Now that the thing was impossible, Edward was telling himself what an innocent pretence it would have been to have feigned a little interest in his sister’s unpractical schemes, a little admiration for her sincere, if wasted, humanity. The lesson that life dins into our ears with such ceaseless iteration that it seems impossible that any of us could ever fail to hear it is, To make haste to be kind! Edward felt that he had not made haste, and that now the opportunity had for ever escaped him.
For a whole day and night Felicity had been dead, and Tom had not yet returned. The telegrams sent after had missed him, owing to a change in his quarters from one remote fishing village to another. More and more urgent ones had been sent in every direction, and to every one who might possibly be in communication with him, but so far he had not appeared. There could be no doubt that he would arrive to-day. After all Felicity’s precautions against their meeting, it would be Bonnybell that would receive him, and not she. Nothing ever affected Miss Ransome very deeply, but at this reflection a profounder sense than ever before of the grim quality of Fate’s sense of humour penetrated her.
She was sitting idle, in the room which had been the scene of so many of her mornings’ labours for Felicity. Evidence of the dead woman’s interrupted toils lay strewn all over the large brass-bound writing-table, bulging out of pigeon-holes in the bureau, occupying in their varied multiplicity even a part of the carpet. Poor Felicity! how astonishing it was of her to die! A quite sincere compassion, and even a small contraction of the heart, slid off into painful speculation as to how yesterday’s catastrophe would affect the speculator’s future? Would the Slammer plan still hold good? Perhaps, now that there was no longer a socially influential Lady Bletchley to oblige, it would be allowed by its entertainer to damp off. And if it did not—if it became action, how much more dismal a future it involved than it had done, even in its original dreary conception! Had poor Felicity lived, she would always have been a resource, a refuge, an antidote! She would have been always joyfully grateful for as much of her society as Miss Ransome could spare; as much, that is, as would have been consistent with keeping her well separated from Tom. Tom!
Bonnybell’s thoughts came to a full stop upon the name. Irony, irony! Who was there to prevent her meeting Tom now? Poor Felicity! She was going to meet him that very minute, meet him tête-á-tête! His footfall was inaudible upon the thickly carpeted stairs; but the turning of the door-handle gave her an instant of preparation. It was as well that she had expected, since otherwise she would scarcely have recognized him! Where was the rubicund, pink-clean, amorously smiling Tom of her recollection? Could this livid, staring-haired, unshorn stranger, whose eyes were wild with misery, and mouth twitched with pain, be indeed he?
The first moment that their looks crossed, Bonnybell saw that the sight of her gave him a shock of surprise. Poor Felicity! It flashed through the girl’s mind in a moment that Tom’s wife had hidden from him all along the fact of her being a guest in his house. The look of surprise vanished, as it had come, instantaneously. It was clear that in his whole being there was no room for any feeling but one. (Perhaps, after all, Felicity had spoken the truth! Perhaps, after all, he would have liked to have her to himself!)
“Yes.”
“When?”
“Yesterday morning, at twenty minutes to eight.”
“Did she leave any message for me?”