NOTICE TO QUIT.
With the curious intuition common to the sick, Prudence felt that
something was wrong. There was an atmosphere of unrest about her.
She noted the frown on the brow of Mrs. Wilcox and the hardness of her
tone when she asked her how she felt, and if she thought she would be
able to sit up for a while to-morrow, though Mrs. Wilcox did her best to
speak in her natural voice.
She remarked the averted face of her old enemy, the medical woman, but
she was too prostrate to heed them, or to enquire if anything unpleasant
had occurred.
She did not seem to mind much what happened now. Justice was probably on
her track. She was a criminal hiding from the law. She would be hunted
down, exposed, put to public shame. Augusta—her poor Augusta—how was
she? In what condition would she be found? Tears of sorrow and weakness
gushed from the eyes of the afflicted lady, but the rest and quiet and
the absence of fresh agitation gradually calmed her nerves, and she had
leisure to reflect on her course of action. There was nothing for it but
to come forward, if compelled, and speak the whole truth. She had had
enough of subterfuges and prevarications. She would tell her story—they
might believe it or not as they liked. She thought, in the apathy of
despair, they probably wouldn’t—time would tell, for surely Augusta, if
ever she became able to speak, would confirm her testimony—granted she
had not lost her memory of the events connected with her previous life.
There would be two or three years to wait probably, but that could not
be helped. She might, meantime, be cast into prison. For that she was
prepared. With the courage of despair she braced herself to meet
whatever fate might have in store for her. At any rate, it could not be
worse than the tortures she had already endured.
When, two days later, the detective from Scotland Yard called, she was
able to receive him in Mrs. Wilcox’s sanctum, for that lady would not
suffer him to be shown into the drawing-room. It was with a sense of
having been through all this before, that Prudence read that “Victoria,
by the Grace of God, Queen,” summoned her to give evidence at the Arrow
Street Police Court, on the ensuing Monday morning, “in the case of the
Queen _v._ Sarah Anne Brown, otherwise,” &c., &c.
Well, the worst had come, and she would go through with it somehow. What
awaited her when the trial was over she did not venture to speculate.
That she had come within the clutches of the law she did not doubt, and
her future loomed vague and dreadful. Where could she go if she escaped
prison? Her name would be in every paper, her story on every lip. Even
the lady who sold the Water of Youth had never heard of a case of a
grown, an elderly person, being transformed into a baby by its effects.
She foresaw that it would be generally believed that she had got rid of
Augusta, and that the baby was—but who or what the baby might be
considered was a point on which she absolutely refused to speculate.
Long after the man from Scotland Yard had taken his departure, she sat
in a sort of stupor, taking no note of objects round her, and unaware
that she was alone, when she was startled by the entrance of Mrs.
Wilcox.
The air of that lady was portentous.
“Miss Semaphore,” she said, “there is something I have been anxious to
say to you for several days back, but did not like to speak while you
were ill. Now, however, that you are able to receive _visitors_”—with
sarcastic emphasis—“I think you are well enough to hear what I have got
to say. It is this, that I desire that you will look for accommodation
elsewhere, and leave my house at the very earliest opportunity.”
“You mean to turn me out?” asked Prudence in alarm.
“Far be it from me to turn anyone out,” said Mrs. Wilcox. “I merely
request you to leave.”
“But why?” said Prudence timidly.
“Why?” echoed Mrs. Wilcox almost in a shriek. “Why? I think you had
better ask yourself that question, Miss Semaphore. I have always tried
to keep my house respectable, and I must say, Miss Semaphore, if I was
to die for it, that I looked to you and your sister to aid me in that
endeavour, rather than to bring disgrace on a first-class and
well-conducted establishment. ‘Why?’ indeed!”
“I have had a great deal of worry lately,” said Prudence, “quite without
any fault of my own, but neither my sister nor myself have done anything
to bring disgrace on your establishment, Mrs. Wilcox.”
“No!” ejaculated Mrs. Wilcox angrily. “Then what about all this
baby-farming business, and detectives from Scotland Yard coming here
looking for you?”
Utterly confounded by such unexpected knowledge on the part of her
landlady, and ignorant of how much more she might have learned, Prudence
could only gaze at her in helpless bewilderment, while Mrs. Wilcox stood
nodding her head and grimly enjoying the confusion she had occasioned.
“I have been—I am in great trouble,” Prudence stuttered; “but I am not
to blame—no one is really to blame, if you’d only believe me. The whole
thing was an accident. If you know anything at all about it, you must
know it was an accident!”
“An accident?” shrieked Mrs. Wilcox. It flashed through her mind that
perhaps after all the medical woman was right.
“Quite an accident,” said Prudence. “Simply an overdose. The bottle
broke, you see, so the poor dear made haste to swallow the contents, and
accidently took too much.”
“I really think, Miss Semaphore,” said Mrs. Wilcox very slowly, “I
really think your mind is wandering.”
“Oh no, indeed I’m not wandering. That was how it happened, and of
course after that I had to get rid of the poor dear, especially as I
never dreamt you knew anything about it.”
More and more confirmed in her belief that Prudence was either raving or
confessing a murder, Mrs. Wilcox spoke.
“Well, without enquiring further as to what has happened, or how it
happened, having no desire to be mixed up in a very painful affair, I
think, Miss Semaphore, we had better part, and the sooner you can make
it convenient the better.”
“Oh, do keep me until after Monday,” cried Prudence, breaking down. “The
trial will be on Monday, and that will decide what course I must take;
but now I am ill, I am not fit to undertake packing. I cannot go.”
“I am sorry to insist, Miss Semaphore, but go you must. I will tell Jane
she is to help you to pack. Even if I were willing to keep you, Captain
Wilcox is not, and in such matters he is terribly severe. I really
cannot gainsay him. He says he will not have you under this roof for
forty-eight hours longer, and would sooner forfeit payment for your
week’s board now due than let you stay.”
Prudence got up and groped her way blindly to the door.
“Very well,” she said, turning on the threshold. “Send Jane to me at
once. I will leave before dinner.”
With the assistance of Jane, Miss Prudence put her belongings together,
dressed, and desired the maid to call a cab. No one came to the door to
see her off; but, glancing at the windows, she saw Mrs. Wilcox peeping
out from her sanctum, and Mrs. Dumaresq and the medical woman from the
window of their respective apartments.
With a heart full of bitterness, Prudence turned away, and bade the man
drive on. Up one street and down another they went, the unhappy lady
taking no note of where she was going, until she was roused from her
brown study by the cabman, who drew up, descended from his box, and
thrust his head in the window to ask where she wanted to go.
“I don’t know, cabman,” said Prudence helplessly. “I am looking for
apartments. Do you know of any that are nice and respectable?”
“Why, yessem, I do,” said the man, “which my wife’s own sister, she
keeps ’em in Victoria Crescent, an’ clean an’ respectable they are, that
I’ll hanswer for; an’ she cooks splendid.”
“Then drive there, please,” said Prudence apathetically, and fell back
into doleful musings, until the cab stopped at the address.
Mrs. Perkins, the cabman’s sister-in-law, married to an ex-butler, was a
kindly, cheerful body, who willingly accepted a week’s rent in advance
in lieu of references. In her sage-green parlour Prudence sat down with
a feeling of rest and privacy, to which she had long been a stranger,
and braced herself as best she might for the ordeal before her.
“My poor darling Gussie,” the goodhearted creature murmured over and
over again. “What you must suffer! My dear sister, what must you think
of me for sending you to that dreadful woman? But I did it for the best,
I did it for the best.”
The excitement of the move was a great strain on Prudence in her weak
state of health; but Mrs. Perkins proved an admirable nurse, and though
quite unable to leave her bedroom for the next few days, the unhappy
spinster rejoiced at being free from the supervision of the medical
woman.