2
I am diverging from the point. I must begin with that dreadful evening of the 4th of September last. Clare was dining with a friend in town, and stopping at Jane's house in Hampstead for the night. Percy and I were spending a quiet evening at our house at Potter's Bar. We were both busy after dinner; he was in his study, and I was in my den, as I call it, writing another instalment of 'Rhoda's Gift' for the Evening Hustle, I find I write my best after dinner; my brain gets almost feverishly stimulated. My doctor tells me I ought not to work late, it is not fair on my nerves, but I think every writer has to live more or less on his or her nervous capital, it is the way of the reckless, squandering, thriftless tribe we are.
Laying down my pen at 10.45 after completing my chapter, the telephone bell suddenly rang. The maids had gone up to bed, so I went into the hall to take the call, or to put it through to Percy's study, for the late calls are usually, of course, for him, from one of the offices. But it was not for him. It was Jane's voice speaking.
'Is that you, mother?' she said, quite quietly and steadily. 'There's been an accident. Oliver fell downstairs. He fell backwards and broke his neck. He died soon after the doctor came.'
The self-control, the quiet pluck of these modern girls! Her voice hardly shook as she uttered the terrible words.
I sat down, trembling all over, and the tears rushed to my eyes. My darling child, and her dear husband, cut off at the very outset of their mutual happiness, and in this awful way! Those stairs—I always hated them; they are so steep and narrow, and wind so sharply round a corner.
'Oh, my darling,' I said. 'And the last train gone, so that I can't be with you till the morning! Is Clare there?'
'Yes,' said Jane. 'She's lying down…. She fainted.'
My poor darling Clare! So highly-strung, so delicate-fibred, far more like me than Jane is! And I always had a suspicion that her feeling for dear Oliver went very deep—deeper, possibly, than any of us ever guessed. For, there is no doubt about it, poor Oliver did woo Clare; if he wasn't in love with her he was very near it, before he went off at a tangent after Jane, who was something new, and therefore attractive to him, besides being thrown so much together in Paris when Jane was working for her father. The dear child has put up a brave fight ever since the engagement, and her self-control has been wonderful, but she has not been her old self. If it had not been for the unfortunate European conditions, I should have sent her abroad for a thorough change. It was terrible for her to be on the spot when this awful accident happened.
'My dear, dear child,' I said, hardly able to speak, my voice shook so with crying. 'I've no words…. Have you rung up Frank and Johnny? I should like Frank to be with you to-night; I know he would wish it.'