What could they speak but inadequate words: “Jamie, don’t, don’t! You loved each other—isn’t that something? Remember that, Jamie.” They could only speak the inadequate words that are given to people on such occasions.
But after a while the storm seemed to pass, Jamie seemed to grow suddenly calm and collected: “You two,” she said gravely, “I want to thank you for all you’ve been to Barbara and me.”
Mary started crying.
“Don’t cry,” said Jamie.
The evening came. Stephen lighted the lamp, then she made up the stove while Mary laid the supper. Jamie ate a little, and she actually smiled when Stephen poured her out a weak whiskey.
“Drink it, Jamie—it may help you to get some sleep.”
Jamie shook her head: “I shall sleep without it—but I want to be left alone tonight, Stephen.”
Mary protested but Jamie was firm: “I want to be left alone with her, please—you do understand that, Stephen, don’t you?”
Stephen hesitated, then she saw Jamie’s face; it was full of a new and calm resolution: “It’s my right,” she was saying, “I’ve a right to be alone with the woman I love before they—take her.”
Jamie held the lamp to light them downstairs—her hand, Stephen thought, seemed amazingly steady.
VIII
The next morning when they went to the studio quite early, they heard voices coming from the topmost landing. The concierge was standing outside Jamie’s door, and with her was a young man, one of the tenants. The concierge had tried the door; it was locked and no one made any response to her knocking. She had brought Jamie up a cup of hot coffee—Stephen saw it, the coffee had slopped into the saucer. Either pity or the memory of Mary’s large tips, had apparently touched the heart of this woman.
Stephen hammered loudly: “Jamie!” she called, and then again and again: “Jamie! Jamie!”
The young man set his shoulder to a panel, and all the while he pushed he was talking. He lived just underneath, but last night he was out, not returning until nearly six that morning. He had heard that one of the girls had died—the little one—she had always looked fragile.
Stephen added her strength to his; the woodwork was damp and rotten with age, the lock suddenly gave and the door swung inwards.
Then Stephen saw: “Don’t come here—go back, Mary!”
But Mary followed them into the studio.
So neat, so amazingly neat it was for Jamie, she who had always been so untidy, she who had always littered up the place with her large, awkward person and shabby possessions, she who had always been Barbara’s despair … Just a drop or two of blood on the floor, just a neat little hole low down in her left side. She must have fired upwards with great foresight and skill—and they had not even known that she owned a revolver!
And so Jamie who dared not go home to Beedles for fear of shaming the woman she loved, Jamie who dared not openly mourn lest Barbara’s name be defiled through her mourning, Jamie had dared to go home to God—to trust herself to His more perfect mercy, even as Barbara had gone home before her.
LI
I
The tragic deaths of Barbara and Jamie cast a gloom over everyone who had known them, but especially over Mary and Stephen. Again and again Stephen blamed herself for having left Jamie on that fatal evening; if she had only insisted upon staying, the tragedy might never have happened, she might somehow have been able to impart to the girl the courage and strength to go on living. But great as the shock undoubtedly was to Stephen, to Mary it was even greater, for together with her very natural grief, was a new and quite unexpected emotion, the emotion of fear. She was suddenly afraid, and now this fear looked out of her eyes and crept into her voice when she spoke of Jamie.
“To end in that way, to have killed herself; Stephen, it’s so awful that such things can happen—they were like you and me.” And then she would go over every sorrowful detail of Barbara’s last illness, every detail of their finding of Jamie’s body.
“Did it hurt, do you think, when she shot herself? When you shot that wounded horse at the front, he twitched such a lot, I shall never forget it—and Jamie was all alone that night, there was no one there to help in her pain. It’s all so ghastly; supposing it hurt her!”
Useless for Stephen to quote the doctor who had said that death had been instantaneous; Mary was obsessed by the horror of the thing, and not only its physical horror either, but by the mental and spiritual suffering that must have strengthened the will to destruction.
“Such despair,” she would say, “such utter despair … and that was the end of all their loving. I can’t bear it!” And then she would hide her face against Stephen’s strong and protective shoulder.
Oh, yes, there was now little room for doubt, the whole business was preying badly on Mary.
Sometimes strange, amorous moods would seize her, in which she must kiss Stephen rather wildly: “Don’t let go of me, darling—never let go. I’m afraid; I think it’s because of what’s happened.”
Her kisses would awaken a swift response, and so in these days that were shadowed by death, they clung very desperately to life with the passion they had felt when first they were lovers, as though only by constantly feeding that flame could they hope to ward off some unseen disaster.
II
At this time of shock, anxiety and strain, Stephen turned to Valérie Seymour as many another had done before
