Neighbours on the Green

by Mrs. Oliphant

I don’t know how I bore it all. I got tired after a while of the mere physical effort of standing to listen to him. I did not try to answer at first, and after the torrent began I could not, he spoke so fast and so vehemently. But at length I turned from him, and walked slowly, as well as I was able, to my own door. He paused for a moment as if in surprise, and then turned and walked on with me, talking and gesticulating. ‘Nothing else would have disturbed me,’ he said; ‘I had made my arrangements. How was I to tell that a fool, a woman,—would thrust herself into it, and put it on my honour as a gentleman to free her? What has honour to do with it? Why should I trouble more for a woman—an old woman—than for a man? Bah! Ah, I will be rude; yes, I am rude; it is a pleasure—it is a compensation. You are plain; you are old. You have lost what charms. Therefore, what right have you to be considered? Why should you not bear your own folly? Why should I interfere?’

‘Pray make yourself quite easy about me,’ I said, roused in my turn. ‘I did not appeal to you on my account, and anything you can do for me would be dearly purchased by submitting to this violence. Go your own way, and leave me to manage my own concerns.’

He stopped, bewildered; and then he asked with confusion, ‘What do you call your own concerns?’

‘Nothing that can any way affect you,’ I said, and in my passion I went in at my own gate and closed it upon him. I stood on one side defying him, and he stood on the other with confusion and amazement on his face.

‘You do not wish my help any more?’

‘No more. I shall act for myself, without thought of you,’ I said. He stood and gazed at me for a moment, and then suddenly he turned round and left me. I looked after him as he walked rapidly away, and I confess that, notwithstanding my indignation and pride, my heart sank. He was the only creature who could help me, and I had driven him away. I had taken once more upon myself the task which it had made me half frantic to think of. My heart fell. I looked back upon my house, which had been such a haven of quietness and rest for so many years, and felt that the Eden was spoiled—that it was no longer my paradise. And yet I had rejected the only help! I was very forlorn, standing there with my hand upon my gate under the chilly October stars, having thrust all my friends from me, and refused even the only possible deliverance. ‘I cannot allow myself to be insulted,’ I said to myself, trying to get some comfort from my pride, but that was cold consolation. I turned round to go in, sighing and ready to sink with fatigue and trouble; and then I suddenly heard moans coming from the house, and Mary calling and beckoning from the open door.

