[CHAPTER XLVIII]
HOW JIM ADDED STORIES TO HIS AIR-CASTLE, AND SMOKED HIS LAST PIPE. HOW HE KNEW CHALLIS'S VOICE AGAIN. WHO HAD TO BE AT THE PARK GATE BY NINE. HOW JIM HEARD THE MOTOR COMING BACK, AND LIZARANN'S VOICE. HOW ATHELSTAN TAYLOR ARRIVED WITHOUT HER. OF JIM'S DEATH AND HERS
Athelstan Taylor and Aunt Bessy were at breakfast when the telegram came to say all was "over unexpectedly; writing." It was opened by the Rector, who rose and handed it to his sister-in-law; then passed on to the door in time to stop an incursion of Phœbe and Joan with "Aunty's coming directly, chicks. Run away now." But not in time to prevent Joan having good grounds for asking Phœbe why Aunt Bessy was crying.
Aunt Bessy was, no doubt. And the Rector was completely upset, too, for the moment. He had not the least expected anything so soon. But his work was cut out for him now. "I must go to poor Jim at once," he said.
"Oh, Athel, Athel!" said Aunt Bessy through her sobs. "You know, don't you, dear, that Jim would have been told before if I had had my way?" It was what Athelstan himself afterwards spoke of to Adeline Fossett as "poor Bessy's I-told-you-so consolation." The Rector was grieved for her grief, and knew that this expedient would really help her to bear it, so he was not going to grudge her all she could get from it.
"I know, Bess," said he. "Perhaps I was wrong. However, I didn't see quite what else to do. And I never imagined anything so sudden as this. Poor Jim!"
But it was only an easement, to be used and discarded. Miss Caldecott was ready to surrender the point—certainly wouldn't rub it in. "P-perhaps you were right, after all!" said she. Her grief for Lizarann was very real. And how was she to tell Phœbe and Joan?
"You may trust me to do whatever can be done for poor Jim, Bess. I shall go to him at the Well at once. He won't be absolutely unprepared by the time I tell him, because he knows my foot on the road a long way off, and he will know something has happened by my coming so early. It's not half-past eight yet. I shall be with him soon after nine."