Sad and shamefaced, her head bent, blinking her timid swollen eyes, Aunt Carrie gulped:
“I’m sure I beg your pardon, Harriet. Shall I give you your medicine now?”
“I should think so.”
“Yes, Harriet.” And hiding her face Aunt Carrie moved blindly to the little table, thinking, oh, dear goodness, let me give Harriet her medicine and get out of this room quickly before I break down completely.
“Your valerian, Harriet?” she asked.
“No,” Harriet said peevishly. “I want my old bromide tonight, the old aromatic bromide that Dr. Lewis gave me. I think that does best with me after all. On the shelf there at the corner.”
“Yes, Harriet.” Aunt Carrie turned obediently to the shelf and began to grope and fumble amongst the bottles. There were so many bottles too. “Where did you say, Harriet?”
“There,” Harriet snapped. “You’re a perfect fool to-night. There under your hand. I put it there myself the last time I was up. I remember perfectly.”
“This one?” Aunt Carrie knew she would break down again. Oh, dear goodness, she thought again, let me get out of here before I give way completely. “This one, Harriet?”
“No! The one next to it, that green bottle there. What on earth is the matter with you? Yes, that one, that’s right.”
Aunt Carrie lifted the bottle dazedly and went to the little table. Her hand shook so much she could hardly pick up the measuring glass.
“How much do you take, Harriet?”
“Two tablespoonfuls! Don’t you know that much? Can’t you even read?”
But Aunt Carrie could not read, Aunt Carrie was blind and dumb and desolate. Her movements were automatic, her mind far away in a grotesque and horrible land where Richard held Hetty Todd upon his knee. She could only do as she was told and then all that she wanted was to get back into her own room and give way to the floods of tears which welled within her. She fumbled out two tablespoonfuls of the medicine she thought Harriet had indicated. Dimly, through the dim darkness of the room, and the confusion of Harriet’s nagging, and the terrible desolation of her own heart, she thought the medicine had a queer smell. But it must be the saltness of her shed and unshed tears which made her think the medicine smelled queer, and Harriet was asking for the medicine and for her to hurry and not be a fool.
She advanced to the bed, drooping, her head averted, her hand outstretched. Harriet sat up and snatched the medicine glass crossly.
“You’ve been very stupid and slow to-night, Caroline,” she said sharply. “Just when you saw I was dying for my medicine.”
Closing her eyes tight in the way she had, Harriet swallowed the medicine at one ill-tempered gulp and for one second remained sitting upright with her eyes tight closed and the medicine glass in her hand. Then she opened her eyes and screamed.
“It’s not the medicine.” She screamed and the glass fell out of her hand.
Aunt Carrie’s tears were frozen with horror. For half a second she stood petrified, then she rushed to the switch and turned on the full illumination of the room. She dived for the bottle. A shrill cry came from her like a frightened rabbit. The bottle said liniment. She had given Harriet a poisonous liniment. She screamed, louder than Harriet.
Harriet was clutching her stomach and writhing on the bed. For the first time since she took to her bed Harriet knew real pain. She was in agony. Her face was a greenish white and her lips all puffed and burned by the liniment.
“Water,” she gasped feebly, clutching with both hands now, clutching at her fat white stomach. “It’s burning on fire.”
Swooning with horror Aunt Carrie fled to the water bottle on the wash-basin and tore back with a tumbler of water. But the water would not go down. Harriet could not drink the water; it ran out of her puffed useless mouth all over the nice clean bed-clothes.
Harriet did not seem to realise that the water was wetting her in all the wrong places.
“Water,” she still gasped feebly. “It’s burning on fire.” But however much she tried, she could not drink the water to put out the fire.
A glimmer of reason now pierced Aunt Carrie’s panic and, clattering the tumbler upon the commode, she bolted out of the room to fetch a doctor. Along the corridor she raced and down the stairs, her long bunioned feet performing a miracle of speed, and in the back vestibule she brushed into Ann who was on her way upstairs to bed.
Aunt Carrie clutched at Ann.
“The doctor,” she moaned. “Telephone for the doctor, any of them, to come at once, quick, quick, the doctor.”
Ann took one look at Aunt Carrie. She was a sensible woman, habitually taciturn, and realising that something dreadful and serious had occurred she did not stop to ask any questions. She went instantly to the telephone and very capably rang up Dr. Lewis who promised to come immediately. Ann thought for a moment, then, in case there should be some unavoidable delay, she rang up Dr. Proctor, her own doctor, and asked him to come as well.
Meanwhile Aunt Carrie had darted to the pantry in search of whiting. She had the belief that whiting was an antidote of value. And, returning with the packet of whiting in her hand, she suddenly observed Richard emerge from the drawing-room. He came slowly, disturbed from his own meditation by the unusual flurry, and supporting himself against the lintel of the door he said heavily:
“What is the matter?”
“It’s Harriet,” she gasped, holding the whiting so tightly In her agitation that a thin white stream poured out of the corner of the packet.
“Harriet?” he repeated dully.
She could not wait, she could not endure it; she turned with another cry, and fled upstairs. He followed slowly.
Harriet was still stretched upon her bed under the bright glare, lying amongst her rows and rows of bottles. She had stopped moaning now. She lay sideways and twisted up and her puffed-up mouth was fallen open. A gummy mucus had formed on her blackened lips.
Occasionally Harriet’s legs gave a little twitch and with that twitch Harriet’s breath came back to her in one quick snore. Sick with terror at that quick infrequent snore, Aunt Carrie mixed the whiting in a frenzy of haste and endeavoured to get some of it past Harriet’s swollen lips. She was still trying to do this when Richard entered the room. He stood staring at Harriet, quite stunned.
“Why, Harriet,” he said in a thickened voice.
Harriet answered by puking back some of Aunt Carrie’s whiting.
Richard came forward in a kind of stupor.
“Harriet,” he mumbled again in a besotted sort of way.
He was interrupted by the abrupt entry of Dr. Lewis who walked in cheerfully with his black gladstone bag. But when Dr. Lewis saw Harriet his cheerfulness dropped from him. His manner altered completely and in a subdued tone he asked Aunt Carrie to ’phone for Dr. Scott to come immediately. Aunt Carrie ran to do this at once. Richard retreated to the alcove by the window where, like some strange figure of destiny, he stood silent, watching.
Dr. Scott came with great dispatch and Dr. Proctor, who had walked up from Sleescale, arrived at exactly the same time. The three doctors put their heads together over Harriet. They did a great many things to Harriet. They injected Harriet with little syringes and lifted Harriet’s unresistant eyelids and pumped at Harriet’s stomach. They pumped and pumped at Harriet’s stomach and got the most extraordinary amount out of Harriet’s stomach. They all saw what a good dinner Harriet had eaten — it was incredible the quantity of asparagus she had put away. But Harriet did not see. Harriet, being dead, would not see any more.
At last, after a final attempt at resuscitation, the doctors were obliged to give it up and, wiping his forehead, Dr. Lewis advanced towards Richard who still stood rigidly in the window alcove.