“What has that to do with it? I don’t understand you. Your accusation’s monstrous.”
“I see it all—I’m not stupid,” she went on, heedless of my emphasis. “It was the book that finished her—it was that decided her!”
“Decided her? Do you mean she has murdered her child?” I demanded, trembling at my own words.
“She sacrificed him; she determined to do nothing to make him live. Why else did she lock herself in, why else did she turn away the Doctor? The book gave her a horror; she determined to rescue him—to prevent him from ever being touched. He had a crisis at two o’clock in the morning. I know that from the nurse, who had left her then, but whom, for a short time, she called back. The darling got munch worse, but she insisted on the nurse’s going back to bed, and after that she was alone with him for hours.”
I listened with a dread that stayed my credence, while she stood there with her tearless glare. “Do you pretend then she has no pity, that she’s cruel and insane?”
“She held him in her arms, she pressed him to her breast, not to see him; but she gave him no remedies; she did nothing the Doctor ordered. Everything’s there untouched. She has had the honesty not even to throw the drugs away!”
I dropped upon the nearest bench, overcome with my dismay—quite as much at Miss Ambient’s horrible insistence and distinctness as at the monstrous meaning of her words. Yet they came amazingly straight, and if they did have a sense I saw myself too woefully figure in it. Had I been then a proximate cause—? “You’re a very strange woman and you say incredible things,” I could only reply.
She had one of her tragic headshakes. “You think it necessary to protest, but you’re really quite ready to believe me. You’ve received an impression of my sister-in-law—you’ve guessed of what she’s capable.”
I don’t feel bound to say what concession on this score I made to Miss Ambient, who went on to relate to me that within the last half-hour Beatrice had had a revulsion, that she was tremendously frightened at what she had done; that her fright itself betrayed her; and that she would now give heaven and earth to save the child. “Let us hope she will!” I said, looking at my watch and trying to time poor Ambient; whereupon my companion repeated all portentously “Let us hope so!” When I asked her if she herself could do nothing, and whether she oughtn’t to be with her sister-in-law, she replied: “You had better go and judge! She’s like a wounded tigress!”