WHAT WOULD BE SAID?
"WELL, I never!" uttered Miss Perkins as Jessie stepped in. "So that's
what you call just going across the road, is it?"
Jessie had not the faintest recollection of any such words as coming
from herself; but she seemed to have lived through a small lifetime of
feeling since last crossing the threshold, and memory was confused.
"I couldn't help it," she made answer meekly.
Miss Perkins still sat in the self-same chair where Jessie had seen her
last, with the self-same piece of work in her hands, exactly as if she
had been glued there throughout the time of Jessie's absence. Only her
sewing had made scant advance; and a bonnet and shawl lay near, where
they had not been earlier.
Jessie observed neither fact, being painfully conscious of the scrutiny
which she was herself undergoing. The colour in her face came and went.
Miss Perkins gave vent to a sniff, which Jessie supposed to intimate
displeasure, though possibly it may have meant concern.
"I couldn't help myself, aunt Barbara—I mean partly. Mrs. Groates asked
me to stay with Mimy."
"Oh, it's the Groateses, is it?" with unmitigated disdain. "I might
have guessed you were after the Groateses. And how ever came you to see
Mrs. Groates at all, I wonder?"
Jessie dropped upon a chair, with her back to the window, and murmured,
"I went there."
"What for?"
"Jack Groates asked me. He hadn't time to see his mother. And he wanted
me to tell her he was gone in the boat."
"What boat?"
"The boat that tried—tried—" Jessie could not finish her sentence.
"Jack Groates didn't speak to you over the way at Mr. Mokes'. I know he
didn't, for I could see quite well from here. He didn't say a word to
you."
"No."
"When did he?"
"I—ran to the shore; I wanted to see. Jack sent me back. He wouldn't
let me stay."
"That's one sensible thing he's done, anyway." Miss Perkins continued
to sew, with lowered eyes, as if her existence depended on getting the
seam done within a given time. "And I s'pose you wanted to catch your
death o' cold. Done your best, anyhow, running all that way to the
beach, in this wind, with nothing but a cobweb of a shawl! I wonder at
you, Jessie! At your age."
Jessie was silent.
"Mrs. Mokes told me you'd gone. 'Silly girl, too!' says she. As if you
could ha' done a scrap o' good to anybody by all your going! Why, they
might have been all drowned before your eyes; and I s'pose you'd just
ha' sat and cried. Much use that would have been."
Jessie tried to speak, and produced only a clatter of shaking teeth.
Miss Perkins glanced up in astonishment. "Eh?" she said.
The girl was clinging to her chair, white as a table-cloth. She met her
aunt's eyes, and tried to laugh; but the chair shook beneath her.
"That's the sort of thing, is it?" quoth Miss Perkins, with a certain
grim satisfaction. "Didn't I say you'd catch your death o' cold?
Shouldn't wonder but you've done it now. You'll just come straight
upstairs this minute, and get into bed, and have a basin of gruel, and
not stir till I give you leave. I'm not going to have you ill on my
hands too, if I can help it."
"Please—" protested Jessie.
But she was in no state for effective resistance; and Miss Perkins
hauled rather than helped her up the two flights.
Midway, as they passed the open door of the spare room on the first
landing, Jessie exclaimed, "Why, there's a fire!"
"Well, why not?"
Jessie stared in bewilderment.
"The room wanted airing," Miss Perkins condescended to explain. "And I
thought of a fire,—all of a sudden. Come, make haste. I've got a lot to
see to."
"If only I needn't go to bed—And then I could see to something too."
"You see to things,—a quaky piece of goods like you! You're best out of
the way. Leave other folks more room."
Jessie noted suddenly the creaking of her aunt's walking boots, and
remembered the words, "Mrs. Mokes told me." She exclaimed again, in her
surprise, "Why, aunt, you've been out."
"And if I have, what then? And if I choose to go out again, what's that
to anybody? Some who ain't quite so spry as others in running after
other folks' business maybe do as much in the world. I shouldn't wonder
if my going out had been a deal more use than yours."
This was crushing; for Jessie could not honestly feel that she had done
much good to anybody by her going. She drooped her head, and was mute,
offering no further resistance.
Ten minutes later saw her tucked up in her little white bed, in the
front attic, a cosy small bedroom with sloping roof, scrupulously clean.
The "spare room," so called, which in summer was often let to a single
lady, desirous of some few days or weeks by the sea, lay under this
attic, and over the front sitting-room. Behind the said sitting-room
was the kitchen; over the kitchen was Miss Perkins' bedroom; and over
Miss Perkins' bedroom was an attic box-room. Miss Perkins, being an
indefatigable worker, kept no servant-girl, but only had a woman in for
two or three hours twice a week, to "scrub down."
The warmth and rest were comfortable, and Jessie's shivering fit soon
subsided. She turned her face from the light, and felt very thankful
for Jack's escape, as well as somewhat ashamed of having been betrayed
into showing what she felt about him. For who could say with certainty
whether Jack cared for Jessie?
"But Mimy promised; Mimy won't tell anybody how silly I was. I'm sure
Mimy will take care."
