The heart-breaking rain spent itself at last; and one morning, laying the cloth for lunch in the dreary, immaculate sitting-room, she saw an unfamiliar gleam of sunshine fall across the table.
Her first impulse was to lift up her heart in thanksgiving for a merciful answer to prayer: if dry weather should be granted at last, perhaps the sickness might abate. Her second was the result of lifelong habit: she spread a newspaper upon the floor to save the carpet.
The board of health officer from Truro came in with the Vicar for a hasty lunch; they were to attend a committee meeting, and then to make a round of visits together to places suspected of unsanitary conditions.
"I shall probably be out late," the Vicar told his wife. "There has been another death near Zennor Cross, and I must go round there when we have finished."
"Don't kill yourself with work," said the visitor. "What would Porthcarrick do?"
"It is the diphtheria we hope to kill," Mr. Raymond answered bravely; "and we shall do it soon now, if the Almighty in His mercy should send us fair weather."
The official nodded approvingly. He was an earnest worker himself and a lover of workers, and the Vicar's indomitable energy delighted him. "What a splendid old fellow!" he had said to Dr. Jenkins. "As stiff as a cast-iron gate to look at; and just see the work he gets through!" He looked at the hard old face with genuine admiration.
"Talking of diphtheria," he said, "reminds me. I wonder are you by any chance related to the Dr. Raymond in Bloomsbury who has been making experiments lately with the diphtheritic virus? I saw an article about it in this week's Lancet; he's to read a paper at the Edinburgh Congress. His theory seems to be attracting a good deal of attention."
If he had turned to the woman her scared eyes would have silenced him; but he was
looking at Mr. Raymond, and the grey face never twitched.
"Yes, he is a relative."
"Really? How small the world is, to be sure! I spent a week in the same boarding-house with Dr. Raymond last summer; I was taking a holiday on the south coast, and he was there with a sister of his, a young widow, I think, with a little boy — such a beautiful child!"
Then he became conscious of the strained immobility of his hosts, and stopped.
"He is a relative," the Vicar repeated; "but not an acquaintance."
The conversation flagged awkwardly for a few minutes; then the visitor looked at his watch.
"It's time to go, I think."
In the garden the Vicar stopped short.
"Pardon me," he said to his guest; "I forgot a message for my wife. I will catch you up the road."
He went back into the house. His wife was standing where they had left her, quite still, her eyes on the floor.
"Sarah," he began, and paused in the doorway.
She started, then recovered her self-possession, and came up to him.
"Did you forget any thing?"
He hesitated, looking away from her. "You perhaps feel lonely when I am out so much?"
"No, Josiah; I'm used to being alone."
"Yes." He paused again.
"I was wondering... whether you would like Dr. Jenkins's little girl to come and sit with you sometimes. She is a nice, quiet little thing, and you were always so fond of children..."
The words died in his throat as he saw her draw back from him, her hands outstretched, her eyes widened, full of dread.
"No, no! Josiah. Oh, don't bring a child in here!"
His face had turned to stone.
"You mean, Sarah..?"
They stood still and looked at each other. He was brave enough, but not she. Her eyes sank; her old hand fluttered against the skirt of her gown.
"I... I'm not so strong as I was; ...and children are so noisy..."
He had not flinched.
"It is as you prefer," he said, and went out.
She watched him from her window as he walked up the lane; a black and sunless blot upon the landscape; correct, professional, with stubborn shoulders still unbowed under the weight of grey hair and of shame. Then she sat down at her neat work-table to darn his socks.
The church clock struck the hour; and, looking up, she saw the door of the board school open and a crowd of little girls coming out, laughing and chattering, their satchels swinging from their wrists. She put down her work.
"My eyes seem failing lately," she said aloud, as if in the empty room there had been still a listener, with whom she must keep up the decencies of old hypocrisy. "They ache when I sew." And she drew her hand across them furtively.
Then she rose and pulled her stiff, white curtain aside, very carefully, not to spoil its starched perfection, and looked out at the children. They came running down the lane; some passed her window without looking up; others glanced over her, where she sat forlorn and old, much as she, in her time long ago had often glanced over Spotty.
She shrank away, as Spotty used to shrink when any one crossed the yard, and drew the curtain forward again. But she peeped between its frilled edge and the shutter to see the children. Strange children all, with cold, unfriendly eyes; but some of them had satin cheeks and wind-kissed freckles here and there; and all of them had nimble feet and voices full of laughter; and one (but she turned her head away when that one passed) had thick and tawny curls that caught the sunlight where some other woman's hand had brushed them back and tied them with a ribbon.
"Johnny dangerously ill. Diphtheria.
Crying for you."
Jack repeated the words to himself over and over again. The wheels of the train hammered them out; the rattle of the windows, the breathing of his sleepy fellow-passengers, the heavy thumping of the thing that ached somewhere inside his chest or somewhere in the top of his head (he was not quite sure which) all worried and pursued him with their senseless iteration. Sometimes the refrain would break off for a moment and let him hear another one that was going on more softly underneath it, scarcely audible, but always going on: "You'll come too late; you'll come too late; you'll come too late."
Surely that must be St. Albans, that blur of brown streets in the shadowy landscape as the train rushed past He would soon be home now. But it was a long time since Molly's telegram had called him from his breakfast in Edinburgh and sent him tearing to the station for the first train back to London. Any thing might have happened since then. If only he had not gone to the medical Congress! If only...
He raised the window blind and looked out. It was growing dark already, but it grows dark so early in winter... Patches of snow gleamed faintly here and there in the level pasture land.
Somehow he had never realised till to-day what the child was to him. Indeed, he had never had much time for thinking about his personal affections; there were always so many things to do, what with the hospital and the microscope work, and chance jobs of coaching students for examinations, to make both ends meet. One couldn't afford to neglect opportunities for earning a few odd pounds here and there, with three mouths to feed and Johnny's education to save up for. And when he did get free, he was tired, or worried about patients, or rushing across the Continent in express trains in response to wild telegrams from Theo...