If Ordham could be very hard, he could also be very soft. When he received a telegram at Flushing stating that Mabel was still alive, but that her condition was hopeless, he was moved deeply, the more so, perhaps, because his sympathies had been so profoundly stirred a few hours before. At the same time he wished to heaven he were on the other side of the world. When he reached London, he went hastily to the sick room, fearing that if he stopped to think his courage might desert him, for it was his first personal encounter with death. There was a strange moaning sound from the bed, such as he had heard animals utter in their last extremity, and he stumbled over a pail of ice. The darkened room seemed to him full of people and in an indescribable confusion, but he had barely caught a glimpse of Mrs. Cutting, dishevelled, haggard, when everybody seemed to disappear simultaneously, leaving him and the dying creature in the bed alone.
He made his way across the big room and saw Mabel, who looked like waxwork with enormous glass eyes. He shuddered, but bent over and would have kissed her had she not pushed him feebly away. He sat down, and his nervousness, even his horror, fled. He looked at the shrunken pallid remnant of the beautiful girl he had married and was filled with an immense pity, which induced one of those rare moments in life, like tiny islands, that have no space for self. He was also awed, as one must ever be in the presence of death, but those little green isles in the ocean of egoism have their atmosphere of unreality; and he felt throughout this interview, which he has never tried to forget, like a man who dreams yet believes himself to be awake.
Mabel spoke in a small distant voice. “I am dying and you have killed me.”
“I am afraid I have.”
“That is all I have left—that you should know that. Had I been happy I might have pulled through, although I had a horrible time, a horrible time! But my brain, all my blood, was on fire. I don’t know—the doctor will explain—but I do know that my only chance was mental peace, and I was like a mad creature from the moment I learned you had gone to that woman. O God! I am only nineteen. What was I born for?”
She paused a moment and he stared at her with blanched face and mouth slightly open. His expression was almost vacant, his remarkably receptive faculty exercising itself unconsciously. To Mabel he looked as young as when she had first known him, and her expression softened, but only for a moment. Her face set again, and she went on:
“I don’t mind dying so much, for I am so tired I don’t care, and there is nothing left to live for. Even the baby deserted me. But I have lost—lost! And I was so sure I should win! Why should I not have been confident? I had had everything—always—it is so strange that I should be ground to powder! I feel as if the huge wheels of one of those old Roman chariots—conquerors’ chariots!—had crushed me. I was a real little queen, and now I am nothing! nothing! And only nineteen! Why was I born?”
She raised herself on her hands; her immense hollow eyes, which had wandered during her last words, focussed, were piercing for the first time, probably, since they had met the light. “I think I should not mind even that—anything—” she was whispering, her voice almost dead—“if I could only have understood you. But to have been your wife, to have loved you so, and to die knowing that not for one minute, not for one second—and even death gives me no insight—”
He fled from the room as she fell back. The doctor, a nurse, and Mrs. Cutting, were waiting on the threshold. He went hastily to his own room, and as he closed the door he felt something at his heels. It was LaLa, and he took him in his arms and sat without moving, almost without thought, for an hour. At the end of that time there was a tap and he admitted Mrs. Cutting. As he saw her face he braced himself and all sense of unreality left him. Her cherished but never harnessed youth had deserted her............