CHAPTER VI

WHAT WOULD BE SAID?

"WELL, I never!" uttered Miss Perkins as Jessie stepped in. "So that's what you call just going across the road, is it?"

Jessie had not the faintest recollection of any such words as coming from herself; but she seemed to have lived through a small lifetime of feeling since last crossing the threshold, and memory was confused.

"I couldn't help it," she made answer meekly.

Miss Perkins still sat in the self-same chair where Jessie had seen her last, with the self-same piece of work in her hands, exactly as if she had been glued there throughout the time of Jessie's absence. Only her sewing had made scant advance; and a bonnet and shawl lay near, where they had not been earlier.

Jessie observed neither fact, being painfully conscious of the scrutiny which she was herself undergoing. The colour in her face came and went. Miss Perkins gave vent to a sniff, which Jessie supposed to intimate displeasure, though possibly it may have meant concern.

"I couldn't help myself, aunt Barbara—I mean partly. Mrs. Groates asked me to stay with Mimy."

"Oh, it's the Groateses, is it?" with unmitigated disdain. "I might have guessed you were after the Groateses. And how ever came you to see Mrs. Groates at all, I wonder?"

Jessie dropped upon a chair, with her back to the window, and murmured, "I went there."

"What for?"

"Jack Groates asked me. He hadn't time to see his mother. And he wanted me to tell her he was gone in the boat."

"What boat?"

"The boat that tried—tried—" Jessie could not finish her sentence.

"Jack Groates didn't speak to you over the way at Mr. Mokes'. I know he didn't, for I could see quite well from here. He didn't say a word to you."

"No."

"When did he?"

"I—ran to the shore; I wanted to see. Jack sent me back. He wouldn't let me stay."

"That's one sensible thing he's done, anyway." Miss Perkins continued to sew, with lowered eyes, as if her existence depended on getting the seam done within a given time. "And I s'pose you wanted to catch your death o' cold. Done your best, anyhow, running all that way to the beach, in this wind, with nothing but a cobweb of a shawl! I wonder at you, Jessie! At your age."

Jessie was silent.

"Mrs. Mokes told me you'd gone. 'Silly girl, too!' says she. As if you could ha' done a scrap o' good to anybody by all your going! Why, they might have been all drowned before your eyes; and I s'pose you'd just ha' sat and cried. Much use that would have been."

Jessie tried to speak, and produced only a clatter of shaking teeth.

Miss Perkins glanced up in astonishment. "Eh?" she said.

The girl was clinging to her chair, white as a table-cloth. She met her aunt's eyes, and tried to laugh; but the chair shook beneath her.

"That's the sort of thing, is it?" quoth Miss Perkins, with a certain grim satisfaction. "Didn't I say you'd catch your death o' cold? Shouldn't wonder but you've done it now. You'll just come straight upstairs this minute, and get into bed, and have a basin of gruel, and not stir till I give you leave. I'm not going to have you ill on my hands too, if I can help it."

"Please—" protested Jessie.

But she was in no state for effective resistance; and Miss Perkins hauled rather than helped her up the two flights.

Midway, as they passed the open door of the spare room on the first landing, Jessie exclaimed, "Why, there's a fire!"

"Well, why not?"

Jessie stared in bewilderment.

"The room wanted airing," Miss Perkins condescended to explain. "And I thought of a fire,—all of a sudden. Come, make haste. I've got a lot to see to."

"If only I needn't go to bed—And then I could see to something too."

"You see to things,—a quaky piece of goods like you! You're best out of the way. Leave other folks more room."

Jessie noted suddenly the creaking of her aunt's walking boots, and remembered the words, "Mrs. Mokes told me." She exclaimed again, in her surprise, "Why, aunt, you've been out."

"And if I have, what then? And if I choose to go out again, what's that to anybody? Some who ain't quite so spry as others in running after other folks' business maybe do as much in the world. I shouldn't wonder if my going out had been a deal more use than yours."

This was crushing; for Jessie could not honestly feel that she had done much good to anybody by her going. She drooped her head, and was mute, offering no further resistance.

Ten minutes later saw her tucked up in her little white bed, in the front attic, a cosy small bedroom with sloping roof, scrupulously clean.

The "spare room," so called, which in summer was often let to a single lady, desirous of some few days or weeks by the sea, lay under this attic, and over the front sitting-room. Behind the said sitting-room was the kitchen; over the kitchen was Miss Perkins' bedroom; and over Miss Perkins' bedroom was an attic box-room. Miss Perkins, being an indefatigable worker, kept no servant-girl, but only had a woman in for two or three hours twice a week, to "scrub down."

The warmth and rest were comfortable, and Jessie's shivering fit soon subsided. She turned her face from the light, and felt very thankful for Jack's escape, as well as somewhat ashamed of having been betrayed into showing what she felt about him. For who could say with certainty whether Jack cared for Jessie?

"But Mimy promised; Mimy won't tell anybody how silly I was. I'm sure Mimy will take care."

