“The county considers I should wear a widow’s cap, and sport crêpe, and my horrible state of plumpness makes me to stink in their nostrils. Just look at my arms! I wish I could oblige them,” she went on wearily, “and bear my woe according to their rules of decency. Lady Mary rolled down on me and stayed a week, and never got out what she came to say until I was putting her into the railway carriage on her way back to London, then she produced her rebuke on the top of a sigh, and began a prayer, but the train started before she got well into it.
“‘My dear,’ she said, ‘I think that under the circumstances a plain black gown and a bonnet—hats to my mind are at present unseemly—and then, my dear Gwen, if by any means you could manage, ahem, not to add to your plumpness—people in our position must set an example—I assure you, for myself, I lost eight pounds and a half the first six months of my widowhood.’
“Then she began her rather irrelevant prayer.”
“Gwen, sit down, and I’ll make tea, and tell you about your father.”
Gwen leant back in her chair and put her hands to her hot head.
“I forget everything but myself and this fattening misery of mine. He is failing very much, is he not? His letters somehow have a fragile sound. They have a horrible habit of making me howl, I have got so maudlin I howl now quite easily; he has been at ‘Chavasse’ again, and to rather an awful extent.”
“Yes, he is failing day by day, and unfolding himself at the same time. I never quite realized before how beautiful and single-hearted his character is; he comes now to see me, or rather to sit and meditate in my presence, after he has been to your mother’s grave, and when he has sat and rested, he speaks of you. You can gather the way, I fancy, from his letters—oh, the quaintness, the pathetic grotesqueness of his remarks!”
“I have often wanted to ask you if Mr. Fellowes ever brings his professional capacity to bear on my father?” asked Gwen.
“Never. ‘Only God is fit to undertake the care of such a soul as his,’ John says, ‘neither he nor his soul are subject to ordinary laws, each lives out the life given it to live.’ Good gracious! fancy John or any other parson attempting to shove theology into such a nature, or to dig down after his beliefs! Gwen, darling, you may be in good condition, but how very tired you look!”
“Tired! Oh yes, I am, I cannot tell you how tired! At first I used to live in a whirl so as to tire myself, now there’s no need of it, I am just as tired when I get up as when I go to bed, and nothing will drive the days on, and the endlessness of life sickens one. I feel crêpey enough to please anyone, goodness knows, but even if Humphrey never comes, I will neither wear crêpe nor put on any of the trappings of decent widowhood, for I know he never got my message. If he is dead, he died knowing nothing, I am no honest widow of his, and I will wear hats to the end of the chapter, and possibly grow fat and outrival Lady Mary, who knows!