_ CHAPTER XIX. "AND YOU COULD DO THIS, FELIX BRAND!"
The June afternoon was glowing with sunshine and all the world was clothed in the sumptuous beauty of spring at its highest tide. Henrietta Marne looked about her as she walked slowly up the street toward her home with a heart more at ease than she had known for many weeks. For she had that day secured a position at a salary equal to that she was receiving from Felix Brand and was to begin work in it as soon as the time should expire for which she had already given him notice.
"Difficulties always disappear as soon as you tackle them in real earnest," she was saying to herself as she smiled in pleasure of the green world all about her and of the satisfaction that glowed in her own breast. "Everything is coming out all right. When Hugh Gordon comes back he'll be pleased to find that I've acted on his advice. I'm sorry, awfully sorry, about Mr. Brand--it was so delightful working for him at first, and for a long time--but if he will act like this, what can he expect?"
Glancing upward at the windows of her mother's room as she entered her gate she was surprised not to see there a loving face on the watch for her coming. She opened the front door and the silence of the house struck her heart with a chill of apprehension.
"Mother! Bella!" she called, a flutter of alarm in her tones. "Where are you?"
"Miss Harry! Miss Harry!" came Delia's voice in response. "Do come here, quick, quick!"
She rushed to the dining room and saw her sister stretched upon the lounge and Delia kneeling beside her. On the floor was an empty bottle bearing a death's head and cross-bones and "strychnine" upon its label. She herself had bought it on their physician's prescription, as a tonic for Mrs. Marne, only a few days before.
"What is it, Delia? Did she take that poison?" gasped Henrietta.
"Yes'm, she took it, the whole bottle full. I heard her scream in the hall an' soon she come flyin' in here, an' she snatched up that bottle an' swallowed all them pills before I knew what she was doin'. Then she tumbled down an' I grabbed her an' stuck me finger down her throat. She fought me and tried to push me away, but I wouldn't an' I kep' on stickin' me finger way down an' after a while she spewed it all up. Oh, the dear an' lovely darlin', an' her so merry an' happy all the time! She won't die now, will she, Miss Harry?"
Henrietta had hastily mixed an emetic and together they forced it down her throat.
"I hope she won't, Delia--I hope you've saved her. But we must have a doctor now, at once. Run, Delia, and send the first person you can find as fast as he can go for a doctor to come immediately--say it's a case of life and death."
Delia rushed away and Henrietta, though her heart was full of anxiety about her mother, hovered over Isabella, who lay with closed eyes and ghastly face, moaning but seemingly unconscious.
Presently, fearful of what the silence of the house might mean with regard to its other occupant, she left her sister and hurried upstairs. There she found Mrs. Marne unconscious on the floor. But she knew what should be done and met the crisis with quick and capable action. And in a few moments more she heard in the hall below the voice of their own physician, whom the maid had luckily encountered nearby upon the street.
But scarcely had she supported Mrs. Marne to her bed when a shriek in Delia's voice, followed by the cry of "Doctor! Miss Harry! Come quick!" sent her on flying feet down the stairs again. Isabella, whom she had thought unconscious, had risen and tottered to the kitchen. There the maid, rushing on from the empty dining-room, had found her beside the sink with a bottle of carbolic acid upraised, ready to pour down her throat. Delia had struck it from her hand barely in time to save her from all but a chance burn upon her cheek.
"She must have had some sudden and very serious shock," said the physician later, as he and Henrietta stood beside the bed where Isabella lay, at last sleeping quietly but moaning in her slumber. "Her second attempt to kill herself shows how profound it must have been. But she will come through all right now, I think, though her recovery will perhaps be slow. What she will need more than anything else will be to talk, and as soon as it is prudent you must persuade her to confide in you and tell you the whole story of whatever it was that led her to take this violent measure. Her nature is one that needs sympathy and support, now far more than ever, and the sooner she can be led to pour out all her trouble the sooner she will be able to get her grip on life again. But of course you'll keep all the knowledge of it that you can away from your mother. You'll have to use your own discretion about that. She's had a pretty severe shock, too, and, though she was getting on so well, it's likely to set her back a good deal."
