The old mahogany fourposter with the red rep hangings had been brought out from among the lumber, and set up afresh in John’s study. And soon after his interview with Mahony John shifted his quarters to this room, on the pretence of sleeping poorly and disturbing his wife. Lizzie raised fierce objections to the change. It took Mary to mollify her, and to insist that she must now place her own health and comfort above everything. Save in this one point, it was true, Lizzie needed small persuasion. The household danced to her whims.
Emmy’s room was only a trifle nearer the study than the other bedrooms; but in everything that touched her father the girl’s senses were preternaturally acute. And so it happened that she started out of her first sleep, wakened she did not know by what, but conscious, even as she opened her eyes, of sounds coming from her father’s room — the strange, heart-rending sounds of a man crying. Sitting up in bed, her hands pressed to her breast, Emmy listened till she could bear it no longer: stealthily unlatching the door, she crept down the passage to the study. And there, on this and many another night, she lay crouched on the mat, her heart bursting with love and pity; while John, believing himself alone with his Maker, railed and rebelled, in blind anguish, against his fate. Yes, Emmy knew before any one else that some disaster had come upon her father. And in the riot of emotion the knowledge stirred in her, there was one drop of sweetness: she alone shared his secret.
The feeling of intimacy this engendered did much to help her over the days of suspense that followed; when she waited from hour to hour for the unknown blow to fall. She confided in no one — not even Aunt Mary. Her father himself she dared not approach. Papa was so stern with her. Once, after a night when she really thought her heart would break, she ventured a timid: “Papa, if there is anything . . . I mean, Papa . . . if I could . . .” But he stared so angrily at her that she turned and ran from the room, for fear of bursting out crying — as much at the sound of her own words and the feeling of self-pity they roused in her, as at his cold repulse. She did not see the look he threw after her as she went. “Her mother’s daughter,” was his muttered comment; and long past days rose before him, when there had been one at his side from whom nothing was hid. Tatting and crocheting, crocheting and tatting, Emmy gave her imagination free play. A failure in business, even bankruptcy was the solution she favoured — being still too young to face of herself the destructive thought of death. And did this happen, and Papa lose all his money, then would come HER chance. He would learn that he had one faithful soul at his side, one shoulder to lean on. Together they would go away, he and she, right into the bush if necessary, and start life afresh. But again there were moments when she indulged an even dearer hope: at last, perhaps, Papa was beginning to see what a dreadful mistake his marriage had been.
For Emmy hated her stepmother; hated her, and sat in judgment on her, with the harshness of the young creature who has been wounded in her tenderest susceptibilities. Thus, though for the most part she rejoiced to know Lizzie among the uninitiated, she could also burn with a furious, unreasoning anger against her for living on, so blindly, so selfishly, without noticing that something was amiss. At sight of the big woman lying stretched on her CHAISE LONGUE, idly fanning herself, book and vinaigrette at her elbow; or Papa bathing her temples for her with lavender-water, or running errands for her like a servant — at things like these Emmy clenched her fist, and averted her tell-tale eyes. She hated, too, Lizzie’s vigorous, exaggerated manner of speaking; hated the full red lips that went in and out and up and down when she talked; her affected languor . . . her unwieldy figure . . . the baby that was on the way.
But with the crash came also the chance of revenge. Then it was Emmy’s turn; and she could say in all good faith: “Oh, DON’T let her — don’t let . . . Mamma go in to him, Aunt Mary! She worries him so.” As always, there was just the suspicion of a pause — a kind of intake of the breath — before she got the “Mamma” out; a name here bestowed for the third time, and only after a severe inward struggle, because HE had wished it.