Then in a moment she remembered the little dressmaker, forgotten hitherto. A rush of hot blood suffused Jessie's face. Miss Sophy Coxen had seen, and Miss Sophy Coxen would talk. Not a man, woman, or child in Old Maxham would fail to receive from Miss Sophy a full and detailed description of precisely how Jessie Perkins had looked, had spoken, had acted, upon that notable occasion when she was informed that Jack Groates had met his end.

Jessie could easily picture to herself what would be said. "That poor dear girl Jessie!" Miss Sophy Coxen would remark. "Now would you have thought it? I shouldn't! I didn't know she cared for young Groates any more than for anybody else. But she does! O yes, it is quite certain. I can answer for that. You see, I was told that poor young Groates had been drowned, and when Jessie heard it, why, the poor dear was like a thing demented. She kept saying, 'Jack Groates drowned!' over and over again and she hid her face, and didn't seem half to know where she was. And of course anybody can guess what that sort of thing means!" And so on, and so on.

"It's horrid! Horrid! How could I be so foolish?" cried Jessie. One burning blush followed upon another. "Oh dear, oh dear, what ever shall I do? What can I say? How can I put things right? And if it should come to Jack's ears! Oh! And it will; I know it will! Everybody tells everything to everybody in this horrid place."

Jessie groaned aloud, and another rush of crimson came.

Miss Perkins chose this instant to enter with the promised "basin" of steaming gruel. A dubious expression crept into her long narrow visage as she surveyed Jessie's face. Had she been anything of an experienced nurse, she would have known quickly that the heat was moist in kind, not fever heat. As it was, she took alarm.

"I declare you're as feverish as can be. You weren't that colour downstairs."

"I'm not a scrap feverish." Jessie accentuated the assertion by an added glow. "It's nothing of the sort. I'm not ill one bit, only just nicely warm."

"If I was you, I'd speak the truth another time, and not go along making believe. Your face is es hot as fire; and if that isn't fever, my name isn't Barbara Perkins." A rather rash assertion, since she possessed no other name.

Jessie broke into a nervous giggle.

"It's a chill you've got; and you'll just lay quiet in bed till it's gone. I'll have no more rampaging about, without I give you leave."

"Aunt Barbara, do you know who's hurt?" asked Jessie.

Since blushing was to be taken for fever, and since she was already about as crimson as it was possible to be, the question might be ventured upon.

Miss Perkins offered no response.

"Because the boat was thrown up on the beach, and all of them were tossed out. And some were hurt, I know—poor Mr. Gilbert, and old Adams, oh, yes, and Jack Groates too. Was there anybody else? I do want to know how they're all getting on. And the poor woman off the wreck—was she killed?"

"She wasn't dead an hour ago. That's about all I know. And Adams was come to; and Mr. Gilbert's arm was enough to make a body sick to look at it. And Jack Groates is a silly fellow."

"Oh-h!"

"A silly fellow! That's what he is. He ought to have thought of his family." Miss Perkins always took a peculiar pleasure in saying exactly the opposite to what was expected of her. "A nice expense for them it'll be, to have him laid by with a broken leg for nobody knows how long. Shouldn't wonder if he never was able to walk straight again."

Jessie giggled anew faintly, as a picture arose in her mind of Jack sidling along, crab fashion.

"Well, I shouldn't. It's what they call a compound fracture. The bone was sticking right out," pursued Miss Perkins, with the relish of one who loved to deal in horrors. "Right out! And the setting of it 'ud be awful, they say. Serve him right, too! What must he meddle for? If he was a sailor—but he isn't! Ben Mokes is a deal more sensible."

"Ben Mokes is a horrid lazy selfish creature, and I can't bear him," Jessie cried, with almost a sob. "And Jack has behaved like a man; and you know he has, aunt Barbara."

Miss Perkins sniffed. "If he isn't a man, I don't know what else he is. Folks has their different sorts of ways of thinking, though; and my way of thinking isn't yours by a long chalk."

Then she quitted the room, and Jessie, pushing aside the basin of gruel, tossed restlessly to and fro for a long while, divided between distress at Jack's sufferings and poignant regrets for her own betrayal of feeling. She ended by dropping sound asleep.

When, two hours later, she woke up, things did not look quite so desperate. Flushes and shivering had departed; and Jessie felt altogether more like her ordinary self. After all, everybody knew the ways of little Miss Sophy Coxen; and people would allow for probable exaggerations; and nobody could wonder at a certain amount of feeling shown at such a moment; and besides all this, Jessie herself could do much to set matters right, by assuming on air of high-and-mighty indifference whenever Jack was named.

Having arrived at these conclusions and consoled herself therewith, Jessie began to debate whether she might not get up and dress. She decided, however, that this would be venturing too far, in the face of her aunt's prohibition. The act might draw unpleasant consequences.

Something of a mysterious nature seemed to be going on below. Was Miss Perkins airing the room still? And why should she take to airing it thus abruptly, without any especial reason, in the middle of an afternoon? Jessie listened intently, and presently made out subdued voices—a man's voice, she was sure. Curiosity rose high.