Trimblerigg

by Laurence Housman

And so, here and there, up and down, he probed for the dear departed; and only when quite convinced that his universe was empty of Davidina did he quit the scene of the disaster and run off to fetch help.

Poles, ropes, lanterns, and presently a drag-net gave to subsequent efforts a surface appearance of efficiency which his own had lacked; but below the surface, where lay all that mattered, they were attended with no more success. No body was found.

Going home to his bereaved family the gasping youth told a tale which was readily believed. His exhaustion, his lively distress, his drenched condition, and his chattering teeth gave evidence of the ordeal he had passed through, and verification to a story which nobody had any reason to doubt. He told how Davidina had lost her footing and tumbled in, and he, plunging after, had twice caught hold of her clothing; and how one garment had come off in his hand, and another had given way. Only when she sank from view, after diving for her repeatedly in vain, did he relinquish his saving efforts.

This was the story in its second telling; others down by the stream, in the intervals of their search work, had heard it all before; and there was so little to alter from the facts, so little to leave out, that at second hearing he had already become convinced of its truth; and only the sight of Davidina standing at the door, carrying the parcels he had forgotten, reminded him, with ‘that sinking feeling’ out of which patent medicines make their fortune, that another version of the story existed and would probably be told.

In the next few minutes he got the surprise of his life: Davidina did not tell it. She had, it is true, something of her own to tell which was a departure from fact; for she said the stream had carried her down a mile and over the weir, at which point she had got upon her feet and waded out; whereas having fallen from the bridge on the upstream side she had become entangled in its central timbers, and after keeping low for a while and watching her brother safely out of sight along the further bank, had climbed out again and gone back into the wood. And there, I regret to say, she had wilfully stayed—warming herself with sharp exercise the while—listening to Mr. Trimblerigg’s intermittent cries of distress, watching the flit of lanterns, hearing the harsh shouts of the search-party, and calculating coolly how long they would take to give up quest for the body that was not there.

And her motive for all this? Her motive was to give Mr. Trimblerigg his chance: his chance to tell the truth, or to do otherwise, just as he chose.

Now was this charitable of her? I do not know. I only know that she genuinely thought it would do him good: to give him the chance, just once, of his own accord, to tell something against himself, bad for his moral credit, bad for his future prospects, and bad for his self-esteem. And yet, though that may have been her motive, I doubt whether it was not practically overborne by her sharp appreciative foresight of the actual shaping of the event.

After waiting for well over an hour to give her brother all the rope he needed to tie himself up in glory, she crossed the bridge, collected the parcels, his as well as hers, and went home. And so well had she timed herself that it was just as the second telling finished that she entered.

It took the family some moments to get over their surprise; but Mrs. Trimblerigg, an eminently practical woman, did not let them wait for questions now. She ran them up to their rooms, got them out of their wet clothes, then brought them down again, bundled in hot blankets to sit opposite each other by the fire; and now to be heard once more, telling their tale more fully each in their own way.

And since Mr. Trimblerigg pleaded exhaustion, his proud mother told it herself; and Davidina listened gratefully, fixing upon her brother Jonathan a kind and considerate regard. Her mother told it all accurately, just as she had heard it from Jonathan; and when it had all been rehearsed in her ears—our own Mr. Trimblerigg sitting opposite the while and furtively regarding her, rather like a Skye terrier that has just been washed and whipped—she said not a word to question the accuracy of the story. She accepted it; and when her mother said that she ought to feel most grateful to brother Jonathan for all he had done in trying to save her at the risk of his own life, she said that she was. She said also that the last thing she remembered was his voice calling, ‘Davidina, where are you?’ And as, weary and weak of tone, she thus corroborated his story, she gave him a friendly look and a faint smile; and then shut her eyes at him, as if to say, ‘The incident is now closed.’