CHAPTER VI.

AN ACCIDENT AND ITS RESULTS.

With ill-concealed impatience did Miss Semaphore await her usual hour for retiring. With a sense of agreeable expectancy did she at last seat herself in her room before the looking-glass and proceed to brush out her scanty tresses. In the open drawer of the table reposed the abundant coils that graced by day the back of her head. As she brushed, she reflected that expensive though the Water of Youth undoubtedly was, it would at any rate spare her buying “Jetoline,” her favourite dye, for many years to come. Women, guilty of a great extravagance, always find comfort in meditating small economies.

Her thoughts next turned to Toutou, and his marvellous recovery of vigour and gaiety. She wondered if her spirits would become as light as his. As a girl she had not been particularly lively, but she hoped in her second girlhood her sprightlier and more freakish qualities might develop.

While thus reflecting, her door opened, and in came Miss Prudence to bid her good-night. Prudence, as we have said, was a large, soft woman, whose kindly, if feeble, nature and unruffled temper tended to preserve her youthful roundness. In her white combing jacket, her cheeks flushed, and her still abundant nut-brown hair falling on her shoulders, she seemed to her sister to look particularly young. To be sure, there was ten years difference or more in their ages, and Miss Semaphore was always accustomed to look on Prudence as a mere girl, but even allowing for this, to-night she might have passed for thirty.

“I think, dear,” she said, “you really ought to put off that dose for a day or two. We might go to Ramsgate to-morrow and engage apartments, then, if you liked, we need not return here. I could come back and fetch the luggage, if you gave Mrs. Wilcox a week’s notice; she would never suspect anything. We can pretend we want change of air.”

“I do wish you were not so silly, Prudence,” said Miss Semaphore with acerbity. “Do you forget that I post-dated the cheque for that woman to allow of my experimenting to-night, and she wants the money immediately. Anyone but you would see that once she has cashed it, we cannot get it back, whether the Water proves to be any good or not. It is essential to test it at once, and stop payment of the draft, if necessary.”

“But they talk so here, I am afraid—”

“Well, really you are very rude. This is the second time you have said something like that. To hear your tone one might think I was a hundred at least. Oh! I know very well what you mean. It is all part of your ridiculous fussiness. It will make very little difference. The dose is one tablespoonful for every ten years, and having reached the proper age, a tea-spoonful at intervals keeps one at it. Now to-night I shall take very, very little, just enough to take off a year or two, so you may make yourself quite easy. No one will see any difference.”

“I wonder if it tastes bad,” said Prudence, after a short silence.

“Not at all,” said Miss Semaphore more graciously, “I have already dipped my finger in and laid a drop upon my tongue, and it tasted just like common water.”

“There can be no doubt but that it is real?”

“Look at Toutou,” was the convincing answer.

“Do you know I’m a little bit afraid of it,” said Miss Prudence. “I wonder how it will feel, will it make one very queer or not. Don’t think me selfish, Augusta, but I’m glad you are going to try it first, you have so much more courage than I.”

Miss Semaphore merely grunted in reply.

“Where is the bottle, Augusta?”

“In my drawer.”

“It does not hold so very much,” said Prudence, meditatively lifting the bottle to the light.

“It does not, and oh! of course I shall require more than you, being older.”

“But I paid for half,” said Prudence mildly.

“Even so, it is quite fair. Less than half will have as much effect on you as the rest on me. We shall then be both of an age, and that will be much pleasanter. Don’t you think so?”

“Ye—es,” answered Prudence doubtfully, “it will be a little strange. But do as you wish about it, Augusta; you know best. By the way, did you remark that the bottle is cracked?”

“Cracked? No!” cried Miss Semaphore with a little shriek of dismay, and rushing to her sister’s side.

Cracked it undoubtedly was.

“It must have been Toutou in the train,” she gasped. “I was afraid of it at the time. Oh! the naughty, naughty dog. Do be careful, Prudence. Put it down softly. She said it was to be kept carefully corked.”

“Oh, the crack is very slight; it does not matter,” said Miss Prudence, as she obeyed. “Toutou, my precious,” to the tricksy little dog that was now rolling on the floor, playing with the fringe of the curtains, and trying many long-forgotten games. “Toutou, you nearly did serious damage to your missus’s property, naughty ducksie wucksie.”

