He was trembling in every limb, and his jaw shook as he uttered his expression of relief at the sight of Patricia. She smiled at him, then suddenly remembering that, in spite of his terror, he had voluntarily gone up to the top of the house to call her, she felt something strangely uncomfortable at the back of her throat.
"Come along, Gustave!" she cried brightly. "Let us help get the tea. I'm so thirsty."
From that moment Gustave appeared to take himself in hand, and save for a violent start, at the more vigorous reports, seemed to have overcome his terror.
As Patricia proceeded to assist Mrs. Craske-Morton, a veritable heroine in a pink flannel wrapper, she took stock of her fellows. Miss Wangle was engaged in prayer and tears, her wig was awry, her face drawn and yellow and her clothes the garb of advanced maidenhood. On her feet were bed-socks, half thrust into felt slippers. From beneath a black quilted dressing-gown peeped with virtuous pride the longcloth of a nightdress of Victorian severity.
Mrs. Mosscrop-Smythe was in curl-papers and a faded blue kimono that allowed no suggestion to escape of the form beneath. Miss Sikkum had seized a grey raincoat, above which a forest of curl papers looked strangely out of place. Her fingers moved restlessly. The two top buttons of the raincoat were missing, displaying a wealth of blue ribbon and openwork that none had suspected in her. The lateness at which the ribbon and openwork began gave an interesting demonstration in feminine bone structure.
Mr. Sefton was splendid in a purple dressing-gown with orange cord and tassels, and red and white striped pyjamas beneath. Mr. Sefton had chosen his raid-costume with elaborate care; but the suddenness of the alarm had not allowed of the arrangement of his hair, most of which hung down behind in a sandy cascade. His manner was the forced heroic. He was smoking a cigarette with a too obvious nonchalance to deceive. The heroes of Mr. Sefton's imagination always lit cigarettes when facing death. They were of the type that seizes a revolver when the ship is sinking and, with one foot placed negligently upon the capstan (Mr. Sefton had not the most remote idea of what a capstan was like) shouted, "Women and children first."
He walked about the kitchen with what he meant to be a smile upon his pale lips. The cigarette he found a nuisance. If he held it between his lips the smoke got in his eyes and made them stream with water; if, on the other hand, he held it between his fingers, it emphasized the shaking of his hand. He compromised by letting it go out between his lips, arguing that the effect was the same.
Mr. Bolton had donned his fez and velvet smoking-jacket above creased white pyjama trousers that refused to meet the tops of his felt slippers. Mr. Bolton continued to make "jokes," for the same reason that Mr. Sefton smoked a cigarette.
Mr. Cordal was negative in a big ulster with a hem of nightshirt beneath, leaving about eight inches of fleshless shin before his carpet slippers with the fur-tops were reached. He sat gazing with unseeing eyes at the cook huddled up opposite, moaning as she held her heart with a fat, dirty hand.
Mrs. Barnes, the victim of indecision, had leapt straight out of bed, gathered her clothes in her arms and had flown to safety. She walked about the kitchen aimlessly, dropping and retrieving various garments, which she stuffed back again into the bundle she carried under her arm.