Maid of the Mist Part 3

"Ay--dead. An' a good thing too, say I, and so too says everyone that's heard it."

"But what took him, Job? He was going on all right last night."

"'Twere the Devil I expecs, Doctor, if you ask me straight. He were getten too strampageous to live. Th' air were so full o' fire and brimstone with his curses, it weren't safe. 'Twere like bein' under a tree wi' th' leeghtnin' playin' all round."

"And Mrs Carew? ... Who was with him when he died? Tell me all you know about it," as they hurried along.

"I come up at ten o'clock as ushal, an' the missus met me at door wi'

her finger to her lips. 'He's sleeping, Job,' she says, an' glad I was to hear it. 'I'll go an' lie down, Job, for I'm very tired,' she says, and she looked it, poor thing. 'Knock on my door if you need me, Job,'

she says, and she went away. He were lying quiet and all tucked up, an' I sat down an' waited for him to wake up and start again. But he never woke, and when the missus came in this morning she went and looked at him, and she says, 'Why, Job, I do believe he's dead,' and I went and looked at him, and, G.o.d's truth, he looked as if he might be.

But I couldn't be sure, not liking to touch him, and I says, 'No such luck, ma'am, _I_'m afraid,'--polite like, for we all knows the time she's had wi' him, and she says, 'Go and fetch Dr Dale.' So I just loosed these three couple o' young uns--they're all achin' for a run,--an' I'm wondering who'll work th' pack now he's gone, if so be as he's really gone, which I'm none too sure of. Th' Hunt were best thing he ever did, but he were terrible hard on his horses."

Dale hurried into the house and up the stair, and into the sick-room, the windows of which were opened to their widest, as though to cleanse the room of the fire and brimstone which had seemed over-strong even to such a pachyderm as young Job.

Carew lay there on the bed, at rest at last, as far as this world was concerned, startlingly quiet after the storm-furies of the last seven days and nights.

Dale was still standing looking down at him, full of that ever-recurring wonder at the quiet dignity which Death sometimes imparts even to those whose lives have not been dignified; full too of anxious desire to learn how it had come about.

The tightly-clenched hands and livid rigidity of the body suggested a startling possibility. He was bending down to the dead man to investigate more closely when a sound behind him caused him to look round, and he found Mrs Carew standing there. Her face was whiter, her eyes heavier and more shadowy, than he had ever seen them.

"He is dead," she said quietly.

"One can only look upon it as a merciful release--for all of you. How was it?"

"He wanted to die," she began, in the dull level tone of a child repeating an obnoxious lesson. Then the self-repression she had prescribed for herself gave way somewhat. Her hands gripped one another fiercely and she hurried on with a touch of rising hysteria, but still speaking in little more than a whisper. "You know how he wanted to die. He was asking you all the time to give him something to end it. But you could not. I know--I quite understand--being a doctor, of course you could not. But there was something he kept--for the rats, you know, in the stables. And he told me where it was and told me to get some. So I got it and gave it him in his sleeping-draught, and----"

"Good G.o.d! Elinor!..." he gasped. "... You never did that!"

"Yes, I did. Why not? He wished it. We all wished it. It is much better so," and she pointed at the dead man on the bed. "It is better for him ... and for all of us. I only did what he told me."

He stood staring at her in blankest amazement, and found himself unconsciously searching her face and eyes for signs of aberration. Her face was wan-white still, but had lost the broken, beaten look it had worn of late. The shadow-ringed eyes were perfectly steady and had in them a curious wistful look, like that of a child expecting and deprecating a scolding.

"Do you know what it means?" he asked at last, in a hoa.r.s.e whisper.

"It means release for us all," she said quickly, and then more quickly still, "Oh, Wulfrey, I couldn't help thinking--hoping that--sometime--not for a long time, of course,--but sometime--when we have forgotten all this--you might--you and I might----"

"Stop!" he said sternly. "Were you thinking that when you did this?"

and he pointed to the bed.

"Not then--at least--no, I think not. I just did what he told me to do. But when I saw he was really dead----"

He stopped her again with a gesture, and broke out with brusque vehemence, "Is it possible you don't understand what you have done? Do you know what the law will call it?"----

"The law? No one needs to know anything about it but you and me----"

"The law will want to know how this man died----"

"But you can tell them all that is necessary. It was Blackbird falling at the old road that killed him. If he hadn't broken his back he wouldn't have been lying here, and if he hadn't----"

"He might have lived for twenty years," he said, breaking her off short again with an abrupt gesture. "The law requires of me the exact truth.

Do you understand you are asking me to swear to a lie? I would not do it to save my own life."

"He took it himself----"

"He could not get it himself, and the law will hold you responsible for supplying it."

"Oh--Wulfrey! ... You won't let them hang me?"--and he saw that at last she understood clearly enough the peril in which she stood if the whole truth of the matter became known.

Hang her they most certainly would if the facts got out, or coop her for life in a mad-house, which would be infinitely worse than hanging.

And the thought of either dreadful ending to her spoiled life was very terrible to him.

She stood before him, little more than a girl still, woful, wistful, with terror now in her white face and shadowy eyes, and he remembered their bygone days together.

"Go back to your room, and rest, if you can. And say nothing of all this to anyone. You understand?--not a word to anyone. I must think what can be done," he said, and she turned and went without a word.

VII

Wulfrey Dale thought hard and deep.

He must save her if he could.

How?

For a moment--inevitably--he weighed in his mind the question of his own honour versus this woman's life.

With a few strokes of the pen he could probably bury the whole matter safely out of sight along with Carew's dead body. But those few strokes of the pen, certifying that this man died as the result of his accident, were as impossible to him as would have been the administration of the poisoned draught itself.

Moreover--though that weighed nothing with him compared with the other--there was in them always the possibility of disaster, should rumour or t.i.ttle-tattle cast the shadow of doubt upon his statement; and an idle word from Mollie or young Job might easily do that. The neighbours also had made constant enquiry after Pasley since his accident, and had been given to understand that he was progressing as well as could be expected. His sudden death might well cause comment.

Indeed, it would be strange if it did not. That might lead to investigation, and that must inevitably disclose the fact that he died from strychnine poisoning.

The Dales had never been wealthy, but their standards had been high, and Wulfrey had never done anything to lower them. He could not sell his honour even for this woman's life.

He pitied her profoundly. He understood her better probably than any other. He knew how terribly she had suffered, and could comprehend, quite clearly, just how she had fallen into this horrible pit. But cast his honour to the dogs for her, he could not.

Then how?

And, pondering heavily all possibilities, he saw the only feasible way out.

It meant almost certain ruin to himself and his prospects, but, if it came, it would be clean ruin and he would feel no smirch.

It involved a false statement of fact, it is true, but of a very different cast and calibre from the other, and one that he himself felt to be no stain upon his honour.

As a matter of pure ethics a lie is a lie, and of course indefensible.

I simply tell you what this man did and felt himself untarnished in the doing.

And the very first thing he did was to go straight home to the little dispensary which opened off his consulting-room, and alter the positions of some of the bottles on the shelves; and from one of them he withdrew a measured dose which he tossed out of the window into the garden.