‘Why, poor Mr Silverdale, and to think that it was only last Friday that we had such fun over the slippers. I declare I shall never want to see a slipper again. He was crushed to a jelly, and I’m sure I hope the driver will be well hung for it, though they are certain to prove that it wasn’t his fault, which is so easy now that poor Mr Silverdale can’t give his account of the matter. It was all over in a moment, though I know quite well you didn’t like him, and said many sarcastic things about him and the young ladies whom he inspired. I’m sure I never said a hard thing about him, nor thought it either, though he didn’t ask Alice to be his wife. But I am convinced he would have if he had been spared, that’s one comfort. If only he had, all this might have been avoided, for they would be on their honeymoon now, let me see, February, March, April, or if they had come back, he wouldn’t have wanted to set out on this mission just yet, and so the van wouldn’t have been there. And what are we all to do now?’
These pathetic reflections had the effect of really working on Lady Keeling’s feelings, and her throat tied itself into knots.
‘His shepherd’s crook!’ she said. ‘All his delightful ways, though, as I say, you never liked him. The muffins he has eaten sitting on the floor before this very fire! The way he used to run, like a boy! The Gregorian chants which he used to call so ripping! All that beautiful music! I declare I shall never want to go to church again. And pray what are we to do now? What’s to happen to Alice, if she won’t unlock her door.’
‘The best thing we can do is to leave Alice alone for the present,’ he said. ‘I’ll go up to her after dinner.’
‘She won’t see you,’ said Lady Keeling confidently. ‘She wouldn’t see me, who have always been so sympathetic about Mr Silverdale, so what chance is there of her seeing you?’
‘That is what I shall find out. Now it’s late already; I have been detained at the office, so let us go into dinner as we are.’
Lady Keeling sighed.
‘I couldn’t eat a morsel,’ she said, ‘though I know it is the duty of all of us to keep our strength up. There is hare soup too: he was so fond of hare soup. But I must run upstairs first, and put on a black fichu or something. I could not sit down to table without some little token of respect like that.’
Lady Keeling performed this duty of keeping her strength up with her usual conscientiousness, and after dinner her husband sent a note up to Alice, saying that he would be alone in his library if she would like to come down. While they were still in the dining-room over coffee, the answer came back that she would do so, and presently he went in there, while Lady Keeling, in a great state of mystification as to how Alice could want to see her father, went back in what may be called dudgeon to the plush and mirrors of the drawing-room. It seemed to her very unnatural conduct on Alice’s part, but no doubt the poor girl’s head was so ‘turned’ with grief that she hardly knew what she was doing. Her mother could think of no other possible explanation. She indulged in a variety of conjectures about the funeral, and presently, exhausted by these imaginative efforts, fell asleep.
Keeling, when he went into his library, found Alice already there, sitting limply in front of the fire. She turned round when her father entered, and fixed on him a perfectly vacant and meaningless stare. Till then he had no notion what he should say to her: now when he saw that blank tragic gaze, he knew there was no necessity to think at all. He understood her completely, for he knew what it was to lose everything that his soul desired. And his heart went out to her in a manner it had never done before. She sat there helpless with her grief, and only some one like himself, helpless also, could reach her. Her silliness, her excited fussinesses had been stripped off her, and he saw the simplicity of her desolation. From him had fallen his hardness, and in him she divined a man who, for some reason, could reach her and be with her. Before he had walked across the room to her, her expression changed: there came some sort of human gleam behind the blankness of her eyes, and she rose.