# The Irrational Knot/Chapter XXI

One day Eliza, out of patience, came to Mrs. Myers, and said:
"A' thin, maam, will you come up and spake to Miss Conolly. She's rasin ructions above stairs."
"Oh dear, oh dear!" said Mrs. Myers. "Cant you keep her quiet?"
"Arra, how can I kape her quiet, an she cryin an roarin, dyin an desarted?"
"Ask Mrs. Forster to go in and coax her to stop."
"Mrs. Forsther's at dhuddher ind o the town. Whisht! There she is, callin me. Youll have to gup to her, maam. Faith I wont go next or near her."
"There's no use in my going up, Eliza. What can I do?"
Eliza had nothing to suggest. "I'm sure, maam," she pleaded, "if she wont mind you, she wont mind me—bad manners to her!"
Mrs. Myers hesitated. The lodger became noisier.
"I spose Ive got to go," said Mrs. Myers, plaintively. She went upstairs and found Susanna lying on the sofa, groaning, with a dressing-gown and a pair of thick boots on.
"What is the matter with you, Miss Susan? Youre goin on fit to raise the street."
"For God's sake go and get something for me. Make the doctor do something. I'm famishing. I must be poisoned."
"Lord forbid!"
"Look at me. I cant eat anything. Oh! I cant even drink. I tell you I am dying of thirst."
"Well, Miss Susan, thers plenty for you to eat and drink."
"What is the good of that, when I can neither eat nor drink? Nothing will stay inside me. If I could only swallow brandy, I shouldnt care. I thought I could die drunk. Oh! Send Eliza out for some laudanum. I cant stand this: I'll kill myself."
"Be quiet, Miss Susan: youll be better presently. Whats the use of talking-about the doctor? He says youll not be able to drink for days, and that you will get your health back in consequence. You are doing yourself no good by screeching like that, and you are ruining me and my house."
"Your house is all you care about. Curse you! I hope you may die deserted yourself. Dont go away. Dear Aunt Sally, you wont leave me here alone, will you? If you do, I'll scream like a hundred devils."
"I dont know what to do with you," said Mrs. Myers, crying. "Youll drive me as mad as yourself. Why did I ever let you into this house?"
"Oh, bother! Are you beginning to howl now? Have you any sardines, or anything spicy? I think I could eat some salted duck. No, I couldnt, though. Go for the doctor. There must be something that will do me good. What use is he if he can't set me right? All I want is something that will make me able to drink a tumbler of brandy."
"The Lord help you! Praise goodness! here's Mrs. Forster coming up. Whatll she think of you if you keep moaning like that? Mrs. Forster: will you step in here and try to quiet her a bit? She's clean mad."
"Come here," cried Susanna, as Marian entered. "Come and sit beside me. You may get out, you old cat: I dont want you any longer."
"Hush, pray," said Marian, putting her bonnet aside and sitting down by the sofa. "What is the matter?"
"The same as last night, only a great deal worse," said Susanna, shutting her eyes and turning her head aside. "It's all up with me this time, Mrs. Ned. I'm dying, not of drink, but of the want of it. Is that fiend of a woman gone?"
"Yes. You ought not to wound her as you did just now. She has been very kind to you."
"I dont care. Oh, dear me, I wonder how long this is going to last?"
"Shall I go for the doctor?"
"No; what can he do? Stay with me. I wish I could sleep or eat."
"You will be better soon. The doctor says that Nature is making an effort to rescue you from your habit by making it impossible for you to drink. Try and be patient. Will you not take off those heavy boots?"
"No, I cant feel my feet without them. I shall never be better," said Susanna, writhing impatiently. "I'm done for. How old are you? You neednt mind telling me. I shall soon be beyond repeating it."
"I was twenty-five in June last"
"I am only twenty-nine. I started at eighteen, and got to the top of the tree in seven years. I came down quicker than I went up. I might have gone on easily for fifteen years more, only for drinking champagne. I wish I had my life to live over again: you wouldnt catch me playing burlesque. If I had got the chance, I know I could have played tragedy or real Italian opera. I had to work hard at first; and they wont fill my place, very readily: thats one comfort. My cleverness was my ruin. Ned was not half so quick. It used to take him months to learn things that I picked up offhand, and yet you see how much better he has done than I."
