“Ye are his sister, ‘appen?”
My mother shook her head.
“Oh — his brother’s wife!” persisted the old lady.
We shook our heads.
“Only a cousin?” she guessed, and looked at us appealingly. I nodded assent.
“Sit ye there a minute,” she said, and trotted off. She banged the door, and jarred a chair as she went. When she returned, she set down a bottle and two glasses with a thump on the table in front of us. Her thin, skinny wrist seemed hardly capable of carrying the bottle.
“It’s one as he’d only just begun of —‘ave a drop to keep ye up — do now, poor thing,” she said, pushing the bottle to my mother and hurrying off, returning with the sugar and the kettle. We refused.
“‘E won’t want it no more, poor feller — an’ it’s good, Missis, he allers drank it good. Ay — an’ ‘e ‘adn’t a drop the last three days, poor man, poor feller, not a drop. Come now, it’ll stay ye, come now.” We refused.
“‘T’s in there,” she whispered, pointing to a closed door in a dark corner of the gloomy kitchen. I stumbled up a little step, and went plunging against a rickety table on which was a candle in a tall brass candlestick. Over went the candle, and it rolled on the floor, and the brass holder fell with much clanging.
“Eh! — Eh! Dear — Lord, Dear — Heart. Dear — Heart!” wailed the old woman. She hastened trembling round to the other side of the bed, and relit the extinguished candle at the taper which was still burning. As she returned, the light glowed on her old, wrinkled face, and on the burnished knobs of the dark mahogany bedstead, while a stream of wax dripped down on to the floor. By the glimmering light of the two tapers we could see the outlined form under the counterpane. She turned back the hem and began to make painful wailing sounds. My heart was beating heavily, and I felt choked. I did not want to look — but I must. It was the man I had seen in the woods — with the puffiness gone from his face. I felt the great wild pity, and a sense of terror, and a sense of horror, and a sense of awful littleness and loneliness among a great empty space. I felt beyond myself as if I were a mere fleck drifting unconsciously through the dark. Then I felt my mother’s arm round my shoulders, and she cried pitifully, “Oh, my son, my son!”
I shivered, and came back to myself. There were no tears in my mother’s face, only a great pleading. “Never mind, Mother — never mind,” I said incoherently.
She rose and covered the face again, and went round to the old lady, and held her still, and stayed her little wailings. The woman wiped from her cheeks the few tears of old age, and pushed her grey hair smooth under the velvet network.
“Where are all his things?” asked mother.
“Eh?” said the old lady, lifting up her ear.
“Are all his things here?” repeated mother in a louder tone.
“Here?”— the woman waved her hand round the room. It contained the great mahogany bedstead naked of hangings, a desk, and an oak chest, and two or three mahogany chairs. “I couldn’t get him upstairs; he’s only been here about a three week.”
“Where’s the key to the desk?” said my mother loudly in the woman’s ear.
“Yes,” she replied —“it’s his desk.” She looked at us, perplexed and doubtful, fearing she had misunderstood us. This was dreadful.
“Key!” I shouted. “Where is the key?”
Her old face was full of trouble as she shook her head. I took it that she did not know.
“Where are his clothes? Clothes,” I repeated, pointing to my coat. She understood, and muttered, “I’ll fetch ’em ye.” We should have followed her as she hurried upstairs through a door near the head of the bed, had we not heard a heavy footstep in the kitchen, and a voice saying, “Is the old lady going to drink with the Devil? Hullo, Mrs May, come and drink with me!” We heard the tinkle of the liquor poured into a glass, and almost immediately the light tap of the empty tumbler on the table.
“I’ll see what the old girl’s up to,” he said, and the heavy tread came towards us. Like me, he stumbled at the little step, but escaped collision with the table.
“Damn that fool’s step,” he said heartily. It was the doctor — for he kept his hat on his head, and did not hesitate to stroll about the house. He was a big, burly, red-faced man.
“I beg your pardon,” he said, observing my mother. My mother bowed.
“Mrs Beardsall?” he asked, taking off his hat.
My mother bowed.
“I posted a letter to you. You are a relative of his — of poor old Carlin’s?”— he nodded sideways towards the bed. “The nearest,” said my mother.
“Poor fellow — he was a bit stranded. Comes of being a bachelor, Ma’am.”
“I was very much surprised to hear from him,” said my mother.
“Yes, I guess he’s not been much of a one for writing to his friends. He’s had a bad time lately. You have to pay some time or other. We bring them on ourselves — silly devils as we are. — I beg your pardon.”
There was a moment of silence, during which the doctor sighed, and then began to whistle softly.
“Well — we might be more comfortable if we had the blind up,” he said, letting daylight in among the glimmer of the tapers as he spoke.
“At any rate,” he said, “you won’t have any trouble settling up — no debts or anything of that. I believe there’s a bit to leave — so it’s not so bad. Poor devil — he was very down at the last; but we have to pay at one end or the other. What on earth is the old girl after?” he asked, looking up at the raftered ceiling, which was rumbling and thundering with the old lady’s violent rummaging.
“We wanted the key of his desk,” said my mother.
“Oh — I can find you that — and the will. He told me where they were, and to give them you when you came. He seemed to think a lot of you. Perhaps he might ha’ done better for himself —”
Here we heard the heavy tread of the old lady coming downstairs. The doctor went to the foot of the stairs.
“Hello, now — be careful!” he bawled. The poor old woman did as he expected, and trod on the braces of the trousers she was trailing, and came crashing into his arms. He set her tenderly down, saying, “Not hurt, are you? — no!” and he smiled at her and shook his head.
“Eh, Doctor — Eh, Doctor — bless ye, I’m thankful ye’ve come. Ye’ll see to ’em now, will ye?”
“Yes —” he nodded in his bluff, winning way, and hurrying into the kitchen, he mixed her a glass of whisky, and brought one for himself, saying to her, “There you are —’twas a nasty shaking for you.”
The poor old woman sat in a chair by the open door of the staircase, the pile of clothing tumbled about her feet. She looked round pitifully at us, and at the daylight struggling among the candle-light, making a ghostly gleam on the bed where the rigid figure lay unmoved; her hand trembled so that she could scarcely hold her glass.
The doctor gave us the keys, and we rifled the desk and the drawers, sorting out all the papers. The doctor sat sipping and talking to us all the time.
“Yes,” he said, “he’s only been here about two years. Felt himself beginning to break up then, I think. He’d been a long time abroad; they always called him Frenchy.” The doctor sipped and reflected, and sipped again, “Ay — he’d run the rig in his day — used to dream dreadfully. Good thing the old woman was so deaf. Awful, when a man gives himself away in his sleep; played the deuce with him, knowing it.” Sip, sip, sip — and more reflections — and another glass to