"Yes, yes, Agnes, that'll be all right," she answered. "Go to sleep now." As she went back into her own room, she thought pa.s.singly to herself, "Strange that anyone can live so long and grow up so little."

She herself opened her bed, lay down on it resolutely, and blew out her candle.

Instantly the room seemed suffocatingly full of a thousand flying, disconnected pictures. The talk with Agnes had changed her mood. The dull, leaden weight of that numbing burden of inarticulate pain was broken into innumerable fragments. For a time, before she could collect herself to self-control, her thoughts whirled and roared in her head like a machine disconnected from its work, racing furiously till it threatens to shake itself to pieces. Everything seemed to come at once.

Frank Warner was dead. What would that mean to Nelly Powers?

Had there been enough bread left in the house till someone could drive the Ford to Ashley and buy some more?

Ought she to wear mourning for Cousin Hetty?

What had happened on the Eagle Rocks? Had Frank and 'Gene quarreled, or had 'Gene crept up behind Frank as he sighted along the compa.s.s?

How would they get Cousin Hetty's friends from the station at Ashley, out to the house, such feeble old people as they were? It would be better to have the services all at the church.

Had anything been decided about hymns? Someone had said something about it, but what had she ... oh, of course that had been the moment when Toucle had come in, and Mr. Bayweather had rushed away to tell Frank's mother. Frank's mother. His mother! Suppose that were to happen to Mark, or Paul? No, not such thoughts. They mustn't be let in at all, or you went mad.

Was it true that Elly cared nothing about her, that children didn't, for grown-ups, that she was nothing in Elly's life?

She was glad that Toucle had come back. There would be someone to help Neale with the children... .

_Neale_ ... the name brought her up abruptly. Her mind, hurrying, breathless, panting, was stopped by the name, as by a great rock in the path. There was an instant of blankness, as she faced it, as though it were a name she did not know. When she said that name, everything stopped going around in her head. She moved restlessly in her bed.

And then, as though she had gone around the rock, the rapid, pattering, painful rush of those incoherent ideas began again. Queer that n.o.body there, Mr. Bayweather, Agnes, Toucle, none of them seemed to realize that Frank had not fallen, that 'Gene had ... but of course she remembered they hadn't any idea of a possible connection between Frank and the Powers, and she had been the only one to see 'Gene in that terrible flight from the Rocks. Nelly had thought he had been cultivating corn all day. Of course n.o.body would think of anything but an accident. n.o.body would ever know.

Yes, it was true; it was true that she would touch Neale and never know it, never feel it ... how closely that had been observed, that she could take a handkerchief from his pocket as from a piece of furniture. It was true that Neale and she knew each other now till there was no hidden corner, no mystery, no possibility of a single unexpected thing between them. She had not realized it, but it was true. How could she not have seen that his presence left her wholly unmoved, indifferent now? But how could she have known it, so gradual had been the coming of satiety, until she had to contrast with it this fierce burning response to a fierce and new emotion? ...

Had she thought "indifference"? and "satiety"? Of whom had she been thinking? Not of _Neale_! Was that what had come of the great hour on Rocca di Papa? _Was that what human beings were?_

She had gone further this time, but now she was brought up short by the same blankness at the name of Neale, the same impossibility to think at all. She could not think about Neale tonight. All that must be put off till she was more like herself, till she was more steady. She was reeling now, with shock after shock; Cousin Hetty's death, 'Gene's dreadful secret, the discovery no longer to be evaded of what Vincent Marsh meant and was... .

She felt a sudden hurried impatient haste to be with Vincent again, to feel again the choking throb when she first saw him, the constant scared uncertainty of what he might say, what she might feel, what they both might do, from one moment to the next ... she could forget, in those fiery and potent draughts, everything, all this that was so hard and painful and that she could not understand and that was such a torment to try to understand. Everything would be swept away except ...

As though she had whirled suddenly about to see what was lurking there behind her, she whirled about and found the thought, "But I ought to tell someone, tell the police, that I saw 'Gene Powers running away after he had killed the man who wanted to take his wife from him."

Instantly there spoke out a bitter voice, "No, I shall tell no one.

'Gene has known how to keep Nelly. Let him have her for all his life."

Another voice answered, "Frank's mother ... his mother!"

And both of these were drowned by a tide of sickness as the recollection came upon her of that dreadful haste, those horrible labored breaths.

She sat up with a great sweeping gesture of her arms, as though she must fight for air. The little room seemed palpably crammed with those jostling, shouting, battling thoughts. She slid from the bed and went to the window, leaning far out from it, and looking up at the sky, immeasurably high and black, studded thick with stars.

They looked down disdainfully at her fever and misery. A chilling consolation fell from them upon her, like a cold dew. She felt herself shrink to imperceptible proportions. What did they matter, the struggles of the maggots who crawled about the folds of the globe, itself the most trifling and insignificant of all the countless worlds which people the aimless disorder of the universe? What difference did it make? Anything they did was so soon indistinguishable from anything else. The easiest way ... to yield to whatever had the strongest present force ... that was as good as any other way in the great and blind confusion of it all.

