“What a home-coming!” raising and straightening herself again.
“Yes.”
“All animals creep to their lairs to die,” pursues Mrs. Prince, shaking her head, and with a poetic excursion into the regions of natural history not usual with her. “I suppose that that is his feeling.”
“I suppose so.”
“How dreadfully flat those boys are singing!” says Féodorovna, affectedly, putting her hands over her ears to exclude the sound of the choir practice, floating in annual struggle with the Christmas anthem from the just dim-lit church.
Féodorovna’s ear for music has never been her strong point, and a jarred surprise at the pretended suffering mixes with Mrs. Darcy’s disgust at the petulant bad taste of the interjection.
“Shall we see poor Lavinia at church to-morrow, do you think?” asks Mrs. Prince, real kindliness struggling in her tone with a rather morbid curiosity. “I declare that I shall hardly dare to look in the direction of their seat. What a life she must have led during these last five months, tête-à-tête in cheap lodgings, for I fear their means would not run to anything very luxurious—with that poor old gentleman going over the same sad story, day after day, day after day, as he did in the case of Bill! And I am afraid that sickness is not likely to have improved his temper. I am sure that I should not be surprised to hear that her reason had given way.”
The apprehension expressed has certainly no novelty for Mrs. Darcy. It has rung ominously in her ears many times since her last sight of the friend whose short letters, dated from so long a succession of dreary health resorts, as to prove the dying restlessness which is upon the old man, tell her so little in their uncomplaining brevity. Perhaps it is the grafting of another’s crude, bald words upon her own scarcely permitted thought, which makes both seem unendurable. She turns hastily away, and all follow her from the grave, since, as far as the churchyard gate, their roads lie together.
Twilight has come upon them as they stand; twilight passing in dim gallop into darkness—a darkness that will never be relieved by the little paltry moon, making its poor fight with the dominant vapours. Silence has fallen upon the two elder women; but the tongues of the children, following hard behind with Féodorovna, are loosed.