'We'll first have some lunch,' explained the young gentleman to us, as we stood all together in the hall; 'and then afterwards we'll drive over to the mausoleum.'
It wasn't a festive luncheon. Only the doctors and Mr. FitzHoward ate anything. I'm sure the rest of us would have been just as well without it; particularly Mr. Howarth, for he did nothing else but drink. In spite of myself I kept getting more and more into the dumps. The air of the place and the air of the people, the feeling, too, that something unpleasant was at hand, began to fill me with a sense of worry. Mr. Howarth's face and manner, and the way he drank, made it worse. He must have had two or three bottles of wine to himself; if not more, tumbler after tumbler. What wine it was I couldn't say. The fact that nobody else drank anything at all made the fact of his drinking so much all the more conspicuous. We all sat peering at him out of the corners of our eyes, wondering what was going to happen.
By the time lunch was over, and we were getting ready to start, I was all of a fidget. I was still persuaded that there was no bad news in store for me, but I was equally sure that there was for some one. What Mr. Howarth feared I couldn't think. I remembered once reading an account of a man who was hanged; how, as he approached the gallows, his face seemed to get more and more set, and he moved more and more like a rickety machine. It all came back to me as I looked at Mr. Howarth. I wished it wouldn't. In particular I did wish that he'd manage to put himself somewhere where I couldn't see him. The fear that was on him began to pass to me. Miss Desmond's face was like a sheet for whiteness. When she came close to me I saw that she was shivering, and that there were deep lines about the corners of her lips and eyes.
As a servant came to tell us all was ready, the young gentleman, noticing how strange she looked, came towards us with an anxious face. He himself didn't look as well as he might have done. But he was resolute and stern rather than white with the terror of what was to come; as she was.
'Edith, I think that you had better stay behind; and you, too.'
This was to me. But I would have no truck with any such suggestion. I had no fear of what I was going to see; I knew it wouldn't be my James. It was because I had no fear that I was resolved to see. Their eyes I wouldn't trust; not Mr. FitzHoward's, nor Dr. Clinton's, nor any one's, except my own. If James was dead, and in that coffin, of which I'd heard so much, then for me there was an end of everything. But I knew he wasn't, and, let them tell what tales they might, I'd require the evidence of my own eyes before I believed he was. It was right and proper that Miss Desmond should stay behind, for that she was in a piteous plight was plain; and this was a business in which her concern was as nothing compared to mine, but with me it was a different tale.
'I shall go. But you--' I turned to her; 'I think that you had better stay.'
'I can't! I can't!' she said. Then she dropped her voice. 'I daren't!'
The young gentleman's face grew darker.
'I shall have to forbid you. You are not well; there is no reason why you should come; rather there is why you shouldn't; and you must excuse my saying, Edith, that we want no scenes.'