Sir David turned into the library and flung himself into a chair with a sigh that was almost a groan. And Dr. Tutterville could have echoed it as he looked round:—the ghosts that Ellinor had chased had all returned with the dust on the window-pane, with the dead flowers in the bowl, with the stagnant atmosphere of a fireless unaired room. The very books seemed to have lost their souls, to have become but matter, telling of nought but the futility of all things. Dimness and desolation brooded again over the house.
The parson tried to pump up some consoling phrase, stopped midway, coughed, went to the window and began to tap aimlessly on the pane. A selfish, elderly longing seemed to draw him back towards his own cosy fireside, where no haunting regret had ever quite extinguished the light of sunny Greek or philosophic Latin; where melancholy assumed no sterner guise than the placid analytic countenance of old Burton. He glanced again at the long figure in the chair, now bent in utter weariness, and the inner voice asked anxiously in a whisper: “How long will the new-found sanity last in such conditions as these?”
Into this brooding came a sudden clamour from without. It was the voice of Madam Tutterville calling upon her spouse with every note of impatience and exultation; and a moment later the lady herself appeared in the doorway, panting but radiant.
“Horatio, my dear doctor! Good gracious, man, what are you doing here? I have sought you everywhere as the spouse of the canticle sought the goat. Oh, my goodness, let me sit down and find breath! I have news!”
News! On her entrance, David had drawn himself slowly together with lustreless eye and turned vaguely to greet the new-comer, but her last words brought him to her side with a spring that overtook even his exclamation.
“News!” he echoed. And the two men looked at each other. What could news mean to them but one thing?
Madam Tutterville tottered to a chair, untied her hat-strings, let her hands drop upon her comfortable knees, and turned her eyes from one eager face to the other. Her own full-moon countenance was irradiated with a harvest-like glow. The infantile smile of her best moods was upon her lips.
But woman will remain woman no matter how clothed with superfluous flesh. Sophia positively coquetted with the moment, dallied with her own consciousness of power as complacently as any slim chit of eighteen. She vowed she was tired to death; pettishly requested Horatio not to hang over her: she was hot, she was stifling. She then, in a tone of promising importance, announced that she was back from Bath (for her autumn shopping), and then broke off to stare at David as if she had but just become aware of his presence, and to comment upon his unexpected return with exasperating interest.
“And what news have you brought?” quoth she, with emphasis.
Bitter disappointment set its mark on David’s face.