He turned away, and as he went, the group of sight-seers went also, slowly dispersing and talking about the fatality in hushed voices, as though they were afraid the sea would hear.
The old sailor remained behind, smoking and watching the waves. Presently he saw something on the surface of the water that attracted his attention, and he went to the edge of the breaking surf and waited till the object was cast at his feet. It was a woman’s white canvas bathing shoe.
“Ay! ’Tother’ll mebbe come in presently,” he said. “Poor soul!—they’se washed off her feet,—she’s gone, for sure! I’ll keep this a bit—in case ’tother comes.”
And shaking it free from the sand and dripping water, he put it in his jacket pocket, and resumed his smoky meditations.
Meanwhile at Rose Lea the worst had been told. Mrs. May, weeping profusely, and tottering like a sack too full to stand upright, had been put to bed in a state bordering on collapse. Mr. May occupied himself in sending off telegrams and writing letters; two representatives of the local press called, asking for details of the “Shocking Bathing Fatality,” which they secured, first from the bereaved Mr. May himself, next from the butler, then from the maid, then from the cook, and then from the kitchen-maid, “who ’ad been the last to see the poor dear lady,” with the result that they had a sufficiently garbled and highly-coloured account to make an almost “sensational” column in their profoundly dull weekly newspaper.
The day wore on,—the house was invested with a strange silence; Diana’s presence, Diana’s busy feet tripping here and there on household business might have been considered trifling things; but the fact that she was no longer in evidence created a curious, empty sense of loneliness. Mrs. May remained in bed, moaning and weeping drearily, with curtains drawn to shut out the aggressively brilliant sunshine; and Mr. May began to take a mysterious pleasure in writing the letters which told his friends in London and elsewhere of his “tragic and irreparable loss.” He surprised himself by the beautiful sentences he managed to compose. “Our only darling child, who was so beloved and precious to us and to all who knew her”—was one. “I shall do my best to cheer and support my dear wife, who is quite prostrated by this awful calamity,” was another. “You know how dear she was and how deeply cherished!” was a third. Sometimes, while he was writing, a small twinge of conscience hurt the mental leather whereof he was largely composed, and he realised his own hypocrisy. He knew he was not really sorry for what had happened. And yet—memory pointed him backward with something of reproach to the day when Diana, a pretty and winsome child, with fair hair dancing about her in bright curls, had clambered on his knee and caressed his ugly face, as though it were an adorable object,—and to the after time, when as a girl in the fine bloom of early youth, she had gone with him to her first ball, sweet and fresh as the roses which adorned her simple white gown, and had charmed everyone by her grace, gentleness and exquisite speaking voice, which in its softly modulated tones, exercised a potent witchery on all who heard it. True,—she had missed all her chances,—or rather all her chances had somehow missed her; and she had grown not exactly old, but passée—and—it was a pity she had not married!—but now!—now all her failures and shortcomings were for ever at an end! She was drowned;—the sea had wedded her and set its salty weed among her hair in place of the never-granted orange-blossom. Mr. May shivered a little at this thought,—after all, the sea was a cold and cruel grave for his only child! And yet no tear of human or fatherly emotion generated itself out of his dry brain to moisten his hard little eyes. He stiffened himself in his chair and resumed the writing of his letters which announced the “sudden and awful bereavement” which had befallen him, and was charmed by the ease with which the tenderest expressions concerning his dead daughter flowed from his pen.
And, after a long, sobbing, snoring sleep, Mrs. May woke up to the practical every-day points of the situation and realised that there could be no funeral. This was an awful blow! Unless—unless the poor body of the drowned woman came ashore there could be no black procession winding its doleful way through the flowering lanes of the little Devonshire village, where it would have been picturesque to make a “show” of mourning. So far, the sea had cheated the undertaker.
“I cannot even put a wreath upon my darling’s coffin!” she moaned. “And she loved flowers!”
Fresh sobs and tears followed this new phase of misfortune. Mrs. May was accustomed to find balm in Gilead for the death of any friend by sending a wreath for the corpse,—and her husband had been heard to say that if he died first he would be sure to have “a nasty wet wreath laid on his chest before he was cold.”
Most of the burden and heat of the day fell on the maid, Grace Laurie, who had to take cups of soup, glasses of wine, and other strengthening refreshment to Mrs. May in her bedroom, and to see that Mr. May “had everything he wanted,” which is the usual rule of a house sustained by the presence of a man. She was an honest, warm-hearted girl, and was genuinely sorry for the loss of Diana, far more so than were the “bereaved” parents. Once, during the later afternoon, when it was verging towards sunset, she went to Diana’s room and entered it half trembling, moved by a sort of superstitious fear lest she should perhaps see the spirit of its late occupant. The window was open, and a rosy glow from the sky flushed the white muslin curtains with pale pink, and gave deeper colour to a posy of flowers in a vase on the dressing-table. Everything was scrupulously tidy; the servants had made the bed early in the morning, before the fatality had become known, and the whole room had an attractive air of peaceful expectation as though confident of its owner’s return. Grace opened the wardrobe,—there were all the few dresses Diana possessed, in their usual places, with two or three simple country hats. Was there anything missing? No sooner did this thought enter her head than Grace began to search feverishly. She opened drawers and boxes and cupboards,—but, so far as she knew, everything was as it always appeared to be. Yet she could not be quite sure. She was not Diana’s own maid, except by occasional service and favour,—her duties were, strictly speaking, limited to personal attendance on Mrs. May. Diana was accustomed to do everything for herself, arranging and altering her own clothes, and even making them sometimes, so that Grace never quite knew what she really had in the way of garments. But as she looked through all the things hurriedly, they seemed to be just what Diana had brought with her from Richmond for the summer, and no more. The clothes found on the sea-shore Grace had herself placed on one chair, all folded in a sad little heap together. She opened the small jewel-box that always stood on the dressing-table, and recognised everything in it, even to the wristlet-watch which Diana always left behind when she went to bathe; apparently there was nothing missing. For one moment a sudden thought had entered her head, that perhaps Diana had run away?—but she as quickly realised the absurdity of such an idea!