“He’d never have killed himself for that. If anything had gone wrong there, it was more than ever his duty to keep alive.”
“Well, there’s no good us arguing here about what he did it for—if he really did do it. The question is—who is going to tell Mother?”
“Oh, Jenny....”
They looked at each other in consternation.
§ 23
But Lady Alard, for all her frailty, belonged to a tougher generation than her children. In times of prosperity she might languish, but in times of adversity her spirit seemed to stiffen in proportion to the attacks upon it. If her cook had given notice she would have taken to her bed, but now when catastrophe trod on catastrophe and the fatal illness of her husband was followed by the death of her first-born son she armed herself with a courage in which her children, careless of kitchen tragedies, seemed to fail when they met the bigger assaults of life. She was less shattered by the news of Peter’s death than was the daughter who broke it to her, and rising up out of her chair, independent of arm or stick, she insisted on going downstairs into the dark, whispering house.
The others followed her, except Doris, who stayed huddled and motionless in her chair in her father’s dressing-room, like a stricken dog at its master’s door. The dining-room was lighted up and seemed full of men. They were gathered round the table on which, with a sense of futility and pathos Jenny caught sight of a pair of stiff legs in muddy boots.
At the sound of footsteps Dr. Mount came out of the room.
“What! Lady Alard!” he exclaimed, quite unprepared for such a visit.
“Yes, I want to see him.”