A grimly amused sense of a likeness to poor Sloggett in the ill-success of her evening’s labours streaked the ink of Miss Ransome’s reflections on her homeward way.
The butler, who opened the door to her, gave her the information that her ladyship had returned, and would like to speak to Miss Ransome in her bedroom.
Felicity was in bed, but sitting up, with writing materials before her, though looking still more fagged than earlier in the day, and a good deal flushed. She dismissed Bonnybell’s expressions of surprised concern very slightly.
“Yes, the hall was hot. I felt rather faint, and had to come out before the end, but the meeting went off admirably. The delegates were delighted with their reception. What I wanted to say to you to-night, in case I might forget it to-morrow morning—not that that is likely—is that you must impress upon Mrs. Slammer that she cannot expect your help at her stall at the Cataleptics. You must explain to her that you have been engaged to me since last autumn—ever since last November.”
CHAPTER XXXIII
After all, if she had but known, it would not make much difference to Lady Bletchley what or what manner of assistants Mrs. Slammer would have at her stall at the Fancy Fair for All England Cataleptics, which was to be held under Distinguished Patronage in the Albert Hall at mid-May, since at that date she herself had already been two months dead. The sequence of events which led to that catastrophe was a now not uncommon one. A vital energy weakened by over-exertion, a chill, a consultation, a successful operation—in medical parlance, a successful operation is often one in which the patient dies next day, instead of immediately under the surgeon’s knife—followed two days later by a paragraph in all the morning papers: “We regret to announce the death, which took place at an early hour yesterday morning, from appendicitis, at her residence in Hill Street, of Lady Bletchley. The deceased lady, better known as Mrs. Glanville—her husband, Lord Bletchley, having succeeded to the title by the death of the fourth Lord only in January last—was a wellknown figure in social and philanthropic circles, where her loss will be long and deeply deplored. She was——” Then followed a lengthy list of societies, associations, organizations, of hospitals, institutions, and institutes, in connection with which Lady Bletchley had cut a more or less prominent figure.
Bonnybell read the flaming obituary notices carefully to the end, and then laid down the papers—her eyes felt tired—with a sigh. “Poor dear thing, how she would have enjoyed them!”
Miss Ransome still felt rather stunned from the effects of the tragic haste with which the dreadful events of the last two or three days had followed on each other’s heels—from the moment when she had left Felicity sitting up, flushed, in bed, adjuring her not to play her false in the matter of the bazaar. There had, indeed, been haste, strange haste, on the dead woman’s part to leave a world so full of a double relish and savour since her accession to fortune; such haste that she had not even waited to say a farewell word to the husband whose anxiety to “have her” to himself had been the motive for Bonnybell’s ejection.
Tom had not returned in time to see his wife alive. Though she had now been twenty-four hours dead, he had not yet returned. Camilla and Edward were in the house. They had come at once. How widely all the many ways in which Bonnybell had figured to herself the manner of her next meeting with Edward had differed from the real one! Camilla? No, there was no change in Camilla. If anything, she looked perhaps a shade less haggard than when Miss Ransome had parted from her. Camilla’s face was one that matched a house of mourning. It needed no dressing to harmonize with gloom. On looking back, Miss Ransome seemed dimly to remember that she herself had been voluntarily embraced with an only half-smothered kindness, but at the time of the Tancreds’ arrival, when poor Felicity’s fate still hung in the balance, her own mind was in such a state of strained tension and grisly surprise that impressions came but blurred to it.
Now that the power of observation was coming back to her, the extreme wretchedness of Edward’s air struck her with a sense of excess. Of course, the whole affair was terrible in its suddenness; but Edward had never seemed to be very fond of his sister. Miss Ransome’s knowledge of human nature was not yet deep enough to teach her that the death of a person to whom one has owed and not given love sometimes brings with it a bitterer pang than that of one to whom has been given our poor best of tenderness.