He sprang up while she stood outside. There was, he knew that, no time for his leg, though he seemed to know nothing else, and he threw on his dressing-gown and took up his crutches while Thompson waited for him. But when he went out to her she still stood there, looking at him.
“Is Mrs. Wellwood ill?” he asked.
“Oh, sir, she’s dead,” said Thompson.
Then, standing in the corridor, he felt himself trying to think. It was like the moment in France when his leg had been shattered and he had not known whether he were alive or dead. But this was worse. This was not like the moment in France. There was only, then, himself. He could not think. Thompson had put her arm under his. He was hanging forward heavily on his crutches.
“Perhaps you’d better go back to bed, till a little later, sir. Till the doctor comes,” she said. “It was an overdose of the powder. She’s sometimes taken them since Mr. Wellwood was killed. And she must have made a mistake. It must have been a mistake, mustn’t it, sir? She had everything to live for.” Thompson broke into sobs. “I’ve just found her. Miss Cicely is there. She sent a boy for the doctor. But it’s too late. You’d only think her sleeping, so beautiful she is, sir.”
“Help me,” said Bevis. “I must come.”
The curtains had been drawn in Tony’s room and the morning sunlight fell across the bed where she lay. It was not as if sleeping; he saw that at the first sight of her. She lay on her back and her head was sunken down on her breast as though with a doggedness of oblivion. Still, she was beautiful; and he noted, his heart shattered by impotent tenderness, the dusky mark upon her eyelids, like the freaking on a lovely fruit.
Miss Latimer sat on the other side of the bed with her back to the light. Beside her stood the little tray of early morning tea that Thompson had brought in and set down on the table near her mistress before drawing the curtains.
Thompson helping him, he reached the bed and laid hold of the bedpost.
“Yes. I can manage. Thank you so much,” he said to her.