Realising that he must take on himself the onus of decision, he gave a
quiet look round.
"If that's the case," he said firmly, "we had better bring her in here.
That sofa that you have there, sir, will do nicely, for her to be laid
upon while they try to bring her round. We've got a doctor already----"
Mr. Tapster bent his head; he was too much bewildered to propose any
other plan; and then he turned--turned to see his hall invaded by a
strange and sinister quartette. It was composed of two policemen and of
two of those loafers of whom he so greatly disapproved; they were
carrying a hurdle, from which Mr. Tapster quickly averted his eyes.
But though he was able to shut out the sight he feared to see, he could
not prevent himself from hearing certain sounds--those, for instance,
made by the two loafers, who breathed with ostentatious difficulty as if
to show they were unaccustomed to bearing even so comparatively light a
burden as Flossy drowned.
There came a sudden short whisper-filled delay; the doorway of the
dining-room was found to be too narrow, and the hurdle was perforce left
in the hall.
An urgent voice, full of wholly unconscious irony, muttered in Mr.
Tapster's ear: "Of course you would like to see her, sir," and he felt
himself being propelled forward. Making an effort to bear himself so
that he should not feel afterwards ashamed of his lack of nerve, he
forced himself to stare with dread-filled yet fascinated eyes at that
which had just been laid upon the leather sofa.
Flossy's hat--the shabby hat which had shocked Mr. Tapster's sense of
what was seemly--had gone; her fair hair had all come down, and hung in
pale, gold wisps about the face already fixed in the soft dignity which
seems so soon to drape the features of those who die by drowning. Her
widely-opened eyes were now wholly emptied of the anguish with which
they had gazed on Mr. Tapster in this very room less than an hour ago.
Her mean brown serge gown, from which the water was still dripping,
clung closely to her limbs, revealing the slender body which had four
times endured, on behalf of Mr. Tapster, the greatest of woman's natural
ordeals. But that thought, it is scarcely necessary to say, did not come
to add an extra pang to those which that unfortunate man was now
suffering; for Mr. Tapster naturally thought maternity was in every
married woman's day's work--and pleasure.
* * * * *
It might have been a moment, for all that he knew, or it might have been
an hour, when at last something came to relieve the unbearable tension
of Mr. Tapster's feelings. He had been standing aside helpless, aware of
and yet not watching the efforts made to restore Flossy to
consciousness.
The doctor raised himself and straightened his cramped shoulders and
tired arms. With a look of great concern on his face he approached the
bereaved husband.
"I'm afraid it's no good," he said; "the shock of the plunge in the cold
water probably killed her. She was evidently in poor health, and--and
ill-nourished. But, of course, we shall go on for some time longer,
and----"
But whatever he had meant to say remained unspoken, for a telegraph boy,
with the impudence natural to his kind, was forcing his way into and
through the crowded room.
"James Tapster, Esquire?" he cried in a high, childish treble.
The master of the house held out his hand mechanically. He took the buff
envelope and stared down at it, sufficiently master of himself to
perceive that some fool had apparently imagined Cumberland Crescent to
be in South London; before his eyes swam the line, "Delayed in
transmission." Then, opening the envelope, he saw the message for which
he had now been waiting so eagerly for some days, but it was with
indifference that he read the words:
"_The Decree has been made Absolute._"
* * * * *
_BY MRS. BELLOC LOWNDES_
THE UTTERMOST FARTHING
THE PULSE OF LIFE
BARBARA REBELL
THE HEART OF PENELOPE
STUDIES IN WIVES
End of Project Gutenberg's Studies in Wives, by Marie Belloc Lowndes