Meanwhile John’s serene and dignified existence had shattered to its foundations; carrying with it, in its fall, the peace and security of those lesser lives that depended on it. For close on six months, he had kept his own counsel. With his once full lips pinched thin in his old, greying face, he went doggedly to and from the warehouse in Flinders Lane, as he had done every day for five-and-twenty years: driving off at nine of a morning, and returning as the clock struck six to escort Lizzie to any entertainment she still cared to patronise: and this, though his skin had gone the colour of dry clay or a dingy plaster, and he was so wasted that his clothes seemed to flap scarecrow-like on his bones. Mary’s heart bled for him; and even Richard was moved to remark that what John must be suffering, both mentally and physically, God alone knew. But they could only pity in silence; open compassion was not to be thought of: after the one terrible night Mary had spent with John, the subject of his illness was taboo, even to her. Alone, sheathed in his impenetrable reserve, he prepared for his departure; bade farewell, behind locked doors, to a life of surpassing interest, now cut short in mid-career. In politics, his place would not be hard to fill. But of the great business he had built up he was still the mainspring; and, in a last spurt of his stiff pride, he laboured to leave all that concerned it in perfect order. — And yet, watching him with her heart in her eyes, Mary sometimes wondered . . . wondered whether the unquenchable optimism that had made him the man he was had even yet wholly deserted him. He had had so little experience of illness, and was, she knew, still running privily from doctor to specialist; giving even quacks and their remedies a trial. Did he nurse a hope that medical opinion, right in ninety-nine cases, might prove wrong in his, and he have the hundredth chance? One thing at least she knew: he intended, if humanly possible, to bear up till the child was born and Lizzie better able to withstand the blow.
But this was not to be. The morning came when, in place of rising and tapping at his wife’s door, solicitously to inquire how she had passed the night, John, beaten at last, lay prostrate in his bed . . . from which he never rose again.
A scene of the utmost confusion followed. Mary, summoned just as she was sitting down to breakfast, found Lizzie in hysterics, John writhing in an agony he could no longer conceal. The scared servants scuttled aimlessly to and fro; the children, but half dressed, cried in a corner of the nursery. Emmy alone had her wits about her — though she, too, shook as with the ague.
Meeting Mary at the front door, she held out two clasped hands imploringly. “Oh . . . what is it? Aunt Mary! what is the matter with Papa?”
“Emmy . . . your poor, dear father — my darling, I look to you to be brave and help me — he will need all our help now.”
Long prepared for some such emergency, Mary took control. Dispatching the groom at a gallop for the doctor, she mixed a soothing-draught for Lizzie (“See to her first,” was John’s whispered request) and gave John the strongest opiate she dared. The children were put in the carriage, and sent to “Ultima Thule.” Then, as Richard had directed, Mary cleared the sickroom of superfluous furniture; while Emmy bore a note to Miss Julia — Mary’s sole confidante. And faithful to a promise, Miss Julia was back with Emmy inside an hour. Without her aid she at once saw to Lizzie, and brought the servants to their senses — without this sane, calm presence, Mary did not know how she would have managed, John from the start obstinately refusing to let her out of his sight. Or for that matter without Emmy either . . . Emmy was her right hand. Nimble, yet light-footed as a cat; tireless; brave; Emmy now proved her mettle. Nothing was beneath her: she performed the most menial duties of the sickroom with a kind of fiery, inner gratitude. And, these done, would sit still as a mouse, a scrap of needlework in her hand, just waiting for the chance of springing up afresh. Her young face grew thin and peaked, and the life went out of her step; but she never complained, or sought to obtrude her own feelings. Only one person knew what she was suffering. It was on Auntie Julia’s neck that she had had her single breakdown, and wept out her youthful passion of love and despair.
“What shall I do! Oh, what SHALL I do?”
And Auntie Julia, knowing everything, understanding everything, wisely let her cry and cry till she could cry no more. “There, there, my little one! There, there!” But after this Emmy did not again give way. Indeed, thought Mary, there was something in her of John’s own harsh self-mastery: a trait that sat oddly on her soft and lovely girlhood.
Lizzie was the sorest trial. But then, poor thing, was it to be wondered at in her condition, and after the shock John had given her? For when, that first morning he failed to present himself at her bedside, Lizzie passed in a twinkling from a mood of pettish surprise to one of extreme ungraciousness. The housemaid was peremptorily bidden to go knock at the master’s door and ask the reason of his negligence. The girl’s confused stammerings throwing no light on this, Emmy was loudly rung for. “Pray, my love, be so good as to find out if your Papeh, who has evidently FORGOTTEN to wish me a good-morning, does not intend going to town to-day!” And when Emmy, sick and trembling, yet with a kind of horrific satisfaction, returned bearing John’s brutal reply: “No, not to-day, nor ever again!” Lizzie, now thoroughly roused, threw on a wrapper and swept down the passage to her husband’s room.
