Jon turned – curled into a sort of ball, as might a hedgehog – into the corner made by the two walls.
He must have been twenty minutes there before a cry roused him. It came from the terrace below. He got up, scared. Again came the cry: ‘Jon!’ His mother was calling! He ran out and down the stairs, through the empty dining-room into the study. She was kneeling before the old armchair, and his father was lying back quite white, his head on his breast, one of his hands resting on an open book, with a pencil clutched in it – more strangely still than anything he had ever seen. She looked round wildly, and said:
‘Oh! Jon – he’s dead – he’s dead!’
Jon flung himself down, and reaching over the arm of the chair, where he had lately been sitting, put his lips to the forehead. Icy cold! How could – how could Dad be dead, when only an hour ago –! His mother’s arms were round the knees; pressing her breast against them. ‘Why – why wasn’t I with him?’ he heard her whisper. Then he saw the tottering word ‘Irene’ pencilled on the open page and broke down himself. It was his first sight of human death, and its unutterable stillness blotted from him all other emotion; all else, then, was but preliminary to this! All love and life, and joy; anxiety, and sorrow, all movement, light and beauty, but a beginning to this terrible white stillness. It made a dreadful mark on him; all seemed suddenly little, futile, short. He mastered himself at last, got up, and raised her.
‘Mother! don’t cry – Mother!’
Some hours later, when all was done that had to be, and his mother was lying down, he saw his father alone, on the bed, covered with a white sheet. He stood for a long time gazing at that face which had never looked angry – always whimsical, and kind: ‘To be kind and keep your end up – there’s nothing else in it,’ he had once heard his father say. How wonderfully Dad had acted up to that philosophy! He understood now that his father had known for a long time past that this would come suddenly – known, and not said a word. He gazed with an awe and passionate reverence. The loneliness of it – just to spare his mother and himself! His own trouble seemed small while he was looking at that face. The word scribbled on the page! The farewell word! Now his mother had no one but himself! He went up close to the dead face – not changed at all, and yet completely changed. He had heard his father say once that he did not believe in consciousness surviving death, or that if it did it might be just survival till the natural age limit of the body had been reached – the natural term of its inherent vitality; so that if the body were broken by accident, excess, violent disease, consciousness might still persist till, in the course of Nature un-interfered with, it would naturally have faded out. It had struck him because he had never heard anyone else suggest it. When the heart failed like this – surely it was not quite natural! Perhaps his father’s consciousness was in the room with him. Above the bed hung a picture of his father’s father. Perhaps his consciousness, too, was still alive; and his brother’s – his half-brother, who had died in the Transvaal. Were they all gathered round his bed? Jon kissed the forehead, and stole back to his own room. The door between it and his mother’s was ajar; she had evidently been in – everything was ready for him, even some biscuits and hot milk, and the letter no longer on the floor. He ate and drank, watching the last light fade. He did not try to see into the future – just stared at the dark branches of the oak tree, level with his window, and felt as if life had stopped. Once in the night, turning in his heavy sleep, he was conscious of something white and still beside his bed, and started up.
His mother’s voice said:
‘It’s only I, Jon dear!’ Her hand pressed his forehead gently back; her white figure disappeared.
Alone! He fell heavily asleep again, and dreamed he saw his mother’s name crawling on his bed.
Chapter Four
SOAMES COGITATES
THE announcement in The Times of his cousin Jolyon’s death affected Soames quite simply. So that chap was gone! There had never been a time in their two lives when love had not been lost between them. That quick-blooded sentiment hatred had run its course long since in Soames’s heart, and he had refused to allow any recrudescence, but he considered this early decease a piece of poetic justice. For twenty years the fellow had enjoyed the reversion of his wife and house, and – he was dead! The obituary notice, which appeared a little later, paid Jolyon – he thought – too much attention. It spoke of that ‘diligent and agreeable painter whose work we have come to look on as typical of the best late-Victorian water-colour art.’ Soames, who had almost mechanically preferred Mole, Morpin, and Caswell Baye, and had always sniffed quite audibly when he came to one of his cousin’s on the line, turned The Times with a crackle.