A Sheaf of Corn Part 16

"Good-bye! oh, good-bye!" she said; "I cannot possibly stay another minute. I am so sorry! Oh, Mrs Jones, will you please remember, I am nearly dead with sorrow--but I must go."

"She is certainly mad," said the other woman to herself. She was so astonished that she forgot to rise from her chair, but sat looking after her vanishing guest with eyes wide with dismay.

On the doorstep the clergyman and the lady encountered. He was panting as one, all unaccustomed to such exercise, who had run. There was a look of famished eagerness in his eyes, the unhealthy pallor of his face was beaded with drops of sweat.

"They told me--at the office--a telegram had been sent," he said.

She s.n.a.t.c.hed it from her pocket and put it in his hand. "I kept it from her," she said. "Take it, and let me go."

And yet she could not go.

His shaking fingers had torn open the envelope, had clutched the enclosure. It wavered so, that, standing behind him, she put her arms round his arms--tall woman as she was--her hands over his, and helped him to steady it.

"Read it," he said to her; "I can't--I can't see."

So she read aloud to him, in a voice that rose on a note of triumph and finished in a sob, the single line of the message!

"Not on board the _Doughty_. Tell mother all right."

Mrs Jones, coming to the dining-room door, looked out for one instant on her husband, apparently clutched in Mrs Macmichel's embrace. In the next, the lady was speeding with her long stride down the path to the gate; the clergyman had staggered into a hall chair, a succession of sounds, something between sobs and hiccoughs, issuing from his throat.

"My dear, has she hurt you?" his wife cried excitedly. "She is mad--quite mad, I am sure!"

Her husband, catching sight of Mrs Macmichel's face as she entered, followed her upstairs to her room. She was lying, dressed as she was, on her bed, with her face hidden.

"My dear, what is the matter? What have you been doing with yourself?"

he asked.

She had been to the Rectory, to call on the Joneses, she told him.

"Well?"

"The _Doughty_ has gone down. All on board lost."

"So I hear. Well?"

"It was their son's ship."

"Well?"

"Freddy's." She sat up and laughed across the sob in her throat. "You stupid! I am crying because Freddy did not go down in the _Doughty_,"

she said.

A NERVE CURE

"_Well_, what a place!" Julia cried.

I had come to it because of an urgent need of change, because it was by the sea, because it was cheap, because the advertis.e.m.e.nt had caught my eye at a moment when I was weary of vainly protesting that I wished to go nowhere except to bed.

"TO LET, during the months of November and December, a six-roomed cottage; desirable; furnished; free of charge, with exception of caretaker's wage."

A couple of letters from me, a couple in reply from the owner, who was going for the winter months abroad, and the affair was settled.

Then my people who--although for ten years I have earned my own living, and helped to keep some of them who have not earned theirs, although I am five-and-thirty years of age and an absolutely dependable person--have never let me have my own way in any single matter, insisted that Julia should come with me. She is my youngest sister. I have not a word to say against her, of course; only I know that the things I am content to put up with are never good enough for Julia.

"Well, _what_ a place!" Julia repeated; the shifting of the accent did not denote, I was sure, a more favourable view.

It certainly was not a pretty cottage. It was also quite out of the town, in which we had believed it to be situated, standing at the extremity of an unfinished road which led halfway across the sandy waste lying between the town of Starbay and the village of Starcliff.

"A garden, back and front," Miss Ferriman had promised me in one of her letters. There were the gardens, sure enough, but almost as unfinished as the road. "An airy situation and uninterrupted view of the sea," the description had continued, and was faithful as far as it went. The wind, which happened to be blowing a gale, without obstruction of any kind to break its force, buffeted us remorselessly as, having descended from the car which had brought us from the station, we struggled up the path to the door. Half a mile of blowing sand, with spa.r.s.e, wiry gra.s.s sticking through, was between us and the breakers; yet the ocean, cold and lead-coloured, was beyond, and not so much as a finger-breadth of impediment to check the prospect.

"Well, what a _place_!" said Julia again. "Let's go back, Isabella.

Don't let us go in."

But, once inside, we found the sitting-room which was to be ours comfortable and prettily furnished; our two bedrooms--there were but three--were also all that was necessary. Mine faced the sea beyond the melancholy, level Denes, Julia, to my great content, choosing the one looking out upon the back. The little back garden with its stunted shrubs, the unmade road beyond, made a melancholy outlook, but one that suited Julia better than the sea-view.

"The sight of the sea at this time of year gives me the most awful feeling," she declared. She rounded her shoulders, and pressed her hands upon a chest made hollow for the occasion, and her knees gave way under her, to prove how strongly she was affected.

"Then, why did you come to the sea?" I asked, for I was a little tired of Julia's grumbling.

"I came to look after you and your nerves, Isabella," she reminded me; "and how could I possibly know I shouldn't like the sea in November till I had seen it?"

We had ordered tea to be ready for us, and after our long railway journey we were more than ready for the meal.

"The woman of the house is a most miserable, frightened-looking creature," Julia remarked. "It is to be hoped that, at any rate, she will provide us with decently cooked food."

On this score I had no misgivings. Miss Ferriman, in one of her letters, had laid special stress upon the fact that Mrs Ragg, the caretaker, was an excellent cook.

She offered us no solacing specimen of her culinary art, however. The round table in the bay-window of our sitting-room was spread simply with the materials for brewing tea and for cutting bread-and-b.u.t.ter.

Julia's eyes blazed with hunger and indignation. "This is your fault, Isabella!" she declared. "What did you order, pray?"

"Something substantial. It is very annoying," I could not help confessing.

Julia angrily jingled the little bell. "We want something to eat," she said, as the caretaker appeared. "Cook us two chops, please; as quickly as possible."

Mrs Ragg looked at us from the doorway with the same gaze of fascinated terror with which a half-starved crow might regard two wild cats taking possession of its cage. With her garments of shabby black, her black untidy hair, her long beak and startled eyes, she had something of the appearance of a bedraggled, ill-used bird of that species. Her trembling, clawlike fingers played with the b.u.t.tons of her dress; her chin, a very long and pointed feature, seemed to elongate itself immensely as her mouth fell; she sucked in the sides of her thin cheeks, and looked with a helpless imploring gaze from Julia to me.

"You have no chops, I suppose?" I interpreted the beseeching gaze.

She had no chops, she confessed.