It was a dreadful hope to lie down with at night, and rise up with in the morning—that morning or night might bring him a message to say that all was over, and that he was free. But it was still more dreadful that this message never came. When he saw her next she had rallied, rallied amazingly, the doctor said; but he added that it was only a flicker in the socket—only a question of time—a day or two, perhaps an hour or two. Oliver had revulsions of pity, attended with a loathing which he could scarcely keep under. He had to suffer himself to be drawn towards her, to feel his neck encircled by her arms, to kiss her cheek, to listen to her as long as he could bear it, while she told him how often she had thought of him; how she had never loved any man but he, how she had felt that she could not die in peace till she had seen him again. It required all his pity for her to strengthen him for these confessions, to enable him to meet that meretricious smile, those ghastly little tricks of fascination which he could remember to have laughed at even in other times. How horrible they were to him now no words could say. He went through the same miserable streets daily till he shuddered at his own errand and at the dreadful hope that was always in his heart in spite of himself, the hope that he might hear that all was over. His mind revolted from his fate with a self-indignation and rage against all that had brought it about, against the wrong done to the most miserable of human creatures by wishing her death, and at himself for the weakness which had brought him into this strait. To live with no desire so strong in him as that this poor girl should die, to make his way to the poor little house that sheltered her day by day, sick with hope that he might hear she was dead—oh! what was this but murder—murder never coming to any execution, but involved in every thought? But afterwards there came upon this unhappy man something more dreadful still, the moment in which a new thought sprang up in him—the thought that it was never to be over, that she was not going to die, that the flicker in the socket of which the doctor had spoken was the filling in of oil to the flame, the rising of new force and life. When this thought came to him, what with the horror of the possibility, and the horror of knowing that he grudged that possibility, and would take life from her if he could, Oliver’s cup seemed full, despair took possession of him. Everything grew dark in heaven and earth. She was going to live, not to die; and what, oh! what, most miserable of men, was he to do?

The first thing that enlightened him was a change in her phrases when she talked to him of her own devotion, of her longings after him.

‘I knew as it would give me a chance for my life if I could see you once again.’

It had been at first only to die in peace after she had seen him that she proposed. And when his eyes, quickened with this horrible light, began to observe closely, he perceived that she spoke more strongly, that her emaciation was not so great nor her breathing so difficult. She was going to live, not die; and what was to become of him? What was he to do?

All this time—and it went on, gliding day after day, and week after week, he scarcely could tell how—he was receiving letters and calls back, and anxious inquiries and appeals from those he had left behind. Grace wrote to him—first a letter of simple love and anxiety, hoping his friend was better, anticipating news from him; then more serious, fearing that the illness was grave indeed, that he was absorbed in nursing, but begging for a word; then anxious, alarmed lest something should have happened to him; then with an outburst of feeling, entreating to know what it meant, imploring him only to tell her there was a reason, even if he could not say what that reason was. Then silence. But even this lasted but for a few days. She wrote again to say that she could not believe he had changed, that it was to her incredible; but should it be so, imploring to know from himself that so it was. The dignity and the tenderness, and the high trust and honour which would not permit any pettiness of offence, went to his very heart. He sent her a few miserable lines in reply, imploring her to wait. ‘Some of my sins have found me out,’ he said; ‘the sins I acknowledged to you. But oh! for the love of God, do not abandon me, for then I shall lose my last hope.’

He got from her in return these words, and no more, ‘I will never abandon you unless I have it from your own hand that I must.’ And then no other word.

But Trix plied him with a thousand. What did he mean flying like this from his betrothed and his family and all his prospects? What did he mean, what was his reason, what in the name of all that was foolish was he thinking of? Did he mean to break his word, to give up his engagement, to break all their hearts? What was it? What was it? What was it?

He left her letters at last unopened. He could make no answer to them. He could give no explanation. Every day he had hoped that perhaps—perhaps. And now that his horror had come over him he was less disposed to write than ever. If it should be as, God forgive him, he feared, what was there in store for him? What should he do? The veins of his eyeballs seemed to fill with blood, and the air grew dark in his sight; a blank, sinking void opened before him; he could perceive only that he must be swallowed up in it, swept beyond sight and knowledge; but for the others who loved him, he did not know how to reveal to them the terrible cause.

During all this time of suspense he was very kind to the woman to whom he had linked himself like the living to the dead. He got her everything she wished for—delicate food, fine wine, all that could afford a little ease to her body or amusement to her mind. Such forms of kindness are appreciated in regions where life is more practical than sentimental. The mother and sister sang his praises. ‘Die! no, he don’t want you to die,’ they said. ‘What would he send you all these nice things for, and feed you up, and get you that water-bed that cost such a deal of money, if he wanted you to die? But you’re that exacting now you’re Mrs. Wentworth.’

