Oneevening in the spring my father asked me to add my name to three legal papers.I did not know what they were, but once or twice had had to attend to suchitems before. I was not concerned. My task was soon done, and the papers meantnothing to me, were only to do with some little household matter thatapparently my poor dead Mama had wanted left in my charge when I wastwenty-one. I forgot the signing, as I forgot the others. I was struggling bythen with an awful translation of a profound German novel, packed with preceptsand exhortations and nobleness, construed in dark brown pits of untranslatablysunken prose. This was enough to dismay me. I needed no other worry.
Wehad a wet spring. I had gone out to look at the fruit trees in the orchard withthe cook, who wanted me to mention to Miss Archer that she might tell my fathersome of the trees were sorely in need of attention. The cook had tried to passthis news to my father directly, but was not noticed, it seemed. Over the pastfive years all the gardeners had gone but one, an elderly, sottish man, who poachedthe nearby woods that, by now, belonged to another landowner. The result ofsome of the poachings came to our kitchen and were economically helpful, and sothe man was not sacked for his otherwise laziness. Our funds were low. I hadnot been bothered, of course, as to how or why my father could or would engagesuch a governess for me as Miss Archer, when impoverished.
As the cook and I returned to thehouse, the rain came down again, and both of us got a wetting.
Upstairs by the fire, Miss Archerfound me drying my hair and grew abruptly anxious. “You should have more care,Coral. You know how very easily you take cold.”
I was crestfallen to displeaseher. But by the hour of my supper, I felt I had incurred no harm. Miss Archernevertheless did not agree.
“Oh, dear, Coral,” she said,gazing at me with great attention, “you’re pale and shivering. No, perhaps you don’tyourself notice. We try to be brave, do we not, and to ignore these things? ButI’ve known you quite some while, and I believe I detect the signs.” She felt myforehead and my hands. “As I thought, your brow is hot, your fingers cold andclammy. You shall go up to bed at once, with a hot stone to warm you.”
So off to bed I was packed, whereI touched my own head and felt it, by then, quite hot, but that might be thefire, or the stone water-bottle. I hoped not to be ill. It was tiresome for me,and for my father, and the servants. The only ray of light in it might be nothaving to read any more of the unspeakable book.
Having eaten my supper, I layback and watched the fire, and soon I fell asleep.
I have no idea what hour I woke,but by then the room was pitch dark and cold, and the stone hot-water-bottle stonecold. Before I could be concerned at how I felt, I heard again that delicatestep in the corridor. I wondered if now Miss Archer would indeed slipgracefully into my room, to ask me how I did. Probably I wished she might.Although, maybe I am not entirely certain of that.
In any event, no other soundcame, nor did anyone enter. I believed myself mistaken.
I was lapsing back into deepslumber, when something occurred that I can only describe as being like a hugepale bird rushing down through the darkness, its gigantic wings feathering andcreaking. And then it squashed home upon my face. A terrible and immoveableweight and power was behind it. Struggle and flail and churn about as I did, Iwas unable to dislodge it. I could smell damp and starch and dank cloth, andsome other harsher smell, rather like metal, but not quite. But I had not beenreally awake, and those moments of semi-awareness were already being crushedfrom me like tiny sparks under the heel of a boot.
I was savage with panic and asurging horror such as I had never known, as vast chunks of nothingness crowdedin on me. I had no single thought. I could not breathe, and as I choked andstifled, had the sense too of some other female life, also expunged in an oddlysimilar way, gasping and spasming, drowning; drowned. I believe, by now, thiswas a ghostly foresight of Laurel, who would die of the influenza plague, herlungs suffused by matter and fluid. In mine, if any had looked – which they didnot – would only have been the nesty, tawny down of the very large pillow usedto suffocate me.
What strength she had, PomponiaArcher, in her pretty little hands!
Becausethe others have spoken, and told me what they surmise, I can say the immediatemedical verdict upon my death was, probably, that I had been the victim of aviolent chill, caused by the rain storm, and my own foolish failure to changemy garments. It appears, or rather does not appear at all, that those who aresuffocated by the steadfast application of a pillow, or other impenetrablebarrier, to the face, closing off the passages of breath through mouth andnose, very frequently display no evidence, save their heart failure, or,conceivably, a very rapid congestion comparable to a severe coriza. The storytold of me by that evil woman must have been that I grew ill through theevening, refused any fuss, how bravely! – and died during the night ofcongestion,
