Vi handed me a cable. It was my recall—we all knew that. I ripped the envelope in haste; what I read, strange to say, caused me no elation—only the bitterness of finality. I raised my eyes; they were both staring at me. “My grandfather’s dead. His will’s in my favor. I must return to England immediately.”
They received the news as though a blow had fallen. Vi crept in and out the rooms with a masked expression of unspoken tragedy. Dorrie caused frequent embarrassment by her coaxing attempts to make me promise to visit them again. Nevertheless, when she had gone to bed and we no longer had her to distract us, we would pass more painful hours in inventing small talk to tide us over dangerous topics.
The night before I sailed, we kept Dorrie up till she fell asleep against me. Her innocence was a barrier between us. When she had been carried to bed, Vi sat down to the piano and sang, while we two men glowered desperately before the fire. I dared not watch her; I could not bear the pain that was in her eyes. As I listened, I knew that her chief difficulty in selections was what to avoid. We were in a mood to read into everything a sentimental interpretation.
There were long pauses between her playing, during which no one spoke and the only sound to be heard was the falling of ashes in the grate. The way in which we were grouped seemed symbolic—she at the piano apart from us, while we were side by side; by loving her, we had pushed her out of both our lives. Randall turned querulously in his chair, “Why don’t you go on playing, my child?”
Several times she half-commenced an air and broke off. Her voice was a blind thing, tottering down an endless passage. For a horrid minute there was dead silence—quivering suspense; then the keys crashed discordantly as she gave way to a storm of weeping.
She rose with an appealing gesture, and slipped out. We heard her footsteps trailing up the stairs, her door close, and then stillness.
I shuddered as though a window had been flung open behind me and a cold wind blew across my back. The man at my side huddled down into his chair; his fleshy face had lost its firmness; his eyes, like a statue’s, seemed without pupils. The moment which we had dreaded and postponed had arrived.
Randall followed her into the hall; he came back, shutting the door carefully behind him. There was slow decision in his voice when he said, “After all, we’ve got to speak about it.”
He sank down, his cheeks blotchy and his hands quivering as with palsy. When he spoke, he tried to make his voice steady and matter-of-fact. It was as though he were saying, “We’ve got to be commonsense, we men of the world. We knew this would happen. There’s nothing to be gained by losing our nerves.”
This is what he actually said, “It isn’t her fault. You and I are to blame.”