"Do not disturb yourself with vain regrets. Think of something else. Shall we talk about Marmaduke?"
"No, I dont particularly care to. Somehow, at my pass, one thinks most about one's self, and about things that happened long ago. People that I came to know later on, like Bob, seem to be slipping away from me. There was a baritone in my father's company, a tremendous man, with shining black eyes, and a voice like a great bell—quite pretty at the top, though: he must have been sixty at least; and he was very fat; but he was the most dignified man I ever saw. You should have heard him do the Duke in Lucrezia Borgia, or sing Pro Peccatis from Rossini's Stabat Mater! I was ten years old when he was with us, and my grand ambition was to sing with him when I grew up. He would shake his head if he saw Susanetta now. I would rather hear him sing three bars than have ten visits from Bob. Oh, dear! I thought this cursed pain was getting numbed, but it is worse than ever."
"Try to keep from thinking of it. I have often wondered that you never speak of your child. I have heard from my friend in London that it is very well and happy."
"Oh, you mean Lucy. She was a lively little imp."
"Would you not like to see her again?"
"No, thank you. She is well taken care of, I suppose. I am glad she is out of my hands. She was a nuisance to me, and I am not a very edifying example for her. What on earth should I want to see her for?"
"I wish I had the good fortune to be a mother."
Susanna laughed. "Never say die, Mrs. Ned. You dont know what may happen to you yet. There now! I know, without opening my eyes, that you are shocked, bless your delicacy! How do you think I should have got through life if I'd been thin-skinned? What good does it do you? You are pining away in this hole of a lodging. You squirm when Mrs. Myers tries to be friendly with you; and I sometimes laugh at your expression when Eliza treats you to a little blarney about your looks. Now I would just as soon gossip and swear at her as go to tea with the Queen."
"I am not shocked at all. You see as badly as other people when your eyes are shut."
"They will soon shut up forever. I half wish they would do it at once, I wonder whether I will get any ease before there is an end of me."
"Perhaps the end of you on earth will be a good beginning for you somewhere else, Susanna."
"Thank you. Now the conversation has taken a nice, cheerful turn, hasnt it? Well, I cant be much worse off than I am at present. Anyhow, I must take my chance."
"Would you like to see a clergyman? I dont want to alarm you: I am sure you will get better: the doctor told me so; but I will go for one if you like."
"No: I dont want to be bothered—at least not yet. Besides, I hate clergymen, all except your brother, the doctor, who fell in love with me."
"Very well. I only suggested it in case you should feel uneasy."
"I dont feel quite easy; but I dont care sufficiently about it to make a fuss. It will be time enough when I am actually at death's door. All I know is that if there is a place of punishment in the next world, it is very unfair, considering what we suffer in this. I didnt make myself or my circumstances. I think I will try to sleep. I am half dead as it is with pain and weariness. Dont go until I am asleep."
"I will not. Let me get you another pillow."
"No," said Susanna, drowsily: "dont touch me."
Marian sat listening to her moaning respiration for nearly half an hour. Then, having some letters to write, she went to her own room to fetch her desk. Whilst she was looking for her pen, which was mislaid, she heard Susanna stirring. The floor creaked, and there was a clink as of a bottle. A moment later, Marian, listening with awakened suspicion, was startled by the sound of a heavy fall mingled with a crash of breaking glass. She ran back into the next room just in time to see Susanna, on her hands and knees near the stove, lift her white face for a moment, displaying a bleeding wound on her temple, and then stumble forward and fall prone on the carpet. Marian saw this; saw the walls of the room revolve before her; and fainted upon the sofa, which she had reached without knowing how.
When she recovered the doctor was standing by her; and Eliza was picking up fragments of the broken bottle. The smell of the spilled brandy reminded her of what had happened.
"Where is Miss Conolly?" she said, trying to collect her wits. "I am afraid I fainted at the very moment when I was most wanted."
"All right," said the doctor. "Keep quiet; youll be well presently. Dont be in a hurry to talk."
Marian obeyed; and the doctor, whose manner was kind, though different to that of the London physicians to whom she was accustomed, presently left the room and went upstairs. Eliza was howling like an animal. The sound irritated Marian even at that pass: she despised the whole Irish race on its account. She could hardly keep her temper as she said:
"Is Miss Conolly seriously hurt?"
