“Well,” retorted Miss Boler, “you said ‘tea at four o’clock,’ and at four o’clock the tea was ready and Dr. Gray was here. If he hadn’t been he would have had to eat leathery muffins, that’s all.”
“Horrible!” exclaimed Miss D’Arblay. “One doesn’t like to think of it; and there is no need to, as it hasn’t happened. Remember that this is a gate-legged table, Dr. Gray, when you sit down. They are delightfully picturesque, but exceedingly bad for the knees of the unwary.”
I thanked her for the warning, and took my seat with due caution. Then Miss Boler poured out the tea and uncovered the muffins with the grave and attentive air of one performing some ceremonial rite.
As the homely, simple meal proceeded, to an accompaniment of desultory conversation on every-day topics, I found myself looking at the two women with a certain ill-defined surprise. Both were garbed in unobtrusive black, and both, in moments of repose, looked somewhat tired and worn. But in their manner and the subjects of their conversation, they were astonishingly ordinary and normal. No stranger, looking at them and listening to their talk, would have dreamed of the tragedy that overshadowed their lives. But so it constantly happens. We go into a house of mourning, and are almost scandalized by its cheerfulness, forgetting that whereas to us the bereavement is the one salient fact, to the bereaved there is the necessity of taking up afresh the threads of their lives. Food must be prepared even while the corpse lies under the roof, and the common daily round of duty stands still for no human affliction.
But, as I have said, in the pauses of the conversation, when their faces were in repose, both women looked strained and tired. Especially was this so in the case of Miss D’Arblay. She was not only pale, but she had a nervous, shaken manner which I did not like. And as I looked anxiously at the delicate, pallid face, I noticed, not for the first time, several linear scratches on the cheek and a small cut on the temple.
“What have you been doing to yourself?” I asked. “You look as if you had had a fall.”
“She has,” said Miss Boler in an indignant tone. “It is a marvel that she is here to tell the tale. The wretches!”
I looked at Miss D’Arblay in consternation. “What wretches?” I asked.
“Ah! indeed!” growled Miss Boler. “I wish I knew. Tell him about it, Miss Marion.”
“It was really rather a terrifying experience,” said Miss D’Arblay; “and most mysterious. You know Southwood Lane and the long, steep hill at the bottom of it?” I nodded, and she continued: “I have been going down to the studio every day on my bicycle, just to tidy up, and, of course, I went by Southwood Lane. It is really the only way. But I always put on the brake at the top of the hill and go down quite slowly because of the crossroads at the bottom. Well, three days ago I started as usual and ran down the Lane pretty fast until I got on the hill. Then I put on the brake; and I could feel at once that it wasn’t working.”