The sudden death of John Bond caused an interruption in the lives of most of the people concerned in this history. George Wood had received one of those violent mental impressions from which men do not recover for many weeks. It was long before he could rid his dreams of the ever-repeated scene. When he closed his eyes the white sail of the little cutter rose before them, the sharp and sudden squall struck the canvas, and almost at the same instant he felt himself once more in the cool depths, struggling with a man already almost dead, striving with agonised determination to hold his breath, then abandoning the effort and losing consciousness, only to awake with a violent start and a short, smothered cry.
293Even Totty, who was not naturally nervous, was haunted by terrible visions in the night and was a little pale and subdued during a fortnight after the accident. Mamie wore a strange expression, which neither George nor her mother could understand. Her lips were often tightly set together as though in some desperate effort, in which her eyelids drooped and her fingers grasped convulsively whatever they held. She was living over again that awful moment when she had clutched what she had believed to be the dead body of the man she loved, and almost unaided, she knew not how, had dragged it into the boat. There was another instant, too, which recalled itself vividly to her memory, the one in which the reviving man had pronounced Constance’s name, and Constance had shown her triumph in her eyes.
As often happens in such cases, both George and Mamie had been less exhausted on the evening of the fatal day than they had been for several days afterwards. It was long before Mamie made any reference again to the first word he had spoken with returning consciousness. She often, indeed, stood gazing across the river, towards the scene of the tragedy and beyond the tall trees in the direction of the house that was hidden behind them, and George knew what was in her thoughts better than he could tell what was in his own. He had learned soon enough that he owed a large share of gratitude for the preservation of his life to Mamie herself. The young doctor who had done so much, had been to see him more than once and had repeated to him that if he had been left, even with his head above water, but without the immediate assistance necessary in such cases, during two or three minutes more, he would in all likelihood never have breathed again. The presence of a boat on the spot, and above all Mamie’s exhibition of an almost supernatural strength in getting George into the wherry, had really saved his life. Without her, the four men who had acted so promptly would have been helpless. Their own craft was adrift and empty, and they had been 294unable to right the cutter so as to make use of her, light as she was. The doctor did not fail to say the same thing to Mamie, complimenting her on her presence of mind and extraordinary energy in a way that brought the colour to her pale cheeks. George felt that a new tie bound him to his cousin.
It was indeed impossible that where there was already so much genuine affection on the one side and so much devoted love on the other, such an accident should not increase both in a like proportion. Whether it were really true that Mamie had been the immediate means of saving George or not, the testimony was universally in favour of that opinion, and the girl herself was persuaded that without her help he would have perished. She had saved him at the moment of death, and she loved him ten times more passionately than before. As for him, he doubted his own power to reason in the matter. He had been fond of her before; he was devotedly attached to her now. His whole nature was full of gratitude and trust where she was concerned, and his relations with Constance Fearing began to take the appearance of an infidelity to Mamie. If he asked himself whether he felt or could ever feel for his cousin what he had felt so strongly for Constance, the answer was plain enough. It was impossible. But if he put the matter differently he found a different response in his heart. If, thought he, the two young girls were drowning before his eyes, as John Bond and he had been drowning before theirs, and if it were only possible to save one, which should it be? In that imaginary moment that was so real from his recent experience, when he was swimming forward with all his might to reach the spot in time, would he have struck out to the right and saved Mamie, or would he have turned to the left and drawn Constance ashore? There was no hesitation. Mamie should have lived and Constance might have died, though he would have risked his own life a hundred times to help her after the first was safe, and though the thought 295of her death sent a sharp pain through his heart. Was he then in love with both? That was an impossibility, he thought, an absurdity that could never be a reality, the creation perhaps of some morbid story-maker, evolved without experience from the elaboration of imaginary circumstances.
Since he had entered upon this frame of mind he had grown very cautious and reticent. He was playing with fire on both sides. That Mamie loved him with all her heart he now no longer doubted, and as for Constance, now that he had not seen her for some time and had found leisure to reflect upon her conduct, it seemed clear that the latter could not be explained upon any ordinary theory of friendship, and if so, she also loved him in her own strange way. He wished it had been easier to decide between the two, if he must decide at all. If there was to be no decision, he should lose no time in leaving the neighbourhood. To stay where he was would be to play a contemptibly irresponsible part. He was disturbing Constance’s peace of mind, and he was not sure that at any moment he might not do or say something that would make Mamie believe that he loved her. He owed too much to these two beings, about whom his strongest affections were centred, he could not and would not give either the one or the other a moment’s pain.
Totty was also not without her apprehensions in the matter. When she had somewhat recovered from the impression of the accident, she began to think it very odd that George should have been sitting alone with Constance under the trees on that Sunday afternoon. She remembered that he had disappeared mysteriously soon after luncheon, without saying anything of his intentions. She argued that he had certainly not met Constance by accident, and that if the meeting had been agreed upon the two must have met before. She knew that George had once loved the girl, and all she positively knew of the cause of the coldness between them 296was what she had learned from himself. She had undoubtedly refused him and he had been very angry, but that did not prevent his offering himself again, and did not by any means exclude the possibility of his being accepted. Totty was worldly-wise, and she understood young women of Constance’s type better than most of them understand themselves. They imagine that in refusing men they are temporarily, and by an act of their own volition, putting them back from the state of love to the state of devoted friendship, in order to discover whether they themselves are in earnest. Many men bear the treatment kindly and reappear at the expected time with their second declaration, are accepted, happily married and forgotten promptly by designing mothers. Occasionally a man appears who is like George Wood, who raves, storms, grows thin and refuses to speak to the heartless little flirt who has wrecked his existence, until, on a summer’s day he is unexpectedly forced into her society again, when he finds that he loves her still, tells her so and receives a kind answer, prompted by the fear of losing him altogether.
