“Ah-h-h!” said Mr. Flinks. He drew
back and stared stupidly at that sprawling flesh which
just now had been a man, and was seized with uncontrollable
shuddering. “Ah-h-h!” said Mr. Flinks,
very quietly.
And Margaret went mad. The earth and the sky
dissolved in many floating specks and then went red—red
like that heap yonder. The veneer of civilisation
peeled, fell from her like snow from a shaken garment.
The primal beast woke and flicked aside the centuries’
work. She was the Cave-woman who had seen the
death of her mate—the brute who had been
robbed of her mate.
“Damn you! Damn you!” she screamed,
her voice high, flat, quite unhuman; “ah, God
in Heaven damn you!” With inarticulate bestial
cries she fell upon the man who had killed Billy,
and her violet fripperies fluttered, her impotent
little hands beat at him, tore at him. She was
fearless, shameless, insane. She only knew that
Billy was dead.
With an oath the man flung her from him and turned
on his heel. She fell to coaxing the heap in
the grass to tell her that he forgave her—to
open his eyes—to stop bloodying her dress—to
come to luncheon...
A fly settled on Billy’s face and came in his
zig-zag course to the red stream trickling from his
nostrils, and stopped short. She brushed the
carrion thing away, but it crawled back drunkenly.
She touched it with her finger, and the fly would
not move. On a sudden, every nerve in her body
began to shake and jerk like a flag snapping in the
wind.
Some ten minutes afterward, as the members of the
house-party sat chatting on the terrace before Selwoode,
there came among them a mad woman in violet trappings
that were splotched with blood.
“Did you know that Billy was dead?” she
queried, smilingly. “Oh, yes, a man killed
Billy just now. Wasn’t it too bad?
Billy was such a nice boy, you know. I—I
think it’s very sad. I think it’s
the saddest thing I ever knew of in my life.”
Kathleen Saumarez was the first to reach her.
But she drew back quickly.
“No, ah, no!” she said, with a little
shudder. “You didn’t love Billy.
He loved you, and you didn’t love him. Oh,
Kathleen, Kathleen, how could you help loving
Billy? He was such a nice boy. I—I’m
rather sorry he’s dead.”
Then she stood silent, picking at her dress thoughtfully
and still smiling. Afterward, for the first and
only time in history, Miss Hugonin fainted—fainted
with an anxious smile.
Petheridge Jukesbury caught her as she fell, and began
to blubber like a whipped schoolboy as he stood there
holding her in his arms.
But Billy was not dead. There was still a feeble,
jerky fluttering in his big chest when Colonel Hugonin
found him. His heart still moved, but under the
Colonel’s hand its stirrings were vague and aimless
as those of a captive butterfly.
