i thought that the old woman, startled by our entrance, had merely stepped back, tripped and so come to the ground; but the doctor uttered an exclamation, ran to the prostrate figure and called me to bring a spongeful of water from the wash-hand-stand.
when i had complied i saw that the ancient limbs were rigid; the teeth set, the lips foaming slightly. peggy was in an epileptic fit and that at her age was no light matter.
i feared that her struggles might presently wake my father, who was to all appearance sleeping peacefully, and asked the doctor if it would not be possible to move her to another room. he shook his head, but gave no answer. suddenly i was conscious that his eyes were fixed upon the tablet still held in her crooked fingers, and that in my distraction i had not erased the damning words that were traced thereon. the wet sponge was in my hand. with a quick movement i stooped and swept it across the surface. as i did so the doctor slewed his head round and smirked up at me with a truly diabolical expression. then he snatched the sponge and plumped it with a slap on the withered forehead. the soot from the tablet ran in wet streaks over the sinister old face and made a grotesque horror of it. the wretched creature moaned and jerked under the shock, as though the water were biting acid.
not a word was spoken between us for full twenty minutes—not till the fit at length subsided and left the racked body to the rest of exhaustion. the eyes became human, with what humanity was left them; the pallid face fell into its usual lines—the old woman lay flat with closed lids in the extreme of debility.
then said dr. crackenthorpe: “take you her feet and i her head and we’ll move her out of this.”
we carried peggy into my room and laid her on the bed that had been jason’s. her hours must be numbered, i thought as i looked at the gray features, already growing spectral in the rising fog of death.
turning from that old fallen stump, dr. crackenthorpe suddenly faced me, a smile on his crackled lips.
“so,” he said, “on the top of that confession, you sought to convince me against your own judgment?”
“i haven’t a thought to deny it. i value it at nothing. he has fed on a baseless chimera, at your instigation—yes, you needn’t lie—till his mind is sick with disease. what does it matter? i know him and i stake my soul on his innocence. i asked you to ease his mind—not mine. i tell you in a word”—i strode up to him and spoke slowly and fiercely—“my father had no hand in modred’s death and i believe you know it.”
he backed from me a little, breathing hard, when a sound from the bed stopped him. i started and turned. the old woman’s hand was up to her neck. her sick eyes were moving from the one to the other of us in a lost, questioning way; a murmur was in her lean, pulsing throat.
“lie quiet, peggy,” i said; “you may be able to speak in a minute if you lie quiet.”
the words seemed only to increase the panic in her. with a gurgling burst a fragment of speech came from her mouth:
“be i passing?”
the doctor heard it. “yes,” he said, brutally.
she appeared to collapse and shrink inward; but in a moment she was up, leaning on her elbow, and her face was terrible to look at.
“’twas i killed the boy!” she cried, with a sort of breathless wail; “tell him—tell ralph,” and so fell back, and i thought the life was gone from her.
was i base and cruel in my triumph? i rose erect, indifferent to the tortured soul stretched beneath me.
“who was right?” i cried. “believe me now, you dog; and growl and curse your fill over the wreck of your futile villainy!”
his mouth was set in an incredulous grinning line. i brushed sternly past him, making for my father’s room. i could not pause or wait a moment. the poor soul’s long anguish should be ended there and then.
as i stooped over his bed i saw that some change had come upon him in sleep. the twist of his mouth was relaxed. his face had assumed something of its normal expression.
i seized up the tablet from where it had tumbled on the floor. i smeared it with a fresh coating from the saucer. his first waking eyes, i swore, should look upon the written evidence of his acquittal. while i was waiting for the stuff to dry, he stirred, murmured and opened his eyes.
“renalt!” he said, in a very low, weak voice.
speech had returned to him. i knelt by his side and passed my tremulous arms underneath him.
