“There are two hot-water bags,” said Grandmother. “Betty, put one under her hands and the other at her feet. Angus, pull that blanket over your chest. We must drive fast. Now, Jacqueline, get us there as quick as possible.”
Jacqueline, white lipped and silent, drove like Jehu across the sand, even down into the edge of the waves in one or two places where the dunes were impassable. Malcolm, looking stern and anxious, his white flesh gleaming in the rain, stood on the running board, holding lightly to the top of the car, and Betty, whom no one had remembered, came running, panting far behind in the rain, getting her feet wet, stumbling and even falling, crying out with a sobbing breath. They were all sure that Sheila was dead.
Back at the cliff halfway up the rocky climb, old Marget Galbraith halted to get her breath and mop the wet gray hair out of her eyes. She turned her sad eyes out to sea, looked at the cruel rocks, and shuddered. Then she said aloud, “Oh, my God, I thank Thee!”
After that she climbed on up to her home to wait for news.
As soon as the car stopped, Grandmother clambered down on her trembling limbs and hurried into the house.
“Get a fire on the hearth as soon as possible, Janet,” she ordered as Janet threw open the door.
“I already done it M’s Ainslee,” said Janet.
For Janet had taken up her stand at a second-story back window and had seen the two men come up out of the sea, one bearing a limp burden. Her eyes were red with anticipatory tears and wide with question, but she would not ask.
“The doctor will be here soon,” said the mistress.
“He’s on the upper road now, drivin’ hard,” said Janet. “I seen him from the window. I got hot blankets in her bed and a flannel ni’gown heatin’. I got hot coffee an’tea both, ef anybody wants it.” Grandmother swept her a grateful look and turned to hold open the door, for they were bringing Sheila in, and the doctor’s car was just driving up beside the wicket gate.
Jacqueline lingered a long time outside with her car, getting it parked just to suit her. She hoped that either Angus or Malcolm would come out to help her. Not that she needed help, but she was really afraid to go in. She was fearfully, desperately afraid of death. Was Sheila dead?
She didn’t understand why one of the men didn’t come out to see what had become of her. Men usually did that when she absented herself even briefly. But no one came, so she slowly, reluctantly, walked into the house.
They had taken Sheila upstairs. She couldn’t tell whether she was alive or not. She was afraid to listen to find out. She could hear grave voices and now and then Grandmother asking questions.
Janet came down pretty soon with something dark and wet in her hand. She dropped it into a big enamel pan and hurried back upstairs with trays of cups and the coffeepot. Janet didn’t turn her head nor look at Jacqueline standing there at the window with her back to the room, gazing at that tearing, tossing sea and shuddering at the thought of one having to die in the sea.
Jacqueline would sooner have cut her tongue out than ask Janet how Sheila was. She hoped that Janet had not seen her.
She began to wonder what had become of the rest of the Galbraith party. She went softly into the kitchen to look out the back window down the beach and saw Betty coming, her head out to the gale. What had Betty come for? What a fool Betty was! Did she think she could hold her husband by standing around glowering?
Jacqueline turned away from the window and saw the wet thing that Janet had brought down and put in the pan. She shuddered and tried to turn away her gaze as if it had been a casket or something connected with death, but her eyes were held irresistibly upon it. Was that a hole—several holes—right in the front breadth of what looked like a skirt?
She stepped closer. It was blue serge, and those were burned places in the fabric!
Then slowly the color stole up into Jacqueline’s selfish little face, and she turned sharply away.
Was that the dress she had put in the fire the day Sheila arrived? Was that what Sheila had worn away when she left? Was it all, perhaps, that she had of her own?
Jacqueline could scarcely conceive of such a state of things, but somehow she sensed the truth, and an unaccustomed, surprising shame filled her. She did not know what to make of it. A feeling that she, Jacqueline Lammorelle, the favored one, the anointed cherub of her world, had been unworthy. It had never entered her head before that such a thing could be, and she would not accept the thought, but it stayed with her even against her will and made her more uncomfortable than even the thought of death could do.
