how he would take it. “The last time I saw you, the night the pleurisy started, she sat over there by the fireside. We talked together confidentially, she said she knew I would write her story, and was sorry because I had no style.” There was a flush on his forehead, he looked to where I said she sat.
“What else did she say?” He did not seem to doubt me or to be surprised.
“You believe I saw her, that it was not a dream?”
“There is an unexplored borderland between dreams and reality. Fever often bridges it. Your temperature was probably high. And I, and you, were so full of her. Go on. Tell me what she wore.”
“She was dressed in grey, a white fichu over her shoulders.”
“And a pink rose.”
“Her hair. …”
“Was snooded with a blue ribbon.” He finished my sentences excitedly.
“No. It was hanging in plaits.”
“Oh, no! Not when she wore the grey dress.” He had risen and was standing by the bed now, he seemed anxious, almost imploring. “Think again. Shut your eyes and think again. Surely she had the blue ribbon.”
I shut my eyes as he bade me. Then opened them and stared at him.
“But how did you know?”
“Go on. There was a blue ribbon in her hair?”
“The first time I saw her. The next time her hair was hanging down her back, two great plaits of fair hair, and she had on a blue dressing-gown.”
“With a white collar like a fine handkerchief, showing her slender throat.”
“How well you knew her clothes.”
“There was a sense of fitness about her, an exquisite sense of fitness. She would not have worn her hair down with that grey dress.”
“You know I really did see her.”
“Of course. Go on. Tell me exactly what she said, word for word.”
“About my bad style.”
“About your good sense of comradeship with her.”
“She said I would write the story. Hers and Gabriel Stanton’s.”
I told him all she had said, word for word as well as I could remember it, keeping my eyes shut, speaking slowly, remembering well.
“She told me of the letters and diary, the notes, chapter headings, all she had prepared. …”
I turned my head away, sank down amongst the pillows, and turned my head away. I didn’t want him to see my disappointment, to know that I had found nothing. Now I recognised my weakness, that I was spent with feverish nights and pain.
“I can’t talk any more.” He put his hand upon my pulse.
“Your pulse is quite strong.”
“I am not,” I said shortly. I wished Ella would come back.
“You looked for them?” I did not answer.
“I am so sorry. Blundering fool that I am. You looked, and looked … that is why you kept me at arm’s length, would not see me, wanted to be alone. You were searching. Why didn’t I think of it before? But how did I know she would come to you, confide in you?”
He was talking to himself now, seemed to forget me and my grave illness. “I might have thought of it though. From the first I pictured you two together. I have them. I took them … didn’t you guess?” I forgot the extreme weakness of which I had complained, and caught hold of his coat sleeve, a little breathless.
“You took them … stole them?”
“Yes. If you put it that way. Who had a better right? I knew everything. Her father, her people, nothing, or very little. And she had not wished them to know.”
“She was going to write the story, whatever it was; to publish it.”
“No! not immediately, not until long afterwards, not until it would hurt no one. They were in the writing-table drawer, the letters, in an elastic band. She was not tidy as a rule with papers, but these were tidy. The diary was bound in soft grey leather, and there were a few rough notes; loose, on MS. paper. You know all that happened there; the excitement was intense. How could I bear her papers, his letters, her notes to fall into strange hands. I was doing what she would wish, I knew I was carrying out her wishes. The day she … she died I gathered them all together, slipped them into my greatcoat pocket; the car was at the door. I hurried away as if I had been a thief, the thief you are thinking me.”
“Got home quickly, gloated over them all that evening.”
“I swear to you, I swear to you I have never opened the packet. I have never looked at them. I made one parcel of them all, of the letters, diary, notes; wrapped them all together in brown paper, tied it up with string, sealed it.
“You’ve got it still!” I was in high excitement, all my pulses throbbing, face flushed, hands hot, breathless.
“In the safe at my bank. I took it there the next morning.”
“You are going to give me the packet?”
“But of course.” He seemed suddenly to recollect that I was an invalid, that he was supposed to be my doctor. “I say, all this excitement is very bad for you. Your sister will turn me out again. Can’t you lie down, get quiet—you’ve jumped from 90 to 112.” His hand was on my pulse again. I knew I was going beyond my tether and cursed my weakness.
“You won’t change your mind!” I was lying on my back now, quite still, trying to quiet myself as he had told me. “Promise!”
“I’ll get the packet in the morning, as soon as the bank is open, and come straight on here with it. You must find some place to put it. Where you can see it, know it’s there all the time. But you mustn’t open it, you must get stronger first. You know you can’t use it yet.”
“Yes, I can.”
“It would be very wrong. You wouldn’t do it well.”
“I’m sick of being ordered about.” But I could barely move and breathing was becoming difficult to me, I had a sense of faintness, suffocation, the room grew dark. He opened the door and called nurse. Ella came in with her. I was conscious of that.
“What does she have when she is like this? Smelling salts, brandy?” Nurse began to fan me; my cheeks were very flushed.
Ella opened the windows, wide, quietly; the scent of the gorse came in. I did not want to speak, only to be able to breathe.
Nurse telegraphed him an enquiring glance. Strychnine? her dumb lips asked. He shook his head.
“Oxygen. Have you got a cylinder of oxygen in the house?” He took the pillows from under my head.
I don’t