“father,” i said, “you can speak—you are awake again. i have something to tell you; something to say. don’t move or utter a sound. you have been asleep all this time—only asleep. while you were unconscious old peggy has been taken ill—very ill. in the fear of death she has made a confession. father, i saw what you wrote on this—look, on this tablet! it was all untrue; i have wiped it out. it was peggy killed modred—she has confessed it.”
he lifted his unstricken hand—the other was yet paralyzed—in an attitude of prayer. presently his hand dropped and he turned his face to me, his eyes brimming with tears.
“renalt,” he murmured, in the poor shadow of a voice, “i thank my god—but the greater sin—i can never condone—though you forgive me—my son.”
“forgive? what have i to forgive, dad? my heart is as light as a feather.”
he only gazed at me earnestly—pathetically. i went and sat by his side and smoothed his pillow and took his hand in mine.
“now the incubus is gone, dad, and you’ll get well. you must—i can’t do without you. the black shadow is passed from the mill, and the coming days are all full of sunshine.”
“what has she—confessed? how did—she—do it?”
“i didn’t wait to hear. i wanted you to know, and left her the moment she had spoken.”
“alone?”
i hesitated and stammered.
“there,” he said, with a faint smile, “i know—i know he’s in the house. i don’t fear—i don’t fear—i tell you. i’m—past that. he won’t want—to come in here?”
he spoke all this time in a bodiless, low tone, and the effort seemed to exhaust him. for some time i sat by him, till he fell into a light slumber. no sound was in the house, and i did not even know if dr. crackenthorpe had left the adjoining room. but when my father was settled down and breathing quietly, i rose and stepped noiselessly thither to see.
he was standing against the window, and turned stealthily round as i entered, watching me.
as i walked toward him i glanced aside at the bed. something about the pose of the figure thereon brought me to a sudden stop. my heart rose and fell with a sharp, quick emotion, and in the instant of it i knew that the old woman was dead. her head had been propped against the bolster, so that her chin rested upon her withered breast. that would never beat again to the impulse of fear or evil or any kinder emotion, for peggy had answered to her name.
for the moment i stood stupefied. i think i had hardly realized that the end was so near. sorrow i could not feel, but now regret leaped in me that i had not waited to hear all that she might tell. only for an instant. on the next it flashed through me that it was better to put my trust in that first wild confession than to invite it by further questioning to self-condonation—perhaps actual denial.
“you went too soon,” dr. crackenthorpe said, in a cold voice of irony. “i must tell you that was hardly decent.”
“i never thought she had spoken her last.”
“nor had she—by a good deal.”
“she said more?”
“much more—and to a different purpose.”
i stared at him, breathing hard.
“are you going to lie again?” i muttered.
“that pleasantry is too often on your lips, sir,” he said, coolly. “none doubt truth so much as those who have dishonored her. the dead woman there leaves you this as a legacy.”
he thrust the thing he was holding into my hand. i recognized it in a sort of dull wonder. it was that ancient mutilated portrait of modred that i had once discovered in peggy’s possession.
from the stained and riddled silhouette to the evil face of the man before me i glanced and could only wait in dumb expectancy.
“she told me where to find it,” he said, “and i brought it to her.”
“i never heard you move.”
“i stepped softly for fear of disturbing your father. do you see that outraged relic? the old creature’s self-accusation turned upon it—upon that and nothing else.”
“what do you mean?”
“that you must look elsewhere, i am afraid, for the criminal. our pleasant rottengoose shared the gross superstitions of her kind. all these years she has secretly hugged the really reprehensible thought that the boy’s death was due to her.”
“i don’t understand.”
“a base superstition, my friend—a very base superstition. she had in her possession, i understand, a flint shaft of the paleolithic period. there are plenty such to be picked up in the neighborhood. the ignorant call them elf arrowheads and cherish a belief that to mutilate with one of them a body’s portrait or image is to compass that person’s destruction. this harridan cherished no love for your brother, and fancied she saw her opportunity of seizing revenge without risk on a certain night of misfortune. the boy died and henceforth she knew herself as his murderess. good-morning to you. may i remind you that my fee is yet unpaid? i will certify to the present cause of death, with pleasure.”
