"Say, old fellow," he said slowly, "I hope there was n"t any sort of a quarrel,--you know,--any domestic unpleasantness, before you came on this trip? I wish to blank I "d left you ash.o.r.e."

"Quarrel? A demon could n"t quarrel with my wife!" exploded Avery.

"That was my impression," returned his host. "Beg pardon, Avery. You see--to be honest, I can"t say exactly how we "re coming out of this. There are several things which might happen. I thought"--the sportsman stammered, and stopped.

"If you should pull through and I should n"t," said Avery, lifting a gray face,--"I "m not a swimmer, and you are,--tell her I "d give my immortal soul if I had n"t left her. Tell her--I--G.o.d! Romer, she was very sick! She did n"t want me to go."

"I "ve always thought," said the bachelor, "that if I had a wife--a woman like that"-- His face hardened perceptibly, dripping under his sou"wester. "You fellows don"t know what you "ve got," he added abruptly. He scrambled up the companionway without looking back. Avery followed him abjectly.

At this moment the yacht groaned, grated, and keeled suddenly. Water poured over the rail. The deck rang with cries. Avery got up, and held on to something. It proved to be the main-sheet. It ran through his fingers like a saw, and escaped. Confusedly he heard the mate crying:-- "We "ve struck, sir! She "s stove in!"

"Well," replied the owner coolly, "get the boats over, then."

He did not look at his guest. Avery looked at the water. It seemed to leap up after him, hike a beast amused with a ghastly play. Oddly, he recalled at that moment coming in one day--it was after she knew what ailed her--and finding Jean with a book face down on her lap. He picked it up and read, "The vision of sudden death." He had laughed at her, and scolded her for filling her mind with such things.

"You don"t quite understand, dear," she had answered.

"Come," said Romer, whose remarkable self-possession somehow increased rather than diminished Avery"s alarm, "we have n"t as much time to spare as I would like. Hold hard there while Mr. Avery gets aboard!"

The tender was prancing like a mustang on a prairie, for there was really a swamping sea. The landsman was clumsy and nervous, missed his footing, and fell.

As he went under he cried, in a piercing voice, "Tell my wife"-- When the water drove into his throat and lungs, he thought how he had seen her fight for her breath, patiently, hours at a time. She had told him once that it was like drowning.

It was two days after this that a man who attracted some attention among the pa.s.sengers got off the Sh.o.r.e train at the old station in the city.

Marshall Avery seemed to himself to see this man as if he saw another person, and felt a curious interest in his appearance and movements. The man was dressed in borrowed clothes that did not fit; his face was haggard and heavily lined; he had no baggage, and showed some excitement of manner, calling several hackmen at once, and berating the one he selected for being too slow. A kind of maniacal hurry possessed him.

"Drive for your life!" he said. He did not lean back in the carriage, but sat up straight, as if he could not spare time to be comfortable. When the hack door slammed Avery saw the man no more, but seemed to crouch and crawl so far within his personality that it was impossible to observe the traveler from the outside.

Avery had never in his life before been in the throat of death, and been spewed out, like a creature unwelcome, unfit to die. The rage of the gale was in his ears yet; the crash of the waves seemed to crush his chest in. Occasionally he wiped his face or throat, as if salt water dashed on it still. He had made up his mind definitely--he would never tell Jean the details. She would not be able to bear them. It might do her a harm. He would simply say that the yacht got caught in a blow, and struck, and that the tender brought him ash.o.r.e. She would not understand what this meant. Why should she know that he went overboard in the process? Or what a blank of a time they had to fish him out? Or even to bring him to, for that matter? Why tell her how long the tender had tossed about like a chip in that whirlpool? It was unnecessary to explain h.e.l.l to her. To say, "We snapped an oar; we had to scull in a hurricane," would convey little idea to her. And she would be so distressed that one of the crew was lost. The Dream was sunk. Romer had remained on the Cape to try to recover the body of his mate. He, Marshall Avery, her husband, had been saved alive, and had come back to her. What else concerned, or, indeed, what else could interest her? In ten minutes nothing would interest either of them, except that he had her in his arms again.... Jean! He thrust his face out of the hack window and cried:-- "Drive faster, man! I "m not going to a funeral."

The driver laid the whip on and put the horse to a gallop. The pa.s.senger leaned back on the cushions now for the first time and drew a full breath.

"Jean!" he repeated, "Jean! Jean!"

