Spinster of This Parish

by W. B. Maxwell

Louisa, the tried and faithful servant, had also been a heaven-sent gift. But perhaps the real key to the triumphant deception had been her own unflinching audacity—the bold idea carried out with a boldness that never faltered. For at the beginning, when people were naturally most suspicious and keeping a sharp watch for the man Dyke, not the most suspicious of them all could suspect that the place to look for him was so outrageously near home as Oratory Gardens.

She was successful, then, and as time went on the thing grew easier. At those queer haunts of theirs they scarcely ever met anybody who knew him, and never anybody who knew her. They had no accidents; that narrow shave with her solicitous kind-hearted Mrs. Bell was the closest approach to catastrophe. But on the last evening of this same visit of Dyke to his native land they had a really unfortunate encounter.

They were coming along the Brompton Road, past the top of Thurloe Square, when a small elderly woman caught sight of Dyke in the full light beneath a lamp-post, and accosted him. He told Miss Verinder to go on, and stopped to talk to the woman. Miss Verinder, obeying him, went by herself slowly to the corner of Oratory Gardens and round it. Then, turning, she strolled back again to meet him. He was hurrying towards her, waving his arm as if as some kind of signal, and the woman was following him and calling after him angrily.

“Straight on, Emmie,” he whispered, taking Miss Verinder’s arm, “and step out.”

He led her rapidly past the two corners that would have taken them home, round into Ovington Square, Pont Street, Sloane Street, and thence by devious twists back to Oratory Gardens; explaining while they took their sharp bit of exercise that he wished “to shake off that old devil,” who was by no means to learn where Miss Verinder resided. When they were safe in the flat he further explained that the old devil was an aunt of his wife, a dangerous objectionable person with whom Emmie must never come into contact. He was sorry that Emmie had made that rather significant turn towards the flat, but he hoped that it had not been noticed.

But next day, after Dyke had gone, the woman called at the flat, and, as reported by Louisa, asked who lived there. Louisa refused to say, and shut the street door in the woman’s face. Then, after a little while, opening it, she saw the woman come out of the auctioneer’s office. Either from the auctioneer or somebody else the woman obtained the information she desired. She was in fact that connection by marriage whom the elder Mr. Dyke had described as a pertinacious writer of abusive or blackmailing letters to him and his son. Soon now she wrote a letter to Miss Verinder.

The last post brought it one night when Emmie was sitting by the fire and thinking of the man who had gone. Louisa, looking stately in her black silk dress and apron, laid it on the small table beside her mistress; and there for a little while it remained unopened.

The evening had begun with desperate sadness as Emmie lived again in memory those perfect days, and thought that once more the joy had fled and life for another merciless stretch of time could be summed up by the two words, waiting and hoping. She must get through it somehow, as she had hitherto got through these dreadful empty intervals, and fortunately he had left her work to do. Work was always a comfort. Then she thought of his recent disappointment—the first failure of the scientific expedition—and of his anxiety that the second attempt should be a complete success. She felt, although he had not said so, that he was dissatisfied with the reception given to him in England. Some of the newspapers had annoyed him by taking the wrong side of the quarrel with that French explorer Saint-Bertin, had condemned him for hastiness and overbearingness. She remembered with burning indignation something really rude that had been said about him by one newspaper. None of them, as it now seemed to her, had been as eulogistic as they used to be; they did not recapitulate sufficiently the magnificent achievements of the past; they dwelt too much on a temporary set-back.

As much as he himself, she was eager that he should ultimately attain undying fame. She knew too that he would never settle down and be quiet until he had reached the goal. And, alas, he was growing older; the years, however lightly they dealt with him, left some marks. The time available was not infinite. He himself asked for luck; and the luck was always against him.

Sitting by the fire, and feeling the natural depression of spirits caused by the sense of loneliness after companionship, she was attacked again by a horrible doubt with which more than once she had been compelled to fight. Was bad luck the only explanation? It was most horrible to her when, as now for a few moments, she seemed to hear mocking questions which she disdained to answer, but which she could not silence. Why always the bad luck? That little trip of his to the Andes was typical; representing on a small scale the big adventures of his life. Again and again, if not always, the tale had been the same. He fitted himself out for an expedition, plunged into the wilderness, and was heard of no more, until he emerged starving, with nothing but the shirt on his back. Should not this make one doubt his powers, and admit that, splendid as he is, there may be some flaw in his mental equipment—some clumsiness of thought that, in spite of his brilliant qualities, makes him less than the truly great; so that he will never really achieve what he desires? As on previous occasions, she fought with all her strength against this disloyal and treacherous doubt, and drove it away to-night perhaps for ever.