Spinster of This Parish

by W. B. Maxwell

A little more than a fortnight later she was writing to Anthony to tell him of his loss.

“...We had Dr. Gordon Giles over from Plymouth, and two very good nurses from Exeter. We did everything that was possible. It began with a chill, then it was a dreadful rapid pneumonia that simply burned him up. He had no strength to withstand the disease, and both doctors agreed that in any case he could only have lived a very little longer.

“You know, dear Tony, that he felt himself that his course was nearly run. He said to me before you left that he would not be here to welcome you home. Of course you will grieve, but you must take consolation in thinking of his long, long life, and of all the pride and joy that came to him from being your father. He loved you so much. In the night when his illness began he had a very vivid dream about you; and I shall ask you later whether you were thinking of us at that particular time. On that same night I had myself a strange feeling that you seemed near to us. Can it be that, with your dear father standing on the borderland, and the veil, as they call it, become very thin, he was indeed able to reach you in the spirit? I wonder. You and I will talk of this.

“You know, dear Tony, that I loved him. Indeed, how could I do anything else, when he was so good to me from the very beginning?

“I have attended to all business matters with Mr. Sadler, and everything is all right. The house will be carried on as you would wish, and of course none of the servants will be dismissed. I know you would not like any petty economies to be made. You can trust old Hannah to keep order and see that your home is ready for you when you return to it.

“I am going back to London to-morrow.”

She shut herself in the flat, and would see no one—not loyal Mrs. Bell clambering up those steep stairs breathlessly, not even affectionate, grateful Mildred lightly springing up them to be rebuffed at the guarded door again and again, not anyone at all. She had ceased to count the months now, dreading the tale of them, refusing to recognize their numbers. She only knew, by the warm air and the brilliant sunbeams that sent dancing fire between the leafy branches of the plane-tree, that it was high summer and that all the world of the noisy streets was gay.

Reverting to an old habit, she used to go out at night, and even then it was not dark enough to harmonise with her thoughts. Louisa always accompanied her. They crossed the Brompton Road, seeking the silence and darkness beside the closed churchyard, wandered through Ennismore Gardens into Prince’s Gate; flitting like ghosts in the grey lamp-light and vanishing in the grey shadow—like two faded and fading ghosts that haunted the broad roads and empty spaces which they had both known in lifetime and youth. On into Queen’s Gate, past its largest house, shrinking from those lighted windows and the sound of music; along the Cromwell Road, round and about the once animated neighbourhood; to and fro—thus they did their phantom walk, night after night.

She could not bear the sight of the daylight crowd. She felt hatred and contempt for these thousands of well-fed comfortable people who ate, slept, and amused themselves in mean security, while the great men, the heroes, the Dykes of the world, were giving their noble lives to distant peril and toil. Nothing short of an urgent call of duty would force her to face the garish sunlight and the heartless mob.

But such a summons came, and with Louisa she went for two days to that town in the midlands.