On discovering the true state of things she dropped to the floor in a swoon. Restored to consciousness and got back to bed, she fell to screaming in hysterical abandonment — on his arrival the doctor had more to do for her than for John, and pulled a long face. And even when the danger of a premature confinement was over, and the worst of the hysteria got under, she would lie and sob and cry, breaking out, to whoever would listen, in wild accusations.
“Oh, Mary, love! When I think HOW I have been deceived! . . . the trick that has been played on me . . . me who ought to have known before any one else. John and his secrecy! — he has made a fool of me, even in the eyes of the servants.”
“My poor, dear Lizzie! Do believe me, he only wanted to spare you . . . as long as he could. Consider him now, and his sufferings, and don’t make it harder for him than you can help. Think, too, of your baby.”
But she might as well have talked to a post: Lizzie continued stormily to weep and to rail. The two older women bore patiently with her, even coming to consider it a good thing that she was thus able to vent her emotion. It remained for Emmy, Emmy with the hard and unyoung look her face assumed when she spoke of her stepmother, to make the bitter comment: “She’s not really SORRY for Papa — she’s SAVAGE, Aunt Mary, that’s what she is!”— a point of view which Mary herself was so rigidly suppressing that it received but scant quarter. “Emmy, Emmy! You must NOT say such things of your Mamma.” But Richard declared the girl had hit the nail on the head. It was herself and herself alone Lizzie grieved for.
“And is it so unnatural? Has Fate not played her a shabby trick? She took John, as we all know, because he was by far the best catch that had ever come her way. Now, after a few brief years of glory, and when her main ambition was about to materialise, the Lady Turnham-to-be sees herself doomed to a widow’s dreary existence: all weepers and seclusion: with, for sole diversion, the care of an unwanted infant. Not to speak of the posse of stepdaughters she has loaded herself up with.”
“It DOES sound harsh . . . the way you put it,” said Mary, and re-tied her bonnet-strings; she had run home one evening for a peep at her children.
However, if he and Emmy were right about Lizzie and her feelings, then what a blessing it was that John, in his illness, made no demands on her, asking neither for nor after her. With his one request on the morning of his collapse, that she should receive first attention, all thought for her seemed exhausted: just as, in the brutal answer he returned her by Emmy, had evaporated his love and care. From the sound of her pitiless crying he turned with repugnance away. Did she enter his room, with a swish of the skirts, either forgetting to lower her voice or hissing in a melodramatic whisper, he was restless till she withdrew. Except for Mary — and he fretted like a child if Mary were long absent — John asked only to be alone.
On taking to his bed he had severed, at one stroke, every link with the outside world: and soon he was to lie drug-sodden and mercifully indifferent even to the small world of his sickroom. But before this happened he expressed one wish — or rather gave a last order. The nature of his illness was not to be made known beyond the family circle.
“Trying to keep his Chinese Wall up to the end,” said Mahony. “His death — like his life — is to be nobody’s business but his own. Well, well . . . as a man lives so he shall die!”
But Mary was much perturbed. A dying man’s whim — and as such, of course, it had to be respected. But what COULD it hurt now whether people knew what was the matter with him or not? Concealing the truth meant all sorts of awkward complications. But Emmy, overhearing this, flushed sensitively and looked distressed. “Oh, Aunt Mary, don’t you SEE? Papa is . . . is ASHAMED of having a cancer.”
Ashamed? . . . ashamed of an illness? . . . Mary had never heard of such a thing. But Richard, struck afresh by Emmy’s acumen, declared: “That’s it! The girl is right. You call it a sick man’s fancy, I the exaggerated reserve of a lifetime, but Emmy knows better, sees deeper than any of us.” And added a moment later: “It strikes me, my dear, that if instead of hankering after that impossible scapegrace of a son, just because he WAS a son, your brother had had a little more eye for the quick wits and understanding of his daughter, he might have been a happier man.”
News of the serious illness of the Honourable John Millibank Turnham, M.L.C., brought an endless string of callers and inquirers to the door: the muffled knocker thudded unceasingly. People came in their carriages, on horseback, on foot; and included not merely John’s distracted partners, and his colleagues on the Legislative Council, but many a lesser man and casual acquaintance — Mary herself marvelled to see how widely known and respected John had been. And those who could not come in person wrote letters of condolence, sent gifts of luscious fruit and choice flowers and out-of-season delicacies — anything in short of which kindly people could think, to prove their sympathy. It was one person’s while to receive the visitors, answer the letters, acknowledge the gifts. Fortunately this very person was at hand in the shape of Zara. Zara’s elegant manners and her ease in expressing herself on paper were exactly what was wanted.
