The doctor looked up at last, and, without hope, I waited for the verdict—there were death and decay in the dust-laden air.
“What’s all this nonsense about vitriol?” he cried with amazement on his face. His words came cool and clear like a breeze from the northern snows.
Margaret answered him, “Mr. Jeffcock said that I threw vitriol; of course that’s absurd, and so I thought that it must have been vitriol and that he’d thrown it himself. The door was locked and we’ve just found the key in his pocket. Oh, it’s all too dreadful!”
“Well, we shall hear what Mrs. Kenley has to say about it in a minute when she comes round.”
“Comes round? Why, she can’t recover, can she—after all that—she must be burned to death?” There was a catch in her voice and from where I sat I could see her clasping and unclasping her hands nervously behind her back.
The doctor got up from his knees. He said not a word, but stood towering above her, looking sternly down.
“It wasn’t vitriol,” he said at length, in a slow measured voice. “As far as I can tell, it was medicinal paraffin, or something of the kind, and has done her no harm whatever.”
I dropped forward on my knees gazing at the doctor. A Judas he had called me, but I could have blessed him where he stood. Like some diver who has dived too deep and fills his bursting lungs with painful breath, my relief was almost more than I could bear.
There was a little time of silence, and then like some echo from the lost, came Margaret’s gentle laugh. Low at first, it grew in volume to an uncontrolled and piercing shriek that went reverberating through the empty attics, through the roof, and into the sunlit air. “I tell you it was vitriol,” she cried between her shouts of laughter. Then quite suddenly she ceased, while the doctor and the others stood looking at her aghast.
“Or else that harlot Hilda Summerson has tricked me, after all,” she burst out again, and before the doctor and the two boys could recover from their surprise, she darted through the door and went racing down the narrow passage, her arms waving wildly as she shouted and shrieked, “Hilda, you harlot, you harlot, I’m coming for you now.”