"Oa, blessed hour! she's kilt. Her head's dhreepin wid blood."
Marian shuddered and felt faint again.
"Lord Almighty save use, I doa knoa how she done it at all, at all. She must ha fell agin the stoave. It's the dhrink, dhrink, dhrink, that brought her to it. It's little I knew what that wairy bottle o brandy would do to her, or sorra bit o me would ha got it."
"You did very wrong in getting it, Eliza."
"What could I do, miss, when she axed me?"
"There is no use in crying over it now. It would have been kinder to have kept it from her."
"Sure I know. Many's the time I tould her so. But she could talk the birds off the bushes, and it wint to me heart to refuse her. God send her well out of her throuble!"
Here the doctor returned. "How are you now?" he said.
"I think I am better. Pray dont think of me. How is she?"
"It's all over. Hallo! Come, Miss Biddy! you go and cry in the kitchen," he added, pushing Eliza, who had set up an intolerable lamentation, out of the room.
"How awful!" said Marian, stunned. "Are you quite sure? She seemed better this morning."
"Quite sure," said the doctor, smiling grimly at the question. "She was practically dead when they carried her upstairs, poor girl. It's easier to kill a person than you think, Mrs. Forster, although she tried so long and so hard without succeeding. But she'd have done it. She'd have been starved into health only to drink herself back into starvation, and the end would have been a very bad one. Better as it is, by far!"
"Doctor: I must go out and telegraph the news to London. I know one of her relatives there."
The doctor shook his head. "I will telegraph if you like, but you must stay here. Youre not yet fit to go out."
"I am afraid I have not been well lately," said Marian. "I want to consult you about myself—not now, of course, after what has happened, but some day when you have leisure to call."
"You can put off consulting me just as long as you please; but this accident is no reason why you shouldnt do it at once. If there is anything wrong, the sooner you have advice—you neednt have it from me if you prefer some other doctor—the better."
Upon this encouragement Marian described to him her state of health. He seemed a little amused, asked her a few questions, and finally told her coolly that she might expect to become a mother next fall. She was so utterly dismayed that he began to look stern in anticipation of an appeal to him to avert this; an appeal which he had often had to refuse without ever having succeeded in persuading a woman that it was futile, or convincing her that it was immoral. But Marian spared him this: she was overwhelmed by the new certainty that a reconciliation with her husband was no longer possible. Her despair at the discovery shewed her for the first time how homesick she really was.
When the doctor left, Mrs. Myers came. She exclaimed; wept; and gossiped until two police officers arrived. Marian related to them what she had seen of the accident, and became indignant at the apparent incredulity with which they questioned her and examined the room. After their departure Eliza came to her, and invited her to go upstairs and see the body of Susanna. She refused with a shudder; but when she saw that the girl was hurt as well as astonished, it occurred to her that avoidance of the dead might, if it came to Conolly's knowledge, be taken by him to indicate a lack of kind feeling toward his sister. So she overcame her repugnance, and went with Eliza. The window-shades were drawn down, and the dressing-table had been covered with a white cloth, on which stood a plaster statuet of the Virgin and Child, with two lighted candles before it. To please Eliza, who had evidently made these arrangements, Marian whispered a few words of approval, and turned curiously to the bed. The sight made her uncomfortable. The body was decently laid out, its wounded forehead covered with a bandage, and Eliza's rosary and crucifix on its breast; but it did not, as Marian had hoped, suggest peace or sleep. It was not Susanna, but a vacant thing that had always underlain her, and which, apart from her, was ghastly.
"She died a good Catholic anyhow: the light o Heaven to her sowl!" said Eliza, whimpering, but speaking as though she expected and defied Marian to contradict her.
"Amen," said Marian.
"It's sure and sartin. There never was a Conolly a Prodestan yet."
Marian left the room, resolving to avoid such sights in future. Mrs. Myers was below, anxious to resume the conversation which the visit of the police had interrupted. Marian could not bear this. To escape, she left the house, and went to her only friend in New York, Mrs. Crawford, whose frequent visits she had never before ventured to return. To her she narrated the events of the day.
"This business of the poor girl killing herself is real shocking," said Mrs. Crawford. "Perhaps your husband will come over here now, and give you a chance of making up with him."
"If he does, I must leave New York, Mrs. Crawford."