Then in a moment she remembered the little dressmaker, forgotten
hitherto. A rush of hot blood suffused Jessie's face. Miss Sophy Coxen
had seen, and Miss Sophy Coxen would talk. Not a man, woman, or child
in Old Maxham would fail to receive from Miss Sophy a full and detailed
description of precisely how Jessie Perkins had looked, had spoken,
had acted, upon that notable occasion when she was informed that Jack
Groates had met his end.
Jessie could easily picture to herself what would be said. "That poor
dear girl Jessie!" Miss Sophy Coxen would remark. "Now would you have
thought it? I shouldn't! I didn't know she cared for young Groates any
more than for anybody else. But she does! O yes, it is quite certain.
I can answer for that. You see, I was told that poor young Groates had
been drowned, and when Jessie heard it, why, the poor dear was like a
thing demented. She kept saying, 'Jack Groates drowned!' over and over
again and she hid her face, and didn't seem half to know where she was.
And of course anybody can guess what that sort of thing means!" And so
on, and so on.
"It's horrid! Horrid! How could I be so foolish?" cried Jessie. One
burning blush followed upon another. "Oh dear, oh dear, what ever shall
I do? What can I say? How can I put things right? And if it should
come to Jack's ears! Oh! And it will; I know it will! Everybody tells
everything to everybody in this horrid place."
Jessie groaned aloud, and another rush of crimson came.
Miss Perkins chose this instant to enter with the promised "basin" of
steaming gruel. A dubious expression crept into her long narrow visage
as she surveyed Jessie's face. Had she been anything of an experienced
nurse, she would have known quickly that the heat was moist in kind,
not fever heat. As it was, she took alarm.
"I declare you're as feverish as can be. You weren't that colour
downstairs."
"I'm not a scrap feverish." Jessie accentuated the assertion by an
added glow. "It's nothing of the sort. I'm not ill one bit, only just
nicely warm."
"If I was you, I'd speak the truth another time, and not go along
making believe. Your face is es hot as fire; and if that isn't fever,
my name isn't Barbara Perkins." A rather rash assertion, since she
possessed no other name.
Jessie broke into a nervous giggle.
"It's a chill you've got; and you'll just lay quiet in bed till it's
gone. I'll have no more rampaging about, without I give you leave."
"Aunt Barbara, do you know who's hurt?" asked Jessie.
Since blushing was to be taken for fever, and since she was already
about as crimson as it was possible to be, the question might be
ventured upon.
Miss Perkins offered no response.
"Because the boat was thrown up on the beach, and all of them were
tossed out. And some were hurt, I know—poor Mr. Gilbert, and old Adams,
oh, yes, and Jack Groates too. Was there anybody else? I do want to
know how they're all getting on. And the poor woman off the wreck—was
she killed?"
"She wasn't dead an hour ago. That's about all I know. And Adams was
come to; and Mr. Gilbert's arm was enough to make a body sick to look
at it. And Jack Groates is a silly fellow."
"Oh-h!"
"A silly fellow! That's what he is. He ought to have thought of his
family." Miss Perkins always took a peculiar pleasure in saying exactly
the opposite to what was expected of her. "A nice expense for them
it'll be, to have him laid by with a broken leg for nobody knows how
long. Shouldn't wonder if he never was able to walk straight again."
Jessie giggled anew faintly, as a picture arose in her mind of Jack
sidling along, crab fashion.
"Well, I shouldn't. It's what they call a compound fracture. The bone
was sticking right out," pursued Miss Perkins, with the relish of one
who loved to deal in horrors. "Right out! And the setting of it 'ud be
awful, they say. Serve him right, too! What must he meddle for? If he
was a sailor—but he isn't! Ben Mokes is a deal more sensible."
"Ben Mokes is a horrid lazy selfish creature, and I can't bear him,"
Jessie cried, with almost a sob. "And Jack has behaved like a man; and
you know he has, aunt Barbara."
Miss Perkins sniffed. "If he isn't a man, I don't know what else he is.
Folks has their different sorts of ways of thinking, though; and my way
of thinking isn't yours by a long chalk."
Then she quitted the room, and Jessie, pushing aside the basin of
gruel, tossed restlessly to and fro for a long while, divided between
distress at Jack's sufferings and poignant regrets for her own betrayal
of feeling. She ended by dropping sound asleep.
When, two hours later, she woke up, things did not look quite so
desperate. Flushes and shivering had departed; and Jessie felt
altogether more like her ordinary self. After all, everybody knew the
ways of little Miss Sophy Coxen; and people would allow for probable
exaggerations; and nobody could wonder at a certain amount of feeling
shown at such a moment; and besides all this, Jessie herself could
do much to set matters right, by assuming on air of high-and-mighty
indifference whenever Jack was named.
Having arrived at these conclusions and consoled herself therewith,
Jessie began to debate whether she might not get up and dress. She
decided, however, that this would be venturing too far, in the face of
her aunt's prohibition. The act might draw unpleasant consequences.
Something of a mysterious nature seemed to be going on below. Was
Miss Perkins airing the room still? And why should she take to airing
it thus abruptly, without any especial reason, in the middle of an
afternoon? Jessie listened intently, and presently made out subdued
voices—a man's voice, she was sure. Curiosity rose high.