Then the receiver was put up and he would return looking amused. “It’s easy work on the telephone,” he laughed.
“It’s all far too easy,” was Kenneth’s comment.
After dinner we sat about uncomfortably, Margaret curling herself up like some large cat in one of the big armchairs and busying herself with her interminable knitting. I felt that, somehow, it would have been in keeping with her had she produced black wool, but it was still a pink jumper which had appeared at many odd moments before that engaged her attention. The two boys strolled up and down the garden for a time, and then they tried a game of chess.
I went out into the garden with a book and sat under the cedar with The Tundish. We hardly spoke. He was really reading, I think, from the regular way he turned the pages of his book, but try as I might, my own thoughts would wander from the printed page and revert to the day’s events. But I could not think consecutively. Ethel had set the seal of terror on us all when she had burst in on us at breakfast time with her “Do come. I’m afraid,” and from that moment, while the sun had blazed and scorched, we had passed from distress to distress. Now the shadow under the garden wall was broadening out across the lawn toward us. Would that darker shadow, that seemed to threaten this unruffled man reading so calmly and so peacefully at my side, with its steady inexorable encroachment, darken his life and then blot him out forever? Or would a door in the high wall open, slashing the shadow with a path of light down which he would pass?
Perched high on the center post of the arch that spans the garden walk where it pierces the hedge of yew, a thrush was filling the air with its limpid song, and when the deeper notes of the chimes came booming down from the cathedral tower, he would stop a while, bright head cocked, alert and listening. Then as they died away he would throw himself back, and with throbbing throat, fill the air again with pure ecstasy. The long hot day of death and horror was closing on a note of peace.
That was my hope, as I sat in the mellowing evening light, but the sun was not to set before I witnessed yet another angry scene between Kenneth and the doctor.
He and Ralph came round the end of the house as the thought crossed my mind. Catching sight of us, they halted, talking urgently together. Even from where I sat, I could see that Kenneth was obstinately overriding advice that Ralph was giving. He stood with his legs wide apart, his hands thrust deep into his trousers pockets, his chin stuck out, stolid and determined to have his own way! Then they hurried toward us, Ralph lagging behind a little, half reluctant. I wondered what new trouble had arisen.
It was the medicine The Tundish had given to Ethel. Margaret had told them about it.
Kenneth was furious. “I say, is it true about your giving some medicine to Ethel?” he asked, planting himself straight in front of the doctor’s chair.
“Yes, quite true. Have you any objection?” The Tundish replied, gently closing his book, keeping his place with inserted finger, and looking up with a slow smile and a twinkling eye.