The daughter, dry-eyed, left alone with death, did what was necessary.
She washed the body of her beloved, and dressed it, and laid her arms
across her breast with a little sprig of marjoram out of her garden
between the fingers, and covered up the cracked dim looking-glass with
a fair white cloth. She went downstairs and procured a plateful of
salt, which she laid on the dead woman’s chest to fend off the evil
spirits. She drew down the blinds of the windows that looked out over
the garden on to the ford, and sat down near the horribly yawning hole
in the flooring to await Luke--or Charles. Neither of them might come
for a good hour or more. She did not know which would be the first.
Charles might not come for days, but when he did he would be of good
comfort, and grateful to her for saving his life at the expense though
it were of half an hour’s desperate but not irremediable degradation.
It was nothing to her, considering the result, perhaps as little to
him, and yet more than once during the ordeal she had fancied he was
on the point of interposing and forbidding, at the risk of his life,
the desecration of the lips that were his, and his only. He might not,
perhaps, be willing to kiss her.… No matter, she would dress his
wound, and shelter him and be a mother, not a mistress, to him a
while. He had not slept in a bed, nurse-tended by kind white hands,
since Preston fight.… He would kiss the hands sometimes?… So she
dreamed.…
About five o’clock she heard the thud of a horse’s hoofs, trotting
briskly towards her from the ford. Charles had been in luck, and had
somehow or other managed to get hold of a horse?…
She ran down, leaping, in her haste to go the nearest way, over the
gaping chasm that shelved in like the hangman’s drop, in the middle of
the floor.
“My beloved!”
A man stood, sheepish, in the house place. It was Captain Butler.
“You!” she stammered, and reeled.
“Yes, ’tis I, poor fool, come back to know more of you and your wiles,
my beauty. For that you are; and may be, now that I’ve given my men
the slip for an hour, you’ll let me have that kiss?”
Christina was holding on to the high back of the settle.
“Ay, there’s no doubt about it, you’re a gay piece, and no one could
call you kissing shy. I like it. But that poor lad who sat there--he
couldn’t stomach so much freedom, I fancy. You made his poor heart
ache, and lost him his wits, now, wasn’t it?… Well, well, he’s the
best judge of his own feelings, may be he’s as well out of this
troublesome world.…”
“What do you mean, Captain?”
“Only that that cousin of yours slipped off from behind Tim Jobling
crossing the ford, and was washed away almost before we in the front
knew what was happening. It’s my belief he did it on purpose.”
“Drowned! Charles!”
“Is that his silly name? I thought you mentioned some other. He said
something to Tim, I believe, before he let go----”
“What was it?”
“Oh, if you care to hear! He said that he found the woman he loved was
no better than a harlot, and he didn’t care for his life any more
since ’twas so. He just slipped off behind----”
“And didn’t any one lift a finger to help him?” she wailed.
“Couldn’t, I tell you, he was a deal too quick for Tim, seeing as he
did it o’ purpose. No, Miss, make no bones about it, his death lies at
your door.”
She tottered, and he held out a clumsy hand.
“Come, put it all behind you. Why should a fine girl like you sorrow
for a half-witted yokel like that? You broke his heart, but what right
had he to cast those bleary eyes of his on you? You are for a better
than he. Come now--be pleasant! You didn’t use to look bashful. One
would think it was a different woman I’ve come back to. You’re
handsome enough, though, in all conscience, even with that face of
thunder on you. Will you or won’t you, Mistress Daunet? Will you come
to me--my pretty?”
He took a pull at the stoup of liquor that was where he had put it
down, and held out his arms.
Still the woman stood, dazed, dumbfounded, her ordinarily quick brain
acting slowly. She began to realize, by a series of successive shocks,
that there was no one left to be helped or saved by diplomacy. She
kept her distance, still eyeing the dark wet knife on the table.… She
spoke at last, sombre, taciturn.…
“My mother lies dead upstairs.”
“Does she so? Well, ’twas her time to die, wasn’t it? We’ll bury her
decently. Come.”
He sat there, glorying in his work, his legs well apart, smiling
fatuously, waiting for the fair sulky girl to forget her immediate
griefs and fall on his neck for solace and comfort.
“Dawdling! Playing the maiden, eh? You’ll come in the end. What if
your mother is dead? Eighty, I think she was? Trooper Tim gave her a
fright. Finished her off.…” He was slightly drunk. “I’ve left my men
at Scanwood. I fancy its master is likely to seek the old earths after
all.… Come, still thinking on your mother? Devil, don’t I tell you she
was old and ripe for death? We’ll give her Christian burial, and do
all things in order.…”
He fumbled in his pockets. And Christina’s hand made a quick outward
movement.
“And will you bury me decently too?” said she, advancing at last. With
the dignity of a queen she sat down on the knee of the amorous
captain, who fancied the hour of surrender had come. Indeed, he had
some small excuse for thinking so, for with a gesture of abandonment
she flung one long arm round his neck.
“Ay, but don’t strangle me!” he whispered, his chin buried in her bare
neck. Christina’s other hand was busy at his coat lapel.
She found the place, just over the collar bone--she had no science but
she just happened on it,--and drove the long kitchen knife in
straight. Its work was not done then. With an effort she drew the
knife out and used it again. Captain Butler, before he fell off the
chair, saw her eyes glazing, and for one moment held a dead woman in
his arms.
* * * * * * *
“And that, I think, was the way it was,” said the romancer to his
patient listener, as they sat together on the bare hillside sloping to
the Bridge on the other side of the ruined battlement, and let their
hands run through the cool straggling grasses that clothed its sad
bleakness a little. He raised his hand, that had been fumbling
negligently in the ground beside him.
“Look here! A daffodil! This must have been poor Christina Daunet’s
garden!”