CHAPTER IX

‘Oh, ma’am, the poor lady’s took bad—the poor dear lady’s took very bad!’ This was Mary’s cry as she hurried me in. The windows were all wide open to give her air. She was lying on the sofa gasping for breath, her mouth and her eyes open, two hectic circles of red upon her cheeks, and that wildly anxious look upon her face which always accompanies a struggle for breath. I did not feel at all sure that she was not dying. I called out to my cook to run instantly for the doctor. Both the women had been in the room running about as she gave them wild orders, opening the windows one after another, fetching her fans, eau-de-cologne, water, wine—as one thing after another occurred to her. She stretched out her hands to me as I came in, and grasped and pulled me to her; she said something which I could not make out in her gasping, broken voice, and I nodded my head and pretended to understand, saying, ‘Yes, yes,’ to calm her—‘Yes, yes.’ It did not seem to matter what one said or promised at such a moment. For some time, every gasp looked to me as if it must be her last. I bathed her forehead with eau-de-cologne, I wetted her lips with wine; I had hard ado not to cry out, too, in sympathy with her distress. I shut down now one window, now another, fearing the cold for her, and then opening them again, in obedience to her gestures to give her air. I seem to see and to feel now, as I recall it, the room so unlike itself, with the cold night air blowing through and through it, and the great squares of blackness and night, with a bit of sky in one, which broke confusedly the familiar walls, and made it doubtful to my bewildered and excited mind whether I was out of doors or in—whether the chairs and sofa and the lamp on the table had been transported into the garden, or the garden had invaded the house. The wind made me shiver; the flame of the lamp wavered even within its protecting glass; darkness and mystery breathed in; and, in the centre absorbing all thoughts, was this struggle between, as I thought, death and life. I cannot tell how time passed, or how long we were in this suspense; but it seemed to me that half the night must have been over before the doctor came, in evening dress, with huge white wristbands, as if he were going to perform an operation. Notwithstanding the anxiety I was in, this fantastic idea flashed across my mind: for his cuffs were always too long and white. But it was a relief beyond description when he came: the responsibility, at least, seemed to be taken off my shoulders. I had scarcely permitted myself to hope before that the paroxysm was already beginning to subside; but now it became evident to me; and Dr. Houghton gave her something, which at once relieved her. I sat down beside the sofa, feeling half stupefied with the sensation of relief, and watched her breathing gradually grow calmer, and the struggle abate. I think my own brain had given way slightly under the tension. It seemed to me that the room behind me was full of people whispering and flitting about, and that all kinds of echoes and murmurs of voices were coming in at the open windows. I suppose it was only my own maids, and Susan from the Admiral’s next door who had come to see what was the matter; but the strange sensation of being almost in the open air, and the worn-out state in which I was, produced this effect. I could not move however to put a stop to it. I could do nothing but sit still and watch. And thus the scene of the first evening, when I brought this strange inmate home to my house, reproduced itself, with another bewildering effect, before my eyes. She was no longer dusty and miserable; her poor black dress was neat and covered by my shawl; her hair had been elaborately dressed, and, though a little disordered, still showed how carefully it had been arranged; but otherwise, the attitude, the look, were exactly the same. Her head was thrown back in utter exhaustion upon the dark velvet pillow, which showed it in relief, like a white cameo on the dark background of the pietra dura. Her eyes were softly closed, and her lips. The doctor, who had gone away to write a prescription, was struck by her wonderful beauty, as I had been that night. He started in his surprise when he came back and saw how she had dropped asleep. He drew me aside in his amazement; the discovery flashed upon him all in a moment, as it had done on me. When a woman is very ill, when one’s mind is full of anxiety for her, her beauty is the last thing one thinks of. So that the sudden sight of her confounded him. ‘How beautiful she is!’ he said in my ear with a certain agitation; and though I am only a woman, I had been agitated, too, when I found it out.

It was just when the doctor had said this that my eye was suddenly caught by a strange figure at one of the open windows. It stepped on to the sill, dark against the blackness without, and there paused a moment. Had this occurred at any other time I should, no doubt, have been very much frightened, I should have rushed to the window and demanded to know what he wanted, with terror and indignation; but to-night I took it as a matter of course. I did not even move, but kept still by the side of my patient’s sofa and looked at him: and when he came in it seemed to me the most natural thing in the world. He entered with a sudden, impetuous movement as if something had pushed him forward. He advanced into the middle of the room—into the little circle round the sofa. It was Mr. Reinhardt. He had never been in my house before, or in any house on the Green, and Dr. Houghton looked at him and looked at me with positive consternation. For my part, I gave him no greeting. I did not say a word. It seemed natural that he should come, that was all.

There was a curious sort of smile upon his face; he was wound up to some course of action or other. What he thought of doing I cannot tell. His face looked as if he had come with the intention of taking her by the shoulders and turning her out. I don’t know why I thought so, but there was a certain mixture of fierceness, and contempt, and impatience in his look which suggested the idea. ‘I have come to put a stop to all this. I shall not put up with it for a moment longer.’ Though he did not speak a word, this seemed to sound in my ears, somehow, as if he had said it in his mind. But when he came to the sofa and saw her laid out in that dead sleep, her face white as marble, the blue veins visible on her closed eyelids, the breath faintly coming and going, he came to a sudden pause. I think for the first moment he thought she was dead. He gave a short cry, and then turned to me wildly, as if I were responsible. ‘You have killed her,’ he said. He was in that state of suppressed passion in which anything might happen. He would have railed at her had he found her conscious, he would have railed at me if I would have let him: he was half mad.