Lindsay nodded. “He was drowned.”
Mrs. Spash nodded confirmatively. “Yes, in Spy Pond—over South Quinanog way. He was swimming all alone. He was taken with cramps way out in the middle of the Pond. Finally somebody saw him struggling and they put out in a boat, but they were too late. Miss Murray was in the garden when they brought him back on a shutter. I was with her. I can see the way her face looked now. She didn’t say anything. Not a word! She turned to stone. And it didn’t seem to me that she ever came back to flesh again. They was to be married in October. He was a splendid man. He came from New York.”
“Yes. Curiously enough I spent a few days in what used to be his rooms,” Lindsay informed her.
“That so?” But it was quite apparent that nothing outside the radius of Quinanog interested Mrs. Spash deeply. She made no further comment.
“Was she very much in love with Lewis?” Lindsay ventured.
“In love! I wish you could see their eyes when they looked at each other. They’d met late. Miss Murray had always had lots of attention. But she never seemed to care for anybody—though she’d flirt a little—until she met Mr. Lewis. It was love at first sight with them.”
She proceeded.
“Well, Miss Murray died five years after Mr. Lewis. She died—well, I don’t know exactly what it was. But she had attacks. She was a terrible sufferer. And she was worried—money matters worried her. You see, little Cherry’s mother died when she was born and her father soon after. Miss Murray’d always had Cherry and felt responsible for her. I know, because she told me. ‘It ain’t myself, Eunice Spash,’ she said to me more’n once. ‘It’s little Cherry.’ Anyway, she was alone when her last attack came. She’d sent for a cousin—I forget the name—to be with her, and she was up in Boston getting a nurse, and I was in the other side of the house. I never heard a sound. We found her dead in the middle of the floor—there.” Her crooked forefinger indicated the spot. “Seemed she’d got up and tried to get to the door to call. But she dropped and died halfway. She was all contorted. Her face looked—Not so much suffering of the body as— Well, you could see it in her face that it come to her that she was going, and Cherry was left with nothing.”
“What became of that cousin?” Lindsay inquired. “I have asked everybody in the neighborhood, but nobody seems to know.”
“And I don’t know. She went to Boston, taking Cherry with her. For a time we heard from Cherry now and then—she’d write letters to the children. Then we lost sight of her. I don’t know whether Miss Murray’s cousin’s living or dead; Cherry either.”