He nodded at Ford with a sort of geniality more inflexibly hostile than any scowls.
Ford would have answered forcibly enough, but from the doorway came a wail, and he looked up to see Mrs. Jakes standing there, with a hand on each doorpost and her small face, which he knew as the shopwindow of the less endearing virtues, convulsed with a passion of alarm and horror. At her cry, they all started round towards her, with the single exception of Dr. Jakes, who lay in his chair with his face in that direction already, and was not stirred at all by her appearance on the scene that had created itself around him.
"O-o-oh," she cried. "Eustace—after all I 've done; after all these years. Why didn't you lock the door, Eustace? And what will become of us now? O-oh, Mr. Ford, I begged you to go to bed. And the Kafir to see it, and all. The disgrace—o-o-h."
The tears ran openly down her face; they made her seem suddenly younger and more human than Ford had known her to be.
"Oh, come in, Mrs. Jakes," he begged. "Come in; it 's—it 's all right."
"All right," repeated Mrs. Jakes. "But—everybody will know, soon, and how can I hold up my head? I 've been so careful; I 've watched all the time—and I 've prayed—"
She bowed her face and wept aloud, with horrible sobs.
Ford was at the end of his wits. While he pitied Mrs. Jakes, Margaret might be dying in her room, under the bland and interested eyes of Fat Mary. He turned swiftly to the Kafir.
"Could you prescribe if I told you what she looked like?" he asked, in a half-whisper. "Could you do anything in that way?"
"Perhaps." The Kafir was quick to understand. Even in the urgency of the time, Ford was thankful that he had to deal with a man who understood readily and replied at once, a man like himself.