"You'll simply terrify him," he said. "He hasn't got a chance with all you people grousing and croaking round him."
And he went off to play in the lawn tennis tournament at Medlicote as a protest against the general pessimism. His idea seemed to be that if he, Jerrold, could play in a lawn tennis tournament, his father couldn't be seriously ill.
"It's perfectly awful of Jerrold," his mother said. "I can't make him out. He adores his father, yet he behaves as if he hadn't any feeling."
She and Anne were sitting in the lounge after luncheon, waiting for
Eliot to come from his father's room.
"Didn't you tell him, Anne?"
"I did everything I know…. But darling, he isn't unfeeling. He does it because he can't bear to think Uncle Robert won't get better. He's trying to make himself believe he will. I think he does believe it. But if he stayed away from the tournament that would mean he didn't."
"If only I could. But I must. I must believe it if I'm not to go mad. I don't know what I shall do if he doesn't get better. I can't live without him. It's been so perfect, Anne. It can't come to an end like this. It can't happen. It would be too cruel."
"It would," Anne said. But she thought: "It just will happen. It's happening now."
"Here's Eliot," she said.
Eliot came down the stairs. Adeline went to him.