“You don’t need to tell me!” said the boy, with a quick and agitated gesture of the hand. “Bates told me. Old Mrs. Prettyman’s dead!” His merry, square-set face was changed and looked actually haggard, and his eyes searched Lavendar’s with an expression oddly different from their usual fearless and straightforward one. They seemed afraid. “Was it my grandmother’s––was it our fault?” he asked. “I, I feel like a murderer. Upon my soul, I do!”
“Don’t encourage morbid ideas, my dear fellow!” said Lavendar in a matter-of-fact tone. “There’s trouble enough in the world without foolish exaggeration. Mrs. Prettyman was ‘grave-ripe,’ as she often said to your cousin; a very feeble old woman, whose time had come. The doctor’s certificate will tell you how rheumatism had affected her heart, and the neighbours would very soon 315 set your mind at rest by describing the number of times poor old Lizzie had nearly died before.”
“Think of it, though!” said Carnaby with wondering eyes. “Think of her lying dead in the cottage while I hacked and hewed at the plum tree just outside! By Jove! it makes a fellow feel queer!” He shuddered. The picture he evoked was certainly a strange one enough: a strange picture in the moonlight of a night in spring; the doomed beauty of the blossoming tree, the blind, headstrong human energy working for its destruction, and Death over all, stealthy and strong!
“What an ass I was!” said Carnaby, summing up the situation in the only language in which he could express himself. “Sweating and stewing and hacking away––thinking myself so awfully clever! And all the time things ... things were being arranged in quite a different manner!”
“We are often made to feel our insignificance 316 in ways like this,” said Lavendar. “We are very small atoms, Carnaby, in the path of the great forces that sweep us on.”
“I should rather think so!” assented the wondering boy. “And yet, can a fellow sit tight all the time and just wait till things happen?”
“Ask me something else!” suggested Lavendar ironically.
There was a short pause. “I’m awfully sorry old Mrs. Prettyman’s dead,” Carnaby said in a very subdued tone. “I meant to do a lot for her, to try and make up for my grandmother’s being such a beast.” He stopped short, and to Lavendar’s astonishment, his face worked, and two tears squeezed themselves out of his eyes and rolled over his round cheeks as they might have done over a baby’s. “It’s the j-jam I was thinking of,” he sniffed. “Once a pal of mine and I were playing the fool in old Mrs. Prettyman’s garden, pretending to steal the plums, and giving her duck bits of bread 317 steeped in beer to make it s-squiffy (a duck can be just as drunk as a chap). She didn’t mind a bit. She was a regular old brick, and gave us a jolly good tea and a pot of jam to take away.... And now she’s dead and––and....” Carnaby’s feelings became too much for him again, and a handkerchief that had seen better and much cleaner days came into play. Lavendar flung an arm round the boy’s shoulder.
“This kind of regret comes to us all, Carnaby,” he said. “I don’t suppose there’s a man with a heart in his breast who hasn’t sometime had to say to himself, I might have done better: I might have been kinder: it’s too late now! But it’s never too late!” added Lavendar under his breath––“not where Love is!”
The shower was over, and though the sun had not come out, a pleasant light lay upon the river as the friends walked down; upon the river beyond which old Lizzie Prettyman was sleeping so peacefully, the sleep of kings 318 and beggars, and just and unjust, and rich and poor alike. Carnaby had dried his eyes but continued in a pensive mood.