English fiction -- 20th century; English poetry; Short stories, English
“I warned you it would be dull,” he said when we met in the
smoking-room.
“It's tremendously interesting,” I said. “But how about a look round the
links?”
“Unluckily damp always affects my eldest cousin. I've got to buy her a
new bronchitis-kettle. Arthurs broke her old one yesterday.”
We slipped out to the chemist's shop in the town, and he bought a large
glittering tin thing whose workings he explained.
“I'm used to this sort of work. I come up here pretty often,” he said.
“I've the family throat too.”
“You're a good man,” I said. “A very good man.”
He turned towards me in the evening light among the beeches, and his
face was changed to what it might have been a generation before.
“You see,” he said huskily, “there was the youngest--Agnes. Before
she fell ill, you know. But she didn't like leaving her sisters. Never
would.” He hurried on with his odd-shaped load and left me among the
ruins of my black theories. The man with that face had done Agnes
Moultrie no wrong.
We never played our game. I was waked between two and three in the
morning from my hygienic bed by Baxter in an ulster over orange and
white pyjamas, which I should never have suspected from his character.
“My cousin has had some sort of a seizure,” he said. “Will you come? I
don't want to wake the doctor. Don't want to make a scandal. Quick!”
So I came quickly, and led by the white-haired Arthurs in a jacket and
petticoat, entered a double-bedded room reeking with steam and Friar's
Balsam. The electrics were all on. Miss Mary--I knew her by her
height--was at the open window, wrestling with Miss Elizabeth, who
gripped her round the knees.
Miss Mary's hand was at her own throat, which was streaked with blood.
“She's done it. She's done it too!” Miss Elizabeth panted. “Hold her!
Help me!”
“Oh, I say! Women don't cut their throats,” Baxter whispered.
“My God! Has she cut her throat?” the maid cried out, and with no
warning rolled over in a faint. Baxter pushed her under the wash-basins,
and leaped to hold the gaunt woman who crowed and whistled as she
struggled toward the window. He took her by the shoulder, and she struck
out wildly:
“All right! She's only cut her hand,” he said. “Wet towel quick!”
While I got that he pushed her backward. Her strength seemed almost as
great as his. I swabbed at her throat when I could, and found no mark;
then helped him to control her a little. Miss Elizabeth leaped back to
bed, wailing like a child.
“Tie up her hand somehow,” said Baxter. “Don't let it drip about the
place. She”--he stepped on broken glass in his slippers, “she must have
smashed a pane.”
Miss Mary lurched towards the open window again, dropped on her knees,
her head on the sill, and lay quiet, surrendering the cut hand to me.
“What did she do?” Baxter turned towards Miss Elizabeth in the far bed.
“She was going to throw herself out of the window,” was the answer.
“I stopped her, and sent Arthurs for you. Oh, we can never hold up our
heads again!”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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