I began my visits in the autumn of 1928 and was faithful in them till February 1932, when Miss Shanklin took pneumonia and died. I did not know of it until I received a letter from Wettenhall, bidding me to the funeral and adding that we must have a talk afterward.

It was one of those wretched February funerals, and I was glad to get away from the graveyard into Wettenhall’s hot little office. He was in a black suit, the only time I ever saw him in other than sporting clothes.

“Let’s cut the cackle, Ramsay,” he said, pouring us each a hearty drink of rye, in glasses with other people’s lipmarks on the rims. “It’s as simple as this: you’re named as Bert’s executor. Everything goes to Mary Dempster except some small legacies—one to me, the old sweetheart, for taking good care of her affairs—and a handful of others. You are to have five thousand a year, on a condition. That condition is that you get yourself appointed Mary Dempster’s guardian and undertake to look after her and administer her money for her as long as she lives. I’m to see that the Public Guardian is satisfied. After Mary’s death everything goes to you. When all debts and taxes are paid, Bert ought to cut up at—certainly not less than a quarter of a million, maybe three hundred thousand. You’re allowed to reject the responsibility, and the legacy as well, if you don’t want to be bothered. You’ll want a couple of days to think it over.”

I agreed, though I knew already that I would accept. I said some conventional but perfectly sincere things about how much I had liked Miss Shanklin and how I would miss her.

“You and me both,” said Orph. “I loved Bert—in a perfectly decent way, of course—and damned if I know how things will be without her.”

He handed me a copy of the will, and I went back to town. I did not go to see Mrs Dempster, who had not, of course, been at the funeral. I would attend to that when I had made some other arrangements.

The next day I made inquiries as to how I could be appointed the guardian of Mary Dempster and found that it was not a very complicated process but would take time. I experienced a remarkable rising of my spirits, which I can only attribute to the relief of guilt. As a child I had felt oppressively responsible for her, but I had thought all that was dissipated in the war. Was not a leg full and fair payment for an evil action? This was primitive thinking, and I had no trouble dismissing it—so it seemed. But the guilt had only been thrust away, or thrust down out of sight, for here it was again, in full strength, clamouring to be atoned, now that the opportunity offered itself.

Another element insisted on attention though I tried to put it from me: if Mrs Dempster was a saint, henceforth she would be my saint. Was she a saint? Rome, which alone of human agencies undertook to say who was a saint and who was not, insisted on three well-attested miracles. Hers were the reclamation of Surgeoner by an act of charity that was certainly heroic in terms of the mores of Deptford; the raising of Willie from the dead; and her miraculous appearance to me when I was at the uttermost end of my endurance at Passchendaele.