“How awful!” said Marian, stunned. “Are you quite sure? She seemed better this morning.”
“Quite sure,” said the doctor, smiling grimly at the question. “She was practically dead when they carried her upstairs, poor girl. It’s easier to kill a person than you think, Mrs. Forster, although she tried so long and so hard without succeeding. But she’d have done it. She’d have been starved into health only to drink herself back into starvation, and the end would have been a very bad one. Better as it is, by far!”
“Doctor: I must go out and telegraph the news to London. I know one of her relatives there.”
The doctor shook his head. “I will telegraph if you like, but you must stay here. Youre not yet fit to go out.”
“I am afraid I have not been well lately,” said Marian. “I want to consult you about myself—not now, of course, after what has happened, but some day when you have leisure to call.”
“You can put off consulting me just as long as you please; but this accident is no reason why you shouldnt do it at once. If there is anything wrong, the sooner you have advice—you neednt have it from me if you prefer some other doctor—the better.”
Upon this encouragement Marian described to him her state of health. He seemed a little amused, asked her a few questions, and finally told her coolly that she might expect to become a mother next fall. She was so utterly dismayed that he began to look stern in anticipation of an appeal to him to avert this; an appeal which he had often had to refuse without ever having succeeded in persuading a woman that it was futile, or convincing her that it was immoral. But Marian spared him this: she was overwhelmed by the new certainty that a reconciliation with her husband was no longer possible. Her despair at the discovery shewed her for the first time how homesick she really was.
When the doctor left, Mrs. Myers came. She exclaimed; wept; and gossiped until two police officers arrived. Marian related to them what she had seen of the accident, and became indignant at the apparent incredulity with which they questioned her and examined the room. After their departure Eliza came to her, and invited her to go upstairs and see the body of Susanna. She refused with a shudder; but when she saw that the girl was hurt as well as astonished, it occurred to her that avoidance of the dead might, if it came to Conolly’s knowledge, be taken by him to indicate a lack of kind feeling toward his sister. So she overcame her repugnance, and went with Eliza. The window-shades were drawn down, and the dressing-table had been covered with a white cloth, on which stood a plaster statuet of the Virgin and Child, with two lighted candles before it. To please Eliza, who had evidently made these arrangements, Marian whispered a few words of approval, and turned curiously to the bed. The sight made her uncomfortable. The body was decently laid out, its wounded forehead covered with a bandage, and Eliza’s rosary and crucifix on its breast; but it did not, as Marian had hoped, suggest peace or sleep. It was not Susanna, but a vacant thing that had always underlain her, and which, apart from her, was ghastly.
“She died a good Catholic anyhow: the light o Heaven to her sowl!” said Eliza, whimpering, but speaking as though she expected and defied Marian to contradict her.
“Amen,” said Marian.