"What are you frightened of? If he is as good a man as you say, you ought to be glad to see him. I'm sure he would have you back. Depend on it, he has been longing for you all this time; and when he sees you again as pretty as ever, he will open his arms to you. He wont like you any the worse for being a little bashful with him after such an escapade."
"I would not meet him for any earthly consideration. After what the doctor told me to-day, I should throw myself out of the window, I think, if I heard him coming upstairs. I should like to see him, if I were placed where he could not see me; but face him I could not."
"Well, my dear, I think it's right silly of you, though the little stranger—it will be a regular stranger—is a difficulty: there's no two ways about that."
"Besides, I have been thinking over things alone in my room; and I see that it is better for him to be free. I know he was disappointed in me. He is not the sort of man to be tied down to such an ignorant woman as I."
"What does he expect from a woman? If youre not good enough for him, he must be very hard to please."
Marian shook her head. "He is capable of pitying and being considerate with me," she said: "I know that. But I am not sure that it is a good thing to be pitied and forborne with. There is something humiliating in it. I suppose I am proud, as you often tell me; but I should like to be amongst women what he is amongst men, supported by my own strength. Even within the last three weeks I have felt myself becoming more independent in my isolation. I was afraid to go about the streets by myself at first. Now I am getting quite brave. That unfortunate woman did me good. Taking care of her, and being relied on so much by her, has made me rely on myself more. Thanks to you, I have not much loneliness to complain of. And yet I have been utterly cast down sometimes. I cannot tell what is best. Sometimes I think that independence is worth all the solitary struggling it costs. Then again I remember how free from real care I was at home, and yearn to be back there. It is so hard to know what one ought to do."
"You have been more lively since you got such a pleasant answer to your telegram. I wish the General would offer to let me keep my own money and as much more as I wanted. Not that he is close-fisted, poor man! That reminds me to tell you that you must stay the evening. He wants to see you as bad as can be—never stops asking me to bring you up some time when he's at home. You mustnt excuse yourself: the General will see you safe back to your place."
"But if visitors come, Mrs. Crawford?"
"Nobody will come. If they do, they will be glad to see you. What do they know about you? You cant live like a hermit all your life."
Marian, sooner than go back to Mrs. Myers's, stayed; and the evening passed pleasantly enough, although three visitors came: a gentleman, with his wife and brother. The lady, besides eating, and replying to the remarks with which Mrs. Crawford occasionally endeavored to entertain her, did nothing but admire Marian's dress and listen to her conversation. Her husband was polite; but Marian, comparing him with the English gentlemen of her acquaintance, thought him rather oppressively respectful, and too much given to conversing in little speeches. He had been in London; and he described, in a correct narrative style, his impressions of St. Paul's, the Tower, and Westminster Palace. His brother fell in love with Mrs. Forster at first sight, and sat silent until she remarked to him how strangely the hotel omnibuses resembled old English stage coaches, when he became recklessly talkative and soon convinced her that American society produced quite as choice a compound of off-handedness and folly as London could. But all this was amusing after her long seclusion; and once or twice, when the thought of dead Susanna came back to her, she was ashamed to be so gay.
No one was stirring at Mrs. Myers's when she returned. They had left her lamp in the entry; and she took it upstairs with her, going softly lest she should disturb the household. Susanna's usual call and petition for a few minutes talk was no longer to be feared, for Susanna was now only a memory. Marian tried not to think of the body in the room above. Though she was free from the dread which was just then making Eliza tremble, cry, and cross herself to sleep, she disliked the body all the more as she distinguished it from the no-longer existent woman: a feat quite beyond the Irish peasant girl. She sat down and began to think. The Crawfords and their friends had been very nice to her: no doubt the lady would not have been civil had she known all; but, then, the lady was a silly person. They were not exactly what Marian considered the best sort of people; but New York was not London. She would not stay at Mrs. Myers's: her income would enable her to lodge more luxuriously. If she could afford to furnish some rooms for herself, she would get some curtains she had seen one day lately when shopping with Mrs. Crawford. They would go well with——
A noise in the room overhead: Susanna's death chamber. Marian gave a great start, and understood what Eliza meant by having "the life put across in her." She listened, painfully conscious of the beats of her heart. The noise came again: a footstep, or a chair pushed back, or—she was not certain what. Could Mrs. Myers be watching at the bedside? It was not unlikely. Could Susanna be recovering—finding herself laid out for dead, and making a struggle for life up there alone? That would be inconvenient, undesirable: even Marian forgot just then to consider that obvious view wrong and unfeeling; but, anyhow, she must go and see, and, if necessary, help. She wished there were some one to keep her company; but was ashamed to call Eliza; and she felt that she would be as well by herself as with Mrs. Myers. There was nothing for it but to take a candle and go alone. No repetition of the noise occurred to daunt her afresh; and she reached the landing above almost reassured, and thinking how odd it was that the idea of finding somebody—Susanna—there, though it had come as a fear, was fading out as a disappointed hope.
