I thought that the old woman, startled by our entrance, had merely stepped back, tripped and so come to the ground; but the doctor uttered an exclamation, ran to the prostrate figure and called me to bring a spongeful of water from the wash-hand-stand.
When I had complied I saw that the ancient limbs were rigid; the teeth set, the lips foaming slightly. Peggy was in an epileptic fit and that at her age was no light matter.
I feared that her struggles might presently wake my father, who was to all appearance sleeping peacefully, and asked the doctor if it would not be possible to move her to another room. He shook his head, but gave no answer. Suddenly I was conscious that his eyes were fixed upon the tablet still held in her crooked fingers, and that in my distraction I had not erased the damning words that were traced thereon. The wet sponge was in my hand. With a quick movement I stooped and swept it across the surface. As I did so the doctor slewed his head round and smirked up at me with a truly diabolical expression. Then he snatched the sponge and plumped it with a slap on the withered forehead. The soot from the tablet ran in wet streaks over the sinister old face and made a grotesque horror of it. The wretched creature moaned and jerked under the shock, as though the water were biting acid.
Not a word was spoken between us for full twenty minutes—not till the fit at length subsided and left the racked body to the rest of exhaustion. The eyes became human, with what humanity was left them; the pallid face fell into its usual lines—the old woman lay flat with closed lids in the extreme of debility.
Then said Dr. Crackenthorpe: “Take you her feet and I her head and we’ll move her out of this.”
We carried Peggy into my room and laid her on the bed that had been Jason’s. Her hours must be numbered, I thought as I looked at the gray features, already growing spectral in the rising fog of death.
Turning from that old fallen stump, Dr. Crackenthorpe suddenly faced me, a smile on his crackled lips.
“So,” he said, “on the top of that confession, you sought to convince me against your own judgment?”
“I haven’t a thought to deny it. I value it at nothing. He has fed on a baseless chimera, at your instigation—yes, you needn’t lie—till his mind is sick with disease. What does it matter? I know him and I stake my soul on his innocence. I asked you to ease his mind—not mine. I tell you in a word”—I strode up to him and spoke slowly and fiercely—“my father had no hand in Modred’s death and I believe you know it.”
He backed from me a little, breathing hard, when a sound from the bed stopped him. I started and turned. The old woman’s hand was up to her neck. Her sick eyes were moving from the one to the other of us in a lost, questioning way; a murmur was in her lean, pulsing throat.