GEORGE SHAW - The Complete Works

“Is it here?” he said.

“Yes, sir,” she whispered.

A painful sense of constriction came in his chest, and he turned pale and stopped with his hand on the lock.

“Don’t be afraid, sir,” said the woman, with an encouraging smile. “She looks beautiful.”

He looked at her with a strange grin, as if she had uttered a ghastly but irresistible joke. Then he went in, and, when he reached the bed, wished he had stayed without. He was not one of those who, seeing little in the faces of the living miss little in the faces of the dead. The arrangement of the black hair on the pillow, the soft drapery, and the flowers placed there by the nurse to complete the artistic effect to which she had so confidently referred, were lost on him; he saw only a lifeless mask that had been his wife’s face, and at sight of it his knees failed, and he had to lean for support on the rail at the foot of the bed.

When he looked again the face seemed to have changed. It was no longer a waxlike mask, but Henrietta, girlish and pathetically at rest. Death seemed to have cancelled her marriage and womanhood; he had never seen her look so young. A minute passed, and then a tear dropped on the coverlet. He started; shook another tear on his hand, and stared at it incredulously.

“This is a fraud of which I have never even dreamed,” he said. “Tears and no sorrow! Here am I crying! growing maudlin! whilst I am glad that she is gone and I free. I have the mechanism of grief in me somewhere; it begins to turn at sight of her though I have no sorrow; just as she used to start the mechanism of passion when I had no love. And that made no difference to her; whilst the wheels went round she was satisfied. I hope the mechanism of grief will flag and stop in its spinning as soon as the other used to. It is stopping already, I think. What a mockery! Whilst it lasts I suppose I am really sorry. And yet, would I restore her to life if I could? Perhaps so; I am therefore thankful that I cannot.” He folded his arms on the rail and gravely addressed the dead figure, which still affected him so strongly that he had to exert his will to face it with composure. “If you really loved me, it is well for you that you are dead — idiot that I was to believe that the passion you could inspire, you poor child, would last. We are both lucky; I have escaped from you, and you have escaped from yourself.”

Presently he breathed more freely and looked round the room to help himself into a matter-of-fact vein by a little unembarrassed action, and the commonplace aspect of the bedroom furniture. He went to the pillow, and bent over it, examining the face closely.

“Poor child!” he said again, tenderly. Then, with sudden reaction, apostrophizing himself instead of his wife, “Poor ass! Poor idiot! Poor jackanapes! Here is the body of a woman who was nearly as old as myself, and perhaps wiser, and here am I moralizing over it as if I were God Almighty and she a baby! The more you remind a man of what he is, the more conceited he becomes. Monstrous! I shall feel immortal presently.”

He touched the cheek with a faint attempt at roughness, to feel how cold it was. Then he touched his own, and remarked:

“This is what I am hastening toward at the express speed of sixty minutes an hour!” He stood looking down at the face and tasting this sombre reflection for a long time. When it palled on him, he roused himself, and exclaimed more cheerfully:

“After all, she is not dead. Every word she uttered — every idea she formed and expressed, was an inexhaustible and indestructible impulse.” He paused, considered a little further, and relapsed into gloom, adding, “and the dozen others whose names will be with hers in the ‘Times’ tomorrow? Their words too are still in the air, to endure there to all eternity. Hm! How the air must be crammed with nonsense! Two sounds sometimes produce a silence; perhaps ideas neutralize one another in some analogous way. No, my dear; you are dead and gone and done with, and I shall be dead and gone and done with too soon to leave me leisure to fool myself with hopes of immortality. Poor Hetty! Well, good-by, my darling. Let us pretend for a moment that you can hear that; I know it will please you.”

All this was in a half-articulate whisper. When he ceased he still bent over the body, gazing intently at it. Even when he had exhausted the subject, and turned to go, he changed his mind, and looked again for a while. Then he stood erect, apparently nerved and refreshed, and left the room with a firm step. The woman was waiting outside. Seeing that he was less distressed than when he entered, she said:

“I hope you are satisfied, sir!”

“Delighted! Charmed! The arrangements are extremely pretty and tasteful. Most consolatory.” And he gave her half a sovereign.

“I thank you, sir,” she said, dropping a curtsey. “The poor young lady! She was anxious to see you, sir. To hear her say that you were the only one that cared for her! And so fretful with her mother, too. ‘Let him be told that I am dangerously ill,’ says she, ‘and he’ll come.’ She didn’t know how true her word was, poor thing; and she went off without being aware of it.”

“Flattering herself and flattering me. Happy girl!”

“Bless you, I know what her feelings were, sir; I have had experience.” Here she approached him confidentially, and whispered: “The family were again’ you, sir, and she knew it. But she wouldn’t listen to them. She thought of nothing, when she was easy enough to think at all, but of your coming. And — hush! Here’s the old gentleman.”

Trefusis looked round and saw Mr. Jansenius, whose handsome face was white and seamed with grief and annoyance. He drew back from the proffered hand of his son-in-law, like an overworried child from an ill-timed attempt to pet it. Trefusis pitied him. The nurse coughed and retired.

“Have you been speaking to Mrs. Jansenius?” said Trefusis.

“Yes,” said Jansenius offensively.

“So have I, unfortunately. Pray make my apologies to her. I was rude. The circumstances upset me.”

“You are not upset, sir,” said Jansenius loudly. “You do not care a damn.”

Trefusis recoiled.

“You damned my feelings, and I will damn yours,” continued Jansenius in the same tone. Trefusis involuntarily looked at the door through which he had lately passed. Then, recovering himself, he said quietly:

“It does not matter. She can’t hear us.”

Before Jansenius could reply his wife hurried upstairs, caught him by the arm, and said, “Don’t speak to him, John. And you,” she added, to Trefusis, “WILL you begone?”

“What!” he said, looking cynically at her. “Without my dead! Without my property! Well, be it so.”

“What do you know of the feelings of a respectable man?” persisted Jansenius, breaking out again in spite of his wife. “Nothing is sacred to you. This shows what Socialists are!”

“And what fathers are, and what mothers are,” retorted Trefusis, giving way to his temper. “I thought you loved Hetty, but I see that you only love your feelings and your respectability. The devil take both! She was right; my love for her, incomplete as it was, was greater than yours.” And he left the house in dudgeon.

But he stood awhile in the avenue to laugh at himself and his father-in-law. Then he took a hansom and was driven to the house of his solicitor, whom he wished to consult on the settlement of his late wife’s affairs.

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The remains of Henrietta Trefusis were interred in Highgate Cemetery the day before Christmas Eve. Three noblemen sent their carriages to the funeral, and the friends and clients of Mr. Jansenius, to a large number, attended in person. The bier was covered with a profusion of costly Bowers. The undertaker, instructed to spare no expense, provided long-tailed black horses, with black palls on their backs and black plumes upon their foreheads; coachmen decorated with scarves and jack-boots, black hammercloths, cloaks, and gloves, with many hired mourners, who, however, would have been instantly discharged had they presumed to betray emotion, or in any way overstep their function of walking beside the hearse with brass-tipped batons in their hands.