The tower of the Church of the Happy Saints rose before his straining eyes against the cold November sky. It was clear and sunny after the storm; bleak, though. He shivered a little as he came in sight of the club. A sick distaste for the very building overcame him. A flash of the river where the Dream had anch.o.r.ed glittered between the houses. He turned away his face. He thought:-- "I wonder when she got the telegrams?" The first one must have reached her by noon of the second day out. This last, sent by night delivery from the little Cape village where the shipwrecked party had landed (he had routed out the operator from his bed to do it)--this last telegram ought to have found her by breakfast-time. She would know by now that he was safe. She might have had--well, admit that she must have had some black hours. Possibly the papers--but he had seen no papers. It had been a pity about the telephone. He had searched everywhere for the Blue Bell. He had found one in a grocery, but the tempest had gnawed the long-distance wire through. He would tell her all about it now in six minutes--in five--poor Jean!

No--stop. He would carry her some flowers. It would take but a minute. She thought so much of such little attentions. The driver reined up sharply at the corner florist"s; it was Avery"s own florist, but the salesman was a stranger, a newcomer. He brought a dozen inferior tea-roses out with an apology.

"Sorry, sir, but they are all we have left. We "ve been sending everything to Mr. Avery"s."

Avery stared at the man stupidly. Was Jean entertaining? Some ladies" lunch? Then she was much better. Or was she so ill that people were sending flowers, as people do, for lack of any better way of expressing a useless sympathy? He felt his hands and feet turn as cold as the seas of Cape Cod.

"Drive slower," he said. But the fellow did not hear him, and the hack rushed on. At the pa.s.senger"s door it stopped with a lurch. Avery got out slowly. The house looked much as usual, except that a shade in Jean"s bedroom was drawn. It was just the hour when she sometimes tried to sleep after an ill night. The husband trod softly up the long steps. He felt for his latch-key, but remembered that he had never seen it since he went overboard. He turned to ring the bell.

As he did so something touched his hand disagreeably; a gust of November wind twisted it around and around his wrist. Avery threw the thing off with a cry of horror.

He had leaned up heavily against the door, and when Molly opened it suddenly, he well-nigh fell into the house.

"Oh, sir!" said Molly. She had been crying, and looked worn. He stood with his tea-roses in his hand staring at her; he did not speak. He heard the baby crying in the nursery, and Pink"s little feet trotting about somewhere. The house was heavy with flowers,--roses, violets, tuberoses,--a sickening mixture of scents. He tried several times to speak, but his dry throat refused.

"What"s happened?" he managed to demand at last, fiercely, as if that would help anything.

"The doctor"s here. He "ll tell you, sir," said Molly. She did not look him in the eye, but went softly and knocked at the library door. Avery started to go upstairs.

"Oh, Mr. Avery," cried Molly, "don"t you do that; don"t you, sir!"

Then Dr. Thorne stepped out of the library. "Wait a minute, Avery," he said, in a quiet, matter-of-fact tone, which at once restored Avery"s composure. "Just come in here before you go up, will you?"

Marshall Avery obeyed. He stepped into the library. And Dr. Thorne shut the door.

The two men regarded each other for a moment in surcharged silence. The distracted husband stood trembling pitiably. He pa.s.sed his left hand over his eyes, then pushed it over his right wrist several times, as if he were pushing away an obstruction.

"I don"t seem to be quite right in the head, Thorne," he pleaded. "I thought there was--something on the doorbell.... I "ve been shipwrecked. I "m not--just myself.... Why don"t you speak to me? Doctor! Doctor!"

"I find it--difficult," replied the experienced physician, with embarra.s.sment. "The case is--unusual. Mrs. Avery"-- "Give me the worst!" cried the tortured man.

"That is impossible," said Esmerald Thorne, in a deep voice. He turned away and went to the window, where he stood looking out into the back yard. Kate was hanging out some sheets and other bedding. Avery noticed this circ.u.mstance--he had got up and stood behind the doctor--as people notice the pettiest items in the largest crises of their lives. A small fluttering white thing on the line arrested his attention. It was the silk Spanish shawl which he had given his wife.

He put out his hand--groped, as a seeing man suddenly smitten blind will grope--and, fumbling, found the doctor"s arm and clutched it. Then he toppled; his weight came heavily, and the physician caught him before he struck the floor.

He pushed the brandy away from his lips and struggled up. Even at that moment it occurred to him that Esmerald Thorne looked at him with something like aversion.

"When did she die?"

"Yesterday."

"What time?"

"At the ebb of the tide. It was eleven o"clock in the morning."

"Who was with her?"

"The servants."

"Oh, my G.o.d, Thorne! n.o.body else? Were n"t you there?"

"I got there.... I doubt if she knew it.... It was only twenty minutes before the end. Hush! Avery, hush! Don"t groan like that, man. n.o.body is to blame. If only--you"-- Dr. Thorne checked himself, savagely, as he did when he was moved beyond endurance.

