She looked across at Tom and discovered suddenly that he wasn't there. The shell of him was there, the dark clothes, the black tie with the pearl pin, the white shirt, the faintly-coloured clear-cut mask with the shining hair, the white throat, the heavy eye-lashes—the shell, the mask, nothing else. She could never remember afterwards exactly what it was that made her certain that nobody was there. Lucile was talking to him, eagerly, repeating, as she always did, her words over and over again. He was, apparently, looking up at her, a smile on his lips. Morgraunt, so smart with the teasing blue feather in her hat, was looking across at them intent upon what Lucile was saying. He was apparently looking at Lucile, and yet his eyes were dead, sightless, like the eyes of a statue. In his hand he apparently held a cigarette, and yet his hand was of marble, no life ran through the veins. Claribel even fancied, so deeply excited had she become, that you could see the glitter of the fire through his dark body as he sat carefully balanced on the edge of the chair.
There was Nobody there, and then, as she began to reflect, there never had been anybody since the Armistice. Tom had never returned from France; only a framework with clothes hung upon it, a doll, an automaton, did Tom's work and fulfilled his place. Tom's soul had remained in France. He did not really hear what Lucile was saying. He did not care what any of them were doing, and that, of course, accounted for the wonderful way that, during these past weeks, he had acquiesced in every one of their proposals. They had many of them commented on Tom's extraordinary good nature now that he had returned. "You really could do anything with him that you pleased," Claribel had heard Morgraunt triumphantly exclaim. Well, so you can with a corpse!...
As she stared at him and realised the dramatic import of her discovery, she was suddenly filled with pity. Poor Tom! How terrible that time in France must have been to have killed him like that, and nobody had known. They had thought that he had taken it so easily, he had laughed and jested with the others, had always returned to France gaily.... How terrified he must have been—before he died!
As she watched him, he got up from the chair and stood before the fire, his legs spread out. The others had gathered in a corner of the room, busied around Hattie, who was trying some new Jazz tunes on the piano. Mrs. Matcham got up from her table and went over to Tom and began eagerly to talk to him. Her hands were clasped behind her beautiful back, and Claribel could see how the fingers twisted and untwisted again and again over the urgency of her request.
Claribel saw Tom's face. The mask was the lovelier now because she knew that there was no life behind it. She saw the lips smile, the eyes shine, the head bend. It was to her as though someone were turning an electric button behind there in the middle of his back....
He nodded. Mrs. Matcham laughed. "Oh, you darling!" Claribel heard her cry. "If you only knew what you've done for me!"
The party was over. They all began to go.
Claribel was right. There was Nobody there.
When everybody had gone that evening and the body of Tom was alone, it surveyed the beautiful room.
Tom's body (which may for the moment be conveniently but falsely called Tom) looked about and felt a wave of miserable, impotent uselessness.