On the following day Mrs. Henshawe asked to be given the Sacrament.
After she had taken it she seemed easier in mind and body. In the
afternoon she told Henshawe to go to his office and begged me to
leave her and let her sleep. The nurse we had sent away that day at
her urgent request. She wanted to be cared for by one of the nursing
Sisters from the convent from now on, and Father Fay was to bring one
to-morrow.
I went to my room, meaning to go back to her in an hour, but once
on my bed I slept without waking. It was dark when I heard Henshawe
knocking on my door and calling to me. As I opened it, he said in a
despairing tone: “She’s gone, Nellie, she’s gone!”
I thought he meant she had died. I hurried after him down the
corridor and into her room. It was empty. He pointed to her empty
bed. “Don’t you see? She has gone, God knows where!”
“But how could she? A woman so ill? She must be somewhere in the
building.”
“I’ve been all over the house. You don’t know her, Nellie. She can do
anything she wills. Look at this.”
On the desk lay a sheet of note paper scribbled in lead pencil:
“_Dear Oswald: My hour has come. Don’t follow me. I wish to be alone.
Nellie knows where there is money for masses._” That was all. There
was no signature.
We hurried to the police station. The chief sent a messenger out to
the men on the beat to warn them to be on the watch for a distraught
woman who had wandered out in delirium. Then we went to Father Fay.
“The Church has been on her mind for a long while,” said Henshawe.
“It is one of her delusions that I separated her from the Church. I
never meant to.”
The young priest knew nothing. He was distressed, and offered to help
us in our search, but we thought he had better stay at home on the
chance that she might come to him.
When we got back to the hotel it was after eleven o’clock. Oswald
said he could not stay indoors; I must be there within call, but he
would go back to help the police.
After he left I began to search Mrs. Henshawe’s room. She had worn
her heavy coat and her furs, though the night was warm. When I found
that the pair of Austrian blankets was missing, I felt I knew where
she had gone. Should I try to get Oswald at the police station? I
sat down to think it over. It seemed to me that she ought to be
allowed to meet the inevitable end in the way she chose. A yearning
strong enough to lift that ailing body and drag it out into the world
again should have its way.
At five o’clock in the morning Henshawe came back with an officer and
a Negro cabman. The driver had come to the station and reported that
at six last night a lady, with her arms full of wraps, had signalled
him at the side door of the hotel, and told him to drive her to the
boat landing. When they were nearing the landing, she said she did
not mean to stop there, but wanted to go farther up the shore, giving
him clear directions. They reached the cliff she had indicated. He
helped her out of the cab, put her rugs under the tree for her, and
she gave him a ten-dollar gold piece and dismissed him. He protested
that the fare was too much, and that he was afraid of getting into
trouble if he left her there. But she told him a friend was going to
meet her, and that it would be all right. The lady had, he said, a
very kind, coaxing way with her. When he went to the stable to put up
his horse, he heard that the police were looking for a woman who was
out of her head, and he was frightened. He went home and talked it
over with his wife, who sent him to report at head-quarters.
The cabman drove us out to the headland, and the officer insisted
upon going along. We found her wrapped in her blankets, leaning
against the cedar trunk, facing the sea. Her head had fallen forward;
the ebony crucifix was in her hands. She must have died peacefully
and painlessly. There was every reason to believe she had lived to
see the dawn. While we watched beside her, waiting for the undertaker
and Father Fay to come, I told Oswald what she had said to me about
longing to behold the morning break over the sea, and it comforted
him.
[Illustration: (An open letter with an envelope beside it)]