"What did he die of, Mrs Bowater?" I demanded.
She caught at the newspaper, folded it close, nodded, shook her head. "Four nights ago," she said. And still, some one last shred of devotion—not of fidelity, not of fear, for I longed to pour out my heart to her—sealed my lips. Holy Living and Dying: Holy Living and Dying: I read over and over the faded gilt letters on the cover of Fanny's gift, and she in her mockery, desperate, too. "Damnation"—the word echoed on in my brain.
But poor Mrs Bowater was awaiting no confession from me. She had out-trapsed her strength. When next I looked round at her, the bonneted head lay back against the rose-garlanded wallpaper, the mouth ajar, the eyelids fluttering. It was my turn now—to implore her to "come back": and failing to do so, I managed at last to clamber up and tug at the bell-pull.
Chapter Thirty
I surveyed with horror the recumbent, angular figure stretched out on the long, narrow, horsehair sofa. The shut eyes—it was selfish to leave me like this.
"There, miss, don't take on," Mrs Petrie was saying. "The poor thing's coming round now. Slipping dead off out of things—many's the time I've wished I could—even though you have come down for a bit of pleasuring."
But it was Lyme Regis's solemn, round-shouldered doctor who reassured me. At first sight of him I knew Mrs Bowater was not going to die. He looked down on her, politely protesting that she must not attempt to get up. "This unseasonable heat, perhaps. The heart, of course, not so strong as it might be." He ordered her complete rest in bed for a few days—light nourishment, no worry, and he would look in again. Me he had not detected under the serge window-curtain, though he cast an uneasy glance around him, I fancied, on leaving the room.
After remaining alone under the still, sunshiny window until I could endure it no longer, I climbed up the steep, narrow stairs to Mrs Bowater's bedroom, and sat a while clasping the hand that hung down from the bed. The blind gently ballooned in the breeze. Raying lights circled across the ceiling, as carriage and cart glided by on the esplanade. Fearful lest even my finger-tips should betray me to the flat shape beneath the counterpane, I tried hard to think. My mind was in a whirl of fears and forebodings; but there was but one thing, supremely urgent, facing me now. I must forget my own miseries, and somehow contrive to send Fanny the money she needed.