The prospect was not a pleasant one. If at the present juncture Constance were to succeed in winning George back, Totty was capable of being roused to great and revengeful wrath. Hitherto she had not even thought of such a catastrophe as probable, but the discovery that the two had been spending a quiet afternoon together under the trees strangely altered the face of the situation. If, however, George still felt anything for the girl, Totty had not failed to see that she also had gained something by the accident. It was a great point that Mamie should have saved George’s life, and the longer Mrs. Trimm thought of it, the more sure she became that he had owed his salvation to the young girl alone, and that the four gentlemen who had appeared so opportunely had only been accessories to her action. George must be hard-hearted indeed if he were not grateful, and the natural way of showing his gratitude should be to fall in 297love without delay. But George was an inscrutable being, as was sufficiently shown by his secretly meeting Constance. Totty wondered whether she ought not to give him a hint, to convey tactfully to him the information that Mamie was deeply in love, to let him know that he was welcome to marry her. She hesitated to do this, however, fearing lest George should take to flight. She knew better than any one that he had been more attracted by the comfort, the quiet and the luxury of her home than by Mamie, when he had consented to spend the summer under the roof, and though Mamie herself had now grown to be an attraction in his eyes, she did not believe that the girl had inspired in him anything like the sincere passion he had felt for Constance.
Meanwhile those who had been most nearly affected by the calamity were passing through one of those periods of life upon which men and women afterwards look back with amazement, wondering how they could have borne so much without breaking under the strain. Grace was beside herself with grief. After the first few days of passionate weeping she regained some command over her actions, but the deep-seated, unrelenting pain, which no longer found vent in tears was harder to bear, inasmuch as it was more conscious of itself and of its own fearful proportions. For many days, the miserable woman never left her room, sitting from morning till evening in the same attitude, dry-eyed and motionless, gazing at the place where her dead husband had lain; and in that same place she lay all night, sleepless, waiting for the dawn, looking for the first grey light at the window, listening for his breathing, in the mad hope that it had all been but a dream which would vanish before the morning sun. Her heart would not break, her strong, well-balanced intelligence would not give way, though she longed for death or madness to end her sufferings.
At first Constance was always with her, but before long she understood that the strong woman preferred to be alone. All that could be done was to insist upon her 298taking food at regular intervals and to pray that her state might soon change. Once or twice Constance urged her to leave the place and to allow herself to be taken to the city, to the seaside, abroad, anywhere away from everything that reminded her of the past. But Grace stared at her with coldly wondering eyes.
“It is all I have left—the memory,” she said, and relapsed into silence.
Constance consulted physicians without her sister’s knowledge, but they said that there was nothing to be done, that such cases were rare but not unknown, that Mrs. Bond’s great strength of constitution would survive the strain since it had resisted the first shock. And so it proved in the end. For on a certain morning in September, when Constance was seated alone in a corner of the old-fashioned garden, she had been startled by the sudden appearance of a tall figure in black, and of a face which she hardly recognised as being her sister’s. She had been accustomed to seeing her in the dimness of a darkened room, wrapped in loose garments, her smooth brown hair hanging down in straight plaits. She was dressed now with all the scrupulous care of appearance that was natural to her, with perfect simplicity as became her deep mourning, but also with perfect taste. But the correctness of her costume only served to show the changes that had taken place during the past weeks. She was thin almost to emaciation, her smooth young cheeks were hollow and absolutely colourless, her brown eyes were sunken and their depth was accentuated by the dark rings that surrounded them. But she was erect as she walked, and she held her head as proudly as ever. Her strength was not gone, for she moved easily and without effort. Any one would have said, however, that, instead of being nearly two years younger than Constance, as she actually was, she must be several years older.
When Constance saw her, she rose quickly with the first expression of joy that had escaped her lips for many a day.
299“Thank God!” she exclaimed. “At last!”
“At last,” Grace answered quietly. “One thing only, Constance,” she continued after a pause. “I will be myself again. But do not talk of going away, and never speak of what has happened.”
“I never will, dear,” answered the older girl.
There had been many inquiries made at the house by messengers from Mrs. Trimm, but neither she, nor Mamie nor George had ventured to approach the place upon which such awful sorrow had descended. They had been surprised at not learning that the two sisters had left their country-seat, and had made all sorts of conjectures concerning their delay in going away, but they gradually became accustomed to the idea that Grace might prefer to stay where she was.
“It would kill me!” Totty exclaimed with much emphasis.
“I could not do it,” said Mamie, looking at George and feeling suddenly how hateful the sight of the river would have been to her if she had not seen his eyes open on that terrible day when he lay like dead before her.
“I would not, whether I could or not,” George said. And he on his part wondered what he would have felt, had Constance or Mamie, or both, perished instead of John Bond. A slight shiver ran through him, and told him that he would have felt something he had never experienced before.
One morning when they were all at breakfast a note was brought to George in a handwriting he did not recognise, but which was oddly familiar from its resemblance to Constance’s.
“Do see what it is!” exclaimed Totty before he had time to ask permission to read it.
His face e............