CHAPTER SIX
A Closed Incident
A WEEK later he very nearly did kill her. The good which men imagine, and the diminished version of it which, when it actually takes place, has so little recognizable likeness to the thing desired, found exemplification in this event. For though Mr. Trimblerigg had often wished Davidina out of life, it was a serious shock to him when by sheer accident he one day pushed her into the water, and was forced for a considerable while to believe that she was drowned.
It happened late one evening, on the edge of night, as brother and sister were returning from a shopping expedition, upon which, rather against his will, he had been forced to accompany her to help carry parcels. Taking the short way back, they came by a wood to the home fields at a point where a deep flowing stream was crossed by a narrow foot-bridge. There had been rain; the plank was slippery, the stream in flood; it was getting dark. Mr. Trimblerigg thought that he was carrying more than his share of the parcels, and the unappreciative companionship of Davidina had made him cross. Embarked upon the plank Davidina suddenly stopped to change over her parcels so as to get help of the hand-rail; and Mr. Trimblerigg coming close behind gave her an impatient nudge harder than he knew.
With an exasperated scream Davidina missing the hand-rail toppled and swung sideways. With quaint heroism she threw him her parcels as she descended streamwards. Two of them Mr. Trimblerigg managed to field; the third made the lethal plunge after her, and being of lighter substance jaunted gaily along the swift current into which she had wholly disappeared.
For a few ghastly seconds that seemed like the threshold of eternity, Mr. Trimblerigg, encumbered with his parcels, stood fixed. The thought flashed that here and now he had done something that he could not help, for he remembered that he did not swim; and though it was a pure accident, he had a swift apprehension that this would be a difficult and also a humiliating matter to explain truthfully. It was a very serious drawback for any young man at the beginning of his ministerial career to push his sister into the water and then have her drown; stated in the mildest terms it showed incompetence; and Mr. Trimblerigg had already begun to pride himself more than most on his efficiency in an emergency.
Luckily, however, nobody had actually seen him give the push; so, if the worst came to the worst, the story would be his own to tell. In the meantime he could but do his best to put matters right. ‘I’m really awfully sorry!’ he said to himself.
While these or similar thoughts were dividing his swift mind in the couple of seconds that had ensued, there was no reappearance of Davidina. Although the fact that he could not swim made direct action difficult, to attempt her rescue was a debt of honour which did not brook delay. Fleet-footed he crossed the plank, deposited his parcels, and began to race down-stream. If he could not actually rescue her, he must at least keep her in sight and give her all the encouragement in his power. Sight of the floating parcel bobbing against a willow bough seemed to suggest her present whereabouts.
Casting off his coat as he stumbled along the bank to outpace the current, he clutched at an overhanging bough and plunged boldly in. His feet touched bottom: he came up again and crying, ‘Davidina, where are you?’ felt about him in all directions with his disengaged hand for the life which had so unexpectedly become dear to him. He encountered the parcel, captured it as a small proof of his efficiency and threw it to land. The stream seemed otherwise quite unoccupied. He called again but got no answer.
In order to be thorough, he took another plunge higher up and two others lower down where boughs offered suitable assistance. Each time his feet touched bottom and his hand found emptiness. Had it then struck him to venture further and try walking across the stream, it might have puzzled him how so capable a person as Davidina should have managed to get drowned. But this he did not do; he continued to call upon her in loud appealing tones, and to repeat his dip, approximating to total immersion, at various points up and down stream.
He could not but feel that these scattered attempts were of a somewhat desultory and speculative character, and that the drowning Davidina, could she have known of them, would not have been satisfied. But Davidina’s standard was always an exacting one, and as he had failed to live up to it in the past, so he must needs fail now. Nevertheless these repeated immersions in water that was so astonishingly cold did at least give his conscience the absolution it required. He could say at the inquest, and afterwards, that he had done his best; what a poor best that happened to be was nobody’s concern but his own.