‘I am Mrs. Wentworth: that’s one thing none can take from me,’ she said.

He heard her as he came up the narrow stair, trying as no one else did to make as little noise as possible, and that wave of loathing which sickened his very soul came over him. How horrible it all was, incredible, impossible, that she should bear that name! that it should be bandied about in a place like this—his mother’s name, his wife’s. Ah! but she, and no other, was his wife. This was the evening when she said to him, ‘I feel I am really getting better, Oliver. I believe I’ll cheat the doctors yet: and it will all be your doing, dear. You’ll take me abroad, and my lungs will come right, and we shall be as happy as the day is long.’

He made no reply, but avoided the hand with which she tried to draw him to her, and asked a few questions of her mother, before he bade her good night. He met the doctor as he was going downstairs, and waited to hear his bulletin. The parish doctor had found his manners, which had only been put aside when there was no need for such vanities: but he was not used to fine words. He said,—

‘That wife of yours is a wonderful woman; it seems as if it might be possible to pull her through after all. She has such pluck and spirit, and that’s half the battle.’

‘You told me,’ said Wentworth, with a sternness which was almost threatening, ‘that there was no hope of recovery.’

‘You don’t seem best pleased with my good news,’ said the doctor, with a laugh. ‘As for hope of recovery, there wasn’t a scrap in her then state. And her life isn’t worth a pinch of snuff even now; but with a husband that can take her abroad to a warm climate and give her every luxury, why, there is hope for any woman; and I can but say I think it possible that she may pull through. That should be good news for you—but perhaps unexpected,’ he said, with a keen glance.

Wentworth made no reply. He bowed his head slightly, and went out before the doctor, walking out into the darkness and distance with a straight, unobservant abstraction. He never looked to right or left; and went out of his way for nothing, as if he saw nothing in his way. The doctor looking after him observed this idly, as people observe things that don’t concern them. He thought that on the whole it was a very curious incident. He could not think of any motive that could have brought about such a marriage. He wondered a little what the man could be thinking of to do such a thing: a woman who had long lost any signs of prettiness, if she had ever possessed any; poor, uneducated, and of damaged character. Why had he married her? and, having married her, was he disappointed that she did not die? He stood and watched Wentworth till he was out of sight, saying to himself that he should not be surprised if that man were found in the river or on Hampstead Heath some of these days. But it was no concern of his.

Oliver went home to his chambers, walking all the way. It was a very long way, and when he got there he was very tired, very tired and sick to death. He ate a mouthful of the dinner provided for him, and drank a glass or two of wine, dully, silently, keeping his thoughts, as it were, at bay, not allowing himself to indulge in them. Afterwards he sat down at his writing-table, and wrote a long, a very long letter, which he closed and sealed, getting up to get matches to light his taper, and searching in every corner he could think of for the sealing-wax; though why he should seal it he could not have explained. It was a mark of special solemnity, in keeping with the great crisis and the state of mind in which he was. Afterwards he sat down and thought long and very gravely. He went over the position in every possible point of view. There could not be a more hopeless one. Betrothed to a woman he loved and approved with every faculty of his being, yet married to one whom he did not pretend to love for whom, at the best, he had no feeling above pity—and at the worst—There began to penetrate into his brain, unused to such thoughts, a dull suspicion that he might have been all through the victim of a cheat; but it did not make much difference, and he felt no resentment, nothing but a profound sensation of hopelessness, past help or care. Whether it was deception all through, or whether it was the judgment of God upon him, who had sinned and had not suffered, and had been on the edge of winning, he so unworthy, the best that man can have in this world—it did not seem to matter much. In either case the result was the same—that here he stood with life made impossible to him, with a blank wall before him, and nothing to be done, no way of deliverance nor even of escape. He looked out in that curious blank way over the future, asking himself what it would be his duty to do. It would be his duty to take her away to a warm country, as her doctor had said—to give her all the care that she required, ‘every luxury’—these were the words—and so ensure her recovery. To do anything else would be inhuman. And as for Grace—ah, for Grace! To him she must henceforth be a sacred thing apart. He must not see her, speak to her, lean his heart upon her evermore. That was all ended—ended and over. He had written a long letter to his brother-in-law, telling him all the circumstances. He was not a man who could go on with deceits and false positions, trying miserably to stand between one and another. He might have done that, perhaps, for a time, might have beguiled Grace with letters, and explained by any false excuse his detention in London, his absence from her—but to what good? One day or other it would all have to be disclosed, now that it was evident that this woman was not going to die; however long he might fight it off, the necessity would come at last. And it was better that she should know now, than only at the moment when he should be leaving England with his wife. His wife! Oh, terrible word! Oh, awful, impossible fate!