Finding herself loth to open the door, she at last set her teeth and did it swiftly, as if to surprise someone within. She did surprise some one: her husband, sitting by his sister's body. He started violently on seeing her, and rose; whilst she, mechanically shutting the door without turning, leaned back against it with her hand behind her, and looked at him open-mouthed.
"Marian," he said, in a quite unexpectedly apprehensive tone, putting up his hand deprecatingly: "remember, here"—indicating the figure on the bed—"is an end of hypocrisy! No unrealities now: I cannot bear them. Let us have no trash of magnanimous injured husband, erring but repentant wife. We are man and woman, nothing less and nothing more. After our marriage you declined intercourse on those terms; and I accepted your conventions to please you. Now I refuse all conventions: you have broken them yourself. If you will not have the truth between us, avoid me until I have subsided into the old groove again. There!" he added, wincing, "dont blush. What have you to blush for? It was the only honest thing you ever did."
"I dont understand."
"No," he said gently, but with a gesture of despair; "how could you? You never did, and you never will."
"If you mean to accuse me of having deceived you," said Marian, greatly relieved and encouraged by a sense of being now the injured party, "you are most unjust. I dont excuse myself for behaving wickedly, but I never deceived you or told you a falsehood. Never. When he first spoke wrongly to me, I told you at once; and you did not care."
"Not a straw. It was nothing to me that he loved you: the point was, did you love him? If not, then all was well: if so, our marriage was already at an end. But you mistake my drift. Falsehood is something more than fibbing. You never told fibs—except the two or three dozen a week that mere politeness required and which you never thought of counting; but you never told me the truth, Marian, because you never told your self the truth. You told me what you told yourself, I grant you; and so you were not conscious of deceit. I dont reproach you. Surely you can bear to be told what every honest man tells himself almost daily."
"I suppose I have deserved it," said Marian; "but unkind words from you are a new experience. You are very unlike yourself to-night."
He repressed, with visible effort, an explosion of impatience. "On the contrary, I am like myself—I actually am myself to-night, I hope." Then the explosion came. "Is it utterly impossible for you to say something real to me? Only learn to do that, and you may have ten love romances every year with other men, if you like. Be anything rather than a ladylike slave and liar. There! as usual, the truth makes you shrink from me. As I said before, I refuse further intercourse on such terms. They have proved unkind in the long run."
"You spoke plainly enough to her," said Marian, glancing at the bed, "but in the long run it did her no good."
"She would have laughed me to scorn if I had minced matters, for she never deceived herself. Society, by the power of the purse, set her to nautch-girl's work, and forbade her the higher work that was equally within her power. Being enslaved and debauched in this fashion, how could she be happy except when she was not sober? It was her own immediate interest to drink; it was her tradesman's interest that she should drink; it was her servants' interest that she should be pleased with them for getting drink for her. She was clever, good-natured, more constant to her home and her man than you, a living fountain of innocent pleasure as a dancer, singer, and actress; and here she lies, after mischievously spending her talent in a series of entertainments too dull for hell and too debased for any better place, dead of a preventable disease, chiefly because most of the people she came in contact with had a direct pecuniary interest in depraving and poisoning her. Aye, look at her! with the cross on her breast, the virgin mother in plaster looking on from where she kept her mirror when she was alive, and the people outside complacently saying 'Serve her right!'"
Marian feared for a moment that he would demolish Eliza's altar by hurling the chair through it. "Dont, Ned," she said, timidly, putting her hand on his arm.
