“But,” said Lady Harman slowly, not advancing and pointing incredulously at the unwinking stare that met her own, “is he dead? Is he really dead? Like that?”
The doctor’s gesture to the nurse betrayed his sense of the fine quick scene this want of confidence had ruined. Under no circumstances in life did English people really seem to know how to behave or what was expected of them. He answered with something bordering upon irony. “Madam,” he said, with a slight bow, “he is really det.”
“But—like that!” cried Lady Harman.
“Like that,” repeated the doctor.
She went three steps nearer and stopped, open-eyed, wonder-struck, her lips compressed.
§12
For a time astonishment overwhelmed her mind. She did not think of Sir Isaac, she did not think of herself, her whole being was filled by this marvel of death and cessation. Like that!
Death!
Never before had she seen it. She had expected an extreme dignity, an almost ceremonial sinking back, a slow ebbing, but this was like a shot from a bow. It stunned her. And for some time she remained stunned, while the doctor and her secretary and the hotel people did all that they deemed seemly on this great occasion. She let them send her into another room; she watched with detached indifference a post-mortem consultation in whispers with a doctor from Rapallo. Then came a great closing of shutters. The nurse and her maid hovered about her, ready to assist her when the sorrowing began. But she had no sorrow. The long moments lengthened out, and he was still dead and she was still only amazement. It seemed part of the extraordinary, the perennial surprisingness of Sir Isaac that he should end in this way. Dead! She didn’t feel for some hours that he had in any way ended. He had died with such emphasis that she felt now that he was capable of anything. What mightn’t he do next? When she heard movements in the chamber of death it seemed to her that of all the people there, most probably it was he who made them. She would not have been amazed if he had suddenly appeared in the doorway of her room, anger-white and his hand quiveringly extended, spluttering some complaint.
He might have cried: “Here I am dead! And it’s you, damn you—it’s you!”