He sounded tired to-night; he was getting very old. Now for the customary last question.
‘When are they coming back, Lacey? It’s high time, isn’t it?’
He paused; then said:
‘You maybe won’t have heard, Miss....’
‘What?’
‘Master Charlie’s been killed.... Yes, Miss. We ‘ad word from London this afternoon. Ah, it’s cruel. It’ll about kill his Grannie, that’s wot I sez first thing—about kill her it will. He was the apple of her eye. That’s what we all said—the apple of her eye. She says to me once she says: “Lacey,” she says, “Master Charlie’ll live ‘ere when I’m gorn. I’m keepin’ the place on for ’im,” she says. “It shall never be let nor nothing. It’s ‘is, for ’im to bring ‘is wife to. Ah, pore little Miss Mariella, pore soul....” He broke into feeble weeping. “Ah, it’ll about be the death of ‘is Grannie. Pore Master Charlie—pore little chap ... everybody’s favourite, I remember ’im when ‘e was.... Yes, Missie, yes, Miss Judith....’
His voice failed; and with a hand touching his hat over and over again in mechanical apology, confused distress and appeal, he went shuffling away into the shadows.
But of course, of course he was dead; she had expected it all the time. Now it had happened she could turn to other things. She thought: ‘It’s not bad now; it’ll be worse later: then some time it will stop. I must bear it—bear it—bear it!’
That wheezing voice echoed in the solitude and complained: ‘Pore Master Charlie, pore little chap,’ over and over again through the dark lane among the poplars, above the wall of the garden where the poor little boy had lived long ago.
Had he really lived? Forget him, forget him. He was only a shadow any way, a romantic illusion, a beautiful plaything of the imagination: nothing of importance. Put him away, be sensible, be indifferent, gather round you once again the imperturbable mysteries of nature, be blinded and made deaf with them for ever. He was much better dead. He was weak and spoilt, selfish; he wouldn’t have been any good.... He never could bear blood: he must be thankful to be dead.