"Dont what?" he said, taken aback. She drew her hand away and retreated a step, coloring at the wifely liberty she had permitted herself to take. "I beg your pardon. I thought—I thought you were going to take the cross away. No," she added quickly, seeing him about to speak, and anticipating a burst of scepticism: "it is not that; but the servant is an Irish girl—a Roman Catholic. She put it there; and she meant well, and will be hurt if it is thrown aside."
"And you think it better that she should remain in ignorance of what educated people think about her superstition than that she should suffer the mortification of learning that her opinions are not those of all the world! However, I had no such intention. Eliza's idol is a respectable one as idols go."
There was a pause. Then Marian said: "It must have been a great shock to you when you came and found what had happened. I am very sorry. But had we not better go downrs? It seems so unfeeling, somehow, to talk without minding her. I suppose you consider that foolish; but I think you are upset by it yourself."
"You see a change in me, then?"
"You are not quite yourself, I think."
"I tell you again that I am myself at last. You do not seem to like the real man any better than the unreal: I am afraid you will not have me on any terms. Well, let us go downstairs, since you prefer it."
"Oh, not unless you wish it too," said Marian, a little bewildered.
He took her candle and led the way out without another word or a look at the bed. Marian, as he stood aside to let her go downstairs before him, was suddenly seized with a fantastic fear that he was going to kill her. She did not condescend to hurry or look back; but she only felt safe when they were in her room, and he no longer behind her.
"Sit down," he said, placing the candle on the mantelpiece. She sat down at the table, and he stood on the hearthrug. "Now," said he, "about the future. Are you coming back? Will you give the life at Holland Park another trial?"
"I cannot," she said, bending her head almost on her hands. "I should disgrace you. And there is another reason."
"It is not in your power, nor in that of all London, to disgrace me if I do not feel disgraced. It is useless to say that you cannot. If you say 'I will not,' then that will settle it. What is the other reason?"
"It is not yet born. But it will be."
"That is no reason to me. Do you think I shall be a worse father to it than he would have been?"
"No, indeed. But it would be unfair to you." He made an impatient gesture. "I dont understand you, Ned. Would you not rather be free?"
"Freedom is a fool's dream. I am free. I can divorce you if I please: if I live with you again it will be by my own choice. You are free too: you have burnt your boats, and are rid of fashionable society, of your family, your position, your principles, and all the rest of your chains forever. You are declassed by your own act; and if you can frankly give a sigh of relief and respect yourself for breaking loose from what is called your duty, then you are the very woman I want for a wife. I may not be the very man you want for a husband; but at all events you are free to choose, free to change after you choose if you choose me, free anyhow; for I will divorce you if you refuse; and then you will be—independent—your own mistress—absolute proprietor of your own child—everything that married women and girls envy. You have a foretaste of that freedom now. What is it worth? One or two conditions more or less to comply with, that is all: nature and society still have you hard and fast; the main rules of the game are inviolable."
"I think it is a good thing to be free," said Marian, timidly.
"That means 'I will not.'"
"Not 'will not'; but I think I had better not."
"A characteristic distinction, Marian. I once thought, like you, that freedom was the one condition to be gained at all cost and hazard. My favorite psalm was that nonsense of John Hay's:
'For always in thine eyes, O Liberty,  Shines that high light whereby the world is saved;  And though thou slay us, we will trust in thee.'
And she does slay us. Now I am for the fullest attainable life. That involves the least endurable liberty. You dont see that yet. Very well: you have liberty—liberty to hurt as well as help yourself; and you are right to try whether it will not make you happier than wedlock has done."
"It was not your fault; and it is very good of you to offer to take me back, I know. Will my refusing disappoint you at all, Ned?"
"I am prepared for it. You may refuse or accept: I foresee how I shall adapt myself to either set of circumstances."
"Yes, I forgot. You foresee everything," said Marian, with some bitterness.
"No: I only face what I see. That is why you do not like living with me. Good-bye. Do not look troubled: we shall meet again to-morrow and often afterward, I hope; but to-night makes an end of the irrational knot."
"Good-night," said Marian rather forlornly, after a pause, proffering her hand.
"One folly more," he said, taking her in his arms and kissing her. She made no resistance. "If such a moment could be eternal, we should never say good-bye," he added. "As it is, we are wise not to tempt Fortune by asking her for such another."
"You are too wise, Ned," she said, suffering him to replace her gently in the chair.
"It is impossible to be too wise, dearest," he said, and unhesitatingly turned and left her.