She hurried away from the offensive sight of the pathetic little worn-out dress with the holes that she had put into it. But as she passed through the dining room, she heard Betty’s footsteps going up the stairs.
Not to be outdone and to lose no chance of making Betty jealous, Jacqueline prodded herself to follow.
The two men, wrapped in togas of blankets, were standing barefoot in the hall outside Sheila’s door, drinking cups of coffee that Janet was serving them and conversing in grave tones. They seemed to Jacqueline ages removed from her suddenly. They did not look up when she came, nor seem to notice her. She was almost upon them before she realized that this would be so. She looked blankly around her, and there was nowhere for her to go but to follow Betty into Sheila’s room, and she did not want to go to Sheila. Yet she had to.
Sheila was lying softly in the blankets, tucked to the chin, her long hair with seaweed twined among it was spread upon the pillow, curling into little wet rings on the ends and around her brow.
The doctor was standing by her side feeling her pulse, and Grandmother was leaning over administering a spoonful of something. Sheila’s eyes were closed. But she could not be dead or they would not be feeding her, would they?
If she was dying, perhaps she would have to stand there and see her die! Oh, that would be awful!
Yet somehow she couldn’t go out there in the hall and stand with two men who did not see her. She had never experienced men before who did not see her.
Betty had gone over to the bedside and was already making herself useful, holding the medicine glass for Grandmother. But there was nothing for Jacqueline to do. Jacqueline was ornamental, not usually very useful.
Then, just as she stood there uncertainly in the doorway, trying to think what to do, Sheila opened her eyes and looked straight at her.
There was bewilderment at first in Sheila’s eyes and then a dawning eagerness. Startlingly she spoke.
“I’m sorry, Jacqueline, that I slapped you!” she said in a weak little voice, yet every word was clear. “I—was afraid—God was—going to take me—before—I got a chance—to tell—you—how ashamed I am—that I got—so angry! Please—forgive—me!”
The voice was very sweet, though exceedingly weak. Jacqueline was quite sure that it could be heard out in the hall. She was quite conscious that the two grave voices had ceased speaking when Sheila uttered the first word. Jacqueline’s face grew crimson up into the sheeny black of her hair. She stood dumbfounded before the girl on the bed, unable to stir or speak, or even to show anything in her usually well-controlled face except consternation. She was aware that two pairs of bare feet had moved in the hall and were standing in front of the door. She felt in her heart that two pairs of grave eyes were looking straight at her.
And now, for almost the first time in her remembrance, Jacqueline had nothing to say and could not think of anything smart or funny to say in reply to this simple apology.
“Better not talk anymore,” said the doctor gently.
“Tell her you forgive her, Jacqueline,” commanded Grandmother without turning her head, and Betty stepped back and gave her a significant questioning look and a place to stand next to the bed.
Jacqueline found herself stepping forward and stooping down over Sheila; then she said in a strange voice that didn’t seem to be hers at all, “Oh, that’s quite all right, dear; don’t think of it again!”
She put in the “dear”
as if it were a dose of medicine that had to be swallowed. She didn’t know why she said that dear; she was sure it wasn’t in her heart, not any feeling of dearness. Only a desire to get this awful ordeal over and to stand in well with the audience.
She had tried to put a little trill to her tone, to get back her perfect assurance that had always stood by her everywhere, but somehow something was wrong. It seemed as if some terrible Presence was in the room. She wondered if it could be that Death stood near, waiting for the ceremony to be over.
She looked apprehensively toward the doctor, standing there with his fingers on that little white wrist. Did he know? If she thought Sheila was about to die, she would certainly scream and rush from the room. She couldn’t stand it much longer.
She tried to think of something more to add to a gracious acceptance of an apology as between the dearest of friends, but words had failed her for once. Even thoughts had failed her. She felt as if she were standing before a judge and was more frightened than she had ever been in her life.
But she found to near amazement that nobody was thinking about her. Only that unseen Presence, which might be Death, standing over there in the corner behind the doctor in the shadow, seemed to be aware of her, and it was with the utmost effort that she kept herself from shuddering.