She and Hempel were staying in lodgings at Fitzroy, prior to setting out on the forlorn hope of a sea voyage. For, after numerous breakdowns, poor Hempel — he looked as if the first puff of wind would blow him overboard; Richard called him: “The next candidate for the Resurrection!”— had been obliged definitely to abandon his pastorate. In the meantime he was resting in bed from the fatigues of the train journey, before undertaking the fresh fatigues to which Zara, in her wilful blindness, condemned him.
At John’s, Zara received in the dining-room among horsehair and mahogany, as better befitting the occasion than the gilt and satin of the drawing-room. Lugubriously clad, she spoke with the pious and resigned air of one about to become a mourner. “My poor brother,” “Our great grief,” “God’s will be done!” But of an evening when the rush was over, she carried to Lizzie a list of names and gifts and a sheaf of letters.
Her sibilant tones were audible through the half-closed door. “Yes, Judge O’Connor — yes, yes, my dear, himself in person! . . . with his own and his lady’s compliments . . . desires to be kept informed of our dear John’s progress.”
And Lizzie’s rich, fruity tones: “Major Grenville, did you say? . . . on behalf of his Excellency? Very gratifying . . . very gratifying indeed!”
Mary was never one to jib at trifles. But as often as Emmy heard them at it, she clenched her fist and ground her teeth. HOW she hated them! . . . hated them. To be able to care who called and who didn’t call, when Papa lay dying! In her passionate young egoism she demanded that there should be no room in any mind but for this single thought.
But, as week added itself to week, and John still lay prostrate, and since, too, the most heartfelt inquiries evoked none but the stereotyped response: “No improvement,” the press of sympathisers visibly declined. People ceased to call daily; came but once a week; then at still wider intervals. And at length even the hardiest dropped off, and a great stillness settled round the dying man. John was forgotten; was reckoned to the dead before he was actually of them. Only once more on earth would he, for a brief hour, play a leading part.
The flawless constitution that had been so great an asset to him in life stood him now in ill stead. His dying was arduous and protracted. Behind the red rep hangings there went on one of those bitter struggles with death that wring from even the least sensitive an amazed: “Wherefore? To what end?” Cried Mahony, watching John’s fruitless efforts: “The day will come, I’m sure of it, when we shall agree to the incurable sufferer being put painlessly away. We need a lethal chamber, and not for dumb brutes alone.” At which Mary looked apprehensive, and wished he wouldn’t. A good job he was no longer in practice. Or what WOULD his patients have thought?
“Ah, thank God, the muzzle of medical etiquette is off my jowl!”
Meanwhile, thought his wife, he was in his element, all tenderness and consideration for John — he went to endless trouble in procuring for him the newest make of water-bed — which was just what one would expect of Richard. Nor would he have him teased about religious questions or his approaching end. On the other hand, had John shown the least desire for religious consolation, Richard would have been the person to see that he got it.
But this John did not. At those rare moments when he was awake to his surroundings and tolerably free from pain, he lay exhausted and inert, his eyes closed, and with little to distinguish him from one already dead. What his innermost thoughts were, what his hopes and fears of a hereafter, remained his own secret. The single wish that crossed his lips seemed to point to his mind still occupying itself with earthly things.
Mary, sewing beside the bed, looked up one day to find his sunken eyes open and fastened on her.
She rose and leaned over him. “What is it, John? Do you want anything?”
He signified yes with his lids, sparing himself any superfluous word for fear of rousing up his enemy. Then, in a thick, raucous whisper: “I should like . . . to see . . . the boy. Yours.”
Thus it came about — greatly against the wish of Mahony, who held that illness and suffering were evil sights for childish eyes — that Cuffy was one day lifted into the carriage beside Nannan, where he sat his little legs a-dangle, clad in his best velvet tunic and with his Scotch cap on his head. He looked pale and solemn. Nannan and Eliza had made such funny faces at each other, and had whispered and whispered. And while she was dressing him Nannan had talked about nothing but how good and quiet he must be, and what would happen to him if he wasn’t. In consequence, directly he was set down from the carriage Cuffy started walking on the tips of his toes; and on tiptoe, holding fast to his nurse’s hand, crept laboriously up the gravel path to the house.
