“She ‘ad French Carlin — but he’s dead — an’ she’s letten th’ candles ter keep th’ owd lad off’n ’im.”
We went to the house and knocked.
“An’ ye come about him?” hoarsely whispered a bent old woman, looking up with very blue eyes, nodding her old head with its velvet net significantly towards the inner room.
“Yes —” said my mother, “we had a letter.”
“Ay, poor fellow — he’s gone, missis,” and the old lady shook her head. Then she looked at us curiously, leaned forward, and, putting her withered old hand on my mother’s arm, her hand with its dark blue veins, she whispered in confidence, “And the candles ‘as gone out twice. ‘E wor a funny feller, very funny!”
“I must come in and settle things — I am his nearest relative,” said my mother, trembling.
“Yes — I must ‘a dozed, for when I looked up, it wor black darkness. Missis, I dursn’t sit up wi’ ’im no more, an’ many a one I’ve laid out. Eh, but his sufferin’s, Missis — poor feller — eh, Missis!”— she lifted her ancient hands, and looked up at my mother, with her eyes so intensely blue.
“Do you know where he kept his papers?” asked my mother.
“Yis, I axed Father Burns about it; he said we mun pray for ’im. I bought him candles out o’ my own pocket. He wor a rum feller, he wor!” and again she shook her grey head mournfully. My mother took a step forward.
“Did ye want to see ’im?” asked the old woman with half-timid questioning.
“Yes,” replied my mother, with a vigorous nod. She perceived now that the old lady was deaf.
We followed the woman into the kitchen, a long, low room, dark, with drawn blinds.
“Sit ye down,” said the old lady in the same low tone, as if she were speaking to herself:
“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,