The Iron Master by Jean Stubbs

Author:Jean Stubbs [Stubbs, Jean]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Endeavour Press
Published: 2015-06-24T04:00:00+00:00

Conspirators

Seventeen

January 1978

They had tiptoed about the house all day while Charlotte sat in solitary grief. It was that wretched time of year, when Christmas is over and spring is nowhere near arriving, and this as much as death in the house had depressed its mistress. For Polly voiced their opinions very well.

‘It warn’t the wet beds, and the running up and down stairs, with Miss Jorrocks, but the downright badness of her at the end. For she’d soil her nightgown a-purpose, just when I’d put it clean on. And I’ve seen her throw a dish to the floor, just on account of it being the pudding she hadn’t called for. As for the language — well, my old father were a blessed saint in heaven compared to her. Where she learned it from I’ll never know!’

Yes, Phoebe had gone out in great style, reduced to the naughty child she had never until then been able to indulge. Dorcas, saddened by the change in her old friend, had even braved Ned’s admonitions to attend on her; while Charlotte went through agonies of embarrassment as Dr Standish listened to the ravings of a foolish virgin.

‘I feel,’ said Charlotte, after one session, ‘that I do her an injury by calling you in. I had not realised she feared men so much. You understand, of course, that I speak not of you but of any man, Dr Standish?’

‘My dear Mrs Longe,’ he replied, with his thin smile, ‘your feelings are most praiseworthy, most delicate. But your diagnosis of the case — which is senile dementia — appears to be at fault. These are not the hallucinations of morbid terror, madam, but of raging desire! She does not fear my sex. She has been most cruelly deprived of it!’

‘Indeed,’ said Charlotte faintly, and kept that information to herself.

At last the ravisher under the bed, and behind the curtains, came forth in the shape of death and claimed his victim. All this they concealed, and her burial was demure and proper. They laid her with her father and mother, And Phoebe, devoted and beloved daughter of the Above, and prayed that the Almighty would overlook this last antic revel, in view of the patient years before. Left her to heaven, as it were, and came home relieved and ashamed.

Then, within the week, Agnes had followed her, and in such a different manner that the entire household was red-eyed and subdued. Though feeble and bedridden, the aged housekeeper had contrived to play a part in the household almost to the last. Propped up on the pillows, she would darn and mend the linen finely, with the aid of her spectacles and a good wax candle to enable her to see clearly. Cicely had been invaluable to both patients, and there was something extraordinary in the way the child comprehended derangement and death. A voice raised in anger, a door slammed, would make her jump. But the harrowing sights and sounds of terminal illness left her unmoved, except for the sympathy with which she would anticipate a need or want.

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