mother’s face, saw Lady Markham come in, looking very pale and fatigued, with that air of having worn her outdoor dress for hours which gives a sort of haggard aspect to weariness. She gave a glance round, evidently without perceiving very clearly who was there, then sank wearily upon the sofa, loosening her cloak. “It is all over,” she said in a low tone, as if speaking to herself—“it is all over. Of course I could not come away before——”
Markham let go Frances’ hands without a word. He walked away to the further window, and drew the curtain aside and looked out. Why, he could not have told, nor with what purpose—with a vague intention of making sure that the hansom which stood there so constantly was at the door.
“What is Markham doing?” said his mother, in a faint querulous tone. “Tell him not to fidget with these curtains. It worries me. I am tired, and my nerves are all wrong. Yes, you can take my cloak, Frances. Don’t call anybody. No one will come here to-night. Markham, did you hear what I said? It is all over. I waited till——”
He came towards her from the end of the room with a sort of smile upon his grey sandy-coloured face, his mouth and eyebrows twitching, his eyes screwed up so that nothing but two keen little glimmers of reflection were visible. “You are not the sort,” he said, with a little tremor in his voice, “to forsake a man when he is down.” He had his hands in his pockets, his shoulders pushed up; nowhere could there have been seen a less tragic figure. Yet every line of his odd face was touched and moving with feeling, totally beyond any power of expression in words.
“It was not a happy scene,” she said. “He sent for her at the last. Sarah Winterbourn was there at the bedside. She was fond of him, I believe. A woman cannot help being fond of her brother, however little he may deserve it. Nelly——”
Here Markham broke in with a sound that was like, yet not like, his usual laugh. “How’s Nelly?” he said abruptly, without sequence or reason. Lady Markham paused to look at him, and then went on—
“Nelly trembled so, I could scarcely keep her up. She wanted not to go; she said, What was the good? But I got her persuaded at last. A man dying like that is a—is a—— It is not a pleasant sight. He signed to her to go and kiss him.” Lady Markham shuddered slightly. “He was past speaking—I mean, he was past understanding—— I—I wish I had not seen it. One can’t get such a scene out of one’s mind.”