This sudden realisation of what was before him made his mind start like a restive horse, and he found himself once more before that blank wall. It would be his duty to do it, and he could not do it. He did not trifle with himself nor elude this question any more than he would deceive the woman he loved. He looked out upon what was before him, and he said to himself that he could not do it—he could not pretend to do it. Other men might have the courage to struggle, but not he. There was only the coward’s remedy remaining to him, only the base man’s way—to turn and flee. He had written it all in his letter to Ford, although it seemed to him that when he wrote that letter he had not so clearly perceived that there was only one thing to do. He had bidden his brother-in-law to secure a living somehow for this wretched creature who bore his name, to use the little he would leave for her, and to eke it out—or finally, with the boldness of a man whom earthly motives had ceased to sway, to put this last inconceivable legacy into the hands of Grace.

‘I know she will do it,’ he had said.

He knew she would do it, God bless her! She would understand why of all terrible things he dared to ask that of her; and she would do it. That was all there could be to arrange before—

Oliver was not of that mind that is the mode of the present moment. He was no doubter. He believed in the canon ‘gainst self-slaughter, as well as in righteousness and judgment to come; but there is something in the unutterable sensations with which a man finds himself thus placed before evils which are too many for him, driven to the last extremity, and unable to move one way or other, which works a strange change upon the mind on this as on other matters of faith. When we are doing any act in our own person, it seems so much less strange to us, so much more natural, than when we contemplate it from the point of view of another man. He did not think either of the sin or of the cowardice. He thought only of the last resort, the last way of escape from that which was intolerable, which was more than man could bear. To describe the way by which a man comes to this point, to entertain the idea of ending his own life, is impossible. Those who are brought so far seldom survive to tell how it has been. It seemed to Oliver something like the arising and going to the Father of the prodigal. God, it seemed to him, would understand it all; the confusion in his soul, the intolerableness, the impossibility. If anyone else misunderstood, God would understand; and as for the punishment that might follow, he thought that he could take that like a man. No punishment could be equal to this. He would say that he did not mean to avoid punishment, that he was ready for anything, only not this; not the ghastly life which was insupportable, not the falsehood, not the treachery. Suffering, honest suffering—yes!—torments if God thought it worth the trouble—anything except this, which was more than he could bear. His mind was all wrong, confused, stupefied with all that had happened to him, and with the turning upside down of all his purposes, and the bitter ending to what had been a good impulse, surely a good impulse, an impulse of pity without consideration of himself; also with the wretched state in which he had been living, the want of food, the want of sleep, the sense of treachery to all he loved, the union to all he loathed; it was all intolerable, insupportable, turning his brain.

He had a pair of pistols in his room—pretty toys, decorated with silver, wrought in delicate designs—which someone had given to him. He took them down and opened the box and examined them curiously to see how they worked and that all was in order. He looked at the little bullet which could do so much, and weighed it in his hand with a dazed smile, and a kind of strange amusement. So little—and yet in it lay that for which not all the wealth of the world could find an antidote. He charged both weapons with a smile at himself for that too, thinking how very unlikely it was that the two would be wanted, and feeling almost something of the pleasure with which a boy prepares for his first shot, with a half horror, half delight. And then he thought how it would be best to do it. He did not want to disfigure himself unnecessarily, to go through all eternity with a bound-up jaw, like—who was it? Robespierre. This brought a sort of smile upon his face; he knew that it was folly to think of Robespierre; for all eternity—with his face bound up! and yet it amused him to think of the awful, grotesque figure, and to determine that he should not be like that. The temple or behind the ear; that was the better way; and then there would be no disfigurement. The hair would hide it, and Grace would see him and not be horrified—not horrified—only perhaps broken-hearted. But that had to be, any way.

Would he hear the report as sound travels before his senses were all stilled? He heard something, a jar and tinkle, which made him start at the very moment he felt that cold mouth of death. The touch of the pistol and then a jerk of his arm and a clanging world of sound, and then—no more. It disturbed his arm and the steadiness of his touch; and the report followed harmlessly, the bullet going somewhere, he knew not where, leaving him sitting there with the jar of the concussion in the finger which had pulled that trigger. The sound seemed to wake him up like a clap of thunder. He sprang to his feet, flinging the little weapon away with a burning sense of despising himself, of scorn for his intention, scorn for his failure. Was he a coward too, doubly a coward, ready to run away, yet weak enough to be stopped in the act? A sudden heat of shame came over him; he burst into a laugh of scorn, self-ridicule, derision—God in heaven! had he been frightened at the last moment? by what, by his nerves, by a fancied sound, like a child?

What? what? a fancied sound? No; but the commonest, most vulgar noise in the world: the bell at his door, pealing, tingling, jarring, with a repeated and violent summons into the silence of the night.