He didn't speak to her or disturb her with any claims on her attention,
partly because the path was very steep and he wasn't used to cliffs, but
also because of his feeling that he and she, isolated together by their
sorrows, understood without any words. And when they reached the house,
the first to reach it from the church just as if, he couldn't help
thinking, they were coming back from their wedding, he told her in his
firmest voice to go straight up to her room and lie down, and she obeyed
with the sweet obedience of perfect trust.
'Who is that?' asked the man who was helping Miss Entwhistle up the
cliff.
'Oh, a _very_ old friend of darling Jim's,' she sobbed,--she had been
sobbing without stopping from the first words of the burial service, and
was quite unable to leave off. 'Mr.--Mr.--We--We--Wemyss----'
'Wemyss? I don't remember coming across him with Jim.'
'Oh, one of his--his _oldest_--f--fr--friends,' sobbed poor Miss
Entwhistle, got completely out of control.
Wemyss, continuing in his rôle of chief mourner, was the only person who
was asked to spend the evening up at the bereaved house.
'I don't wonder,' said Miss Entwhistle to him at dinner, still with
tears in her voice, 'at my dear brother's devotion to you. You have been
the greatest help, the greatest comfort----'
And neither Wemyss nor Lucy felt equal to explanation.
What did it matter? Lucy, fatigued by emotions, her mind bruised by the
violent demands that had been made on it the last four days, sat
drooping at the table, and merely thought that if her father had known
Wemyss it would certainly have been true that he was devoted to him. He
hadn't known him; he had missed him by--yes, by just three hours; and
this wonderful friend of hers was the very first good thing that she and
her father hadn't shared. And Wemyss's attitude was simply that if
people insist on jumping at conclusions, why, let them. He couldn't
anyhow begin to expound himself in the middle of a meal, with a
parlourmaid handing dishes round and listening.
But there was an awkward little moment when Miss Entwhistle tearfully
wondered--she was eating blanc-mange, the last of a series of cold and
pallid dishes with which the imaginative cook, a woman of Celtic origin,
had expressed her respectful appreciation of the occasion--whether when
the will was read it wouldn't be found that Jim had appointed Mr. Wemyss
poor Lucy's guardian.
'I am--dear me, how very hard it is to remember to say I was--my dear
brother's only relative. We belong--belonged--to an exiguous family, and
naturally I'm no longer as young as I was. There is only--was only--a
year between Jim and me, and at any moment I may be----'
Here Miss Entwhistle was interrupted by a sob, and had to put down her
spoon.
'--taken,' she finished after a moment, during which the other two sat
silent.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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