In Brackenhurst alone there were more deaths in that first autumn than in all the two years before.
Old Mrs. Whittle was the first to succumb—old Mrs. Whittle, the Valentines’ half bed-ridden pensioner who lived in one room at the top of rickety stairs, which Wilfred and James had never been induced to climb when they went with Laura and Nurse on Sunday afternoons to carry Mrs. Whittle beef-tea and sixpences. It always struck Laura as so unfair that because of their easy blubberings they should be allowed to wait at the foot of those witch-cottage stairs, while she, as frightened as they of the bright eyes and the hoarse whisper and the movements in the crimson shawl, always found herself following Nurse without a protest into the tiny, rank room. Yet, though she did not know it, it had not been Nurse, but her own innate fear of causing pain, that had forced her steps. More insistent than the fear of Mrs. Whittle had been the fear of hurting Mrs. Whittle’s feelings. She had stolidly endured the dim airlessness, the fire that spat startlingly, the bedclothes-smell, and sometimes—setting her teeth—a kiss from Mrs. Whittle, rather then hurt the feelings of Mrs. Whittle who had rheumatics.
“Bless everybody, and Justin, and give Mother my dear love, and make Mrs. Whittle quite well,” had run, in the dim years, her nightly petition.
Laura hated pain.
And now Mrs. Whittle was dead, needing neither sixpences nor Sunday visits any more from a grown-up Laura.
Old Jackson, digging her water-logged grave, in an absent son’s stead, shivered and coughed in the keen wind and followed her in a week. Two children from Laura’s Sunday-school fell sick of neglected colds and the listless, pining mother, in her dyed mourning, let Laura and the doctor do as they pleased. The long lists lengthened in the church porch and for a month there had been no news of Justin, not even the second-hand, meagre comfort, the ‘I am quite well’ of a field-postcard, filtering through to her by way of Mrs. Cloud. She had been glad to have her hands full. It helped to help people.... And the news got worse and worse.
And then Gran’papa had caught cold.
Aunt Adela was inclined to blame Papa. Papa had insisted on going—at his age!—all the way to the station last Sunday, to get a paper for Laura—he, who so strongly disapproved of Sunday papers. And all because Laura, at lunch, before she hurried off to those wretched children, had said something about wishing for a Sunday delivery! Papa was very difficult to manage. She had spoken to Laura seriously about it on her return. Between them they might, another time, circumvent easily enough an obstinate old man—for his own good, of course. But Laura, who was a peculiar girl in some ways, had merely stared at her aunt with those blank, black eyes, had merely said with a ridiculous catch in her voice—
“Do you mean to say that Gran’papa——” And then, breaking off in that irritating way of hers, had gone up without another word to Papa’s room. Had stayed there till supper-time—had not even come down to say how do you do to the rector—had spent every spare minute of her time there since. Well—she would catch Papa’s cold for a certainty, and then she would see!
But Laura did not catch Gran’papa’s cold. It was not one of his usual colds, the angry, vigorous, resentful colds of his healthy old age, but a feverish indisposition, a certain fading and shrinking of body that accompanied a glittering, fitful, mental activity. The change in him was so marked, so swift, that at the end of the week Laura looked back to the Gran’papa of last Sunday as to a memory, as to a stranger.