I surveyed with horror the recumbent, angular figure stretched out on
the long, narrow, horsehair sofa. The shut eyes--it was selfish to leave
me like this.
"There, miss, don't take on," Mrs Petrie was saying. "The poor thing's
coming round now. Slipping dead off out of things--many's the time I've
wished I could--even though you _have_ come down for a bit of
pleasuring."
But it was Lyme Regis's solemn, round-shouldered doctor who reassured
me. At first sight of him I knew Mrs Bowater was not going to die. He
looked down on her, politely protesting that she must not attempt to get
up. "This unseasonable heat, perhaps. The heart, of course, not so
strong as it might be." He ordered her complete rest in bed for a few
days--light nourishment, no worry, and he would look in again. Me he had
not detected under the serge window-curtain, though he cast an uneasy
glance around him, I fancied, on leaving the room.
After remaining alone under the still, sunshiny window until I could
endure it no longer, I climbed up the steep, narrow stairs to Mrs
Bowater's bedroom, and sat a while clasping the hand that hung down from
the bed. The blind gently ballooned in the breeze. Raying lights circled
across the ceiling, as carriage and cart glided by on the esplanade.
Fearful lest even my finger-tips should betray me to the flat shape
beneath the counterpane, I tried hard to think. My mind was in a whirl
of fears and forebodings; but there was but one thing, supremely urgent,
facing me now. I must forget my own miseries, and somehow contrive to
send Fanny the money she needed.
_Somehow_; but how? The poor little hoard which I had saved from my
quarterly allowances lay locked up on Beechwood Hill in my box beneath
my bed. By what conceivable means could I regain possession of it,
unknown to Mrs Bowater?
Conscience muttered harsh words in my ear as I sat there holding that
cold, limp hand with mine, while these inward schemings shuttled softly
to and fro.
When my patient had fallen asleep, I got downstairs again--a more
resolute, if not a better woman. Removing latch and box keys from their
ribbon round my neck, I enclosed them in an envelope with a letter:--
"DEAR MR. ANON,--I want you, please, to help me. The large one of
these two keys unlocks my little house door: the smaller one a box
under my bed. Would you please let yourself in at Mrs Bowater's
to-morrow evening when it's dark--there will be nobody there--take
out Twenty Pounds which you will find in the box, and send them to
_Miss Fanny Bowater, the Crown and Anchor Hotel, B----_. I will
thank you when I come.
"Believe me, yours very sincerely,
"M. M."
It is curious. Many a false, pandering word had sprung to my tongue when
I was concocting this letter in my mind beside Mrs Bowater's bed, and
even with Mrs Petrie's stubby, ink-corroded pen in my hand. Yet some
last shred of honesty compelled me to be brief and frigid. I was simply
determined to be utterly open with _him_, even though I seemed to myself
like the dark picture of a man in a bog struggling to grope his way out.
I dipped my fingers into a vase of wallflowers, wetted the gum, sealed
down the envelope, and wrote on it this address: Mr ----, Lodging at a
cottage near the Farm, North-west of Wanderslore, Beechwood, Kent. And I
prayed heaven for its safe delivery.
For Fanny no words would come--nothing but a mere bare promise that I
would help her as soon as I could--an idiot's message. The next three
days were an almost insupportable solitude. From Mr Anon no answer could
be expected, since in my haste I had forgotten to give him Mrs Petrie's
address. I brooded in horror of what the failure of my letter to reach
him might entail. I shared Fanny's damnation. Wherever I went, a silent
Mr Crimble dogged my footsteps. Meanwhile, Mrs Bowater's newspaper, I
discovered, lay concealed beneath her pillow.
At length I could bear myself no longer, and standing beside her bed,
asked if I might read it. Until that moment we had neither of us even
referred to the subject. Propped up on her pillows, her long face
looking a strange colour against their whiteness, she considered my
request.
"Well, miss," she said at last, "you know too much to know no more."
I spread out the creased sheets on the worn carpet, and read slowly the
smudged, matter-of-fact account from beginning to end. There were
passages in it that imprinted themselves on my memory like a photograph.
Mr Crimble had taken the evening Service that last day looking "ill and
worn, though never in what may be described as robust health, owing to
his indefatigable devotion to his ecclesiastical and parochial duties."
The Service over, and the scanty congregation dispersed, he had sate
alone in the vestry for so unusual a time that the verger of St Peter's,
a Mr Soames, anxious to get home to his supper, had at length looked in
on him at the door, to ask if his services were required any further. Mr
Crimble had "raised his head as if startled," and "had smiled in the
negative," and then, "closing the eastern door behind him," had
"hastened" out of the church. No other human eye had encountered him
until he was found at 11.27 p.m. in an outhouse at the foot of his
mother's garden. "The head of the unfortunate gentleman was wellnigh
severed from the body." "He was an only son, and was in his twenty-ninth
year. Universal sympathy will be extended by all to the aged lady who is
prostrated by this tragic occurrence."
Propped on my hands and knees, fearful that Mrs Bowater might interrupt
me before I was prepared, I stared fixedly at the newspaper. I
understood all that it said, yet it was as strange to me as if it had
been written in Hebrew. I had seen, I had known, Mr Crimble. Who, then,
was this? My throat drew together as I turned my head a little and
managed to inquire, "What is an inquest, Mrs Bowater?"
"Fretting out the why's and wherefore's," came the response, muffled by
a handkerchief pressed close to her mouth.
"And--_this_ 'why'?" I whispered, stooping low.
"That's between him and his Maker," said the voice. "The poor young man
had set his heart on we know where. As we make our bed so we must lie on
it, miss. It's for nobody to judge: though it may be a lesson."
"Oh, Mrs Bowater, then you knew I knew."
"No, no. Not _your_ lesson, miss. I didn't mean that. It's not for you
to fret yourself, though I must say---- I have always made it a habit,
though without prying, please God, to be aware of more than interference
could set right. Fanny and I have talked the affair over till we
couldn't look in each other's faces for fear of what we might say. But
she's _Mr_ Bowater's child, through and through, and my firm hand was
not firm enough, maybe. You did what you could. It's not in human
conscience to ask more than the natural frame can bear."
Did what I could.... I cowered, staring at my knuckles, and it seemed
that a little concourse of strangers, heads close together, were talking
in my mind. My eyes were dry; I think the spectre of a smile had dragged
up my lips. Mrs Bowater raised herself in her bed, and peered over at
me.
"It's the letters," she whispered at me. "If he hasn't destroyed them,
they'll be read to the whole parish."
I crouched lower. "You'll be thankful to be rid of me. I shall be
thankful to be rid of myself, Mrs Bowater."
She thrust a long, skinny arm clean out of the bed. "Come away, there;
come away," she cried.
"Oh," I said, "take me away, take me away. I can't bear it, Mrs Bowater.
I don't _want_ to be alive."
"There, miss, rest now, and think no more." She smoothed my hair,
clucked a little low, whistling tune, as if for lullaby. "Why, there
now," she muttered sardonically, "you might almost suppose I had been a
mother myself!"
There was silence between us for a while, then, quietly raising herself,
she looked down at me on the pillow, and, finding me to be still awake,
a long smile spread over her face: "Why, we don't seem neither of us to
be much good at daytime sleeping."