"Oh, I take it all!" cried Avery. He stooped as if he bent his broad shoulders to receive some mighty burden. "I shall carry it all ... forever. Men have gone mad," he added, more calmly, "for much less than I have got to face."

"If you find yourself strong enough," said the physician, "I shall try to put you in possession of the facts." Again, as before, Avery thought he noticed an expression of aversion on the countenance of his old friend. Cowering, he bowed before it. It was part of his punishment; and he had already begun to feel that nothing but a consciousness of punishment could give him any comfort now.

"Will you go up and see her first?" asked Dr. Thorne, as if to gain time. "She looks very lovely," he added, with quivering lip.

But the room rang to such a cry as the man of mercy--used to human emergency, and old before his time in the a.s.suagement of human anguish--had never heard.

It softened Dr. Thorne a little, and he tried to be more gentle. He did not succeed altogether. Iron and fire were in the doctor"s nature, and the metal did not melt for Marshall Avery.

He began quietly, with a marked reserve. Mrs. Avery, he said, had been very ill on the morning that her husband started. He had hurried to the house, as requested; her condition was so alarming that, after doing what he could to relieve her, he had driven rapidly to the river-wall back of the club, hoping to signal the yacht before it was out of reach; he had even dispatched some one in a row-boat, and some one else on a bicycle, hoping to overtake the Dream at the draw. The patient must have been low enough all night; and being subject to such attacks-- "I had warned you," said the physician coldly. "I explained to you the true nature of her condition. I have done my best for a year to prevent just this catastrophe.... No. I don"t mean to be a brute. I don"t want to dwell on that view of it. You don"t need my reproaches. Of course you know how she took that trip of yours. When the storm came up, she--well, she suffered," said the doctor grimly. "And the wreck got into the papers. We did our best to keep them from her. But you know she was a reading woman. And then her anxiety.... And you hadn"t given us any address to telegraph to. When she began to sink, we could not notify you. I should have sent a tug after you if it had n"t been for the gale-- What do you take me for? Of course I provided a nurse. And my wife would have been here, but she was out of town. She only returned last night. Helen did n"t get here in time, either. It was most unfortunate. I sent the best woman I could command. My regular staff were all on duty somewhere. That was the infernal part of it. I had to take this stranger. I gave her every order. But Mrs. Avery seemed to rally that morning. She deceived us all. She deceived me; I admit it. The woman must needs take her two hours off just then--and Mrs. Avery got hold of the paper. That"s the worst of it. She read the account of the wreck all through. You see, the reporters gave the party up. She was unconscious when I got here. Once she seemed to know me. But I cannot honestly say that I believe she did. I don"t think I have anything more to say. Not just now, anyhow." Esmerald Thorne turned away and looked out of the window again, tapping on the sill with his fingers--scornfully one might have said.

"We made the best arrangements we could. Some relatives telegraphed. And the interment"-- "Oh, have some mercy, Thorne! I have borne all I can--from you." ...

"Esmerald?" As if a spirit had stirred it, the library door opened inwards slowly. A womanly voice embodied in a fair and stately presence melted into the room.

"Oh, my dear! my dear!" said Helen Thorne. "Leave him to me."

As the stricken man lifted his face from the lash of his fellow-man, the woman put out her hands and gathered his, as if he had been a broken child.

"Oh," she said, "don"t take it so! Don"t think of it that way. It would break Jean"s heart.... She loved you so! ... And she knew you did n"t know how sick she was. Any wife would know that--if her husband loved her, and if she loved him. And you did love her. And she knew you did. She used to tell me how sure she was of your true love--and how precious it was to her, and how much she ... cared for you."

Helen"s voice faltered on these last three words; she p.r.o.nounced them with infinite tenderness; it was the pathos of woman pleading for womanhood, or love defending love.

"And she would n"t want you to be tortured so--now. Oh, she would be the first of us all to forgive you for any mistake you made, or any wrong you did. She would understand just how it all came about, better than any of us can--better than you do yourself. Jean always understood. She wanted nothing, nothing in this world, but for you to be happy. She was so grieved because she was sick, and could not go about with you, and make it as cheerful for you at home as she used to do. She used to tell me--oh, she used to tell me so many things about how she felt, and every feeling she ever had was purer and tenderer and truer than the feeling of any other woman that I ever knew! She was the n.o.blest woman--the loveliest, ... and she loved you.... Why, she could n"t bear it--she could n"t bear it, dead up there as she is, if we let you suffer like this, and did not try ... if I did not try to comfort you."