She who had delighted to flaunt herself in startlingly brief array, to uncover her flesh to the world in the merest scrap of a bathing suit, or bare her back to the public gaze with costly evening attire, felt suddenly that her little naked soul looked very small and mean and vulgar as she stood there in the quiet room with her onetime enemy lying there in a blanket forgiving her and trying to come alive again. And all because of a mean, untrue thing that she had said. She knew it was not true when she had said it. If she had not seen Moria Ainslee’s marriage certificate, she never would have thought it.
If her own jealousy and selfishness could have been visible and tangible, she would have seen them lying then at her feet, slimy creatures of the earth, coiled low, and looking up at her with slithering, evil eyes of green.
She found presently that she could fade away out of the room without causing any notice at all.
The two blanketed men had finished their coffee and stood aloof, conversing again in serious tones. What were they waiting for? She dared not ask them. She slipped past them with downcast eyes, appropriate to a state of sorrow on account of a near relative’s critical condition, and went back to her own room, closing and softly locking her door. No one noticed her going in the least. She had a strange feeling that she wanted to cry. And she never cried. Even when she was a small girl she had scorned to cry. She had always preferred to make somebody else do the crying.
She went and stood by her window, looking out toward the sea, tossing blackly, the window crossed and recrossed with wild, dashing rain. She reflected on what she had just done, just said, and was angry. Very angry to have been placed in such a situation.
The presence of Death was not in this room. She could take out her own natural feelings here and look them over, and she found herself furious.
What right had that girl, dug from whatever pit she was—as witnessed by the dress she had worn to go away—to apologize to her? Apologies were out of date. They belonged to the Victorian age. No one apologized anymore unless he wanted to make others feel that he was better than they. And that was the way that Sheila had taken to bring her into disrepute, to put her down and spit on her! To bring out the difference between them in the eyes of the household and the neighbors.
Ah! Sheila was perhaps no Victorian after all. Perhaps she was the wiser in her day and generation than anyone suspected. Perhaps she wasn’t sick and weak at all. Perhaps she was just a fine actress, making them all believe that. Perhaps even that thing in the shadows that had so terrified her was not the presence of Death. Perhaps it was just the devil in Sheila laughing in his sleeve that she, Jacqueline, had had sweetly to accept an apology! If Sheila’s mother had been a singer or an actress, perhaps Sheila was just acting with a consummate skill.
She let her anger boil in thoughts like these, seething round till it resembled the far fury of the sea she was watching. And then her quick ear caught voices in the hall, a sound as of someone taking farewell. Was it the doctor?
She opened the door a crack.
Angus stood at the head of the stairs, wrapped well in his blanket.
“No, Malcolm,” he was saying, “don’t bother to go after the car. I’ll just run along this way. There’ll be nobody to frighten with the sight of me but the fishes, and I doubt if they are out this afternoon. Yes, I’m perfectly fit for a run up the beach. Nonsense!”
Jacqueline preened herself and assumed her sweetest smile. She came upon the scene at once.
“Why, I’m taking you at once in my car, of course,” she said, smiling into his eyes. “You wouldn’t deprive me of driving the hero of the occasion back to his home, would you?”
She saw with quick anger that Angus had stiffened as she approached, and now he answered her with cold formality.
“That’s awfully kind, Miss Lammorelle, but it isn’t in the least necessary for you to take your car out in the rain again. It sounds to me as if it were raining harder than ever. I’ll just run up the beach with my cousin.”
“Oh, it’s no trouble whatever,” caroled Jacqueline, ignoring the cool tone. “I’m going out anyway. I just love this wild weather. And I have an errand at the station. Malcolm can go with us.”
Suddenly Betty appeared in the doorway with lynx eyes on Jacqueline. “We’re all going,” she said. “I’m not needed here, so I’ll go back with you, Malcolm.”
“Oh, there’s room for you all, of course,” said Jacqueline sweetly. “Angus and I’ll sit in front and you and your husband can sit in back.”
