Volume Ii Part 39 (1/2)

The nurse glanced at her, and wondered. Miss Fountain, no doubt, had been dazed a little by the sudden shock. She had learnt, however, not to interfere with the first caprices of grief, and she did not try to dissuade the girl from going.

When the flowers were all laid, Laura went round to the further side of the bed and dropped on her knees. She gazed steadily at Augustina for a little; then she turned to the faldstool beside the bed and the shelf above it, with Augustina's prayer-books, and on either side of the St.

Joseph, on the wall, the portraits of Helbeck and his mother. The two nurses moved away to the window that she might be left a little to herself. They had seen enough, naturally, to make them divine a new situation, and feel towards her with a new interest and compa.s.sion.

When she rejoined them, they were alternately telling their beads and looking at the glory of the sunrise as it came marching from the distant fells over the park. The rain had ceased, but the trees and gra.s.s were steeped, and the river came down in a white flood under the pure greenish s.p.a.ces, and long pearly clouds of the morning sky.

Laura gave it all one look. Then she drew her cloak round her again.

”Dear Miss Fountain,” whispered Sister Rosa, entreating, ”don't be long.

And when you come in, let me get you dry things, and make you some tea.”

The girl made a sign of a.s.sent.

”Good-bye,” she said under her breath, and she gently kissed first Sister Rosa, and then the other nurse, Sister Mary Raphael, who did not know her so well, and was a little surprised perhaps to feel the touch of the cold small lips.

They watched her close the door, and some dim anxiety made them wait at the window till they saw her emerge from the garden wall into the park.

She was walking slowly with bent head. She seemed to stand for a minute or two at the first seat commanding the bend of the river; then the rough road along the Greet turned and descended. They saw her no more.

A little before eight o'clock, Helbeck, coming out of his room, met Sister Rosa in the pa.s.sage. She looked a little disturbed.

”Is Miss Fountain there?” asked Helbeck in the voice natural to those who keep house with death. He motioned toward his sister's room.

”I have not seen Miss Fountain since she went out between four and five o'clock,” said the nurse.

”She went out for some flowers. As she did not come back to us, we thought that she was tired and had gone straight to bed. But now I have been to see. Miss Fountain is not in her room.”

Helbeck stopped short.

”Not in her room! And she went out between four and five o'clock!”

”She told us she was going for some flowers to the otter cliff,” said Sister Rosa, with cheeks that were rapidly blanching. ”I remember her saying so very plainly. She said you would know where it was.”

He stared at her, his face turning to horror. Then he was gone.

Laura was not far to seek. The tyrant river that she loved, had received her, had taken her life, and then had borne her on its swirl of waters straight for that little creek where, once before, it had tossed a human prey upon the beach.

There, beating against the gravelly bank, in a soft helplessness, her bright hair tangled among the drift of branch and leaf brought down by the storm, Helbeck found her.

He brought her home upon his breast. Those who had come to search with him followed at a distance.

He carried her through the garden, and at the chapel entrance nurses and doctors met him. Long and fruitless efforts were made before all was yielded to despair; but the river had done its work.

At last Helbeck said a hoa.r.s.e word to Sister Rosa. She led the others away.

... In that long agony, Helbeck's soul parted for ever with the first fresh power to suffer. Neither life nor death could ever stab in such wise again. The half of personality--the chief forces of that Helbeck whom Laura had loved, were already dead with Laura, when, after many hours, his arms gave her back to the Sisters, and she dropped gently from his hold upon her bed of death, in a last irrevocable submission.