At the front door stood Cousin Emmy, who kissed him and led him in. Like Nannan she, too, said: “Now you must be a VERY good boy, Cuffy, and not make the least noise.” Cuffy’s heart began to thump with anxiety: he walked more gingerly than before. The house felt like the nursery when the Dumplings were asleep. Emmy opened a door into a room that was quite dark. It had also a very nasty smell. Someone was snoring. Cuffy tried to pull back.
“Now, be good, Cuffy!”
Then he was at his mother’s knee, mechanically holding out his hands to have his little gloves peeled off. But his thoughts were with his eyes — pinned to some one lying in a bed . . . a man with a dark yellow face and a grey beard, who was asleep and snoring — like Nannan did. Cuffy did not associate this funny-looking person with his uncle; he just stood and stared stupidly. Nevertheless, something very disturbing began to go round inside him; and he swallowed hard.
Then two big black shiny eyes were awake and looking at him. They looked and looked. Cuffy stood transfixed, his lips apart, his breath coming unevenly, his own eyes round with a growing fear.
A yellow hand like a claw came over the bedclothes towards him, and some one tried to speak; and only made a funny sound — and tried again.
“ . . . does you credit. But . . . at his age . . . John . . . a finer . . . child.” After which the eyes shut and the snoring began anew.
Then, though he had only just come, somebody said: “Kiss your uncle good-bye, Cuffy.”
This was too much. As he was lifted up Cuffy made protest, wildly working his arms and legs. “No, no!”
But his lips had brushed something cold and clammy before, his clothes all twisted round him, he was put back on the floor. And by then the face on the bed had changed: the eyes were all wrinkles now; the mouth like a big black hole. Somebody screamed. And now people were scurrying about, and there came Aunt Lizzie running in her dressing-gown, and she was naughty and cried, making the noise he had been told not to. His own tears flowed; but true to his promise he did not utter a sound.
Then some one took his hand and ran him out of the room to the dining-room, where, his eyes wiped and his nose blown, Cousin Emmy gave him a nectarine, which she peeled for him and cut up in quarters, because it was “nicer so.” He was also allowed to eat it messily, and not scolded for letting the juice drip down his tunic.
But at home again, he felt the need of blowing out his shrunken self-esteem. It was a chance, too, of making himself big in the eyes of his playfellow Josey, the youngest of his three cousins, a long-legged girl of seven, who domineered over him, smacked him and used his toys without asking. There she came along the verandah, dragging his best horse and cart — with her nasty big black eyes, and the hair that stuck straight out behind her round comb.
Under seal of secrecy and with an odd sense of guilt, as if he was doing something he ought not to, Cuffy confided to her his discovery that big people could cry, too. “I seed your Mamma do it.”
But in place of being impressed Josey was very angry. Grabbing the secretmonger’s silky topknot, she shook him soundly. “That’s a storwy, Cuffy Mahony, and you’re a howwid storwy-teller! Gwownup people NEVER cwy!” The fact that she spoke with a strong lisp, while a baby like Cuffy would talk plainly, always rendered Josey very emphatic. Moreover in the present case, she still burned with shame at the disgraceful knowledge that not only Mamma could cry, but Papa, too.
John died five days later at midnight.
The afternoon before, an odd thing happened. Mary and Emmy were alone with him, he lying drugged and comatose, and Mary had been fanning him, for it was very warm. Outside, beneath a copper-coloured sky, a scorching north wind blew; the windows of the room were shut against swirling clouds of dust. There was no sound but John’s laboured breathing, and, exhausted, Mary thought she must have dropped into a doze. For when, warned by a kind of instinct she started up, she saw that John’s eyes were open: he was gazing with a glassy stare at the foot-end of the bed. And as she watched, an extraordinary change came over the shrunken, jaundiced face. The eyes widened, the pin-hole pupils dilated; while the poor, burst lips, on which were black sores that would not heal, parted and drew back, disclosing the pallid flesh of the gums. John was trying to smile.
A second later and the whole face was transfigured — lit by an expression of rapturous joy. John even made an abortive effort to raise himself — to hold out his arms. His breath came sobbingly.
“Emma! Oh, EMMA! . . . WIFE!”