With what dignity he could summon in his present attire, Angus reluctantly consented to ride, but Jacqueline had scant satisfaction from his company. He let her do the talking, responding in monosyllables.
Jacqueline studied him furtively and wondered what he was thinking about. Then she started along another line. “Do you know, I’m just thrilled to death to know you, Angus Galbraith! I think you’re simply the greatest hero I ever knew. I think what you did this afternoon was wonderful, simply wonderful!”
“You’re mistaken,” said Angus with annoyance in his tone. “There was nothing wonderful about it. I’ve been out in worse storms simply for amusement.”
“And to think you did all that for one who was practically a stranger!” caroled on Jacqueline, ignoring his protest.
“You’re mistaken,” said Angus, growing more annoyed every minute. “Your cousin and I are very good friends indeed!”
“Oh, really,” said Jacqueline with a lifting of her slender brows. “How lovely for poor little Sheila! Really, it’s too sweet of you to be so nice to her. Just now especially, when you know she has practically no friends at all, and when she’s so frightfully distressed about her poor renegade father.”
“I was not aware of her friendlessness,” said Galbraith in a cold tone, “but that, of course, had nothing to do with it.”
“Oh no, of course, not with a man like you.” Jacqueline gave him a sweet glance intended to be impressive, quite aware that Betty was watching her, though she knew her voice could not be heard on the backseat in all the wind.
“But you know,” went on Jacqueline when Galbraith made no comment whatever, “just now is when she’s so worried and so sort of alone; it certainly must be a great comfort to her.”
“Why just now?” asked Galbraith almost haughtily. “Has she been passing through some sorrow?”
“Well, I don’t know that you’d exactly call it sorrow. Of course her mother has just died, I understand. But that can’t have ever been such a loss from all I’ve been told. Of course, you know we Ainslees have never really had anything to do with her. She’s simply here because Aunt Myra felt sorry for her, I suppose. I don’t imagine she’ll stay long.”<
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“And why shouldn’t the loss of her mother be a sorrow?” Galbraith’s voice was stern.
“Well, you know, she wasn’t just of our class. I never did know just what she was, but something like a barmaid, I think. It’s really commendable, of course, what Sheila has made of herself in spite of such handicaps. It’s so unfortunate when people of good blood get mixed up with the lower classes, don’t you think? But, you know, her father was always doing wild things. I can remember when I was just a little girl hearing of his terrible escapades. And now it’s so unfortunate, Sheila not knowing just where he is. At least, I gathered that from some things she said to Aunt Myra.”
“Do you think that Miss Ainslee would like to have us discussing her private affairs?” said Galbraith.
“Oh, she’ll never know. I just thought I ought to warn you not to say anything about her father. You might ask after him or something, and that might make her feel badly. I don’t exactly know what he’s been doing. Perhaps he’s in hiding. Or he might even be serving time in prison. I’m not sure that Sheila even suspects that, of course, but I know from the few words I overheard that there is some tragedy. I know they always told me Aunt Myra felt perfectly terrible about him. It’s dreadful, don’t you think, when a man born into a good family simply drags them down like that? I’m not sure but it was embezzlement. The family didn’t talk much about it, you know.”
“I see,” said Galbraith. “Well, perhaps it would be better if we didn’t talk about it either. Now, Miss Lammorelle, if you’ll just let me out here, I’d like to run down the beach there and see if I can locate some of my wardrobe that I cast off, before the tide carries it to China.”
Jacqueline stopped her car sharply. She was not thin skinned, but there was that in the young man’s tone that made her feel as if she had been slapped in the face again.
She watched him get out of the car and was about to start on again, vexed with herself and him and already planning how she could get Malcolm into the front seat with herself, when Malcolm called out, “Wait a minute, Jac; I’ll go down with him and help. I remember where some of his things are, I think. Just you go on up with Betty, and don’t wait for us. We’ll climb up the crags when we find his things.” He swung open the back door and sprang out, casting his blanket from him and running down the dunes toward the beach.