Mrs. Trenchard's eyes opened. There was a slight movement of the mouth: it seemed, in that half light, ironical, a gesture of contempt. Her head rolled to one side and the long, long conflict was at an end.
[CHAPTER V]
NOTHING IS PERFECT
At that moment of Mrs. Trenchard's death began the worst battle of Millie's life (so far). She dated it from that or perhaps from the evening of her mother's funeral four days later.
Mrs. Trenchard had expressed a wish to be buried in Garth and so down to Glebeshire they all went. The funeral took place on a day of the dreariest drizzling rain—Glebeshire at its earliest autumn worst. Afterwards they—Katherine, Millie, Henry, Philip and Mr. Trenchard—sat over a spluttering fire in the old chilly house and heard the rain, which developed at night into a heavy down-pour, beat upon the window-panes.
The Aunts had not come down, for which every one was thankful. Philip, looking as he did every day more and more a cross between a successful Prize-fighter and an eminent Cabinet Minister, was not thinking, as in Henry's opinion he should have been, of the havoc that he had wrought upon the Trenchard family, but of Public Affairs. Katherine was silent and soon went up to her room. Henry thought of Christina, his father retired into a corner, drank whisky and went to sleep. Millie struggled with a huge pillow of depression that came lolloping towards her and was only kept away by the grimmest determination.
Nobody except Katherine thought directly of Mrs. Trenchard, but she was there with them all in the room and would be with one or two of them—Mr. Trenchard, senior, and Katherine for instance—until the very day of their death.
Yes, perhaps after all Mrs. Trenchard had won the battle.