Vol. VI No. 1 - Modernist Magazines Project

WHERE I DID BEGIN
laughter and grabbing on to their breeches in case of accidents . . .
and there she be. ... sitting at her open door as she sometimes did
of a summer evening ... oh my girl, my girl ... it were only a bit
of foolishness. You bain't going to wreck our lives for the sake of a mad
prank? Don't 'ee do it, for God's love dont 'ee do it. . . ." Ritchie
knelt and held Williker's hands, for the laughter had become a sobbing
that shook the emaciated body and yet lacked the relief of tears. After
the paroxysm had passed he dozed.
"Is she still alive?" I asked.
"Miss Cruttenden?" Oh yes. She lives in London."
"And she never forgave him?"
"No, never. And his life was ruined, and hers too, in a manner of
speaking. She went on with the schooling until her rheumatics got
too bad. She just withered and^got old, and liked gossip and such like
little things."
"May be," I suggested, "she would have liked to make friends
again, but didn't know how to set about it. Often it's difficult to say
the right word just at the moment that it should be said."
"Yes. It so soon be too late."
Ritchie got up to put her things on. "I must be getting down home
now. Do you mind being left?"
I assured her that I did not, which I think was true, but as I held
the lamp so that she could see the uneven path to the little white gate
I rather wished that she was not going. I had never actually met death
before—not so closely. I made up the fire and turned down the lamp.
Williker was breathing heavily. Sitting down again I fell to contemplating
the stalwart beams that spanned the room, as I had done before
in many an idle moment. Somehow to-night those familiar beams took
on a new significance. They had supported the bed in which Williker's
mother had laboured in his birth and here he was lying beneath them
breathing his last. Those beams were in position when Shakespeare
went home to die at Stratford; they were there when Holbein drew
the Dance of Death. If ever any place was fraught with atmosphere
that could reveal a ghost this old timber building was one, and as the
still night crept on to the wheezing accompaniment of my grandfather
clock I felt that something must surely happen—that I should see
something. What I expected I cannot say. What I desired I do not
know, unless it was some kind of spiritual compensation for Williker's
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