“I'll go,” said Stella, walking across the hall.
“Stella, not in your pyjamas!” screamed Miss Matthews.
Stella began to laugh again, trying to stifle the unbecoming sound by biting her lips.
Her uncle's room was in the front of the house, separated from his sister-in-law's by a bathroom. Beecher had drawn back the curtains, and set the early morning tea-tray down on a table beside the bed. It was evident, even to Stella, looking on death for the first time, that Gregory Matthews would never drink tea again.
He was lying on his back in an uncomfortably rigid attitude, his arms tossed outside the bedclothes, the fingers gripping the sheet as though in a last convulsion. His eyes were open, the pupils contracted. Stella stood looking down at him, her face slowly whitening. She heard her aunt's querulous voice, her footstep in the hall, and moved towards the door. “I say, Aunt Harriet!” she said jerkily. “Don't come! It's beastly!”
Miss Matthews, however, fastening her pincenez on her nose with trembling hands, pushed past her niece into the room, and walked up to the bed. “Oh, he's dead!” she said superfluously, and recoiled. “It's his blood pressure. I knew it would happen! He ought never to have eaten that duck, and it's no use anyone blaming me, because I ordered cutlets for him, and if he wouldn't eat them nobody can say it was my fault. Oh dear, oh dear, he does look dreadful! I wish he hadn't gone like that. We may have had our differences, but blood's thicker than water, say what you will! And you'd never think it, but he was a dear little boy! Oh, whatever are we going to do?”
“I don't know,” said Stella, taking her arm, and pulling her towards the door. “Let's get out of this room, anyway. Oh aunt, don't, for God's sake!”
Miss Matthews allowed herself to be led away, but continued to weep. Stella, unable to feel that Gregory Matthews' nature when a little boy could compensate her aunt for all the subsequent years of strife, was impatient of this facile grief, and thankfully gave her into Mary's charge.
Rose, still gulping, quavered a message from Mrs Matthews: Miss Stella was to go to her mother at once.
Mrs Matthews was reclining against her pillows in a most becoming bed jacket, and had evidently had the presence of mind to wipe the expensive night-cream from her face, and apply a dusting of powder. She turned her head as Stella came into the room, and held out a wavering hand. “Oh, my dear child!” she said in an extinguished voice. “Poor Gregory! It has given me a terrible shock. I had a feeling when Rose brought my hot water.”