Dead Water

She hesitated, winding her fingers together in the old way. Patrick gave her a kiss. ‘Don’t give it a thought,’ he said. ‘What is it they say in Jenny’s antipodes? “She’ll be right”? She’ll be right, Mama, never you fear.’

But when his mother had left them, Jenny thought for a moment he looked very troubled.

III

In the old bar-parlour Major Barrimore with Miss Pride’s letter in his hand and his double-Scotch on the chimneypiece, stood on the hearthrug and surveyed his meeting. It consisted of the Rector, Dr Maine, Miss Cost and Mr Ives Nankivell, who was the newly-created Mayor of Portcarrow, and also its leading butcher. He was an undersized man with a look of perpetual astonishment.

‘No,’ Major Barrimore was saying, ‘apart from yourselves I haven’t told anyone. Fewer people know about it, the better. Hope you all agree.’

‘From the tone of her letter,’ Dr Maine said, ‘the whole village’ll know by this time next week.’

‘Wicked!’ Miss Cost cried out in a trembling voice, ‘that’s what she must be. A wicked woman. Or mad,’ she added, as an afterthought. ‘Both, I expect.’

The men received this uneasily.

‘How, may I inquire, Major, did you frame your reply?’ the Mayor asked.

‘Took a few days to decide,’ said Major Barrimore, ‘and sent a wire. “Accommodation reserved will be glad to discuss matter outlined in your letter”.’

‘Very proper.’

‘Thing is, as I said when I told you about it: we ought to arrive at some sort of agreement among ourselves. She gives your names, as the people she wants to see. Well, we’ve all had a week to think it over. What’s our line going to be? Better be consistent, hadn’t we?’

‘But can we be consistent?’ the Rector asked. ‘I think you all know my views. I’ve never attempted to disguise them. In the pulpit or anywhere else.’

‘But you don’t,’ said Miss Cost, who alone had heard the Rector from the pulpit, ‘you don’t deny the truth of the cures, now do you?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘I thank God for them but I deplore the – excessive publicity.’

‘Naow, naow, naow,’ said the Mayor excitedly. ‘Didn’t we ought to take a wider view? Didn’t we ought to think of the community as a whole? In my opinion, sir, the remarkable properties of our Spring has brought nothing but good to Portcarrow: nothing but good. And didn’t the public at large ought to be made aware of the benefits we offer? I say it did and it ought which is what it has and should continue to be.’

‘Jolly good, Mr Mayor,’ said Barrimore. ‘Hear, hear!’

‘Hear!’ said Miss Cost.

‘Would she sell?’ Dr Maine asked suddenly.

‘I don’t think she would, Bob.’

‘Ah well, naow,’ said the Mayor, ‘Naow! Suppose – and mind, gentlemen, I speak unofficially. Private – But, suppose she would. There might be a possibility that the borough itself would be interested. As a spec –’ He caught himself up and looked sideways at the Rector. ‘As a civic duty. Or maybe a select group of right-minded residents –’

Dr Maine said dryly: ‘They’d find themselves competing in pretty hot company, I fancy. If the Island came on the open market.’

‘Which it won’t,’ said Major Barrimore. ‘If I’m any judge. She’s hell-bent on wrecking the whole show.’

Mr Nankivell allowed himself a speculative grin. ‘Happen she don’t know the value, however,’ he insinuated.

‘Perhaps she’s concerned with other values,’ the Rector murmured.

At this point Mrs Barrimore returned.

‘Don’t move,’ she said and sat down in a chair near the door. ‘I don’t know if I’m still –?’

Mr Nankivell embarked on a gallantry but Barrimore cut across it. ‘You’d better listen, Margaret,’ he said, with a restless glance at his wife. ‘After all, she may talk to you.’

‘Surely, surely!’ the Mayor exclaimed. ‘The ladies understand each other in a fashion that’s above the heads of us mere chaps, be’ant it, Miss Cost?’

Miss Cost said: ‘I’m sure I don’t know,’ and looked very fixedly at Mrs Barrimore.

‘We don’t seem to be getting anywhere,’ Dr Maine observed.

The Mayor cleared his throat. ‘This be’ant what you’d call a formal committee,’ he began, ‘but if it was and if I was in occupation of the chair, I’d move we took the temper of the meeting.’

‘Very good,’ Barrimore said. ‘Excellent suggestion. I propose His Worship be elected chairman. Those in favour?’ The others muttered a disjointed assent and the Mayor expanded. He suggested that what they really had to discover was how each of them proposed to respond to Miss Pride’s onslaught. He invited them to speak in turn, beginning with the Rector who repeated that they all knew his views and that he would abide by them.

‘Does that mean,’ Major Barrimore demanded, ‘that if she says she’s going to issue a public repudiation of the Spring, remove the enclosure and stop the festival, you’d come down on her side?’

‘I shouldn’t try to dissuade her.’

The Mayor made an explosive ejaculation and turned on him: ‘If you’ll pardon my frankness, Mr Carstairs,’ he began, ‘I’d be obliged if you’d tell the company what you reckon would have happened to your Church Restoration Fund if Portcarrow hadn’t benefited by the Spring to the extent it has done. Where’d you’ve got the money to repair your tower? You wouldn’t have got it, no, nor anything like it.’

Mr Carstairs’s normally sallow face reddened painfully. ‘No,’ he said, ‘I don’t suppose we should.’

‘Hah!’ said Miss Cost, ‘there you are!’

‘I’m a Methodist myself,’ said the Mayor in triumph.

‘Quite so,’ Mr Carstairs agreed.

‘Put it this way. Will you egg the woman on, sir, in her foolish notions. Will you do that?’

‘No. It’s a matter for her own conscience.’

The Mayor, Major Barrimore and Miss Cost all began to expostulate. Dr Maine said with repressed impatience: ‘I really don’t think there’s any future in pressing the point.’

‘Nor do I,’ said Mrs Barrimore unexpectedly.

Miss Cost, acidly smiling, looked from her to Dr Maine and then, fixedly, at Major Barrimore.

‘Very good, Doctor,’ Mr Nankivell said. ‘What about yourself, then?’

Dr Maine stared distastefully at his own hands and said: ‘Paradoxically, I find myself in some sort of agreement with the Rector. I, too, haven’t disguised my views. I have an open mind about these cases. I have neither encouraged nor discouraged my patients to make use of the Spring. When there has been apparent benefit I have said nothing to undermine anyone’s faith in its permanency. I am neutral.’

‘And from that impregnable position,’ Major Barrimore observed, ‘you’ve added a dozen rooms to your bloody nursing home. Beg pardon, Rector.’

‘Keith!’

Major Barrimore turned on his wife. ‘Well, Margaret?’ he demanded. ‘What’s your objection?’