"I can't go on standing here," said Henry. "I think I shall go through and walk round the new house."
He lifted a small lamp, and passed through the door in the dining-room that led into the new corridor between the two wings. There was a smell of paint and varnish. The workmen were busy this week on the panelling in the new dining-room. He held the lamp above his head and went through into the great hall. It looked very massive, very bare. The light shone down from the vast skylight in the roof. The place seemed ghostly, grey, and the wide staircase leading to the gallery yawned like a gulf.
"It will be all right," he thought, "when we have it furnished. A big fire in the open hearth, chairs, sofas, tables, and Katherine's piano in the corner here."
He wandered about the empty rooms, his footsteps making a hollow sound. Once he stumbled against a ladder and some pots of paint. There was a little heap of cement in a corner of the drawing-room. The room struck very cold, and air blew in, dank and chill. He turned and went up the great stairs to the gallery above. The children had been playing there. One of them had left a skipping-rope trailing from the top of the stairs. He wandered through his new dressing-room to the bedroom. The paint smell clung about him still.
He wished the room could have been finished in time for Katherine to have had her baby there. Then she could have been carried through to the boudoir and spent her days on the sofa, returning to the bedroom at night. He stood on the threshold of the boudoir. Even now, bare and empty, there was something snug about it, a foretaste of the future. Perhaps because they had planned so much of it together. He turned the handle of the long window, and stepped out on to the balcony. A little wind blew towards him from the sea. He could hear the tide ripple in the creek below. His lamp flickered and went out.
He had to grope his way back in the darkness, through the dark, silent rooms, along the gallery, down the great stairs to the hall. There were shadows everywhere, and the caps and overalls of the workmen, hanging just inside an open door, were like the dangling bodies of men. He tried to picture the new wing as it would be, finished and complete, the carpets on the stairs, the pictures on the walls, the fires burning, and for the first time the image forsook him, his imagination failed.
He tried to see Katherine sitting in the corner of the hall, pouring out tea, with the children beside her, the dogs lying on the floor, and himself coming in from shooting, with old Tom perhaps, and Herbert, and Edward, and Katherine glancing up smiling. And he could not see her. He could not see any of them. There was nothing but this vast, unfinished, empty hall.
"Henry," said a voice, "Henry…?
Tom came searching for him from the old house, peering through the darkness.
"Armstrong came down for you," he said, "he wants to speak to you."
Henry followed him, blinking in the sudden light.
The door between the two wings closed behind him with a clang. He could hear the sound of it echoing through the new wing that had been shut away.
"What's happened?" he said. "Is it over yet?"
Old Armstrong watched him from under shaggy brows.
He seemed old and tired.
"A daughter," he said, "not very strong, I'm afraid. She'll need a lot of looking after.
Katherine is very weak. You had better go up."
Henry glanced from one to the other, his friend, and the friend of his father.
"Yes," he said, "yes, I'll go to her."
He ran swiftly up the stairs and met the young Doctor McKay coming along the passage.
"Don't stay long," the doctor said, "she's very tired. I want her to sleep. '
Henry looked into his eyes.
"What do you mean?" he said. "Isn't everything going to be all right?"
The young doctor watched him steadily.
"Your wife is not strong, Mr. Brodrick," he said. "This has been a very great strain upon her.
If she sleeps, all may be well, but I cannot promise. I think it right that you should know this."
Henry did not answer. He went on looking at the doctor's eyes.
"Armstrong told you about the little girl?" the doctor said. "I'm afraid she's malformed, one foot not quite straight, and rather underweight, but otherwise all right. There's no reason why she should not be as healthy as the others in time. Now perhaps you will go in to Mrs. Brodrick?"
The familiar new-born baby cry rang in his ear, taking him back to those other times, to the birth of Molly at East Grove. How proud and anxious and excited he had been. And Kitty's in London. The nurse was in a corner, murmuring to the new little one. She brought the baby out of the cot and showed the child to him.
"Such a pity about the foot," she whispered. "We aren't going to say anything about it to Mrs.
Brodrick."
Henry heard her in a dream. He did not know what she was saying. He went over and knelt beside the bed, taking Katherine's hand and kissing the fingers.
She opened her eyes and touched his head. He did not say anything. He went on kissing the fingers. The nurse took the baby out of the room, and the fitful cry disappeared along the passage. Henry tried to pray, but no words came to his lips. There was nothing he could say, nothing he could ask. Her hands were so cold, he wanted to warm them. This seemed to him more important than anything else, that he should warm her hands. He kissed them again and again, and held them against his cheek, and then inside his vest, against his heart.
She smiled then.
"I can feel your heart," she said; "it's throbbing, like an engine in a ship."
"Are you warmer?" he asked.
"Yes," she said. "I would like to leave my hand there always."
He went on kneeling there, and presently, about six in the morning, the workmen came walking along the drive below the castle, whistling and talking, the gravel scrunching under their boots. Somebody went and told them to go away.
It was Tom Callaghan who did everything. He took all responsibility upon his shoulders. He kept the children at Heathmount, out of Henry's way.
Then Herbert came over, and took them back with him to Lletharrog, the nurse and the baby as well as the older children and their governess. It was Tom who remembered about Ardmore, and he remembered too the hymns that Katherine had loved best, and her favourite flowers. Henry saw and heard nothing.
The only thing for which he gave orders himself was to stop all building on the house. He spoke to the men himself. He was quite calm, and knew what to say. He gave every one of them a sum of money, and shook hands with each, and thanked them. And they took away the bricks, and the cement, and the ladders, and all the paraphernalia of building, and did not return.
The architect went back to England, leaving the roll of plans with Henry. He put them away in his desk and locked it. He never looked at them again.
He went down to Heathmount and stayed with Tom, and then, after a few weeks, he became restless. It was no use, he said, every part of Doonhaven held a memory that gave him no peace. He would have to go away. He would let Clonmere, perhaps for a number of years.
"I don't think I should do that," said Tom gently. "You must remember the children. It's their home, and they are devoted to it Molly is twelve now, Hal ten, and Kitty seven. It's an age when children feel things. Let them keep their home.
Memories to children are precious, and not bitter. You must always remember that."
"They will have to come alone then," said Henry. "I can't live there. There's no meaning in anything.
Life is finished, that's all there is to it."
"I know, old fellow," said Tom. "But if you would try to accept it, surrender to it, you would find the pain easier to bear. It's only going to add to suffering if you build up resentment against it. And that is what you are doing now, dear boy, it is indeed."
"I build up resentment against nothing and no one," said Henry, "except myself. You see, Tom, I killed her. That is something that I can never forget, or forgive. I killed her."