THE faces, with one exception, had receded into the background,
when June returned slowly and painfully to a knowledge of what
was happening. Maw was bending over her, and holding a cracked cup
to her lips, and also “telling off” the others with a force and a
scope of language that added not a little to June’s fear.
Perhaps the smell of its contents had quite as much effect upon the
sufferer as the cup’s restorative powers. It was so distasteful to one
who had been taught to shun all forms of alcohol, that a sheer disgust
helped to bring her round.
At first, however, her mind was hardly more than a blank. But when,
at last, a few links of recognition floated up into it out of the
immediate past and hitched themselves to this strange present, a shock
of new terror nearly overwhelmed her again. Recollection was like a
knife stab. The Van Roon! The Van Roon! Where was it? Oh, God--if she
had not got it after all!
The thought was pain, pure and exquisite. But the case did not really
call for it. She was clutching the Van Roon convulsively to her breast
like a child holds a doll. As she wakened slowly to this fact her brain
wonderfully cleared.
The mind must be kept alive, if only to defend this talisman for whose
sake she had already suffered so outrageously. She did not know where
she was, and the evil presence holding the foul cup to her lips, and
those other evil presences filling the background beyond gave her an
intense apprehension.
Maw, however, in spite of a general air of obscenity, meant well. It
was not easy for this fact to declare itself through that loud voice
and ruthless mien; but gradually it began to percolate to June’s
violated nerves, and so gave her a fleck of courage to hold on to that
sense of identity which still threatened at the first moment again to
desert her.
“Where was you goin’, deery?”
Rude the tone, but when June’s ear disentangled the words, she was able
to appreciate that they were spoken in the way of kindness. But if the
knowledge brought a spark of comfort it was quickly dowsed. Where was
she going? To that grim question there was no possible answer.
“Scared out of her life, poor lamb!” said Maw. With furtive truculence
she announced the fact to the rather awed spectators who gathered once
more about the sufferer.
“Where you come from?”
June’s only answer was a shiver. The frozen silence was so full of the
uncanny that Maw shook her own head dismally and tapped it with a grimy
finger.
In the view of Maw, for such a calamity there was only one remedy. Once
more the cup was pressed to June’s lips; once more it was resisted,
this time with a hint of fierceness reassuring to the onlookers,
inasmuch that it implied a return of life.
“Looks respectable,” said the cracked voice of the crone, who was now
at Maw’s elbow.
“Where was you goin’?” demanded Maw again.
June was beyond tears, or she would have shed them. Now that the facts
of the situation in all their hopelessness were streaming back to her,
a feeling of sheer impotence kept her dumb.
“Off her rocker,” said Elbert gloomily.