At first sound of her name, Emmy sprang from her seat behind the curtains and threw herself on her knees at the bedside, close to John’s groping hand. “Papa! . . . yes, oh yes? Oh, papa . . . DARLING!”
But John did not hear her. All the life left him was centred in his eyes, which hung, dazed with wonder, on something visible to them alone. Bending over the passionately weeping girl Mary whispered: “Hush, hush, Emmy! Hush, my dear! He sees . . . he thinks he sees your mother.”
Mahony knew nothing of this occurrence till long after. By the time he got there that evening, the death-agony had begun; and now the one thought of those gathered round John’s bed was to ease and speed his passing. It was a murderous business. For the drug that had thus far blunted the red-hot knives that hacked at his vitals suddenly lost its power: injections now gave relief but for a few moments on end; and, hour after hour, hour after hour, his heart-breaking cry for help beat the air. “Morphia . . . morphia! For God’s sake, morphia!”
But the kindly, bearded physician who sat with a finger on John’s wrist remained impassive: the dose now necessary to reduce the paroxysms would be more than the weakened heart could bear. And so, livid, drenched in sweat, John fought his way to death through tortures indescribable.
At the end of the afternoon those present felt that the limits of human endurance had been reached. All eyes hung on the doctor’s, with the same mute appeal. The two men, Mahony and the other, exchanged a rapid glance. Then, bending over the writhing anguished thing that had once been John Turnham, the doctor addressed it by name. “Mr. Turnham; you are in your right mind . . . and fully aware of what you are saying. Do you take the injection necessary to relieve you, of your own free will and at your own risk?”
“For the love of God!”
A moment’s stir and business, and the blessed sedative was running through the quivering veins, the last excruciating pangs were throbbing with hammer-strokes to their end: upwards from the feet crept the blissful numbness . . . rising higher . . . higher . . . higher. And, as peace descended and the heavy lids fell to, Mahony stepped forward, and taking one of the dying hands in his said in a loud, clear voice: “Have no fear of death, John!”
Already floating out on the great river, John yet heard these words and was arrested by them. Slowly the lids rolled back once more, and for the fraction of a second the broken eyes met Mahony’s. In this, their last, living look, not a trace was left of the man who had been. They were now those of one who was about to be — fined and refined; rich in an experience that transcended all mortal happenings; wise with an ageless wisdom. And as they closed for ever to this world, there came an answer to Mahony’s words in ever so faint a flattening of the lips, an almost imperceptible intake at the corners of the mouth, which, on the sleeping face, had the effect of a smile: that lurking smile, remote with peace, and yet touched with the lightest suspicion of amused wonder, that sometimes makes the faces of the dead so good to see.
John did not wake again. Towards midnight his breathing grew more stertorous, the intervals between the breaths longer. And at last the moment came when the watchers waited for the next . . . and waited . . . in vain.
All was over; the poor weeping, shattered women were led from the room. Mary, despite her grief, kept her presence of mind, and Miss Julia with her. But Lizzie was convulsed; and poor little Emmy, her long service ended, broke down utterly and had to be carried to bed, and chafed, and dosed with restoratives. Zara was bidden see to the children, John’s three, who had been brought over during the afternoon in case their father should ask for them: forgotten, hungry, tired, they had cried themselves to sleep, and now lay huddled in a tear-stained group on the dining-room sofa. Mahony and the doctor busied themselves for yet a while in the death-chamber; after which, decently composed and arranged, John formed no more than a sheet-draped rising on the bed’s smooth plain. Mahony locked the door behind him and took the key. The dogcart had come round, and Jerry, who was to drive back to town with the doctor, stood, his collar turned up, all of a fidget to get home to Fanny and his children. Mahony went out with them and, having watched them drive off, paused to breathe the night air, which was fresh and welcome after the fetid odours of the sickroom. And standing there under the stars he sent, like an arrow of farewell, a parting thought to the soul that might even now be winging its way to freedom, and to whom soon all mysteries would be plain. John had made a brave end. There had been no whining for pity or pardon: on his own responsibility he had lived, and he died by the same rule — the good Turnham blood had come out in him to the last. And as he re-entered the house, where, by now, the last exhausted watcher was sinking into unconsciousness, Mahony murmured half-aloud to himself: “Well done, John . . . well done!”