Alfred Head nodded. “I don’t mind,” he said stoutly. “I’m an innocent man.” But he had clenched his teeth together when he had heard the name of Pollit uttered so casually. If Pollit told all he knew, then the game was indeed up.
CHAPTER XXXIV
After the door had shut behind Alfred Head, Anna Bauer sat on, quite motionless, awhile. What mind was left to her, after the terrifying and agonising interview she had just had, was absorbed in the statement made to her concerning Jervis Blake.
She remembered, with blinding clearness, the afternoon that Rose had come into her kitchen to say in a quiet, toneless voice, “They think, Anna, that they will have to take off his foot.” She saw, as clearly as if her nursling were there in this whitewashed little cell, the look of desolate, dry-eyed anguish which had filled Rose’s face.
But that false quietude had only lasted a few moments, for, in response to her poor old Anna’s exclamation of horror and of sympathy, Rose Otway had flung herself into her nurse’s arms, and had lain there shivering and crying till the sound of the front door opening to admit her mother had forced her to control herself.
Anna’s mind travelled wearily on, guided by reproachful memory through a maze of painful recollections. Once more she stood watching the strange marriage ceremony—trying hard, aye, and succeeding, to obey Sir Jacques’s strict injunction. More than one of those present had glanced over at her, Anna, very kindly during that trying half-hour. How would they then have looked at her if they had known what she knew now?
She lived again as in long drawn-out throbs of pain the piteous days which had followed Mr. Blake’s operation.
Rose had not allowed herself one word of fret or of repining; but on three different nights during that first week, she had got out of bed and wandered about the house, till Anna, hearing the quiet, stuffless sounds of bare feet, had come out, and leading the girl into the still warm kitchen, had comforted her.
It was Anna who had spoken to Sir Jacques, and suggested the sleeping draught which had finally broken that evil waking spell—Anna who, far more than Rose’s own mother, had sustained and heartened the poor child during those dreadful days of reaction which followed on the brave front she had shown at the crisis of the operation.