Claude had been a week or more in his grave when the letters began to arrive from Mrs. Willoughby.
"As to our sailing," she wrote from London, "everything depends on Ena. My cablegrams will have told you that she's better, but not exactly how. She's better mentally, and very sweet. I think it surprising. Now that the first shock is past, she's calmer, too, and doesn't say so often that she expected it. Why she should have expected it I couldn't make out till last night, when Archie told me that there'd been something between Claude and a girl named Fay. I remember those Fays; queer people they always were, and rather uppish. She was a big, handsome girl when I was a little one. Eliza Grimes was her name, and as long ago as that she couldn't keep her place. I remember how she came for a while to Aunt Rachel's school, though not for long. Aunt Rachel couldn't draw too exclusive a line at first, but she did drop her in the end. I should never have thought that Claude would take up with a girl like that—Claude, of all people. You can't run counter to class distinctions without making trouble, I always say—and you see how it acts. You and Thor are far too republican, or too democratic, or whatever it is, but I never thought that of poor Claude.
"Not that Archie attributes this dreadful thing to the connection with the Fays. He won't hear of any such suggestion. Ena seemed to look on it at first as a retribution, but Archie insists that there never was anything to retribute. There may be two opinions about that, though, mind you, I'm not saying so. To the best of my ability I'm letting bygones be bygones, as I think I've shown. But Ena certainly thought so at first, and it's my belief she does still. She's told me herself that when they were motoring through Devon and Cornwall they never reached their destination for the night without her being afraid of a cablegram awaiting their arrival. She was sure something terrible was going to happen, and knew it before they left home. I asked her in that case why in the name of goodness they should have come, but she couldn't answer me. Or, rather, she did answer me—just the kind of answer you'd expect from her. It was to get some new things, and she's got them. Lovely, some of them are, especially the dinner-gowns from Mariette's—but with their money—and where it comes from—it's easy to dress. Retribution indeed! It must be retribution enough for the poor thing just to look at them. She's already had a woman from Jay's to talk over her mourning. Seems heartless, doesn't it? but then, of course, she must have it. Jay's woman had to take her measurements from the gray traveling-suit, for the doctor won't let her get up for another week, not even to be fitted. That will show you how far we are from sailing, and poor Archie has changed the bookings twice.
"As for him, I can't tell, for the life of me, how he feels about being kept here—he's so frightfully the gentleman. I've always said that he wore good manners not as his natural face, but as a mask, and I feel it now more than ever. It's a mask that hides even his tears, though I'm sure, poor man, they flow fast enough beneath it. All the same, I suspect that he finds it something of a relief to be held up here—for a while, at any rate. He wishes he was home, and yet for some reason he's afraid to get there. Terrible as everything is, I know he feels that it will be more terrible still when he's on the spot."
It was in a subsequent letter that Mrs. Willoughby wrote: "I had to scrawl so hurriedly yesterday to catch the first mail that I couldn't begin at the beginning, or get to the point, or anything. I'll try now, though, as for the beginning, it's like going back to the dark ages, it all seems so long ago.
"Your first cablegram giving us the news arrived at Les Dalles in the middle of the afternoon, and such a scramble as we had to get over to Havre in time for the night boat! I can't tell you how we felt, for it was one of those shocks so awful that you don't feel anything. At least I didn't feel anything, though I can't say the same of your father. He, poor lamb, has felt it terribly, so sensitive as he is, and so easily upset. Well, we managed to get to Havre in time, and had a fair crossing. We reached London about ten in the morning, and of course had no notion of where Archie and Ena were. So we drove to their bankers, and, as luck would have it, found they were in London on their way between Cornwall and the north.
"Once we'd learned that, we came straight to this hotel, and sent up our cards. After that we waited. Waited! I should say so. Your father got crosser and crosser, threatening to go away without breaking the news at all. We knew they thought we'd come to make trouble about old scores, and were discussing whether or not to see us. When word came at last that we were to be shown up your father was in such a state that I had to leave him in the public parlor and go and face it alone.
"I wonder if you've ever had the experience of being ushered into a room where you could see you weren't wanted? I don't suppose so. I never had it before, and I hope I never shall again. It was one of those chintzy English sitting-rooms with flowers in every corner. I shall never see Shirley poppies again without thinking of poor Claude. Archie was standing in the middle of the floor, looking more the gentleman than ever, but no Ena!
"'I'm sorry to have kept you waiting, Bessie,' he said, with that frigid sympathy of his which to me is always like iced water down the spine. 'Is there anything I can do for you?'