Helen"s own tears broke her choking words. But the heart-break of the man"s sobs came now at last; and they had such a sound that the doctor covered his eyes, and stood with bowed head, as if he had been the culprit, not the judge, before the awful courts of human error, remorse, and love, in which no man may doom his fellow, since G.o.d"s verdict awaits.

"Come, Mr. Avery," said Helen. She stooped and picked up the tea-roses, which had fallen and were scattered on the floor, put them into his cold hand--and then drew away. "She "d rather you would go up alone," said Helen Thorne.

He pa.s.sed out through the open door. His two friends fell back. The children could be heard in the dining-room: Molly was trying to keep them quiet there. It seemed to him as if he waded through hot-house flowers, the air was so thick with their repugnant scent. He crawled upstairs, steadying himself by the banister. The hall below looked small and dark, like a pit. His head swam, and it occurred to him that if he fell he would fall to a great depth. He clung to the wretched tea-roses that he had brought her. He remembered that this was the last thing he could ever do for her.

Outside the door of her room he stopped. His lips stirred. He found himself repeating the old, commonplace words wrung from the despair of mourners since grief was young in the story of the world:-- "It is all over. This is the end."

"No," said a distinct voice near him, "it is not the end."

Starting, he stared about him. The hall was quite empty, above and below. The nursery door was closed. The children and Molly could be heard in the dining-room. No person was within the radius of speech with him. The door of Jean"s chamber was shut.

The roses shook in his hand.

PART III.

Avery stood irresolute. "It is one of those hallucinations," he thought. "This shock--following the wreck--has confused me." The voice was not repeated; and after a few moments" hesitation he opened the door of his wife"s room.

It was neither dark nor light in the chamber; something like twilight filled the room, which, unlike the house, was not heavy with the excessive perfume of flowers. A handful of violets (modest, winning, and like Jean) was all that had been admitted; these stood on a table beside her Bible and prayer-book, her little portfolio, and her pen and inkstand.

In his wretchedness Marshall duly perceived the delicate thought which had ordered that his should be the first flowers to touch her dear body.

He came up with his poor roses in his hand. Jean seemed to have waited for them. He could have said that she uttered a little, low laugh when she saw him cross the room.... Impossible to believe that she did not see him! She lay so easily, so vitally, that the conviction forced itself upon him that there was some hideous mistake. "Perhaps I am still in the water," he thought, "and this is one of the visions that come to drowning people."

"I may be dead, myself," he added. "Who knows? But Jean is not dead." He thrust up the shade, and let the November day full into the room. It fell strongly upon her bright hair and her most lovely face. He called her by her name two or three times. It might be said that he expected her to stir and stretch out her hands to him.

"I never thought you would die," he argued. "You know I did n"t, Jean. Why, you told me yourself you should live for years.... Jean, my girl! they "ve blundered somehow. You could n"t die, you would n"t die, Jean, while I was on that cruel trip.... I was sorry I went. I was ashamed of myself for leaving you.... I hurried back--and I was shipwrecked--I was almost drowned. I "ll never leave you again, dear darling! I "ll never leave you again as long as I live!"

These words ached through his mind. He could hardly have said whether he spoke them aloud or not. He sat down on the edge of the bed beside her. By some carefulness, probably Helen Thorne"s, the usual ghastly circ.u.mstance of death was spared Jean. She lay quite naturally and happily in her own bed, in her lace-frilled night-dress, with her bright hair braided as she used to braid it for the night. Except for her pallor--and she had been a little pale so long that this was not oppressive--she wore one of her charming looks. The conviction that she was not dead persisted in the husband almost to the point of pugnacity. It occurred to him that if he lifted her she would cling to him, and comfort herself against his heart.

"Come, Jean!" he said. He held out his arms. "Forgive me, Jean.... I shall never forgive myself."

Then he stooped to kiss her; and then he slid to his knees, and hid his face in his shaking hands, and uttered no cry, nor any word or sound.

He was so still, and he was still so long, that his friends took alarm for him, and Helen Thorne quietly opened the door. When she saw him, she retreated as quietly, went downstairs, and called his little girl.

Pink trotted up noisily as Pink always did, hurried to her mother"s room, and hesitated on the threshold. When she said "Hullo, Papa!" her father turned and saw her standing there. He made an instinctive movement towards her; the child ran to him; he caught her, and kissed her little hands and hair, and Pink said: "Crying, Papa? Have you got "e toofache? ... Come to Mummer Dee. She "ll comfort you."

