She had had no time to buy mourning clothes, as she would have liked to do, but she had found a very dark blue coat and skirt, which she wore in preference to her new green dress. It was more respectful to the dead, she thought. (2/14)
She had been weeping, and as she crossed the hall she tiptoed.
“Oh, James!” she said, and her hushed voice irritated him, “My poor James! Dear Kitty! my only sister! the shock!” Tears choked her; she clung to his hands. (3/14)
“Thank you for coming,” he said. “I would have sent for you before, only… there wasn’t time.”
She was shocked to hear him speak so levelly. She had always thought him cold and unfeeling. “I can’t believe it!” she said. “I can’t! I can’t! She was always so full of life!” (4/14)
“Please!” he said sharply.
“If only I had been here!” For a time she sobbed, muffled, into her handkerchief, while he stood with his back to her, staring out of the window. “To me—such a blow! You’re so brave—I can’t understand it. What you must have gone through!” (5/14)
He did not answer. Her lachrymose sympathy stabbed him, and raised waves of sore misery. They had never liked one another, and the thought uppermost in his mind now was that the loss was nothing to her who had a husband and children to fill her life. (6/14)
Presently Mrs Beazley spoke again, in a voice thickened by sobs. “The… the child?”
“A girl.”
“She’s alive?”
“Oh yes,” Marchant said indifferently.
“A girl! Yet another blow! Poor Jim! Oh, poor man!”
“No. It doesn’t matter. Kitty was glad.” (7/14)
She winced at the mention of Kitty’s name. “It came too late, Jim. I was afraid, right from the first. After six years—! If only we could foresee these things!”
“It wouldn’t have made any difference.” (8/14)
“No. Oh, the pity of it! the pity!” Again, she was weeping, not noisily, but with long-drawn, quivering sobs.
He fidgeted, jingling the money in his pockets, wishing that he could say something to make her stop. (9/14)
Carter came into the hall, bringing to Marchant a sense of relief. Carter understood, better even than Dr Lane, that his master came of a stock that did not easily relinquish their self-control, and were too proud to let their deepest hurts be seen. (10/14)
Unobtrusively he had been at hand all through this interminable day. Now he was speaking to Mildred. “Good evening, Madam. The blue spareroom is ready for you if you would care to go up.”
“Oh, thank you, Carter,” she said. (11/14)
“Dinner will be served in half an hour, Madam.”
“Dinner! I have hardly eaten all day. I haven’t the heart. I’ll go and take my hat off, Jim.”
“Mrs Sims has instructed Lucy to wait on you, Madam. You have only to ring.” (12/14)
“Thank you.” She went up the stairs very slowly, leaning on the bannister. Carter went to the fire, and swept the hearth clean of the grey ashes.
“Your bath is ready, sir, and your clothes are laid out.”
“Thanks. I suppose someone is looking after the nurse?” (13/14)
“She has everything she wants, sir.”
“That’s all right, then. I’m afraid you’ve had a lot of trouble today.”
“No, sir, indeed,” Carter said impassively. (14/14)
HELEN Tweet Read #2 unrolled thread is here:
https://t.co/aoHqYEtMIj
