"Listen to this, father; it's dreadful!"
And Henry re-read the paragraph, turning also to the news columns, where the information was supplemented by the statement of a servant to the effect that the novelist had been heard playing his 'cello late in the night, and had stopped suddenly in the middle of a bar.
"Well, well," said Edward John, "that beats all! Poor fellow, and me went up to Brum to get some things all on account of 'im."
CHAPTER XXIV
ONE SUNDAY, AND AFTER
Sunday morning came sweet with the soft breath of golden autumn, and Henry awoke with the breeze whispering through his open window, "Adrian Grant is dead." For a moment it seemed that nothing else mattered, and in a moment more the need to wash and dress dispelled that gloomy thought.
"Poor Grant!" said Henry to himself, as he soused his face at the wash-stand. "Poor Grant! I wonder what he thinks of life and death to-day?" All the cynical utterances of the dead man crowded back on the memory of the living. His contempt of the spiritual life, his jaundiced views of humanity. It was terrible to think of a gifted man dying with such cold thoughts in his mind. The mysterious nature of the death also troubled Henry, and his knowledge of the man led him to suspect the use of some drug.
But these thoughts and speculations were suppressed, if not banished, by the pleasant routine of the rural morning and the going to morning church. Henry found himself searching anxiously with his eyes for Eunice Lyndon, and he was disappointed not to see her there. She was absent owing to household duties, and a pressing visit to be made to a sick member of Mr. Needham's flock.