For days Isabella lay in her bed, like a broken, withered flower, weeping much and asking between her sobs why they had not let her die. But at last her sister's love and tender, persistent effort broke through the wrappings of grief and shame that had kept her bound in silence and in Henrietta's arms she sobbed out the pitiful tale that had come to so tragic an ending.
"Oh, Harry," she said, "I can't understand why this awful thing should have happened when I meant no harm at all. I can't see yet that there was anything wrong in my going out with Mr. Brand now and then. It wasn't many times, you know, and always he had some business errand and just stopped for me to give me a little pleasure and to have some company himself. I suppose he liked to have me go with him because I was always jolly and kept him in good spirits. For I did notice, Harry, that when he came he always seemed rather blue and anxious, and then, after we had been out for a while and I had laughed and chattered a lot, he would be more cheerful and by the time we would get back he would seem quite himself again.
"Since I have been lying here and thinking and thinking, Harry, dear," she stopped and hid her face and a shiver of shame passed over her body. Henrietta's arms tightened about her and she whispered soothing, loving words. "I've been thinking, dear," Isabella went on brokenly, "that perhaps that was why he always stopped somewhere and ordered a bottle of champagne. Because it did put me in such gay spirits and, I suppose, made me more lively and just that much better company. And that, I guess, was what he wanted. I never drank but little, never more than a glass or two, and I couldn't see any harm in it, though you did think I oughtn't. Sometimes I held back and asked him if he thought I'd better, and he always laughed at me and urged me on and made it seem silly in me to have scruples.
"But that last day--" again she stopped and broke into a passion of sobbing that took all of Henrietta's loving sympathy and tenderness to soothe. "You asked me not to go again," she went on after a while in trembling tones, "and when he came mother, too, thought I'd better not. Oh, Harry, how I wish I had heeded you and refused to go! I could have made some excuse, and then--Oh, Harry, Harry, I don't want to live any longer!"
"There, there, darling!" soothed her sister. "Try to control yourself and tell me all that happened. I'm sure it couldn't have been anything so very bad. Tell me all about it, dear, and then you'll feel better."
"Mr. Brand seemed so different from what he used to be," she presently went on, "and I began to understand what you told us about the change in him. I was just a little afraid after we started, he seemed to be in such an ugly temper and, oh, Harry, what a bad man he looks now! I begged him to bring me home again after a little while, but he wouldn't and said his business was too important to be put aside for my whims.
"I was a little frightened and a good deal anxious and so of course I wasn't as gay as usual, and that seemed to make him angry. Then he said we'd stop and have some wine and I thought perhaps it would be best to humor him and then maybe I could persuade him to bring me home. I meant not to drink more than a glass, but he made me--perhaps he thought it would make me more lively. Anyway, he was so rough in his manner and looks and there was such an angry gleam in his eyes that I was too frightened not to do what he told me to. And by the time we got home I was--oh, Harry, I can't say it--and Warren met me as I came in and saw--and he said--an awful thing--and rushed away--and it's all over, Harry--I can never see him again--it's all over."
"Don't think that, yet, Bella, dear. I'll write to him and explain it all, and he'll know it wasn't your fault. He won't blame you. He's too kind-hearted and good not to see that it was hasty of him to act as he did."
"That won't matter, Harry. I'd like him to know that I'm not the kind of woman he seemed to think. But I could never, never look him in the face again after--that--after what he saw and said. I'd always think he was thinking of it. It's all over, Harry, it's all over."
When at last Henrietta had soothed her sister to sleep she stood beside the bed looking down at Isabella's grief-stricken face and listening to the sobs that now and then convulsed her throat.
"And you could do this, Felix Brand!" she said bitterly. "You, that we thought so noble and good! Hugh Gordon is right--you are a wicked man, and if you are the one he meant you don't deserve to live!" _