After she had gone back to bed, she could still see the silent mult.i.tude of stars above her, enormous, remote beyond imagination, and it was under their thin, cold, indifferent gaze that she finally fell asleep.

CHAPTER XXII

EUGENIA DOES WHAT SHE CAN

July 22.

Agnes brought upstairs an armful of white roses. "The lady that visits at your house, she brought them from your garden and she wants to see you if she can."

Eugenia of course. That was unexpected. She must have made an effort to do that, she who hated sickness and death and all dark things.

"Yes, tell her I will be down in a moment. Take her in a gla.s.s of cold water, too, will you please, Agnes. The walk over here must have been terribly hot for her."

The roses showed that. They were warm to the touch and as she looked at them intently, at their white clear faces, familiar to her as those of human beings, bent on her with a mute message from the garden, she saw they had begun to droop imperceptibly, that the close, fine texture of their petals had begun ever so slightly to wither. She sprinkled them, put their stems deep into water and went downstairs, wiping her moist hands on her handkerchief.

Eugenia in mauve organdie stood up from the deep Windsor chair where she had sunk down, and came forward silently to greet her. They kissed each other ceremoniously in token of the fact that a death lay between them and the last time they had met ... was it only yesterday morning?

"Were you able to sleep at all, Marise? You look shockingly tired."

"Oh yes, thanks. I slept well enough. Are the children all right?"

Eugenia nodded, "Yes, as usual."

"Did their father tell them the news of Cousin Hetty's death? How did they take it? Elly perhaps was ..."

Eugenia did not know about this, had not happened to hear anybody say.

But old Toucle was back, at least, to do the work.

"I knew she must be," said Marise. "She was here last night. It was she, you know, who found Frank Warner's body at the foot of ... of course you've heard of that?"

Eugenia made a little wry face. Of course she had heard of that, she said with an accent of distaste. Everybody was talking about the melodramatic accident, as probably they would still be talking about it a hundred years from now, up here where nothing happened. People had come all the way from North Ashley to look at the place, and some of the men and boys had gone around up to the top of the Eagle Rocks to see where Frank had lost his footing. They found his surveyor's compa.s.s still set upon its staff. It was where the line ran very near the edge and Frank must have stepped over the cliff as he was sighting along it.

They could see torn leaves and stripped twigs as though he had tried to save himself as he fell.

She stopped speaking. Marise found herself too sick and shaken to venture any comment. There was rather a long silence, such as was natural and suitable under the circ.u.mstances, in that house. Presently Marise broke this to ask if anyone knew how Frank's mother had taken the news, although she knew of course Eugenia was the last person of whom to ask such a question. As she expected, Eugenia had only lifted eyebrows, a faint slow shake of her head and a small graceful shrug of her shoulders, her usual formula for conveying her ignorance of common facts, and her indifference to that ignorance.

But Marise, looking at her, as they sat opposite each other in the twilight of the closely shuttered room, was struck by the fact that Eugenia did not seem wholly like herself. Her outward aspect was the same, the usual exquisite exact.i.tude of detail, every blond hair shining and in its place, the flawless perfection of her flesh as miraculous as ever, her tiny white shoe untouched by dust through which she must have walked to reach the house. But there was something ... in her eyes, perhaps ... which now looked back at Marise with an expression which Marise did not understand or recognize. If it had not been impossible to think it of Eugenia, Marise would have imagined that her eyes looked troubled, excited. Was it possible that even in her safe ivory tower of aloofness from life, she had felt the jarring blow of the brutally immediate tragedy of the Eagle Rocks? Or perhaps even Cousin Hetty's disappearance ... she had always hated reminders of death.

As Marise, surprised, looked at her and wondered thus pa.s.singly if she felt any reverberation from the tragedy-laden air about them, Eugenia's face hardened back into its usual smooth calm; over the eyes that had been for an instant transparent and alive with troubled brightness, slid their acquired expression of benignant indifference. She answered Marise's faintly inquiring gaze by getting up as if to go, remarking in a clear low tone (she was the only person who had come into the house who had not succ.u.mbed to that foolish, instinctive m.u.f.fling of the voice), "I forgot to give you a message from Neale. He is obliged to be away today, on business, something about a deed to some wood-land."

Marise was slightly surprised. "Where is he going?" she asked. "In the Ford? On the train?" How little she had thought about the mill of late, that she should be so entirely blank as to this business trip.

"Oh, I didn't even try to understand," said Eugenia, smoothing the shining silk of her parasol. "Business finds no echo in me, you know. A man came to supper last night, unexpectedly, and they talked interminably about some deal, lumbering, lines, surveys, deeds ... till Toucle came in with the news of the accident. The man was from New Hampshire, with that droll, flat New Hampshire accent. You know how they talk, 'bahn' and 'yahd' for barn and yard."

The words "New Hampshire" and "deeds" stirred a disagreeable a.s.sociation of ideas in Marise's mind. The shyster lawyer who had done the Powers out of their inheritance had come from New Hampshire. However, she supposed there were other people in the state besides dishonest lawyers.

Eugenia went on casually. "It seemed quite important. Neale was absorbed by it. He told me afterward, Neale did, that the man had acted as agent for him some years ago in securing a big tract of wood-land around here, something that had been hard to get hold of."