Read Online The Diamond Waterfall by Pamela Haines - Free Book Online

back the morrow. He’ll maybe— t’hospital. Happen it’s too late, though.” She stood behind me at Vicky’s bedside. She added righteously, “And she’ll not tell us who did it. They’ll never tell, will they?”
    Who did it? Why, Laurence, of course, I would have betrayed him at once. Innocent as I was, ignorant rather, I did not realize it was something else she spoke of. I said to her, “Would you leave us, please?”
    When we were alone: “Darling,
tell me,”
I said. I could not bear it that she suffered so.
    Her lips were dry, cracked. “The pain,” she said. “It cannot be all right. The pain—all wrong, all has gone wrong.”
    There were sounds in the street outside, drinkers returning home. The light by the bedside flickered. I noticed the bedclothes.
    â€œBut, darling, you were going home. What
happened?”
    â€œLily, I
couldn’t.”
Her eyes were enormous, but sunken. “/
could not do that to them.
You understand?”
    â€œYes, yes. Of course, darling. But the pain—”
    â€œI thought, you see, Mrs. Swarbrick, in the show, she knew a woman. I was going to be here just a week. Less. Tell no one. It was all arranged. I had the money. They think I am married, you know. You won’t say?
You won’t say?”
    At first I could not understand—but then when she had, whispering, explained properly, I was filled with a desolate, despairing horror. Why, why, why?
    â€œBut Vicky—oh, darling,
why?
I would have helped. Something, anything—but not, no, never
this.”
    The pain had gathered again. The doctor had left some opium. She said then, between cramps, “I don’t understand why this pain is so much.
She
said it would be all over soon and that when it was, I would be—all right. But it,
it
has left me, you know. And yet still—oh Lily, everything is worse,
worse.
Lily, dearest,
what will become of me?”
    I could think only that we must get, at once, the very best of help. “The best, Vicky, you shall have the best man. At once. I shall see to it.” I was Dad’s daughter. Lily Greenwood now, never Lily Greene. But as the pain came again, she twisted my hand.
    â€œNo—I cannot.”
    â€œHospital, Vicky. They will care for you. I’m going to send now.”
    â€œI
cannot.
Lily, don’t leave me, darling!” She clung to me as I bent over the bed. The place was terrible, it was all terrible. I did not know the full story—would never know it. (Some woman botching it up? Filthy money for filthy instruments? Or just—an accident?)
    â€œI’m afraid. So afraid, Lily. The pain. I’m afraid of the pain. Because I did wrong, it was because I did wrong.”
    â€œNo. You are not to say that.” Laurence, I thought. Laurence shall pay.
    The bleeding began very suddenly. In only a few moments the sheets, the bedding, all drenched. I shouted for the landlady.
    The boy was sent for the doctor. We tried, with growing despair, everything. A jug of icy water brought up from the yard was splashed onto her, from as great a height as we could manage. Brandy was sent for and forced between her colorless lips. Opium. More opium.
    But in that next hour, before even the doctor had arrived (what, I think now, could he have done so late?), she bled to death.
    My dear dear friend. The smell of that room. The sad confusion. The dawn breaking behind closed shutters.
    â€œSweet wine, for the ladies,” Lionel said. The waiter poured Barsac into their glasses. “Sweets to the sweet, of course. I only say what is expected of me.”
    â€œJames eleven,” said Sir Robert. “ ‘Doth a fountain send forth at the same place, Sweet water and bitter?’ “
    â€œThe Bible, at the Savoy? Really, he is impossible.” Lionel, looking around him, shrugging his shoulders helplessly.
    â€œYes,” said Sir Robert affably to