must have had a hell of a time, poor darling. I'm simply dying to see you. It's rather funny our both having babies together. We shall be able to hold one another's hands.
Kitty, lost in reflexion, stood for a little while on the deck. She could not imagine her mother ill. She never remembered to have seen her other than active and resolute; she had always been impatient of other people's ailments. Then a steward came up to her with a telegram.
Deeply regret to inform you that your mother died this morning. Father.
LXXIX
KITTY rang the bell at the house in Harrington Gardens. She was told that her father was in his study and going to the door she opened it softly: he was sitting by the fire reading the last edition of the evening paper. He looked up as she entered, put down the paper, and sprang nervously to his feet.
"Oh, Kitty, I didn't expect you till the later train."
"I thought you wouldn't want the bother of coming to meet me so I didn't wire the time I expected to arrive."
He gave her his cheek to kiss in the manner she so well remembered.
"I was just having a look at the paper," he said. "I haven't read the paper for the last two days."
She saw that he thought it needed some explanation if he occupied himself with the ordinary affairs of life.
"Of course," she said. "You must be tired out. I'm afraid mother's death has been a great shock to you."
He was older and thinner than when she had last seen him. A little, lined, dried-up man, with a precise manner.
"The surgeon said there had never been any hope. She hadn't been herself for more than a year, but she refused to see a doctor. The surgeon told me that she must have been in constant pain, he said it was a miracle that she had been able to endure it."
"Did she never complain?"
"She said she wasn't very well. But she never complained of pain." He paused and looked at Kitty. "Are you very tired after your journey?"
"Not very."
"Would you like to go up and see her?"
"Is she here?"
"Yes, she was brought here from the nursing home."
"Yes, I'll go now."
"Would you like me to come with you?"
There was something in her father's tone that made her look at him quickly. His face was slightly turned from her; he did not want her to catch his eye. Kitty had acquired of late a singular proficiency at reading the thoughts of others. After all, day after day she had applied all her sensibilities to divine from a casual word or an unguarded gesture the hidden thoughts of her husband. She guessed at once what her father was trying to hide from her. It was relief he felt, an infinite relief, and he was frightened of himself. For hard on thirty years he had been a good and faithful husband, he had never uttered a single word in dispraise of his wife, and now he should grieve for her. He had always done the things that were expected of him. It would have been shocking to him by the flicker of an eyelid or by the smallest hint to betray that he did not feel what under the circumstances a bereaved husband should feel.
"No, I would rather go by myself," said Kitty.
She went upstairs and into the large, cold and pretentious bedroom in which her mother for so many years had slept. She remembered so well those massive pieces of mahogany and the engravings after Marcus Stone which adorned the walls. The things on the dressing-table were arranged with the stiff precision which Mrs. Garstin had all her life insisted upon. The flowers looked out of place; Mrs. Garstin would have thought it silly, affected and unhealthy to have flowers in her bedroom. Their perfume did not cover that acrid,* musty smell, as of freshly washed linen, which Kitty remembered as characteristic of her mother's room.
Mrs. Garstin lay on the bed, her hands folded across her breasts with a meekness which in life she would have had no patience with. With her strong sharp features, the cheeks hollow with suffering and the temples sunken, she looked handsome and even imposing. Death had robbed her face of its meanness and left only an impression of character. She might have been a Roman empress. It was strange to Kitty that of the dead persons she had seen this was the only one who