"Why send it at all?" said Meg. "Let him come."
CHAPTER XXIII
TACTICS
IT was a fortnight since Hugo Tancred arrived at Wren's End, and Jan had twice put off Peter's visit.
During the first few days Hugo's temperature remained so high that she grew thoroughly alarmed; and in spite of his protestations that he was "quite used to it," she sent for the doctor. Happily the doctor in his youth had been in the East and was able to reassure her. His opinion, too, had more weight with Hugo on this account, and though he grumbled he consented to do what the doctor advised. And at the end of a week Hugo was able to come downstairs, looking very white and shaky. He lay out in the garden in a deck-chair for most of the day and managed to eat a good many of the nourishing dishes Hannah prepared for him.
It had been a hard time for Jan, as Hugo was not an invalid who excited compassion in those who had to wait upon him. He took everything for granted, was somewhat morose and exacting, and made no attempt to control the extreme irritability that so often accompanies fever.
When the fever left him, however, his tone changed, and the second stage, indicated by Tony as "sad," set in with severity.
His depression was positively overwhelming, and he seemed to think that its public manifestation should arouse in all beholders the most poignant and respectful sympathy.
Poor Jan found it very difficult to behave in a manner at all calculated to satisfy her brother-in-law. She had not, so far, uttered one word of reproach to him, but she would shrink visibly when he tried to discuss his wife, and she could not even pretend to believe in the deep sincerity of a grief that seemed to find such facile solace in expression. The mode of expression, too, in hackneyed, commonplace phrases, set her teeth on edge.
She knew that poor Hugo—she called him "poor Hugo" just then—thought her cold and unsympathetic because she rather discouraged his outpourings; but Fay's death was too lately-lived a tragedy to make it possible for her to talk of it—above all, with him; and after several abortive attempts Hugo gave up all direct endeavour to make her.