Part 16 (1/2)

”Good-bye! oh, good-bye!” she said; ”I cannot possibly stay another minute. I am so sorry! Oh, Mrs Jones, will you please remember, I am nearly dead with sorrow--but I must go.”

”She is certainly mad,” said the other woman to herself. She was so astonished that she forgot to rise from her chair, but sat looking after her vanis.h.i.+ng guest with eyes wide with dismay.

On the doorstep the clergyman and the lady encountered. He was panting as one, all unaccustomed to such exercise, who had run. There was a look of famished eagerness in his eyes, the unhealthy pallor of his face was beaded with drops of sweat.

”They told me--at the office--a telegram had been sent,” he said.

She s.n.a.t.c.hed it from her pocket and put it in his hand. ”I kept it from her,” she said. ”Take it, and let me go.”

And yet she could not go.

His shaking fingers had torn open the envelope, had clutched the enclosure. It wavered so, that, standing behind him, she put her arms round his arms--tall woman as she was--her hands over his, and helped him to steady it.

”Read it,” he said to her; ”I can't--I can't see.”

So she read aloud to him, in a voice that rose on a note of triumph and finished in a sob, the single line of the message!

”Not on board the _Doughty_. Tell mother all right.”

Mrs Jones, coming to the dining-room door, looked out for one instant on her husband, apparently clutched in Mrs Macmichel's embrace. In the next, the lady was speeding with her long stride down the path to the gate; the clergyman had staggered into a hall chair, a succession of sounds, something between sobs and hiccoughs, issuing from his throat.

”My dear, has she hurt you?” his wife cried excitedly. ”She is mad--quite mad, I am sure!”

Her husband, catching sight of Mrs Macmichel's face as she entered, followed her upstairs to her room. She was lying, dressed as she was, on her bed, with her face hidden.

”My dear, what is the matter? What have you been doing with yourself?”

he asked.

She had been to the Rectory, to call on the Joneses, she told him.

”Well?”

”The _Doughty_ has gone down. All on board lost.”

”So I hear. Well?”

”It was their son's s.h.i.+p.”

”Well?”

”Freddy's.” She sat up and laughed across the sob in her throat. ”You stupid! I am crying because Freddy did not go down in the _Doughty_,”

she said.

A NERVE CURE

”_Well_, what a place!” Julia cried.