“It may be a ghastly mistake—I can’t believe it’s true—why he was laughing and talking in this very hall less than two hours ago. I can’t believe it,” Claire wailed.
But Mary could believe it. She told me afterward that, from the instant in which she had heard that Bill Patch was dead, it seemed to her that there was something inevitable in that arbitrary solution to the affair.
When General Kendal brought me back to the Manor House—and, after all, we were at the bridge less than an hour—Sallie was with me. She had helped most pluckily and sensibly, with a silent efficiency that spoke admirably for her training.
Martyn had remained with the A. A. men who were beside the wrecked car.
The early morning light was flooding the windows and there was in the air the curious chill that is sometimes the preliminary, in England, to a very fine summer day.
The faces of those three women, waiting there, were ghastly, and Claire every now and then had a paroxysm of sobbing and low, muffled screaming.
General Kendal took his wife away. He had already told me, what was indeed sufficiently obvious, that she would inevitably be obliged to give evidence at the inquest, and the poor old fellow was already dreading the ordeal for her and hoping vehemently that the fear of it would not occur to her until the last possible moment.
The Ambreys were staying in the house, and Sallie said, after one look at Mary:
“Mother, won’t you come upstairs?”
Mary’s face was gray. She only asked me two questions: