I followed him.
Let it not be supposed from the above scene that there was any ill-feeling between Bastin and Bickley. On the contrary they were much attached to each other, and this kind of quarrel meant no more than the strong expression of their individual views to which they were accustomed from their college days. For instance Bastin was always talking about the early Christians and missionaries, while Bickley loathed both, the early Christians because of the destruction which they had wrought in Egypt, Italy, Greece and elsewhere, of all that was beautiful; and the missionaries because, as he said, they were degrading and spoiling the native races and by inducing them to wear clothes, rendering them liable to disease. Bastin would answer that their souls were more important than their bodies, to which Bickley replied that as there was no such thing as a soul except in the stupid imagination of priests, he differed entirely on the point. As it was quite impossible for either to convince the other, there the conversation would end, or drift into something in which they were mutually interested, such as natural history and the hygiene of the neighbourhood.
Here I may state that Bickley’s keen professional eye was not mistaken when he diagnosed Mrs. Bastin’s state of health as dangerous. As a matter of fact she was suffering from heart disease that a doctor can often recognise by the colour of the lips, etc., which brought about her death under the following circumstances:
Her husband attended some ecclesiastical function at a town over twenty miles away and was to have returned by a train which would have brought him home about five o’clock. As he did not arrive she waited at the station for him until the last train came in about seven o’clock—without the beloved Basil. Then, on a winter’s night she tore up to the Priory and begged me to lend her a dogcart in which to drive to the said town to look for him. I expostulated against the folly of such a proceeding, saying that no doubt Basil was safe enough but had forgotten to telegraph, or thought that he would save the sixpence which the wire cost.
Then it came out, to Natalie’s and my intense amusement, that all this was the result of her jealous nature of which I have spoken. She said she had never slept a night away from her husband since they were married and with so many “designing persons” about she could not say what might happen if she did so, especially as he was “such a favourite and so handsome.” (Bastin was a fine looking man in his rugged way.)
I suggested that she might have a little confidence in him, to which she replied darkly that she had no confidence in anybody.
The end of it was that I lent her the cart with a fast horse and a good driver, and off she went. Reaching the town in question some two and a half hours later, she searched high and low through wind and sleet, but found no Basil. He, it appeared, had gone on to Exeter, to look at the cathedral where some building was being done, and missing the last train had there slept the night.
About one in the morning, after being nearly locked up as a mad woman, she drove back to the Vicarage, again to find no Basil. Even then she did not go to bed but raged about the house in her wet clothes, until she fell down utterly exhausted. When her husband did return on the following morning, full of information about the cathedral, she was dangerously ill, and actually passed away while uttering a violent tirade against him for his supposed suspicious proceedings.
That was the end of this truly odious British matron.
In after days Bastin, by some peculiar mental process, canonised her in his imagination as a kind of saint. “So loving,” he would say, “such a devoted wife! Why, my dear Humphrey, I can assure you that even in the midst of her death-struggle her last thoughts were of me,” words that caused Bickley to snort with more than usual vigour, until I kicked him to silence beneath the table.
IV
Death and Departure
Now I must tell of my own terrible sorrow, which turned my life to bitterness and my hopes to ashes.
Never were a man and a woman happier together than I and Natalie. Mentally, physically, spiritually we were perfectly mated, and we loved each other dearly. Truly we were as one. Yet there was something about her which filled me with vague fears, especially after she found that she was to become a mother. I would talk to her of the child, but she would sigh and shake her head, her eyes filling with tears, and say that we must not count on the continuance of such happiness as ours, for it was too great.
I tried to laugh away her doubts, though whenever I did so I seemed to hear Bastin’s slow voice remarking casually that she might die, as he might have commented on the quality of the claret. At last, however, I grew terrified and asked her bluntly what she meant.
“I don’t quite know, dearest,” she replied, “especially as I am wonderfully well. But—but—”
“But what?” I asked.
“But I think that our companionship is going to be broken for a little while.”
“For a little while!” I exclaimed.
“Yes, Humphrey. I think that I shall be taken away from you—you know what I mean,” and she nodded towards the churchyard.
“Oh, my God!” I groaned.
“I want to say this,” she added quickly, “that if such a thing should happen, as it happens every day, I implore you, dearest Humphrey, not to be too much distressed, since I am sure that you will find me again. No, I can’t explain how or when or where, because