Toutou rushed at her with enthusiasm, and was with difficulty persuaded to enter his basket. Then Miss Prudence, with a portentous yawn, bade her sister good-night, and opened the door into the adjoining room.

Left alone, Miss Semaphore slowly divested herself of her wearing apparel, donned her night-gear, and tied on the night-cap of her youth, adhered to despite change of fashion. Notwithstanding the confidence of her manner to her sister, she was secretly a little nervous, now that she was actually to make the experiment. Her spirits went up and down like a see-saw. At one moment she saw herself surrounded by admirers, singing, dancing, with fresh, unwrinkled complexion, bright colour, dark curly hair innocent of “Jetoline.” A ravishing picture. Again she felt like a patient at a dentist’s about to take gas for the first time. What would it be like. Oh, if only Toutou, if only anyone who had tried it could tell her exactly how it felt. Would she lose consciousness or feel pain? Might it not possibly kill her? By this time she had worked herself to a state of intolerable nervousness. She got into bed, and, sitting up, hugging the precious bottle in one hand, and a tea-spoon in the other, tried to decide whether she would actually make the experiment or not. By her bed, within easy reach, burned a gas jet, which she always turned out last thing, and a small table stood near, on which lay a book, a newspaper, a box of matches, and a glass.

“Just a very little,” she murmured, “that can do no harm. Only make me a few years younger. She would never have ventured to give me anything dangerous or poisonous.”

Her hands trembled.

Can one fancy the impatience of an old woman who had missed the joys of life, to be young? A woman with the means in her grasp? Miss Semaphore panted with excitement; her heart thumped like a steam hammer. Twice she took up the bottle from the table. Twice she laid it down again.

“Just a very little,” ran her thoughts, “a few drops to see what it is like.”

Alas for her nervousness! By some untoward movement the frill of her sleeve caught the bottle, and knocked it over. For one terrible moment she sat as if petrified, watching the Water of Youth flowing across the table, and dribbling on to the floor on the side farthest from her. Then, quick as lightning, she jumped out of her bed, got down on her knees, and received the little stream into her open mouth as the liquid gushed over the edge. That her position was undignified did not trouble her, did not even enter her mind. The overwhelming nature of the misfortune, and how to rectify it, as far as possible, alone occupied her. The bottle had broken in half where it was cracked, so that the contents rushed out at once. She swallowed all that flowed freely, and, damming the rest with her finger, stood up. The Water was horribly wasted. Some had soaked into the carpet. The newspaper had received a certain amount, and this, owing to a lucky crease, formed a little pool on its surface. Now, for the first time, Miss Semaphore thought of her sister, whose money had been equally invested in the purchase. Should she call Prudence, tell her what had happened, and bid her drink the little that remained? The fear that there would not be enough for herself prevailed, and stifling the voice of conscience, Augusta gathered up the paper with delicate fingers, carefully made it into a sort of funnel, and drank off its contents. Then she sat down on the side of the bed, and considered her conduct with a certain amount of shame, not unmingled with alarm. So far, she felt nothing more than the sensation of having swallowed a quantity of cold water of peculiar flavour.

“After all,” she said, to stifle her remorse, “there was scarcely sufficient to make one person young, not to speak of two, and I wanted it much more than Prudence. Why, she does not want it at all! She looked quite a girl just now. Besides, there really was no time. Before I could have roused her and explained matters the water would have soaked through the paper. Of course I shall have to return her the money she advanced. I am quite willing to do that if she makes a fuss. Perhaps it’s just as well I did not call her. She was frightened to-night at the idea of drinking it. I really think she would prefer not to have any.”

Despite these powerful arguments Miss Semaphore felt rather mean as she crept once more between the sheets, and turned out the gas with a jerk. For a long time she lay wakeful, thinking of what the morrow might bring, of how she could tell Prudence there was no Water of Youth left for her, or of how she could best get away from Beaconsfield Gardens without being noticed, if she found herself only twenty, and other reflections of the same kind, until at last tired out by the excitements of the day she fell asleep.