Into the Church of the Happy Saints, where Jean was used to worship (for she was a religious woman, in her quiet, un.o.btrusive way), they carried her for her last prayer and chant. And it was noticed how many people there were among the mourners of this gentle lady to whom she had done some kindness, forgotten by every one except themselves, or, more likely, not known to any one else; obscure people, those who had not many friends, and especially sick people, the not helpless, but not curable, whom life and death alike pa.s.s by. In her short, invalid life Jean had remembered everybody within her reach who bore this fate; and it would never be known now in what sweet fashion she had contrived to make over to these poor souls a precious portion of her abounding courage, or the gift of Jean"s own sympathy. This was something quite peculiar to herself. It was finer than the shading of words in a poem, as reverent as the motion of feeling in a prayer, and always as womanly as Jean.

He who followed her to her burial in such a trance of anguish as few men know who love a wife and cherish her (as so many do, that women may well thank Heaven for their manly number),--he who had loved, but had not cherished, looked into Jean"s open grave, and believed that in all the world he stood most desolate among afflicted men.

"I left her to die alone," he said. He grasped Pink"s little hand till he hurt the child, and she wrenched it away. He did not even notice this, and his empty hand retained its shape as the little girl"s fingers had left it. "I went on a gunning trip. And she asked me not to go. And she died alone." ...

The clergyman"s voice intoning sacred words smote upon and did not soothe this comfortless man.

"He that believeth on Me." ...

"Jean believed on me. And I failed her. And she is dead."

Pink crept up to his side again, and put her fingers back into his still outstretched hand. Perhaps it was the child"s touch; perhaps--G.o.d knew--it was some effluence from the unseen life within whose mystery the deathless love of the dead wife had ceased from the power of expression; but something at that instant poured vigor into the abjectly miserable man. His first consciousness that Jean was not dead rushed back upon him at the mouth of her grave. It seemed, indeed, no grave, but a couch cut in a catafalque of autumn leaves.

"There is some mistake," he thought, as he had thought before. He lifted his bared head to the November sky in a kind of exaltation.

This did not fail him until he came back into his desolate home. He stood staring at the swept and garnished house. The disarray of the funeral was quite removed. His wife"s room was ordered as usual; its windows stood open. Some of the dreadful flowers were still left about the house. He pulled them savagely from their places and threw them away. The servants stood crying in the hall; and the strange professional nurse, who had remained with the baby, came up and offered him the child--somewhat as if it had been a Bible text, he thought. He took the little thing into his arms, piously; but the baby began to cry, and hit him in the eyes with both fists.

"It"s after her he do be cryin"," said Molly.

Avery handed her the child in silence. As he turned to go upstairs, Pink ran after him.

"Papa," said Pink, "do you expect Mummer Dee to make a very long visit in heaven? I should fink it was time for her to come home, by supper, shouldn"t you, Papa?"

In their own rooms Marshall Avery sat him down alone. He bolted all the doors, and walked from limit to limit of the narrow s.p.a.ce--his room and hers, with the door open between that he used to close because the baby bothered him. It stood wide open now. In his room some of his neckties and clothes were lying about; Jean used to attend to his things herself, even after she was ill--too ill, perhaps; he remembered reminding her rather positively if any of these trifles were neglected; once she had said, "I "m not quite strong enough to-day."

On his bureau stood her photograph, framed in silver--a fair picture, in a white gown, with lace about the throat. It had Jean"s own eyes; but nothing ever gave the expression of her mouth. He stood looking at her picture.

Presently he put it down, and came back into his wife"s room. He shut the windows, for he shivered with cold, and stared about. The empty bed was made, straight and stark. The violets were drooping on the table beside her Bible, her basket, and her portfolio. He picked these things up, and laid them down again. He went mechanically to the bureau and opened the upper drawer. All her little dainty belongings were folded in their places,--her gloves, her handkerchiefs, the laces that she fancied, and the blond ribbons that she wore--the blue, the rose, the lavender, and the corn.

In this drawer a long narrow piece of white tissue-paper lay folded carefully across the glove box. He opened it idly. Something fell from it and seemed to leap to his fingers, and cling as if it would not leave them. It was a thick lock of her own long bright hair.

He caught it to his breast, his cheek, his lips. He cherished it wildly, as he would now have cherished her. The forgotten tenderness, the omitted gentleness of life, lavished itself on death, as remorse will lavish what love pa.s.sed by. The touch of her hair on his hands smote the retreating form of his illusion out of him. He could not deceive himself any longer.

"Jean is dead," he said distinctly.

He threw himself down on her lounge and tried to collect himself, as he would for any other event of life--that he might meet it manfully.

"She is really dead," he repeated. "I have got to live without her, ... and those children ... no mother. I must arouse myself. I must bear it, as other men do."