She started running; and wondered why; and ran as hard as she could.
As she opened the front door, she stopped, aghast. The telephone bell was screaming, screaming, screaming.
Telegram for Judith Earle. From Paris.
‘Father died this evening. Come to-morrow. Mother.’
As she hung up the receiver silence in a vast tide flowed in and drowned the house, his house, as if for ever.
He had been deep in the business of dying while she, his daughter—— No. She must not think that way; she must just think of him dead. What an extraordinary thing.... Last time she had seen him had he looked as if he were going to die? There came a doubtful indistinct picture of him—yes—going upstairs to bed, early, not later than ten o’clock. She had looked up the staircase and seen him near the top, mounting with a hand on the bannister: going to bed so early, looking—yes—a little feeble; the bowed back and slow yielding step, the slightly laborious stair-mounting of a man getting old—yes—a delicate elderly man, a little frightening, a little pathetic to see unexpectedly: for could youth then really depart? He had been young and he had come upon old age. Some day she too—she too ... yes, for a moment she had thought that. And now he was dead.
She crept to the library and switched on all the lights and stared at the portrait of a young man. That beautiful youth had lived, grown old and died. He had begotten a daughter who was looking at him and thinking these things. But the cold portraits of people held them bound for ever in unreality; they could not die: they had not lived.
She sank into a chair, burying her face in her hands, seeking for a memory that would make her know that he had lived and died.
She was very small and he, very kind and noble, was taking her to hear the child-genius play. Her excitement was too great to bear: she too would be a child-genius; and when the violin came it wrought on her so violently that she was sick where she sat. He had been deeply disappointed in her, his kindness and nobility turned to disgust.
At night, every night for a long time, with the night light burning, he had sat on her bed and sung softly to her. He sang ‘Uncle Tom Cobley.’