pg1845 [93]
The mother was loth to have been outdone in sensibility by the daughter, and it was with some temper that she hastened to make the necessary ministrations.
"Where am I?" asked Katie, at length, echoing the words used in this very house, at a similar juncture, on this very day, by another lover of the Duke.
"Ah, you may well ask that," said Mrs. Batch, with more force than reason. "A mother's support indeed! Well! And as for you," she cried, turning on Clarence, "sending her off like that with your—" She was face to face again with the tragic news. Katie, remembering it simultaneously, uttered a loud sob. Mrs. Batch capped this with a much louder one. Clarence stood before the fire, slowly revolving on one heel. His clothes steamed briskly.
"It isn't true," said Katie. She rose and came uncertainly towards her brother, half threatening, half imploring.
"All right," said he, strong in his advantage. "Then I shan't tell either of you anything more."
Mrs. Batch through her tears called Katie a bad girl, and Clarence a bad boy.
"Where did you get THEM?" asked Clarence, pointing to the ear-rings worn by his sister.
"HE gave me them," said Katie. Clarence curbed the brotherly intention of telling her she looked "a sight" in them.
She stood staring into vacancy. "He didn't love HER," she murmured. "That was all over. I'll vow he didn't love HER."
"Who d'you mean by her?" asked Clarence.
"That Miss Dobson that's been here."
"What's her other name?"
"Zuleika," Katie enunciated with bitterest abhorrence.
"Well, then, he jolly well did love her. That's the name he called out just before he threw himself in. 'Zuleika!'—like that," added the boy, with a most infelicitous attempt to reproduce the Duke's manner.
Katie had shut her eyes, and clenched her hands.
"He hated her. He told me so," she said.
"I was always a mother to him," sobbed Mrs. Batch, rocking to and fro on a chair in a corner. "Why didn't he come to me in his trouble?"
"He kissed me," said Katie, as in a trance. "No other man shall ever do that."
"He did?" exclaimed Clarence. "And you let him?"
"You wretched little whipper-snapper!" flashed Katie.
"Oh, I am, am I?" shouted Clarence, squaring up to his sister. "Say that again, will you?"
There is no doubt that Katie would have said it again, had not her mother closed the scene with a prolonged wail of censure.
"You ought to be thinking of ME, you wicked girl," said Mrs. Batch. Katie went across, and laid a gentle hand on her mother's shoulder. This, however, did but evoke a fresh flood of tears. Mrs. Batch had a keen sense of the deportment owed to tragedy. Katie, by bickering with Clarence, had thrown away the advantage she had gained by fainting. Mrs. Batch was not going to let her retrieve it by shining as a consoler. I hasten to add that this resolve was only sub-conscious in the good woman. Her grief was perfectly sincere. And it was not the less so because with it was mingled a certain joy in the greatness of the calamity. She came of good sound peasant stock. Abiding in her was the spirit of those old songs and ballads in which daisies and daffodillies and lovers' vows and smiles are so strangely inwoven with tombs and ghosts, with murders and all manner of grim things. She had not had education enough to spoil her nerve. She was able to take the rough with the smooth. She was able to take all life for her province, and death too.
The Duke was dead. This was the stupendous outline she had grasped: now let it be filled in. She had been stricken: now let her be racked. Soon after her daughter had moved away, Mrs. Batch dried her eyes, and bade Clarence tell just what had happened. She did not flinch. Modern Katie did.
Such had ever been the Duke's magic in the household that Clarence had at first forgotten to mention that any one else was dead. Of this omission he was glad. It promised him a new lease of importance. Meanwhile, he described