"Why did I forget father?" she asked herself with awe.
"I only meant to tell him that they were all out, and run back.
Why did I forget father?"
She would never be able to persuade anybody that she had literally forgotten her father's existence for quite ten minutes; but it was true, though shocking.
Then there were noises downstairs.
"Bless us!
Bless us!" came the unpleasant voice of Mr. Critchlow as he bounded up the stairs on his long legs; he strode over the pail.
"What's amiss?"
He was wearing his white apron, and he carried his spectacles in his bony hand.
"It's father--he's--" Sophia faltered.
She stood away so that he should enter the room first.
He glanced at her keenly, and as it were resentfully, and went in. She followed, timidly, remaining near the door while Mr. Critchlow inspected her handiwork.
He put on his spectacles with strange deliberation, and then, bending his knees outwards, thus lowered his body so that he could examine John Baines point-blank.
He remained staring like this, his hands on his sharp apron-covered knees, for a little space; and then he seized the inert mass and restored it to the bed, and wiped those clotted lips with his apron.
Sophia heard loud breathing behind her.
It was Maggie.
She heard a huge, snorting sob; Maggie was showing her emotion.
"Go fetch doctor!" Mr. Critchlow rasped.
"And don't stand gaping there!"
"Run for the doctor, Maggie," said Sophia.
"How came ye to let him fall?" Mr. Critchlow demanded.
"I was out of the room.
I just ran down into the shop--"
"Gallivanting with that young Scales!" said Mr. Critchlow, with devilish ferocity.
"Well, you've killed yer father; that's all!"
He must have been at his shop door and seen the entry of the traveller!
And it was precisely characteristic of Mr. Critchlow to jump in the dark at a horrible conclusion, and to be right after all.
For Sophia Mr. Critchlow had always been the personification of malignity and malevolence, and now these qualities in him made him, to her, almost obscene.
Her pride brought up tremendous reinforcements, and she approached the bed.
"Is he dead?" she asked in a quiet tone. (Somewhere within a voice was whispering,
"So his name is Scales.")
"Don't I tell you he's dead?"
"Pail on the stairs!"
This mild exclamation came from the passage.
Mrs. Baines, misliking the crowds abroad, had returned alone; she had left Constance in charge of Mr. Povey.
Coming into her house by the shop and showroom, she had first noted the phenomenon of the pail --proof of her theory of Maggie's incurable untidiness.
"Been to see the elephant, I reckon!" said Mr. Critchlow, in fierce sarcasm, as he recognized Mrs. Baines's voice.
Sophia leaped towards the door, as though to bar her mother's entrance.
But Mrs. Baines was already opening the door.
"Well, my pet--" she was beginning cheerfully.
Mr. Critchlow confronted her.
And he had no more pity for the wife than for the daughter.
He was furiously angry because his precious property had been irretrievably damaged by the momentary carelessness of a silly girl.
Yes, John Baines was his property, his dearest toy!
He was convinced that he alone had kept John Baines alive for fourteen years, that he alone had fully understood the case and sympathized with the sufferer, that none but he had been capable of displaying ordinary common sense in the sick-room.
He had learned to regard John Baines as, in some sort, his creation.
And now, with their stupidity, their neglect, their elephants, between them they had done for John Baines.
He had always known it would come to that, and it had come to that.
"She let him fall out o' bed, and ye're a widow now, missis!" he announced with a virulence hardly conceivable.
His angular features and dark eyes expressed a murderous hate for every woman named Baines.